Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By David Cornell, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Lancashire

As far back as 1980, the American philosopher John Searle distinguished between strong and weak AI. Weak AIs are merely useful machines or programs that help us solve problems, whereas strong AIs would have genuine intelligence. A strong AI would be conscious.

Searle was sceptical of the very possibility of strong AI, but not everyone shares his pessimism. Most optimistic are those who endorse functionalism, a popular theory of mind that takes conscious mental states to be determined solely by their function. For a functionalist, the task of producing a strong AI is merely a technical challenge. If we can create a system that functions like us, we can be confident it is conscious like us.

Recently, we have reached the tipping point. Generative AIs such as Chat-GPT are now so advanced that their responses are often indistinguishable from those of a real human – see this exchange between Chat-GPT and Richard Dawkins, for instance.

This issue of whether a machine can fool us into thinking it is human is the subject of a well-known test devised by English computer scientist Alan Turing in 1950. Turing claimed that if a machine could pass the test, we ought to conclude it was genuinely intelligent.

Back in 1950 this was pure speculation, but according to a pre-print study from earlier this year – that’s a study that hasn’t been peer-reviewed yet – the Turing test has now been passed. Chat-GPT convinced 73% of participants that it was human.

What’s interesting is that nobody is buying it. Experts are not only denying that Chat-GPT is conscious but seemingly not even taking the idea seriously. I have to admit, I’m with them. It just doesn’t seem plausible.

The key question is: what would a machine actually have to do in order to convince us?

Experts have tended to focus on the technical side of this question. That is, to discern what technical features a machine or program would need in order to satisfy our best theories of consciousness. A 2023 article, for instance, as reported here in The Conversation, compiled a list of 14 technical criteria or “consciousness indicators”, such as learning from feedback (Chat-GPT didn’t make the grade).

But creating a strong AI is as much a psychological challenge as a technical one. It is one thing to produce a machine that satisfies the various technical criteria that we set out in our theories, but it is quite another to suppose that, when we are finally confronted with such a thing, we will believe it is conscious.

The success of Chat-GPT has already demonstrated this problem. For many, the Turing test was the benchmark of machine intelligence. But if it has been passed, as the pre-print study suggests, the goalposts have shifted. They might well keep shifting as technology improves.

Myna difficulties

This is where we get into the murky realm of an age-old philosophical quandary: the problem of other minds. Ultimately, one can never know for sure whether anything other than oneself is conscious. In the case of human beings, the problem is little more than idle scepticism. None of us can seriously entertain the possibility that other humans are unthinking automata, but in the case of machines it seems to go the other way. It’s hard to accept that they could be anything but.

A particular problem with AIs like Chat-GPT is that they seem like mere mimicry machines. They’re like the myna bird who learns to vocalise words with no idea of what it is doing or what the words mean.

This doesn’t mean we will never make a conscious machine, of course, but it does suggest that we might find it difficult to accept it if we did. And that might be the ultimate irony: succeeding in our quest to create a conscious machine, yet refusing to believe we had done so. Who knows, it might have already happened.

So what would a machine need to do to convince us? One tentative suggestion is that it might need to exhibit the kind of autonomy we observe in many living organisms.

Current AIs like Chat-GPT are purely responsive. Keep your fingers off the keyboard and they’re as quiet as the grave. Animals are not like this, at least not the ones we commonly take to be conscious, like chimps, dolphins, cats and dogs. They have their own impulses and inclinations (or at least appear to), along with the desires to pursue them. They initiate their own actions on their own terms, for their own reasons.

Perhaps if we could create a machine that displayed this type of autonomy – the kind of autonomy that would take it beyond a mere mimicry machine – we really would accept it was conscious?

It’s hard to know for sure. Maybe we should ask Chat-GPT.

David Cornell does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The hardest part of creating conscious AI might be convincing ourselves it’s real – https://theconversation.com/the-hardest-part-of-creating-conscious-ai-might-be-convincing-ourselves-its-real-268123

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefano Arlaud, PhD candidate in Time Processing and Metacognition of Time Processing, SBBS, Queen Mary University of London

Most animals, including humans, carry an internal lunar clock, tuned to the 29.5-day rhythm of the Moon. It guides sleep, reproduction and migration of many species. But in the age of artificial light, that ancient signal is fading – washed out by the glow of cities, screens and satellites.

Just as the circadian rhythm keeps time with the 24-hour rotation of the Earth, many organisms also track the slower rhythm of the Moon. Both systems rely on light cues, and a recent study analysing women’s menstrual cycles shows that as the planet brightens from artificial light, the natural contrasts that once structured biological time are being blurred.

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Read more:
Five animals that behave differently in moonlight

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Plenty of research suggests the lunar cycle still influences human sleep. A 2021 study found that in Toba (also known as Qom) Indigenous communities in Argentina, people went to bed 30-80 minutes later and slept 20-90 minutes less in the three-to-five nights before the full Moon.

Similar, though weaker, patterns appeared among more than 400 Seattle students in the same study, even amid the city’s heavy light pollution. This suggests that electric light may dampen but not erase this lunar effect.

The researchers found that sleep patterns varied not only with the full-Moon phase but also with the new- and half-Moon phases. This 15-day rhythm may reflect the influence of the Moon’s changing gravitational pull, which peaks twice per lunar month, during both the full and new Moons, when the Sun, Earth and Moon align. Such gravitational cycles could subtly affect biological rhythms alongside light-related cues.

Laboratory studies have supported these findings. In a 2013 experiment, during the full Moon phase participants took about five minutes longer to fall asleep, slept 20 minutes less, and secreted less melatonin (a hormone that helps regulate the sleep-wake cycle). They also showed a 30% reduction in EEG slow-wave brain activity – an indicator of deep sleep.

Their sleep was monitored over several weeks covering a lunar cycle. The participants also reported poorer sleep quality around the full Moon, despite being unaware that their data was being analysed against lunar phases.

Perhaps the most striking evidence of a lunar rhythm in humans comes from the recent study analysing long-term menstrual records of 176 women across Europe and the US.

Before around 2010 – when LED lighting and smartphone use became widespread – many women’s menstrual cycles tended to begin around the full Moon or new Moon phases. Afterwards, that synchrony largely vanished, persisting only in January, when the Moon-Sun-Earth gravitational effects are strongest.

The researchers propose that humans may still have an internal Moon clock, but that its coupling to lunar phases has been weakened by artificial lighting.

A metronome for other species

The Moon acts as a metronome for other species. For example, coral reefs coordinate mass spawning events with precision, releasing eggs and sperm under specific phases of Moonlight.

In a 2016 laboratory study, researchers working with reef-building corals (for example A. millepora) replaced the natural night light cycle with regimes of constant light or constant darkness. They found that the normal cycling of clock-genes (such as the cryptochromes) was flattened or lost, and the release of sperm and eggs fell out of sync. These findings suggest lunar light cues are integral to the genetic and physiological rhythms that underlie synchronised reproduction.

Other species, such as the marine midge Clunio marinus, use an internal “coincidence detector” that integrates circadian and lunar signals to time their reproduction precisely with low tides. Genetic studies have shown this lunar timing is linked to several clock-related genes – suggesting that the influence of lunar cycles extends down to the molecular level.

However, a 2019 study found that the synchrony of wild coral spawning is breaking down. Scientists think this may be due to pollutants and rising sea temperatures as well as light pollution. But we know that light pollution is causing disruption for many wildlife species that use the Moon to navigate or time their movements.

Near-permanent brightness

For most of human history, moonlight was the brightest light of night. Today, it competes with an artificial glow visible from space. According to the World Atlas of Artificial Night Sky Brightness, more than 80% of the global population – and nearly everyone in Europe and the US – live under a light-polluted sky (one that is bright enough to hide the Milky Way).

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Read more:
For medieval people, the Moon was both a riddle and a blessing

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In some countries such as Singapore or Kuwait, there is literally nowhere without significant light pollution. Constant sky-glow from dense urban lighting keeps the sky so bright that night never becomes truly dark.

This near-permanent brightness is a by-product of these countries’ high population density, extensive outdoor illumination, and the reflection of light off buildings and the atmosphere. Even in remote national parks far from cities, the glow of distant lights can still be detected hundreds of kilometres away.

In cognitive neuroscience, time perception is often described by pacemaker–accumulator models, in which an internal “pacemaker” emits regular pulses that the brain counts to estimate duration. The stability of this system depends on rhythmic environmental cues – daylight, temperature, social routines – that help tune the rate of those pulses.

Losing the slow, monthly cue of moonlight may mean that our internal clocks now run in a flatter temporal landscape, with fewer natural fluctuations to anchor them. Previous psychological research has found disconnection from nature can warp our sense of time.

The lunar clock still ticks within us – faint but measurable. It shapes tides, sleep and the rhythms of countless species. Yet as the night sky brightens, we risk losing not only the stars, but the quiet cadence that once linked life on Earth to the turning of the Moon.

Stefano Arlaud does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Humans have an internal lunar clock – but light pollution is disrupting it – https://theconversation.com/humans-have-an-internal-lunar-clock-but-light-pollution-is-disrupting-it-266717

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Michael Rowe, Reader in European History, King’s College London

The Napoleonic wars were fought on a bigger scale than any conflict that had gone before. Though concentrated in Europe, their impact was global. They conjure up images of huge battles fought between armies in colourful and flamboyant uniforms. Given all this, it is unsurprising that Napoleonic-era military history still looms large in our cultural imagination.

It is the wider social and cultural effects of those wars, however, that dominates current historical research. This includes the impact of those wars on attitudes towards race.

The National Army Museum in London has recently identified the likely subject of a portrait of a black soldier in its collection as Private Thomas James. Speaking to the Guardian to mark both the identification and restoration of the portrait, curator Anna Lavelle highlighted the British army as a place of racial equality. Meanwhile, the museum’s director, Justin Maciejewski, suggests that the painting underscores the shared sense of purpose historically held by British soldiers when facing common enemies such as Napoleon.

The vast majority of ordinary privates who fought and died in the Napoleonic wars have left no record, irrespective of their ethnicity. This in itself makes the recent identification – though not with a 100% degree of certainty – of the subject of this portrait important. It might be taken as evidence for an argument already made by Napoleonic specialists: that the demands of war provided an opportunity for previously marginalised groups to improve their status.

This applied not only to enslaved men of African heritage, but to other groups including, for example, Jewish people in Central Europe who fought against Napoleon in the armies of Austria and Prussia. Like Irish Catholics in the British armed forces, they and their supporters used their patriotic engagement to justify greater equality in the emancipation debates that followed the end of the Napoleonic wars.

James’s experience was therefore far from unusual. Within the British armed forces of the time, the majority of black men served in the so-called West India Regiments, formed in the 1790s to fight the French in the Caribbean. These men were, in practice, “purchased” by a British government desperate for additional manpower. They served in an environment infamous for its horrendous attrition rates caused by tropical diseases. Whether this process can be heralded as a model of modern diversity and inclusion practices seems doubtful, to say the least.

That said, these black soldiers were by virtue of their military service freed from slavery. While wearing the king’s coat, they were subject to military disciplinary codes that were ostensibly colour-blind, unlike the colonial codes that had previously regulated their lives.

From their perspective, the British military effort in the Americas undoubtedly led to an improvement in status. At the same time, vast investments in naval infrastructure in the Caribbean created new economic opportunities for freed black people – both women and men. These opportunities were especially significant in the islands of that strategically vital region.

There is a further dimension to the portrait of James. The white colour of his uniform deviates from that of most of the regiment, which would have been dark blue. Taken together with the prominently displayed cymbals, this suggests James was part of the military band common to regiments in all the armies that fought the Napoleonic Wars.

Music was a feature not only of ceremonial occasions but an important ingredient to good morale. It even played a role in communications. Black musicians were often prominent in military bands in this period, and not only in the British army.

They were also common in the armies of German states even before the Napoleonic wars – somewhat surprisingly, given that these states, unlike Britain, did not possess any African or Caribbean colonies. The background to this fashion derives from the Ottoman origins of modern military music, and its adoption by European armies during the 18th century. Initially, western armies employed Turkish musicians in these bands, but over time they were replaced by men of African origin.

African musicians were much prized and respected. They added lustre to the regiment and prestige to the colonel. More widely, they fed into a wider societal demand for the “exotic”.

Within Napoleonic-era armies, this was manifested in the undue prominence given to military units that fed Orientalism – including, most famously, the Mamelukes of the Imperial Guard, who served close to the emperor himself, and who appear in almost every Napoleonic-era battle painting. Other examples include the Russian Cossacks, whose attire was so exotic that it inspired innovations in civilian fashion when the Tsarist army occupied Paris after Napoleon’s defeat.

Armies reflect the societies from which they are drawn. And while Napoleonic-era armies provided unusual, if not unique, opportunities for those otherwise on the margins, they also reinforced notions of difference that were fairly common at the time.

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Michael Rowe does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What a newly identified portrait of a black Napoleonic soldier reveals about British Army diversity – https://theconversation.com/what-a-newly-identified-portrait-of-a-black-napoleonic-soldier-reveals-about-british-army-diversity-268230

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jessica Mary Bradley, Senior Lecturer in Literacies and Language, University of Sheffield

Throughout October, the Barbican in London is hosting Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages. It’s the first UK festival for artists who create in indigenous languages and dialects. And it explores themes of art, language, the idea of home and belonging – including how all four intersect.

Festival events include The Creative Voice, a free exhibition with newly commissioned poems in endangered languages and script-based visual artworks, exploring ideas of home and language.

The exhibition, co-curated by artists Sam Winston and Chris McCabe, is complemented by a live literature programme. This includes talks and a panel discussion with writers Irvine Welsh and Raymond Antrobus, performances of the commissioned poems, as well as Yiddish and dialect poetry and an open mic poetry night.

Sound artist Jamie Perera has also created a sound trail of endangered languages, located in hidden places across the Barbican estate. It invites people to “lend their ears, reflect and connect with cultures and languages at risk of being forgotten”. This culminates in Babel Reclaimed, described as “an ocean of endangered languages moving around the world”.

The Creative Voice exhibition is located at the back of the performing arts centre, just before the entrance to Barbican Kitchen restaurant. Deceptively small in terms of physical space, the exhibition is ambitious in its scope, incorporating an eclectic range of exhibits which clamour for attention.

The five commissioned poems, called the Global Poems for Home, are drawn from across Africa, North America, Asia and Europe. Together they form a central focus, connecting with home and belonging through letter forms, script and colour ideas, and experiences of language.

In dialogue with the poems, Winston has created the artworks Seed Syllable Flags, displayed high above the poems and exhibition space, which each show one word. These words, chosen by the five poets, are inscribed in endangered or minority script and in a unique colour connected to that poem. The colours are made using inks derived from materials connected to place or experience. According to text panels in the exhibition, the term Seed Syllable refers to a short, sacred sound or mantra.

The flags are positioned above the audio readings of the poems and the written displays, with descriptions of each of the flags alongside the poems to which they connect, creating an immersive space, with exhibit colours echoing the coloured dyes of the flags. The poems are displayed in several languages alongside a translation to (or from) English, with the translators involved named.

Tuareg poet Hawad’s poem Our Land Keens, originally written in Tamajaght language and in Tiginagh script (the Tuareg alphabet), references “blood ochre”, the colour of the associated flag. This is linked to the colour of the poet’s home landscape, where ochre is now inaccessible for the poet. The word itself is colourless on a red ochre flag.

A poem by Norma Dunning, I Will Be at Home, originally in English, is shown alongside its translation to Inuktitut, accompanied by the word “veins”, painted in ink made from wild blueberries. Dunning connects place with the body, stating:

Home is a place of calm

Where the river widens

Flowing into my veins.

Smoke by Filipino poet Troy Cabida is written on the flag in Tagalog and in Baybayin script, with ink made from Marlboro Red cigarettes. Smoke is evocative of an urban childhood and memories of buying cigarettes for their parents as a young child.

Iraqi-Welsh poet Hanan Issa’s What Colour Are You?, an English-language poem with Arabic words intermingled, plays with translation. The Iraqi Arabic greeting “how are you?” translates literally as “what colour are you?” The words “how are you?” are translated into Arabic for the associated flag, using Kohl ink, connecting with the charcoal used in makeup and traditional tattoos.

On the fifth flag, the word “continuity” is inscribed in Cyrillic script in ink made of chokeberries, a fruit connected to poet Hanna Komar’s memories of childhood in Belarus.

Beyond the poems, the exhibits explore the relationship between writing traditions and the existence of languages, showcasing photographs and anthropological films of speakers which showcase living languages and everyday communication from the Endangered Languages Archive, both beyond and very much besides language. Three bilingual dialect poems from the UK, an important reminder of the nation’s multilingual and multi-dialectal heritage, are also displayed.

While relatively small in scale, The Creative Voice exhibition offers deep insights into connections between language, place, materiality and our interconnected senses of belonging and home. Together, the exhibits create an immersive, interactive document of endangered languages and their relationship to memory and lived experience, as well as colour, shape and texture.

The Seed Syllable Flags offer an urgent alternative to nation-state colours and emblems, inviting reflection on what happens when languages (and homelands) are lost. What do we lose? What is at stake? And, importantly, who loses the most?

Voiced: The Festival for Endangered Languages is at Barbican London until October 31 2025, moving to Manchester in 2026

Jessica Mary Bradley receives funding through the British Academy / Leverhulme small grants scheme (2025) in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust.

Louise Atkinson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Voiced: Barbican festival highlights endangered languages and their connection to art – https://theconversation.com/voiced-barbican-festival-highlights-endangered-languages-and-their-connection-to-art-267652

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sarah-Jane Coyle, PhD Candidate, School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen’s University Belfast

Is there such a thing as the “perfect victim”? Is it an old lady who is suddenly mugged on the street? And where does a greedy lawyer, eager to profit from an elderly widow’s demise, fit in? Would we have sympathy if he was manipulated and wrongly accused of her murder?

Such questions of victimhood lie at the heart of John Grisham’s new novel, The Widow. The book is marketed as a classic Grisham courtroom drama with the addition of a whodunnit-style mystery – the writer’s first foray into this genre.

Our protagonist is Simon F. Latch, a working-class lawyer who covers routine legal matters such as bankruptcy and wills. Simon struggles with illegal gambling and a fondness for alcohol, which worsens his already struggling marriage and barely profitable legal practice.

Potential for change arrives when Eleanor Barnett, an 85-year-old widow with no family, comes to his office in rural Virginia to secure a new will and claims she is sitting on a US$20 million (£149 million) fortune. Eleanor entrusts oversight of her estate to Simon, whose new drafting of her will ensures he will earn legal fees of US$500 per hour when the will is eventually brought to probate.

Simon sneaks deeper into Eleanor’s life by secretly taking her out to lunch, then begins to take control of her personal affairs – all the while keeping her wealth a secret. But when Eleanor dies under suspicious circumstances after being in a car accident, Simon suddenly finds himself in the dock for murder.

As ever, Grisham’s theme of law as a corrupt system is omnipresent. Simon is arrested and tried for a crime he didn’t commit. The police stop investigating now they have their man and have retrofitted him with the crime.

The criminologist Nils Christie defined the ideal victim as the one generating the most sympathy from society. Victimhood, he argued, is socially constructed – not simply a matter of who suffers harm.

So, as an old lady who is seen by society as vulnerable, Eleanor is the ideal victim, whereas as a lawyer – a career marked by negative sterotypes like opportunism, avarice, manipulation and lack of trustworthiness – Simon is hardly the model of a good victim.

But the facts are rarely so simple. Not only is Eleanor not entirely blameless in her conduct, Simon is not entirely malevolent. While he clearly has ulterior motives, he appears to genuinely befriend Eleanor. He also has frequent doubts about his will drafting which, though morally questionable, is technically legal. Grisham does a good job at developing the grey within the black-and-white letter of the law.

As someone with a background in law, I was pleasantly surprised to see Grisham highlighting how the procedural delays and bureaucracy of the legal system can psychologically affect even those who are most familiar with it, such as judges, defence lawyers and The Widow’s lawyer-defendant.

While a serious criminal conviction can obviously deprive a person of their liberty, even before the trial stage Simon is shown to have lost his friends, privacy and livelihood. The ripple effect of notoriety is felt by his children too, who are forced to move with their mother to a faraway town to escape press intrusion.

American law professor and literary critic James Boyd White believed that law is a form of storytelling, and that fiction helps us understand the ethical dimensions of legal problems.

Going a step further, theorists in the Critical Legal Studies movement assert that the law tells stories about itself to sustain its legitimacy. French theorist Michel Foucault believed that legal procedures often create injustice rather than prevent it, because power produces the discourse that justifies it. In his view, the law was not neutral but constructed through power relations.

While Grisham’s previous books have frequently criticised the legal system, his characters have been able to use loopholes or alternative reasoning to affirm the belief that justice is ultimately always possible.

The Widow marks a key departure in Grisham’s thinking by suggesting that alternative, illegal or non-legal action is sometimes needed. Simon realises that legal knowledge has its limits and instead assumes the role of detective to clear his name.

While a critical reader may consider this a convenient plot device that makes the most of the current boom in mystery novels, it emerges as an astute acknowledgment that, sometimes, order must be broken to avoid disorder. As detective, Simon turns to illegal computer hackers and convinces an old friend to clandestinely use FBI resources to uncover the identity of the true killer. The implication is that sometimes you have to fight fire with fire.

Given that the “whodunnit” element forms less than a quarter of the overall book, its effect is ultimately limited. The change of approach is rather abrupt, and mystery fans may feel shortchanged in terms of the number of clues Grisham provides. Also, the novel’s conclusion seems rushed and curiously detached given the emotional journey readers have been on with Simon.

While The Widow may not satisfy readers looking for a tightly woven mystery, it rewards those who are interested in the murky overlap between law and morality. By giving us a suspect who isn’t entirely guilty, the novel deconstructs our assumed binaries of good versus evil, victim versus perpetrator, and innocence versus guilt. In doing so, it reminds us that, sometimes, the only way to survive the system is to subvert it.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

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Sarah-Jane Coyle receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

– ref. John Grisham’s The Widow: a legal mystery that asks if a sleazy lawyer can ever be seen as a ‘good’ victim – https://theconversation.com/john-grishams-the-widow-a-legal-mystery-that-asks-if-a-sleazy-lawyer-can-ever-be-seen-as-a-good-victim-268038

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gerda Wielander, Professor of Chinese Studies, University of Westminster

Chinese authorities detained Ezra Jin, the leader of the Zion Church, on October 10 alongside more than 30 church staff and pastors. The arrests come amid the largest crackdown on Christian churches in China in recent years, and have put renewed light on Beijing’s attempts to curb religious activities in China.

The Zion Church, a large unregistered church with congregations across China, has been on the authorities’ radar for many years. So the question is not why the crackdown is happening, but why it is happening now. China’s tense relations with the US have as much to do with this as domestic religious policy.

China’s relationship with Christianity is complex, and has been marked by periods of tolerance and persecution. The country officially recognises five religions: Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism. Of these, only Buddhism and Daoism are regarded as indigenous religions and central to Han Chinese culture.

Together with Confucianism, they formed the so-called three teachings that provided the spiritual and ethical foundation of Chinese society throughout much of its imperial history (from 200BC to 1911).

Other religions flourished alongside these, including Islam and Christianity, both of which found their way into China centuries ago via trade routes. The earliest historical sources date the arrival of Nestorian Christians in China in the 7th century.

But the first major growth spurt of Chinese Christianity only occurred in the 19th century. This period saw China sign various treaties with western powers, which opened the doors for Protestant missionaries and led to the establishment of Protestant charitable institutions.

At the same time, the presence of western missionaries in China fuelled xenophobic movements. These movements ultimately contributed to the downfall of the empire. Christanity’s association with western imperialism continues to cloud Beijing’s view of the faith to this day.

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, all foreign Christians were expelled from the country and state-run self-governing bodies were created for all main religions.

Dissatisfaction with these bodies – which was related to, among other things, the requirement to cut ties with churches and religious authorities outside China – led to the formation of unregistered churches. These churches, which are also known as house churches, have existed outside of state control ever since.

Arrests and severe persecutions of Christians started in the 1950s and continued, as for all other religious practices, during the Cultural Revolution. This was a ten-year period between 1966 and 1976 of extreme political upheaval and violence.

But, as the country emerged from the Cultural Revolution, it became clear that religious belief had survived in a sustained fashion despite severe repression. And the more liberal 1980s enabled the second growth spurt of Chinese Christianity.

The new political climate allowed more space to practice religion. This more open climate also meant that ties with churches abroad could be informally reinstated and that foreign missionaries, often in the form of English teachers on campus, returned to China.

The rapid growth of Christianity during this period led some observers to argue that Chinese Christians could be a decisive factor in the global balance of power.

Cracking down on religion

It’s hard to estimate how many Christians there are in China today. Official estimates are generally considered too low, while predictions by international Christian organisations are probably too high.

The generally accepted figure settled at around 90 million earlier this millennium, which puts the number of Christians in China in line with the number of Communist party members. This number is unlikely to have grown significantly since then. Research from January 2025 suggests that the number of Chinese Christians has been plateauing for the past 20 years.

The reasons for this are complex. The main concern of pastors and church leaders in the 2000s was how to retain new converts, especially among the younger generation. But China’s religious policy under Xi Jinping will also have been a factor.

From the start of his leadership in 2013, Xi has struck a fundamentalist tone. He has promoted elements of traditional Chinese culture paired with socialist values as orthodox state doctrine. At the same time, he has severely repressed religions considered a potential threat to the state. This has played out most starkly in the persecution of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, but it has also affected Chinese Christians.

New regulations on religion were passed in 2015, which involved tighter state control of religious sites, church finances and involvement in charitable activities. One year later, Xi formally introduced the need for “sinicisation” of religion – the closer assimilation of all religions to Chinese state ideology.

This policy came with five-year plans that heralded the destruction of religious statues and the visual alteration of religious buildings. It also introduced more emphasis on the commonality between socialism and Christianity in doctrine.

The forcible removal of crosses from church buildings and the 2018 detention and subsequent sentencing to nine years in prison of Wang Yi, a prominent church leader, were further signs of the severity of the crackdown.

One particular bone of contention that further blights the lives of ordinary Christians in China is the close link between some unregistered churches, or individual people within them, and evangelist lobbying groups in the US.

Chinese-American Christians close to the Republican party are often instrumental in providing support for prominent exiled figures. They also ensure that the prosecution of Chinese Christians remains high on the agenda in bilateral relations. In turn, repressive measures tend to intensify when relations between China and the US deteriorate.

It is in this context that the timing of the recent crackdown needs to be understood. Sweeping in on a well-known unregistered church like the Zion Church, whose founder’s daughter is a US Senate staffer, is as much about Xi sending a signal to Washington as it is about controlling religious activity at home.

Unless US-China relations improve, Chinese Christians have to expect that more such signals may follow.

Gerda Wielander received funding from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to conduct research for her book Christian Values in Communist China (Routledge 2013).

– ref. Why Beijing is looking to exert tighter control over Chinese Christians   – https://theconversation.com/why-beijing-is-looking-to-exert-tighter-control-over-chinese-christians-267571

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dan Baumgardt, Senior Lecturer, School of Psychology and Neuroscience, University of Bristol

Trick or treat? Something I won’t be hearing at my own door this Halloween. Myself and the other misers of our village will once again be shunning anyone ringing the bell in search of sugar. Apparently, placing a pumpkin outside your house is the standard invitation to call — as much effort as buying the wretched sweets in the first place. Bah humbug (and, since you ask, there won’t be any of those in the house, either).

And just as well, really. Not just because of my general curmudgeonliness, but have you seen what all that sugar does to you? A lot more than cavities in your teeth and hyperactive kids climbing the curtains — try gut inflammation, kidney damage and heart disease. Literally.

Take the case of one unfortunate chap in the news recently who consumed a whole 3kg bag of jelly cola bottles over three days. He ended up in hospital, blocked up with gelatine and overloaded with sugar that caused acute diverticulitis: inflammation of small pouches in the colon, which generates severe abdominal pain, fever and sometimes even rectal bleeding.

Luckily he recovered, though with a new and healthy aversion to cola bottles, which is probably for the best. It just goes to show that too much of a good thing can be dreadful.

Let’s take a peek at some of the other perils associated with confectionery. As you’ll see, sugar isn’t the only enemy.

It might help the medicine go down, but Mary Poppins never had to take Jane and Michael to the dentist, did she? Most of us are taught from an early age that sugar is the enemy – and, in truth, it can be.

Sugar starts its damage the moment it hits your mouth. It feeds the many colonies of bacteria living there, which proliferate and release acids that corrode tooth enamel. Prolonged exposure then wears through to the deeper layers of the tooth, causing cavities and hidden decay. Bacterial plaque development also generates gum irritation – otherwise known as gingivitis, which can also lead to persistent bad breath as bacteria release unpleasant sulphur compounds.

Once absorbed from the gut, sugar spikes blood glucose levels. These cause short-term bursts of hyperactivity and anxiety, followed by fatigue and irritability as levels crash – setting up a vicious circle of cravings and overconsumption.

Many blame sugar for diabetes mellitus – the medical term for disorders that affect how the body processes blood glucose – and in the case of Type 2 diabetes, they’re not wrong. High-sugar diets can drive weight gain and insulin resistance, the hallmarks of the disease. It doesn’t, however, cause Type 1 diabetes, where the pancreas stops producing insulin. But the effects of too much sugar reach far beyond diabetes, contributing to heart and liver disease, high cholesterol and high blood pressure, to name but a few.

Liquorice all-sorts of issues

Nigella Lawson is well known for showcasing her black toolbox compendium of liquorice-related goodies – some decidedly more palatable than others. What many may be surprised to learn is that the traditional black stuff can pack quite a punch.

It’s made from the root of the plant Glycyrrhiza glabra – and the aromatic extract mixed with sugar, gelatine or starch to create the chewy confection we all recognise. Its active ingredient, glycyrrhizin, doesn’t just bring that distinctive anise taste; it can also meddle with your hormones.

In small doses, liquorice can help relieve indigestion and may have some anti-inflammatory properties. I’m quite partial to it myself, so imagine my shock in a renal lecture at medical school years ago to learn it can cause high blood pressure and low potassium levels. Glycyrrhizin mimics the effects of adrenal hormones such as cortisol and aldosterone, which regulate blood pressure, and fluid and electrolyte balance. In excess, this mimicry can trigger fluid retention, muscle breakdown, and even heart, liver or kidney failure.

Advisory bodies have actually set recommended limits for consumption: less than 100mg of glycyrrhizin a day for adults – roughly 50g of traditional black liquorice. It’s also best avoided altogether if you suffer from significant heart or kidney disease. So if you’re knocking back the allsorts, do so sparingly.

Sherbets and super sours

One of my own childhood favourites was the sherbet Dip Dab – a bag of mouth-puckering powder with a strawberry lolly for dipping. It seemed like magic: sweet, sour and fizzy all at the same time. What I’ve since discovered is that it’s very easy to make – just sugar and citric acid from the chemist’s shop.

Citric acid also gives those “super sour” bonbons their face-contorting power. Several studies have found such sweets possess a pH as low as 2.3 – intensely acidic – and can drastically alter the acidity of saliva, stripping enamel from teeth. The erosive potential of some commercially available sweets, especially on milk teeth, is staggering.

Beyond the mouth, the effects are less clear. There are media reports of mouth ulcers from sour sweets, and we also know that acidic irritation of the stomach lining is known to trigger inflammation and ulceration. The impact of sherbets and sours on the gut remains to be seen — but I wouldn’t volunteer to find out.

So, while candies and chocolates can be enjoyed responsibly, it’s worth remembering their wider effects — especially in children, whose sweet tooth is more pronounced. Consider ways to limit sugar intake, so the occasional treat doesn’t quickly become a double-trouble trick. And from there a longer-term issue.

After all, it’s Halloween — and the last thing you want is your own digestive system playing nasty tricks on you.

Dan Baumgardt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Is Halloween more trick than treat? The dangers of overeating sugar, liquorice and sherbet – https://theconversation.com/is-halloween-more-trick-than-treat-the-dangers-of-overeating-sugar-liquorice-and-sherbet-267554

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Matt Wall, Associate Professor, Political and Cultural Studies, Swansea University

If any seat has a claim to be part of Labour’s electoral heartland, it is Caerphilly. Labour’s electoral dominance there reaches all the way back to the creation of the constituency in the 1918 UK general election, when Alfred Onions became the the first of many Caerphilly Labour MPs. This pattern has heretofore been replicated in Wales’s devolved elections, where the seat has always returned a Labour member.

This gives a sense of the blow dealt to Welsh Labour in the Senned byelection held there on October 23. Plaid Cymru candidate Lindsay Whittle, a man who has stood and failed to win in the constituency in 10 Westminster elections going back to 1983, won the Caerphilly Senedd seat with 15,960 votes to Labour’s 3,713.

In one sense, this was a surprise result. Reform’s Llŷr Powell was the bookies’ favourite to take the seat and Whittle’s vote share was well above what pundits and analysts had anticipated. Labour’s third place finish was widely predicted but, ultimately it undershot even the dismal expectations set. Plaid Cymru’s 11.4% margin of victory over Reform was greater than Labour’s entire vote share.

Typically, byelections are difficult to project forward onto nationwide votes so it’s not wise to predict future Senedd or general election from these results. Byelections often play out amid emotive and idiosyncratic circumstances, such as a member resigning in disgrace or an unfortunate passing. With the death of Hefin David, this contest falls into the latter. Byelections are also often difficult for parties in government, as they can engender protest vote dynamics. Voters feel able to give governing parties a kicking with relatively few political consequences.

This particular byelection is particularly unrepresentative of next year’s Senedd election, because the single-seat tier of the Welsh electoral system has been removed for future Senedd votes. This means that tactical voting incentives won’t be anywhere near as pronounced come next May’s Senedd election.

Threats on both sides

With these caveats in place, however, we can still draw out lessons from Labour’s Caerphilly defenestration. The results show a mass abandonment of the Labour party, providing behavioural proof of a wider pattern of Welsh Labour abandonment captured in national polling.

Were such a result to be replicated at the full Senedd elections in May 2026, Labour would be skirting electoral oblivion. Its decisive defeat in this historical heartland means that such an outcome, previously a hypothetical based on polling figures, can no longer be dismissed.

The willingness of many former Labour voters to place their trust in Reform is partially a response to a UK Labour government that has struggled to make progress on bread-and-butter issues since coming into office. More in Common estimates that approximately 11% of Labour voters in the 2024 election would vote for Reform if an election were held tomorrow. This would make Reform the party that most benefits from a UK-level disenchantment with Keir Starmer’s premiership.

On the left of the spectrum, traditional Labour voters have been alienated by the inability or unwillingness of the Labour government to provide daylight between itself and the previous Conservative administration. In Wales, this problem has been rendered almost comical by current first minister Eluned Morgan’s attempt to promote a “Red Welsh way” narrative – and attempt to show that Welsh Labour operates differently to its Westminster counterpart, despite a lack of evidence to support such a claim.

As a result, a similar “why not?” logic may lie behind Labour voters pivoting to Reform on Labour’s right and Plaid Cymru on its left. If Labour is bleeding support on both sides, the strategy for winning voters back becomes all the more difficult. Pleasing Reform-adjacent/disaffected Tories happy has been a notable aspect of Starmer’s governance, and it seems that now those on the left of the party are showing their frustrations – these are two groups of voters that cannot be won over by similar policies.

Reform is beatable

The other perspective from the Labour-to-Plaid pivot could be that voters saw the latter as the only legitimate bulwark against a tide of surging Reform sentiment. Voters tactically coalescing around the best “anti-Reform” option could be something that comes back to haunt Nigel Farage’s party.

Labour might think that this contingent can be won back in next summer’s proportional representation election, when the threat of a “winner-takes-all” result should be less of a factor, thereby reducing the need for tactical voting. Winning back voters, however, is easier said than done in a national context where Starmer is the most unpopular prime minister in British history at this stage of an administration.

What is also important to consider is where Reform could’ve pulled more votes from. The Conservative vote share dropped from 17% in 2021 to a measly 2% this year. Had they all gone to Reform, and all of the 5% who voted “other” went as well (as improbable as that is), Plaid still would’ve won by 4 points.

If Reform is to win contests like this, increasing turnout beyond the typically low levels of Welsh politics (no Senedd election has ever had above 50% turnout before this byelection, which just tipped over into 50.43%) is seemingly the only way to go. But that’s a tough ask for Reform’s fledgling Welsh party machine.

Looking to 2026

While this second place result can be seen as something of a stumble for Reform’s momentum ahead of the national Senedd elections next May, the party will take a great deal of comfort in the fact that this is a colossal improvement over 2021, when it took just 2% of the vote. An increase of 34 points in one seat, especially one that was a safe leftwing seat, suggests that Reform could be well positioned in areas currently held by Tories or in seats where Labour have much smaller majorities (Hefin won by 18-points in 2021).

This lends more credence to the notion that Reform are now the de facto rightwing option in Wales and Britain more broadly.

On the Welsh left, this win will undoubtedly spur a renewed vigour within Plaid Cymru, with party leader, Rhun ap Iorweth, already claiming that his party has popular momentum. Other left-progressive parties such as the Greens will also take heart from the collapse of the Welsh Labour vote, a loss for Labour does not mean a win for Reform by default.

What this result makes crystal clear is that Welsh vote intentions have shifted dramatically away from Welsh Labour, which is now in the middle of the very same backlash against the status quo that delivered it a general election win against the unpopular Conservatives in July 2024.

Upon winning, Whittle stated: “Listen now Cardiff, and listen Westminster.” Welsh and UK Labour politicians would be wise to take heed. If events in Caerphilly give any portent of what is to come, there will be a clear red divide – but it will be between Labour and power.

Matt Wall receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council as a co-director of the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD) and as the Principal Investigator of the 2026 Welsh Election Study.

Louis Bromfield receives funding from the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data (WISERD).

– ref. Plaid Cymru’s staggeringly large victory in Caerphilly is a warning to both Labour and Reform – https://theconversation.com/plaid-cymrus-staggeringly-large-victory-in-caerphilly-is-a-warning-to-both-labour-and-reform-268310

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kevin Collins, Senior Lecturer, Environment & Systems, The Open University

A woman was recently fined £150 by a council for pouring coffee down a drain before getting on a bus. The fine has now been rescinded, but the incident has prompted many discussions about whether coffee discarded like this could cause environmental damage.

About 98 million cups of coffee are consumed every day in the UK and 2 billion per day worldwide. All that liquid has to go somewhere, whether you are at home, at work or running for a bus. While the welcome hit of caffeine is a morning ritual for many, it can be an unwelcome hit for the environment when disposed of.

An individual cup is insignificant, but 98 million daily dregs poured down the drain would create a much bigger problem for our rivers and watercourses, because we are adding to the caffeine levels already present in sewage from households.

Much of the UK has a combined sewage system where a single pipe carries both rainwater from streets and wastewater from households to sewage treatment works. The more caffeine that goes in to these pipes, the more that could evade the treatment and reach rivers.

Cups of coffee contain hundreds of chemical compounds. As well as caffeine (assuming you are not drinking decaf), many will include milk and sugar while some also contain cocoa, spices and other ingredients.

Of these, caffeine has the most impact, environmentally speaking. It does not break down quickly or easily, and is considered an emerging contaminant (scientists have only recently started testing for caffeine levels and it is not always monitored). But even back in 2003, caffeine was found to be polluting Swiss lakes and rivers.

However, don’t think this means it’s fine to pour decaf coffee down the drain. All coffee lowers the pH of water, and coffee also contains organic compounds which rob aquatic systems of oxygen as they decompose.

The nutrients in coffee also encourage algae growth and may lead to additional oxygen depletion in rivers and lakes, which can stress and potentially reduce the lifespan of marine plants and animals.

Why is caffeine such a problem?

Wastewater treatment plants vary in their ability and capacity to treat and remove caffeine – ranging from 60-100% depending on treatment types, plant design, season, temperature and other elements. This means even treated water can contain caffeine when it is returned to rivers and seas.

Heavy rains add to the problem if the capacity of sewage pipes is exceeded. When this happens, untreated wastewater is designed to divert directly into rivers and water courses to prevent sewage flooding of homes, businesses and treatment plants.
Whether from a street drain or toilets, some of the caffeine that we have consumed will eventually make its way into our rivers and aquatic environments.

This is a problem in the UK and in every part of the world, including in Antarctica. One study of 258 rivers in 104 countries found caffeine in over 50% of sites sampled.

Recent studies show that caffeine has an impact on the metabolism, growth and mobility of some freshwater algae, plants and aquatic fly larvae, potentially leading to their death. Caffeine can affect marine and plant life even in small amounts.

What should and shouldn’t you put in a drain?

Street drains are part of our water system. Don’t put anything into a drain that you don’t want to see ending up in a river, lake, on a beach or in the sea.

This means no coffee or coffee grounds, food-based liquids, oils, paint or hot fats, detergents, bleaches, liquids from building work and so on. All these should be disposed of via the appropriate household bins or waste collection centres. Leave the street drains to do their single, simple job: collecting rainwater not wastewater.

And unfortunately, because of the combined sewage system in the UK, there is not much difference between disposing of liquids down your sink or into the street drain. So, what’s good for your street drain is also good for your kitchen sink and good for the environment. If nothing else, be pragmatic: coffee grounds can easily block your kitchen sink.

So, what should you do with your coffee?

If you are constantly throwing away coffee water, perhaps try making less coffee. At home, you can dilute coffee water for use as a plant tonic. Coffee liquid and grounds can also be disposed of on gardens or any plant beds in small amounts with care.

While coffee grounds could add to the organic content of the soil, regularly adding grounds to the same patch of earth can cause a build up of caffeine and solids, which will be harmful to plants and soil function.

Otherwise, the best place for waste coffee is a compost heap or food waste recycling. If you don’t have access to these options, then put liquids or grounds into a container and put them in your bin.

A recent UK government inquiry concluded that improving the poor status of our rivers and coasts requires major reform, policy changes and investment. But we, as individuals, are also part of how the water system works. We can help it by keeping coffee out of drains, out of our rivers and out of our environment.

Kevin Collins receives research funding from Affinity Water and the Environment Agency.

– ref. Should you pour coffee down the drain? An environmental scientist explains – https://theconversation.com/should-you-pour-coffee-down-the-drain-an-environmental-scientist-explains-268236

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Stevens, Visiting Fellow, Centre for Urban and Regional Development Studies (CURDS), Newcastle University

Tokyo’s Shibuya district, which has long been known as the centre of youth culture in Japan, has once again moved to restrict its Halloween street celebrations. A mayoral edict against so-called “Nuisance Halloween” has led to a series of strict measures in recent years, including a public drinking ban, to curb rowdy behaviour.

This draconian edge echoes Japan’s wider turn under its new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi. She placed an emphasis on the tighter control of public space and activities during her leadership campaign, citing the need for a “strict response to law-breaking foreigners”.

A decade ago, Halloween in Shibuya acted as a shop window for “Cool Japan”, a state-sponsored initiative to leverage the cool dimensions of Japanese culture internationally. Huge costume-clad crowds filled the famous Shibuya crossing, one of the world’s busiest pedestrian intersections, in a spontaneous celebration that aligned global youth culture with Tokyo’s urban vibrancy.

Since then, however, the mood has shifted among the levels of government that make up the world’s largest metropolis. Shibuya mayor, Ken Hasebe, has repeatedly urged partygoers – especially tourists – not to gather for Halloween. And to discourage problematic behaviour, he has reinforced bans on public drinking and has asked retailers to halt alcohol sales.

The turning point came in 2018, when a group of Halloween revellers overturned a truck near the Shibuya crossing. The incident drew national criticism and led to the arrest of four people after CCTV analysis.

One year later, Shibuya introduced a public drinking ban around Halloween and New Year’s Eve. This was the first formal restriction on a largely unregulated gathering that had, until then, enjoyed the endorsement of city leaders as part of nascent branding efforts.

A critical international reference point was provided in 2022, when a crowd crush during Halloween festivities in the Itaewon nightlife district of Seoul, the South Korean capital, killed 159 people. Shibuya has experienced no comparable incidents, but Mayor Hasebe has frequently cited Itaewon when pleading with revellers not to crowd the streets. He has framed his actions as necessary to avoid a similar outcome.

By 2024, permanent nighttime bans on public drinking had been introduced in parts of Shibuya. This was followed by further tightening. Alcohol sales were restricted by stores during Halloween nights, smoking areas were closed, street layouts were altered to disrupt crowd flow, and security patrols were expanded.

On Halloween in 2025, electric scooter and e-bike services will also be suspended at various lending and return ports near the busiest areas. What was once an organic, globally visible gathering has gradually been managed, discouraged and hollowed out.

Cities worldwide are confronting similar tension. But rather than taking steps to restrict such activity outright, many have sought to govern it more strategically.

Amsterdam pioneered the office of “night mayor” in 2012 to balance divergent interests in the European nightlife capital. London then adopted a similar concept through its own “night czar”, while New York City has established an office of nightlife to manage late-night culture as a policy domain rather than a policing issue.

Shibuya itself was once in the vanguard of this approach. The district appointed Japanese hip-hop artist Zeebra as its nightlife ambassador in 2016, promoting a vision of curated and responsible nighttime activity. The current Halloween deterrence strategy marks a distinct shift from integration to avoidance.

Changing political climate

Japan’s changing national political climate gives this local pivot a deeper resonance. Takaichi, Japan’s much-vaunted first female prime minister, places a heavy emphasis on social order. She has called for stronger policing and the protection of national identity amid rising tourism and migration.

While Shibuya’s nightlife policies are not enacted by the national government, they echo a broader shift in Japan that connects perceived disorder – particularly associated with foreigners – to a need for proactive control.

This marks a sharp break from the “Cool Japan” era of the 2000s and 2010s, when informal street culture and youth-led cultural imagery were keenly leveraged as soft power. As a place where tourists could briefly participate in Japanese cultural life, Shibuya was emblematic of that openness. The same phenomenon has now been reclassified as a possible threat.

It is important to acknowledge the real risks associated with urban crowd management. Itaewon demonstrated how a carnival atmosphere can turn fatal in minutes. However, when safety messaging merges with narratives about public order and foreign influence, urban regulation risks drifting from crowd management headlong into cultural gate-keeping.

Tokyo is not alone in restricting elements of nightlife when public tolerance is exceeded. Amsterdam has cracked down on what it calls “disruptive tourism”, while Barcelona has sought to curb late-night street gatherings that disrupt neighbourhood life. But Japan’s trajectory appears distinct in that it is not working toward new models of managed coexistence between nightlife, residents and visitors.

Shibuya’s response may also set a precedent for other urban hubs in Japan. This sits uneasily alongside national ambitions to attract more tourists, recruit foreign workers and draw international talent at a time of population decline and near-zero birthrates.

Japan now faces a dilemma: can it afford to retreat from culturally open public spaces at the very moment it needs to appear more welcoming on the world stage? The Halloween crackdown reflects a polarising governance choice – not just about public safety, but about what kind of society Japan wishes to project to the outside world.

Andrew Stevens is affiliated with the Council of Local Authorities for International Relations (CLAIR) of Japan.

– ref. Why Tokyo’s youth culture district will ban ‘nuisance Halloween’ again this year – https://theconversation.com/why-tokyos-youth-culture-district-will-ban-nuisance-halloween-again-this-year-268242