Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Renaud Foucart, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University

A year ago, Google faced the prospect of being dismantled. Today, artificial intelligence (AI) and a new court judgment has helped it avoid this fate. Part of the reason is that AI poses a grave threat to Google’s advertising revenues.

“Google will not be required to divest Chrome; nor will the court include a contingent divestiture of the Android operating system in the final judgment,” according to the decision.

Google must share certain data with “qualified competitors” as deemed by the court.
This will include parts of its search index, Google’s inventory of web content. Judge Mehta will allow Google to continue paying companies like Apple and Samsung to distribute of its search engine on devices and browsers. But he will bar Google from maintaining exclusive contracts.

The history of this decision goes back to a 2024 ruling by federal judge Amit Mehta. It found that Google maintained a monopoly in the search engine market, notably by paying billions to companies including Apple and Samsung to set Google as the default search engine on their devices.

Almost a year later, the same US judge issued his final ruling, and the tone could not be more different. Google will not be broken up. There will be no choice screen on new phones.

The nature of the search engine market, where more users generate more data, and
more data improves search quality, made it impossible for competitors to challenge
Google, the court found in 2024.

The 2024 ruling itself was controversial. While high quality data enables a dominant firm to extract more profit from consumers, it also allows it to provide a better service. Decades of research in economics has shown that determining which effect is more important is not straightforward.

At the time, the US Department of Justice deemed the issue so serious that it
considered breaking up Google as the only viable solution. For instance, it
suggested forcing the company to sell its web browser, Google Chrome.

The government also proposed forcing device manufacturers to offer users a choice of
search engines during set up, and compelling Google to share most of its data on
user behaviour and ad bidding, where advertisers compete in auctions to get their ads shown to users for a specific search query or audience. These so-called “remedies”, measures Google would be required to implement to end its monopoly, aimed to restore competition.

Limited sharing

So, what has changed in a year to so radically change the perception of Google’s
market dominance? The main answer is AI – and specifically, large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, and Google’s own Gemini. As users increasingly turn to LLMs for web searches, Google responded by placing AI-generated summaries at the top of its search results.

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Read more:
Google monopoly ruling: where the tech giant goes from here

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The way people navigate the internet is quickly evolving, with one trend reshaping
the business models of online companies: the zero click search. According to a Bain & Company survey, consumers now default to accepting AI-generated answers without further interaction. The data is striking: 80% of users report being satisfied with AI responses for at least 40% of their searches, often stopping at the summary page.

Threat to ad revenue

This AI-driven shift in consumer behaviour threatens not only Google’s business
model but also that of most internet based companies. Advertising accounts for
roughly 80% of Google’s revenue, earned by charging companies for prominent placement in search results and by leveraging its vast amount of user data to sell ad space across the web. If users stop clicking links, this revenue stream evaporates.

More importantly for this ruling, the market Google once monopolised may no longer
be the relevant one. Today, Google’s primary potential competitors in search are not Microsoft Bing, but AI models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity. In the global race for AI dominance, the outcome is far from certain.

From an antitrust standpoint, there is little justification for penalising Google now or forcing it to cede advantages to competitors. What would be the benefit for consumers of forcing Google to accept the £24.6 billion offer from Jeff Bezos’ Perplexity AI to buy the Chrome browser?

In essence, the judge acknowledges that Google monopolised the search engine market for a decade but concludes that the issue may resolve itself in the years ahead.

This situation echoes the first major monopolisation case: Internet Explorer. For
years, European and US regulators battled Microsoft to dismantle the dominance of
its web browser, which was bundled with the then-dominant Windows 95 operating
system.

By the time all appeals were exhausted, however, the monopoly had vanished. Internet Explorer was partly a victim of the rise of smartphones, which did not rely on Windows. The new king in town was a newcomer: a certain Google Chrome.

How you view the economic and political power of tech giants will shape which lesson you draw from this story. An optimistic view I suggested (with the economist Jana Friedrichsen) is that winner-takes-all markets can intensify competition through innovation. In such markets, incremental investment is not enough; to challenge Google, a competitor must offer a vastly superior product to capture the entire market.

Precisely because they ruthlessly defend their monopoly positions, tech
giants show competitors that the potential gains from radical innovations are
massive. The pessimistic view, however, is that years of dominance have left these firms largely unaccountable, which could embolden them in future.

Renaud Foucart 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. Google avoids being dismantled after US court battle – and it’s down to the rise of AI – https://theconversation.com/google-avoids-being-dismantled-after-us-court-battle-and-its-down-to-the-rise-of-ai-264512

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation

With Russia’s Vladimir Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un among 26 world leaders watching, China’s president Xi Jinping made a muscular address to 50,000 people in Tiananmen Square marking 80 years since the end of the second world war. China is “never intimidated by bullies” and would “stand by the right side of history”, Xi said, adding that “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation was unstoppable”.

Absent from the ceremony was Taiwan’s leader, Lai Ching-te, who instead took to Facebook, writing that Taiwan does not “commemorate peace with the barrel of a gun”. Taiwan had barred public officials from attending the event.

 China and Taiwan both claim their forces bore the true burden of Chinese resistance against Japan during the second world war, and use this contested history to lay claim to power and territory. Now China is weaponising this history, pushing for a “correct” perspective of the war as it seeks to reshape the world order and assert its ambitions over Taiwan.

In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, Meredith Oyen, a historian and expert in China-Taiwan relations, explains how disagreements between China and Taiwan over who fought the Japanese more than 80 years ago are still raging and why China’s military parade raised tensions with Taiwan up another notch.

“The second world war has this very long shadow in all of east Asia because there’s a lot of unfinished business,” says Oyen, an associate professor of history and Asian studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

When Japan officially surrendered on September 9 at a ceremony in Nanjing, it was to the Republic of China, then ruled by Chiang Kai-shek. With the war against Japan over, Chiang’s nationalist Kuomintang resumed their civil war against the Chinese Communist Party. In 1949, Chiang and the Kuomintang were pushed to Taiwan as Mao Zedong declared the People’s Republic of China.

As a result, persistent questions about whether China and Taiwan are two separate entities or a divided nation with Taiwan a part of China are a “really significant geopolitical flashpoint” says Oyen, “something that stems directly out of the second world war”.

Listen to the conversation with Meredith Oyen about how disagreements between China and Taiwan over the second world war on The Conversation Weekly podcast. You can also read an text version of this interview.

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This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany and Gemma Ware with assistance from Katie Flood. Mixing and sound design by Eloise Stevens and theme music by Neeta Sarl.

Newclips in this episode from Straits Times , BBC News and NBC News and KinoLibrary .

Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

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

– ref. How China uses second world war history in its bid to reshape the global order – podcast – https://theconversation.com/how-china-uses-second-world-war-history-in-its-bid-to-reshape-the-global-order-podcast-264442

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sambit Bhattacharyya, Professor of Economics, University of Sussex Business School, University of Sussex

Donald Trump’s tariff policy seems to have morphed into as much of a tool of foreign policy as an economic strategy. But the administration’s decision to impose a 50% tariff on India, a key US ally as part of the Quad (Quadrilateral Security Dialogue) along with the US, Australia and Japan, could have significant repercussions – not just for international trade, but for global geopolitics.

The US rationale for the tariff hike is primarily political. The White House argues that India has been profiteering from buying and reselling Russian oil, in defiance of sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This has helped Russia weather the effects of the sanctions and continue to fund its war in Ukraine.

Needless to say, the tariff policy and subsequent statements from both Washington and New Delhi have ruined a burgeoning bilateral relationship to the extent that the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, has been refusing to take Trump’s phone calls. For his part, Trump is no longer planning to visit India for the Quad summit later in the year.

India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Tianjin, China, from August 31 to September 1, along with the Russian president Vladimir Putin. The three leaders were photographed together in cordial discussion and Modi met separately with both Xi and Putin on the sidelines of the summit, which was billed as presenting an alternative to the US-led hegemonic order.

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Read more:
What Xi Jinping hosting Modi and Putin reveals about China’s plans for a new world order

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It now seems clear that raised US tariffs won’t deter India from buying Russian oil. On the contrary, Modi has reaffirmed India’s commitment to not only continue buying Russian oil but to increase volumes.

This is unsurprising. India’s stance on Russia as a net crude oil importer is not driven by any grandiose geopolitical objective but the mundane economic reality of controlling inflation.

When it comes to energy, India is heavily dependent on imports and its consumers, the overwhelming majority of whom are poor and vulnerable, depend on stable and affordable energy prices. No amount of pressure from the US or its G7 allies would change that simple economic reality.

America’s loss is Russia’s gain

One consequence of the US tariffs is that Indian exports of clothing and footwear to the US could decline as big western brands seek to substitute their Indian suppliers with cheaper suppliers from other countries. This will push up prices for consumers in the US.

But it’s unlikely to be that damaging for Indian suppliers as there’s considerable global demand for clothing and footwear. It wouldn’t be difficult for Indian suppliers to find alternative markets.

Another of India’s big exports is gemstones, in which it has a dominant position in the global market. US tariff pressure is unlikely to change that as India exports gemstones to a range of different countries (although the US is a big buyer).

Closer trade ties between India and Russia will open up new opportunities for mutual investment. Russia’s economic position, meanwhile, is likely to improve overall as a result of the tariffs. Not only has India signalled it is likely to increase its oil imports, but Russia is also likely to get the benefit of importing clothing and footwear from Indian suppliers at a favourable price, as Indian suppliers look to redirect their US exports elsewhere.

Closer economic ties with India with the aim to increase bilateral trade to US$100 billion (£74.5 billion) by 2030 will give Russia another large market outside of China to sell its products. Russia will also get access to another major supplier of the sort of consumer goods that it typically imports to keep local prices low for Russian consumers.

An end to US dollar primacy?

There’s a danger for the west that if the tariff situation escalates into harsher financial sanctions, it could divert Indian investment away from the US and G7 countries towards Russia and China. Indian investors have significant presence in the automotive, pharmaceutical, and IT and telecom sectors in the west, which could be directed elsewhere.

But there are growing signs of increasing cohesion, not only from the SCO, but from an expanding Brics group of trading nations. This is now made up of original members, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, plus recent joiners Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates.

These growing economies are already working towards setting up technical mechanisms for mutual investments and trade settlements in their local currencies rather than the US dollar.

The global trade shocks prompted by US imposition of tariffs have led to a short-term decline in the value of the US dollar. While not drastic from a historical trend perspective, these short-term trends mask a broader long-term risk.

Not from trade transactions – trade accounts for only a fraction of dollar transactions. The long-term risks are from a potentially reduced role of the dollar in transactions associated with asset management, investment, finance and international reserves.

In particular, the dollar’s near exclusive status as a reserve currency for Brics and global south nations is at risk.

Any policy that puts that status at risk would compromise US prosperity and security. The concern is that any financial and trade policies that drive the US’s big trading partners closer to Russia and China will do just that.

Sambit Bhattacharyya receives funding from UK Research and Innovation, Economic and Social Research Council, Australian Research Council, and European Research Council.

– ref. Why Trump’s fight with India could have global repercussions – https://theconversation.com/why-trumps-fight-with-india-could-have-global-repercussions-258141

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Will de Freitas, Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

Summer 2025 was the UK’s hottest on record, the Met Office announced this week. The news somehow felt both inevitable and surprising. There may have been four separate heatwaves, but for many this summer felt pretty normal.

This is because of “shifting baseline syndrome” and the way humans notice – or fail to notice – temperature change.

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This roundup of The Conversation’s climate coverage comes from our award-winning weekly climate action newsletter. Every Wednesday, The Conversation’s environment editor writes Imagine, a short email that goes a little deeper into just one climate issue. Join the 45,000+ readers who’ve subscribed.

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Academics have been warning about shifting baselines for decades: the idea that each generation takes the climate and ecosystems of its youth as the baseline or “normality”.

Back in 2020, Lizzie Jones, then a PhD researcher in conservation psychology at Royal Holloway, said this is why parents and grandparents should talk to children about the natural world of their youth.

“Even my parents”, she writes, “recall clouds of insects while they learned to drive, regular snowfall each winter and now rare bird species filling their back gardens.”

For people struggling to put environmental changes in context, local anecdotes like these can be more useful than news stories. “Older people hold a rich library of knowledge about the past,” says Jones, “and how their corner of the world has changed over the course of their lives.”

As time passes, losses accumulate or temperatures creep up. But because we reset our expectations every generation, the change feels ordinary. This is shifting baseline syndrome, and Jones says it leads us to “underestimate how much the environment has changed”.

She particularly focuses on wildlife changes:

“Whatever you or your generation grew up with is considered normal, but as species continue to go extinct and wild habitats are erased, your children will inherit a degraded environment and accept that as normal, and their children will normalise an even more impoverished natural world.”

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Read more:
Why grandparents should talk to children about the natural world of their youth

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My own grandparents were born near Newcastle more than a century ago. Back then, red squirrels still dominated that part of the world but grey squirrels introduced from America were fast taking over. Skip forward two generations, and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a red squirrel in the wild. My baseline is that squirrels are grey.

There’s something similar going on with birds in the UK. I grew up in west London and vividly remember as a teenager my first sighting of a bright green parakeet in Richmond Park. My friend Oscar told me a small colony had established themselves in the city’s suburbs. These days, I see these invasive parakeets (originally from the Himalayan foothills, say scientists) more than any bird aside from pigeons. They’re loud and annoying and keep taking food from native songbirds.

My children will never know a London without parakeets: that’s their baseline.

Altered perceptions

But it’s easy to spot when a chunky colourful parrot has muscled a tiny blue tit out of its usual feeding spot. It’s a lot harder to notice that the hottest summer day might now be 35°C rather than 31°C.

In part, that’s because climate change isn’t just altering the weather – it’s altering our perceptions.

Matthew Patterson is a climate scientist at the University of Reading. Writing in June last year, after supposedly cold and miserable weather still hadn’t moved the month much below the long-term temperature average, he noted that the UK has warmed so fast that: “We have come to normalise extreme heat, while relatively cold or even average conditions feel unusual and thus newsworthy.”

We’re also prone to very human biases here. Our collective memory of the weather in any given summer is hugely influenced by conditions during the daytime on perhaps ten weekends. Few people notice whether it was abnormally hot or cold at 3am on a Tuesday, but that’s part of the average too.

This may explain why the UK’s record hot summer still came as a surprise: we pay attention to outliers and recent events (August was cooler than July this year), not to the relentless upward creep of average temperatures.

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Read more:
Average months now feel cold thanks to climate change

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Lost summers, wilder futures

History offers a sobering lesson in averages and outliers. During the little ice age between the 14th and 19th centuries, average global temperatures cooled by a few tenths of a degree. But that had a huge impact, especially in Europe: failed harvests, frozen rivers, famines and storms.

For climate historian Dagomar Degroot of Georgetown University in the US, this was a case of small global trends masking bigger local consequences. “The comparatively modest climate changes of the little ice age,” he says, “likely had profound local impacts.”

And if less than half a degree can do all that, what might two degrees of warming do in the near future?

Degroot does note that: “People who lived through the little ice age lacked perhaps the most important resource available today: the ability to learn from the long global history of human responses to climate change.”

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Read more:
Small climate changes can have devastating local consequences – it happened in the Little Ice Age

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The little ice age teaches us how vulnerable we are to climate shifts, but we can reimagine the natural world rather than simply mourn its loss.

Back in 2018, Jones (the conservation psychologist), together with her colleagues Christopher Sandom and Owen Middleton of the University of Sussex, asked young people to imagine what a thriving natural world would look like:

“What they expressed was a desire to see ecosystems with not just more of the wildlife that’s currently there, but the return of species which have disappeared. There was also an undercurrent of sadness about litter and the present absence of wildlife, and hopes for more sustainable lifestyles in the future.”

This is why the authors say we should not simply accept shifting baseline syndrome, as it would mean “progressive damage to the natural world, even with our best efforts”.

Instead, they write, “By broadening our imagination and what we can expect from the environment, we can raise our ambitions for the natural world we leave to future generations.”

While memory loss hides decline, imagination can help reverse it.

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Read more:
Forget environmental doom and gloom – young people draw alternative visions of nature’s future

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These stories help explain the paradox of the low-key record-breaking summer. Shifting baselines make us forget the past. Human biases mean we notice cool rainy days more than creeping warmth. And history warns us that even small global changes have huge local effects.

Post-carbon

Lots of responses to our question about air conditioning last week.

Dave Pearson says: “When we were younger my wife and I lived in Chad without air conditioning for 10 years. In the hot season our living room would drop to 40 °C just before dawn, then the sun would rise…” He now has an AC unit in his living room: “We see it as a source of convenient comfort at this point, but potentially life-saving as we get older (and therefore more vulnerable) and heatwaves get hotter”

Marolin Watson says her “brick-built South-facing terrace house” tends to stay fairly cool. “However, with people increasingly being forced to live in flats that often rise a considerable distance into the air and may, depending on their orientation, catch the full sun for most or all of the day, I can see that air conditioners will be a necessity.”

Helen Wood says: “if you want air-conditioning, it should be only operated by battery powered by solar panels and not draw on the national grid”

Anne Heath Mennell grew up in Yorkshire and now lives in Australia. She points out “it is an efficient way to cool down, especially if powered by renewables”, but that people once “dreamed of balmy summers. Be careful what you wish for…”

An obvious question this week: what are some climate or environmental changes you have noticed in your lifetime? Don’t give me data: I want anecdotes.

– ref. When record heat feels strangely normal – https://theconversation.com/when-record-heat-feels-strangely-normal-264515

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Jacqueline Boyd, Senior Lecturer in Animal Science, Nottingham Trent University

Losing weight is hard. Anyone who has tried to lose weight and keep it off will describe how difficult it can be. If your pet is a little more rotund than is healthy, then helping them regain and retain their waistline can be even trickier.

Drugs such as Ozempic (the brand name for the drug semaglutide) and Mounjaro (brand name for tirzepatide), both originally intended for treating type 2 diabetes in humans, have become increasingly used to support human weight loss. Given that estimates suggest that at least 50% of dogs and cats weighed at the vets are overweight, it’s unsurprising that the future potential to use drugs to support pet weight loss is now being explored.

It’s important to note that these weight management drugs are not currently in use for our pets, but it’s undeniable that pet obesity is a growing concern, and pharmaceutical companies are looking for solutions.

Just like us, carrying excess weight is associated with several health conditions for our pets, including osteoarthritis, inflammatory conditions, metabolic disorders and even shorter lives. This means that excess body weight is a significant health and welfare concern for our pets and might even be linked to our own expanding waistlines.

Unfortunately, our pets have a number of lifestyle challenges that can make weight gain more likely. Food that is tasty, freely available, highly digestible and high in calories means it is easy for our pets to eat more than they need. Combined with the use of frequent food training rewards and even accidental or guilt-based overfeeding, pets can quickly gain weight, which is then often difficult to lose.

Spaying and neutering have been very effective at reducing pet overpopulation and lowering the risk of some health problems like mammary tumours. However, these procedures can also make pets more likely to become overweight. To help prevent this, owners usually need to adjust their pets’ diets after surgery – most often by slightly reducing food portions and keeping track of their pets’ weight and body condition.

Some animals are more likely to gain weight because of their genetics, and this tendency has been unintentionally reinforced during domestication. Labrador retrievers, often called “foodies”, are a good example. Research shows that many Labs carry a gene mutation that affects an appetite-regulating molecule called pro-opiomelanocortin. Dogs with the mutation are more food-driven and more likely to gain weight than dogs without it.

Limited exercise is another big risk factor for weight gain. Many pets spend most of their time indoors or in the garden, which reduces their activity and energy use. Regular walking is good for dogs and their owners.

However, exercise alone won’t necessarily keep your pet lean. So, what can you do without the use of weight-loss drugs to help your pet?

Helping your pet keep a healthy weight naturally

Knowing what a healthy weight looks like for your pet is essential. One of the easiest tools for this is body condition scoring. Instead of just looking at the number on the scales, body condition scoring involves feeling your pet’s ribs, waist and tummy to check whether they’re too thin, too heavy or just right.

When used alongside regular weigh-ins, it gives you a clear picture of your pet’s overall health and helps you spot small changes early. Acting quickly on slight weight gain or loss – through diet, exercise, or a vet check – can make a big difference in keeping your pet fit and well.

Keeping active with your pet can help you both stay at a healthy weight. Playing games, adding fun activities, or just making sure your pet moves more each day are simple ways to support weight loss and keep it off in the long run.

What your pet eats is just as important as exercise when it comes to a healthy weight. A diet lower in calories to support steady weight loss is helpful for otherwise healthy pets. This can be done with foods that have less fat, moderate protein and more fibre. Some nutrients, like carnitine, which is often included in weight management diets, may also help the body use energy more effectively.

You can also look for low-calorie swaps that your pet enjoys. For example, many dogs love carrots and cucumbers as healthier treats.

If you are concerned about your pet’s weight, do seek veterinary advice and support. Keep records of their body weight, body condition, overall health, activity and even food intake. This can help you see where there might be easy wins for improving their health, wellbeing and even lifespan.

The choice is clear: rather than waiting for pharmaceutical solutions, we already have the tools we need to help our pets live their healthiest, happiest lives. The question isn’t whether we can help our pets maintain a healthy weight naturally – it’s whether we’re willing to make the commitment to do so.

In addition to her academic affiliation at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) and support from the Institute for Knowledge Exchange Practice (IKEP) at NTU, Jacqueline Boyd is affiliated with The Kennel Club (UK) through membership and as advisor to the Health Advisory Group and member of the Activities Committee. Jacqueline is a full member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT #01583). She also writes, consults and coaches on canine matters on an independent basis.

– ref. Pets on skinny jabs? Here’s how to help them lose weight naturally – https://theconversation.com/pets-on-skinny-jabs-heres-how-to-help-them-lose-weight-naturally-263481

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Oleksandra Osypenko, PhD Candidate in Linguistics, Lancaster University

In Ukrainian dictionaries, the word “surzhyk” originally referred to a mix of grains – rye, wheat, barley and oats – or to flour made from a blend of these that was considered of lower quality. But its meaning morphed to mean a mixed or “impure” language – and today it refers to a blend of Ukrainian and Russian used by millions in Ukraine.

Often stigmatised in the past as a marker of rural backwardness, poor education or simply ignorance of Ukraine’s literary norms, the status of the Surzhyk language is now being reconsidered in wartime – not as a threat to Ukrainian identity, but as a way for native Russian speakers to communicate in a way that is more socially acceptable in a country at war with Russia.

Since the full-scale invasion of 2022, people in some central and eastern areas of Ukraine who might have primarily spoken Russian have been switching to Ukrainian, particularly in public. These are people who would have understood and occasionally used Surzhyk, but would have seen it as a form of Ukrainian “pidgin” – not to be used in formal situations. But now, it’s increasingly being used and any stigma that might have attached to it is slowly disappearing.

There has been debate about whether it’s a language in its own right, or a dialect or even slang. Most Ukrainian linguists tend to refer to it in English as an “idiom”. But it’s important to note that Surzhyk varies by region and is constantly evolving.

In the 1930s, it was heavily Russianised, reflecting Soviet language policies. More recently, after decades of Ukrainian revival, it has tilted in the other direction towards Ukrainian. And other influences are creeping in, especially from English. Words like “булінг” (buling, like the English “bullying”) and “донатити” (donatyty, meaning “to donate”) are slipping into everyday speech, showing how Surzhyk mirrors society’s shifting horizons.

But it is also a product of trauma and necessity. As Ukrainian writer Larissa Nitsoy notes, Ukrainians survived genocide – and they also survived linguicide. During the Soviet era, Russia made strenuous efforts to eradicate the Ukrainian language, punishing – often executing – those who spoke, wrote and taught in Ukrainian. To survive, they adapted.

Later, Surzhyk continued as a practical tool of social mobility. As Ukrainian-speaking villagers moved to Russian-dominated big cities in Ukraine for work or education, they adopted a hybrid idiom to “pass” as local. Laada Bilaniuk, a US-based anthropologist, calls this “urbanised-peasant Surzhyk” – a way of mimicking Russian without abandoning one’s Ukrainian linguistic roots.

In this sense, Surzhyk was both a survival strategy under Russian colonial rule, and an adaptation to urbanisation.

How widespread is Surzhyk?

In 2003, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) estimated between 11% and 18% of Ukrainians spoke or wrote in Surzhyk – roughly one in seven people at the time. A more recent study of 104 students of the National Transport University in Kyiv in 2024 found that more than half of respondents (51%) admitted using some form of Surzhyk at home, and nearly one in five used it in messages with friends. Admittedly, the 2024 study was done on a much smaller scale, but the contrast is striking.

The question is: has the proportion of Surzhyk speakers really increased significantly – or simply the willingness to admit using it? Could it be that shame is giving way to recognition of Surzhyk as an acceptable tool for communication?

For decades, Surzhyk was a source of embarrassment. Nitsoy was voicing widespread Ukrainian nationalist views when she described it in 2021 as “a rape of the Ukrainian language by Russian”. Pavlo Hrytsenko, director of the Institute of the Ukrainian Language, argued that speaking Surzhyk signalled personal “underdevelopment”, a refusal to master the country’s literary language. Others were even more blunt, suggesting that: “By speaking Surzhyk, we humiliate ourselves.”

The assumption was that Surzhyk speakers leaned lazily toward Russian rather than making the effort to learn proper Ukrainian. These attitudes produced active campaigns to “correct” it, like the 2020 chatbot StopSurzhyk, which suggested literary alternatives for “improper” words.

This stigma was reinforced by the proportion of Ukrainian-Russian words and phrases that make up Surzhyk. Throughout the 20th century, Surzhyk was heavily Russianised, reflecting the dominance of Russian in public life. But more recently, and especially in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the balance has shifted. Surzhyk now carries more Ukrainian elements and has been increasingly viewed not as a regression, but a reversal.

A bridge for Russian speakers to Ukrainian

Today, Surzhyk is generally seen by Ukrainian scholars, writers and the wider public as transitional, even useful, and is often used by Russian speakers switching to Ukrainian.

Ukrainian linguistics experts argue that mocking or judging those speaking Surzhyk is misguided, because every language learner passes through such a stage, and that any Surzhyk is better than Russian.

Philologist Svitlana Kovtiukh likens the language to “slippers at home” – meaning that one might wear formal shoes in public but slip into something more comfortable in private. Ukrainians should be encouraged, according to Kovtiukh, to speak literary Ukrainian in official settings – as required by the Language Law – but be free to use Surzhyk in their personal life. What Soviet authorities once dismissed as “weeds” in the national language may actually be the streams that nourish it.

This reversal of perspective reflects a new hierarchy. Once a way for Ukrainian speakers to survive in a Russian-dominated world, Surzhyk is now a way back to Ukrainian for Russian speakers to Ukraine’s national language.

Once abominated by Ukrainians, it is increasingly seen as a tool of linguistic decolonisation. It’s both a practical way for Russian speakers to understand and be understood in Ukraine, and an alternative to what most Ukrainians see as the language of their oppressors.

Oleksandra Osypenko 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. Surzhyk: why Ukrainians are increasingly speaking a hybrid language that used to be a marker of rural backwardness – https://theconversation.com/surzhyk-why-ukrainians-are-increasingly-speaking-a-hybrid-language-that-used-to-be-a-marker-of-rural-backwardness-264280

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stuart Mills, Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Leeds

Making AI quicker, smarter and better is proving to be a very expensive business. Companies like OpenAI are investing billions of dollars in hardware, and the likes of Meta are offering top (human) talent huge salaries for their expertise.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that these businesses have started exploring new ways of making money as well as spending it.

OpenAI, for example, is exploring a partnership with Shopify, one of the world’s largest e-commerce platforms, which helps businesses manage online selling.

The reported deal between the two companies would see OpenAI receive a cut of any Shopify sales that result from recommendations provided by ChatGPT, creating a new revenue stream for OpenAI and more online traffic for Shopify.

But this relationship could be risky for consumers if OpenAI became incentivised to push people towards products, rather than offering genuinely objective recommendations. It might even push recommendations when users of ChatGPT are not looking to buy anything at all.

This situation reminds me of the early days of online advertising when Google was under pressure from shareholders to increase revenues, following the dot-com bubble. Google was (and still is) the world’s leading search engine, in part because it had the best algorithm. But the obvious path to generating revenue – advertising – posed a big dilemma.

Loading search results with adverts would put off users and weaken Google’s position. The company’s solution was to develop targeted advertising, matching ads to search queries to maintain relevance and quality.

Similarly, OpenAI will surely not just flood ChatGPT with links to products. If it did, the quality of its own product would decline, and users would quickly go elsewhere.

So, like Google, it needs to find a subtle way to influence people to shop.

Luckily for OpenAI, the sociable, text-based interface of a chatbot creates ample opportunities to use persuasive techniques to try to influence people’s behaviour.

Processing power of persuasion

One way of thinking about online persuasion is in terms of “metacognition”, the ability to think about thinking, which is very important in the world of sales.

Research suggests that when a customer has high metacognition skills, they are more likely to be sceptical of a salesperson’s tactics, and harder to persuade. When a salesperson has high metacognition, they are good at getting into a customer’s head and making a sale.

One theory of metacognition argues that high levels are influenced by how much sellers and customers know about a product, how much they know about persuasion, and how much they know about each other.

In all three cases, AI may have an advantage.

On any given topic, ChatGPT will “know” more about it than an average person. A particularly knowledgeable person might not get caught out. But nobody is an expert on everything, while ChatGPT can at least pretend to be (like any good salesperson).

AI large language models (known as LLMs) are also up to speed on the latest research on rhetoric, marketing and psychology. They can even identify deceptive sales techniques.

AI can also be tweaked to be persuasive. For instance, research has found that people are more likely to buy something when a salesperson or advert mirrors their personality. One study found that ChatGPT can accurately predict a person’s personality from relatively little information. Over time then, ChatGPT could be programmed to make predictions about us, and then start acting like us.

When it comes to knowledge about each other, most people probably know little about how AI language tools actually work. And if people are also unaware of the incentive AI companies may soon have to recommend products, these recommendations may be met with less scepticism, because an AI chatbot would seemingly have no motive to manipulate.

Meanwhile, like Google, companies such as OpenAI are gathering huge amounts of data about the people who use their software. Initially, this was to train future AI models. But these same data could be used to learn more about people, what makes them tick, and what makes them click “buy”.

Product recommendations from ChatGPT, Google or any other company are not inherently sinister. If data is used to suggest products people genuinely love, this can be helpful.

But being helpful is not the primary motivation here. Just as Google introduced ads because of financial pressure, deals like those between OpenAI and Shopify are a response to the economic pressures the AI industry is facing.

It is great if these systems recommend products a person wants to buy. But what might matter most to AI, regardless of the product, is that they buy it.

Stuart Mills 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. OpenAI looks to online advertising deal – AI-driven ads will be hard for consumers to spot – https://theconversation.com/openai-looks-to-online-advertising-deal-ai-driven-ads-will-be-hard-for-consumers-to-spot-264377

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Cholong Sung, Lecturer in Korean, SOAS, University of London

Thanks to the runaway global popularity of Netflix’s new animated film, KPop Demon Hunters, cinemas around the world have picked it up and are now screening a sing-along edition.

Huntr/x, the musical girl group featured in the story, has topped charts worldwide with their track Golden.

As the film smashes records and captures audiences everywhere, one question lingers: what makes this animation stand out from the rest? An answer lies in how relatable the main characters are.

The film follows three K-pop girl group members who use their music and voices to protect the world from demonic forces. While the storyline centres on the fantastical notion of “demon hunters”, grounding the protagonists in the guise of K-pop idols adds on-trend authenticity. As co-director Chris Appelhans explained, the aim was “making girls act like real girls, and not just pristine superheroes”.

Rather than dwelling solely on their heroics, the film portrays the characters’ everyday moments and ordinary behaviour. Food, clothes and familiar locations in South Korea are rendered with surprising precision, to the extent that even Korean audiences are astonished at their accuracy, despite the production being based overseas.

But how closely does the film’s version of K-pop reflect the real thing?

Take the first appearance of Huntr/x members Rumi, Mira and Zoey: with only minutes to go before a performance, they are shown devouring kimbap, ramen, fish cakes and snacks – fuel for the stage. In reality, idols may often end up grabbing a quick bite of kimbap or ramen in the car between packed schedules. More commonly, however, strict diets are the norm. There are reports that sometimes trainees – aspiring K-pop idols who are part of an entertainment company’s training programme – are even forced to shed weight by agencies: one of the industry’s darker aspects.

Yet, as idols mature, many develop their own healthier routines, not simply for looks but to ensure longevity in their careers.

Meanwhile, in the case of boy group Saja Boys, the film highlights the fans’ fascination with their sculpted abs. In reality, male idols often put themselves through intense workouts to build impressive physiques, showing off toned bodies and six-packs on stage for their fans.

Then there is the question of accommodation. In the film, Huntr/x members share a luxurious penthouse overlooking Seoul’s skyline. In reality, agencies often provide dorm accommodation to facilitate scheduling and teamwork, usually near the company, and often managers live with artists. The quality varies greatly, with newcomers typically placed in modest housing.

After debut, successful idols may upgrade their accommodation as the money starts to roll in, but a penthouse, as shown in the film, is more fantasy than fact. BTS being a notable exception, progressing from sharing a converted office (not even a proper house) to one of Seoul’s most prestigious apartments. Most idols tend to strike out on their own some years after debut, balancing solo activities with personal life. By then, their choice of home usually reflects their individual earnings.

The film mirrors K-pop reality in other respects. One Huntr/x member, Zoey, is Korean-American – reflecting the industry’s trend since the 2000s towards multinational line-ups designed to create a global audience. Blackpink, for instance, includes two Korean members with overseas backgrounds and one foreign national, which has bolstered their international reach.

The right music

The film also shows Zoey writing and composing songs: many idols are now singer-songwriters. With the industry demanding constant renewal, the shelf life of an “idol” is very short. Writing and producing music has become both a way to extend careers and secure additional income streams. BTS are all credited songwriters, while figures such as BigBang’s G-Dragon, Block B’s Zico, and i-dle’s Soyeon have all built reputations – and royalties – through their creative work.

Increasingly, even K-pop trainees now learn songwriting and production before their debut. Beyond these points, the film captures a wide slice of K-pop culture as it really exists – from fan sign events to the sea of light sticks waving at concerts.

More than any other element, it’s the music that gives the film its sharpest sense of realism.

Executive music producer Ian Eisendrath teamed up with record label THEBLACKLABEL to produce K-pop tracks that sound right at home in the current charts. Blending trendy and catchy hooks with the story itself has drawn in not only animation fans but also audiences lured by the music alone.

Co-director Maggie Kang put it plainly in an interview: “We really wanted to immerse the world in K-pop.” At the same time, she noted that the film deliberately heightens certain aspects of the genre. That kind of exaggeration is only natural in animation, where drama is part of the appeal. What matters is that every flourish is still grounded in reality.

For viewers familiar with Korean culture and K-pop, that means spotting a wealth of details that might otherwise go unnoticed – and it’s this layer of discovery that may well be among the key factors driving the popularity of KPop Demon Hunters.

Cholong Sung 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. KPop Demon Hunters gives a glimpse into K-pop culture in South Korea – https://theconversation.com/kpop-demon-hunters-gives-a-glimpse-into-k-pop-culture-in-south-korea-264141

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tim Lenton, Director, Global Systems Institute, University of Exeter

The collapse of a major system of ocean currents, the meltdown of major ice sheets or the dieback of the Amazon rainforest are all examples of negative climate tipping points. These are the big risks associated with a changing climate, where harmful change becomes self-propelling. Each could cause environmental disasters affecting hundreds of millions of people.

The prospect of such irreversible and massively damaging outcomes is looming ever closer, as we are set to exceed 1.5°C global warming. Every year and every 0.1°C above this threshold increases the risk of crossing negative climate tipping points. To avert them, climate action must accelerate spectacularly. We need to decarbonise the global economy five times faster than the current rate to have reasonable odds of limiting warming well below 2°C.

This sounds both frightening and daunting. We are facing existential risks and to avoid them requires extraordinary rates and scales of social and technological change. It is understandable to feel climate despair or doomism – particularly with the current spate of backsliding on climate commitments.

But there are credible grounds for conditional optimism. They lie in the evidence of positive tipping points – where changes to zero-emission behaviour and technologies become self-propelling. This is now the only plausible way we can accelerate out of trouble, because we have left it way too late for incremental change to rescue us.

Tipping points happen when amplifying feedback within a system gets strong enough to support self-propelling change. Like putting the proverbial microphone too close to the speaker. They can happen in a range of systems, and history shows us they have happened repeatedly in social systems. Think of political revolutions, abrupt shifts in social norms – like the abandonment of smoking in public, or the rapid transition from horse-drawn carriages to cars.

Happily, almost everything that contributes to human-induced greenhouse gas emissions could be positively tipped towards zero emissions. It can take a lot of work to bring a system to a tipping point, but some key sectors have already positively tipped, at least in some countries.

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Read more:
Climate ‘tipping points’ can be positive too – our report sets out how to engineer a domino effect of rapid changes

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Norway has tipped from buying petrol and diesel cars to EVs in the space of a decade. The UK abruptly shut down coal burning. While gas temporarily replaced some of coal’s role in electricity generation, rapidly growing renewable power has now replaced coal burning and is starting to displace gas. Neither transition happened by chance. Tipping our societies to zero emissions requires deliberate, intentional action from us all.

In Norway, change was started by social activists in the late 1980s, including members of the pop band A-ha, pushing the government to adopt a package of policies to incentivise EVs. In the UK, tipping was triggered by a rising floor price on carbon in the power sector, a policy that can be traced to the Climate Change Act, which started life as a private member’s bill, in turn born out of decades of environmental activism.

The beauty of tipping points

In my new book, Positive tipping points: How to fix the climate crisis, I highlight how just a small change can make a big difference. A minority can ultimately tip the majority. That minority activates amplifying feedback loops that get stronger with the more people who join in the change. This means we can all play a part in triggering positive tipping points.

We all make decisions about what we consume. Just by adopting a lower emission technology or behaviour (like eating less meat) we encourage others to join us. This is because people imitate one another, and the more people who adopt something the more people they can influence to adopt it too – a phenomenon known as “social contagion”.

With technologies, there are extra amplifiers of “increasing returns”: the more of us who adopt a new technology, the better it will get (through learning by doing), the cheaper it will get (due to economies of scale), and the more other technologies will emerge that make it more useful. This is how solar PV panels, wind turbines and batteries that power EVs have got ever cheaper, better and more accessible.

Policy usually also plays a crucial role in stimulating positive tipping points. Mandates to phase in clean technologies and phase out fossil fuelled ones are particularly effective. But despite polling evidence that roughly 80% of people worldwide support more decisive action on the climate crisis, governments can dither or be captured by vested interests. Sometimes they need to see what we support.

This may inspire us to get involved with social activism, which has its own tipping points. Each person joining a protest movement makes it incrementally easier for the next person to join. This can reach a critical mass – as it did for Fridays for Future and Extinction Rebellion in 2019. Or if, like me, you are not so comfortable on the march, there are other forms of social activism, like divesting from fossil fuels, or bringing civil cases against companies causing the climate crisis and governments failing to adequately respond to it.

Together a fraction of us can trigger positive tipping points to avoid otherwise devastating negative climate tipping points.

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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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Tim Lenton is a shareholder in Transition Risk Exeter (TREX) Ltd., receives funding from the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), and previously received funding from the Bezos Earth Fund.

– ref. How to help trigger positive tipping points – and speed up climate action – https://theconversation.com/how-to-help-trigger-positive-tipping-points-and-speed-up-climate-action-261407

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Richard Milne, Senior Lecturer in Plant Evolutionary Biology, University of Edinburgh

The wildflowers of Britain include all manner of treasures – yet many people are only aware of a few, such as bluebells and foxgloves. A lot of its other flora are rare because of Britain’s location at the northern, western or even southern edges of their natural geographic – and hence climatic – ranges.

In fact, Britain has over 1,000 native species of wildflower, including 50 kinds of orchid, a few species like sundew that use sticky tentacles to eat insects, and others such as toothwort that live as parasites, plugging their roots into other plants to suck on their sap like botanical mosquitoes. There are even a few species, such as the ghost and bird’s-nest orchids, that extort all their food from soil fungi.

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Many people think of plants as nice-looking greens. Essential for clean air, yes, but simple organisms. A step change in research is shaking up the way scientists think about plants: they are far more complex and more like us than you might imagine. This blossoming field of science is too delightful to do it justice in one or two stories.

This story is part of a series, Plant Curious, exploring scientific studies that challenge the way you view plantlife.

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I’ve been an obsessive plant hunter since I was seven years old. Wishing to

– ref. What I’ve learned from photographing (almost) every British wildflower – https://theconversation.com/what-ive-learned-from-photographing-almost-every-british-wildflower-263656