Category: The Conversation – UK

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Graham J Dwyer, Associate Professor of Social Innovation, Trinity College Dublin

The island of Ireland has a moderate climate, with few temperature extremes. Its temperature record is still “only” 33°C – almost every other country has been hotter at some point.

But even somewhere with a relatively pleasant and cool climate isn’t immune to the risks of climate change. Recent severe storms like Floris, Bert, Darragh and Eowyn have brought strong winds, more intense floods and a greater risk of blackouts and eroded coastlines.

It’s too soon to definitively link this extreme weather to climate change, but computer models that simulate the climate decades into the future predict stronger storms and more floods. We are already noticing extreme weather happening at unexpected times of year. The sea level is rising and coastlines are eroding at an alarming rate.

Ireland’s position on the edge of the Atlantic – the very reason for its mild climate – makes it especially vulnerable. Those recent severe storms remind us that climate change is a serious threat to wellbeing and, in the longer-term, survival of human life as we know it.

Environmental threats are economic threats

Around 40% of the Irish population lives within a few miles of the coast. That’s where the ports, airports and other infrastructure Ireland’s small open economy depends on are concentrated. Key industries like tourism, fisheries and aquaculture are particularly exposed to disruption.

Higher seas and stronger storms are particularly economic and social threats, not just environmental threats. As coastal populations grow, risks to homes, businesses and infrastructure will only escalate.

A government opinion tracking initiative has indicated there is no shortage of climate change awareness in Ireland. But awareness alone has not translated into urgent action. Too often, the conversation around climate change gets stuck on the reliability of electric vehicles or whether wind turbines spoil the view. Such debates miss the point and risk fuelling climate scepticism.

Recognising our human selves as the chief perpetrator of climate change is the first step towards real behavioural change. This means moving away from a linear economy of extraction and waste, towards a circular one based on reusing, repurposing and recycling resources wherever possible.

Building resilience

Scientists have an invaluable role to play here. Given the relatively recent recognition that a climate-driven increase in extreme weather is a serious hazard, Ireland now needs a foundation of relevant evidence to ensure it makes the right decisions about living with and adapting to climate change. This must include robust modelling and predictions about what is in store, particularly around storms and rising seas.

Policymakers must translate this into clear strategies for coping with the risk of flooding – from flood defences and storm-resistant infrastructure to better water management during periods of alternating droughts and downpours.

There is some good news, as some communities are showing resilience in action. For instance, a community initiative called the Maharees Conservation Association is leveraging local knowledge to protect the northern peninsula of Dingle in Kerry – one of the first places Atlantic storms slam into. The area is implementing a coastal erosion management plan and the Dingle Hub, a non-profit community enterprise, is working to turn the region into a low carbon society. Also, social entrepreneurs are not only contributing to lower carbon emissions but they are also educating, facilitating and supporting communities in tackling climate change.

The Irish government too has made a statutory commitment to achieve a “climate-neutral” and climate-resilient economy by 2050: a crucial step in a country with one of the larger carbon footprints in the world. Meanwhile local authorities are leading campaigns on circular economies, energy use, and are establishing climate action regional offices to focus on climate change.

Ireland cannot hold back the seas or calm the storms. But it can decide how to respond – through stronger science, smarter policy and, above all, collective responsibility.

As sea levels rise, storms surge and flooding increases there is a need for us all to find ways of being part of climate solutions rather than merely being part of the problem.

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Graham J Dwyer is Co-Director, Trinity Centre for Social Innovation. He receives funding from the Australian Research Council. He is affiliated with the University of Melbourne.

Karen Helen Wiltshire is Professor of Climate Sciences and receives funding from Trinity College Dublin (TCD). She holds the TCD-CRH Chair of Climate Science. She is affiliated with the Alfred Wegener Institute Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Science and the University of Kiel in Germany. She is the Chief Author in the UNEP GEO 07. Chapter 5 Oceans and Coasts.

– ref. Why Ireland’s mild temperatures won’t protect it from the climate crisis – https://theconversation.com/why-irelands-mild-temperatures-wont-protect-it-from-the-climate-crisis-259070

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Shelley Brady, Postdoctoral Researcher in Animal Behaviour, Assistive Technology and Epilepsy, Dublin City University

How is an animal feeling at a given moment? Humans have long recognised certain well-known behaviour like a cat hissing as a warning, but in many cases we’ve had little clue of what’s going on inside an animal’s head.

Now we have a better idea, thanks to a Milan-based researcher who has developed an AI model that he claims can detect whether their calls express positive or negative emotions. Stavros Ntalampiras’s deep-learning model, which was published in Scientific Reports, can recognise emotional tones across seven species of hoofed animals, including pigs, goats and cows. The model picks up on shared features of their calls, such as pitch, frequency range and tonal quality.

The analysis showed that negative calls tended to be more mid to high frequency, while positive calls were spread more evenly across the spectrum. In pigs, high-pitched calls were especially informative, whereas in sheep and horses the mid-range carried more weight, a sign that animals share some common markers of emotion but also express them in ways that vary by species.

For scientists who have long tried to untangle animal signals, this discovery of emotional traits across species is the latest leap forward in a field that is being transformed by AI.

The implications are far-reaching. Farmers could receive earlier warnings of livestock stress, conservationists might monitor the emotional health of wild populations remotely, and zookeepers could respond more quickly to subtle welfare changes.

This potential for a new layer of insight into the animal world also raises ethical questions. If an algorithm can reliably detect when an animal is in distress, what responsibility do humans have to act? And how do we guard against over-generalisation, where we assume that all signs of arousal mean the same thing in every species?

Of barks and buzzes

Tools like the one devised by Ntalampiras are not being trained to “translate” animals in a human sense, but to detect behavioural and acoustic patterns too subtle for us to perceive unaided.

Similar work is underway with whales, where New York-based research organisation Project Ceti (the Cetacean Translation Initiative) is analysing patterned click sequences called codas. Long believed to encode social meaning, these are now being mapped at scale using machine learning, revealing patterns that may correspond to each whale’s identity, affiliation or emotional state.

In dogs, researchers are linking facial expressions, vocalisations and tail-wagging patterns with emotional states. One study showed that subtle shifts in canine facial muscles correspond to fear or excitement. Another found that tail-wag direction varies depending on whether a dog encounters a familiar friend or a potential threat.

At Dublin City University’s Insight Centre for Data Analytics, we are developing a detection collar worn by assistance dogs which are trained to recognise the onset of a seizure in people who suffer from epilepsy. The collar uses sensors to pick up on a dog’s trained behaviours, such as spinning, which raise the alarm that their owner is about to have a seizure.

The project, funded by Research Ireland, strives to demonstrate how AI can leverage animal communication to improve safety, support timely intervention, and enhance quality of life. In future we aim to train the model to recognise instinctive dog behaviours such as pawing, nudging or barking.

Honeybees, too, are under AI’s lens. Their intricate waggle dances – figure-of-eight movements that indicate food sources – are being decoded in real time with computer vision. These models highlight how small positional shifts influence how well other bees interpret the message.

Caveats

These systems promise real gains in animal welfare and safety. A collar that senses the first signs of stress in a working dog could spare it from exhaustion. A dairy herd monitored by vision-based AI might get treatment for illness hours or days sooner than a farmer would notice.

Detecting a cry of distress is not the same as understanding what it means, however. AI can show that two whale codas often occur together, or that a pig’s squeal shares features with a goat’s bleat. The Milan study goes further by classifying such calls as broadly positive or negative, but even this remains using pattern recognition to try to decode emotions.

Emotional classifiers risk flattening rich behaviours into crude binaries of happy/sad or calm/stressed, such as logging a dog’s tail wag as “consent” when it can sometimes signal stress. As Ntalampiras notes in his study, pattern recognition is not the same as understanding.

One solution is for researchers to develop models that integrate vocal data with visual cues, such as posture or facial expression, and even physiological signals such as heart rate, to build more reliable indicators of how animals are feeling. AI models are also going to be most reliable when interpreted in context, alongside the knowledge of someone experienced with the species.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that the ecological price of listening is high. Using AI adds carbon costs that, in fragile ecosystems, undercut the very conservation goals they claim to serve. It’s therefore important that any technologies genuinely serve animal welfare, rather than simply satisfying human curiosity.

Whether we welcome it or not, AI is here. Machines are now decoding signals that evolution honed long before us, and will continue to get better at it.

The real test, though, is not how well we listen, but what we’re prepared to do with what we hear. If we burn energy decoding animal signals but only use the information to exploit them, or manage them more tightly, it’s not science that falls short – it’s us.

Shelley Brady 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. Can AI teach us how animals think? – https://theconversation.com/can-ai-teach-us-how-animals-think-263545

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rose Marroncelli, Lecturer, Nottingham Trent University

During the 2000s and 2010s, Topshop was a fashion powerhouse – an icon of the British high street. A combination of music, make-up and the latest fashions allowed the retailer to thrive in popularity. And high profile celebrity collaborations with model Kate Moss and singer Beyoncé also raised Topshop’s profile in a crowded retail market.

The retailer was renowned for being “cool”, fostering design collaborations with up-and-coming designers, including JW Anderson, Marques’ Almedia and Christopher Kane. The models which fronted campaigns were also “it girls”, such as models Lily Cole and Cara Delevinge and actor Kate Bosworth.

The brand’s success, however, did not prove sustainable. In 2020, its owner, the Arcadia group, entered administration and all physical stores closed shortly thereafter. The brand’s reputation was further damaged by allegations of financial mishandling surrounding its owner, Sir Philip Green. Green was also accused of poor treatment towards Arcadia staff, but has always denied any unlawful behaviour.

The online retailer, Asos, acquired Topshop in 2021 and continued to sell its clothes online. However, in 2024, Asos sold a 75% stake of the Topshop brand, in order to repay debts. The majority is now owned by Danish company, Bestseller.

Changing consumer shopping habits, predominantly the rise in online shopping, contributed to Topshop’s downfall. But Topshop was not the only high street retailer that struggled to keep up in the digital age. In recent years, Debenhams, Ted Baker and in mid-August Claire’s have all gone into administration. House of Fraser has also announced multiple store closures. With an ever increasing number of empty units on the high street, the news that Topshop is planning a return, with physical stores, may come as a surprise to some.

Topshop’s relaunch

In August, Topshop returned to the runway with its first catwalk show for seven years, in Trafalgar Square. The show was deemed a success, and “the comeback show of the year”, according to critics including Rolling Stone. Demonstrating the brand’s ability to embrace the digital era, a “see-now, buy-now” approach let audiences shop for pieces instantly. The catwalk show set the backdrop for the relaunch, and Michelle Wilson, managing director of Topshop and Topman, then confirmed to BBC News that standalone stores would be returning to the high street.

Can this high street plan be a success? The same struggles exist as they did when Topshop closed all physical stores in 2020. High rents and running costs remain a challenge, and the popularity of online shopping continues to grow.

Online brands such as Temu and Shein offer the latest styles at low prices. This is known as “ultra-fast fashion”, and appeals to younger consumers.

However, research has suggested that gen-Z are becoming sensitive to the issue of unsustainable production practices, which are widely reported at both brands. It may be the case that in an increasingly digital world, there remains a need for physical retail spaces, where consumers can touch garments and interact with their peers.

Global market research firm, Mintel, notes how successful retail spaces are evolving to provide more than just products; this is known as experiential retail. This includes creating spaces for socialising, learning and community events. Gymshark is an example of an online active-wear brand that followed these retail recommendations when opening its flagship store in Regent Street, London, in 2023. In addition to garments, the Regent Street store offers gym classes, running clubs and personal training sessions..

Can Topshop create a new physical space which consumers will want to pay repeat visits? The original consumer base from the 2000s and 2010s have now grown up, and are in a different life phase. However, research has shown that consumers can display strong emotional connections with retro brands, which may work for Topshop.

A successful return to the high street will hinge on its ability to balance nostalgia with innovation. Reviving emotional connections with its original audience while resonating with gen-Z will be crucial. If the brand can combine the latest fashions with sustainability, experiential retail and digital integration, it does have the potential to thrive once more.

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Rose Marroncelli 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. Topshop’s return to the high street must appeal to gen-Z to succeed – https://theconversation.com/topshops-return-to-the-high-street-must-appeal-to-gen-z-to-succeed-263567

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Kyoko Murakami, Lecturer in psychology, University of Westminster, London, University of Westminster

To mark 80 years since the end of the second world war, a group of ten Japanese people whose fathers and grandfathers once fought against the British travelled to the UK to mark victory over Japan day (VJ day). The story of their ancestors is one that is often forgotten. These men fought during the Burma campaign between 1942 and 1945 – one of the most brutal but often overlooked episodes of the war.

The Burma Campaign Society’s (BCS) Japan branch hope to shed light on this episode by fusing personal memory with national histories. Their efforts are not only about remembering Japan’s past, but also about confronting the complex legacy of their families’ roles in it.

The Burma campaign was a gruelling battle between the Japanese imperial army and Allied forces, predominantly British, Indian, Chinese and American troops. Fought in then Burma, now Myanmar, it was marked by some of the toughest conditions of the war, fighting through disease-ridden jungles, during torrential monsoons across near-impossible terrain. For the men who fought there, it was a struggle for survival in one of the most hostile battlefields of the war.

On Friday August 15, the BCS group attended the national commemorative ceremony, Remembering VJ Day 80 Years On, at the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire. The group, aged from 12 to 78, paid their respects and forged connections with surviving British veterans and descendants of the fallen in Burma. Their work is personal: each member can trace their lineage to soldiers who served, and in some cases died, in Burma. The purpose of their visit is to extend to the UK their work of “irei” – a Japanese word which means to console the spirits of the fallen; to pray for the repose of their souls for those who made the ultimate sacrifice in war.

Two years ago, BCS members held “irei-sai”, memorial services, in Tokyo and other locations in Japan, inviting British veterans and family members to join with Japanese and dignitaries from former allied countries.

In the special VJ Day 80th anniversary ceremony this year, BCS members prayed on British soil for the repose of the souls of the victims. They did so at the memorials and monuments including the Burma memorial, Chindit memorial and Thai Burma railway memorial.

Participating in the VJ Day ceremony was emotional for all concerned. BCS members were initially apprehensive about attending the historic ceremony as citizens of the former foe. They did not know what to expect or how the British would treat them.

Takuya Imasato (47) said he wanted his child to experience how the war is interpreted and commemorated in Britain. He commented that: “I did not feel any bitterness or animosities toward us.”

Another of the Japanese descendants at the ceremony, Hiroaki Fujimori (64), said some of the British people there approached him and shook hands, hugged him or even kissed him on the cheek: “I felt an overwhelming send of welcome and kindness.”

Colonel Yoshiaki Himeda (56), of the Japanese Self Defence Force, said the ceremony was quite different from what he was used to in Japan: “I was so surprised to experience a ceremony that was inclusive, acknowledging the diversity of Britain.” He continued, “It is as if a symbolic wall of the foe or friend quickly dissolved when I, in JDF uniform, saluted the military personnel and veterans in uniforms or with medals. There was more of a silent recognition, we were both children of men who endured something terrible.”

The chairperson of BCS, Akiko Macdonald (74), who lives in the UK, said she was delighted with how the visit went. “Until now, I felt like I was alone, leading the society’s work of irei in the UK with the UK Burma veterans. My father survived, but in his post-war years, he suffered from the survivor’s guilt and PTSD like those who repatriated to Japan. In postwar Japan, if one returns home alive, he is not a war hero and is made to feel ashamed.”

Intercultural dialogue

Many BCS members grew up with fragmented stories, often whispered about, but rarely discussed openly in postwar Japan. Wartime service, especially in campaigns marked by atrocities, was long treated with silence. Families often avoided the topic, torn between pride in their relatives’ endurance and discomfort over Japan’s imperial ambitions.

Showing me a photograph of her father, who, in his later years, trained to be a Burmese Buddhist monk, Yoshiko Fujiwara (70) reflected on the meaning of her irei work. She told me: “I accompanied my father, who worked tirelessly to achieve reconciliation and the reconstruction of Myanmar, helped build memorials and kept a detailed record of my father’s involvement in the battles. I felt duty-bound to succeed in his legacy of irei and to share the facts and personal memories.”

“We cannot change what happened, but we can listen, remember, and share. If my father fought in the atrocious conditions of Burma, perhaps our task is to fight against forgetting and to pay respect to those sacrificed for us,” Fujiwara explained. She told me his loss was huge for her family and that they knew little about what he experienced during his campaign. “Now, as his descendants, we feel it is our duty to tell the story – not to glorify, nor to be ashamed, but to understand and have dialogues.”

Bob White, the curator of the Kohima Museum in York told me how Burma is rarely mentioned in history books, which tend to focus on larger battles in the pacific. “My father, a British Burma veteran, spoke very little about his own experience in Burma. What makes these descendants’ work so valuable is that they bring in personal testimony – letters, diaries, memories passed down – that humanise an otherwise forgotten front,” he explained.

BCS’s irei journey remains committed to its mission. Yoshihiro Sekiba (75), whose father fought as an army doctor in Burma, wants to set up a scheme for a UK-Japan student exchange. BCS chair Akiko Macdonald is hoping to build on this historic attendance at the VJ Day commemoration in the UK, creating an archival learning centre in Japan that will allow descendants worldwide to upload family documents and testimonies related to the campaign. The aim is to make the Burma Campaign not just a footnote in history books, but a living, shared memory.

As the world marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the war, the voices of descendants of those who fought are reminders that conflict echoes across generations. It’s not distant history, but exists as stories that continue to shape identity, reconciliation, and the fragile pursuit of peace.

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Kyoko Murakami, PhD works for the University of Westminster. She is affiliated with the Burma Campaign Society.

– ref. Remembering the second world war’s Burma campaign with the descendants of Japanese fighters on the 80th anniversary of VJ day – https://theconversation.com/remembering-the-second-world-wars-burma-campaign-with-the-descendants-of-japanese-fighters-on-the-80th-anniversary-of-vj-day-263699

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Rachel Pistol, Senior Research Fellow, University of Southampton

The recent opening of an immigration centre in El Paso, Texas, has reignited protests of the Trump administration’s tough immigration plans from Japanese Americans. The internment camp, which opened in August 2025, is on the site of a military base that was used to intern Japanese Americans during the war.

In the past few months hundreds of Japanese Americans have been protesting the construction of new immigration centres and plans to detain thousands of people by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement unit (Ice), because it stirs up memories of how their families were rounded up during the second world war.

The US government has also invoked the 1798 Alien and Enemies Act, last used in the second world war, to increase the powers of Ice to detain individuals.

Much of the basis for the internment of Japanese Americans during the war was derived from the 1798 act, which allows the detention and deportation of foreign “enemies”.

Dublin prison, near San Francisco, was closed in 2024 but Ice is seeking to reopen it – and many other detention sites – to keep up with Donald Trump’s ambitious plan to arrest large numbers of immigrants.

The Japanese American community came out to protest in July around Dublin, outlining fears that the recent Ice raids are a repeat of the history that led to the incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese Americans between 1942 and 1946. One internal Ice estimate suggests there are currently 60,000 immigrants held in detention throughout the US.

Latino neighbourhoods are being targeted, according to civil rights groups, although the Department of Homeland Security has denied it is targeting groups based on their skin colour or ethnicity.

One protester, Lynn Yamashita, said to ABC News: “I’m here because the Japanese were interned, my father was interned, and it can’t happen again – but it is happening, it’s shameful.” Douglas Yoshida, another protester, said: “There’s no invasion, but Trump has cited the Alien Enemies Act to detain and deport people without any due process.”

The Japanese American community in California has been quick to draw comparisons between the alleged targeting of Latino communities by Ice and their own treatment during the second world war. This attracted particular national attention when scores of masked and armed federal agents turned up and arrested a person outside the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) in Los Angeles, during a speech by California’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

This is a highly symbolic site, as it is where Japanese American families were forced to board buses to American concentration camps in 1942. JANM has posted pictures comparing the cramped conditions in those WWII camps to the cages being used in Ice detention facilities. In both cases, families were ripped apart, causing huge amounts of trauma.

What is the history?

In the decades before the second world war, various pieces of legislation were passed to halt both Chinese and Japanese immigration to the US, and there was significant racism directed at Asian immigrants.

Many businesses run by white Americans refused to serve Asians or let them use leisure facilities such as swimming pools. They were also reluctant to allow anyone who looked Asian to rent or buy properties in white neighbourhoods. Despite these challenges, Asian immigrants worked hard to establish businesses and farms, as well as working in many American factories.

Today, immigrants from the Latino and Hispanic populations make up around 19% of the American workforce, yet regularly experience racism in the US.

Forcibly displaced and incarcerated

During the second world war, with the US and Japan on opposite sides, people of Japanese ancestry living in the US were forcibly displaced and incarcerated. The basis of their treatment was signed into being as executive order 9066 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in February 1942.

EO9066 authorised the forced removal of any person who might be a threat to national security from the west coast of the US. Although no mention was made of any specific group, the order was used almost exclusively to target individuals of Japanese ancestry – not just Japanese citizens but their US-born children.

Much of the argument for detention both then and now is to rid the country of “undesirables” – be they defined as “looking like the enemy” (then) or “violent criminals or illegal immigrants” (now). However, recent data shows large numbers of arrests are being made of people without criminal charges or convictions, and of some US citizens. This suggests Ice is very focused on meeting its alleged quota of arresting 3,000 migrants per day. The White House has denied this quota exists.

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Read more:
Masked and armed agents are arresting people on US streets as aggressive immigration enforcement ramps up

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Since Trump’s return to office, some people have reportedly been arrested during routine naturalisation appointments for errors as small as forgetting to submit a relevant form. Even when someone has entered the US legally, this is not necessarily protection from the new powers enacted under the Trump presidency.

Hundreds are being detained in hastily constructed detention camps in isolated areas. During the second world war, this was what happened with the ten so-called “relocation centres”, or internment camps, that were built across the west and south of the US for Japanese Americans, who were then denied habeas corpus – meaning they had no right to defend themselves in a court of law and could be detained indefinitely without a fair hearing.

In June this year, there were suggestions from the Trump administration that it was discussing suspending habeas corpus. If this happens, it could mean there is no limit for how long people can be detained in these camps, and that they no longer have a right to a fair hearing.

In 1988, the US accepted it had carried out a “grave injustice” against people of Japanese ancestry, and that these actions during the second world war were motivated by racial prejudice and “war hysteria”. It’s not clear what, if any, lessons have been learned from this history – and if so, why are they being ignored?

Rachel Pistol has received funding from the British Association for American Studies with the Tuna Canyon Detention Station Coalition for a travelling exhibition in 2026 about Japanese American incarceration.

– ref. Why Japanese American memories of US internment during the second world war are stirring up protests in 2025 – https://theconversation.com/why-japanese-american-memories-of-us-internment-during-the-second-world-war-are-stirring-up-protests-in-2025-261989

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Owen Brierley, Course Leader in the Department of Creative Industries, Kingston University

In the recently released game Tiny Bookshop you are invited to “leave everything behind and open a tiny bookshop by the sea”. Tiny Bookshop has been described as an ambient narrative management game, which has a cosy and calming feel.

From Zoo Tycoon to SimCity and now Tiny Bookshop, computer games have made work feel like play. But the recent explosion of “cosy work simulators” reveals something profound about modern labour and why we’re seeking meaning in the most unexpected places.

Critics and fans have loved Tiny Bookshop, where players spend hours organising shelves, recommending novels and chatting with customers. Meanwhile, 15 million people have bought Euro Truck Simulator 2 to drive virtual trucks on digital motorways. Stardew Valley has sold over 20 million copies, letting players escape to virtual farms where they grow turnips and milk cows.

This isn’t just escapism. It’s something philosophers have been trying to explain for decades.

Research has shown that video games are as powerful as morphine. Other researchers have commented that gamification of work is pacifying workers who should be demanding better conditions. There’s truth here. It’s easier to download Tiny Bookshop than to quit your corporate job and start a real shop.

The romanticisation of small businesses also ignores that bookshop owners often earn little and have no benefits. You can quit playing a game and return to it when you feel like it. That’s not so easy with real jobs.

But dismissing these games as mere escapism misses something crucial. As political theorist Kathi Weeks argues, they function as “laboratories for post-work imagination”. Players aren’t escaping bad work. They are rehearsing better work. They are experiencing what labour could feel like if it served human needs rather than capital accumulation.

Beyond escape: reimagining labour

Johan Huizinga, the Dutch historian who invented game studies, had this concept called the “magic circle”. When we enter a game, we step into a special space with its own rules. Inside this circle, mundane activities become meaningful because we’ve chosen to be there.

Think about it: washing dishes is tedious. But washing dishes in the game Unpacking is meditative. Filing paperwork is soul crushing. But processing immigration documents in Papers, Please becomes a moral thriller. The difference? Agency and consent. We’ve voluntarily entered these spaces, transforming obligation into play.

Karl Marx would have had a field day with this. His theory of “alienation from work” argued that industrial capitalism separated workers from what they produce, how they produce it, and why they’re producing it. In real jobs, you might never see the finished product, never control the process, never understand the purpose.

But in Tiny Bookshop? You choose the stock, stack the shelves and sell to customers who thank you. The entire cycle is visible, controllable and meaningful. You’re experiencing what Marx described as work where you control the means of production and see direct results.

Work as play, play as work

Humans have always blurred these boundaries. Children, for instance, instinctively play house or play shop, rehearsing adult work through voluntary recreation.

What’s shifted is scale and context. The explosion of cosy work simulators around 2020 wasn’t coincidental. As research shows, these games attracted entirely new demographics, particularly women and older adults, who’d never identified as “gamers”. They weren’t seeking escape from reality but rather a different version of it.

The Korean game Work Time Fun (originally released as Baito Hell 2000) made this explicit, parodying meaningless labour by having players cap pens for virtual pennies. Critics called it “deliberately boring”. Yet people played it obsessively, suggesting something deeper than entertainment was at work.

The academic and game designer Ian Bogost’s concept of “procedural rhetoric” explains how games make arguments through their systems rather than stories. When Euro Truck Simulator rewards careful driving and timely delivery, it’s making a claim about what makes work satisfying. When Tiny Bookshop connects every sale to a customer’s happiness, it argues that commerce can be personal and meaningful.

This connects to what the Hungarian-American psychologist
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow” – a state where time disappears because you’re perfectly balanced between challenge and skill. Real jobs rarely create flow: feedback is delayed, goals are unclear and difficulty spikes randomly. But games are flow machines, carefully calibrated to keep you in that sweet spot where work feels effortless.

The anthropologist David Graeber’s theory of “bullshit jobs” adds another layer. He argued that up to 40% of workers secretly believe their jobs are pointless, what he called “box-tickers”, “flunkies”, and “taskmasters” who exist only to manage other managers. These jobs violate something fundamental about human nature: our need to feel useful.

Virtual work offers the opposite. Every customer in Coffee Talk has a story. Every crop in Stardew Valley feeds someone. Even in Papers, Please, a game about bureaucracy, your decisions determine life and death. These games provide what philosopher Byung-Chul Han warns we’ve lost: clear connections between effort and outcome.

The shift from SimCity to Tiny Bookshop reflects changing aspirations. We’re less interested in managing systems and more interested in human-scale interactions. Less excited by efficiency and more drawn to meaning. The fact that millions choose to spend free time on virtual labour that mirrors real work but with agency, purpose and visible impact is itself a form of critique.

These games reveal the gap between what work is and what it could be. They show us that the problem isn’t work itself, but work stripped of autonomy, meaning and connection. In Huizinga’s magic circle, we glimpse what Marx imagined: labour that develops rather than diminishes us.

The next time someone questions why you’re wasting time managing a virtual bookshop, remind them you’re not escaping work. You’re experiencing what work could be. Voluntary. Meaningful. Genuinely productive. The fact that we have to find this in games rather than our own jobs isn’t a gaming problem. It’s a work problem.

And millions of us, controller in hand, are imagining solutions.

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Owen Brierley 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. Tiny Bookshop: why gamers are choosing to spend their free time simulating work – according to philosophy – https://theconversation.com/tiny-bookshop-why-gamers-are-choosing-to-spend-their-free-time-simulating-work-according-to-philosophy-263646

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Justin Stebbing, Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Anglia Ruskin University

The health advice that keeps you from getting sick might actually harm you once you’re already ill. This counterintuitive medical reality has a new name: “Cuomo’s paradox”, coined by Professor Raphael Cuomo at UC San Diego School of Medicine after analysing findings across numerous studies.

The paradox describes how behaviour long considered unhealthy – carrying extra weight, drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, having elevated cholesterol – sometimes correlates with better survival in people who already have cancer or heart disease. It’s a phenomenon that challenges the one-size-fits-all approach to medical advice.

This doesn’t mean throwing prevention guidelines out the window. Rather, it suggests nutrition should be treated as stage-specific medicine. Before diagnosis, the goal is clear: reduce your risk of getting sick. After diagnosis, the priorities shift dramatically to preserving strength, tolerating harsh treatments and avoiding dangerous complications.

The distinction matters enormously for the millions living with advanced cancer or heart disease. Too often, doctors apply prevention-focused advice – lose weight, eliminate alcohol, slash cholesterol levels – to patients whose immediate battle is surviving chemotherapy or managing frailty. These competing goals can point to entirely different dietary strategies.

Cuomo argues for personalised nutrition after diagnosis rather than copying prevention guidance. What keeps a healthy 40-year-old disease-free may not help a 70-year-old cancer patient get through treatment.

The pattern isn’t entirely new. Researchers have long documented the obesity paradox in cardiovascular and cancer care, where heavier patients sometimes survive longer once they’re ill. These observations have sparked years of debate, with critics pointing to measurement timing, unintentional weight loss from illness, and statistical quirks that might explain the findings.

Although careful study design can reduce some paradoxical signals, they don’t always disappear. Cuomo’s contribution is connecting these recurring reversals across multiple factors – weight, alcohol, cholesterol – and multiple diseases, creating a unified framework for stage-specific nutrition.

The findings don’t negate established science. Obesity and alcohol clearly increase cancer risk and worsen heart health. But once illness strikes, the survival equations change, and rigid prevention targets may not suit every patient undergoing treatment.

The paradox in practice

Why might extra weight help cancer survival? The answer lies in the brutal reality of cancer treatment. Chemotherapy, radiation and surgery are physically punishing, breaking down muscle and tissue. Patients with greater reserves – both fat and crucially, muscle mass – may be able to weather these assaults better and resist the rapid weight loss that signals declining health.

When a person was last weighed matters too. A person who is underweight now – at diagnosis – may have been overweight before they became ill, but is at a higher risk of death compared with an overweight person for the reasons stated above.

Similar patterns appear with alcohol. Although drinking clearly increases cancer risk in proportion to consumption and duration, some studies suggest light-to-moderate drinkers show better or equivalent post-diagnosis outcomes compared to non-drinkers. The interpretation remains murky – light drinkers may have different social or health behaviour, while some may quit alcohol due to illness, skewing comparisons.

Cholesterol presents another puzzle. In advanced heart disease, extremely low cholesterol sometimes signals broader health problems: inflammation, malnutrition and liver dysfunction. In these cases, low cholesterol is more likely to reflect underlying illness rather than directly cause poor outcomes, meaning that sicker patients often show low levels. This creates a U-shaped pattern where both very high and very low cholesterol are linked to an increased risk of death.

Cuomo’s message isn’t that “high cholesterol is good” but that aggressively pursuing prevention targets in frail patients might not improve survival and could conflict with maintaining strength and quality of life. Treatment decisions require individualisation and careful monitoring.

For doctors, this means separating prevention from survival goals. Before diagnosis, standard guidance applies: maintain healthy weight, limit alcohol, manage cholesterol. After diagnosis, targets should reflect disease stage, treatment plans, body composition and other health conditions. The focus shifts to avoiding unintentional weight loss while maintaining muscle and energy during active treatment.

Cuomo’s paradox doesn’t upend health advice. It emphasises context. The behaviour that prevents disease isn’t always that which best supports survival once serious illness arrives. That’s not permission for unhealthy habits – it’s a call for individualised care that balances survival, strength and quality of life through careful medical oversight.

Justin Stebbing 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. Why losing weight or cutting alcohol isn’t always best after illness strikes – https://theconversation.com/why-losing-weight-or-cutting-alcohol-isnt-always-best-after-illness-strikes-263315

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Brownlee, Associate Professor, Sport and Exercise Science, University of Birmingham

It can look almost too easy: athletes gliding along on a bike, runners shuffling at a pace slower than most people’s warm-up, or someone strolling so gently it barely seems like exercise at all. Yet this kind of effortless movement is at the heart of what’s becoming known as zone zero exercise.

The idea runs counter to the “push yourself” culture of gyms and fitness apps. Instead of breathless effort, zone zero exercise is all about moving slowly enough that you could chat very comfortably the whole time. For some people, it might mean a gentle stroll. For others, it could be easy yoga, a few stretches while the kettle boils, or even pottering about the garden. The point is that your heart rate stays low; lower even than what many fitness trackers label as zone 1.

In the language of endurance training, zone 1 usually means about 50-60% of your maximum heart rate. Zone zero dips beneath that. In fact, not all scientists agree on what to call it, or whether it should be counted as a separate training zone at all. But in recent years, the term has gained traction outside research circles, where it has become shorthand for very light activity, with surprising benefits.

One of those benefits is accessibility. Exercise advice often leans towards intensity: the sprint intervals, the high-intensity classes, the motivational “no pain, no gain”. For anyone older, unwell, or returning to movement after injury, this can feel impossible. Zone zero exercise offers an alternative starting point.

The quiet power of easy effort

Studies have found that even very light activity can improve several health markers including circulation, help regulate blood sugar, and support mental wellbeing. A daily walk at a gentle pace, for example, can lower the risk of cardiovascular disease.

There’s also the question of recovery. High-level athletes discovered long ago that they couldn’t train hard every day. Their bodies needed space to repair. That’s where easy sessions came in. They aren’t wasted time, but essential recovery tools.

The same applies to people juggling work, family and stress. A zone zero session can reduce tension without draining energy. Instead of collapsing on the sofa after work, a quiet half-hour walk can actually restore it.

Mental health researchers have pointed to another benefit: consistency. Many people give up on exercise plans because they set the bar too high. A routine based on zone zero activities is easier to sustain. That’s why the gains – better sleep, a brighter mood, and lower risk of chronic illness – keep adding up over months and years.

There are limits, of course. If your goal is to run a marathon or significantly increase fitness levels, gentle movement alone won’t get you there. The body needs higher-intensity challenges to grow stronger. But the “all or nothing” mindset, either training hard or not at all, risks missing the point. Zone zero can be the base on which other activity is built, or it can simply stand on its own as a health-boosting habit.

The fact that researchers are still debating its definition is interesting in itself. In sports science, some prefer to talk about “below zone 1” or “active recovery” instead of zone zero. But the popular name seems to have stuck, perhaps because it captures the spirit of effortlessness. The idea of a “zero zone” strips away pressure. You don’t need fancy equipment or the latest wearable. If you can move without strain, you’re doing it.

That simplicity may explain its appeal. Public health messages about exercise can sometimes feel overwhelming: how many minutes per week, what heart rate, how many steps. Zone zero cuts through that noise. The message is: do something, even if it’s gentle. It still counts.

And in a world where many people sit for long stretches at screens, it might be more powerful than it sounds. Evidence shows that long sedentary periods raise health risks even in people who exercise vigorously at other times. Building more light, frequent movement into the day may matter just as much as the occasional intense workout.

Zone zero exercise, then, isn’t about chasing personal bests. It’s about redefining what exercise can look like. It’s not a test of willpower but a way to keep moving, to stay connected to your body, and to build habits that last. Whether you’re an elite cyclist winding down after a race or someone looking for a manageable way back into movement, the same principle applies: sometimes, the gentlest pace is the one that gets you furthest.

Tom Brownlee 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. Zone zero: the rise of effortless exercise – https://theconversation.com/zone-zero-the-rise-of-effortless-exercise-263365

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Elizabeth Simon, Postdoctoral Researcher in British Politics, Queen Mary University of London

In 1998, British prime minister Tony Blair was bullish about his government’s vision for local democracy in London. A city-wide referendum had just firmly endorsed New Labour’s plan to give London a mayor. Though only a third of the electorate turned out, 72% of them were in favour – much healthier than the 50% of Welsh voters who ensured, by a hair’s breadth, the creation of their devolved assembly the year before.

Blair held up the UK’s capital city as a trailblazer. “Once they see how much London is benefiting from having a mayor,” he predicted, “I am confident that people in many other cities and towns of Britain will want to follow.”

Two years later, and a quarter of a century ago this year, Blair’s government created the London mayoralty, the Greater London Authority (GLA) and the London Assembly. Since then, the mayoralty has become, in the words of local government expert Tony Travers, one of the “biggest prizes in British politics”. Former prime minister Boris Johnson, who was mayor from 2008 to 2016, embodies the career-boosting potential of the office.

Coming alongside a sweep of constitutional reforms, the mayoralty, authority and assembly were supposed to address a perceived democratic deficit.

True, through Westminster, London was unquestionably the geographical centre of British political power – and dominant economically too. But after the 1986 abolition of the Greater London Council by Margaret Thatcher’s government (a council led, not coincidentally, by outspoken socialist and future inaugural mayor Ken Livingstone), one of the world’s great cities lacked its own democratically elected authority. This was a running sore. New Labour’s reforms were supposed to address it.

But 25 years on, the evidence that these institutions adequately represent the capital’s 9 million citizens is, at best, mixed.

Admittedly, as Blair predicted, more mayors have been added to the UK’s political landscape since London first took the plunge. But the UK capital’s particular institutional setup has not proven popular.

Our poll of a representative sample of adults in London shows, shockingly, that just 30% of people living in the capital feel they have “some” or “a lot” of influence over decision-making in the UK. Even when asked how much control they felt they had over decisions in London, only 31% of Londoners said “some” or “a lot”. The same figure emerged when we asked how much control they had over decisions in their constituency.

Admittedly, Londoners are slightly more trusting of local than national government to act in their interests. We found that 32% trust the mayor and nearly four in ten trust their borough council, compared with only a quarter who trust the national government. But those numbers are hardly ringing endorsements.

And it is striking that Londoners do not feel they have more influence over local than national decision-making. On existing evidence, that is not the case elsewhere in the country.

Some are particularly dissatisfied. White Londoners and those on lower social grades, with lower incomes and lower levels of educational attainment, are all less trusting than average that the government – at both local and national levels – will act in the best interests of Londoners.

We should be cautious when drawing conclusions. We cannot compare our findings with polling conducted prior to devolution, because no polls in that period asked Londoners comparable questions to those we used. And much of the dissatisfaction we pick up clearly reflects wider alienation from, and volatility in, British politics – patterns which have begun to manifest themselves in London, just as they have in other parts of the country.

Bizarre contradictions

In cities outside London, the mayor plays a “convenor” or “team captain” role for clusters of councils. But London’s unusual 32-borough structure – a reflection of its size and population density – makes this difficult. In contrast, Greater Manchester’s mayor, Andy Burnham, only has to convene ten councils.

Yet London borough leaders have recently demanded decentralising reform so the London mayoralty looks more like its counterparts. These calls may not be entirely motivated by governance concerns: frustration with perceived GLA incompetence and animosity towards the current mayor, Sadiq Khan, are also probably at play. But some advocates genuinely believe that City Hall is overpowered.

Others take a different position. Though the mayor and the GLA can make significant decisions in areas like transport (think, for example, of the congestion charge), they lack the chunky institutional and taxation powers of comparable cities such as New York and Paris.

This leads to bizarre situations. Formally, the mayor is responsible for the critical service of policing, yet cannot even appoint the commissioner for the Metropolitan Police. City Hall is caught between borough councils delivering core services and successive national governments determining budgets – including the Met’s. As declassified government papers reveal, such a situation was a worry even before the role existed: a young Pat McFadden, then political adviser to Blair, privately expressed such concerns about the draft plans in 1997.

Unfinished business

It does not appear, then, that devolution has made Londoners feel empowered over their capital’s politics. Add this to the frequent attacks on “Sadiq Khan’s London” from prominent national and international politicians, especially from the right, and it seems the future of London’s democratic institutions is as contentious as it has ever been.

A quarter of a century since the capital got its first mayor, Londoners still don’t feel as though they are adequately represented, and that they can trust their politicians to deliver for them.

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The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. It’s 25 years since London got a mayor – and our polling reveals discontent – https://theconversation.com/its-25-years-since-london-got-a-mayor-and-our-polling-reveals-discontent-263359

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Dix, Senior Lecturer in American Literature and Film, Loughborough University

“I’m still excited when somebody makes a movie out of something that I’ve done,” Stephen King recently told The Guardian. This openness to exhilaration on King’s part is remarkable, given that he is such a widely adapted writer. To date, more than 90 of his novels and short stories have been adapted for cinema and television (and more adaptations are currently in production).

Variations in the scale of his works have proved no barrier for potential adaptors of King. The 1,100 pages of The Stand (1978) have been processed for the screen. But so too have been the 110 of Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption (1982). Genre shifts across the long arc of King’s work have also been accommodated by adaptors. While early ventures in horror such as Carrie (1974) and Misery (1987) were rapidly taken up by Hollywood, equal haste has been expended recently to bring to American TV King’s crime novels featuring the likeable sleuth Holly Gibney from the Holly series.

In all of this furious adaptive activity, differences in quality are only to be expected. For every screen treatment with the lustre of Kubrick’s The Shining (1980), there is a dull or clumsy transposition such as John Power’s two-part miniseries of The Tommyknockers (1993).

Even King’s involvement in a project is not a guarantor of success. His role as executive producer failed to prevent Salem’s Lot (1975), his horrifying tale of vampires in Maine, from being defanged when it was adapted for cinema in 2024.

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Read more:
Salem’s Lot: a faithful but shallow adaptation of Stephen King’s classic vampire novel

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Now King is back as an executive producer, this time attached to The Life of Chuck, a film adapting one of the novellas included in his 2020 collection, If It Bleeds. Here, however, he is working alongside something of a King specialist (if not a King obsessive), the screenwriter and director Mike Flanagan. He has already adapted two novels by the author: Gerald’s Game (1992) and Doctor Sleep (2013).

Happily, The Life of Chuck proves to be a thoughtful adaptation, shot through with King’s sensibility while augmenting the original novella through its own cinematic choices.

The Life of Chuck showcases King’s continuing interest in narrative experimentation, even in this late phase of a long writing life. Three acts, structured in reverse chronology, consider moments in the seemingly unremarkable life of Chuck Krantz (Tom Hiddleston), a New England everyman. Flanagan’s adaptation sensibly preserves this design.

There are a few instances in the film where the director appears inhibited by his source material. In his Guardian interview, King reveals himself to be pleasingly without any sense of proprietorship about the adaptative process, saying he thinks of his novels and short stories and the films made from them as “two different things, like oranges and apples”. But where Flanagan draws verbatim on the novella for sustained passages of voice-over, especially in act one, he is in danger of not sufficiently differentiating his apple from King’s orange.

Elsewhere in the film, however, Flanagan frees himself from King’s storytelling. More is done on screen than on the page to weave together the three acts, as when characters restricted in the novella to one segment only appear in other places in the film (a roller-skating girl, for example, or high school English teacher Marty Anderson, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor).

New motifs are included in one strand by Flanagan so as to prepare us, subtly, for another part of the story. Most notably, an allusion in act three to the 19th-century poet Walt Whitman, great celebrator of everyday American experience, who is an animating presence in act one.

In praise of ordinariness

Film is a mixed or “composite” medium, having at its disposal not only the visuals of photography but the resources of other forms such as architecture, dance, music and theatre. All are mobilised effectively in Life of Chuck.

A low-key score by the Newton Brothers is heard throughout, further endowing the several sections of the film with narrative continuity and atmospheric unity. The drumming that figures prominently in the middle section is echoed in act one when Chuck’s rock‘n’roll-loving grandmother bangs the rim of a saucepan.

Dance, too, is central to The Life of Chuck as a screen experience. This is not an especially kinetic film: the camera tends to move smoothly, while editing transitions are generally stately (rationing the terrifying jump cuts common elsewhere in King adaptation). But there is vivid movement in the film’s middle section.

Recalling the extended set-pieces of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals that we catch glimpses of when characters are watching TV, the adult Chuck frees himself from the constraints of life as a be-suited accountant and spontaneously dances.

The dance is one of many moments in which The Life of Chuck celebrates the ordinary, uncovering its richness. Ordinariness has a long tradition in American writing (a field in which King, as a former English teacher, is expert). Consider John Williams’s novel Stoner (1965), perhaps, or Raymond Carver’s short story A Small, Good Thing (1983). But Flanagan has succeeded in the challenge he sets himself to bring ordinariness to a cinema screen that often, these days, is populated instead by images of the super-heroic and fantastical.

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Andrew Dix 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 Life of Chuck: Stephen King adaptation celebrates the richness of ordinary life – https://theconversation.com/the-life-of-chuck-stephen-king-adaptation-celebrates-the-richness-of-ordinary-life-263691