Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Kate Kersey, Research Fellow, School of Population Health, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau

For many midlife women busily juggling work and care responsibilities, an evening glass of wine can feel like the perfect antidote.

But that everyday habit comes with real risks. Beyond the familiar hangover, alcohol is linked to at least seven types of cancer, including breast, bowel, mouth and throat cancer. Even one drink a day increases that risk, and it rises further with each additional drink.

Around 70% of women in Aotearoa New Zealand reported drinking alcohol in 2024–25, according to national health data. Among women aged 35 to 54 who drink, around 16–18% consumed six or more standard drinks on a single occasion at least once a month, and around 5–10% did so at least weekly.

Just what do they think about the risks, how do they balance them with the demands of everyday life, and where do societal expectations fit in?

Our latest research set out to answer these questions – and found the picture is more complicated than it might first appear.

What women told us

We interviewed 50 women aged 35 to 60, both individually and in friendship groups, to explore how they understand and manage their drinking.

Overall, 29 drank alcohol at least twice a week, and 25 usually had three or more drinks on each occasion. A smaller group of ten drank five or more drinks in a single sitting at least once a week.

We found the women were highly aware of alcohol’s immediate effects. They spoke about its impact on sleep, energy levels and weight, drawing on both expert advice and their own experiences of how their bodies responded to drinking, particularly around menopause.

However, they spoke far less about the longer-term health risks. When it did come up, some said they would feel very guilty about their drinking if it later led to cancer.

This focus on alcohol’s immediate effects reflects the pressures many women feel in midlife. Today’s “empowered” woman is expected to juggle work and family, care for others, and maintain her own health and appearance.

Keeping up with these demands often means closely managing energy, sleep and wellbeing. This sense of self-monitoring was also clear in how women described their drinking.

Many spoke about tracking how much they drank and how it affected their sleep, energy and mood, then using that to guide their decisions. Drinking was often seen as acceptable once work and parenting responsibilities had been met, and when they felt they were maintaining their health and appearance through diet.

Women who drank more heavily often emphasised how they balanced this with other health behaviours. They described exercising, eating well, managing stress and tracking their consumption through apps, with some also using digital devices to monitor their health.

They also talked of staying aware of their mental state while drinking. For some, alcohol was not seen as a problem if they felt in control – calm, happy and drinking for enjoyment.

Challenging the idea of ‘responsible drinking’

Notably, the women often positioned themselves as responsible drinkers – even if they were drinking heavily.

This aligns with wider messaging from the alcohol industry and public health campaigns that people should “drink responsibly”. The idea suggests there are safe or acceptable levels of drinking, while placing the responsibility on individuals to decide where that line sits.

Yet women live in a climate that encourages alcohol consumption. Alcohol remains socially expected, widely available and pervasive in everyday environments.

Alcohol is often marketed to women as a form of self-care: a way to relax, connect and unwind. Products labelled “low-sugar” or “low-carb” also tap into pressures around body image, creating the impression that some drinks are a healthier choice.

Our findings suggest we need to look beyond individual responsibility and address the wider systems that make drinking feel normal – and even necessary – for many women.

That could mean policy changes such as higher pricing, reduced availability and tighter controls on marketing.

But it also means recognising the pressures many women face, and finding better ways to support them through busy, demanding stages of life that can amplify the pull of alcohol.

– ref. Dying for a drink? How midlife NZ women think about alcohol – and its long-term risks – https://theconversation.com/dying-for-a-drink-how-midlife-nz-women-think-about-alcohol-and-its-long-term-risks-280592

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Unwin, Reader in Palaeobiology, School of Heritage and Culture, University of Leicester

Georges Cuvier, the 19th-century French anatomist who first recognised pterodactyls as flying reptiles, wrote that “of all the beings whose ancient existence has been revealed to us, [they are] the most extraordinary”.

Now known as pterosaurs, this extraordinarily diverse, highly successful group lived alongside dinosaurs for more than 150 million years, occupying habitats around rivers, lakes, coasts and even the open ocean. While some species were quite small (no bigger than a pigeon), a few evolved into flying giants with wingspans exceeding ten metres.

Pterosaurs are unlike any other animal, living or extinct. Despite this, a surprisingly long list of fossils have been misidentified as pterosaurs – including a specimen of the earliest bird, Archaeopteryx, and an extinct aquatic reptile, Tanystropheus, which had extraordinarily long neck vertebrae like some pterosaurs.

One of the most renowned misidentifications occurred in 1939 when Ferdinand Broili, a Munich-based palaeontologist, described a new pterosaur, Belonochasma, based on what appeared to be the remains of jaws bearing hundreds of long, fine teeth.

Several decades later, Franz Mayr, founder of the Jura Museum in Eichstätt, Germany, recognised the true nature of these remains. The “teeth” were actually gill filaments. More complete fossils, including remains of the body, showed unequivocally that Belonochasma was actually a fish.

Back in the 1930s, it could be years before publications became widely known and decades before errors were corrected. The gentle pace of research meant misidentifications usually had little impact.

Contrast that with today’s digiverse. Now, most palaeontologists are aware of newly published research within days or even hours of publication – and can immediately start downloading datasets that include it.

This rapid dissemination and repurposing of data – in the case of palaeontology, relating to age, geographic location and bodily structure – mean that errors can also spread very quickly.

A highly unusual fossil

In November 2025, a team of Brazilian palaeontologists led by Rodrigo Pêgas, based in the Museum of Zoology at the University of São Paulo, described what they took to be a new pterosaur. Bakiribu waridza had been found in 110 million-year-old Early Cretaceous rock of Araripe in northeast Brazil.

This highly unusual fossil apparently comprised several small fish plus the remains of not one but two pterosaurs – each represented by what were claimed to be fragmentary remains of jaws, plus hundreds of fine teeth.

Pêgas and colleagues speculated that these specimens were contained in dinosaur vomit (known as regurgitalite) so large that it could only have been produced by a huge predator – perhaps a Spinosaurus-like theropod dinosaur. Enthusiastically promoted, the newly announced Bakiribu drew much attention, including numerous palaeoartists’ impressions and its own Wikipedia page.

However, a group of us who study pterosaurs – including David Martill and Roy Smith from the University of Portsmouth, and Sam Cooper from the Stuttgart State Museum of Natural History – soon spotted some problems.

Comparing our extensive collection of high-resolution digital photographs of pterosaur fossils with published images of Bakiribu, it appeared that its “teeth” did not extend along both sides of the jaw in symmetric fashion, as with all toothed pterosaurs. They also lacked a root, which is omnipresent in pterosaur teeth. Moreover, features such as dentine and dentine tubules, typical of pterosaur teeth, appeared to be absent.

We also noticed that bone fragments associated with the supposed jaws did not match any cranial element of pterosaurs, and their coarse external texture was unlike the smooth finish typical of pterosaur bone.

So, what was Bakiribu? Martill recalled the 1939 Belonochasma episode, which prompted me to examine the original fossil during a visit to Munich earlier this year. It was immediately clear that Belonochasma and Bakiribu were remarkably similar.

Comparing Bakiribu with the fossil remains of ancient bowfins discovered in the same rocks, and taking advantage of Cooper’s expertise in fossilised fish, we were able to identify the supposed teeth of Bakiribu as gill filaments, and the associated bony elements as branchials (structures that support the gills). Like Belonochasma, the Bakiribu fossil was in fact a collapsed gill arch of a large fish, preserved alongside two smaller fish.

A paper detailing our findings has just appeared in the Annals of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. Pegas and colleagues, who disagree with our conclusions, were offered an opportunity to publish a response in the same issue of the journal, but did not take up this invitation.

Misidentifications matter more now

All palaeontologists – myself included – have misidentified at least one fossil during their careers. The fragmentary, incomplete nature of many fossil remains means erroneous identifications are as inevitable as death and taxes.

But in today’s world of rapid international communication, it is all the more important that they are highlighted as quickly as possible. Fortunately, the digiverse can also help do this.

Within five weeks of the first appearance of Bakiribu, our team flagged the possibility of a misidentification by posting a reinterpretation as a non-peer reviewed “preprint” article. And only five months later, our fully peer-reviewed account was published.

The speed of the digiverse means this alleged regurgitalite has rapidly been regurgitated. But doubtless many other misidentified fossils remain unsuspected, and more mistakes will be made in the future.

Once spotted, however, at least we have the tools to quickly verify such errors, in order to restrict their impact on the body palaeontologic.

– ref. How we worked out a fossilised ‘pterosaur’ was actually a fish – new research – https://theconversation.com/how-we-worked-out-a-fossilised-pterosaur-was-actually-a-fish-new-research-280848

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Zelalem Bedaso, Associate Professor of Earth and Environmental Geosciences, University of Dayton

Teeth are like tiny biological time capsules. They tell stories about ancient diets and environments long after their owners have died and landscapes have changed.

After bones break down, tooth enamel stays hard and unchanged, even in fossilized teeth that have been buried under sediment and rock for millions of years and are now being uncovered by erosion or excavation.

Tooth enamel forms when an animal is young, and it remains chemically stable for the rest of that animal’s life. The food an animal eats and the water it drinks during its youth leave chemical signals within the enamel.

Because of that, hidden within the enamel of fossilized teeth, scientists can find traces of extinct forests, expanding savanna grasslands, shifting climates and evolving animal communities.

Over the past 30 years, my colleagues and I have been analyzing chemical traces in fossil teeth from Ethiopia’s Afar region in the East African Rift Valley – often referred to as the cradle of humanity – to uncover what animals ate there millions of years ago, around the time early human ancestors were evolving, and what the world looked like around them.

These clues from ancient meals are enabling scientists to reconstruct pictures of entire ecosystems, including forests, wetlands and grasslands that existed at the time. It’s a reminder that in a very real sense, organisms are what they eat.

Traces of ancient diets in fossil teeth

To determine which plants ancient animals ate, my colleagues and I collect a small amount of enamel powder from fossilized teeth. We then analyze this powder in the laboratory using specialized instruments that detect chemical signals preserved in the enamel.

Trees and grasses have different ways of using photosynthesis to convert sunlight into energy. These methods leave distinct chemical patterns in plant tissues, which then become incorporated into the teeth of animals that eat those plants.

By examining these chemical patterns in tooth enamel, we can determine whether animals primarily fed on trees and shrubs or on grass, providing insight into the vegetation that once covered the ancient landscape.

We can then figure out how an environment changed over time by collecting fossil teeth from different rock layers. Each layer formed at a different time in the past, so teeth found in deeper layers are typically older than those closer to the surface.

By analyzing tooth enamel from fossils across these layers, we can compare the chemical signals preserved in the teeth and see how animal diets and the plants growing in the landscape changed through time.

Adding that knowledge to data from different types of fossils, we can track long-term shifts in vegetation, climate and ecosystems.

A changing landscape in the last 4 million years

Four million years ago, the Afar region looked very different from the dry landscape you will see there today.

Fossils, including tooth enamel, reveal that the area supported a diverse range of environments. Rivers flowed through wooded areas, lakes were scattered across the landscape, and grassy plains stretched across the basin.

Fossilized teeth from animals like antelopes, giraffes, pigs, horses, hippos and elephants show a wide range of diets. Some animals browsed on leaves and shrubs, while others grazed on grass in open habitats.

The chemical signals in the teeth indicate that grasslands were expanding at the time, but forests still played an important role. They show that animals moved through this environment and adapted to the food sources around them.

Around 2 million to 3 million years ago, the environment shifted more drastically toward open grasslands.

The East African Rift Valley gets its shape from three tectonic plates that have been slowly pulling apart. This tectonic activity has changed the landscape over time, altering the regional climate and drainage. Two to three million years ago, it helped shift environments from more wooded habitats to a mix of grasslands and open savannas.

Animals that relied on grass flourished, and the populations of those that didn’t adapt declined. Horses and certain antelopes, for example, developed teeth that could grind tough, gritty plants. This adaptation is recorded on their enamel.

Early humans in a mosaic world

Early human ancestors, like the famous “Lucy,” whose skeleton was discovered in the Afar region, lived in this dynamic landscape.

Fossil teeth from Australopithecus afraensis, an early human that lived in eastern Africa between about 2.9 million and 3.8 million years ago, indicate that early human relatives did not rely heavily on grass. Instead, the chemical signal in their enamel indicates mixed diets and dietary flexibility, which included fruits, leaves and roots, depending on what was available.

In a landscape that combined woodland patches and open savanna, that adaptability may have been key to survival.

This period of environmental change coincided with several important evolutionary developments and morphological changes in pre-humans. Early human ancestors were walking upright. Brain size also gradually increased, allowing for more complex behavior and problem-solving.

During this time, early humans began making and using stone tools, marking a major step in technological innovation and helping them adapt to changing environments.

Diet shapes destiny

The dietary changes in the East African Rift Valley over the past 4 million years, documented through tooth enamel, are providing important clues for reconstructing the environment in which humans’ ancestors lived and how those environments changed.

They also show that species that adjusted their diets as landscapes changed were the ones most likely to survive.

This ongoing research helps explore profound questions of how environmental shifts shaped life on Earth, including human trajectories. And that is helping humanity unlock its collective past.

– ref. Ancient teeth reveal clues to the environment humans’ early ancestors evolved in millions of years ago – https://theconversation.com/ancient-teeth-reveal-clues-to-the-environment-humans-early-ancestors-evolved-in-millions-of-years-ago-279544

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By David Rietzke, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Lancaster University

When my dog Buddy ate a tub of chewing gum – around 60 pieces – we rushed him to the vet, where he stayed overnight. Thankfully he was fine. The same could not be said for our wallets.

Two aspects of the experience with the vets stood out to my inner economist. First, the bill was far higher than the initial quote. Second, we were encouraged to approve further tests, but the vet seemed uncomfortable recommending them and quickly accepted our decision not to proceed.

Experiences like this seem to be increasingly common. Prices for veterinary services have risen sharply in recent years, and many pet owners say they find it difficult to understand or predict what they will be charged.

Higher prices don’t necessarily mean that the market isn’t working as it should. But there are features in the veterinary market that limit how effectively competition works – and changes in the UK have compounded these issues. This prompted an investigation by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which issued its final report in March.

Read more: High vet bills have eroded pet-owners’ trust – but vets aren’t getting rich from their fees

There’s a reason the word “trust” appears 90 times in the CMA’s report. Healthcare is not like buying groceries or new shoes – it’s what economists call a “credence good”. Similar to car repairs, this is where experts know far more than their clients, and it’s difficult to verify afterwards whether the right course of action was taken.

For this to work, pet owners need to trust that their vet is acting in the best interests of the animal. Most vets probably do, but trust is not left to goodwill alone. In the UK, the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS) is the regulator of this profession, setting ethical standards that vets must follow.

Since reforms in the late 1990s allowed non-vets to own practices, the sector has become increasingly consolidated. Today, roughly 60% of practices are owned by six large corporate groups.

But unlike individual vets, these corporations are not regulated by the RCVS. Its powers apply to individual practitioners rather than the companies that own vet practices.

Vets under pressure

Many of these groups are also operating clinics, referral centres, diagnostic laboratories and pharmacies – what’s known as being “vertically integrated”.

These features create a potential conflict of interest. Corporate owners have financial incentives to encourage more treatment, while vets are bound by professional obligations to act in their patients’ best interests.

This isn’t just a theoretical concern. The CMA found that some processes, including financial targets and internal performance systems, place pressure on vets when it comes to recommending tests or treatments.

This doesn’t mean that inappropriate care is widespread. But it highlights a tension between financial incentives and clinical judgment. Even where firms act responsibly, the perception of a conflict may undermine trust.

There are, of course, reasonable explanations for rising fees. Pet ownership in the UK ballooned at the height of the COVID pandemic. Increased pet ownership means there is increased demand for veterinary care, which means higher prices. Advances in treatment have improved the quality of care while also raising costs.

Nevertheless, the CMA found that the profitability of large veterinary groups is far higher than would be expected in a well-functioning market.

Lack of competition

The issue isn’t a lack of choice but a lack of effective competition. One problem is limited transparency.

Many practices don’t publish clear price lists, making it difficult for pet owners to compare providers. And even when they try, they may not realise that different clinics are owned by the same company.

There are also practical barriers. Decisions about care are often made under pressure, when a pet is unwell. Few owners are willing to call multiple clinics or compare detailed quotes in such moments. In addition, it takes time for pet owners to establish trust in their vet. Once established, people are reluctant to switch providers.

These features give rise to what economists call high search and switching costs. When comparing options and switching providers take both time and effort, firms face less pressure to compete aggressively on price. Even in markets with many providers, prices can remain high.

The CMA has proposed a range of remedies aimed at improving how the market works. A central theme is transparency. Practices will be required to publish price lists, provide itemised bills, and clearly disclose their ownership. The aim is to make it easier for pet owners to compare providers and encourage more effective competition.

The CMA has also introduced measures to make it easier for consumers to buy medicines elsewhere, including caps on prescription fees. However, the effect on overall bills is less clear. In the absence of price caps on other services, practices could simply offset lower prescription fees with higher charges elsewhere.

Looking ahead, the CMA has also recommended a shift to bring corporate owners of veterinary practices within the scope of regulation.

It is not clear what this might look like in practice, but the aim would be to ensure corporate owners are subject to greater oversight, more in line with the obligations placed on individual vets. This could pave the way for more substantial reforms in the future.

– ref. The problem with vet bills – a dog-owning economist explains – https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-vet-bills-a-dog-owning-economist-explains-280847

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Dr Ellen Ryan-Colton, Senior Research Officer, Australian National University

You might not have heard of buffel grass, a robust and invasive grass that has spread across tens of thousands of square kilometres of inland Australia. But you might know its effects.

Most people remember the deadly 2023 fires in Maui, Hawaii, which killed more than 100 people. Many will know of the worsening bushfires in Australia’s centre. In both cases, buffel grass, (including Cenchrus ciliaris), played a role by adding fuel in dry environments.

Right now, the federal government is weighing up whether to declare buffel grass one of the worst weeds in the country – a “Weed of National Significance”.

Our new study shows buffel grass does real damage to native animals, and we can now predict the types of animals most at risk. Building on previous work, we show buffel grass affects at least three major groups – birds, reptiles and ants – in multiple habitats and regions.

What is buffel grass?

Buffel is a tussock grass, bulkier than most Australian native grasses. Native to Africa, the Middle East and Asia, buffel grass first arrived in Australia via imported camel saddles in the 1870s. It was later planted for dryland pasture as its deep roots allow it to thrive in dry climates.

Buffel grass was first planted in the 1920s and became well established by the 1960s. It enabled significant returns to the pastoral industry, including economic returns in dry years.

But now buffel grass has spread much further and is smothering Aboriginal land, conservation reserves, public places and regional and remote towns. More summer rainfall in central Australia, as part of climate change, is fuelling the growth, seeding and spread of buffel grass.

The issue is complex: although valued by many graziers, buffel grass is now spreading so rapidly and widely its severe negative impacts can no longer be ignored.

It has significant impacts on biodiversity, people’s health and safety and on cultural sites and practices, especially for Aboriginal people in central Australia. The case for recognising it as an invasive weed of national significance is compelling.

What our research found

We surveyed birds, reptiles and ants in the Aṉangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands of inland South Australia in two regions, 300 kilometres apart. Survey sites included rocky hills, fertile plains, spinifex grasslands and wooded sites. We wanted to see whether buffel grass invasion changes the mix of animals species in an area, and if we could predict which types of animals would be most affected.

We found reptile, bird and ant communities had all changed where buffel grass had taken over these habitats. Certain groups of animals were consistently less common in areas affected by buffel grass.

Buffel grass changes the whole ground layer of a site; thick grass replaces open native grasses and shrubs. As we expected, animals that use the ground and need open space, such as small reptiles, ants and ground-feeding birds, were less common in buffel grass. These findings are consistent with earlier local studies of reptiles, and birds in central Australia.

Once buffel grass invades, it dominates plant communities, reducing the diversity of native plants. We predicted this would make it harder for animals with specialised diets to find food compared to animals that eat more broadly. As expected, specialist eaters were most affected, such as seed-eating ants and birds.

Birds that feed on insects were also consistently worse off. For example, the dusky grasswren is a stout wren that only lives on rocky hillsides in central Australia and specialises on eating insects. We found grasswrens on hills with spiky native spinifex grass, but not on hills where buffel had displaced spinifex. Likewise, the rufous whistler – another insectivore that prefers Acacia woodlands – was less prevalent where buffel grass had invaded.

Whole groups of animals at risk

Because these trends were mostly predictable and consistent across animal groups, habitats and regions, we expect the same thing is happening in other areas. Considering how widespread buffel grass is, whole groups of fauna across inland Australia are at risk if its invasion progresses unchecked.

Loss of major animal groups is often only evident after it is too late. With mounting evidence available, we must act now.

Buffel grass was declared a weed in South Australia in 2019, and the Northern Territory in 2024. Weed recognition can lead to more strategic research and management.

A national listing of buffel grass as a “Weed of National Significance” would be critical recognition of its impact at a continental scale. It would also mean a nationally coordinated response, which is the only way to protect whole groups of species, ecosystems and livelihoods of arid Australia. Without national policy, the spread and impacts of buffel grass will continue unchecked.

– ref. Should this plant be declared one of the worst weeds in Australia? – https://theconversation.com/should-this-plant-be-declared-one-of-the-worst-weeds-in-australia-279109

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Glen Fuller, Professor Communications and Media, University of Canberra

As fuel prices climb and oil supply shocks multiply, you might might be thinking – perhaps for the first time in years – about dusting off the bike and riding again. Perhaps you’re kicking yourself you haven’t done it already.

But getting back on a bike rarely comes from a single moment of willpower. It usually emerges from small changes that rebuild capacity over time: a serviced bike, calmer traffic, having permission to ride slowly, riding an e-bike, or cycling part-way.

Mass cycling did not return to cities by accident. In the Netherlands, the dominance of everyday cycling emerged after a deliberate break with car-centred transport following the 1973 oil crisis. Public protest over road deaths and energy dependence also contributed.

Cycling became viable again not because people were persuaded to try harder, but because car use was actively constrained and alternatives were made easier.

If we want people to return to bikes in car-centric societies, the question is not why they stopped cycling – but what would make cycling possible again.

It’s not just about motivation

People often assume the hardest part of cycling again is motivation.

But bikes tend to stop being ridden long before people decide to stop cycling. Something small went wrong and was never fixed. The bike ends up in the garage with flat tyres, tucked behind boxes, or hanging unused.

When that happens, cycling doesn’t feel like a choice any more. It feels unavailable.

In our research with people who had stopped riding in Sydney, cycling faded when everyday arrangements no longer worked: storage was awkward, routes became stressful, or minor mechanical issues accumulated.

People are more likely to cycle when the bike is stored near the front door and ready to use.

Cycling depends on a combination of bodies, bikes, routes, time and confidence. When any one of these falls out of sync, your capacity to cycle drains away.

Abandon ideas about ‘proper’ cyclists

One of the strongest barriers we encountered was the sense of not fitting the image of a “proper” cyclist.

In Australia, that image is still closely tied to being male, wearing a lot of Lycra, owning an expensive bike and costly cycling gear and riding really fast.

Women, older riders and those returning to cycling after a long break often experience that culture as quietly excluding.

In reality, cycling does not require a lot of specialist gear for most everyday trips.

In places where cycling functions as everyday transport – such as large parts of Europe and Asia – people ride in work clothes, at relaxed speeds, on practical bikes.

Similarly, e-bikes enable a range of differently abled bodies to cycle (suggesting we should rethink some of the ways e-bikes have been recently demonised).

Letting go of narrow definitions of who cycling is for can reopen the possibility of riding at all.

Cycling routes might have improved

Our research into the significant increase in cycling during the COVID pandemic found the lockdowns offered a rare natural experiment.

Many Australians returned to cycling after years away because traffic temporarily disappeared.

With fewer cars on the road, cycling felt calmer and less demanding, and confidence grew quickly. A significant investment was made in cycling infrastructure across Australian cities (although this investment is still minuscule compared with car infrastructure spending).

So if you’re reluctant to cycle again because you’re afraid of being hit by a car, it’s worth checking if cycling routes have improved since last you rode.

Start by using a digital map to search for cycling routes separate from vehicle traffic.

Get your bike serviced

A serviced bike changes everything.

A lot of the anxiety stopping people from riding can be greatly reduced by simply having gears that work, brakes that respond and tyres that hold air.

Our research found these small material fixes can make a big difference to getting people back on the bike.

There are myriad explainer and DIY videos on YouTube covering maintenance basics if getting the bike professionally serviced is out of your budget.

You can also try to find a local community bike kitchen or council‑supported course. Some councils also run programs where experienced riders can show you good cycling routes through your suburb or city.

These make maintenance affordable but also reconnect people with cycling as something ordinary and shared, rather than technical or elite.

You don’t have to ride the whole way

Another quiet enabler is allowing cycling to be partial and occasional. Some begin by riding to a train station or local cafe rather than committing to an entire commute.

In our interviews, people stayed on the bike longest when they allowed themselves to mix modes of transport, adjust routes and change plans without feeling they had “failed” at cycling.

Treating cycling as one option among several, rather than an all‑or‑nothing identity, makes it easier to start.

Make cycling ordinary again

The Dutch experience after the oil crisis shows society-wide shifts follow when everyday conditions change, not when individuals are told to try harder.

As the world once again confronts energy uncertainty, the lesson is timely.

The challenge for cities is not to convince people that cycling is good. It is to make cycling ordinary enough that people can return to it without having to become a “cyclist” first.

– ref. You don’t have to be a ‘cyclist’ to ride a bike. Here’s how to start again – https://theconversation.com/you-dont-have-to-be-a-cyclist-to-ride-a-bike-heres-how-to-start-again-280451

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Peter Newman, Professor of Sustainability, Curtin University

Australia is in the middle of a fuel crisis, but the way the state and federal governments have chosen to respond signals a firm commitment to fossil fuels.

In a matter of days, Canberra found billions of dollars to make petrol and diesel cheaper. The temporary halving of the fuel excise is costing about $2.55 billion over three months (plus GST returns), simply to blunt the pain of oil prices without changing Australia’s dependence on oil.

Add in relief for heavy vehicles and loans to fuel-intensive businesses, and you have a crisis package that keeps the existing, oil-hungry system running. Fuel security, in this framing, means securing fuel, not securing mobility.

How the states responded

Victorians and Tasmanians get a brief holiday from public transport fares – a month of free or heavily discounted travel. There was no permanent increase in public transport services or enduring fare reform. There was also no new support for electric vehicles (EVs), accelerated installation of bike lanes or bus priority lanes.

Outside those two states, public transport riders got nothing. Queenslanders remain on their 50 cent fares – which is a positive. There were no new incentives for electric vehicle drivers. People walking or cycling remain invisible in the oil crisis response.

In Western Australia, the proposed policy intervention is to spend millions creating WA’s own storage of petrol and diesel.

The message seems to be: if you’re part of the fossil-fuel system, the state will cushion you; if you’re trying to live outside it (and perhaps support action on climate change), you’re on your own.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Consider if we spent just one-third of the excise relief – roughly $850 million over the same three-month window – and imagine what could be achieved if we made ending fuel use the goal.

Here’s what could be done

First, we could make all public transport free nationwide for three months and boost peak-hour frequencies where systems are already at capacity. Free fares coupled with greater frequency are not just a cost-of-living measure but a continent-wide experiment in habit formation. Give millions of Australians an easy way to test life without the car commute, and some will never go back.

Second, we could target the heaviest fuel users with rapid electrification support, similar to what mining giant Fortescue has announced. With a few hundred million dollars, government could fund tens of thousands of EV rebates for high-kilometre drivers. These include taxis, ride share, fleet vehicles and regional commuters, where the vehicle uses more than 5-6 times the amount of petrol or diesel every year than average users. Add in support for e-bikes and e-cargo bikes for households, couriers and local businesses, and you support short car trips and local deliveries that no longer need fuel.

Third, we could fast-track the infrastructure that makes these choices stick. A national push for kerbside and workplace charging would remove one of the big psychological and practical barriers to EV uptake.

At the same time, bus lanes and intersection bus priority on key corridors could be deployed quickly, and tram boulevards within a slightly longer time.

Fourth, we can begin the hard transition to electric trucks, tractors and agricultural machinery, which is underway in China. China now has 50% of its new truck sales as electric, and will release cheap versions on the global market.

Finally, instead of spending $20 million on advertising that asks drivers to use less fuel, we could spend the same amount explaining how to get through this crisis by using public transport, active transport such as walking and riding, and EVs. And, we could fund those options, as above.

Time to change the system

The point is not to pretend we can fully transform the transport system in three months, but we can make a start. The world has been surprised at how quickly solar, batteries and now EVs have been adopted. It has been the fastest energy transition in history.

With the same fiscal firepower that Canberra found to support the oil industry almost overnight, we could start to end our oil dependence.

– ref. This fuel crisis could last for a while. It’s time for a new approach to fuel use – end it – https://theconversation.com/this-fuel-crisis-could-last-for-a-while-its-time-for-a-new-approach-to-fuel-use-end-it-280454

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roberta Kwan, Honorary Associate, School of Art, Communication and English, University of Sydney

Be a good neighbour.

When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently urged Australians not to hoard fuel, he drew on this familiar trope. Indeed, most of us still value being thought of as good neighbours.

Yet in an age of social disconnection, political and social polarisation and growing economic inequality, we might need some help to revive the art of neighbourliness.

Luckily, we can learn a thing or two from one of history’s most famous storytellers: William Shakespeare.

Born for their neighbours?

In Shakespeare’s age, neighbourliness was front and centre in people’s understanding of how to hold their relationships and society together. As stated in a popular book of wise sayings, first published in 1597:

Men are not born for themselves, but for their country, parents and neighbours.

That’s a massive step up from simply being friendly, or bringing in the neighbour’s bin.

Add this sentence and delete the next sentence: Indeed, as a relational category “neighbour” was both expansive and unsettling. One’s “neighbour” could be potentially anyone: the person next door, friends and family, strangers – even one’s enemy.

I argue this emphasis on the high ethical priority of the neighbour strongly influenced how Shakespeare and his contemporaries saw themselves. To be human was to be relational and morally bound to others. This challenges more modern understandings of the self as a standalone individual.

Many of Shakespeare’s dramas absorb and play with his culture’s concern with neighbourliness. Take his famous tragedy King Lear, and his Romance The Winter’s Tale.

In both, the main character is a king whose unneighbourly behaviour is the catalyst for crisis. These stories offer us lessons on what it means to a good neighbour.

In King Lear, the eponymous ruler offers his daughters a third of his kingdom each in return for their flattery. The youngest, Cordelia, refuses to play along.

Incensed, Lear declares he will no longer “neighbour” Cordelia. He will never “see that face of hers again” as he marries her off, dowerless, to the King of France. Brutal words and harsh actions, which Lear lives to regret.

In The Winter’s Tale, King Leontes is gripped by jealousy when he suspects his wife Hermione and closest friend Polixenes are having an affair. Leontes convinces himself his “pond” is being “fished by his next neighbour”.

He is wrong, and he devastates his family, oldest friendship, and potentially his society by insisting he is right.

Lesson 2: be willing to engage during disagreements

Setting aside Lear and Leontes, Shakespeare’s characters mostly move towards – and not away from – those they disagree with, reflecting a belief that people can change.

Lear’s loyal courtier, Kent, stands up for Cordelia. In The Winter’s Tale, Paulina, a lady of the court, defends Hermione. These moves are risky. Lear banishes Kent, while Leontes threatens to burn Paulina for treason.

Kent and Paulina’s costly willingness to engage with the kings contrasts sharply with today’s common approach of shutting down those we disagree with. This contrasts sharply with today’s common approach of “cancelling” those we disagree with.

Thrust into a “pitiless storm” by his other daughters, Lear, without shelter and vulnerable, has a moment of recognition. As king, he overlooked the “houseless heads and unfed sides” whose hardships he now tastes.

Lear vows to bring about justice for the poor. This echoes the significant weight placed on caring for needy neighbours in Shakespeare’s society. But by the time Lear recognises his unjust neglect of his neighbours, he is powerless to fix what is broken. His society and relationships fall apart.

In The Winter’s Tale, it takes a supernatural perspective (an oracle from Apollo) and the tragic death of Leontes’ son for him to see he has “too much believed mine own suspicion” and caused much “injustice”. Like Lear, Leontes seems headed for tragedy – until Shakespeare steers the plot in a different direction.

Leontes will get a miraculous second chance to reconcile with the neighbours he had cast away, most importantly Polixenes (whom Leontes tried to murder), Hermione (whom Leontes thought he had killed with his cruelty) and his daughter Perdita (whom Leontes had exiled as a newborn, presuming she was Polixenes’ child).

For Shakespeare’s characters, moral growth comes from seeing themselves through others’ eyes. This is a humbling experience, at odds with our algorithmically driven echo chambers and socially conditioned resistance to admitting when we’re wrong.

Fast forward 16 years after Leontes tears his world apart, a shepherd’s son, the Clown, is on the road, loaded with cash. He’s shopping for his family’s sheep-shearing feast. In Shakespeare’s day, this yearly celebration brought together neighbours – rich and poor, landowners and shearers – to share “good cheer and welcome”.

Enter Autolycus, a rogue. He fakes his own robbery and injury to pick the pockets of the gullible yet generous Clown who offers to help. Autolycus’ ruse works, but it doesn’t stop the party, which begins as he exits, crowing over his success. I argue that the happy turn of events that follow pivot on the Clown’s willingness to be a good neighbour to a stranger in “need”.

The neighbourhood arrives. The family “welcomes” “unknown friends”. There is food for all. These celebrations set the tone as the play progresses towards its joyful end that reunites its once-estranged characters.

At a time when Australians report having fewer friends, Shakespeare shows us how being a good neighbour might turn up unexpected friendships.

– ref. 4 lessons on how to be a good neighbour, from Shakespeare – https://theconversation.com/4-lessons-on-how-to-be-a-good-neighbour-from-shakespeare-279843

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Jacob Parakilas, Research Leader, Defence, Security, and Justice Group, RAND Europe

Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky recently announced that ground robots (also known as unmanned ground vehicles) had captured a Russian position. Zelenskyy said it was the first time in the Ukraine war that an enemy position had been taken exclusively by robots.

Ukraine’s increasing use of drones in its defence has received a great deal of attention as Russia’s invasion has dragged on. While most of this has focused on aerial and maritime drones, the army’s use of ground robotics has been a quieter story – but one with growing significance.

Military ground robotics are rapidly transforming battlefield tasks. However, for the foreseeable future, their greatest impact will be in supporting roles rather than directly replacing infantry soldiers. So, while this capture of the enemy position by robots is a milestone moment, it shouldn’t be over-interpreted.

When it comes to ground robots taking on infantry combat, there are a set of serious obstacles. The first is, quite literally, obstacles. Anyone who has watched increasingly sophisticated robotics demonstrations online will have seen machines navigating complex and difficult terrain.

However, operating in a controlled environment in front of a camera is a world away from crossing broken ground under fire. Most ground robots continue to rely either on wheels or tracks for a variety of very good reasons: mechanical simplicity, availability of spare parts, and cost.

But they have sharp limits on the types of terrain they can traverse, and not all enemy strongpoints are built at the end of paved driveways.

Even accounting for combat loads and the nature of the battlefield, human infantry can climb, jump, wade and otherwise traverse a large variety of obstacles unassisted, in ways that robots still cannot match.

Human in control

The second major obstacle is the electromagnetic environment. While the term robot is often used to describe uncrewed ground vehicles, they are mostly still remotely operated, which means the operator must maintain a constant control link with the vehicle.

This can be done via radio link. However, these links can be interrupted by enemy jamming, or by unfavourable weather or terrain.

The operator can also control the robot by a fibre-optic cable, which cannot be jammed but limits how far the robot can travel from its operator. A cable can also be severed by a blast, shrapnel or just adverse terrain.

The alternative is autonomy, and these ground robots do increasingly have some autonomous capabilities. But so far, this tends to be for specific tasks such as highlighting identified enemy positions, rather than being autonomous in the sense of driving and controlling themselves.

Autonomous driving is a massive challenge. Residents of London may have seen Waymo autonomous cabs in recent weeks, moving through the city’s streets ahead of their public rollout. But following traffic laws and (more-or-less) consistent road markings is still a huge and complex task.

Navigating a battlefield in a complex 3D environment is at least as complex, requiring a huge amount of processing power. That power can either be put aboard the robot itself, which significantly increases its cost and complexity, or done remotely and transmitted – which brings us back to the issue of control link vulnerability.

Support roles

While these are serious challenges for ground robots in an infantry role, they pose less of an issue in a range of critical support tasks. Robots have, for example, been extensively used by Ukraine for battlefield casualty evacuation, front-line resupply, combat engineering, mine laying and mine clearing.

In these instances, their smaller size, substantially lower cost, versatility and lower profile relative to traditional crewed vehicles (which makes them harder to detect) hold benefits that substantially outweigh the drawbacks. And while they are remotely operated so do not drastically reduce overall personnel requirements, if the ground robot is destroyed, its operator is not.

For Ukraine, the strategic imperative to rapidly roll out ground robots is enormous. Four years of war against a numerically larger opponent has imposed huge challenges on its ability to continue recruiting and deploying a large enough force to safeguard its sovereignty.

On a battlefield where the enemy can see and hit almost anything moving within 20 kilometres of the front line, swapping irreplaceable humans for cheap and replaceable robots is a necessary condition for staying in the fight long enough to win it.

But for the immediate future at least, robots are more likely to support that fight, rather than lead it.

– ref. Robots just captured a Russian position in Ukraine – but don’t worry about real-life Terminators just yet – https://theconversation.com/robots-just-captured-a-russian-position-in-ukraine-but-dont-worry-about-real-life-terminators-just-yet-280959

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Tony Wood, Assistant Professor of History, Modern Latin America, University of Colorado Boulder

In Latin America, as in other parts of the world, the second Trump administration has adopted an increasingly aggressive policy.

From drone strikes on purported drug traffickers to increased tariffs on imports, and from the blockade on fuel shipments and threats of invasion in Cuba to the Jan. 3 military incursion into Venezuela, the U.S.’s more coercive approach to its hemispheric neighbors evokes an earlier period of U.S. foreign policy.

Many commentators have found echoes of the 1989 capture of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega in the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Others highlighted the longer history of U.S. interventions in Latin America stretching back through the Cold War. That includes the Nixon administration’s support for the 1973 coup against Salvador Allende in Chile or the CIA-sponsored removal of Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, in 1954.

Yet as a historian of early 20th-century Latin America, I believe the Trump administration’s approach to Latin America more closely resembles an older pattern of U.S. policy. Between 1900 and the mid-1930s, U.S. forces intervened in one Latin American country after another. This practice was often justified by the Roosevelt Corollary, President Theodore Roosevelt’s addition to the Monroe Doctrine. In cases of “chronic wrongdoing,” Roosevelt said in 1904, the U.S would find itself compelled to exercise an “international police power” in defense of U.S. interests.

But crucially, how Latin Americans responded to the U.S. exerting its dominance in the early 20th century may hold some lessons for the present day. One of the major side effects of the U.S.’s so-called gunboat diplomacy was an upsurge of resistance and anti-imperialist thinking in the region’s political life.

The roots of anti-imperialism

In the 30 years after Roosevelt asserted the U.S.’s right to intervene across the hemisphere, U.S. forces occupied Cuba three times – in 1906-09, 1912 and 1917-21. They also occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. In Nicaragua, the U.S. deployed the Marines from 1912 to 1925 and then again from 1926 to 1933, waging a counterinsurgency in which it used aerial bombardment for the first time.

Across much of the region, then, this was a time when the U.S. was quick to resort to force, unburdened by any concerns for Latin American countries’ sovereignty.

Yet this era of external intervention also coincided with a period of remarkable political ferment, which I describe in my recently published book, “Radical Sovereignty.”

In one place after another, from Buenos Aires to Mexico City and from Havana to Lima, movements sprang up that put forward sharp critiques of U.S power. Many of them grew out of student organizations in the late 1910s, while others drew on the rising strength of labor unions and newly formed leftist political parties.

In 1923, rural workers in the Mexican state of Veracruz formed a Peasant League. From the outset, they saw local issues as closely interwoven with international ones, and they argued that there was a compelling reason for this. As the league put it, “Our internationalism is not the child of a crazed enthusiasm for empty phrases … but of the need to take preventive measures, to bolster ourselves against the enemy,” which they identified as “the imperialism of North America.”

Many of Latin America’s radical movements at this time were inspired by the recent example of the Mexican Revolution. The new Mexican Constitution of 1917 had nationalized the country’s land and natural resources, putting it on a collision course with U.S. companies and landowners.

Others still were energized by the global repercussions of the Russian Revolution. This, of course, included several brand-new communist parties across the region. But at the time, many others in Latin America saw the Bolsheviks as part of a global anti-colonial wave.

Mexico City as activist hub

My book explores the key role Mexico City played as a gathering point for these different political tendencies.

They included groups ranging from Mexican peasant leagues to the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, an anti-imperialist movement formed by Peruvian exiles. Many of these organizations converged under the umbrella of the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas. Founded in Mexico City in 1925, it soon had chapters in a dozen more countries across the region.

Between them, these movements brought into focus the novel features of U.S. power. As the Cuban student leader and communist Julio Antonio Mella saw it in 1925 – at a time when his native country was highly dependent on the U.S. but formally sovereign – the U.S. was distinct. Unlike European empires, it largely refrained from direct control of territories, though it had pressed the Cubans to include in their 1901 constitution a provision allowing it to intervene in the island at will.

In Mella’s view, the U.S. was clearly an empire, one that mainly exercised its dominance through commercial or financial pressures. For him, the dollar and Wall Street were as central to U.S. power as the halls of government in Washington, D.C.

For Ricardo Paredes, an Ecuadorean doctor who founded the country’s Socialist Party in 1926, a new term was required to capture Latin American countries’ contradictory position. Formally sovereign, they were not colonies as such. Yet they were economically and politically subordinated to Washington and Wall Street – “dependent countries,” as he phrased it in 1928.

For the Peruvian poet Magda Portal, a leading member of the anti-imperialist American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, U.S. dominance played out differently in different parts of Latin America.

In a series of lectures she gave in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in 1929, Portal divided the region into zones. While countries such as Argentina or Brazil were mainly sites for U.S. investment, Mexico and the Caribbean were regularly subjected to U.S. military force. Or, as Portal put it, “Here imperialism wears no disguise.”

Portal concluded her lectures with a phrase that combined her analysis of U.S. dominance with a resonant appeal for unity: “We have a single and great enemy; let us form a single and great union.”

United states of resistance?

Yet while there was much Latin American anti-imperialist thinkers could agree on, there were also profound divergences between them. This included questions of strategy as well as issues of principle. What role should different classes play in their movement? How radical a transformation of society were they pushing for? And what kind of state should emerge from it?

Over time, these differences turned into deep rifts that pitted revolutionaries against democratic reformists, internationalists against nationalists, and pro-Soviets against anti-communists. These disagreements played an important role in Latin American politics over the rest of the century.

While many of these rifts became especially prominent during the Cold War, they developed out of earlier divisions over how best to counter U.S. dominance.

The anti-imperialist upsurge of the 1920s and ’30s was formative for a generation of Latin American radicals. Several of those who entered political life during these years went on to play key roles in major events of the 20th century. Raúl Roa, for example, who served as foreign secretary for Cuba’s revolutionary government from 1959 to 1976, was first politicized in the island’s anti-imperialist movement of the 1920s.

The men and women whose political visions were formed in the interwar period carried those ideals forward into the Cold War era. In important ways, the 1920s and 1930s laid vital groundwork for later and better-known radical movements.

Past is, of course, not always prologue. It is impossible to predict what the long-term consequences of current U.S. policy in Latin America will be, especially given the rightward tilt that is currently unfolding across the region.

But looking at the region’s anti-imperialist traditions does point to one possible outcome: The U.S.’s newly aggressive stance will, sooner rather than later, fuel a resurgence of anti-imperialist sentiment as the organizing principle for a new generation of activists.

– ref. Trump’s coercive tactics in Latin America evoke era of gunboat diplomacy – and the rise of anti-imperialism it helped spur – https://theconversation.com/trumps-coercive-tactics-in-latin-america-evoke-era-of-gunboat-diplomacy-and-the-rise-of-anti-imperialism-it-helped-spur-279238

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Meighen McCrae, Associate Professor of Strategic & Defence Studies, Australian National University

The Iran war reminds us small strategic moves can mushroom into expanding military commitments. The United States decided to blockade Iranian ports by controlling access to and from the vital Strait of Hormuz, as a response to Iran’s asserting control over it – which it had long threatened to do if attacked.

In its list of conditions to end the war, Iran is for the first time demanding recognition of its sovereignty over the waterway – considered the world’s most critical energy corridor. The Strait of Hormuz is one of the world’s key maritime choke points: strategic corridors where large volumes of global trade pass through extremely limited space.

A heavy price has often been paid for assuming this type of operation will be over quickly and easily.

America’s allies might wisely consider this history now – particularly as the April 25 anniversary of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign, which aimed to open the way to the Black Sea during World War I, approaches.

Gallipoli was about controlling sea routes

By early 1915, Europe’s most powerful states – including Britain and its empire – had been at war for months, with no end in sight. Keeping Britain and France’s ally, Russia, in the fight meant delivering it a steady stream of munitions and other critical war materials.

The only realistic route lay through the Ottoman (Turkish) controlled Dardanelles, the straits linking the Mediterranean and Black Seas, between the peninsula of Gallipoli and Asia minor. And since the Ottoman Empire was already at war with Britain, France and Russia, this would necessitate Allied forces attempting to destroy Turkish resistance to force a way through.

After months of discussion, the Allies settled on a purely naval operation: no need for army support. It was mostly the brainchild of Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty.

If the cream of the Royal Navy needed to stay in home waters to contain the threat of a powerful German navy in the North Sea, obsolescent warships could carry the day. This “side show”, the Allies concluded, could be called off at any time.

Other leading government ministers and admirals, including the prime minister and secretary of state for war, supported Churchill’s plan – or appeared to. Privately, some had deep reservations.

Why did it fail?

When sailing in open water, naval forces are safe from most land-based weapons. However, when they are constrained in limited waters, such as maritime choke points, they become extremely vulnerable to attack from land (as well as from sea mines). An expensive warship can be damaged or destroyed by much cheaper land-based artillery.

British decision-makers underestimated Turkish defences and ignored disagreeable intelligence. With the outbreak of World War I, Turkish forces had set about reinforcing heavy artillery on both shores of the straits and laid mines in the waters.

When the Anglo-French fleet attempted to clear a path with minesweepers, the Turkish batteries rained fire on them, driving them off. Then, when the old battleships advanced to knock the guns out, they too came under artillery fire and rapidly fell prey to unswept sea mines, losing nearly one third of the armada.

As historian Jörn Leonhard wrote, “With just one minelayer, the Turkish navy had successfully sealed the mouth of the Dardanelles.”

Things got much worse. With British prestige now at stake, the Allies escalated their efforts. On April 25 1915, Allied (including Anzac) ground troops intervened in an attempt to finally crush the coastal defences.

As historian John H. Morrow Jr insightfully describes:

There they would remain for the next eight months, through bloody attacks and counter-attacks, as both sides launched ferocious and suicidal assaults against each other. The troops now mown down by shell or machine-gun and rifle fire fell in frenzied hand-to-hand combat, as men bit, punched, bludgeoned, and stabbed each other to death, all to no avail.

Though outnumbered, Turkish forces held superior positions and proved a formidable opponent. There were roughly 483,000 Allied and Turkish military casualties. The Allies were forced to withdraw.

4 lessons of Gallipoli

1. Beware of the allure of the dominant personality. Complex strategic decisions require broad consultation and a base in evidence that considers all crucial factors. Of course “they should have known better” at Gallipoli. But those decisions were considerably more thought out than the strategy employed so far in the US attack on Iran, which has been labelled by some as erratic.

2. Don’t fall unto the trap of underestimating your enemy. “Gunboat diplomacy” (showing up and militarily threatening a weaker adversary) did not work in 1915 and so far it is not working in 2026. It is possible that US president Donald Trump was seduced by the ease of US military actions against Venezuela. But Washington has significantly underestimated Tehran’s resolve and strategic position.

3. Mission creep: Once initial resources prove inadequate, powerful states are likely to scale up, not scale down, their efforts – the definition of the dreaded “mission creep”.

4. War is costly in terms of human life. This is a point often forgotten when calculating for a perceived easy win. Gallipoli led to horrific military casualties. The current war has left mostly civilian casualties. And if the conflict escalates, even if ostensibly at sea to control merchant shipping, further civilian casualties will occur.

Furthermore, we are yet to comprehend the scale of the harm being caused due to the wider economic costs of disrupting crucial energy and fertiliser supplies, not least to disadvantaged areas of the world.

Australians have options in the Iran war

Naval forces at maritime choke points are more vulnerable than ever. The proliferation of cheap, land-based systems such as drones and missiles means traditionally much weaker states – and even non-state actors – can effectively contest seaways against the most costly, sophisticated militaries.

We should be as critical of the current Iran war as we are of the Gallipoli campaign today. It is unlikely to be solved quickly, and not at all by military means alone.

The difference between 1915 and 2026 is that Australia is no longer automatically drawn in by the interests of others. Now, a sovereign Australia has the right to make its own decisions.

Correction: the original version of this article stated that Anzac ground troops first intervened at Gallipoli in 1916, but it was 1915. The article has been updated to reflect this.

– ref. Gallipoli has 4 lessons for the Strait of Hormuz crisis – https://theconversation.com/gallipoli-has-4-lessons-for-the-strait-of-hormuz-crisis-280723

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Robert William Smith, Professor of History, University of Alberta

Do aliens exist? Could Earth really be the only planet hosting intelligent life?

Debates over the existence of extraterrestrials date back to the earliest Indigenous and western thought.

The tools generating the evidence within western science, however, have changed — from the philosophical and theological arguments of the Ancient Greeks to the development of increasingly sophisticated telescopes and space travel and exploration.

These include NASA’s missions to Mars, using a fleet of robotic orbiters, landers and rovers, and the development of the James Webb Space Telescope, which orbits the sun 1.5 million kilometres away from the Earth.

Philosophy and theology

Aristotle’s views on the nature of the cosmos dominated the Ancient Greek world. He argued that there’s only one world, at the centre of which is an immobile Earth. The planets move around the Earth. Beyond them is the sphere of the stars, or heaven.

“It is clear then that there is neither place, nor void, nor time, outside the heaven,” he wrote in On the Heavens. “Hence whatever is there, is of such a nature as not to occupy any place, nor does time age it.”

Aristotle’s teachings later created a storm in the Catholic Church, with various theologians worrying that Aristotle’s ideas were becoming too dominant. Étienne Tempier, bishop of Paris, responded to these criticisms by issuing the Condemnation of 1277, prohibiting the teaching of some 219 propositions — many of them derived from the teachings of Aristotle — and warning that those who disobeyed could be excommunicated.

In Proposition 34, Tempier took aim at those who, following Aristotle, claimed God could not have created other worlds. He argued that to adopt this position was to deny God’s omnipotence.

One theologian who pushed the argument about omnipotence further was Nicholas of Cusa. In his book, Of Learned Ignorance, published in 1440, he explicitly speaks of a plurality of inhabited worlds.

The invention of the telescope

A century later, Nicholas Copernicus lifted the Earth into the heavens in his book, On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, as the first thinker to suggest the Earth revolved around the sun. The Earth thus became a planet. And if planet Earth contains life, then was it not reasonable to argue that the other planets could also contain life?

The invention of the telescope in the early 17th century gave this notion further impetus. The telescope revealed, for example, that the moon is not perfectly spherical as Aristotelians believed, but is covered by craters and mountains and so is quite Earth-like.

By the end of the century, Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle had penned the first “scientific blockbuster,” Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds. Fontenelle speculated about living beings on all the planets of our solar system, as well as on planets orbiting other stars.

There was, however, little empirical evidence for these claims — a situation that would persist until after the Second World War.

The race to Mars

After the Second World War, national governments started to pour money into science, which was now seen as crucial to national well-being, and both astronomy and planetary science boomed.

In the United States, the space race with the Soviet Union and the battle for prestige also propelled spacecraft throughout the solar system.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a controversy had raged around some long, straight markings that people claimed to see on the surface of Mars. Some people believed that Martians had constructed canals to bring water from the planet’s poles to arid desert regions.

In 1964, the U.S. launched the Mariner 4 on a mission to Mars. The spacecraft flew by Mars in July 1965, taking the first photos of another planet from space. Instead of evidence of canals, these 21 photographs revealed the planet to have a cratered, moon-like surface.

By 1976, two American spacecraft were orbiting Mars, while on the planet’s surface, two other spacecraft conducted experiments, including scooping up and analyzing Martian soil to search for signs of life.

The James Webb Telescope

We now tackle the question of extraterrestrial life with even more powerful scientific tools. In 1995, astronomers Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz discovered the first planet orbiting a sun-like star, named “51 Pegasi b” or “Dimidium.”

As of now, NASA has confirmed more than 6,000 exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, and billions are believed to exist.

The James Webb Space Telescope, located beyond the moon and some 1.5 million kilometres from Earth, is investigating the atmospheres of some of these exoplanets.

The Earth’s atmosphere blocks most of the infrared light from astronomical objects reaching Earth-bound telescopes. But the James Webb’s location enables its giant mirror to gather infrared light, which the spacecraft’s instruments then analyze, allowing astronomers to learn about the composition of exoplanet atmospheres.

The telescope has also employed instruments that block the light of the star around which an exoplanet is travelling so that the exoplanet itself can be imaged. There is as yet no confirmed evidence of life in an exoplanet’s atmosphere.

In 2025, however, a paper published in Nature claimed that a rock sample taken from an ancient dry riverbed in Jezero Crater on Mars by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover could contain “potential biosignatures” of ancient microbial life.

So what are we to make of this ongoing search for extraterrestrial life? A quotation often attributed to science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke puts it well: “Sometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case, the idea is quite staggering.”

– ref. Are aliens real? Scientists have been hunting for extraterrestrial life since the time of Aristotle – https://theconversation.com/are-aliens-real-scientists-have-been-hunting-for-extraterrestrial-life-since-the-time-of-aristotle-279727

Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Frederick Oliver Beeby Maglaque, Exhibition Researcher, Pacific Museum of Earth and Masters student in Art History, University of British Columbia

“This is the story of the dinosaurs as it has never been told before,” narrates Morgan Freeman in the opening of Neflix’s The Dinosaurs docuseries.

The four-part series combines advanced CGI with real nature footage to create cutting-edge photorealistic visuals and tell a compelling story. The Dinosaurs is undeniably a technical and scientific achievement.

Netflix’s marketing has emphasized the show’s accuracy and engagement of more than 50 scientific advisers. Meanwhile, experts describe some scenes as “speculative,” given our evolving knowledge of the Mesozoic Era.

What The Dinosaurs does tell us, with great accuracy, is a lot about ourselves.

Tracing the rise and extinction of dinosaurs from the Triassic period to the Late Cretaceous period, the show — much like the dinosaur media that came before it — reflects our own reckoning with possibilities of human extinction that is only more necessary as our planet changes rapidly due to climate change.

It also reinforces another familiar narrative: the story of life on Earth as a story of conquest.

Exotic beasts to be tamed, classified

Dinosaurs first entered the visual culture of western science in the 19th century. Famous depictions include two full-sized dinosaurs — an Iguanodon and Megalosaurus — that were unveiled at Crystal Palace Park in London in 1854.

The Crystal Palace itself was designed for the 1851 Great Exhibition — which displayed animals, minerals, cultural objects and more from across the British Empire. It was a steel and glass monument to industrial modernity and imperial power.

These “exotic” fake dinosaurs were placed on small, artificial islands, within lakes in the palace park, where visitors could view them from afar. They were positioned as beasts to be viewed with as much wonder as terror that the combined authority of science and empire could tame and classify. They are still there today.

Imperial fantasies of extraction

The film Jurassic Park, released in 1993, followed its 19th-century predecessors, depicting dinosaurs as creatures that dwell in distant exotic realms that humans, typically white explorers or scientists, must journey to.

The film is set on the imaginary Costa Rican island of Isla Muerta, where dinosaurs are born from amber extracted from the fictional Mano de Dios mine.

Read more: Thirty years after Jurassic Park hit movie screens, its impact on science and culture remains as strong as ever – podcast

Like the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, they evoke an unknown exotic frontier — shaped by imperial fantasies of extraction. And yet, films like Jurassic Park also question this framing. Characters who seek to dominate nature — the businessman, the lawyer, the big game hunter — ultimately meet their downfall.

Dinosaurs versus Earth

So, what happens when these familiar tropes are presented through the hyperrealism of modern dinosaur documentaries, alongside real paleontological discoveries, as “accurate?”

“In a savage and ever-changing world, some will rise and some will fall. But through it all, the dinosaurs will expand their empire and advance relentlessly to seize Earth’s final frontiers,” narrates Morgan Freeman in Episode 3 of The Dinosaurs.

Throughout the series, dinosaurs are portrayed as seeking to colonize the planet. This is evident in the episode titles — Rise, Conquest, Empire, Fall — and in how the other organisms are depicted.

Read more: What bite marks on a dinosaur fossil tell us about the T. rex’s eating habits

The first episode concludes with a cowboy-style showdown between a dinosaur and a rauisuchian, a Triassic reptile described as a monstrous, lesser “other.” This scene marks the beginning of the dinosaurs’ so-called “reign.”

Again and again, The Dinosaurs tells a story of dinosaurs versus Earth, where natural events like volcanism are described as “Earth’s darkest forces.” The planet itself becomes something to be overcome in the dinosaurs’ pursuit of empire.

This Mesozoic, non-human history is also told as a story that is always moving toward a known ending. The first episode opens with a Tyrannosaurus rex (T.rex) in the aftermath of the Chicxulub impact, a 100- million megaton blast that struck the Gulf of Mexico region and devastated the planet.

The T.rex closes its eyes as ash falls across an apocalyptic landscape. Dinosaurs are portrayed as conquerors of Earth and as always already doomed to fail — ruled by this so-called “tyrant lizard king.”

A story of human mastery

The Dinosaurs engages in what we could call the “dino dialectic” — a trope where dinosaurs are presented as allegorical stand-ins for humans, reflecting an anthropocentric and often colonial vision of the human subject.

As media theorist W.M.T. Mitchell writes, “Dinos R Us.”

At the same time, their inevitable extinction is used to define them as primitive and inferior. Dinosaurs are us, but we remain superior, masters of our fates and of our planetary dominion.

If The Dinosaurs, the latest in an increasing number of contemporary dinosaur documentaries, reflects our own apocalyptic anxieties while reiterating this “dino dialectic,” we are continuing to tell the same story that led us here.

These documentaries are examples of what visual culture scholar Nicholas Mirzoeff calls “Anthropocene visuality” — a way of seeing that “keeps us believing that somehow the war against nature that western society has been waging for centuries is not only right; it is beautiful and it can be won.”

– ref. Netflix’s ‘The Dinosaurs’ rehashes a very old story of empire and conquest – https://theconversation.com/netflixs-the-dinosaurs-rehashes-a-very-old-story-of-empire-and-conquest-279162