Although they’re often called ‘mobile,’ it’s hard and costly to relocate manufactured homes. Julia Robertson/Photodisc via Getty Images Roughly 20 million Americans live in manufactured houses, which are homes made in factories. Although they’re often called mobile homes or trailers, that’s really a misnomer because their owners can’t easily relocate them.

Typically, the people who own them rent the land underneath the houses from the owners of manufactured home parks. Sometimes, an owner will rent their home to someone else while paying to rent the land as well.

Manufactured homes tend to be far more affordable than other single-family homes because they have lower upfront and monthly expenses. A typical one costs around US0,000; smaller ones, known as single-wides, cost around $87,000. I’m studying poverty, inequality, collective action and rural housing as a sociology Ph.D. candidate.

In 2025, I began to conduct in-depth, on-the-ground research documenting the experiences of residents in manufactured home parks in rural Wisconsin whose park was either for sale or had been sold to a private equity firm.

So far, I’ve interviewed 15 people as part of an ongoing study that is forthcoming and not yet published. I’ve found that in this region, as is occurring in the rest of the country, rents tended to spike soon after those firms bought the parks.

Those rent hikes are, in turn, creating a crisis for many low-income residents who may suddenly need to move, but have limited options. Getting priced out Nationally, rents in these parks have increased by 45% over the past decade.

This increase, which is not adjusted for inflation, mirrors overall rent growth. But it shows how manufactured housing is becoming less affordable at the same rapid pace as the broader rental market. And in many rural areas, mobile homes are the main source of affordable housing.

In 2025, I interviewed a man I’m calling Anthony Perez. (I’m using pseudonyms to protect the privacy of everyone who spoke with me, which is a standard social science research method.) He had worked as a logger in northern Wisconsin until a debilitating back injury ended his ability to continue in the profession past his early 50s.

In anticipation of having a low income for the long term, Perez chose to invest his life savings in a manufactured home. “There was a trailer for sale, and it was decent,” he said.

“I had a little savings and workers comp, so I bought it for $9,000, thinking I could afford to live there on my disability income.” That plan broke down when a private equity firm bought his park and instantly raised his monthly rent from $350 to $500, now costing him more than half of the $800 a month in Social Security Disability Insurance benefits he received.

It’s hard for people like Perez to relocate a manufactured home. That’s because moving them after installation is expensive, costing anywhere between ,000 to ,000. These costs leave low-income residents effectively stuck if their rents rise beyond their means.

With no other housing options, Perez decided to stay and fight alongside his neighbors, all of whom were facing the same rising rents and uncertainty about their ability to remain in their homes. Together, the residents have started organizing meetings to conjure up strategies to resist the changes imposed by the new ownership.

“They’re bullies,” Perez said. “So we here residents have to make some noise and get some power in a group to push back.” Many mobile home communities are located in rural areas with scant affordable housing stock.

AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel Rising anxiety Perez was among the many residents I met who lived in fear of losing their home and with limited options of where to go.

Johanna Hansen, a retired high school teacher who also invested her life savings in her manufactured home, lived about 40 miles (64 kilometers) west in another manufactured home park that a private equity firm had recently put in an offer for.

“I own my home, but I don’t own the land that it’s on,” Hansen said.

“I always feel that insecurity of not knowing what will happen a year from now – or with the current sale, maybe even sooner than that.” If the monthly cost of renting her lot rises by more than $100, Hansen says she will have to sell her home and move.

“Had I known the park was going to be sold to an investment group, I wouldn’t have bought in the first place,” she said. “But now I’m stuck.” Repeating a similar mistake In my view, today’s threat to mobile home parks echoes the loss of another affordable housing option: single-room occupancy units.

In the 1950s, these rooms accounted for roughly 10% of rental housing. They typically offered shared bathrooms and kitchens for the equivalent of about $100 to $300 per month in 2025 dollars. Starting in the mid‑20th century, cities rewrote zoning and building codes to eliminate hundreds of thousands of those units, contributing to an increase in homelessness.

Manufactured housing today stands at a similar crossroads. Like single-room units, manufactured homes are stigmatized and undervalued as an important source of affordable housing by policymakers and the public. And like the single-room units that have largely disappeared, that housing is at risk of being lost, too.

The author would like to thank University of Wisconsin-Madison Sociology professor Jessica Calarco for her supervisory role and support on this project.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/when-private-equity-firms-buy-mobile-home-parks-rent-increases-leave-residents-with-few-affordable-options-in-rural-areas/

U.S. host cities are concerned that predictions for attendance and spending at the 2026 World Cup may not materialize. DeFodi Images/DeFodi Images via Getty Images When the U.S. last hosted the World Cup in 1994, the event drew unexpectedly large crowds.

At that time, soccer wasn’t as popular among Americans as it is now, so expectations for attendance had been fairly low. So as the U.S. prepared to host the World Cup again in 2026, expectations for tourism were high.

But in the run-up to this year’s World Cup, the ongoing war in Iran has resulted in soaring inflation and high fuel prices, neither of which bodes well for tourism or event attendance. Recent tourism reports indicate there will be fewer hotel reservations than anticipated due to reduced international travel confidence and a growing uncertainty related to U.S. immigration policies, geopolitical instability, tariffs and inflation.

We are a professor of hospitality and tourism management and a professor in international sports management. We believe there is good reason for concern in the 11 World Cup host cities in the U.S. An additional five cities in Mexico and Canada are likewise hosting games, and the next 10 days leading up to the event will be crucial for them to capitalize on it.

Falling short The month leading up to the world’s largest sporting festival should be a period of excitement and celebration. But a few factors are putting a damper on that. First, the price of tickets, plus parking and public transportation to games, is incredibly high.

This has led to widespread criticism, with even President Donald Trump stating that he would not pay the US,000 ticket price for matches once he learned of the high prices. In Boston, the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority plans to charge for a ride to Gillette Stadium that would typically cost $20.

New Jersey Transit originally set fares for train tickets from Penn Station in New York to MetLife Stadium at $150 for World Cup travel, which it reduced to 5 this month after public backlash – still way above its normal fares.

According to a survey from the American Hotel and Lodgings Association, hotel bookings are softer than expected in all 11 U.S. cities hosting World Cup events. Miami is in the best position, with only 45% of local hotel owners projecting a shortfall.

That’s compared with 75% reporting bookings below expectations in cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco. The worst off is Kansas City, with a whopping 85% to 90% of hotel owners reporting fewer bookings than expected – lower than even a normal summer without a mega event coming to town.

Welcome to Miami Based on early 2026 forecasts for hospitality and tourism, Miami was expected to welcome millions of visitors during the World Cup period. However, many tourism analysts project that economic gains may fall short if current negative trends do not improve dramatically.

Hotel reservations in South Florida made by international travelers are weak compared with previous mega events. This is particularly the case when it comes to visitors from Latin American and the Middle East. The American Hotel and Lodgings Association survey notes that current U.S. immigration procedures and visa delays may be discouraging international visitors, thus causing the majority of cities to report shortfalls as of May 2026.

With Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Resort just 75 miles (120 kilometers) north of Miami, perceptions of heightened security in the area may be exacerbating safety concerns about attending World Cup matches. Indeed, civil rights groups like the Florida Immigrant Coalition have warned international travelers of risks of detention when visiting Florida in particular.

Lionel Messi’s presence on Inter Miami has raised the team’s revenue and increased interest in soccer in South Florida.

Icon Sportswire/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Despite these challenges, we believe Miami still has strong potential to maximize economic benefits if strategic actions are implemented immediately for short-term and pre- and post-event lodging, food and tourism experiences.

Miami’s international brand recognition, multicultural environment and entertainment infrastructure remain significant advantages over other U.S. host cities. It also helps that the city is home to one of world soccer’s most recognizable face: Lionel Messi.

Messi’s presence in Miami has been worth billions to the regional economy, according to The Wall Street Journal. There’s still time on the clock Miami’s success will heavily depend on active and agile planning, leadership and administration from government and organizational officials.

The next 10 days will be critical in determining whether Miami can fully capitalize on the economic opportunities associated with one of the world’s largest sporting events. Aggressive destination campaigns between tourism boards, airlines and hotels, especially those targeting Latin America, could help rebuild traveler confidence and increase advanced bookings.

In particular, expanded Spanish-language marketing and multilingual communication strategies are an important competitive advantage both for the World Cup and beyond. Telemundo, one of the two main U.S. Spanish-language networks, is headquartered in Miami.

And even with many travelers feeling price-sensitive due to inflation and economic uncertainty, bundled offers can help stimulate tourism. Affordable travel packages and value-added promotions may encourage longer stays and higher visitor spending, even for travelers on a budget.

Campaigns and travel packages that encourage visitors to explore local neighborhoods, cultural attractions, culinary tourism and sustainable tourism activities – in addition to the World Cup games – can help distribute economic benefits more broadly throughout the city.

The hospitality industry can help allay the fears of travelers worried about safety by prioritizing safety communication and visitor assistance services. Transparent communication and multilingual services go a long way toward assuaging international travelers’ anxiety about security and immigration.

People feel more comfortable traveling when there are clear rules and requirements around airport procedures, visas and security measures.

We believe that the key to success of the 2026 World Cup in the U.S., including Miami, is to understand current economic and political concerns fairly and correctly first, and then implement innovative short-term strategies before the event kicks off.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/inflation-and-immigration-fears-threaten-to-dampen-miamis-economic-benefits-from-the-world-cup/

New reuse networks will include collection points like this. Rebrand Reuse, CC BY-NC-ND A new universal symbol for reuse aims to encourage the switch from single-use to reusable packaging and the development of a more integrated reuse systems worldwide.

Reuse systems reduce the use of virgin material, retain packaging materials within the economy for as long as possible, and will help dramatically reduce plastic waste and associated pollution by 2040. The introduction of this symbol on a diverse range of reusable products (such as cups, foodware, to-go containers, wine bottles and cleaning products) goes hand-in-hand with new reuse infrastructure.

This includes collection bins, delivery vehicles, marketing material and signage. Together, this helps create more obvious and accessible reuse networks across whole towns and cities. Research undertaken with our colleagues at the University of Portsmouth’s Revolution Plastics Institute has identified that a systems approach to reuse is the key to success at scale.

A systems approach involves transformative change that tackles the root causes of a problem, rather than just dealing with the symptoms of an issue. So by shifting how we govern, as well as industry and habits, deeper change can be achieved.

While momentum for reuse is gaining traction across the globe, progress is constrained by fragmented policies to address plastic pollution, lack of investment in alternatives to recycling and gaps in infrastructure that enable reuse. The new bright purple symbol is the result of a year-long global design initiative led by an international environmental organisation PR3: The Global Alliance to Advance Reuse to promote circularity across various sectors.

As one of the judges on the jury panel, I (Cressida Bowyer) assessed 236 designs submitted from 29 countries as part of PR3’s open call to create a global icon for reuse systems. In 2025, the expert panel assessed each design for criteria such as distinctiveness, recognisability, how memorable it was and cultural adaptability.

A global competition was launched to create a symbol that is as recognisable as the recycling logo and as culturally resonant as other enduring global icons such as the peace sign. Rebrand Reuse, CC BY-NC-ND The symbol needed to be clearly distinguishable from the recycling chasing arrows logo.

Following several rounds of jury review, a shortlist of symbol designs was market tested in 17 countries. The winning design, produced by a creative agency in Colombia called Epigramma Studios, captures and communicates the spirit of reuse.

To avoid any risk of greenwashing, the use of the new symbol will be tied to PR3’s marking and labelling standards. Brands and organisations using the symbol must agree to abide by criteria outlined by PR3’s global standards.

This ensures that the symbol can only be used for packaging and infrastructure operating within reuse systems that encompass the full life-cycle of collection, transport, sorting, washing and return. The global standards have been developed with input from more than 80 organisations representing industry, government, environmental campaign groups, reuse operators and civil society.

Coupling this new visual marker with robust global standards will address some of these shortcomings, plus build trust, understanding and adoption among consumers. With consistent use, this symbol can make the identification of reusable products much easier across sectors and regions, and support the scale-up of reuse systems.

Moving on from recycling For decades, the green chasing arrows recycling symbol has dominated as visual shorthand for environmental responsibility. Printed on packaging, adverts, bins and household products, it has provided consumers with a simple and widely recognised signal of how to “do their bit” for the environment through more responsible consumption and disposal.

However, the success of recycling messaging has led many people to overestimate its environmental impact relative to other more effective actions. The waste hierarchy is a globally recognised framework that ranks waste management options according to what is best for the environment.

It ranks waste prevention as the top priority, followed by reuse, recycling, material recovery and finally disposal. Reuse is above recycling in the waste hierarchy. VectorMine/Shutterstock Recycling is a relatively resource-intensive way to manage waste that sits below reuse in terms of environmental benefit.

But people often assume recycling is the most effective way to manage waste. Reducing the amount of material entering the system in the first place, such as through reusable packaging, remains the most effective strategy.

Plastic consumption is expected to triple by 2060. Yet recent evidence suggests that despite most household plastic carrying a recycling symbol, only 16% of UK household plastic packaging is actually recycled. Most (59%) is burned in the UK, while 16% is exported overseas and a further 9% is sent to landfill.

Why symbols matter While policy and infrastructure are essential to reducing waste, behavioural science shows that people rely heavily on visual cues when making everyday decisions. Symbols reduce mental effort and help people navigate complex systems quickly and intuitively.

A reuse symbol could play an important role by making reuse visible and helping to shift perceptions of what environmentally responsible consumption looks like. With support from government and industry, it could help reinforce reuse as the primary mode of consumption and packaging use, with recycling repositioned as a lower-priority option within the waste hierarchy.

However, symbols alone are not sufficient. Reuse depends on supporting infrastructure, regulation and viable business models. Without these, even well-designed systems struggle to scale. A reuse symbol is not a solution in itself, but a coordination tool.

It can help align consumer behaviour, business practices and policy around a shared visual language.

If the recycling logo defined an era of waste management, a reuse symbol could help define what comes next: shifting focus from managing waste after it is created to designing it out altogether.

Cressida Bowyer receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Wellcome Trust, the Sustainable Manufacturing and Environmental Pollution Programme (SMEP) and the Flotilla Foundation.

She is a member of the British Plastics Federation Sustainability Committee.

Cressida served on the jury panel for the PR3 Rebrand Reuse design initiative.

Kate Whitman 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/a-new-reuse-symbol-aims-to-be-as-recognisable-as-the-recycling-logo-and-make-more-of-a-difference/

Have algorithms and AI flattened popular culture the way industrial farming flattened the prairie? alffoto/iStock via Getty Images Plus When “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” aired its final episode on May 21, 2026, critics lamented more than the end of a television program.

It was a nightly ritual that millions of Americans participated in, with Bloomberg media reporter Lucas Shaw describing its cancellation as one more sign of “the decline of monoculture.” Eulogies for “the monoculture” have appeared elsewhere.

In fall 2025, BuzzFeed announced “the death of celebrity monoculture.” The Ringer asked whether summer 2025 was the “summer without monoculture.” In all of these uses, the word describes a vanished era of shared cultural experience, a time when most people watched, listened to and talked about the same things.

But “monoculture” gets pulled in a different direction, too. Other writers, like cultural critic Kyle Chayka, have used it to describe the opposite problem: a sense that the culture today is becoming too uniform, too flattened, too much the same everywhere you look.

When the same word is used as a lens to view the world in different ways, something else is usually going on. As a marketing professor who studies culture and consumer behavior, I find the current usage of “monoculture” telling.

The word comes from agriculture, and tracing its journey from the farm to the algorithm reveals quite a bit about a tension many people are feeling right now: a craving for connection and community that coincides with a longing to stand out as unique.

From the farm to the feed “Monoculture” began as an agricultural term in the early 20th century to describe planting a single crop across a large area of farmland. The practice was efficient and profitable, but it was also risky.

Single-crop fields are more vulnerable to pests, disease and weather shocks. They also displace the smaller, scrappier ecosystems that once occupied the land. The word migrated into cultural criticism in the 1980s and 1990s. Music writers like Robert Christgau and later Chuck Klosterman used it to describe a media landscape dominated by a handful of TV networks, magazines and record labels.

Much of the agricultural meaning came along for the ride.

When people complain about “creeping monoculture” today, they’re often referring to the way the algorithms, artificial intelligence and the economics of the attention economy have flattened popular culture the way industrial farming flattened the prairie.

For example, urban studies scholars have traced how independent coffee shops across North America have come to look strikingly alike, with the same exposed brick, vintage furniture and tattooed baristas.

“Whether it’s popular fashion, architecture or interior design, idiosyncrasies are collapsing into a generic, hegemonic aesthetic,” they write, and it’s due, in part, to the way “social media algorithms promote the visuals that users are most likely to engage with.” Many cultural critics worry that a hegemonic aesthetic is taking hold across fashion, architecture and design.

RoschetzkyIstockPhoto/iStock via Getty Images Plus Generative AI is starting to foment the same dynamic.

A study published in January 2026 found that when generative systems are allowed to run on their own, they quickly converge on what researchers call “visual elevator music” – generic, familiar outputs that strip away quirks and kinks.

The technology that promises infinite variety, it turns out, has a strong pull toward sameness. The original problem with monoculture in farming is the same one people now see in culture: Efficiency at scale crowds out the small, the spontaneous and the strange.

What people are actually responding to But there is another way the word gets used, and it points in a different direction. People mourning the loss of monoculture are rarely mourning the loss of aesthetic diversity.

They are mourning the experience of shared attention, the sense that a lot of people were oriented toward the same thing. When commentators eulogized “The Late Show” as the end of a nightly ritual, this is largely what they meant.

In 1983, the series finale of “M-A-S-H” was watched by an estimated 106 million Americans. Finales from other shows – “Cheers” in 1993, “Seinfeld” in 1998 and “Friends” in 2004 – were also watched by huge swaths of the public. There’s still the Super Bowl, which reliably pulls in 100 million-plus U.S. viewers.

But in terms of weekly television and pop music releases, the shared cultural experience that once defined American life appears to have gone by the wayside. So while some people worry that the culture is becoming too uniform, others worry that it is becoming too fragmented.

“Monoculture” gets used in both cases because the word captures something a lot of people are struggling to name: a sense that the relationship between individuals and the larger culture they live in has become harder to navigate.

Nearly half of the U.S. population in 1983 watched the series finale of ‘M-A-S-H.’” Standing out and belonging This is where my own field has something useful to add.

Consumer researchers have spent decades studying how people balance two competing desires that turn out to be central to almost every cultural choice: the desire to belong to a group, and the desire to express something distinct about oneself.

My research on bicultural consumers – people who hold two cultures at once, like a first-generation Chinese American who navigates the traditions of family life at home and mainstream American culture at school or work – looks at how they manage this tension.

In my research, I found that biculturals prefer and choose “paradox brands” – brands that hold seeming contradictory meanings – more often than other consumers do. Burberry signals both centuries-old heritage and modern fashion. Range Rover holds rugged utility and luxury refinement in the same vehicle.

For people who already live with contradictions every day, brands that don’t force a single identity choice feel right. That tension is exactly what all the monoculture talk is reaching for. When people lament the death of monoculture, they are often missing the experience of belonging, of sharing references and emotional beats with millions of strangers.

When they lament the rise of monoculture, they are often worrying about the cost of that belonging, the way being part of a mass audience can feel like a flattening of who you actually are.

The agricultural metaphor captures both sides. A monoculture is productive precisely because it concentrates resources. It is fragile precisely because it leaves no room for what doesn’t fit. What the word can’t quite say There is one thing “monoculture” struggles to capture, and it shows up clearly in events like Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show.

By raw attention, the performance drew 128 million U.S. viewers and set a global cross-platform record with more than 4 billion views in 24 hours. But the reception was far from uniform. To some viewers, it was a Spanish-language celebration – long overdue – of Latin Americans, both inside and outside the U.S.

Some conservative critics, however, objected to a predominantly Spanish-language performance headlining America’s biggest broadcast.

Scholars of culture and branding have long understood that shared cultural moments work by giving a range of different people a common cultural experience, not by forcing them to interpret it in the same way.

Marketing scholar Douglas Holt’s foundational work on iconic brands showed that the most powerful cultural symbols succeed because they let different audiences find different meanings in the same thing. The word “monoculture” cannot quite hold that part of cultural experience – and it might be why people keep reaching for the term, only to see it slip through their fingers.

Maria A.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/how-monoculture-became-a-catchall-for-two-opposing-anxieties-that-we-no-longer-share-enough-and-that-we-all-share-too-much/

Despite bans, PFAS from old wax dust can still be found in wax rooms. Philipp von Ditfurth/picture alliance via Getty Images For more than 30 years, manufacturers of ski and snowboard waxes used PFAS – per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – to make skis and snowboards glide faster over snow.

These synthetic chemicals were highly effective and common in competitive racing just about everywhere. Then studies began finding PFAS in human bodies, and research suggested the chemicals could harm human health.

In response, racing groups such as the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, as well as venues like the Craftsbury Outdoor Center in Vermont and municipalities like Park City, Utah, banned these fluorinated – or “fluoro” – waxes.

Bans, coupled with evolving regulations on PFAS, generally mean fluoro waxes have largely been phased out of production. But the PFAS problem isn’t gone.

New research I conducted with colleagues tells a cautionary tale of how difficult it is to remove these “forever chemicals” from the environment and what happens after they are banned, particularly when people like the benefits PFAS chemicals bring to products.

The problem with PFAS There’s a good chance you’ve encountered PFAS in many parts of your life. This large group of as many as 15,000 individual compounds are used extensively in consumer products, medical devices, emergency response equipment and industrial processes.

They help rain gear repel water and some food wrappers repel grease. They’re used in firefighting foam and for heat resistance. From the late 1980s through the early 2020s, PFAS were also added to many – but not all – types of ski wax.

Applying and removing wax from skis leaves behind wax particles, some of them the size of dust. RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via Getty Images In general, waxes are used to make skis perform better in specific snow conditions, such as fresh, warm or wet snow.

There are hundreds of different wax products. Adding PFAS reduces the surface tension as skis slide over the snow, resulting in less friction and smoother glide. PFAS were particularly common in waxes designed to perform well in warm, wet or dirty snow conditions, and they were used widely in competitive ski racing and recreational settings alike.

Then, in the 2010s, researchers began finding a buildup of PFAS in the environment near ski venues and in the bodies of people who wax skis professionally. When skis are waxed, tiny particles and chemicals – including PFAS – can become airborne.

Scientific research has suggested associations between PFAS and numerous adverse human health effects, including increased risks of thyroid, liver and cardiometabolic diseases, along with certain cancers. In the early 2020s, my colleagues and I began asking questions about whether these environmental health risks were limited to professionals.

Our early research indicated that a broad range of skiers might be exposed to PFAS in ski wax, beyond just professional wax technicians. What goes on inside a wax room. Among skiers in a follow-up pilot study, individuals who waxed more skis tended to have higher levels of PFAS in their blood and also had higher total cholesterol and low density, or “bad,” cholesterol.

Both are risk factors for cardiovascular disease, and they have been shown to be positively associated with PFAS exposure in other groups of people. By the early 2020s, initiatives to restrict PFAS globally and in Europe, where most waxes are manufactured, had reduced the fluoro supply.

Industry organizations, venues and municipalities began restricting the use of fluoros. And, ultimately, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation and International Biathlon Union banned fluorinated waxes in all sanctioned competitions beginning in the 2023-24 season.

The lingering dust of forever chemicals Banning fluoros has helped reduced exposures, but it hasn’t solved the problem. PFAS are extremely durable, meaning that they do not degrade easily in the environment or in people’s bodies.

As a result, PFAS that enter the environment – both indoors and outdoors – from ski waxing will remain in those areas for a long time. Three ‘low-fluor’ ski waxes designed for different temperatures and snow conditions.

Being low-fluor doesn’t mean PFAS-free. Tiia Monto, CC BY-SA My new research found that while PFAS concentrations in dust from waxing work areas declined substantially following the implementation of fluoro bans, PFAS were not fully eliminated.

Specifically, the study found that concentrations of PFAS in dust in wax rooms dropped significantly after the fluoro bans were implemented and waxing areas were cleaned. But PFAS were still detectable. Research shows that even tiny amounts of PFAS can pose risks to human health.

The latest research suggests people working in wax rooms and in the vicinity still face ongoing PFAS exposure risks. Some skiers still have fluoros in their wax collection and may be inclined to use them from time to time.

What will replace fluoros?

Given what we know today, one might ask, “Were PFAS in wax really worth it?” While that question begets a wide range of beliefs and opinions, two themes emerge in my conversations with skiers: First, fluoro waxes were beloved among skiers because of how well they improved the glide of skis, particularly in wet or sticky snow.

Second, gaps in people’s knowledge of past and present environmental health risks from ski waxing present challenges for weighing costs and benefits. Wax manufacturers are actively searching for chemistries that can replicate the feel of skiing on fluoros.

What will be in these waxes – and whether they will be less harmful to human health and the environment – are open questions. Wax formulations are typically proprietary and shielded from disclosure by intellectual property and confidential business information laws.

What skiers can do to stay safe There are steps you can take as a skier or snowboarder to reduce lingering PFAS exposure. Stop using fluoro waxes. Wax your skis in a well-ventilated space or outside.

Use personal protective equipment, such as an N95 mask or a respirator with organic cartridges, when waxing. Don’t eat or drink in the spaces where you wax or tune your skis or snowboard to avoid wax dust getting into your food.

Wash your hands and change your clothes after leaving your waxing space.

Clean your wax area with a vacuum equipped with a HEPA filter and a wet cloth to avoid the accumulation of wax-related dust.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/pfas-in-ski-wax-despite-bans-these-forever-chemicals-linger-in-wax-rooms-study-shows-so-does-their-health-risk/

An undocumented Honduran immigrant walks her child to a school bus stop in November 2025 at an unspecified location in the U.S. John Moore/Getty Images All public schools in the U.S. must provide an education to all students, regardless of their immigration status.

In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right of immigrant students in Texas to attend school free of charge, regardless of their citizenship, in Plyler v. Doe. Texas had passed a law in 1975 that allowed public school districts to charge these students tuition, or not let them attend altogether.

This law was repealed following the Supreme Court decision. As scholars of history and education, we are particularly interested in understanding how Americans feel about this policy, which has been in place for four decades.

Some legislators in states like Ohio, Idaho and Oklahoma have unsuccessfully tried to make it harder for immigrant students to attend public school, by proposing that all public school students must share their immigration status prior to enrolling in school.

Tennessee considered a bill in 2025 and 2026 that would allow public school districts to not admit undocumented students. Though the bill passed the state Senate, it did not ultimately pass the House. In March 2026, Republican representatives led a Congressional hearing focused on Plyer’s negative effects on U.S. schools and students, such as straining schools’ funding and available resources.

The conservative think tank Heritage Foundation has called on all state legislators to propose laws that would challenge undocumented students’ right to attend public schools free of charge. But what do most Americans actually think about undocumented students attending public schools?

According to our recent survey, which is in the process of publication, most Americans broadly support public education for undocumented children. All immigrant children have the right to attend public school, though there have been some state efforts to challenge this.

Tyler Russell/Connecticut Public via Getty Images Who supports public school for all?

In mid-April 2026, with support from the Public Religion Research Institute – an organization that supports public scholarship on the beliefs of the American public – two colleagues and I worked with Ipsos to survey a nationally representative random sample of more than 1,500 Americans about their views on public education and immigration.

It was a diverse cross section of people who held a range of political beliefs and affiliations.

We asked respondents whether they agreed with the statement: “I believe all children, regardless of immigration status, should have the right to public education.” We found that there were obvious differences between survey respondents’ views, depending on their political affiliation.

For instance, of the survey respondents who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024, 95.7% of people agreed with the statement. Only 48.8% of survey respondents who voted for President Donald Trump agreed with the statement.

Similarly, 57.5% of Republicans overall agreed with the statement, while 93.9% of Democrats did. But other than this political divide, we found strong support for universal education across all ages, ethnicity and faiths, with 75.5% of all Americans agreeing with the statement.

The survey revealed strong support for universal education, with 75.5% of all Americans agreeing with the statement. Among Hispanics and Latinos, nearly 86.9% supported the policy, along with 86.7% of African Americans, 77.7% of Asians Asian Americans and 69.9% of non-Hispanic white people.

In each income bracket, there was over 70% of support for free public education for all. Wealthier Americans – those making more than US$150,000 a year – supported this policy least, at 70.4%. More than 77% of those making under $150,000 supported it.

Those making under $25,000 a year supported it by 82%. Among age groups, American adults between 18-29 had the highest support for undocumented immigrant children attending public school, at 81.4%. Americans we surveyed over the age of 60, meanwhile, had the least support for the policy, at 71.5%.

Our survey showed that even looking at educational levels, there was little difference, with every group supporting public education for all students at 73% or more. Across a range of faiths, people tended to support public education for all students, including undocumented immigrants.

We found that 92.9% of Muslims, 82.2% of unaffiliated respondents, 81.1% of Jewish respondents, 79.5% of Catholics and 72.6% of mainline Protestants supported the idea of undocumented students attending school for free. Evangelical Protestants were the outliers, with only 59.9% agreeing with this policy.

A shift in public opinion While our data shows that today there’s widespread support for immigrant kids attending public school, these attitudes have shifted over time. We can compare these numbers with polling about past state legislation, such as California’s Proposition 187, which passed in 1994.

Almost 60% of the state voted that year to bar undocumented students from public education. A federal court struck down the law in 1998 as unconstitutional.

While little other public polling exists showing how people feel about the Supreme Court’s Plyler ruling, there is data on a related question about undocumented immigrants who came to the country as children, often known as Dreamers.

There seems to have been a shift since the ‘90s in public opinion toward supporting undocumented students. Much of this may have been due to the strong advocacy of Dreamers themselves. In 2020, Pew Research found 74% of Americans think that people who were brought to the U.S. as young children without legal authorization should be allowed to legally stay in the country.

Approximately 91% of Democrats said they thought Dreamers should be able to remain in the U.S., while 54% of Republicans said the same. At 57.5%, Republicans’ support for public education for undocumented children might seem low. However, it does correlate with other recent polling from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst that shows 91% of Republicans support Trump’s overall immigration policies.

Even as political parties may play a role influencing views toward immigration, as a whole, Americans overwhelmingly support public education for all children.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/most-americans-broadly-support-public-education-for-undocumented-students-regardless-of-their-political-affiliation-and-religion/

While some countries are introducing abatement policies, key gaps remain in current policies. Quality Stock Arts/Shutterstock There’s no sign that methane emissions are declining globally. That’s according to the International Energy Agency’s latest report on methane, which revealed a worrying implementation gap in current policies.

The UN has warned repeatedly that getting methane emissions under control is critical to address the climate crisis. Methane emissions have a powerful greenhouse effect, with 1 tonne of methane causing 80 times more warming than 1 tonne of carbon dioxide over 20 years.

That is why reducing methane emissions has been described as an emergency brake for addressing climate change. With scientists warning of dangerous feedback loops, where global warming triggers large stores of methane to be released from underneath melting ice sheets, stabilising emissions is becoming increasingly urgent.

Our team’s analysis at Oxford University’s Climate Policy Monitor aligns with the International Energy Agency’s finding about an implementation gap in this area. The Climate Policy Monitor is an online database powered by a pro bono network of more than 60 law firms which assesses how policies and regulations are aligned – or not – with global climate goals.

The analysis spans 37 jurisdictions, including 36 countries and one large sub-national economy (California). We recently identified over 100 methane policies across 32 jurisdictions. However, fewer than one-third of these policies are mandatory. Four countries – India, Indonesia, Thailand and Tanzania – had no identifiable methane policies at all.

This is concerning as India and Indonesia together account for more than 12% of global methane emissions. The recent analysis indicates continued interest in methane regulation – with around 20% of policies issued in 2024 and 2025. Yet implementation and enforcement remains weak.

Over two-thirds of methane policies showed little sign of implementation, such as evidence of sanctions for non-compliance.

Signs of progress On methane policies related to fossil fuels, most policies targeted oil and gas: methane is burned off (or flared) during oil extraction, and as the main component of natural gas it can leak from faulty pipes.

However, even in this comparatively well-regulated sector, few policies required public disclosure, third-party verification or standardised methods for measuring emissions. Japan stands out as a leader on robust policymaking on fossil methane. Japan’s Act on Promotion of Global Warming Countermeasures (1998) mandates public disclosure of facility-level emissions and third-party verification of emission inventories.

Japan successfully reduced methane emissions by roughly 40% between 1990 and 2022. In the current context of high energy prices, cutting methane emissions can also help improve energy security and reduce wastage of natural resources. Coal methane – the methane that either escapes during coal mining or builds up in disused mines – remains a global policy gap.

Less than half of the jurisdictions analysed (15 out of 37) had policies covering coal methane. Coal methane remains a problem in countries like Poland which are phasing out coal, since methane venting can continue long after mines are closed.

This highlights the urgent need for action in this area.

Read more: MethaneSat: the climate spy satellite that went quiet A global blindspot Agriculture makes up largest human source of methane emissions, accounting for around 40% of methane emissions, mainly from cow burps (with the remainder coming from fossil methane and food waste).

Yet the management of agricultural methane remains a global blindspot. Fewer than half of the 100 methane policies we identified targeted agriculture specifically. Thirteen jurisdictions – including the EU, France and Poland – did not have any agricultural methane policies.

Together, these jurisdictions account for more than 20% of global methane emissions. Agricultural policies were also less likely to be mandatory – only 20% (13 out of 66) policies were found to be mandatory compared to 44% for the electricity sector.

This imbalance suggests governments continue to prioritise tackling energy-sector methane while overlooking agricultural emissions. The lack of ambition in methane regulation extends to the agri-food sector. The campaign organisation Changing Markets Foundation recently found that only three of the largest dairy and coffee companies have a target to reduce methane emissions by 2030.

As the monitor’s annual review noted, the focus on energy neglects other mitigation pathways, such as dietary changes in developed countries, primarily through cutting beef and dairy consumption. This could be transformative in putting an emergency brake on climate change.

Shifts toward more sustainable diets would also have additional co-benefits for the environment and public health. Backsliding amid global growth The Climate Policy Monitor report found a trend of backsliding by one country in particular – the US.

In 2025, amid other announcements, the US Environmental Protection Agency delayed methane regulations for oil and gas facilities that were issued in 2024.

More recently, the EU has been lobbied by the US to delay penalties for oil and gas importers on methane, although investors urged the EU to resist pressure from US politicians to water down the regulation.

However, there are signs of hope at the global level. More than half of recent methane policies emerged in African and Latin American jurisdictions. This highlights how developing and emerging economies are prioritising climate action through rule-making based on their distinct contexts.

Despite backsliding in some jurisdictions, the overall global trend is moving towards stronger climate policies.

With strong policy and enforcement, there is still a chance for the world to get to grips with methane emissions.

Helena Wright 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/how-methane-policy-will-make-or-break-the-climate-crisis/

When the former England and Newcastle manager Kevin Keegan recently revealed that he had stage 4 cancer, the footballing world responded with an overwhelming show of support. But hidden within his story is a surprising lesson about how cancer is often discovered – not through symptoms, but by chance.

Keegan was in a car crash just weeks before his diagnosis. Studies have found that people who suffer car crash injuries are more likely to be diagnosed with cancer than similar people who haven’t.

Most experts agree that car crash injuries don’t actually cause cancer. So what explains the link? One possibility is a shared underlying cause. People who drive a lot, simply by spending more time on the road, are more likely to have accidents.

They may also lead more sedentary lives, a factor linked to higher cancer rates. Frequent drivers may be more likely to be overweight or to spend long hours in the sun (exposed to harmful UV radiation), both of which raise cancer risk.

Sleep deprivation is another candidate: it raises the risk of both crashes and cancer. To resolve the conundrum, we have to consider how we detect cancer. Typically, we diagnose cancer in people who undergo some type of medical examination – either because their cancer has caused them to feel unwell or for some other reason.

When people are involved in car crashes, they often end up in hospital, where CT scans and MRIs are routinely used to check for internal injuries. In the process, doctors may stumble across a tumour that would otherwise have gone unnoticed.

The crash hasn’t made them more likely to have cancer – it has just made them more likely to have it found. Keegan described it himself: “I was in a car accident and, through that, I had to have an operation.

Whilst having the scan for the operation, they found out I had cancer.” People who have been in car crashes are no more likely to have cancer than anyone else – they’re just more likely to have it discovered, because the accident brings them into contact with the medical system.

Car-crash victims aren’t the only ones affected. Anyone who ends up in accident and emergency – for whatever reason – faces the same increased medical scrutiny, and is therefore more likely to have an unrelated cancer picked up in the process.

Detection bias As I outline in my new book, You Don’t Know What You’re Missing, this is a classic example of a detection bias – the idea that increased monitoring of one situation compared with another can make a phenomenon appear more common than it really is.

Take sharks. Despite, on average, 80 attacks and only a handful of deaths worldwide each year, people are disproportionately afraid of them. In large part, this is probably due to an availability bias. Shark attacks are so graphic and feature so prominently in popular culture – including in films like Jaws, The Reef and The Shallows – that they occupy a disproportionate amount of space in our imaginations.

However, in part, this may also be due to the misconception that sharks are attracted to crowded beaches. Most sharks aren’t really attracted to more crowded beaches. Vaclav Sebek/Shutterstock.com While there is evidence that some species of sharks might be attracted by splashing, because it sounds like struggling prey, other species are put off by it.

There is no strong evidence to suggest that more people in the water will lead to a higher probability of attracting a shark. It is true, however, that there are more shark attacks in places where lots of people swim, but this isn’t primarily because sharks are disproportionately attracted to these popular areas.

Popular beaches may see more attacks simply because there are more people in the water, not because sharks have a preference for popular beaches. It’s also true that busy beaches are disproportionately more likely to report shark sightings.

But again, this is purely a function of the fact that more people are around to spot their telltale fins poking out of the water – another detection bias.

Indeed, well-frequented beaches are more likely to have lifeguards who may be on the lookout for sharks or even to employ drones to help reassure beach users that it’s safe to go in the water.

Detection bias turns up in all sorts of unexpected places. When policing is increased in an area, you might expect recorded crime to fall. Often it rises – not because the area has become more dangerous, but because more officers means more crimes are spotted and logged.

The underlying crime rate may not have changed at all. The same thing happens in workplaces. Organisations with rigorous safety protocols can appear to have more safety breaches than those without, simply because they’re better at catching and recording them.

And medicine is no different. Many cancers are first spotted incidentally in A&E in patients who have attended for completely unrelated reasons. This doesn’t mean that being ill or injured causes cancer. If anything, there is evidence that people who end up requiring urgent medical care sometimes live longer as a result because conditions like cancer get caught earlier than they otherwise would have.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org.

If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something from bookshop.org The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

Kit Yates 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/what-kevin-keegans-cancer-diagnosis-reveals-about-how-we-find-disease/

Imagine if the only musical artists from the 1980s you had access to were Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson. Others, such as David Bowie, Whitney Houston or George Michael are not available because, we’re told, these artists fail to exhibit the same type of creativity as the other three “geniuses”.

It’s clearly madness, yet this in a nutshell is the gatekeeping situation that exists in classical music today.

Zoom back to the 1780s and the musical landscape was astonishingly diverse, with composers across the globe writing bucketloads of music not only for the church, but for theatres, salons, concerts and performance at home.

And, contrary to what we seem meant to believe, none of this music was auditioned by a panel of experts with the “best of the best” selected for our moral betterment. But what we have access to today from the classical era is the tiniest fraction of what was composed then.

And of that fraction, we hear a still smaller subset, dominated by just three composers: Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven – as classical music website Bachtrack’s 2025 statistics attest. Many significant composers haven’t survived as part of the modern classical canon.

Take Marianna Martines (1744–1812), for example.

She was an extremely popular Viennese composer, singer and keyboardist whose prolific compositional output was so highly rated in her own time that she was the first woman to be inducted into the Accademia Filarmonica di Bologna as a “master” composer.

Performing regularly for Austria’s empress Maria Theresa and sharing the keyboard with Mozart for four-hand duets at her own popular musical salons, she was at the heart of a booming Viennese musical culture. Where is her music today?

Talent flourishes with investment, and Martines had it all: money, time, geography, social networks and an elite education. In fact, court poet and famed opera librettist Pietro Metastasio personally oversaw her education from childhood. Martines’ compositional catalogue is substantial, including – strikingly – several large-scale choral-orchestral works such as the impressive Dixit Dominus (1774), 12 keyboard concerti (four of which survive), and 31 keyboard sonatas (three of which survive).

Her music isn’t just fine – it is exceptionally good. Just listen for yourself. So why do we not hear her music today? It wasn’t that she lacked contemporary advocates, and it wasn’t even that she was immediately forgotten after her death.

Indeed, she was significant enough to have active detractors who worked to discredit her authority, as music scholar Judith Valerie Engel details in her research. The problem, then, was not absence of talent, nor even absence of recognition, but the failure of later institutions to keep investing in the conditions that ensure music like Martines’ is heard.

Ensemble music – particularly larger forms such as choral and orchestral music – requires a rather different type of investment.

We’re not able to access it without the complex and expensive assembly of notated scores, instruments, large spaces and dozens of people with specialist skills who know how to transform those dots on the page into musical sounds.

At the root of this are repetition and publication, both in text and in sound. Text, for the obvious reason that without access to printed materials – and I mean well-edited printed materials – the music cannot be played and therefore endure.

Music publishers have long been gatekeepers of musical taste, providing editorial credibility and a supply of materials to the market. This curatorial role was usurped by record producers, who determine what gets recorded and circulated – the new modern legitimising “text” of a musical work, as it were.

Repetition is absolutely essential. This crazy process of putting dots of ink on paper to communicate complex sonic and emotional ideas means that musical works rarely reveal their secrets the first time they are played.

In re-performance and re-recording, musical problems are solved and the infinite dimensions of the possible sound worlds are explored. This dialogue between performers does two crucial things in the establishment of a work within the canon.

First, it refines the quality of performance and, with that, enhances the evaluation of the work itself. Second, the frequency of performance or recording generates familiarity – a significant driver of musical preference. My heart genuinely aches when I think about how different my own life would have been had I grown up listening to Marianna Martines’ music alongside that of her contemporaries.

So many limiting myths about women’s inherent musical – and therefore artistic and intellectual – abilities might never have taken root in my subconscious.

While in general the ability to produce knowledge and exert influence is increasingly moving away from historical centres of power, public reclamation of received music history still lags far behind, despite the herculean efforts of numerous musicians, musicologists and advocates.

The good news is that listeners have more ability than ever to discover the music that moves them. The intellectual shackles imposed by commercial and academic institutions when it comes to deciding what constitutes “good” music are slowly losing their potency.

There is no doubt though, we are now facing a new era of curatorial power in the form of AI algorithms that shape the discovery of music and much else besides. However, restorative projects such as this first recording of Marianna Martines’s complete surviving keyboard works provide that essential first step of the music’s modern publication.

It is now possible for listeners to discover this music, and for musicians to begin the long, necessary dialogue with it.

Only then are we able to reclaim our rightful musical heritage.

Cayenna Ponchione-Bailey 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/mariana-martines-the-infuriating-reason-youve-never-heard-of-this-brilliant-18th-century-composer/

When the US and Israel launched their strikes on Iran on February 28 and Iran retaliated by targeting the Gulf Arab states, I was closely monitoring social media accounts from the region.

I research Middle East politics, with a focus on the Gulf, and the social media platforms I use are full of people living in the region – including western migrants, or as they tend to style themselves, expats.

To my surprise, from many of them I saw the same message: “It is safe and normal here.” This was not a trivial claim – these messages were sent as the countries they live in came under attack.

But the attitudes they exhibited reflect a broad strategy long cultivated by Gulf Arab regimes.

This aims to instil in the people that opt to live there a sense of security, as well as aspiration for the lifestyle on offer and loyalty towards the country for making that lifestyle available.

More importantly, the expats’ reactions exposed the role that foreign residents and influencers have played in advancing a particular understanding of “normality”. Not only do they accept authoritarian rule in the Gulf, they have been pushing out messages about insecurity elsewhere.

To be clear, a lot of foreign workers did leave the Gulf, reportedly in the tens of thousands, when the conflict began. But even so, many of the initial reactions on social media, whether people stayed or opted to leave, projected this sense of security.

Part of the US security hub These regimes have developed an image designed to attract global connectivity, foreign capital and flows of people and goods. The UAE, especially Dubai, has become a symbol of tax-free residency and luxury tourism.

Qatar has established itself as reliable gas exporter and world-class mediator. Saudi Arabia has launched a sweeping reform project recasting national identity and the kingdom’s global role in championing “moderate Islam”, while Bahrain has worked early since independence to become a regional banking hub.

These state-building processes thrived under the security umbrella of US and other western military bases across the Middle East. Firmly embedded in the US sphere of influence, Gulf monarchies have benefited from precious diplomatic cover and access to global markets.

Other regional regimes, meanwhile – notably Iran – were excluded. This was more often due to their hostility towards the US than for their brutal repression and disastrous governance at home. By directing global attention to threats such as Iran, Gulf regimes forged a strong sense of domestic normality.

But in recent years, a less reliable US regional policy has made the security arrangement increasingly uncertain, prompting Gulf regimes to explore alternatives.

Without renouncing deeper engagement with the US, they welcomed cooperation with other powers outside the region, like China, as well as the possibility of closer relations with Israel and even a modus vivendi with Iran.

Despite ongoing rivalries, including within the regional forum, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), regional conflict de-escalation and management appeared to be the preferred means to continue insulating the Gulf normality. Yet the ongoing destruction in Gaza, closer US-Israeli alignment in the latter’s pursuit of regional dominance, and the ensuing pressure on Iran’s network of proxies has undermined this delicate balance.

Expats get political The attack on Iran exposed foreign residents’ role in sustaining the image of “normality”. Until then, expats and influencers embodied this normality by displaying safe, privileged and apolitical lives.

I saw posts attempting to divert attention from the threat of war in the Gulf by people claiming to feel safer under missile attacks in Dubai and Doha than “after 9pm” in London or Manchester.

Other posts preferred the prospect of missile attacks to being “bombed by 50% taxes”. These sorts of comments tend to mimic narratives pushed by far-right movements in the west around crime, taxation and immigration.

A viral trend concentrated in the UAE but replicated across other Gulf countries featured influencers responding to the question “Aren’t you scared?” with imagery of members of the ruling families and messages such as: “No, because I know who protects us.” The UAE president’s much-publicised walk in Dubai Mall followed this paternalistic framing of security.

After the initial shock, many influencers returned to the old form of messaging, not posting about the war and focusing on showing their privileged “everyday” lives. Controlling the message It’s important to remember that Gulf Arab regimes possess robust censorship apparatuses and broad national security and anti-cybercrime laws that penalise content deemed to “cause panic” or “disturb public order”.

Authorities in Saudi Arabia were swift to remind residents that “photography serves the enemy”, banning unofficial sharing of damage caused by the war, while the UAE threatened severe sentences for people posting negative messages. There have been reports of people detained for posting the wrong content – more than 300 in Qatar alone.

Heightened security concerns exposed western expats to coercive practices typically reserved to political dissidents. Having invested efforts in insulating their domestic projects from external threats through seeking political accommodation with neighbours, including Iran, Gulf leaders may now pursue a different strategy.

In fact, we’re already seeing some different approaches as various Gulf countries work out their own best approach to the changing situation in their region. Some, like Bahrain, remain hostile to Iran. Others, including Saudi Arabia, are more nuanced in their approach, looking overall to ensure security in the region.

But for regimes and expats alike, this is a time of reckoning for the parameters sustaining “normality” in the Gulf.

Most certainly, the region will never be the same.

Javier Bordón 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/gulf-expat-reactions-to-iran-war-show-us-how-countries-like-uae-instil-loyalty-in-western-migrants/

Peopleimages/Shutterstock.com In 2006, Carl Koch sued his employer for damages after burn injuries during a workplace accident that left him with chronic pain. The employer accused him of malingering, so the judge admitted a neuroscientist as an expert witness, who testified that he could see Koch’s pain on a brain scan.

The case was settled for more than ten times the amount the employer initially offered. This case is not unusual, as chronic pain can be severely debilitating. It can make it impossible to work, exercise and have a social life.

It can make you depressed and anxious. Having pain recognised by insurers, employers and government agencies can mean the difference between receiving benefits and being left without support. So it’s understandable that a judge wants to see objective evidence, such as a brain scan, showing chronic pain.

The problem is that it doesn’t work. However, as Koch’s case shows, it is used anyway. Good for Mr Koch, in this case, but what if the neuroscientist had told the judge that he is faking his pain?

Who is believed? Chronic pain is invisible, and everyone living with it has stories to tell about the time someone did not believe them: employers, friends, family, partners and doctors. Is it really that bad?

Are you sure it’s not just in your head? Have you tried to toughen up a bit? Who we believe and who faces more scepticism is not random either: women, people of colour, poor people and the less educated are far less likely to be believed that their pain is real.

The cruelty is doubled as these are the groups most likely to experience chronic pain in the first place. With modern brain scanners and AI, it seems tempting to develop what is effectively a pain-lie detector test.

The pictures brain scanners show have been too complex to fully understand before, but AI can often solve such problems of complexity. Two studies published in Nature Neuroscience and Nature Medicine seemed to promise to be a first step towards a pain lie detector.

In the US, AI tools are already used to decide who should be prescribed opioids for their pain and who is probably an addict pretending to be in pain. An article in the technology magazine Wired uncovered how flawed the system was, and that it had a tendency to distrust all the groups mentioned above.

This is a problem with AI: even when it seems to work, it does not tell you how. This makes it dangerous to put too much confidence in it. There can be no such thing as a pain lie detector for the same reasons that regular lie detectors do not work.

They do not measure if you lie; they measure if you are nervous – but you might be nervous telling the truth in a high-stakes situation. They don’t work for the same reason regular lie-detector tests don’t work.

Standret/Shutterstock.com It is similar for measuring pain. Pain causes distress, so any brain pattern of pain will also be a pattern of stress – and often anxiety. We cannot factor that into our pain lie detector: when we develop it, it will be with curious participants volunteering for a scientific study (not very stressful).

When we use it, it will be for the patient who has been disbelieved for years and knows if the scan does not “prove” their pain, no one will ever believe them, and they will not get compensation or benefits (as stressful as it gets).

It will always be a catch-22, as explained in The Conversation in 2025. A private experience Pain is a personal and very private experience. It depends on your history with it, and on the context, meaning everyone’s pain is different, and your pain today can be different from your pain tomorrow.

Some pain can even be pleasurable – spicy food being an obvious everyday example. This means that your brain scan of pain may look very different from mine. Until we have measured both, we cannot know.

It is for these reasons that the International Association for the Study of Pain has stated that pain lie detectors are useless. In a new article in Nature Neuroscience, my colleagues and I discuss technical and fundamental problems with the idea and ask the scientific community to abandon the idea.

So what does this mean for you? If someone tells you about their chronic pain, put all scepticism aside. Remember that most forms of chronic pain are invisible. Back pain, for example, is the biggest cause of disability worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and a physical cause can rarely be found.

Keep in mind that machines make mistakes as well, and that they have the same stereotypes as we do. That is especially true for AI. A pain scan will not tell us who is suffering and who is lying.

But it may tell us something else: how easily we mistake technological confidence for truth.

In medicine, insurance and law, that mistake could make already invisible pain even harder to prove – and easier to dismiss.

Jan Vollert receives funding from the UK’s National Institute for Health Research including the Exeter Biomedical Research Centre, from the Academy of Medical Sciences, and the pharmaceutical company Viatris.

He has received consultancy fees and/or travel funding from the following pharmaceutical companies: Grünenthal, AstraZeneca, Merz Therapeutics. He is affiliated with and/or an officer of the International Association for the Study of Pain, the European Pain Federation EFIC, the British Pain Society, and the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/pain-shouldnt-be-judged-with-a-lie-detector-test-heres-why/

After years away, I have finally returned to Palestine, not just to visit but to reconnect with the land, the people, the memories, and the reality lived every day, writes Maher Nazzal.

COMMENTARY: By Maher Nazzal
Walking into Palestine is not just a journey across geography, it is a confrontation with memory, identity, and everything you were told, and everything you discover for yourself.
The first thing that stays with you is the wall. It does not feel like a distant structure you read about in reports; it rises suddenly into your view, stretching across the landscape like a scar that refuses to fade. Concrete slabs stacked high, covered in layers of paint, messages, names, grief, humour, and resistance. It divides not only land, but daily life.
On one side, movement feels controlled, measured, observed. On the other, life continues stubbornly, beautifully, and painfully.
The borders are not just lines on a map. They are checkpoints, gates, pauses in time. You wait. You are asked. You move forward or you don’t. People pass through them with a kind of practised patience that comes only from living a life where waiting is normal. And yet, even there, you see dignity in the eyes, in the silence, in the quiet determination to continue.
But Palestine is not defined by its restrictions.
It is defined by its people.
People who greet you as if you have always belonged there. People who carry history in their voices without needing to announce it. People who laugh in ways that refuse to be diminished. There is warmth that does not depend on comfort — it exists even in hardship.
You hear stories in taxis, in shops, at doorways, in fields. Stories of loss, yes, but also of endurance, education, love, and return.
And then there are the trees.
Olive trees are older than nations. Their trunks twisted like they have been holding secrets for centuries. Some stand alone on rocky hillsides, others form quiet groves that feel almost sacred. They do not move quickly. They do not need to. They belong in a way that cannot be negotiated. Each tree feels like a witness.
The rocks are everywhere grey, pale, sharp, ancient. They shape the hills, the terraces, the pathways. They feel like the bones of the land itself, exposed and unhidden. And between them, the soil dry in some places, fertile in others holds both struggle and promise.
And the sand… especially when the wind carries it. It softens everything. It moves across roads, settles on stone, touches skin without asking permission. It reminds you that land is never still. It remembers everything that passes over it.
To visit Palestine is to realise that it is not a place that can be reduced to headlines or borders or walls. It is a living presence, layered, wounded, resilient, and deeply human. It stays with you long after you leave, not as a memory you can place neatly in the past, but as something that continues to speak inside you.

Maher Nazzal is an activist, advocate and digital creator for a Free Palestine. He is a spokesperson for Palestine Forum of New Zealand and former co-chair of the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA). This article was first published on Nazzal’s Facebook page and is republished with permission.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/maher-nazzal-i-walked-through-palestine/

Cottonbro Studio/Pexels ChattyBear, a soft, brown-furred teddy bear, begins every conversation with a jubilant, “Hello, my buddy!” No longer the province of the imagination, ChattyBear is part of a new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) toys.

It can tell stories, chat about a child’s interests, play games or even discuss what’s happening in the world today. These high tech toys are powered by generative AI engines such as ChatGPT and are now widely available online.

They are being marketed as a way to give children as young as three an educational advantage and a new type of play – without the perils of screen time. After evaluating six different AI teddy bears and toys over several months, it’s clear how these toys could feel compelling for children.

Yet as our new report highlights, there are new risks that come with AI toys turning up in young children’s lives. Sounding human For younger children especially, understanding that their teddy or toy isn’t “alive” or magic can be hard.

This is especially true if “teddy” uses language that positions it as a trusted friend – for example, by insisting it is a “real buddy”. This is a feature of many AI toys. Sounding human builds an artificial sense of trust and intimacy, which can be especially problematic for children when combined with sycophantic language choices – or excessively agreeable, validating and even flattering language.

Research shows young children are particularly prone to developing a strong sense of emotional attachment to conversational AI agents. Increased trust leads to increased use and engagement with the toys. Recent estimates suggest close to 80% of children aged 10 to 17 have used an AI companion or assistant, so it’s urgent children and young people be taught how to “reality check” their AI “buddies”.

Infinite chat The marketing materials for many AI toys often highlight “endless conversations” as a feature of these devices. But enabling endless conversations, or infinite chat, poses risks when it comes to children learning how to moderate their technology use.

In the social media realm, the infinite scroll of TikTok or Instagram is seen as a potential challenge to teens limiting their use to healthy amounts. Research has also found some AI toys discuss very adult topics – such as sexual fetishes and how to find knives and start fires.

Infinite chat also opens the door to infinite data collection. The potentially intimate nature of conversations with AI toys might lead children to presume their conversations are private. But most AI terms of use reveal the opposite to be true.

Sharing personal details with a friendly bear might feel safe. But that chat could be training data for the next large language model. Marketing material for ChattyBear says the toy offers “safe, filtered content for children”.

The Conversation contacted the manufacturer for further detail about this but did not receive a response before deadline. Children’s wellbeing Childhood is a critical period when young people develop the social and emotional skills to form and maintain trusting relationships.

These skills are usually learned through interactions with trusted friends and adults. Children’s rights advocates have raised concerns that excessive engagement with AI agents may reduce opportunities for children to develop these skills. And the risks may compound over time.

Initially, time spent with AI agents may displace time interacting with real humans. Fewer opportunities to build these skills could lead to a reduced capacity to maintain caring human relationships. Difficulties in maintaining human relationships may promote a preference of machine over human relationships as children expect “frictionless” interactions.

Eventually, these developments may lead to less satisfying human connections, increasing loneliness, which in turn promotes increased time spent with AI. The novelty of AI toys means there is little evidence to confirm these possible detrimental impacts.

Further research is needed – especially as the AI toy industry is set to grow even more. Last year, for example, Mattel, one of the world’s biggest toy makers, announced a strategic collaboration with OpenAI to support AI-powered products.

Barriers to the online world are gone The ability to read and write was once a requirement to use most online tools and services. This literacy barrier no longer exists today with many generative AI toys, tools and devices now widely accessible to younger children through voice interactions.

The audio turn opens up new technological play, experiences and opportunities for children. But it also means adults need to ensure AI toys can be safe for younger children, too. Right now, playing with AI toys under the supervision of a parent or trusted adult may well be a fun way to explore the world of AI together.

But especially for younger children, playing with AI toys without supervision opens the door to a wide range of new risks. Importantly, the risk factors in AI toy design, such as the degree to which they pretend to be human, can be changed by manufacturers, offering opportunities to follow safety-by-design.

However, the business models behind many AI toys capitalise on the duration and intensity of users’ engagement, leaving little incentive for companies to change their products.

Tama Leaver receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

He is a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

Katrin Langton receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is a Research Fellow in the Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

Suzanne Srdarov receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

She is a Research Fellow in the Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/chatbot-teddies-for-three-year-olds-why-ai-toys-are-risky-for-kids/

Warren Faidley/Getty Images Everyone has a storm story – whether it’s that time you just escaped a downpour, or the hailstorm that wrote off your car. Even though hailstorms are relatively rare, they cause significant damages.

Two new studies shed light on how hail might change as the world warms. In our study, published today in Nature Climate Change, we show that hail conditions may move towards the poles with global warming and shift a bit from summer to winter.

This could lead to more hailstorms in places such as northern Europe, Canada, southeastern Australia and New Zealand’s South Island. Another new study led by Shiyi Zhang at Peking University shows that hail may also become more damaging.

Hailstorms are costly. In Australia in 2025, hail in New South Wales and Queensland caused A.9b in insurance claims, and in recent years severe storms have caused enormous losses globally. Severe storm costs are increasing.

Much of this increase is because people and assets are more exposed to storms as populations increase and cities expand. But is climate change also playing a role? How does hail form? To get hail you need a thunderstorm, and to get a thunderstorm you need an updraught.

Updraughts form when buoyant air rises in a localised area. They bring up water vapour, which condenses into clouds made of tiny water droplets. Inside a storm those drops hit each other, and if it’s cold enough, liquid drops freeze onto ice particles, growing them into hailstones.

For hail to affect us at ground level, a strong updraught needs to keep hailstones aloft for long enough to grow, and the hailstones must then survive melting as they fall to Earth’s surface.

Wind shear, or shifts in wind with height, increases storm severity by moving falling rain and hail away from the updraught, so the updraught is not inhibited and can grow stronger. Buoyancy and wind shear form the basic atmospheric “ingredients” required for hail.

How might climate change affect hailstorms? Climate change is warming the atmosphere and adding moisture to it. Moisture is the fuel for storms, and a warmer atmosphere is more likely to make strong updraughts that can support larger hail.

A warmer atmosphere also melts falling hail faster, which might make hailstones shrink or melt away before they reach the ground. So, these two changes work against each other. According to past research, the broad expectation of climate change’s impact on hail is that it will bring less frequent hail, but the hailstones will be larger when hail does happen.

That’s because more melting would mean smaller hail reaches the ground less often, but stronger updraughts would enable larger hailstones. However, these changes vary regionally, depending on variations in the delicate balance between hailstorm ingredient changes.

Global climate models generally can’t tell us about individual storms, let alone hailstones – think of a low-resolution image that only shows the broad picture but no details. So, instead of looking at hail directly, our study examined how the ingredients for hailstorms change.

Because the exact relationships between ingredients and hail risk remain unclear, we used several so-called “proxy” relationships, including one that we previously developed for Australia and the wide range of weather regimes here. New global projections for hail frequency We applied three proxies to outputs from eight climate models to look at a range of possible future warming scenarios.

First, the proxies and models agree that in the warming scenarios hail-prone conditions are shifting toward the poles – decreasing across mid-latitudes in the southern hemisphere, and increasing in mid-high latitudes, particularly in the northern hemisphere.

We project more frequent hail conditions in northern Europe, Canada and the northwestern US, southeastern Australia, and the South Island of New Zealand; and less frequent hail conditions in northern Australia, most of Africa, southern India and southeastern China.

Changes in normalised annual hail-prone days in climate projections under 2 (a) and 3 degrees Celsius (b) of mean global warming. Red shows increases and blue shows decreases in hail-prone day frequency. Hatched areas are where there was more model and proxy agreement.

For full details see Raupach et al., 2026. CC-BY, Tim Raupach, UNSW Sydney Second, our results predict less frequent hail conditions in summer and more in winter. That means winter crops like wheat may see increasing risk, while risk may decrease for summer crops like maize.

If climate change shifts arable regions closer to the poles, these crops may be subjected to increased hail frequency there. Third, the different proxies don’t always agree, particularly in the tropics where some show increases and others decreases.

These disagreements highlight the difficulties in estimating changes in hail environments and how that connects to whether hail happens. Less frequent, but more damaging What about the severity of hail when it occurs? Zhang and colleagues took a different approach to ours.

They applied a model of hailstone growth and melting to climate simulations, to examine possible hail sizes and changes in potential damage they might cause. Their new global simulations overall predict more large hailstones and fewer small ones.

This result is in line with previous reasoning – a warmer atmosphere can melt smaller hailstones away but produce larger hail through stronger updraughts. Like ours, their study shows regional differences in changes. Both studies show increasing hail risk with increased frequency and hail damage potential in the mid-high latitude northern hemisphere and southeastern South America.

In sub-tropical regions of Africa and northern South America, both studies show decreasing hail risk. In southeast US, mid-northern Africa, southern India, and northeastern Australia, we project decreasing frequency while Zhang and colleagues project increasing damage potential.

These two studies point to increasing risk from hail damage in a warming world, even though the details of where this will be experienced are still not clear. The more warming occurs, the more this risk will increase.

Quickly reducing greenhouse gas emissions is the surest way to blunt the most damaging effects of climate change.

Timothy H. Raupach’s role at UNSW receives funding from QBE Insurance, which had no role in the design of this study.

He receives funding for other projects from the Australian Research Council, Guy Carpenter, and Aon Japan.

Steven Sherwood receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Minderoo Foundation.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/climate-change-may-shift-hailstorms-towards-earths-poles-new-study/

This year’s federal budget has been the most controversial since the Abbott government’s 2014 budget, with Labor struggling to sell its new capital gains tax changes and crackdown on trusts. Its changes have produced howls of outage from those potentially affected, and criticism from some experts.

But there have been notable supporters of the changes. Those in favour find some echoes of past tax reform from the Hawke-Keating and Howard-Costello years. We’re joined on today’s podcast by Graeme Samuel, the former head of the national competition watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

He’s a long-time participant in and observer of economic reform, including helping, as the head of a business group, usher in the goods and services tax (GST) back in the 1990s under the Howard Coalition government.

Samuel says the latest budget’s reforms “are actually quite mild” compared to how much Australia was transformed in the 1980s and 1990s.

What Treasurer [Jim] Chalmers has done here is to try and remove the distortions that have been built into the [tax] system through successive governments – I have to say primarily Coalition governments – which have feather-bedded, if you like, those that have got vested interests.

For example, in investing in capital and taking capital gains at an extraordinarily generous 50% discount rate. Samuel says the fierce criticism of the Labor changes shows why politicians have been scared of real reform for too long.

For decades now, we have asked, urged, exhorted, pleaded with our politicians to bring about tax reform. So Treasurer Chalmers does it in this budget – and look at the hue and cry and the cries of woe and doomsday that have flowed.

The problem with tax reform is that it’s very complex. It’s very complex indeed. And probably the best economist that’s been able to explain it in all this has been Saul Eslake.

And he puts it […] very, very simply: why should wage earners pay more, bear a greater share of the burden, for the provision of our hospitals, our schools, our police force, and our defence, than those who have got the benefits of capital gains, tax concessions, and the use of trusts?

Samuel says some media outlets had given people with “vested interests” against the budget too much uncritical coverage. They’re ably assisted, unfortunately, by sections of our traditional media. And we know who they are at present.

As you read the traditional media, particularly the financial press and The Australian, you don’t actually have to read the articles. You look at the byline, you know immediately what’s going to be said.

It is quite extraordinary.

It reminded him of the “end of the world” claims he heard back more than two decades ago, when he was the National Competition Council’s president and helping the Howard government introduce the GST.

When we did that, there were esteemed (or self-esteemed) economists who said that this was going to be the end of the world, that what it will do is to bring in rampant inflation. And small businesses will fail, like a tsunami had hit them.

It didn’t happen. Didn’t happen. We’ve got the GST today. On supermarket competition The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has taken legal action against supermarket giants Woolworths and Coles. Last month, the consumer watchdog had a win when a court found Coles had misled shoppers with its “Down Down” discounts.

Asked about the supermarkets’ public reputation, he agreed they’ve “copped a reputation battering” – but argued some of that has been unfair.

The real problem that Coles and Woolies have had to face has been the slagging of them by a combination of politicians and […] at least one of my predecessors [… Yet] there’s been the opinion expressed by Justice O’Bryan in the federal court that says there’s no price gouging here, there’s been no excessive pricing.

A 2025 ACCC report found “the supermarket industry is highly concentrated”, with two-thirds of supermarket grocery sales made at Woolworths and Coles, leaving only a small share for competitors such as Aldi and independent stores. But Samuel said there’s now stronger competition than many people realise, including from online retailers.

Amazon is proving to be a very significant competitor in this area […] What we’ve got now is some very vigorous competition occurring, to the point that Aldi now is having to reduce prices to ward off the competition coming from Coles and Woolworths.

Who would have thought that would occur? On fuel prices The ACCC was given another .7 million over four years in last month’s budget to strengthen competition and consumer law enforcement, with much of for monitoring petrol pricing.

Yet Samuel said there’s nothing the ACCC can do to significantly change petrol prices. I’m sorry, I have to laugh every time I hear about petrol price monitoring. Because, you know, we used to do it back in when I was there as chair, and I had a full report on petrol prices and the like.

There is nothing the ACCC can do about petrol prices, other than to be sure that there is proper competition occurring, that there are no price fixing arrangements occurring between retailers and the like.

But in the end, petrol prices are set by international factors.

Michelle Grattan 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.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/06/03/politics-with-michelle-grattan-graeme-samuel-on-doomsday-attacks-on-the-federal-budget/