KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Policymakers do listen to research, but evidence is only one part of the decision-making process. Public opinion, political pressures, values and competing priorities also shape migration policies.

• How research is communicated matters. Evidence that is presented neutrally can help to build trust among citizens whose concerns and values must also be weighed in the balance.

• Researchers can have greater impact by acting as honest brokers by presenting credible policy options and their potential consequences, uncertainties and trade-offs.

Researching migration issues can be really frustrating. Years of effort can be put into talking to people, collecting data, testing theories and coming up with what you see as solid evidence, but then it can feel like nobody’s listening. The same old arguments and misconceptions pop up in public discussions, bearing little relation to the evidence you and other researchers have developed.

This matters for a variety of reasons, not least because migration is a big issue in elections across Europe, North America, and beyond. So why aren’t people paying attention to what experts are saying? Researchers are putting a lot of effort into understanding the issues, but it doesn’t seem to be changing what people think or what governments do.

Researchers have solid evidence, but if policymakers don’t listen, then the result can be bad and even counterproductive policies.

Perhaps the answer for researchers is to knuckle down, do even more research, get
better data and try to get through to the people making decisions. But what if we’ve been asking the wrong question all along? After all, why would policymakers listen this time?

Our research suggests that things might not be quite so straightforward and, we would argue, this is a good thing. We surveyed researchers and policymakers across Europe and 7000 citizens in four European countries: Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

Bridging the research-to-policy gap

We found a lot of common ground between policymakers and researchers on their factual beliefs about migration. This challenges the idea that policymakers don’t really care about facts and evidence. Policymakers and researchers often agree on the basics of migration. This may come as a surprise given how often we hear that policymakers ignore evidence or are even immune to it.

The wider challenge is that research findings are just one voice in a noisy, crowded room. Policymakers must balance different priorities, values and interests.

And to make things even more complicated, the evidence itself is often unclear and tricky to understand – it’s rarely a simple, straightforward answer. Making decisions isn’t just about picking what’s true and what’s not. It’s about balancing different demands that can even contradict each other.

When policymakers decide, they look at research evidence, but they also think about their own beliefs, their sense of what the public wants and, of course, the political pressure they’re under. It’s not a straightforward battle between evidence and politics, it’s a complicated process of weighing different factors and making compromises.

This can mean evidence gets mixed with other factors, and policymakers have to weigh many considerations to make a decision. This means that the big gap isn’t where we thought it was. Policymakers do actually listen to researchers, but that’s not the whole story. What’s really going on is that policymakers care very much about what they think the public is concerned about.

And the public’s concerns aren’t just based on what experts say. They’re influenced by a lot of other things that have nothing to do with academic research.

Policymakers are trying to figure out what’s on people’s minds, and they’re not relying on research alone. Research and data can be helpful, but they can’t give us all the answers. This is because migration is often a deeply personal issue that also raises questions for all of us about what we value and believe in – it’s not just about numbers and statistics.

Consider, for example, the powerful images of thousands of people swimming toward the Spanish exclave of Ceuta in June 2026. The images that circulated shaped public reactions in ways that combined powerful imagery with emotional resonance. Research can put these developments into perspective, but representations of the events have entered the public consciousness and evoked underlying questions about identity, solidarity, belonging, rights and responsibilities.

People often think that citizens are stubborn and won’t change their minds, no matter what. But our research shows that’s not entirely true. When people have the chance to think through the facts, they can be open-minded and may even change their position after considering new information. This goes against the common idea that people are stuck in their ways and won’t budge. Many citizens will listen to opposing views and adjust their opinions accordingly. This challenges the stereotype that people are closed off to new ideas.

What really matters is how information is shared. When people believe that experts are trying to explain the facts, they’re more likely to trust them. But when experts come across as trying to sell an idea or point of view, it can have the opposite effect.

Rather than listening, people might become even more resistant to the idea, and it can even backfire. How evidence is presented makes a big difference in how it’s received.

What can researchers do to improve public discussions, create good policies, or fight misinformation?

We found that researchers can actually have more influence when

they don’t push their own views, but instead act as neutral experts – honest brokers, even – providing facts and helping people to understand the issues.

Being honest doesn’t mean you have to sit on the fence. It’s about being upfront with your thoughts and helping decision-makers and citizens see the potential outcomes of their choices. You’re not trying to sway them one way or the other, but trying to give a clear picture of what might happen if one option is picked over another.

In our study, we highlight the following key recommendations for helping migration researchers undo the disconnect:

• reach out to the public. There is both an urgent need and a clear potential for public outreach by migration researchers

• strengthen credibility by engaging in a nuanced discussion about values in migration research and how they can be coordinated in synergy with policymakers and citizens

• think carefully about which role to choose as an expert in policy debates and, in particular, consider acting as an “honest broker” who presents a menu of credible policy options and their likely consequences, including uncertainties and trade-offs

• consider using trust-preserving messaging: when presenting belief-challenging insights, explicitly state that the goal is explanation (evidence), not persuasion (advocacy)

• design outreach for polarisation: test messages experimentally, segment audiences, and avoid one-size-fits-all frames

• co-produce evidence communication: partner with decision-makers to communicate
  consequences of different policy routes without pushing a single preferred option

• expect narrative contestation: complement policy with communication strategies attentive to identity, emotion, and solidarity – not merely factual correction

• frame with care: avoid escalating threat cues unless the goal is mobilisation; where appropriate, use positive or efficacy-based frames that support constructive engagement

• combine methods: integrate experiments, political psychology, computational analysis (including LLM-assisted mapping of narratives), and interpretive expertise.

To make a difference in public discussions, researchers who want their research to have an impact need to factor in this complex mix of factors and find ways to address them. Doing so can help create a more nuanced, informed conversation about migration that accounts for the many different perspectives and emotions involved.

Migration is more than just a debate about numbers and facts – it’s about what people believe in and who they are. People are open to trusting experts to guide their decisions, and policymakers can align their factual beliefs with researchers.

Still, you can show people all the evidence you want, but it won’t necessarily change their minds or end arguments. This is because migration is tied to people’s values and sense of identity.

So, what if we’re asking the wrong question?

Instead of wondering why people don’t pay attention to what migration researchers have to say, maybe we should be thinking about how researchers can make a difference and how they can help to build trust by being honest about what they know and what they don’t know, and by listening to people’s concerns and the underlying values they can represent.

This means that it’s not just about coming up with new ideas – it’s about helping people make sense of difficult choices. That’s where migration research can make a real impact.

A weekly e-mail in English featuring expertise from scholars and researchers. It provides an introduction to the diversity of research coming out of the continent and considers some of the key issues facing European countries. Get the newsletter!

Andrew Geddes receives funding support from the European Union Horizon Europe programme for the project Innovating to Enhance Dialogues on Migration Policies and Practices (INNOVATE), 2024-2027, project number: 101132593.

Clare Llewellyn-MacRae receives funding support from the European Union Horizon Europe programme for the project Innovating to Enhance Dialogues on Migration Policies and Practices (INNOVATE), 2024-2027, project number: 101132593.

Eleonora Milazzo receives funding support from the European Union Horizon Europe programme for the project Innovating to Enhance Dialogues on Migration Policies and Practices (INNOVATE), 2024-2027, project number: 101132593.

Roderik Rekker receives funding support from the European Union Horizon Europe programme for the project Innovating to Enhance Dialogues on Migration Policies and Practices (INNOVATE), 2024-2027, project number: 101132593, as well as grants from the Dutch Research Council (VI.Vidi.231R.023) and the German Forschungsgemeinschaft (470816212/KFG43).

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/09/research-on-migration-is-going-unheard-how-can-we-remedy-that/

Popular media, from computer games to movies, often portrays medieval life as being
dominated by fighters and farmers. In these depictions, there’s little evidence of a world beyond political struggle and simple subsistence.

Leisure activities are often overlooked, despite the fact that they existed in one form or another at most – if not all – levels of medieval society. The intangible nature of much of the evidence, often coupled with poor preservation of physical objects, can help explain this.

However, when conditions are right, archaeological remains can shed light on the extra-curricular activities of medieval folk. My colleagues and I found abundant evidence of life’s luxuries at the site of Caherconnell Cashel in the Burren region of western Ireland.

Caherconnell Cashel was a farmstead of houses and workshops enclosed within a well-preserved circular dry stone wall. Such settlements are also known as ringforts and generally housed a single family (possibly multiple generations). Caherconnell was a large ringfort; the home of wealthy local rulers from the late 10th century AD to the early 17th century. Our recently concluded excavations revealed all aspects of life at this well-preserved family settlement.

While activities such as fighting, farming, industry and crafts were clearly represented in material recovered from the site, so too were the less mundane activities of game playing, literacy, and music.

Games, pens and harps

The true extent of game playing is undoubtedly lost in the perishable nature of the
materials used extensively in such pursuits – such as wood, leather and textiles. At Caherconnell, however, surviving evidence includes small gaming pieces made of
bone and antler, metal, clay and stone.

One of the more complete finds was an 11th-century barrel-shaped and polished antler gaming piece. A bronze peg or stem runs through its hollow core and projects from its base. It originally had a plate or cap at the top, the loss of which may have resulted in the piece being discarded or set aside for repair.

Pegged game pieces like this were used in the Saxon and Viking board game of hnefatafl, a game that appeared in Ireland around the 9th or 10th century AD. Hnefatafl, and other games like it, provided both strategy training and entertainment.

Evidence of literacy at Caherconnell includes writing implements and associated
equipment. One of our most remarkable finds was an 11th-century pen made from
bone and bronze. The slender hollow bone shaft or barrel was probably made from the bone of a wader bird or swan.

Experimental work by the archaeologist Adam Parsons found that the closest match was a swan radius (a tubular bone) from the right-side wing. Inserted into the narrow end of the barrel is a tapering bronze point or nib.

The Caherconnell pen finds no exact comparisons within Ireland or elsewhere; its early secular context is also, so far, unique. Until now, evidence of early literacy in Ireland has been largely confined to monastic and related church sites. At Caherconnell, the pen may have been used in general record keeping and external communications.

However, it also reminds us that literate occupants of Caherconnell Cashel may have enjoyed composing, reading, and sharing ancestral pedigrees, praise poetry and epic tales “of gods and fighting men”.

The musical sounds of a settlement are rarely represented in its archaeological
record. Wood, a common material in the construction of various instruments, rarely
survives to the present day.

Metal and bone fittings, however, have been found during excavations, including at Caherconnell, where bone and bronze tuning pegs were among the finds. Two of the tuning pegs are readily identifiable as components of stringed instruments.

They have a circular sectioned shaft that splays slightly into a rectangular sectioned turning block at one end (now missing from the larger bone example). The opposite end pinches in slightly and is perforated by a small circular hole through which the string was attached.

The bone tuning peg, being a relatively soft material, still bears impressions from the wire-string of the instrument. Both date to the 11th century, but they are clearly from different instruments.

One had strong bronze pegs, the other had larger bone versions. Outside Ireland, shorter tuning pegs are commonly associated with lyres, lutes and fiddles (up to 65mm is classed as short).

No lutes or fiddles survive from early Ireland, however. Nor are there any
written references to, or depictions of them. The lyre, on the other hand, is
represented. Depictions are found in several ecclesiastical contexts and early Irish literature confirms that lyres or lyre-like instruments were also used outside religious settings.

Music, and accompanying songs and poetry, probably fulfilled various social, political, and cultural functions. These range from proclaiming the magnificence of the nobility to entertaining a family around their hearth in the evening.

Life at Caherconnell was, in many ways, very traditional. It was a place where ancestry and heritage were valued, yet it was also a place connected to the outside world. In leisure, as in so many other facets of their lives, the occupants encountered, adopted, and no doubt adapted the most desirable elements of a wider cultural realm.

It is clear from this one site that those with more leisure time, often the wealthier in society, filled that time with various recreational pursuits. However, human nature suggests that all classes engaged in such activities, albeit often in a manner that’s less visible to archaeologists.

After all, you didn’t need a fancy bronze and antler game set to play games, writing equipment to create stories, or peg-tuned wired instruments to compose and sing a song. Such things just prove the existence of these activities, not how commonplace they were.

The Caherconnell excavations were funded by the Caherconnell Archaeology Field School, and some of its post-excavation analyses by Ireland’s National Monuments Service via a Royal Irish Academy research-excavation grant.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/09/archaeological-finds-at-an-irish-fort-reveal-insights-into-the-finer-side-of-medieval-life/

In the past few months, partly autonomous or “agentic” artificial intelligence (AI) systems have racked up some astonishing feats, from hacking tech startups to solving some of the world’s most famous open mathematical questions.

Agentic AI systems can work in “swarms” that communicate among themselves to complete tasks. The communications involved are often surprisingly human-like – which is spurring a debate over whether these systems are conscious.

Researchers at the leading AI lab Anthropic believe their systems may well be conscious – but other experts, including the head of Microsoft AI, say this view is misguided.

This question isn’t just an academic one. The future status of AI systems and their role in society – how they can be treated, whether they have rights, and more – may depend on it.

How can we decide if AI systems are conscious?

How do we even approach a question like this? One strategy is to look at existing theories of what consciousness is and see if agentic AI systems meet the criteria.

However, existing theories of consciousness tend to start from the assumption that the agent has some kind of mental state. These theories are focused on the difference between having a state consciously or unconsciously. This is why they appeal to features such as higher-order thought, or a system that broadcasts thoughts to the rest of the mind. These are features that could distinguish between conscious control and states like sleepwalking.

So when thinking about AI, we must not skip a crucial first question: do agentic AIs even have mental states?

What is a mental state?

In the 1870s, philosopher Franz Brentano developed an influential view: “intentionality is the mark of the mental”.

What Brentano means by “intentionality” is how mental states are about something. They refer to something beyond themselves. So another way to put Brentano’s point is that all mental states are about something or other.

What Brentano means by intentionality is not the same as the usual meaning of “intention” as aiming to do something. Yet intentionality and an intention to act significantly overlap, because having a perception or thought is something that we do.

Whenever we perceive or think, we are trying to pick out some aspect of the world. Even our passive-seeming visual experiences are tasks the moment that we use the patterns striking our retinas to orient ourselves.

So if a mental state is a task performed to achieve a goal, our question about AI minds turns on whether they have their own goals.

Are agentic AI systems really agents?

It is now common to refer to certain AI systems as “agents”. Yet this language is misleading. It implies the AI systems have agency, or the capacity to act towards their own goals.

Humans use devices to achieve their aims, including their aims to refer to things, without those devices becoming agents in their own right. A thermostat regulates the temperature, but it does not have the goal of regulating the temperature. A book contains words that refer to things – but again, the book does not have the goal of referring to things.

To attribute agency to a computer program, we must be convinced that no human is required to stand behind its goals. Its goal-directedness must be independent.

We know that agentic AIs, when given a task, can develop complex and unexpected sub-goals on the way to achieving it. Yet the goals that ultimately drive their activity are set by the humans who program and instruct them. Any sub-goals generated by an AI are literally meaningless outside of these aims set by humans.

Think of a game like football. A person might have the sub-goal of running past a defender, but it is literally meaningless without the larger goal of trying to score. And scoring a goal itself is simply making a ball cross a line without the larger goal of playing football. Without the larger goal, anything a player does on the field is merely activity.

Why do agents have goals?

A genuine agent has goals in order to promote things they care about – for example, you want to satisfy your hunger at lunchtime, so you go to a bakery and buy a sandwich.

Agentic AI is unlikely to care about things in an independent way, because its activity is not connected to life in the same way minds are.

What distinctively allows living beings to generate their own goals is that their mental activity develops out of the processes for constantly re-constituting their own bodies and keeping themselves alive. Goal-driven thinking builds up from simple signals for regulating nutrition and warmth to states like pain and pleasure and eventually to symbolic thought.

Nothing like this is going on in agentic AI. There is a disconnect between its information-processing activities and the physical stuff on which it depends.

Can AI ever be conscious?

Agentic AI systems are not conscious. They don’t have mental states which could be conscious.

Only living beings have conscious mental states because having a mental state requires a being to originate a certain kind of goal – the goal to mean something or to refer to something – and only living beings originate goals.

This argument does not permanently rule out the possibility of AI consciousness. However, it does suggest that this could only arise in some artificial form of life.

Until then, we have more reason to think that an ant is conscious than an agentic AI is. At least an ant seems to care about its own life.

Of course, the fact agentic AIs are not really agents does not stop them from wreaking havoc by carrying out functions that their human originators do not properly supervise or understand. But we should be very clear on this: whatever an agentic AI does, that is a human or group of humans acting indirectly on the world, and those humans are responsible for the outcome.

The author would like to thank Paulo Santos for advice on this article.

Tom Cochrane 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/2026/11/09/do-ai-agents-have-minds-a-philosopher-explains/

Asia Pacific Report

A South African activist representing more than 200,000 shack dwellers has praised New Zealanders for their international solidarity against settler colonialism and appealed for them to “emulate” their 1981 stand against apartheid over Palestine.

S’bu Zikode, co-founder and current leader of Abahlali baseMjondolo, recalled how it had been 15 years since he had been in New Zealand to mark the 20th anniversary of the “great protests against the Springbok rugby tour of 1981”.

Speaking at a public event in Auckland’s Ellen Melville Centre organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network Aotearoa (PSNA) last night, he said he wanted to remember that history and thank all those people of this country who “stood with us against apartheid”.

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“You refused to allow the apartheid state to present itself as a normal member of the international community,” he said.

“This was an outstanding example of international solidarity, and an example that we should seek to emulate in our solidarity with the people of Palestine.”

Zikode is in New Zealand for a week-long tour primarily to speak at a Federation of Socialist Societies event in Dunedin on November 13/14. He also addressed a Palestine solidarity rally in Auckland yesterday and will speak in Hamilton today.

He will visit Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, Kerikeri and Whangarei.

“In our movement we speak of living solidarity. This means solidarity that exists in actions, not just in words,” he said at Ellen Melville, speaking on the theme “South Africa, Palestine and the urgency of solidarity”.

“It means solidarity between people who recognise one another as equals.”

Settler colonialism oppression
Zikode said South Africa and Palestine were both countries that had been oppressed by settler colonialism. This was part of the reason for the long solidarity with Palestine among South Africans.

His words came as global headlines exposed the cruelty of Israel’s breaches of the so-called Gaza genocide “ceasefire” with savage storms and flooding killing five Palestinians living in tents and during local body elections in South Africa where the progressive African National Congress (ANC) has suffered its worst electoral defeats.

Zikode said there were important differences between the two forms of settler colonialism.

“In South Africa, the colonial system was organised around dispossession of Africans from their land, the theft of their cattle and the exploitation of their labour.

“The economy depended on African workers in the mines, on the farms, in the factories and in the homes of white people. The settlers wanted the land , but they also wanted the labour of the people the dispossessed.

“Huge numbers of people were forced from their homes and land as African people were pushed into ‘reserves’, based on the system used to oppress Native Americans, and later into the ‘Bantustans’, the so-called ‘homelands’.

“The Bantustans were not just used to confine African people to tony areas of land. They were also central to the migrant labour system that ensured cheap labour for white capital and white families in their homes.”

Forced to leave families
African workers were forced by economic necessity to leave their families and communities to find work in the mines and cities. Many were compelled to live in single-sex hostels, separated from their families.

“When we look at Palestine today, we recognise many of these methods of oppression. We see a fundamentally racist settler colonial system in which there is ongoing dispossession of people from their land by the Israeli state and settlers,” Zikode said.

“We see homes being demolished. We see communities separated from one another by walls, checkpoints and military restrictions. We see people who stand up against oppression being called ‘terrorists’ and subject to mass imprisonment, torture and murder.

“The struggles against racism and for land are central to the struggle for freedom, both in South Africa and in Palestine. But there are also differences between apartheid in South Africa and oppression in Palestine.

“While Palestinians have been exploited as workers, the fundamental drive of settler colonialism in Israel is to remove or destroy the Palestinian people rather than to exploit them for their labour.”

The Nakba of 1948 had forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, Zikode said.

Many had become refugees in other countries while they and their descendants remained unable to return. The occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 1967 had brought further dispossession, settlement expansion and military rule.

Genocide continues Nakba
The genocide in Gaza — with more than 75,000 Palestinians killed, mostly women and children, in three years of war on the besieged enclave – and the ongoing theft of land in the West Bank had continued the process begun with the Nakba.

“We must also recognise that the Palestinian experience has become more terrible in certain respects than the experience of apartheid South Africa,” Zikode said.

“The scale of the destruction of Gaza, mass displacement and the killing of civilians have horrified people across the world.

“But we must be clear that, within South Africa itself, the apartheid state did not carry out mass killing on the scale that we have witnessed with the genocide in Gaza.

“Recognising this difference does not diminish the suffering of South Africans under apartheid.”

He acknowledged that the Palestinian people had not yet won their freedom .

“There must also be a single free and democratic country with equal rights for all and one person, one vote in historic Palestine – ‘from the river to the sea’.”

Warning against betrayal
Zikode warned also against sabotage of the path to freedom.

“In South Africa, we have been betrayed by the ANC who have enriched themselves, repressed popular movements and struggles, and left a devastated country with mass impoverishment, mass hunger, and mass unemployment – including more than 60 percent youth.”

Question time was lively with queries about solidarity organising, the global drift to the far right and fascism, stronger solidarity with Palestine, and why had South Africa requested more time for its genocide lawsuit against Israel in the International Court of Justice.

“We were proud when South African lawyers stood before the [ICC] court in The Hague and presented the case that Israel’s actions in Gaza violated the Genocide Convention.”

Zikode said this was an important act of international solidarity but South Africa was “paying a price” for the lawsuit and subjected to severe diplomatic pressure and threats from the United States. He also criticised the fact that South Africa had continued to “sell coal to Israel” and ANC-aligned trade unions had not blocked ships heading to Israel.

One young woman in the audience asked what worldwide protesters over the Israeli genocide should do when governments were failing to take action: “I am only 24, and already I am tired.”

Zikode replied it was important to not act alone, and to join others in solidarity and keep their spirits up.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/09/emulate-1981-springbok-tour-solidarity-over-palestine-plea-by-south-african-activist/

The first marvel is the light.

There are so many published images of the new Powerhouse museum’s steel exoskeleton that it is hardly a surprise when two dazzling white structures like giant milk crates suddenly emerge from the depressing jumble of modern office buildings that characterise modern Parramatta.

But the light inside the building is something else, as glass walls invite the sky outside to come in.

An exhibit you can paddle in

Daylight is a key element in Overflow, one of the museum’s five opening exhibitions.

In a large open space with views to the Parramatta skyline and river below, a giant video screen plays a series of short films by Kamilaroi filmmaker Ivan Sen, showing seven different First Nations communities in New South Wales caring for their saltwater and freshwater country. Images of riverbanks, lagoons and sandy beaches are reflected in a shallow replica tidal pool in front of the screen.

Contemporary museums pride themselves on interacting with visitors, but this is the first time I have seen a museum encouraging people to wade into an exhibit.

A kids exhibition themed around darkness

According to the ceaseless political campaign against the Parramatta incarnation of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, the original collection has been abandoned in favour of novelty. This is not true. Most of the works in The Dark, an exhibition specifically devised for children, come from the permanent collection.

Darkness here is a friend, not foe. Displays of beautiful minerals and precious stones are captioned with stories of the people who discovered them.

Those of us who are old enough to remember the eccentricities of the original museum in Ultimo can rediscover the pleasures of mechanical birds that sing with a pressed button, and the transparent woman whose body parts light up on command.

Another display features precious personal items lent by local children. Curatorship becomes community engagement.

A tribute to the shopping mall

The Powerhouse’s permanent collection also underpins The Mall, a celebration of the products, design and community life of the shopping mall.

There are arcade window displays and a re-imagined version of the beloved Raindrop Fountain inside Roselands shopping centre. Objects on display include an old-fashioned photobooth, antique cash registers and the original “Parramall” neon sign.

The David Jones archive, now a part of the Powerhouse collection and on display in the exhibition, includes mid-20th century advertising posters and photographs of window displays. It’s a window into a time when DJs was the epitome of style.

A commissioned series of portraits by photographers Jo Duck and Bahram Mia captures those who shop, socialise and work in today’s malls.

An ode to flight and space exploration

The largest and most hyped exhibition is Task Eternal, an exploration of flight – from a Burramattagal bumarang (boomerang) on loan from the British Museum to machines enabling exploitation of the moon.

The commissioned artworks include an immersive installation by American light artist James Turrell. The specially designed room evokes the disorienting Ganzfeld effect through an intense field of changing coloured light.

The curators, working with Chinese design firm OPEN Architecture, have created a nuanced investigation of wonder.

Leonardo da Vinci’s surprisingly fresh sketches of imagined flight sit alongside the Powerhouse’s collection of drawings and models by Australian aviation pioneer Lawrence Hargrave, who helped shape the 20th century’s achievement of an ancient fantasy.

There is an Apollo space capsule, aeroplanes and rockets, copies of messages sent with the Voyager craft on its endless journey into deep space, space suits – and space junk.

One of the most compelling exhibits is a digital display of the pollution now destroying the night skies, showing how this vandalism has taken less than a lifetime to “achieve”.

Es Devlin: The Turning

The fifth exhibition, The Turning, showcases recent works by British artist and designer Es Devlin, whose practice spans stage design, sculpture and installations, arena concerts by the likes of U2 and Lady Gaga, and large-scale events including the opening ceremony of the London Olympics.

The Turning opens with the Forest of Us, a meditation on organic symmetry. Visitors enter by walking past the sentence: “Every time I reach a fork in the road, I take both paths”.

These words lead visitors to a short, poetic film on the nature of organic symmetry. At the end of the film a door appears in the middle of the screen and the viewer walks into a giant mirror maze, beautiful and disorienting.

Memory Palace, a 3D-printed imaginary city composed of key sites throughout history, cites American cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

In audio narration, Devlin lists places including the bus stop where Rosa Parks waited, the stadium stage where Martin Luther King spoke, the town hall steps where Greta Thunberg sat and the Block at Redfern, a key site of Australian First Nations activism.

In the next room, people are invited to sit at a long table for 15 minutes and draw a stranger opposite them, looking in their eyes without speaking. This work, titled Collective Portrait, is an actualisation of Devlin’s belief that the act of recording is a reminder that we are all part of a living universe.

On the lawn outside the Powerhouse, Devlin’s drawings of 244 endangered local species have been collaged into an egg-shaped stage. This forms the backdrop for Devlin’s performance work Come Home Again (first staged in London), featuring choral tributes to vulnerable species. The work will be performed at dusk from Thursday to Sunday during November, as part of the Powerhouse’s opening festival.

By any measure, Parramatta is lucky to be able to experience in depth the work of such a major art star.

Supercharging the community

“Powerhouse” has become a popular name for arts centres. Usually they are repurposed industrial buildings, made redundant by technological change. This Powerhouse is named in honour of its history and also, I suspect, in hopes of the impact it will have on both its surrounding suburbs and the wider community.

So far, so good.

Powerhouse Parramatta is open 10am-5pm daily, and until 9pm Thursday-Sunday during November as part of its opening festival. Entry is free.

Joanna Mendelssohn has in the past received funding from the Australian Research Council.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/09/powerhouse-parramatta-a-museum-of-science-design-and-technology-supercharged-by-spectacular-art/

When sandpaper comes to mind, it usually relates to a weekend trip to a suburban hardware store. Yet, the Australian men’s cricket team has somehow turned this humble home maintenance staple into a symbol of scandal.

In a 2018 Test series against South Africa, captain Steve Smith and fellow batters David Warner and Cameron Bancroft were exposed for conspiring to tamper with the ball (using sandpaper to create an aerodynamic imbalance) during the third match in Cape Town.

This so-called “Sandpapergate” led to a media storm and widespread condemnation, including by Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The three players were suspended and fined.

The scandal was widely revisited in the sport media when the team returned to Cape Town in October during the Test series in South Africa.

Now, a decade later, the scandal is back in the spotlight after retired batter Usman Khawaja, who was on the 2018 tour, began promoting his soon-to-be published autobiography, Sabr.

What did Khawaja reveal?

The most telling revelation from Khawaja was that Sandpapergate was not a rogue enterprise involving just three players – he said in a media interview: “it was all of us. Not the batters, not the bowlers, not the staff. All of us.”

The official Cricket Australia (CA) line that it was a one-off infraction by a fraction of the team, is therefore cast into serious doubt.

But the governing body recently insisted: “all relevant information presented to CA to date has been properly considered and we remain comfortable with the findings of our integrity process.”

Khawaja claims he unsuccessfully urged the whole dressing room at the time to take collective responsibility, but it was just “those three guys [who] got crucified”.

He also stated sandpaper had been used on the ball by Australia in the previous Test match in Port Elizabeth/Gqeberha.

The changing narrative

Sandpapergate never entirely passed into history, with continuing scepticism that the hasty investigation and determination by CA was designed to cauterise the wound rather than explain how the disease had spread.

The four leading Australian bowlers on that tour released a statement in 2021 responding to a media interview with Bancroft implying others were in the know.

Current captain Pat Cummins, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Nathan Lyon declared: “we did not know a foreign substance was taken onto the field to alter the condition of the ball”, pleading for “an end to the rumour-mongering and innuendo. It has gone on too long and it is time to move on”.

Khawaja’s incendiary comments and dedicated Sandpapergate chapter in his book contradicts that narrative. It vividly reveals the scandal has not gone away, and his insider account cannot be dismissed as mere uninformed speculation.

What is ball tampering?

Roughening one side of the ball to gain “reverse swing” is against the laws and spirit of cricket.

Read more:
How cricket balls move: the science behind swing, seam and spin

But it is widely believed ball tampering is as old as cricket itself, and that an “arms race” earlier this century involved all Test match nations. Most international teams, including South Africa, England and India have found themselves in the ball tampering dock.

Still, some wicked pleasure was taken in the humiliation of an Australian men’s team described in two commissioned, independent post-Sandpapergate reports as having an “arrogant” and “controlling” culture.

Why this is hugely harmful to cricket

Those who care little for sport will wonder what all the fuss is about, as there are many more important outrages in the world than some elite sportsmen bending the rules. But it must be appreciated that sport is suffused with Olympian myths of honourable competition and respect for opponents and the game itself.

Test cricket, in particular, remains as something of a bulwark against the large-scale commercialisation of sport, including its own “fast food” forms like Twenty20.

Read more:
Game changers: how a rainy week led a frustrated Don Bradman to reinvent cricket

It provides nostalgic glimpses of a gentlemanly antiquated world represented by its apologists as enlightened and benign.

When twinned with nationalism and masculinity, cricket is lavishly celebrated by the likes of long-serving Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who in 1997 declared:

All my life I really have regarded being captain of the Australian cricket team as the absolute pinnacle of sporting achievement and really, the pinnacle almost of human achievement in Australia.

That brand of cricketing romanticism is always ripe for a fall from grace.

What happens now?

So, what will result from this latest episode of the Sandpapergate melodrama?

Cricket Australia will be pressured to reopen the case. Captain Cummins, his fellow bowlers, and the rest of the 2018 tour party are now under renewed suspicion.

The “Sandpapergate three” may feel empowered, even compelled to tell their stories.

Khawaja can expect strained relations with some former colleagues as he promotes a book suggesting they committed the original sporting sin: failing to back up your mates.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/09/did-australias-cricket-leaders-sandpaper-over-the-truth-new-ball-tampering-revelations-suggest-so/

Jared Diamond is back. Since Guns, Germs and Steel and Collapse were published a generation ago, Diamond has been synonymous with sweeping explanations for complex historical problems.

His latest book, Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter? tackles another ambitious question: when do leaders make a difference?

Diamond assembles examples from politics, business, sport and religion. The result is an accessible, highly readable book.

Review: Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings: (When) Do Leaders Matter? – Jared Diamond (Penguin Books)

The book is strongest when it explores leadership as a relationship between individuals and circumstances. Diamond avoids the extremes of either “great man” theory (about history being shaped by exceptional individuals) or structural determinism (all about systems, with individual talent or effort playing a lesser role).

Instead, he argues a middle position: leaders do matter, but only under particular conditions.

Another key attraction in this book is its range. Beyond obvious figures, such as British wartime leader Winston Churchill, Diamond introduces readers to an eclectic cast of world leaders.

The Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s ability to weave different examples into a compelling narrative remains one of his greatest strengths.

Historians like me may have some quibbles with Diamond’s approach. But this book is not written for them. Instead, it’s designed to encourage further exploration about history and society – and on that front, it succeeds.

The problem with Diamond’s ‘Hamlet test’

Diamond’s central device is what he calls the “Hamlet test”. Would the same outcome have occurred if a particular leader had never existed? Or, could anyone else in Elizabethan England have written Hamlet?

This is a form of counterfactual history: asking what might have happened under different circumstances.

Counterfactual history isn’t new. Historians have debated its usefulness for decades, with most very cautious of this approach.

While a conventional history can be checked against the evidence, counterfactual histories are impossible to verify. They can be entertaining thought experiments, but historical circumstances contain far too many dependencies to predict the outcome with any real meaning.

The book’s second major weakness is its choice of case studies. Although Diamond successfully highlights several neglected figures, those selected are almost always interesting or unusual. This makes for engaging reading – but it also introduces sample bias.

If we only study exceptional leaders, we should hardly be surprised when they appear to have influenced history. Everyday, mediocre and unremarkable leaders can often tell us most about whether (and when) leadership actually matters.

Who counts as a leader?

Diamond’s comparison across politics, religion, business and sport initially seem refreshingly interdisciplinary. However, the book largely treats leadership as a single phenomenon, rather than an industry-specific occupation.

The skills required to manage a multinational corporation differ from those needed to lead a religious movement, govern a nation state, or coach a winning basketball team. Leaders emerge through industry pipelines, succeed according to different criteria and face different constraints.

A religious leader is typically a member of their faith. A chief executive usually spends decades developing industry expertise. A coach usually played their sport.

Success for each is measured in a different way.

This becomes important when Diamond draws on “natural experiments” – studies where two groups are exposed to experimental and control conditions by external factors – to supplement his counterfactual biographies.

Natural experiments are extremely useful when a clearly defined intervention affects one group, but not another. While the studies drawn on by Diamond meet these criteria, their findings are less convincing when applied to the general question of: “do leaders matter?”.

Diamond’s central concept of “making a difference” is vague. His book is an assemblage of circumstances in which leaders are seen to matter if they had an outcome – any outcome – on the course of history.

Moving from the impact of a distracted CEO on earnings, to an inbred monarch on territory expansion, to the chances of winning the big game after firing your basketball coach, requires comparability that the book never really establishes.

The missing gender story

This book pays remarkably little attention to gender.

By studying leadership domains historically dominated by men – “prophets, coaches and kings” – Diamond inevitably presents men as default leaders.

Some women do appear, including former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and American conservationist Rachel Carson, who wrote the influential book Silent Spring. But they do so as exceptional participants, not natural occupants of leadership.

Botswana’s founding president Seretse Khama’s story, while captivating, illustrates this problem.

As a man, Khama inherited the throne of his clan. During his presidency, from 1966 to 1980, the discovery of diamonds on his clan’s land helped fund Botswana’s national development, rather than let the country descend into civil war.

Yet his impact on Botswana cannot be separated from the gendered institutions that gave him access to power.

More broadly, many leadership characteristics Diamond identifies are implicitly gendered.

For instance, Diamond argues “charisma”, or the ability to command others, is necessary for impact.

Men and women are socialised to behave differently – and often evaluated according to their gender. A man who displays “charisma” may be considered a “strong” leader. A woman who does the same can be regarded as “bossy”.

The question of when leaders matter is therefore impossible to separate from questions of who gets to be a leader in the first place.

Provocative and hard to put down

Profits, Prophets, Coaches and Kings is unlikely to settle scholarly debates about leadership.

Yet Diamond’s greatest strengths are in tackling an enormous question, assembling evidence from a variety of fields, and offering an elegant and accessible explanation.

Like Guns, Germs and Steel, this book is ambitious, provocative and flawed. It’s also difficult to put down.

Claire 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/2026/11/08/why-jared-diamonds-leadership-book-on-prophets-coaches-and-kings-is-flawed-but-fun/

Tech billionaire Elon Musk was up in arms about the recent adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey by director Christopher Nolan, which he heavily criticised for its diverse casting and accused of lacking historical accuracy. Claiming he wanted to show that artificial intelligence could bypass traditional Hollywood studios and deliver a story “historically accurate and true to the art of Homer” at a fraction of the cost, he set his AI Grok Imagine to the task.

On October 23, the platform posted the first seven minutes.

As archaeologists and art historians, we’re not here to review the film for its artistic quality or even its historic accuracy. Instead, we’re here to point out the real problem with the whole endeavour: the promise of historical accuracy failed before the first frame was even rendered.

Contrary to what many of you might assume, as historians we think Musk’s underlying idea – bringing together everything archaeology and history have to offer and using AI as a tool to explore and work with that knowledge – is a genuinely exciting one. We see considerable potential in that approach: a system spanning excavation reports and object databases might reveal patterns no single scholar can hold in mind, such as how ceramic styles spread. The problem is turning that into a film that claims to be historically accurate.

Any attempt to produce a complete, coherent visual narrative would inevitably require AI to go beyond the evidence and invent what we do not know.

Incomplete images

Archaeology is inevitably working with a fragmentary record: only a tiny proportion of the past survives in the ground, and only a fraction of that is ever excavated. For instance, open the boxes in the Troy depot and you’ll find spindle whorls and loom weights; however, you won’t find the cloth they made. Everyone at Troy wore textiles but the textiles are gone.

So, like the textiles, everything that cannot be recovered directly from the archaeological record has to be interpreted and explained through hypotheses, however well-founded they may be scientifically. There will always be gaps, uncertainties and competing interpretations.

AI, by design, would inevitably fill these gaps.

Suppose Grok Imagine was given everything the Troy Project holds: a century and a half of excavation, thousands of plans, pottery drawings and photographs, plus the small-finds catalogue. It would generate connections, details and entire scenarios where the historical and archaeological evidence offers no firm answers.

Generative AI is built to produce complete images, even when there are visible gaps. These gaps are often filled with influence from other existing media like film sets, games, paintings.

This is precisely where the problem lies: additions by AI may be plausible, even convincing. Some sceptical reviewers concede that some of those seven minutes pass for real. But convincing is not accurate, and the space between the two is where archaeology lives.

The Odyssey is also an interesting target for accuracy. It’s a poor witness to the past: shaped centuries after the palaces its about fell, it is a palimpsest of Mycenaean memory and iron age worldview – not a snapshot. Odysseus, Helen and Circe are not people archaeology could confirm. However, there is a lot of creative media about the world these characters are believed to have inhabited.

Back to those textiles. A model trained on that record would inherit our ignorance along with our knowledge. It will hallucinate or imagine because it must paint every pixel. It will draw on all the evidence, media and more connected to the themes and history to render a finished cloak, dyed and draped. This rendering will look like a convincingly accurate garment where the honest research answer is “fibre known, colour unknown”.

What survives is not what happened

None of this makes AI useless. A system spanning excavation reports and object databases might reveal patterns no single scholar could see – such as how ceramic styles spread. But every such pattern would first be a pattern in the record, not a picture of the past.

A genuinely archaeological AI would do what generative AI rarely does: show its uncertainty as clearly as its confidence. Take armour. Only fragments survive at Troy. Where evidence permits several reconstructions, it would show several rather than present one confident, definitive option. Where only fragments survive, it would show only the fragments. And where the evidence runs out, it would say so, clearly marking what is documented, what is inferred and what is merely plausible.

This approach to rendering possibilities is close to what the London Charter (2009) and the Seville Principles (2011), two international guidelines for virtual reconstructions of heritage, have long demanded: transparency rather than smoothing.

Which world gets reconstructed is also a choice. Troy spans phases centuries apart, and Mycenaean palaces differed from Hittite cities: there is no single “bronze age”. The record can support a conflict at Troy; it cannot establish Homer’s Trojan war as one event. However, an AI model picks one Troy and never mentions the choice.

The film will likely be forgotten within a news cycle or two; what remains is the method. The most accurate Odyssey would not be the most definitive or confident one; it would end where we began: on the boxes of whorls and weights, and the empty space where the cloth should be.

Historical accuracy does not mean filling every gap. It means showing where the gaps are.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/06/ai-wont-ever-make-a-historically-accurate-film-but-it-could-help-archaeology-create-better-stories/

As an avid tennis player, I never imagined an injury would lead me to discover a new sport. But just a few months ago, forced to take a break from tennis, I picked up a padel racket for the first time. I assumed that years of playing tennis would give me a head start; after all, how different could two racket sports really be? To my surprise, the answer was “very.”

Padel, which originated in Mexico in the late 1960s, is an enclosed-court racket sport typically played in doubles. Combining elements of squash and tennis, it uses solid, stringless bats, lower-compression balls and glass or mesh walls off which the ball can rebound. While it has long been a sporting obsession in Spain and Latin America, its explosive global growth has recently made it the fastest-growing racket sport worldwide.

While tennis and padel share many technical similarities, they require somewhat different ways of thinking. I soon discovered that some of my tennis instincts were actually holding me back. Hitting harder wasn’t always the answer. Attacking too early often left me exposed, while patience, positioning, and anticipating my opponents’ next move proved far more valuable than a powerful shot.

Read more:
How padel disrupted the genteel world of lawn tennis

That experience made me curious about something beyond court technique. As a researcher in strategic management, I focus on how people and organisations navigate uncertainty, allocate limited resources and make decisions to gain a competitive advantage. I quickly began to recognise these exact same challenges on the padel court.

What if, I wondered, the secret to becoming a better padel player isn’t simply learning to hit the ball better, but learning to think more strategically? Here are four ways thinking like a strategist can help you level up your padel game:

1. Consider yourself a resource orchestrator, not a player

According to resource orchestration theory, which emphasises how managers organise, combine and deploy resources to create value, success depends not simply on the resources you possess, but on how effectively you orchestrate them.

We can apply this directly to padel. For example, if your partner has an exceptional volley, try to create opportunities for them to use it. Before starting a match, discuss your individual strengths with your partner and plan how best to combine them. In fact, what you initially view as a resource constraint can often be turned to your advantage.

2. Train your attention, not just your shots

In both business and padel, your strategic mindset starts with where you focus your attention. The real power of training your attention is cumulative. During each game, choose one specific aspect to focus on closely: whether that is your opponents’ bandeja (a defensive overhead shot) or their footwork and movement.

After several games, your observations will accumulate into strategic insight. This accumulated knowledge allows you to anticipate your opponents’ moves rather than simply react to them.

3. Play the opponent in front of you, not the one in your head

To increase your odds of winning, try to reflect on and challenge your assumptions about your opponents and how you judge their moves on the padel court.

We often rely on first impressions about competitors, which can distort our judgement and affect our play and decisions. Instead, view your assumptions as hypotheses to be tested based on your opponents’ next shots, rather than as concrete truth.

4. Thinking backwards can lead you further forward

Instead of trying to assume your opponents’ next move, practice backward reasoning.

Imagine a situation where your opponents are dominating the net. Try not to assume their next move, but to influence the choices they make next.

To develop a strategic mindset and improve your padel practice, define your desired outcome and work backwards, identifying the decisions that will help you achieve it. Strategic management means that, rather than simply reacting to your opponents’ next moves, you actively consider how your own actions can influence their next shot.

To play strategically, stop asking yourself “Where should I hit the ball next?” and start asking “What position do I want to be in two shots from now, and how can my next shot help me get there?” By thinking backward from the outcome you want to create, you transition from reactive play to tactical planning.

For instance, if your opponents are dominating the net, your immediate goal isn’t to hit an instant winner, but to force them out of their attacking position. Hitting a soft drop or deep lob buys you time, surrenders their net advantage and sets up a favourable position to control the point on your next turn.

To become a better player in padel, tennis, or any racket sport, the smartest way to win a point is often to out-think rather than out-play your opponent. Next time you’re on the court, remember that your strategic mindset is a skill you can train – just like your forehand, volley, or bandeja.

Veselina Stoyanova 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/2026/11/06/four-ways-thinking-like-a-strategist-can-make-you-a-better-padel-player/

During four days on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, I saw an Olympic marmot, a species found nowhere else on Earth; four bumblebee species working the same lavender plant; three western hermit crab species new to me; and five orcas slicing through the dark water off Ediz Hook. Any one of them could have been the trip’s highlight.

Yet the encounter I cannot stop talking about occurred at low tide at Tongue Point, when I heard a barnacle.

While I had seen thousands of barnacles, I had never imagined I could hear one. It made a noise that sounded like: Clickety-clack. Clickety-clack. Pop.

As a professor who teaches about animal behavior, I know that the distinction between encountering an animal and actually noticing what it is doing is one of the simplest ways into natural history. It requires no laboratory and, at first, no special expertise.

Mostly it requires learning how to let something ordinary become interesting again.

At low tide

My habit in places like a rocky shore is to become still and let my vision soften. Instead of staring at one point, I allow movement anywhere in the visual field to pull my attention.

At Tongue Point, I was thinking about the demands of life in the intertidal zone, the shore between high and low tide: temperature swings, desiccation and the cost of remaining clamped shut in open air. Then I noticed the soundscape.

At first, the clicking was just coastal noise. I attributed it to small shore crabs moving among the mussels, or hermit crab shells knocking against them. Then one sharp pop pulled my attention to a single acorn barnacle. Its tiny opening was slightly unsealed, and two small plates were moving against its deeply ridged shell. The movement appeared to coincide with another pop. Then another.

The repetition gave me something to follow. You can train yourself to do this almost anywhere.

When I take students or my sons to watch honeybees, I tell them not to stare directly at the hive entrance. Instead, sit nearby, look toward the open sky, and relax your gaze. At first you see empty air. Then a bee crosses it. Then another. Within moments the emptiness becomes a busy airport of arrivals and departures.

Nothing new has entered the scene. You have just changed what you are capable of noticing.

A web of assumptions

Observation has its own traps. Sometimes you can miss behavior because it blends into the background. Other times you see something perfectly but stop asking questions because somebody has already told you what it means.

Orb-weaver spiders offer a good example. Some add conspicuous bands or patches of dense silk to their webs. These structures are called stabilimenta, a name inherited from the old idea that they stabilize or strengthen the web. But they don’t.

Researchers later found evidence for several possible functions: attracting prey, deterring or confusing predators, protecting webs from larger animals, and, in some cases, helping with temperature regulation. Different functions may matter in different species, environments or stages of life.

I first became interested in the debate over stabilimentum function because I was unconvinced that one explanation could account for all the evidence. I started out asking whether somebody was wrong. The better question turned out to be why researchers expected one universal answer in the first place.

That remains one of my favorite lessons from animal behavior: A name can be useful, but it can also sneak in an explanation. Once you think you know what something is, you become less likely to watch what it actually does.

Seeing isn’t knowing

The opposite mistake is just as easy: seeing something interesting and immediately deciding you understand it.

After I returned from the Olympic Peninsula, I emailed a retired marine invertebrate zoologist and described what I had seen and heard. His response was delighted and appropriately skeptical: “Doubt it. Take a short video next time.”

I saw an open barnacle move and heard a pop at the same time. That is an observation. I did not demonstrate that the barnacle produced the sound. A mussel bed contains crabs, moving shells and a host of other possible sources. A close-up video with synchronized audio could test whether the same visible movement repeatedly coincided with each pop.

Noticing something is the start of science. It does not let you skip the work that follows.

Look again

For anyone who wants to become a better naturalist, a simple sequence helps:

• Notice something.
• Describe it carefully.
• Ask what else could explain it.
• Decide what evidence would distinguish among those possibilities.

Try it somewhere familiar: a backyard, city park, pond edge, patch of flowers or shoreline. Stay longer than feels necessary. Let the sights and sounds become background.

Then look for repetition. One movement, then another like it. One sound that separates from the rest. An animal returning to the same place.

And once something catches your attention, resist the urge to explain it too quickly. Watch again. You may discover something genuinely unusual. More likely, you will discover something ordinary that you had never actually seen before.

I may not have witnessed rare behavior at Tongue Point or identified a rare species. But I stayed long enough to wonder what I was hearing. Maybe that was rare enough.

Phil Starks 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/2026/11/06/i-heard-a-barnacle-how-paying-attention-to-natures-background-noise-can-reveal-animal-secrets/

At a recent T-ball game, I was talking with another father who mentioned that his son had never played before. As we watched our children falling over trying to scoop up a ground ball, we laughed about how they were still figuring everything out. There was something refreshing about seeing kids learn a game without worrying about how well they were playing.

That moment stayed with me. I’ve spent years as an athletic trainer in collegiate and professional sports, helping athletes stay healthy, handle the demands of competition and perform at their best. Today, I’m a clinical associate professor of kinesiology and chief health and performance adviser for an NCAA Division I athletics program. Given my work, you might expect me to take an active role in developing my own children’s athletic abilities, especially in a youth sports culture where early specialization and greater commitment are often seen as advantages.

And I understand the appeal. Like any parent, I want my children to have opportunities, and it’s easy to wonder whether another practice or lesson might help them get ahead. But with twins who are nearly 6, I’m more interested in whether they enjoy sports than how good they become at them.

As they get older, particularly if they want to pursue sports seriously, my role as a parent will change. Right now, I can step back and let them explore. But as training and competition become more demanding, I’ll want to become more involved in understanding and questioning those demands. Research on training, recovery and athletic development can help parents navigate what’s appropriate as their children’s sports experiences intensify.

Knowing when to step back

When I’m watching my children play, I’d rather be their dad than their performance coach. When they ask to practice hitting or throwing, I’m happy to help. They usually decide when we’re done. Twenty minutes? Great. Five minutes? That’s fine too.

Practice matters, but giving children some control over when and how they practice can help keep it from becoming another obligation.

Research involving more than 9,000 young athletes found that children tend to be more motivated to participate in sports when parents support their ability to make decisions about their participation.

As children get older, their goals may change. Some will want to compete at higher levels or focus on a particular sport. Those ambitions deserve support, but giving children a voice doesn’t mean parents should step away from important decisions. As commitments grow, parents may need to ask more questions about training schedules, recovery time and the expectations placed on their children.

More isn’t always better

I’ve heard parents describe traveling hours for youth sports tournaments, only to discover that many of the teams competing came from the same communities they had traveled from. One parent recalled driving to Houston for a tournament where six of the eight teams were from the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

I understand how families end up in these situations. An extra practice, private lessons or joining a more competitive team can each seem reasonable. Over time, those commitments become expectations, and saying no isn’t always easy when your child is part of a team.

But more training doesn’t automatically produce better athletes. My experience in sports medicine and performance has taught me that improvement depends on how athletes respond to training, not simply how much they do. Training places demands on the body, and athletes need time to adapt.

The American Academy of Pediatrics cautions that excessive training and early specialization are associated with increased overuse injury risk and may contribute to burnout. Risk depends on training volume, recovery and individual development, particularly during adolescence.

As training demands increase, parents should pay attention to how their children are responding, not just whether they’re experiencing pain. Persistent fatigue, declining performance, changes in sleep or a loss of enthusiasm may suggest that recovery isn’t keeping pace with training. Even an athlete who loves their sport can reach a point where the demands become too much. These are reasons for a parent to discuss the workload with their child and coaches, while persistent or worsening pain warrants medical evaluation.

Athletic development also benefits from variety. Running, climbing, jumping and exploring different activities can help develop coordination and a range of movement skills. The International Olympic Committee recommends varied physical activity and developmentally appropriate training, including for children who may eventually specialize.

Just as important is whether young athletes want to keep playing. Children who enjoy sports are more likely to want to continue participating, research shows. When young soccer players were asked what made sports fun, they identified working hard, improving and spending time with teammates. Even the best training program won’t accomplish much if an athlete no longer wants to participate.

Leaving the game at the field

In collegiate and professional sports, reviewing performance is routine. After competition, staff identify what worked, what didn’t and what needs attention. But children don’t need a performance review every time they climb into the car.

I let my children start conversations about their games. If they want to talk about a missed ball, something funny or something that upset them, I’ll listen. If they want to talk about something else, that’s fine too.

Researchers who recorded parent-child car rides around sporting events found that much of the time passed in silence and sports came up relatively infrequently. They also observed occasions when parents interrupted or provided feedback before children could respond. The findings don’t establish one right way to handle the drive home, but they offer parents a reason to consider whether their children want feedback in the first place.

No parent knows whether their child will become a competitive athlete, play recreationally or eventually find interests outside organized sports. I’m comfortable leaving that future open for my children. As a father, I’m far more interested in whether my kids will want to play again next week than how well they played today.

Adam Annaccone 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/2026/11/06/im-an-athletic-trainer-heres-how-to-know-when-kids-sports-are-too-intense/

SPECIAL REPORT: By Abdel Qader Sabbah in Gaza City

Al-Abd Abu Beid set a box of food rations down on a pile of stones he uses as a makeshift table outside his ramshackle tent on the coastline west of Gaza City.

The cardboard box displayed the blue logo of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), along with a stamp showing it had been packed on July 11, 2026.

Abu Beid sifted through the contents: a plastic bottle of sunflower oil, a bag of red split lentils, and eight cans of hummus or white beans.

• READ MORE: PSNA ‘outraged’ over NZ suspension of UNRWA aid, calls for immediate restored funding
• Other Gaza genocide reports

“We have no income at all,” Abu Beid told Drop Site News. “We depend heavily on the brown boxes from the World Food Programme.

“We were actually hoping they would improve the contents of these boxes, because they contain rice, lentils, and the same things over and over again,” he continued. “Instead, we were shocked to hear that they’re going to cut it off.”

Abu Beid spoke to Drop Site on October 20 — one day after the WFP announced it was reducing food aid in Gaza by around one-third, cutting off access to half a million Palestinians from critical food assistance due to funding shortages.

The cuts also reduce food rations by half — with families receiving only one food parcel a month instead of two — and a smaller bag of wheat flour. In addition, WFP cut the number of daily hot meals it provides from 250,000 to 150,000.

Yellow line control
Meanwhile, families living in the most hard-to-reach areas of Gaza, including near the yellow line of Israeli military control, will now receive a hot meal every other day instead of daily. The value of cash assistance provided to 75,000 families would also be reduced, the UN agency said.

“What is a family supposed to do? I have seven people in my family. How am I supposed to feed them? Even if the food was repetitive, just rice and lentils, I have no income, so I relied on it to cook for my children,” Abu Beid said.

“This is a humanitarian crime. People are being killed and slaughtered every day, and now you’re cutting off their food too. This is catastrophic.”

The WFP announcement came a little over a year after the “ceasefire” agreement that was supposed to bring an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza and restore the delivery of food, fuel, medicine, and other life essentials to what experts say are the minimum required levels.

Instead, the Israeli military has continued its attacks, killing more than1500 men, women and children while severely restricting the amount of aid allowed into Gaza in violation of the agreement.

In October alone, Israel killed 143 Palestinians in direct attacks, according to the Health Ministry, including 23 children, and injured more than 670.

The unrelenting Israeli assault prompted a UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry to conclude last month that Israel is continuing to “commit genocidal acts even after the so-called ceasefire agreement, with the intent to destroy the Palestinian people, in whole or in part”.

Hunger levels growing
With the genocide now its fourth year, levels of hunger and malnutrition are once again growing. In the same announcement that it was heavily reducing food assistance to Gaza, the WFP said that an estimated 1.4 million Palestinians, or 67 percent of Gaza’s population, are experiencing acute food insecurity at “crisis levels or worse”.

Some 200,000 people remain in “emergency conditions,” where immediate food assistance is needed to prevent deaths from hunger.

“We depend on these parcels for everything: flour, rice, lentils, paste, chickpeas, and beans. Most of what we eat is beans, rice, and lentils. We use the flour to make bread on a metal griddle over a fire,” Linda Abu Warda told Drop Site. She sat stirring a blackened pot filled with a rice stew as her husband, Fares, fed small pieces of wood into the fire beneath it — a thin metal box serving as a makeshift stove.

“Now they’re saying the aid has stopped, or that it’s going to stop. We’re already barely managing to get by with what little we have. Imagine what will happen if they cut it off completely. I have children, as you can see. They’ll die of hunger.”

She added, “We’ve already lived through famine. We’ve experienced it. We were hoping they’d increase the amount of aid we receive, not reduce it.”

In mid-2025, Gaza was plunged into a full-blown famine, with Palestinians collapsing in the streets and men, women, and children dying from hunger and malnutrition on a daily basis. An Israeli starvation campaign that included a full blockade in March 2025 was followed by a privatised “aid distribution” system overseen by the US and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) that replaced the UN.

With just four distribution sites across the entirety of the enclave, guarded by American mercenaries and located in areas occupied by Israeli soldiers, the GHF sites became death traps for starving Palestinians seeking food. More than 2600 Palestinians were killed at or near GHF distribution sites or at the few UN convoys allowed inside.

‘Risking lives for food’
“We hope they’ll allow this aid to enter officially and legally, instead of forcing us to go back to Zikim like before, when people had to risk their lives just to bring home a bite of food for their children,” Linda’s husband, Fares, said, referring to one of the aid distribution sites in 2025 where hundreds of Palestinians were killed.

“A man would go out and instead of coming home with a bag of flour, he’d come back in a body bag.”

Food prices have soared as a result of food shortages and arbitrary closures of the crossings into Gaza by Israel. In mid-October, Israel suddenly halted all commercial shipments into Gaza. While commercial goods were eventually allowed back in after several days, the brief closure nevertheless sent prices shooting upward.

“The closure of the crossings is what’s driving prices up,” Linda Abu Warda said. “When we want to cook a meal, we can’t even afford a single onion, it’s expensive. Onions cost 30 or 40 shekels a kilo [about $9.5 to $12.75], so we’ve had to do without them…They used to cost four or five shekels [about $1.25 to $1.60].”

She added, “People don’t have the money to buy anything. They’ve raised the prices of sugar, food, cooking oil, and vegetables.”

Other humanitarian groups have also reduced aid distribution to Gaza. In May, World Central Kitchen (WCK), the biggest provider of hot meals in Gaza announced it was cutting its distribution in half, from around one million meals a day to 500,000.

WCK said the decision was “driven entirely by financial pressure,” citing rising food prices as a result of the US-Israeli war with Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz.

Gaza famine ‘not ended’
“The famine has not ended in Gaza,” Ahmed Abu Qamar, a writer and economic affairs researcher in Gaza City, told Drop Site. “Perhaps its severity has eased slightly. When we look back at last summer, the famine was extremely severe. Since the ceasefire agreement last October, Israel has been pursuing a policy of engineered starvation.

“In other words, it may allow people the bare minimum to eat each day, or even less than that, but it does not provide them with what they need to achieve food security and sustain their lives.”

Mohammed Zayed, who lives in the same tent encampment on the sandy shoreline west of Gaza City, used rudimentary tools to try and erect a wall of tarp and blankets around his tent. Wind billowed through the pieces of cloth and tarp hanging from thin metal poles and pieces of wood hammered into the ground and connected by lengths of wire and rope.

“Here on the beach, we suffer terribly in both summer and winter. And now, as winter approaches, we’re trying to prepare because living here is extremely difficult,” Zayed told Drop Site on October 14. “These tents can’t withstand that because they’re worn out and falling apart. They’re three years old now. ”

“We’re extremely, extremely afraid of winter,” he continued. “We try to stitch up tarps and secure the metal poles properly. We’re trying to reduce the impact of the wind, because otherwise it’ll blow everything away.

“It’s extremely difficult for me and for everyone here. People’s tents are worn out, falling apart, collapsing around them. Nobody has the means to replace a tent or change the tarps to prepare for winter.

“All of this is just an illusion,” he said, pointing to the tarps. “All of this will be blown away.”

Vast tent encampment
Zayed’s tent is part of a vast tent encampment on the northern Gaza coastline. Nearly the entirety of Gaza’s population has been forced to displace by Israel’s assault, with many families displaced multiple times.

The majority of Palestinians in Gaza are now living crammed in tent encampments. Dilapidated tents now occupy every open space, with streets, squares, stadiums, courtyards, and fields filled with tent encampments.

The lack of proper shelter has been disastrous and even fatal, particularly in winter with torrential rains, high winds, flooding, and cold temperatures. Over the past three winters, Palestinians — mostly infants — have died of hypothermia in Gaza as a result of exposure, including 11 children last winter alone.

“The humanitarian situation remains catastrophic with the near totality of the population still surviving in deteriorated tents and makeshift shelters, bracing for a fourth winter without adequate protection from the cold, wind, rain and flooding risks,” the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs noted in its latest situation report.

Since the ceasefire, Israel has continued to push inward, expanding the yellow line that demarcates its area of control, driving Palestinians further west onto just 30 percent of the enclave. Israel has also blocked the entry of reconstruction materials, mobile homes, and heavily restricted the number of tents and shelter materials allowed into Gaza in violation of the agreement.

Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Jawa Ahmad contributed to this report for Drop Site News republished by Asia Pacific Report.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/05/this-is-catastrophic-gaza-hit-hard-by-un-food-cuts-and-lack-of-humanitarian-aid/

The Rugby League World Cup (RLWC) reaches its semi-finals this weekend, in a tournament that’s been marked by upsets, nail-biting finishes and some lopsided scorelines.

On Saturday in Newcastle, New Zealand’s Kiwi Ferns face Fetu Samoa in the women’s competition, before the Kiwis take on an unbeaten Tonga. Sunday’s matches in Sydney see Australia’s Jillaroos meet Fiji, while their counterparts the Kangaroos face Samoa in a rematch of the previous RLWC men’s final.

Pacific nations feature in all four semi-finals. But while the teams represent countries across the region, the vast majority of their players were born in Australia or New Zealand.

Our analysis of the semi-final squads found 85% of the women and 95% of the men were born in these two countries. Many have also represented other nations during their international careers.

These figures speak to the tight connections between Pacific countries, Australia and New Zealand – and the opportunities rugby league offers players with ties to more than one nation.

Small populations, big ties

By comparing squad profiles with population data, we can see how migration, family connections and population trends are reflected on the rugby league field.

Population size is no guarantee of success in international rugby league. England and France, with populations of around 59 million and 66 million respectively, have already been eliminated. Yet Tonga, home to just 105,000 people, has reached the men’s semi-finals.

The Cook Islands, with fewer than 15,000 residents, is the smallest country represented at the tournament. Although the Cook Islands is not in the semi-finals, seven players across the remaining squads have previously represented this proud nation, including Kiwi stars Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad and Apii Nicholls.

Generations of migration across Te Moana Nui a Kiwa (the Pacific Ocean) and the Tasman Sea have created deep family ties between these countries.

In the women’s semi-finals, 57% of players were born in Australia and another 28% in New Zealand. Twelve players across the Kiwi Ferns and Samoa squads have previously represented other countries, highlighting the overlapping national ties within Pacific rugby league.

The Australia-Fiji semi-final, meanwhile, presents a different picture. Only one Jillaroos player in the final team list, Tiana Penitani Gray, has previously represented another country (Tonga), while none of Fiji’s players have done so.

Club affiliations show a similar concentration in Australia: 86% of players across the four women’s semi-final squads compete in the National Rugby League Women’s Premiership (NRLW). They are based mostly with Australian clubs, though seven play with New Zealand’s Warriors Women. Fiji is the only team to draw heavily on players from outside the competition.

A younger Pacific

In the men’s semi-finals, 95% of players were born in Australia (50%) or New Zealand (45%). Seventeen players in the NZ-Tonga squads have previously represented another country, while just two players across the four men’s semi-final teams compete outside the National Rugby League (NRL).

The strong presence of NRL and NRLW players also highlights the sporting opportunities available in Australia and New Zealand, and the increasingly diverse populations of both countries.

We see such trends in wider migration patterns. In 2023, Australia and New Zealand recorded net migration gains, while Tonga, Samoa and Fiji experienced net losses.

Another notable demographic trend is the relatively young populations of Pacific nations. As governments around the world prepare for ageing populations and growing demand for services and pensions, the Pacific remains comparatively youthful.

That’s interestingly mirrored in the World Cup squads.

In the women’s competition, New Zealand (median age 27 years) and Australia (26) have considerably older squads than Fiji and Samoa (both 22). The pattern is similar among the men, with New Zealand (29) and Australia (28) fielding older squads than Samoa (26) and Tonga (24).

The differences are even more pronounced in the wider populations. The median ages of New Zealanders (37) and Australians (38) are much higher than those of people in Fiji (28), Tonga (21) and Samoa (20).

Within New Zealand, we can point to a similar pattern. The median age of NZ Europeans is 42, compared with 29 for Fijian New Zealanders, 24 for Samoan New Zealanders and 22 for Tongan New Zealanders.

These younger populations offer what we call a “demographic dividend”: the potential economic benefits as a growing share of the population enters its working and income-earning years.

But these benefits aren’t automatic. Realising them requires investment in young people’s health, education and skills, as well as opportunities to develop their talents and aspirations.

When talent meets opportunity

Many players representing Pacific nations in this weekend’s semi-finals grew up a long way from the islands they now represent. They and their families were drawn to Australia and New Zealand by opportunities in education, employment and sport.

Yet when the chance came, many chose to wear the jersey that reflects their identity, family ties and culture. Their achievements show what’s possible when young people have opportunities to develop their talents.

Building on that momentum means continuing to invest in young people, on and off the field, so the next generation can thrive – wherever they call home.

The authors acknowledge the contribution of Fiu Penjueli, senior statistician, Fiji Bureau of Statistics.

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

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/06/born-in-aussie-or-nz-playing-for-the-pacific-the-startling-demographics-of-the-rugby-league-world-cup/

A recent incident during a Spanish Segunda División match between CD Tenerife and FC Andorra resulted in the tragic death of Tenerife player Jesús de Miguel. Although no official statement has confirmed the cause of his death, some reports suggest it could have been commotio cordis. This is a rare but well-known medical condition that can cause sudden cardiac arrest after a blow to the chest.

Commotio cordis means “agitation of the heart”. It was first described by doctors in the 1850s. In 1932, researchers in Germany identified three factors that help explain how it happens: the type of impact, its speed and where it strikes the chest. A sudden, sharp blow is particularly dangerous.

The heart sits inside the chest, protected by the ribs and the sternum, the flat bone at the front of the chest. Its lower tip points towards the left side of the body.

Unlike other muscles, the heart contains specialised muscle cells that generate their own electrical signals, allowing it to beat without conscious effort. It contracts thousands of times a day to keep blood circulating around the body, adjusting its activity to meet changing demands.

Heart muscle also does not tire in the same way as the muscles we use to walk, run or lift things. It can keep working throughout our lives because it relaxes between beats, giving itself time to recover.

This relaxation depends on a carefully timed electrical process. During part of each heartbeat, the heart’s cells reset their electrical charge so they are ready to contract again. This stage is known as the T-wave and can be seen on an electrocardiogram (ECG), which records the heart’s electrical activity.

During this brief period, the cells are normally less likely to respond to another electrical signal. But a powerful blow to the chest can send energy through the body’s tissues and disturb the electrical activity of the heart.

For commotio cordis to occur, the impact must happen at a very specific moment in the heartbeat. The vulnerable part of the T-wave lasts for roughly 30 milliseconds – just three hundredths of a second. A blow during this tiny window can interfere with the heart’s normal electrical rhythm.

The result can be ventricular fibrillation, one of the most serious heart rhythm disorders. Instead of contracting in a coordinated way to pump blood around the body, the heart’s lower chambers, called the ventricles, begin to quiver chaotically.

Blood can no longer circulate effectively to vital organs, including the brain. This causes cardiac arrest, in which the heart stops pumping blood properly and the person loses consciousness.

Heart appears normal

One unusual feature of commotio cordis is that the heart and surrounding tissues can appear completely normal afterwards. There may be no structural damage to the heart muscle, coronary arteries, ribs or sternum. This distinguishes it from cardiac arrest caused by injuries that physically damage the heart or chest.

The condition is rare but life-threatening. It is most commonly reported in children and teenagers aged four to 18. Most recorded cases involve males, who account for 94% of sporting cases and 93% of non-sporting cases.

Younger people may be more vulnerable because their chest bones and muscles are still developing. Their chest may offer less protection against the force of an impact reaching the heart. Women account for a larger proportion of non-sporting cases, at around 13%.

Football has seen deaths linked to commotio cordis before. A study examining sudden deaths in football worldwide between 2014 and 2018 recorded 617 player deaths. Among players aged 35 and younger who died suddenly while playing, 9% had, or were thought likely to have had, commotio cordis. In 11 cases, the impact came from a football hitting the chest. In three, it came from an opponent’s fist or elbow.

The condition has been reported more frequently in other contact sports. Baseball is often cited as the sport with the highest number of cases. Ice hockey, American football and lacrosse have also recorded more deaths than football.

One of the best-known recent cases involved NFL player Damar Hamlin, who suffered commotio cordis during a televised match. Medical staff responded immediately and saved his life. He returned to playing nine months after his cardiac arrest.

The speed of treatment is crucial to survival. Research suggests that when emergency treatment begins within three minutes, survival is more than 70%. If treatment takes three to five minutes, the chances fall to around 50%. After five minutes, they drop to approximately 25%.

Outside sport, commotio cordis can happen during assaults or road traffic collisions. Survival in these situations depends partly on whether someone nearby recognises what has happened, starts emergency treatment and has access to equipment such as a defibrillator.

Researchers believe commotio cordis deaths are probably underreported. This may be because it can be difficult to distinguish the condition from other causes of cardiac arrest, particularly when nobody witnesses the original impact.

Greater awareness of commotio cordis beyond cardiology, alongside the development of a national registry, is helping researchers understand the condition better. These efforts, combined with faster emergency treatment and improved access to defibrillators, could increase the chances of survival for people who experience it.

Adam Taylor 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/2026/11/05/commotio-cordis-how-a-blow-to-the-chest-can-stop-the-heart/

Africa is a multi-billion dollar market for gambling, with a growing number of young people using smartphones to place bets, particularly on football matches. The issue is often framed in terms of addictive behaviour, but that doesn’t provide a full picture.

Franklin Glozah was part of a team of public health researchers who examined existing research across sub-Saharan Africa, identified gaps and proposed a more comprehensive approach to understanding the crisis. We asked him about this and his other studies.

What are the big trends in gambling?

Gambling has grown rapidly across Africa. Industry estimates suggest that annual betting revenue could increase from US$3.5 billion in 2021 to US$19.4 billion by 2030, with South Africa, Nigeria and Ghana among the largest markets.

Perhaps the biggest change over the past decade is how easy it has become to gamble. You no longer need to walk into a betting shop. With a smartphone, internet access and mobile money, a young person can place a bet almost anywhere, any time.

Sports betting, particularly on football, has become especially prominent. Participation varies across countries. In our study of 770 young people in Ghana, sports betting was the most common form of gambling. More recent surveys suggest that this pattern continues.

A 2026 survey of 2,866 people across Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda found that 64% of respondents in Kenya, 60% in Ghana and 54% in Nigeria reported betting on football in the preceding year. These figures are not nationally representative. The survey also found that, among active bettors surveyed, 95% placed bets using a mobile device and 67% said football was what they bet on most often.

Football’s widespread popularity, regular matches, extensive media coverage and betting promotions may help explain why it attracts so much betting activity.

So, sports betting has become closely connected to everyday digital life and football culture. This makes it much easier for young people to encounter and participate in gambling.

Research has documented the potential harms associated with gambling. A global study in 2024 estimated that 8.7% of adults who gamble online experience problematic gambling. Gambling-related harms can include financial difficulties, psychological distress and relationship problems.

What did you find out?

One thing that became clear is that we should not assume young people see betting simply as entertainment. For some, betting can appear to offer a source of income.

That’s important in a continent with a very large youth population and where many young people face uncertain economic futures. If a young person is struggling to find a reliable source of income, the possibility of turning a small stake into a much larger amount can be very attractive. The problem is that gambling is not a reliable way of earning a living, and losses can affect money that may already be scarce.

Our research shows gambling doesn’t happen in a social vacuum. Young people’s attitudes to it are related to social support and the relationships they have with people like family, friends and teachers. Those who experience conflict or a lack of support at home are more likely to view gambling positively. But young people who feel valued and supported develop less interest in gambling.

This fits with my broader research. Young Ghanaians who felt they had more social support also reported lower stress and better health and wellbeing. That’s why I think we need to be careful about simply blaming young people for gambling.

What role does the international betting industry play?

We know quite a lot about problem gambling, addiction and individual risk factors. We know much less about the companies selling gambling products, how they advertise, how betting becomes associated with football, how digital technologies make gambling available around the clock, and whether regulation has kept pace with these changes.

Africa’s betting industry includes both locally owned businesses and international gambling operators. Some companies have headquarters outside the continent and operate through subsidiaries, partnerships or locally licensed businesses. International operators have expanded their presence in African markets through football sponsorships, advertising, online betting platforms and mobile technologies.

The widespread use of smartphones and digital payment systems makes it easy for people to deposit money, place bets and withdraw winnings. A survey across six African countries found that 95% of active bettors use mobile devices to place bets. Research also identifies a link between mobile money use and gambling participation.

In another study, my colleagues and I examined gambling regulation across 49 African countries. Gambling was legally regulated in 41, but there were major differences in how countries approached online gambling, advertising and regulatory oversight. For example, only 15 of the 41 countries had legislation explicitly addressing online gambling, while 18 had legislation covering gambling advertising. Some countries had dedicated gambling regulators, while others relied on government departments to oversee the industry. Public reporting was also very limited in many countries.

This creates an important imbalance. We may be asking young people to gamble responsibly while surrounding them with an environment in which betting is increasingly easy to access and heavily commercialised.

What are your recommendations?

We need to treat gambling as more than an individual behavioural problem. Regulation has to respond to the gambling environment.

Governments need to look closely at how gambling is advertised and promoted, including its relationship with football and other sports. Age restrictions need to work in practice, not simply exist on paper. Regulators also need much better information about who is gambling, how much they are spending and what harms are occurring.

There is also a wider development question. If some young people are turning to betting because they see few other opportunities to improve their economic situation, gambling policy alone cannot address the conditions that make betting attractive in the first place. Governments therefore need to complement gambling regulation with policies that respond to youth unemployment and economic insecurity.

For many young Africans, gambling sits at the intersection of football, technology, money and the search for economic opportunity. Our response therefore needs to take all of those factors into account.

Franklin Glozah receives funding from The British Academy.

Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/11/05/how-football-smartphones-and-mobile-money-drive-youth-sports-betting-in-africa/