October 31st each year is the celebration of Halloween, often characterised by costume parties, children doing 'trick or treat' visits in the neighbourhood (to collect candies and sweet treats), watching horror films, lighting bonfires (if environmentally viable), apple bobbing (more difficult that it appears), and carving pumpkins or turnips into lanterns to name a few activities. Associated with the supernatural and macabre, Halloween had moved far beyond its actual origin and taken on a more commercial theme.
Halloween derives from All Hallows Eve or All Saints Eve being celebrated in many countries in the Western Christian practice on the eve of All Hallows Day. This day in the liturgical year is dedicated to remember the dead and all the faithful departed. It could have been influenced by early Celtic harvest festivals or Gaelic spiritual festivals. The origins of Halloween are strongly connected to Scotland and Ireland where it has been celebrated for centuries. Scottish and Irish immigrants brought the tradition to North America in the 1800s from where it spread to other countries in the late 20th Century.
For the United States, Halloween also occurs during the election cycle and it could not be more apt for the 2024 election. It may be that Americans will wake one morning in November to find that they are again in a "Nightmare on Pennsylvania Avenue II". Only the ballot will decide this fate.
As of the current date, it's now 7 days to the election day (November 5) for the US President, the Houses of Congress and some governorships. Polls of all shapes and sizes have been taken to try and gauge the likely outcome and voter intentions. Some polls have shown the contest between Trump and Harris to be neck-to-neck, others have Harris leading by a single percentage point while still other polls have measured Trump as being marginally ahead. In professional betting platforms, Trump is more favoured than Harris and commentators of all persuasions have given their views about the candidates. It is not possible to predict the outcome is the reality at this moment in time.
36 states offer early voting and 40.7 millions Americans have cast their ballot in the pre-poll period whether through postal voting or in-person at voting centres. The Secretary of State for Georgia expects that 70% of ballots will be cast in that state before the actual polling day.
From outside of the United States, the contest is perceived as one that intrinsically is about more than the two candidates. It is also about the very viability of democratic functions and institutions in that country. Serious efforts have been made and continue to be made to control and manipulate elections by various measures such as limiting the locations where voters to actually vote, denying their right to vote through various rules of eligibility, trying to invalidate votes cast in methods such as postal voting to name a few. In this respect the ''Make America Great Again" (MAGA) version of the Republican Party is where attention has to remain focussed.
If you’ve ever gone to look up a quick fact and just kept browsing from one article (or page, or video), to another, to another – then you know the feeling of “going down a rabbit hole”. This experience of curiosity-led online wandering has become synonymous with the free, user-created encyclopedia Wikipedia.
In new research involving more than 480,000 Wikipedia users in 14 languages across 50 countries, US researchers led by Dale Zhou at the University of Pennsylvania studied three distinctly different ways of going down the Wikipedia rabbit hole. These “curiosity styles” have been studied before, but not in such a large, diverse group of people using Wikipedia “naturalistically”, in daily life.
The research may help us better understand the nature and importance of curiosity, its connections to wellbeing, and strategies for preventing the spread of false information.
Wikipedia: first controversial, now mature, always popular
When Wikipedia was new in the early 2000s, it sparked controversies. People such as librarians and lecturers voiced concerns about Wikipedia’s potential for platforming untrue or incomplete information.
Today, the factuality of Wikipedia’s existing contents is less concerning than questions of bias, such as which topics the site’s volunteer editors deem noteworthy enough to include. There are global efforts to fill gaps in Wikipedia’s coverage, such as “edit-a-thons” to add entries on historically overlooked scientists and artists.
Part of what made Wikipedia groundbreaking was how it satisfies people’s intrinsic learning needs by inviting navigation from page to page, luring readers into rabbit holes. This, combined with the site’s participatory approach to creating and verifying pages, sparked its rapid growth. These qualities have also sustained Wikipedia as a predominant everyday information source, globally.
This new study examines data about Wikipedia readers’ activities. It looks at the different “architectural styles of curiosity” people embody when they navigate.
Busybodys, hunters and dancers
The new study explores the “knowledge networks” associated with the three main styles of curiosity: busybody, hunter and dancer. A knowledge network is a visual representation of how readers “weave a thread” across Wikipedia articles.
As the researchers explain:
The busybody scouts for loose threads of novelty, the hunter pursues specific answers in a projectile path, and the dancer leaps in creative breaks with tradition across typically siloed areas of knowledge.
Earlier research had shown evidence of busybodies and hunters, and speculated about the existence of dancers. The new study confirms that busybodies and hunters exist in multiple countries and languages. It also details the dancer style, which has been more elusive to document.
The researchers also identified geographical differences between curiosity styles.
In all 14 languages studied, busybodies tend to read more about culture, media, food, art, philosophy and religion. Hunters in 12 out of 14 languages tend to read more about science, technology, engineering and maths.
In German and English, hunters were more drawn to pages about history and society than busybodies. The opposite was true in Arabic, Bengali, Hindi, Dutch and Chinese.
Dancers were identified by their forward leaps between disparate topics, as well as the diversity of their interests.
The research team points out we still have much to learn about how curiosity is shaped by local norms. Relating these results to gender, ethnicity, access to education, and other elements will paint a fuller picture.
Curiosity is beneficial, generally … and we have more to learn
Overall, this study supports the benefits of freer, broader browsing and reading. Following our curiosity can help us become better informed and expand our worldviews, creativity and relationships.
At the same time, people sometimes need closure more than they need exploration. This is not a bad thing or a sign of narrow-mindedness. In many situations there are benefits to moving on from information-seeking, and deciding we’ve learned enough for now.
Endless curiosity can have downsides. This is especially true when it’s motivated not by the joy of learning, but by the discomfort of uncertainty and exclusion. As other research has found, for some people, curiosity can lead toward false information and conspiracy theories. When information has a sense of novelty, or a hint of being hidden by powerful elites, this can make it more appealing, even when it’s not true.
The new study emphasises that different curiosity styles do not lead simply or universally to creativity or wellbeing. People’s contexts and circumstances vary.
Each of us, like Goldilocks, can follow our curiosity to find not too much, not too little, but the information that is “just right”. The researchers also hint at evidence for a spectrum of new curiosity styles beyond the main three, which will surely spark more research in future.
Stay curious and enjoy the rabbit hole
This study also suggests ways Wikipedia (and sites like it) could better support curiosity-driven exploration. For example, rather than suggesting pages based on their popularity or similarity to other pages, Wikipedia could try showing readers their own dynamic knowledge network.
As a Wikipedian would say, this new study is noteworthy. It shows how smaller-scale, exploratory research into people’s reading and browsing can be translated to a much larger scale across languages and cultures.
As AI becomes more influential and the problems of misinformation grow, understanding technologies that shape our access to information – and how we use them – is more important than ever. We know YouTube recommendations can be a radicalising pipeline to extremist content, for example, and ChatGPT is largely indifferent to the truth.
Studying Wikipedia readers reveals a rich picture of people’s freely expressed, diverse online curiosities. It shows an alternative to technologies built on narrower assumptions about what people value, how we learn, and how we want to explore online.
The State of the Climate Report 2024 from a consortium of scientists in mulitple institutions paints a grim picture for the direction of climate change with rising temperatures and greenhouse gas emissions. To quote an opening section of the report -
“We
are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster. This is a global
emergency beyond any doubt. Much of the very fabric of life on Earth is
imperiled. We are stepping into a critical and unpredictable new phase of the
climate crisis. For many years, scientists, including a group of more than
15,000, have sounded the alarm about the impending dangers of climate change
driven by increasing greenhouse gas emissions and ecosystem change (Ripple et
al. 2020). For half a century, global warming
has been correctly predicted even before it was observed—and not only by
independent academic scientists but also by fossil fuel companies (Supran et
al. 2023). Despite these warnings, we are
still moving in the wrong direction; fossil fuel emissions have increased to an
all-time high, the 3 hottest days ever occurred in July of 2024.”
The graphs below from the report (figure 2) categorically demonstrate the upwards trends across a whole range of measures such as carbon dioxide emissions, methane emissions, nitrous oxide emissions, ocean heat, ocean levels and so on.
Tuesday 5 November 2024 is the formal election day for the US Presidential election with Kamala Harris (Democratic Party, current US Vice President) and Donald J Trump (Republican Party, former US president) as the contenders. At the same time, 34 Senate seats and all 435 seats in the House of Representatives in the US Congress are also being decided. There are also 12 gubernatorial elections taking place making it a particularly critical moment in the US voting cycle and potentially momentuous for the United States and the wider world.
The two contenders offer radically different perspectives on the United States with Harris reflective of the future and a positive, hopeful message. Trump in contrast has continued a long history of listing deficiencies, conspiracies and claims of one form of grievance or another. Trump has also been the subject of a range of prosecutions, a number of which are not resolved and others resulted in convictions. The contrast between the two candidates could not be more extreme yet despite this situation, Trump at this point could easily win the election. There are also concerns with the public opinion polling by various organisations including media companies, that Trump's support may be underestimated. Only the election results will show whether this is correct or not.
The US is one of the most partisan divided countries at present with the majority of states either voting/aligning with the Republicans or the Democrats leaving a small number of 8 states being termed the 'swing states'. These are -
Pennsylvania
Georgia
Nebraska District 2
North Carolina
Michigan
Arizona
Wisconsin
Nevada
The margins in these states are paper thin. The US election system also has a number of in-built deficiencies such as: voluntary voting (almost 40 % of eligible voters do not vote in the Presidential ballot and almost 50 % of eligible voters do not vote for the ballots for seats in Congress); different voting systems used in different states and subject to local political influence; no limits campaign funding and little control on the truthfulness or accuracy of claims made; an electoral college system where for most states, the candidate with the most ballot votes (a bare majority) is given all that State's electoral college votes (a winner-takes-all-approach) even where the winning candidate may not be supported by the majority of Americans on a country wide basis. The stakes could not be higher for the US and for the rest of the World.
The next Conference of the Parties (COP) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) will take place in Baku, Azerbiajan from 11th November to 22nd November 2024. There are 198 Parties (197 countries plus the European Union) to the Convention representing near complete, universal membership. The Conference is held annually and rotated between the five United Nations regions ensuring that both developed and developing nations have a role for the Conference presidency. Despite the extraordinary international coverage and the near agreement on the reality of climate change including the major industrial powers of the US and China, progress to limit increased temperatures through reductions in CO2 emissions is failing at this point in time.
A string of reports from multiple academic and science institutions, from the IPCC, from Meterological agencies and from think tanks all confirm increasing temperatures, continuing and in some case increased CO2 emissions and worryingly, methane emissions. The planet continues to heat with the results being seen in a myriad of extreme weather events together with melting glaciers, melting permafrost in the Northern Hemisphere, and loss of ice cover in both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. Corresponding sea level rises are now being tangibly seen in low level land masses affecting multiple island communities in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean.
Representatives from the various countries who have signed onto the UNFCCC need to actually face the fact that they need to do more and do it earlier. The end point for results to be seen has been publicly stated as no later than 2030 otherwise a very different planet will come into existence and one that the human species will find it hard to survive on.
You don’t have to look far to see what climate change is doing to the planet. The word “unprecedented” is everywhere this year.
We are seeing unprecedented rapidly intensifying tropical storms such as Hurricane Helene in the eastern United States and Super Typhoon Yagi in Vietnam. Unprecedented fires in Canada have destroyed towns. Unprecedented drought in Brazil has dried out enormous rivers and left swathes of empty river beds. At least 1,300 pilgrims died during this year’s Hajj in Mecca as temperatures passed 50°C.
Unfortunately, we are headed for far worse. The new 2024 State of the Climate report, produced by our team of international scientists, is yet another stark warning about the intensifying climate crisis. Even if governments meet their emissions goals, the world may hit 2.7°C of warming – nearly double the Paris Agreement goal of holding climate change to 1.5°C. Each year, we track 35 of the Earth’s vital signs, from sea ice extent to forests. This year, 25 are now at record levels, all trending in the wrong directions.
Humans are not used to these conditions. Human civilisation emerged over the last 10,000 years under benign conditions – not too hot, not too cold. But this liveable climate is now at risk. In your grandchild’s lifetime, climatic conditions will be more threatening than anything our prehistoric relatives would have faced.
Our report shows a continued rise in fossil fuel emissions, which remain at an all-time high. Despite years of warnings from scientists, fossil fuel consumption has actually increased, pushing the planet toward dangerous levels of warming. While wind and solar have grown rapidly, fossil fuel use is 14 times greater.
This year is also tracking for the hottest year on record, with global daily mean temperatures at record levels for nearly half of 2023 and much of 2024.
Next month, world leaders and diplomats will gather in Azerbaijan for the annual United Nations climate talks, COP 29. Leaders will have to redouble their efforts. Without much stronger policies, climate change will keep worsening, bringing with it more frequent and more extreme weather.
Bad news after bad news
We have still not solved the central problem: the routine burning of fossil fuels. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases – particularly methane and carbon dioxide – are still rising. Last September, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere hit 418 parts per million (ppm). This September, they crossed 422 ppm. Methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas, has been increasing at an alarming rate despite global pledges to tackle it.
Compounding the problem is the recent decline in atmospheric aerosols from efforts to cut pollution. These small particles suspended in the air come from both natural and human processes, and have helped cool the planet. Without this cooling effect, the pace of global warming may accelerate. We don’t know for sure because aerosol properties are not yet measured well enough.
Other environmental issues are now feeding into climate change. Deforestation in critical areas such as the Amazon is reducing the planet’s capacity to absorb carbon naturally, driving additional warming. This creates a feedback loop, where warming causes trees to die which in turn amplifies global temperatures.
Loss of sea ice is another. As sea ice melts or fails to form, dark seawater is exposed. Ice reflects sunlight but seawater absorbs it. Scaled up, this changes the Earth’s albedo (how reflective the surface is) and accelerates warming further.
In coming decades, sea level rise will pose a growing threat to coastal communities, putting millions of people at risk of displacement.
Accelerate the solutions
Our report stresses the need for an immediate and comprehensive end to the routine use of fossil fuels.
It calls for a global carbon price, set high enough to drive down emissions, particularly from high-emitting wealthy countries.
Introducing effective policies to slash methane emissions is crucial, given methane’s high potency but short atmospheric lifetime. Rapidly cutting methane could slow the rate of warming in the short term.
Natural climate solutions such as reforestation and soil restoration should be rolled out to increase how much carbon is stored in wood and soil. These efforts must be accompanied by protective measures in wildfire and drought prone areas. There’s no point planting forests if they will burn.
Governments should introduce stricter land-use policies to slow down rates of land clearing and increase investment in forest management to cut the risk of large, devastating fires and encourage sustainable land use.
We cannot overlook climate justice. Less wealthy nations contribute least to global emissions but are often the worst affected by climate disasters.
Wealthier nations must provide financial and technical support to help these countries adapt to climate change while cutting emissions. This could include investing in renewable energy, improving infrastructure and funding disaster preparedness programs.
Internationally, our report urges stronger commitments from world leaders. Current global policies are insufficient to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels.
Without drastic changes, the world is on track for approximately 2.7°C of warming this century. To avoid catastrophic tipping points, nations must strengthen their climate pledges, reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and accelerate the transition to renewable energy.
Immediate, transformative policy changes are now necessary if we are to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
Climate change is already here. But it could get much, much worse. By slashing emissions, boosting natural climate solutions and working towards climate justice, the global community can still fend off the worst version of our future.
