Cookies help us run our site more efficiently.

By clicking “Accept”, you agree to the storing of cookies on your device to enhance site navigation, analyze site usage, and assist in our marketing efforts. View our Privacy Policy for more information or to customize your cookie preferences.

Accept Deny

GoGreenNation news

Are walking pads worth it? Why I’m never leaving my desk treadmill.

News Feed
Thursday, April 4, 2024

SAN FRANCISCO — During a regular day in the office, I last about five minutes at my desk. Then I get antsy and move to the table in the office kitchen. Then to the conference room. Then back to the kitchen.For whatever reason, deskbound work is a challenge for me. At home, I rotate from the couch to the floor to the roof of my apartment, stopping at intervals to pick at my cuticles and wonder why I can’t sit still like a normal person. If only there were some type of human-size hamster wheel I could install in the living room, I remarked grimly to my husband after another day nail biting and leg bouncing. Then in October, I opened TikTok and saw a woman on a walking pad.In fitness corners of TikTok, the “walking pad” — the treadmill’s smaller, lighter cousin — reigns supreme. One TikToker starts her day at 5 a.m., watching “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” from her walking pad. Another pledged to walk a half marathon during the workday. Internet searches for “walking desk” and “walking pad” spiked this year, as people on TikTok promoted the tiny treadmills. I bought one expecting some cautionary tale about the dangers of self-optimization and productivity culture — then the thing remade my entire professional life. Suddenly, I could work in the same spot for hours with minimal damage to my cuticles and self esteem.It’s not just me: Early research suggests walking pads may help with mood and stress in the workplace, and some people credit their walking pads with improvements to their health, productivity or happiness.But the walking pad’s position in a long series of social media wellness trends deserves a raised eyebrow. Social media creators promote an endless stream of wellness products that are supposed to make us happier or skinnier. Plenty of walking pads will gather dust next to our vibration pads and gua sha sets. Plenty more will remain under our desks, pressuring us to overexert or joylessly count steps.Walking pads aren’t for everyone, but with some reflection, you can dodge the downsides and reap the benefits. Here’s everything you need to know before diving in.Why the walking pad obsession?Burgeoning interest in portable treadmills is a testament to TikTok’s power in influencing consumer trends, said Forrester vice president and principal analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee.“We’ve seen the nature of product and brand discovery shift over the years, from Google searching to Amazon browsing to TikTok scrolling,” Chatterjee said.Videos promoting walking pads show people enjoying fitness on their own schedules — which might mean during the workday or a reality TV marathon. Many of us became more sedentary during the pandemic, and walking pads look like an easy way to get back on our feet.Prolonged sitting has been linked to early mortality, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression and anxiety, and even exhaustion and job dissatisfaction. Interrupting sedentary sessions with spurts of activity, meanwhile, has been shown to improve these measures of health.To get those benefits, we need the time and space to move. In 2020, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles asked students and faculty members why they were sedentary much of the day. Participants cited “environmental constraints” and “social acceptability.” (In other words, doing jumping jacks in the library or cafeteria is embarrassing.)Enter the walking pad, which lets you move around without stopping your task or changing locations.Walking pads help some people focusPsychologists have long theorized that before we can pay attention, we need some arousal or stimulation. Too little arousal, and we’re distracted. Too much, and we’re overwhelmed.That process works the same for everyone, but the amount of stimulation we need to focus varies. It’s why some people need background noise to focus, while others prefer silence.For some of us, walking while working will be a helpful source of stimulation. For others, juggling both tasks will feel impossible. If you’re hoping a walking desk would help you stay energized at work, make sure to test that theory before you buy. Visit a friend with a walking pad or bring your laptop to the gym. Can you work and walk at the same time?Generally, walking pad sessions are good for simple or repetitive tasks, said productivity researcher Lucas Miller, who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. Catching up on your email? Yes. Drafting an important presentation? Less so. The more weighty or important your brain perceives a task to be, the harder it gets to deal with the extra stimulation, Miller said.Carver Bain, a 26-year-old writer in San Diego, said he struggles to stay focused, especially while he reads. He started wanting a walking pad after attending an event where author Ann Patchett said she wrote the entirety of her novel “Tom Lake” on a treadmill. (A representative for Patchett confirmed the detail.)Bain decided to test Patchett’s strategy: He brought his book outside and walked around the neighborhood while he read — being extra careful before crossing the street, he noted.The hack worked, Bain said, and now he’s considering a walking pad more seriously. “When my body is occupied doing something, I’m not thinking, ‘What’s on my phone?’”Making exercise easier and more accessible is a smart way to boost our activity levels, said Michelle Segar, a researcher at University of Michigan and author of “The Joy Choice: How to Finally Achieve Lasting Changes in Eating and Exercise.” For decades, the fitness industry has pushed the long-term health benefits of exercise, but that hasn’t motivated many Americans to participate, Segar said. Perhaps there’s a better, more immediate approach.“Look at it like a wine tasting,” she said. “We experiment, we savor, we use self-awareness to say, ‘How does this taste? How does this feel? Do I like it?’”Future-oriented goals such as weight loss — or matching the routine of a TikTok fitness influencer — are liable to kill any joy you might get from the walking pad, Segar said. Instead, let yourself notice how your time on the pad makes you feel. Maybe you feel slightly less achey or a little bit proud of yourself. Those observations make you more likely to come back for more, Segar said.If that fails, you can always engineer some joy with mood lighting, a big or little screen, your favorite beverage and some music. This TikTok user calls it “cozy cardio,” complete with a pumpkin sugar candle.Will I look unprofessional?Let’s be clear: Your boss and colleagues have nothing to lose by supporting the accommodations that help you do your best work.That said, the corporate world can be slow to change, and most people are unaccustomed to seeing a bobbing head on the Zoom grid. Talk to your team ahead of time and let them know why the walking desk is beneficial to your work. Maybe you’ll decide to save the pad for your off-camera hours — or double down and become the resident Walking Pad Guy.In this case, don’t worry about fancy brands. I got mine on Amazon for $195 after browsing the reviews on three models. Check that the item’s dimensions will fit its intended space, then glance at the speed and weight limits.Like BowFlex, ThighMaster and Peloton before it, the walking pad may be a fitness fad. But if you, like me, find it easier to get things done when you’re moving, there’s nothing quite like a portable hamster wheel.

TikTok fitness trends deserve skepticism. But walking pads can have real benefits for mood and focus.

SAN FRANCISCO — During a regular day in the office, I last about five minutes at my desk. Then I get antsy and move to the table in the office kitchen. Then to the conference room. Then back to the kitchen.

For whatever reason, deskbound work is a challenge for me. At home, I rotate from the couch to the floor to the roof of my apartment, stopping at intervals to pick at my cuticles and wonder why I can’t sit still like a normal person. If only there were some type of human-size hamster wheel I could install in the living room, I remarked grimly to my husband after another day nail biting and leg bouncing. Then in October, I opened TikTok and saw a woman on a walking pad.

In fitness corners of TikTok, the “walking pad” — the treadmill’s smaller, lighter cousin — reigns supreme. One TikToker starts her day at 5 a.m., watching “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” from her walking pad. Another pledged to walk a half marathon during the workday. Internet searches for “walking desk” and “walking pad” spiked this year, as people on TikTok promoted the tiny treadmills. I bought one expecting some cautionary tale about the dangers of self-optimization and productivity culture — then the thing remade my entire professional life. Suddenly, I could work in the same spot for hours with minimal damage to my cuticles and self esteem.

It’s not just me: Early research suggests walking pads may help with mood and stress in the workplace, and some people credit their walking pads with improvements to their health, productivity or happiness.

But the walking pad’s position in a long series of social media wellness trends deserves a raised eyebrow. Social media creators promote an endless stream of wellness products that are supposed to make us happier or skinnier. Plenty of walking pads will gather dust next to our vibration pads and gua sha sets. Plenty more will remain under our desks, pressuring us to overexert or joylessly count steps.

Walking pads aren’t for everyone, but with some reflection, you can dodge the downsides and reap the benefits. Here’s everything you need to know before diving in.

Why the walking pad obsession?

Burgeoning interest in portable treadmills is a testament to TikTok’s power in influencing consumer trends, said Forrester vice president and principal analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee.

“We’ve seen the nature of product and brand discovery shift over the years, from Google searching to Amazon browsing to TikTok scrolling,” Chatterjee said.

Videos promoting walking pads show people enjoying fitness on their own schedules — which might mean during the workday or a reality TV marathon. Many of us became more sedentary during the pandemic, and walking pads look like an easy way to get back on our feet.

Prolonged sitting has been linked to early mortality, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, depression and anxiety, and even exhaustion and job dissatisfaction. Interrupting sedentary sessions with spurts of activity, meanwhile, has been shown to improve these measures of health.

To get those benefits, we need the time and space to move. In 2020, researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles asked students and faculty members why they were sedentary much of the day. Participants cited “environmental constraints” and “social acceptability.” (In other words, doing jumping jacks in the library or cafeteria is embarrassing.)

Enter the walking pad, which lets you move around without stopping your task or changing locations.

Walking pads help some people focus

Psychologists have long theorized that before we can pay attention, we need some arousal or stimulation. Too little arousal, and we’re distracted. Too much, and we’re overwhelmed.

That process works the same for everyone, but the amount of stimulation we need to focus varies. It’s why some people need background noise to focus, while others prefer silence.

For some of us, walking while working will be a helpful source of stimulation. For others, juggling both tasks will feel impossible. If you’re hoping a walking desk would help you stay energized at work, make sure to test that theory before you buy. Visit a friend with a walking pad or bring your laptop to the gym. Can you work and walk at the same time?

Generally, walking pad sessions are good for simple or repetitive tasks, said productivity researcher Lucas Miller, who teaches at the University of California at Berkeley. Catching up on your email? Yes. Drafting an important presentation? Less so. The more weighty or important your brain perceives a task to be, the harder it gets to deal with the extra stimulation, Miller said.

Carver Bain, a 26-year-old writer in San Diego, said he struggles to stay focused, especially while he reads. He started wanting a walking pad after attending an event where author Ann Patchett said she wrote the entirety of her novel “Tom Lake” on a treadmill. (A representative for Patchett confirmed the detail.)

Bain decided to test Patchett’s strategy: He brought his book outside and walked around the neighborhood while he read — being extra careful before crossing the street, he noted.

The hack worked, Bain said, and now he’s considering a walking pad more seriously. “When my body is occupied doing something, I’m not thinking, ‘What’s on my phone?’”

Making exercise easier and more accessible is a smart way to boost our activity levels, said Michelle Segar, a researcher at University of Michigan and author of “The Joy Choice: How to Finally Achieve Lasting Changes in Eating and Exercise.” For decades, the fitness industry has pushed the long-term health benefits of exercise, but that hasn’t motivated many Americans to participate, Segar said. Perhaps there’s a better, more immediate approach.

“Look at it like a wine tasting,” she said. “We experiment, we savor, we use self-awareness to say, ‘How does this taste? How does this feel? Do I like it?’”

Future-oriented goals such as weight loss — or matching the routine of a TikTok fitness influencer — are liable to kill any joy you might get from the walking pad, Segar said. Instead, let yourself notice how your time on the pad makes you feel. Maybe you feel slightly less achey or a little bit proud of yourself. Those observations make you more likely to come back for more, Segar said.

If that fails, you can always engineer some joy with mood lighting, a big or little screen, your favorite beverage and some music. This TikTok user calls it “cozy cardio,” complete with a pumpkin sugar candle.

Will I look unprofessional?

Let’s be clear: Your boss and colleagues have nothing to lose by supporting the accommodations that help you do your best work.

That said, the corporate world can be slow to change, and most people are unaccustomed to seeing a bobbing head on the Zoom grid. Talk to your team ahead of time and let them know why the walking desk is beneficial to your work. Maybe you’ll decide to save the pad for your off-camera hours — or double down and become the resident Walking Pad Guy.

In this case, don’t worry about fancy brands. I got mine on Amazon for $195 after browsing the reviews on three models. Check that the item’s dimensions will fit its intended space, then glance at the speed and weight limits.

Like BowFlex, ThighMaster and Peloton before it, the walking pad may be a fitness fad. But if you, like me, find it easier to get things done when you’re moving, there’s nothing quite like a portable hamster wheel.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Related News

Protect This Place: Ladakh, the Planet’s ‘Third Pole’

Home to glaciers, snow leopards, and rich human cultures, Ladakh suffers from a lack of political representation, which has inspired recent protests. The post Protect This Place: Ladakh, the Planet’s ‘Third Pole’ appeared first on The Revelator.

The Place: Ladakh, India’s cold desert, is located to the east of Jammu and Kashmir at altitudes between 8,800 and 18,000 feet. This mountain enclave is geographically distinct, with unique climatic and ecological characteristics fostering a rich culture amidst towering peaks. Ladakh is marked by steep cliffs, deep valleys, arid plains, salt flats, and sparse vegetation. Situated between Pakistan and China, it nurtures a population of around 275,000 people, as well as rare and beautiful wildlife such as snow leopards and Tibetan antelopes. The people and wildlife here depend on the Hindu Kush ranges to the northwest for essential resources. The other mountain ranges surrounding the Ladakh, the Karakoram to the north and the Himalayan to the south, are some of the highest in the world. Together known as the Hindu Kush Himalaya, these ranges are often referred to as the “Third Pole.” They feature the world’s most renowned peaks, clad in over 30,000 square miles of glacial ice — the largest concentration of glaciers outside the Arctic and Antarctic. Why It Matters: High-altitude regions have fragile ecosystems and experience the effects of climate change more acutely and earlier, which also makes them indicators of broader climate trends. This allows scientists to study shifts in weather phenomena, migration, and ecosystem responses along with the tectonic processes involved in the region’s varied geology. A rich diversity of medicinal plants can be found here, such as Himalayan yew, known for cancer-fighting properties; ashwagandha, used for stress relief; and ginger, valued for anti-inflammatory benefits. Protecting these unique environments is essential to sustaining traditional medicine practices and preserving these invaluable resources. Ladakh is home to a rich tapestry of cultures, traditions, and religions, including Buddhism and Islam. Its monasteries, festivals, and unique lifestyles provide insights into how diverse ways of living have adapted to harsh conditions. The area’s unique wildlife play essential roles in nutrient cycling and maintaining ecological balance: Himalayan blue sheep, also known as bharal, graze on alpine meadows, while Himalayan marmots aerate the soil and serve as prey for other species. The Threat: The local ecosystems in Ladakh, and the more than 1.2 billion people downstream, depend on glaciers for their freshwater supply. As the permafrost thaws, concerns about potential pandemics from viral spillover have surfaced. Recently a collaborative effort of Ohio State’s Byrd Center and Chinese Academy of Sciences isolated 33 viruses from ice samples in the Tibetan Plateau, 28 of which were novel and estimated to be approximately 15,000 years old. The runoff from glacier melt has furthered the risk of introducing diseases into vulnerable communities. Recent examples of mega-scale flash floods and landslides underscore the impact of man-made disasters and the urgent need for new policies. Militarization has occurred in Ladakh due to its strategic location and geopolitical conflicts. Unregulated tourism, construction, global warming, and various forms of pollution are worsening the situation. Snow in the glaciers melts faster as black soot from fossil fuels settle on the snow and ice and absorb the sunlight they would normally reflect. Water contamination is another major concern, and flooding has altered soil functions, microbial communities, and soil redox potential. Floods cause soil erosion, nutrient loss, and siltation of water bodies, reducing the already constrained agriculture yield in the region. Ladakhis also lack access to essential healthcare facilities and services that reflect their needs and support their wellbeing. A decade of unfulfilled promises has left residents feeling politically marginalized and skeptical of policymakers, especially concerning healthcare and land rights. Recent amendments to forest laws allow forest land use for nonforest purposes, jeopardizing biodiversity and Indigenous livelihoods and deepening distrust. Who Is Protecting It Now: Ladakh activist Sonam Wangchuk and others have spent the past few months fasting, protesting, and educating the community, with the goal of bringing more autonomy to the region. Wangchuk’s dedication to innovation and sustainable development has earned him numerous accolades, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award, often referred to as Asia’s Nobel Prize, in 2018. His initiatives — including ice stupas, artificial glaciers that store water — highlight time-tested and Indigenous innovations in the face of climate challenges. While he envisions a future of innovative development and education for all, Wangchuk is particularly currently focused on preservation of ecosystem in Ladakh. With the extreme conditions and limited resources, the Ladakh protests are addressing the need for reforms to support the unique challenges faced by the region and he is the face of the protests. What This Place Needs: The ongoing protests in Ladakh reflect a desire for political representation and autonomy and are aimed at preserving ecological integrity and Tribal rights. Among the primary demands are full statehood within India, recognition as a Scheduled Tribe under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution for legislative and administrative control, and the implementation of policies aimed at safeguarding Ladakh’s fragile ecosystem while balancing developmental needs and local participation. Ladakhis have reason to be worried: The government of India has plans for massive solar and hydroelectric projects that come with substantial environmental and social costs, including biodiversity loss, land degradation from extensive solar farms, and alterations in local water flows. Socially these projects have the potential to displace communities and lead to external control over local resources, and eventually the influx of workers would pose a threat to the Ladakhi livelihoods and culture. Lessons From the Fight: The people of Ladakh teach us spiritual resilience. The unique demographics of the region, with its blend of Buddhist and Muslim populations, foster a sense of solidarity in advocating for local governance and sustainable development. As both groups confront external pressures from national policies and environmental changes, their collective efforts symbolize a shared commitment to protect their heritage and secure their futures in an increasingly complex geopolitical landscape. This collaboration highlights a broader geopolitical context, as both communities face common challenges related to resource management, healthcare access, and demands for statehood. Traditional practices, often overlooked, can play a crucial role in sustainability. Empowering small-scale and indigenous communities helps preserve their knowledge and ways of life. One possible answer is economic localization, which prioritizes local, sustainable practices like ecotourism that celebrate rather than exploit local culture. Small-scale green energy projects can reduce reliance on fossil fuels, protecting delicate ecosystems. Water conservation, forest management, and incentives for local businesses should replace resource extraction by large corporations. Fast-paced change often overlooks the science behind traditional practices that can help save our planet. Follow the Fight: Himalayan Institute of Alternatives Ladakh Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) Do you live in or near a threatened habitat or community, or have you worked to study or protect endangered wildlife? You’re invited to share your stories in our ongoing features, Protect This Place and Species Spotlight.  Scroll down to find our “Republish” button Previously in The Revelator: Protect This Place: The Mountainous Ulu Masen Ecosystem The post Protect This Place: Ladakh, the Planet’s ‘Third Pole’ appeared first on The Revelator.

Culture
Activism
Business

AI isn’t about unleashing our imaginations, it’s about outsourcing them. The real purpose is profit

Artificial intelligence doesn’t just incrementally erode the rights of authors and other creators. These technologies are designed to replace creative workers altogetherGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailBack in 2022, when ChatGPT arrived, I was part of the first wave of users. Delighted but also a little uncertain what to do with it, I asked the system to generate all kinds of random things. A song about George Floyd in the style of Bob Dylan. A menu for a vegetarian dinner party. A briefing paper about alternative shipping technologies.The quality of what it produced was variable, but it made clear something that is even more apparent now than it was then. That this technology wasn’t just a toy. Instead its arrival is an inflection point in human history. Over coming years and decades, AI will transform every aspect of our lives.Songs arise out of suffering … the complex, internal human struggle of creation … [but] algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer … What makes a great song great is not its close resemblance to a recognisable work. Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past.Sign up for the fun stuff with our rundown of must-reads, pop culture and tips for the weekend, every Saturday morning Continue reading...

Back in 2022, when ChatGPT arrived, I was part of the first wave of users. Delighted but also a little uncertain what to do with it, I asked the system to generate all kinds of random things. A song about George Floyd in the style of Bob Dylan. A menu for a vegetarian dinner party. A briefing paper about alternative shipping technologies.The quality of what it produced was variable, but it made clear something that is even more apparent now than it was then. That this technology wasn’t just a toy. Instead its arrival is an inflection point in human history. Over coming years and decades, AI will transform every aspect of our lives.But we are also at an inflection point for those of us who make our living with words, and indeed anybody in the creative arts. Whether you’re a writer, an actor, a singer, a film-maker, a painter or a photographer, a machine can now do what you do, instantly and for a fraction of the cost. Perhaps it can’t do it quite as well as you can just yet, but like the Tyrannosaurus rex in the rear vision mirror in the original Jurassic Park, it’s gaining on you, and fast.Faced with the idea of machines that can do everything that human beings can do, some have just given up. Lee Sedol, the Go Grandmaster who was defeated by DeepMind’s AlphaGo system in 2016 retired on the spot, declaring AlphaGo was “an entity that couldn’t be beaten”, and that his “entire world was collapsing”.Others have asserted the innate superiority of art made by humans, effectively circling the wagons around the idea that there is something in the things we make that cannot be replicated by technology. In the words of Nick Cave: Songs arise out of suffering … the complex, internal human struggle of creation … [but] algorithms don’t feel. Data doesn’t suffer … What makes a great song great is not its close resemblance to a recognisable work. Writing a good song is not mimicry, or replication, or pastiche, it is the opposite. It is an act of self-murder that destroys all one has strived to produce in the past. It’s an appealing position, and one I’d like to believe – but sadly, I don’t. Because not only does it commit us to a hopelessly simplistic – and, frankly, reactionary – binary, in which the human is intrinsically good, and the artificial is intrinsically bad, it also means the category of creation we’re defending is extremely small. Do we really want to limit the work that we value to those towering works of art wrought out of profound feeling? What about costume design and illustration and book reviews and all the other things people make? Don’t they matter?Perhaps a better place to begin a defence of human creativity might be in the process of creation itself. Because when we make something, the end product isn’t the only thing that matters. In fact it may not even be the thing that matters most. There is also value in the act of making, in the craft and care of it. This value doesn’t inhere in the things we make, but in the creative labour of making them. The interplay between our minds and our bodies and the thing we are making is what brings something new – some understanding or presence – into the world. But the act of making changes us as well. That can be joyous, and at other times it can be frustrating or even painful. Nonetheless it enriches us in ways that simply prompting a machine to generate something for us never will.What’s happening here isn’t about unleashing our imaginations, it’s about outsourcing them. Generative AI strips out part of what makes us human and hands it over to a company so they can sell us a product that claims to do the same thing. In other words the real purpose of these systems isn’t liberation, but profit. Forget the glib marketing slogans about increasing productivity or unleashing our potential. These systems aren’t designed to benefit us as individuals or a society. They’re designed to maximise the ability of tech corporations to extract value by strip-mining the industries they disrupt.This reality is particularly stark in the creative industries. Because the ability of AI systems to magic up stories and images and videos didn’t come out of nowhere. In order to be able to make these things, AIs have to be trained on massive amounts of data. These datasets are generated from publicly available information: books, articles, Wikipedia entries and so on in the case of text; videos and images in the case of visual data.Exactly what these works are is already highly contentious. Some, such as Wikipedia and out-of-copyright books, are in the public domain. But much – and possibly most – of it is not. How could ChatGPT write a song about George Floyd in the style of Bob Dylan without access to Dylan’s songs? The answer is it couldn’t. It could only imitate Dylan because his lyrics formed part of the dataset that was used to train it.AI-generated artworks by Mario Klingemann that were auctioned at Sotheby’s. Photograph: Malcolm Park/AlamyBetween the secretiveness of these companies and the fact the systems themselves are effectively black boxes, the inner processes of which are opaque even to their creators, it’s difficult to know exactly what has been ingested by any individual AI. What we do know for sure is that vast amounts of copyright material has already been fed into these systems, and is still being fed into them as we speak, all without permission or payment.But AI doesn’t just incrementally erode the rights of authors and other creators. These technologies are designed to replace creative workers altogether. The writer and artist James Bridle has compared this process to the enclosure of the commons, but whichever way you cut it, what we are witnessing isn’t just “systematic theft on a mass scale”, it’s the wilful and deliberate destruction of entire industries and the transfer of their value to shareholders in Silicon Valley.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Saved for LaterCatch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia's culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tipsPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionThis unconstrained rapaciousness isn’t new. Despite ad campaigns promising care and connection, the tech industry’s entire model depends upon extraction and exploitation. From publishing to transport, tech companies have employed a model that depends upon inserting themselves into traditional industries and “disrupting” them by sidestepping regulation and riding roughshod over hard-won rights or simply fencing off things that were formerly part of the public sphere. In the same way Google hoovered up creative works to make its libraries, filesharing technologies devastated the music industry, and Uber’s model depends on paying its drivers less than taxi companies, AI maximises its profit by refusing to pay the creators of the material it relies on.Meanwhile the human, environmental and social costs of these technologies are kept carefully out of sight.Interestingly the sense of powerlessness and paralysis many of us feel in the face of the social and cultural transformation unleashed by AI resembles our failure to respond to climate change. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. With both there is a profound mismatch between the scale of what is taking place and our capacity to conceptualise it. We find it difficult to imagine fundamental change, and when faced with it, tend to either panic or just shut down.But it’s also because, as with climate change, we have been tricked into thinking there are no alternatives, and that the economic systems we inhabit are natural, and arguing with them makes about as much sense as arguing with the wind.In fact the opposite is true. Companies like Meta and Alphabet and, more recently, OpenAI, have only achieved their extraordinary wealth and power because of very specific regulatory and economic conditions. These arrangements can be altered. That is within the power of government, and we should be insisting upon it. There are currently cases before the courts in a number of jurisdictions that seek to frame the massive expropriation of the work of artists and writers by AI companies as a breach of copyright. The outcome of these cases isn’t yet clear, but even if creators lose, that fight isn’t over. The use of our work to train AIs must be brought under the protection of the copyright system.And we shouldn’t stop there. We should insist upon payment for the work that has been used, payment for all future use and an end to the tech industry practice of taking first and seeking forgiveness later. Their use of copyright material without permission wasn’t accidental. They did it on purpose because they thought they could get away with it. The time has come for them to stop getting away with it.For that to happen we need regulatory structures that ensure transparency about what datasets are being used to train these systems and what is contained in those datasets. And systems of audits to ensure copyright and other forms of intellectual property are not being violated, and that enforce meaningful sanctions if they are. And we need to insist upon international agreements that protect the rights of artists and other creators instead of facilitating the profits of corporations.But most of all, we need to be thinking hard about why what we do as human beings, and as creators and artists in particular, matters. Because it isn’t enough to fret about what is being lost, or to fight a rearguard action against these technologies. We have to begin to articulate positive arguments for the value of what we do, and of creativity more broadly, and to think about what form that might take in a world where AI is a pervasive reality.

Culture
Technology
Government

Chinese Study Recommends Region-Specific Diets, Amid Rising Obesity Risks

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese scientists have recommended a region-specific diet they say is crucial to improving eating habits in the country amid...

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese scientists have recommended a region-specific diet they say is crucial to improving eating habits in the country amid a rise in obesity and lifestyle diseases, and as a means to conserve natural and environmental resources.China in October published its first set of guidelines to standardise the diagnosis and treatment of obesity, with more than half of China's adults already overweight and obese, and the rate expected to keep rising. The government has said that healthier diets are important to treat and prevent obesity.A group of scientists from the School of Public Health at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, in China's affluent southern Guangdong province, said its study adheres to a "Planetary Health Diet" and advocates a reduced consumption of dairy products and red meat.Published in the Nature Food journal in August and reported in state media last week, the study recommended that in China's north, which is characterised by a high intake of dairy products but low consumption of vegetables, people need to eat more fruits and whole grains.In the southwest, which has a harsher environment and severe water scarcity, the region could focus on a high intake of legumes and vegetables rather than its existing very high consumption of red meat, the study said.In the east, known for its "affluent agricultural culture and developed aquaculture", a higher intake of whole grains, seafood and vegetables was recommended for its residents.China's health commission did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.The recommended diets work for the prevention of "obesity and cardio-metabolic diseases," said Liu Yan, one of the authors of the study, adding that they help reduce premature mortality and disability, and ensure nutritional requirements for residents.Not only China but also other developing nations facing similar health and environmental challenges could benefit from the roadmap for the diet, the scientists said in the study.Brent Loken, global food lead scientist for the World Wildlife Fund, said the study provided a promising way forward for developing countries, including India and Kenya."Adopting these planetary health diet variants could serve as a viable strategy for dietary shifts in China to achieve both human health and environmental sustainability goals... with lessons translatable to other countries around the world," he said.(Reporting by Farah Master; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

Culture
Food
Government

Sweden abolishes tax on plastic bags despite warnings usage could rise

Levy that reduced usage by more than three-quarters in four years fell victim to rightwing culture wars, say criticsA tax that has reduced plastic bag consumption in Sweden by more than three-quarters in four years is being abolished on Friday, despite warnings that the move could lead to usage rising back towards previous levels.Since the introduction of the 3 kroner (£0.21) tax in May 2020, plastic bag usage in the country has slumped. In 2019, before the levy was introduced, people in Sweden used an average of 74 plastic bags (15-50 micrometres thick) per person each year each. In 2023 that number had dropped to 17. Continue reading...

A tax that has reduced plastic bag consumption in Sweden by more than three-quarters in four years is being abolished on Friday, despite warnings that the move could lead to usage rising back towards previous levels.Since the introduction of the 3 kroner (£0.21) tax in May 2020, plastic bag usage in the country has slumped. In 2019, before the levy was introduced, people in Sweden used an average of 74 plastic bags (15-50 micrometres thick) per person each year each. In 2023 that number had dropped to 17.The law was introduced after the EU’s 2015 plastic bag directive required member states to dramatically cut usage.Among those to criticise the end of the tax in Sweden was the government’s own environmental protection agency, which warned the levy was still needed to consolidate new behaviours.“We don’t think the government should lower the tax already,” said Åsa Stenmarck, a spokesperson for the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. “We think they could have evaluated this properly before making a decision.”Last year, Sweden’s centre-right coalition government, backed by the far-right Sweden Democrats, announced the tax would be abolished. It said the country’s plastic bag consumption was already below the EU target, which meant the levy was “not deemed necessary for its purpose”.Stenmarck said: “We don’t know what will happen now. The consumption target of 40 bags per person still exists from 2025 onwards and if we don’t reach it, we will be fined by the EU.”Now the responsibility fell to industry, which Stenmarck said she hoped would not start marketing plastic bags, and consumers, who she hoped had “largely changed their behaviour and carry their own bags”.Despite Sweden’s involvement in the invention of the plastic bag, which was patented by the Swedish company Celloplast in 1965 and quickly went on to replace cloth and plastic bags in Europe, the country has been a frontrunner on reducing usage.The big supermarkets have long charged for plastic and paper bags, in turn encouraging people to bring their own, while the tax rapidly reduced consumption in other areas of retail.But the levy has fallen victim to rightwing populism and culture wars, said Rolf Lindahl, a climate and energy campaigner for Greenpeace Sweden.skip past newsletter promotionSign up to Headlines EuropeA digest of the morning's main headlines from the Europe edition emailed direct to you every week dayPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotion“The plastic ban tax has become a part of a very unfortunate populist narrative around climate policies from the rightwing parties and they have used it as an example of environmental overreach from the government,” he said.“We worry that dropping the tax will mean increased plastic use and a return to the norm of always buying new bags at the supermarket.”Joakim Brodahl, from the non-profit organisation Keep Sweden Clean, said the removal of the tax would probably lead to plastic bags costing less to consumers and in turn increasing consumption. “We see that there is a risk that the behaviour can quickly turn back unless, for example, the trade is alert to changes in their sales of plastic bags,” he said.

Culture
Climate
Government

Surrealism Is Turning 100. See the Dreamlike Paintings That Made the Movement So Revolutionary

A blockbuster exhibition in Paris is showcasing 500 artifacts and artworks in honor of the Surrealist Manifesto, which sparked a new artistic style that spread around the world

Green Tea, Leonora Carrington, 1942 © Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York / Scala, Florence / © Adagp, Paris, 2024 In October 1924, French writer André Breton published what’s now known as the Surrealist Manifesto. The seminal text—which argued for a new style of art and literature that would be “free from any control by reason, exempt from aesthetic or moral preoccupation”—helped give rise to a new, avant-garde movement that spread around the world. Now, to mark the manifesto’s 100th anniversary, a new exhibition in Paris is examining Surrealism’s enduring global impact. Titled “Surrealism,” the show incorporates more than 500 artifacts and artworks, including poems, drawings, sculptures and paintings. Pages from Breton’s original handwritten manuscript are also on display, thanks to a loan from the French national library. To bring the historic document to life, the museum worked with the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music to create an artificial intelligence recording of Breton reading it aloud. The Fireside Angel, Max Ernst, 1937 © Vincent Everarts Photographie / © Adagp, Paris, 2024 The show initially opened in Brussels in February, and it’s currently on display at Paris’ Pompidou Center. After it leaves France next year, it will move on to Madrid, Hamburg and Philadelphia. In total, five institutions are hosting the exhibition, but each museum is taking its own unique curatorial approach. “I hope that people will discover that Surrealism is a state of mind and a way of looking at things,” Francisca Vandepitte, who curated the show at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, tells the New York Times’ Nina Siegal. “It’s not something theoretical and very complicated. The main force is something that we all know. It’s irrational, and it’s our dreams, and it’s liberating.” In Paris, the exhibition presents Surrealism as a global movement—not just a European one. Though the movement originated in France, its core principles, including “challenging rationality, embracing the unconscious and exploring alternative realities,” struck a chord with a diverse group of artists from different backgrounds and cultures, writes Artnet’s Sofia Hallström. “It is important to remember that Surrealism was a movement that spread—and this is exceptional for an avant-garde movement—around the world, in Europe, but also the United States, South America, Asia and the Maghreb,” Marie Sarré, who co-curated the Pompidou Center exhibition with the museum’s deputy director Didier Ottinger, tells the Guardian’s Jennifer Rankin. Items on display include works by well-known artists such as Salvador Dalí and René Magritte, as well as pieces by lesser-known Surrealists like Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo and Japanese artist Tatsuo Ikeda. The Pompidou Center also shines a light on often-overlooked women in the Surrealist movement, including Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington and Dora Maar. The exhibition, which is laid out in a spiral and split into 13 sections, also explores themes like anticolonialism and environmentalism. Curators hope to attract younger audiences, who may not be familiar with Surrealism but might connect with some of its core beliefs. Surreal Composition, Suzanne van Damme, 1943 © Collection RAW Many younger museumgoers are “disillusioned with the idea of progress and Modernism,” Sarré tells the Art Newspaper’s Dale Berning Sawa. “They’re politically and ecologically engaged, anticolonialist, antinationalist—in a way that chimes with what the Surrealists were doing.” All the while, the Surrealists were also having a great deal of fun, as Jonathan Jones notes in a review for the Guardian. “Of all the Modernist art movements, it was the Surrealists who were best at enjoying their revolution,” he writes. “In the Pompidou’s perfectly judged exhibition, that pleasure shines through as you meet these artists, all dead now, not so much as giants of art history as extremely amusing companions.” “Surrealism” is on view at the Pompidou Center in Paris through January 13, 2025. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

Culture

Suggested Viewing

Remnant

An experimental short film from Iran.

Experimental
Culture
Water

Destitute Living

Two friends live in the Qubaibah village Northwest of Al-Quds (Jerusalem).Those young men are forced to leave their daily life concerns after the water was cut off from their area two weeks ago by the Israeli occupation closing the feeding line.Those two characters go on a dangerous journey to an area close to their village to try to reach the water spring captured by the Israeli military occupation as they took over the land, sky, and air in Palestine. On their journey, some things happen that change the course of events with an unexpected end.

Culture
Water
Fiction

The Divers

Talitha, who works in the non-profit sector, finds ways to make her dollar stretch by dumpster diving* to rescue and reclaim unused food. Director How is a graduate of the prestigious MFA Directing program at the UCLA School of Theatre, Film and Television. *Miriam-Webster: The practice of searching through public trash receptacles for edible food or discarded items that retain some use or value.

Food
Waste
Culture

Tellus

"Tellus" is a love letter for Mother Earth which celebrates our connection with her - from pure joy and love towards nature’s elements, to our collective fears and worries about the damage that humankind has done to our planet, to an inspiring call for action and a hope for a greener, more united future. "Tellus" is a sustainable, female-led community project that captures love, concern and hope for our planet from voices across the world.

Culture
Nature
Experimental

Cultivating the Wild: William Bartram's Travels

Cultivating the Wild focuses on six Southerners committed to reclaiming the nature of the South through art, science, and culture. Their inspiration is William Bartram, 18th century naturalist and America’s first environmentalist. From 1773 to 1777, a plant-collecting trip took Bartram from the Carolina coast west to the Mississippi. Far more than a botanical catalog, Bartram’s 1791 book Travels provides a captivating window into the past and continues to fire the imagination of readers over 200 years later. Despite the passage of time, Bartram’s words speak to current issues of critical importance. The film responds to an America hungry to re-connect with the natural world around us, an America increasingly focused on sustaining this planet we call home. Often called “the South’s Thoreau,” Bartram’s reverence for all aspects of nature lies at the heart of these modern environmental movements and in the people we meet in Cultivating the Wild.

Culture
Plants
Documentary

Join us to forge
a sustainable future

Our team is always growing.
Become a partner, volunteer, sponsor, or intern today.
Let us know how you would like to get involved!

CONTACT US

sign up for our mailing list to stay informed on the latest films and environmental headlines.

Subscribers receive a free day pass for streaming Cinema Verde.
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.