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The gift of a lifetime: How one busy mum found peace of mind and left a lasting legacy

<p>Anita lives in Sydney with her husband and three sons. She recently chose to include a gift to Lifeline Australia when writing her Will with an online Will-writing service called <a href="https://www.gatheredhere.com.au/c/lifeline-au?gh_cuid=Oxs_YC7byb&gh_cch=%40campaign%2Fchannel%2Fnews" target="_blank" rel="noopener"><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Gathered Here</span></a>.</p> <p>“My Will has been in the making for the last five years and it has always been pushed down on the prioritisation list due to the high cost of seeing a solicitor and us being a very busy family with young kids,” says Anita.</p> <p>“When I found out about Gathered Here, I thought I may as well check it out, and after 10 minutes I had a Will! The process was simple and straightforward without any complicated legal jargon to cut through.</p> <p>“Within the Will-writing process, summarising my wishes was an important and practical step for me. I want to ease the situation for my loved ones I leave behind by providing emotional and financial certainty in a time of confusion and grief.</p> <p>“There is also an opportunity to nominate and leave gifts to my favourite charities. I have three young boys and having some insight into the mental health challenges in Australia made my decision of allocating a portion of my estate to Lifeline Australia very easy.</p> <p>“Seeing an organisation like Lifeline continuously dedicate their effort, time and professionalism at the highest level to ensure that no one is ever alone in crisis provides me with hope of a better world for my children.”</p> <p>Lifeline is a national charity providing people in Australia experiencing emotional distress with access to 24-hour crisis support and suicide prevention services.</p> <p>Tragically, over 3,000 people in Australia lose their lives to suicide every year. This year, Lifeline will receive well over 1 million contacts from people in crisis. Every 30 seconds, someone in Australia reaches out to Lifeline.</p> <p>Lifeline exists to ensure that no person in Australia has to face their toughest moments alone, and believes that through connection, hope can be found.</p> <p>Lifeline Australia has partnered with Gathered Here to offer you the opportunity to <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.gatheredhere.com.au/c/lifeline-au?gh_cuid=Oxs_YC7byb&gh_cch=%40campaign%2Fchannel%2Fnews" target="_blank" rel="noopener">write your Will online for free</a></span> this Include a Charity Week, which runs from the 2nd – 8th September and is dedicated to raising awareness of how anyone can make a lasting impact to causes that they care about with a gift in their Will. You’ll also be able to make free and unlimited changes to your Will for life.</p> <p>Gathered Here provides end-of-life services through probate, funerals and online Wills. They are supported by an in-house legal team of highly experienced Wills and estate lawyers who have reviewed and vetted the Will writing process.</p> <p>Gathered Here's online Will-writing service allows you to appoint guardians for your children and pets, set out how you want to divide your estate and leave gifts to charities that mean the most to you - like Lifeline.</p> <p>After you've provided for those closest to you, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="https://www.gatheredhere.com.au/c/lifeline-au?gh_cuid=Oxs_YC7byb&gh_cch=%40campaign%2Fchannel%2Fnews" target="_blank" rel="noopener">leaving a gift to Lifeline Australia is a lasting and meaningful way that you can have an impact for years to come</a></span>. You will be helping to prevent suicide and save lives in future generations.</p> <p>Gifts in Wills make a phenomenal difference to charities, including Lifeline. This is why a growing number of people understand that once they have provided for their loved ones, leaving a gift in their Will is one of the most powerful ways they can support Lifeline, without incurring any financial costs during their lifetime.</p> <p>If you would like to learn more, please do not hesitate to get in touch with Lifeline Australia’s Gifts in Wills Specialist Abi Steiner via email at <a href="mailto:giftsinwills@lifeline.org.au" target="_blank" rel="noopener">giftsinwills@lifeline.org.<span style="text-decoration: underline;">au</span></a> or phone on 02 8099 1974.</p> <p>If you, or someone you know, are feeling distressed or overwhelmed, we encourage you to connect with Lifeline in the way you feel most comfortable. For 24/7 crisis support, you can phone Lifeline to speak to a Crisis Supporter on 13 11 14, text 0477 131 114, chat to Lifeline online or access the Support Toolkit to self-manage what you’re going through at <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.lifeline.org.au/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">www.lifeline.org.au</a></span>.</p> <p><em>This is a sponsored article produced in partnership with Lifeline Australia.</em></p> <p><em>Image: Lifeline Australia</em></p>

Money & Banking

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"He was at peace": Sam Landsberger’s parents break silence after sudden death

<p>The heartbroken family of Sam Landsberger have revealed what he was doing in his final moments before he tragically <a href="https://oversixty.com.au/health/caring/prominent-sports-journo-killed-at-just-35" target="_blank" rel="noopener">died</a> at the age of 35. </p> <p>Landsberger, 35, was struck by a truck driven by a 45-year-old Seaford man at the intersection of Bridge Rd and Church St in Richmond, Melbourne on Tuesday morning.</p> <p>According to Sam's father Jake, his son's final moments were spent on the phone to his mother Anne while he was walking to meet a friend.</p> <p>“Anne was on the phone with Sam when it happened, heard the hit, she heard the commotion, and we’ve been beside ourselves worrying whether she actually possibly distracted him,” Jake told <em>The Herald Sun</em> on Wednesday. </p> <p>‘The next thing there was commotion, a stranger picked up the phone, and said: ‘Who am I talking to’, so Anne said: ‘I’m Sam’s mother, who are you’."</p> <p>“And he said, ‘I’m sorry to say but your son has just been hit by a vehicle … he’s lying on the ground’. </p> <p>“The man conversed with Sam initially until he lost consciousness’.”</p> <p>Landsberger was rushed to hospital but later died from his extensive injuries. </p> <p>His father said the family received a message from the man who helped Landsberger on Wednesday, saying, “He messaged us and said, ‘I told Sam I was on the phone with his mother and he was at peace knowing that he was communicating with you through me’."</p> <p>Victoria Police have since confirmed the truck driver, 45, who stopped at the scene, underwent “standard” roadside alcohol and drug tests, which were both negative. </p> <p>“He was requested by Melbourne Highway Patrol officers to provide a blood sample as per standard procedure under the Road Safety Act being a driver involved in a serious collision,” a spokesman said.</p> <p>“The driver allegedly refused and was charged on summons with refusing to provide a blood sample.”</p> <p>The man was “immediately” given a notice banning him from driving, and is due to appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court on September 19th.</p> <p>Sam's father said that while his family are "angry" over what happened, they have been overwhelmed by the amount of love they have received since Sam's tragic passing. </p> <p>“I can’t put into words the comfort, the joy and the pride we are getting from that,” Jake said.</p> <p>“By the time we both took two sleeping pills to go to bed about 9pm on Tuesday, I personally had received in excess of 250 messages and Anne probably the same."</p> <p>“The tributes, watching AFL360, seeing The Tackle had been postponed, the stories all over the media … I said to Anne while we sat at our table bawling our eyes out, I wish I could go back to the morgue in the coroner’s court, just wake Sam up briefly and say, ‘Sam, look how much you were loved, look how much you were admired’."</p> <p>“Because he had no idea. He did not realise. The degree to what we’ve seen has blown us to smithereens.”</p> <p><em>Image credits: Twitter</em></p>

Caring

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Hospice nurse reveals the key to a peaceful death

<p>Hospice nurse Julie McFadden has shared her best advice for ensuring a peaceful death, after learning from her patients in their final moments. </p> <p>The healthcare professional, who is known for her YouTube channel where she shares information about death to break the taboo of conversations around dying, shared a video about what you can do in life to ensure a peaceful passing. </p> <p>In the recent clip, she shared what you can do in order to have a peaceful death, and she says it comes down to preparedness and acceptance.</p> <p>"That's one of the biggest things I see," she explained. "People who plan for death will tend to have a more peaceful death than those who do not plan for death."</p> <p>"A prepared death versus a non-prepared death - that's the one thing that I've seen in all of my patients," she explained.</p> <p>Julie said she noticed the patients that were "willing to talk about the hard stuff" had a more peaceful death.</p> <p><iframe title="YouTube video player" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qoFvKkfIo00?si=Ba5BnxuaKsBVaGAe" width="560" height="315" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p>"[That means] willing to ask the questions about, 'how long do you think I have? What can I expect? What should I do before I die to make this easier for my family?'" she listed.</p> <p>Julie went on to share a story of when a patient of hers died peacefully surrounded by his family, explaining that the patient was in hospice and had started to decline around 20 minutes after she arrived.</p> <p>"He started having weird changes in breathing, so this was a sudden decline and it looked like he may suddenly die," she recalled, adding the abrupt change was "uncommon actually" in hospice care.</p> <p>"What I noticed was because this family - and him - were so prepared, instead of the family [being] chaotic and reacting in an emotional way - which is very normal - they flipped along right with him," she explained.</p> <p>"[They laid] in bed with him. They understood immediately what was happening. They didn't panic," she shared.</p> <p>Julie said the man was surrounded by his loving family and it was an overwhelmingly emotional experience.</p> <p>"It makes me cry every time I think about it - that vision of them all being able to understand what was happening, even though it was a change they didn't want," she explained.</p> <p>"By the end of that visit he died, so he went from kind of looking okay to dying which is hard - but that family made it a beautiful moment," she said.</p> <p><em>Image credits: YouTube </em></p>

Caring

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The art of meditation

<p>Meditation is essentially relaxation time and is based on the art of focusing 100 per cent of your attention on one thing. The practice comes with many health benefits including increased concentration, decreased anxiety and improved mental and physical health.</p> <p>While it can be challenge to set aside regular meditation time, the benefits you gain in as little as five minutes will soon have you looking forward to your “me” time.</p> <p>Here are some tips to help you get the most out of it.</p> <p><strong>Choose a convenient time.</strong> You can meditate any time, whether you’re already feeling relaxed or need to de-stress. The best time is when you’re not likely to be disturbed and are free to relax. Sunrise and sunset are ideal, particularly first thing in the morning – it is quieter, your mind isn’t filled with the usual clutter, and there’s less chance you’ll be disturbed.</p> <p><strong>Choose a quiet place.</strong> Quiet, peaceful surroundings can make meditation more enjoyable and relaxing. But the good news is that as you progress, you’ll learn to ignore any interruptions that arise – sirens, phones and the hustle and bustle of the world around you.</p> <p><strong>Meditate with purpose.</strong> If you’re a beginner, keep in mind that meditation is an active process. The art of focusing your attention on a single point is hard work, and you have to be purposefully engaged!</p> <p><strong>Establish a regular practice.</strong> The idea “practice makes perfect” definitely applies to meditation and as per the point above, if you‘re going to get positive benefits, you need to stay committed.</p> <p><strong>Sit comfortably.</strong> Make sure you’re relaxed and comfortable. Sit up straight, keep your shoulders and neck relaxed, and eyes closed. Luckily, there’s no need to sit in the lotus position!</p> <p><strong>Don’t meditate on a full stomach.</strong> It’s best to meditate before a meal so you don’t feel too full or doze off while meditating. However, don’t meditate when you’re hungry. You‘ll find it tricky if you keep thinking about food the whole time! </p> <p><strong>Choose a meditation practice.</strong> There are a range of different meditation techniques to explore. The most popular include:</p> <p>1. Observing your breathing – without altering the rhythm of your breathing, simply notice every inhalation and exhalation. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to the breath.</p> <p>2. Repeating a mantra – saying a sound, word or phrase in your mind over and over can lead you into a state of deep relaxation. You can learn transcendental meditation from a trained teacher who will give you a mantra, or you can try the word “om” or other words like “peace”.</p> <p>3. Practicing visualisation – taking your mind to a safe, calm place can be a pleasant way to meditate. Imagine you are on a beach or in a garden and picture every detail of your surroundings.</p> <p>4. Progressively relaxing the body – while sitting or lying down, try moving your awareness slowly through your body from your head to your toes. Relaxing each part of your body is an effective way to achieve a wonderful state of calm.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Mind

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6 tips to keep the peace on holidays with a friend

<p>Even the best of friends can come to blow when they’re on the road. Avoid conflict with your travel buddy by following these tips.</p> <p><strong>1. Plan ahead</strong></p> <p>Before you set foot on that plane, you need to make absolutely sure that you are both having the holiday you want. If one person loves to spend their days hiking through the forest, they won’t appreciate being made to lie on the beach all day. Or vice versa. There’s always going to be an element of compromise, so plan a trip that appeals to both of you. Otherwise you’ll spend the whole time at loggerheads.</p> <p><strong>2. Agree on a budget</strong></p> <p>Money always causes trouble and that can be amplified when you’re on the road. Even if you are keeping your finances separate while travelling, it’s important to agree on a general budget. One person might be happy to splash out on fancy restaurants every night while the other prefers to fill up on budget street food. You’ll need to find a happy medium that suits both of your wallets and it’s easier to do it before you depart, rather than starting a fight when you’re both hungry.</p> <p><strong>3. Pack separate bags</strong></p> <p>You’ll thank us in the end. It might sound like a great idea to minimise the load and just take one bag, but everyone needs a bit of their own space. Having your own bag means there’s no conflict over who has packed too much or who is a messy folder, plus you both get lots of space for souvenirs. It also prevents one person from getting stuck carrying the load every time.</p> <p><strong>4. Be flexible</strong></p> <p>It’s always handy to have a schedule, but you don’t have to stick to it like you’re on a military expedition. Choices will have to made at numerous points in your trip, so discuss them with your buddy and be prepared to be flexible. You can’t both have things exactly your own way the whole time, so it’s easier to be open to alternative options rather than digging in.</p> <p><strong>5. Spend some time apart</strong></p> <p>Travelling together doesn’t mean you have to spend every waking minute together. Time apart is healthy and gives each person the chance to do things they want to do. One of you can go to the museums, the other can hit the shops, and you can swap stories over dinner.</p> <p><strong>6. Let it go</strong></p> <p>It’s a holiday, so have some fun. Try not to pick silly fights and, if you do end up in one, don’t hang on to it. If things go wrong it’s easier in the long run to laugh about it than apportion blame. No one’s here to keep score. And if you feel things getting a little tense, talk about it before it goes too far.</p> <p><em>Image credit: Shutterstock</em></p>

Travel Tips

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“Let him rest in peace”: Viewers slam Shane Warne miniseries

<p dir="ltr">Viewers have slammed Channel Nine’s upcoming miniseries on Shane Warne, calling the “major drama” two-part event “embarrassing and disgraceful”. </p> <p dir="ltr">The first promo ads for the miniseries aired during the first State of Origin game on Wednesday night, with the trailer showing actor Alex William depicting the late Australian cricketer.</p> <p dir="ltr">The trailer was not well received by fans, with many saying it is “too soon” to be making a series about his life and death.</p> <p dir="ltr">Warmie died in March 2022 of a suspected heart attack while on holiday in Thailand. </p> <p dir="ltr">Just six months after his passing, the Nine Network confirmed the miniseries was in production, however, they did not disclose at the time that production began just three weeks after his death. </p> <p dir="ltr">The series, called <em>Warnie</em>, is set to air over two nights later this year. </p> <p dir="ltr">After the first trailer aired, many fans took to Twitter to express their disappointment over the show. </p> <p dir="ltr">One disgruntled viewer wrote, “Are Channel Nine taking the piss with the Warnie mini series. That promo was s***house, embarrassing and disgraceful. Let him rest in peace.”</p> <p dir="ltr">Another wrote, “Does anyone else think it’s too soon for a Warnie show on? He hasn’t even been gone for 15 months, and already the show seems filmed and ready to release.”</p> <p dir="ltr">“How quickly after his passing did someone go ‘yep it’s time to make a show on his life?’”</p> <p dir="ltr">A third person put it simply: “On the YeahNah scale the Warnie TV drama series look like a massive nah.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The miniseries was filmed in the late cricketer's hometown of Melbourne, and tells a dramatised version of Warnie's remarkable sporting career and rise to fame.</p> <p dir="ltr">Shane's eldest daughter Brooke, 24, previously called Nine's announcement of a telemovie based on her father “<a href="https://www.oversixty.com.au/entertainment/tv/shane-warne-s-daughter-blasts-channel-nine-for-disrespect">beyond disrespectful</a>”, as he spent 23 years as a commentator for the network's cricket coverage.</p> <p dir="ltr">“Do any of you have any respect for dad? Or his family?” she wrote on Instagram.</p> <p dir="ltr">“He did so much for Channel Nine and now you want to dramatise his life and our family's life six months after he passed away? You are beyond disrespectful.”</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image credits: Nine</em></p>

TV

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6 secrets from people with peaceful homes

<p>Does your home feel at times a bit chaotic? Try these top tips to re-instil serenity into your life at home.</p> <p><strong>1. Add plants</strong> – Plants will bring a necessary life to your room while maintaining the peaceful environment.</p> <p><strong>2. Use water colours</strong> – Light shades of certain colours can have a calming effect, including blues and greens. Try to avoid the use of any very bright shades, as these can stimulate the mind.</p> <p><strong>3. Decrease clutter</strong> – If your room is in disarray, your mind will be too. Get rid of excess clutter, i.e. anything that you haven’t used in the last 6 months (unless it’s seasonal) to make your room visually calmer.</p> <p><strong>4. Get some fish</strong> – Aquariums are a great way to add both life and serenity to a room. The sound of running water has a tranquil effect on the environment while the fish themselves are incredibly relaxing to watch as they swim about.</p> <p><strong>5. Add cosy elements</strong> – Add soft fabrics and textures such as a cashmere throw to your couch or bed for a look and feel that’s comfortable.</p> <p><strong>6. Assess the windows</strong> – If you live in a quiet area, open the windows to let in a pleasant breeze and remove any distracting odours while bringing in peaceful sunlight. If you live in a busy city environment, give the windows a close while leaving the curtains open to re-instil serenity to your environment.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Home Hints & Tips

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Tips to filter out the noise in your life

<p>The modern world can make you feel like you are in a constant state of busyness. Here’s how to filter out the noise and take back some time for yourself.</p> <p><strong>1. Begin your day with some quiet</strong></p> <p>They way you start your morning can determine your whole day. When you wake up, take a few minutes to centre yourself in silence. This could be meditation or even just some quiet reflection in bed. You will be amazed at how it can change your outlook.</p> <p><strong>2. Declutter your digital</strong></p> <p>Technology is a wonderful thing, but it also means we are constantly tied to our smartphones, email accounts or the latest news updates. It can be hard to switch off when you are constantly connected. You don’t have to switch off completely, but set yourself limits – only check social media once a day, don’t check emails on the weekend or leave your phone at home if it’s not essential.</p> <p><strong>3. Limit TV time</strong></p> <p>It’s amazing how quickly an hour (or two or three) can go by when you are sat mindlessly in front of the TV. Don’t automatically turn it on as soon as you walk in the house. Set a time for TV (say after 7pm) and then use your new free time to read a book, do some gardening or take a walk. You’ll be amazed at how much free time you suddenly have.</p> <p><strong>4. Get out into nature</strong></p> <p>Never underestimate the power of connecting with the physical world. Head out for a walk through the park or along the beach. Leave your phone and iPod at home so you can listen to the sounds around you. You can clear your mind in a sort of moving meditation, plus the physical exercise will give you an extra boost.</p> <p><strong>5. Find meaningful activities</strong></p> <p>In our busy life we rarely take time for the activities we love, like drawing, reading, singing or yoga. These activities can bring meaning to our lives, and encourage us to slow down and find stillness. It is worth setting aside some time each day or week to do something you really love.</p> <p><strong>6. Practice inner stillness</strong></p> <p>Too often we are our own worst enemy. So, even if we can quiet the external noise, we persist with the internal noise. We constantly run over to do lists, fret over mistakes we’ve made, berate ourselves for not loosing weight. When you feel yourself falling into these patterns, stop. Relax, reset and feel grateful for what you have. </p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Mind

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Why does money cause anxiety? 5 finance habits to transform your peace of mind

<h2>Money and your mental health</h2> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Money is the top source of stress among Australians, according to private health insurance provider, Medibank. And this pressure is taking a toll on our collective mental health. Another poll conducted in July revealed that almost 90 per cent of us are experiencing anxiety over our finances and the ever-rising cost of living.</p> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Money can hold such power over mental health because it plays a big role in how we navigate our place in today’s world. Our financial perceptions and experiences closely overlap with our sense of self-worth, confidence, and personal power, explains clinical psychologist, Jonathan D. Friedman. That’s why “financial anxiety is a mix of material and psychological concerns,” he says, which can be based on both concrete and perceived realities. This means that freaking out about money may stem from a range and combination of situations, from the actual lack of funds to pay bills to social pressures and obligations.</p> <h2>Why does money cause anxiety?</h2> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Your life experiences with money have a big effect on your current relationship with it, explains mental health counsellor, Aja Evans. At a base level, if you grew up in a financially insecure environment, many people will bring this anxiety-ridden scarcity mentality with them into adulthood – spending money feels wrong or dangerous, even if it doesn’t necessarily reflect their current reality. But other messages stick with us, too.</p> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Maybe money was ignored or never discussed in your family, so dealing with finances as an adult makes you feel overwhelmed. Studies show that this type of anxiety often snowballs into to avoidance behaviours, like neglecting your finances. Whether that means you avoid checking bank statements, delay saving (or learning about money-saving methods), or don’t form a budget, “[this] can easily lead to a cycle of overspending and always trying to catch up with financial responsibilities,” says psychiatrist, Dr Jason Hunziker.</p> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Or, if you grew up experiencing money as a way to deal with problems or your feelings, that can help explain your attitude toward “retail therapy” impulse buys today, Evans says. Similarly, society props up wealthier people as being smarter or happier, she says – cues we’re exposed to from a young age that are difficult to unlearn, even if we know better. And social media makes these messages stronger than ever. According to a survey from Allianz Insurance, 57 per cent of people spend money they hadn’t planned to because of what they see on social media.</p> <h2>Why do I keep overspending?</h2> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">“Our emotions or moods govern a lot of our actions,” Evans says. Often, she says, overspending and impulse-buying are coping mechanisms to deal with uncomfortable feelings. And research confirms that we’re more likely to spend money when we’re stressed out.</p> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">A major part of this tendency is that it works, in a sense. Spending money is a form of instant gratification, triggering a rush of dopamine through the body. But when this feel-good hormone wears off, we’re left back at where we started – and potentially with some added guilt or stress about that spending. That’s why overspending can be a vicious cycle.</p> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Now, find out how to build better money habits.</p> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">“Looking for a quick fix to a problem, a temporary solution is extremely appealing when you just want to feel better,” Evans says. “At some point, the overspending and impulse buying becomes the go-to problem solver” – whether the problem you face is boredom, a bad day at work, or something deeper.</p> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Plus, advertisers and marketers know this human tendency inside and out – and they’re good at using it to their advantage. “Our email inbox, home mailbox, ads on television, and social media are full of advertisements telling us that our life is incomplete unless we have the item that they are trying to sell,” Dr Hunziker adds. “Because this information is present in all aspects of our lives, it makes it easier for us to impulsively make purchases, even when it falls outside of our financial budget.”</p> <h2>Tap into your feelings</h2> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Before heading into a store or opening a shopping app, take a pause, Evans urges. “What are you feeling? Are you upset, hungry, angry, lonely, tired? Recognising that you are trying to deal with discomfort through spending helps you to shift the behaviour.”</p> <h2>Find other ways to get that feel-good hit</h2> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">It will be hard to break an impulse-buying habit at first. But Evans recommends that once you realise that you’re shopping to mask a bad mood or emotion, be deliberate about getting gratification from another source. “Talking to a friend, taking a class, exercising, journaling, cleaning your home – literally anything that will take you out of the desire to shop,” she says. “You won’t get it right every time, but slowly you will begin to learn that you can shift your mood without spending money, and your brain will adjust to getting that rush from something other than spending.”</p> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Just like with fad diets, totally depriving yourself isn’t sustainable – and trying to justify every single dollar you spend can create more anxiety. That’s why as you work on your spending habits, leave some room in there for the occasional indulgence. Just make sure that you’re spending with intention and in a way that aligns with your values.</p> <h2>Allow permission to treat yourself</h2> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">For example, ask yourself: will spending this money save you time, make your job easier, bring you relaxation or genuine connection with a friend? “You can make it a personal rule to never purchase anything impulsively,” Dr Hunziker offers. “Wait at least one night to ‘sleep on it’ before making a purchase.”</p> <h2>Reframe your shame</h2> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Whether it’s the holiday you’ve always wanted, a new laptop for work, or a morning latte, if intentionally spending money still brings you feelings like shame and guilt, try this science-approved trick. Researchers found that shame around spending money creates a self-reinforcing cycle of financial anxiety. But their review of studies, published in Organizational Behaviour and Human Decision Processes, found that you can counter this feeling by ‘reaffirming valued aspects’ of yourself, like your kindness or your hard work.</p> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;">Over time, this process retrains your brain not to associate all spending with shame – but removing this barrier doesn’t mean you’ll just start spending frivolously. The study shows that taking shame out of the equation eases money anxiety while reducing poor or counterproductive financial decisions.</p> <h2>Understand your finances</h2> <p style="font-size: medium; font-weight: 400;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Raleway, sans-serif, 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial; font-size: 16px; background-color: #ffffff;">Avoidance behaviours work to keep you stuck in a cycle of money anxiety – so the experts say it’s important to take an honest look at your finances and spending habits for lasting peace of mind. “Start learning about the different aspects about money you don’t understand,” Evans says. Tackling your avoidance behaviours head-on is an important part of stopping the financial anxiety cycle. But “building comfort in navigating your money gives you a sense of control that reduces stress,” too, so you’re more resilient if something unexpected happens financially.</span></p> <p>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://www.readersdigest.com.au/food-home-garden/money/why-does-money-cause-anxiety-5-finance-habits-to-transform-your-peace-of-mind">Reader's Digest</a>.</p> <p><em>Image credit: Getty</em></p>

Money & Banking

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"A kind of meditative peace": Quiet hour shopping makes us wonder why our cities have to be so noisy

<p>The idea behind “quiet hour” shopping is to set aside a time each week for a retail experience that minimises noise and other sources of sensory overload. It is aimed at people who are <a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/10/explainer-neurodivergence-mental-health/">neurodivergent</a> – an umbrella term for people with autism, ADHD and other sensory-processing conditions. </p> <p>What began as a boutique or specialist retail strategy has become more mainstream. Major <a href="https://www.coles.com.au/about-coles/community/accessibility/quiet-hour">supermarket</a> <a href="https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/au/en/media/news-archive/2019/woolworths-rolls-out-quiet-hour-to-select-stores-across-australia.html">chains</a> and <a href="https://insideretail.com.au/news/westfield-tuggerah-introduces-quiet-hour-for-people-with-dementia-autism-201907">shopping centres</a> in Australia and overseas have introduced it in recent years.</p> <p>In newly published <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07255136221133188">research</a> we explored quiet hour as an aspect of the impacts of sound on how people experience city life. As expected, we found it did benefit people who are neurodivergent. But other people also welcomed the relief from sensory overload once they’d overcome the feeling of having wandered into an eerily quiet “post-apocalyptic scene”. </p> <p>Our work has made us question the acceptance of urban noise and light as being part and parcel of a vibrant city.</p> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet"> <p dir="ltr" lang="en">As families around Australia prepare for Santa’s arrival Coles and Woolworths supermarkets become a centre of activity.<br />Both stores offer ‘Quiet Hour’ on Tuesday for a low sensory shopping experience.<br />Coles hours: <a href="https://t.co/jZV0f5bGwm">https://t.co/jZV0f5bGwm</a> <br />Woolworths hours: <a href="https://t.co/X5iMm05cOr">https://t.co/X5iMm05cOr</a> <a href="https://t.co/R5CyXcB9R3">pic.twitter.com/R5CyXcB9R3</a></p> <p>— NDIS (@NDIS) <a href="https://twitter.com/NDIS/status/1458706093492817923?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 11, 2021</a></p></blockquote> <h2>What does quiet hour involve?</h2> <p>Quiet hour is intended to make retail spaces more inclusive or sensory-friendly. Its features include retailers or mall managers agreeing to: </p> <ul> <li> <p>switch automatic doors to open</p> </li> <li> <p>pause collection of trolleys</p> </li> <li> <p>turn off the PA and music</p> </li> <li> <p>fix flickering lights and turn off as much lighting as practicable</p> </li> <li> <p>remove scented reeds and pause automatic scent dispensers</p> </li> <li> <p>switch off hand dryers </p> </li> <li> <p>turn down the volume on checkout scanners.</p> </li> </ul> <p>One of the tools we used for mapping quiet hour was a <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/07255136221133188">thematic analysis</a> of reports about it in Australian print media from 2017 to 2019. We found the following themes: </p> <ul> <li> <p>an emphasis on the kinds of discomforts associated with retail environments</p> </li> <li> <p>the importance of providing a “low-sensory environment” as a form of inclusion</p> </li> <li> <p>while lighting was often mentioned, the main recurring theme was the reduction of sound. </p> </li> </ul> <h2>Why does reducing sound matter?</h2> <p>Sound and sensory hypersensitivity are important themes in neurodivergent people’s accounts of how they struggle with everyday experiences others take for granted. </p> <p>Leading autism researcher and advocate Sandra Thom-Jones <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/growing-in-to-autism-paperback-softback">writes</a> that neurodivergents’ sensitivity to sound is complex. It’s affected by “what the sound actually is, how loud it is, whether I am expecting it, and whether I can control it”.</p> <p>People might assume everyone has the ability to <a href="https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9780203033142-4/radio-texture-self-others1-jo-tacchi">frame which sounds are important</a> and which are “irrelevant to what we are listening to or doing”. However, the ability to single out sound sources and block out background noise is a major point of differentiation between neurotypicals and neurodivergents.</p> <p>Thom-Jones, who received her autism diagnosis at age 52, <a href="https://www.mup.com.au/books/growing-in-to-autism-paperback-softback">reports</a> that when she is “in an environment with multiple sounds” she tends to “hear all of them”.</p> <p>Thus, when she is catching up with a friend in a café, she may be “listening intently” to what her friend is saying but she will also be “hearing the piped music, the people talking at the next table, cars driving past, the coffee machine”. </p> <h2>Others welcome quiet hour too</h2> <p>Given how neurodivergents process sound, quiet hour is likely to increase their sense of comfort in retail spaces. </p> <p>However, quiet hour also suspends or – to use a term coined by <a href="https://www.google.com.au/books/edition/Frame_Analysis/XBpmAAAAIAAJ?hl=en">Erving Goffman</a> – “rekeys” the <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/symb.506">sensory frames</a> of all shoppers. A quiet hour could benefit lots of people who may not have a specific condition but simply prefer a quieter retail environment.</p> <p>We found this is an under-researched area, but did find anecdotal accounts to suggest this. Take the <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/12-07-2020/the-quiet-hours-in-praise-of-supermarket-serenity">case</a> of New Zealand actress and author Michelle Langstone. </p> <p>She reports visiting stores across Auckland and Rotorua that offer quiet-hour shopping. She stumbled upon it by “sheer luck”. At first, she admits, it felt “a bit like a post-apocalyptic scene”.</p> <p>Once she adjusted to the unfamiliar sensory environment, she felt herself succumbing to changed supermarket routines, “I cruised every single [aisle], taking in the quiet for nearly 45 minutes, at the end of which I felt a kind of meditative peace come over me.” </p> <p>Langstone also <a href="https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/12-07-2020/the-quiet-hours-in-praise-of-supermarket-serenity">reports</a> avoiding impulse buying. That first time she left with “only [the] bread and eggs” she had gone to the shop for. She was able to focus on shopping rather than “multi-tasking”, and quiet hour left her with a “feeling of goodwill towards all shoppers”. </p> <p>In other words, even if the strategy is about levelling the sensory playing field for neurodivergents, it seems to <a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/soin.12232">change the shopping experience</a> for other people too.</p> <h2>Why the bias towards the noisy city?</h2> <p>As researchers interested in sound and space, quiet hour made us reflect on how we think about these issues and our attitudes to noise. It made us question, for example, why one of the most cited texts in our field is entitled <a href="https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/noise">Noise: The Political Economy of Music</a>?</p> <p>Studies of silence or quietude are rare in urban or spatial studies. One has to turn to fields such as the study of <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1466138109339041">meditation practices</a> or the silence associated with <a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-au/A+History+of+Silence:+From+the+Renaissance+to+the+Present+Day-p-9781509517350">nature or sacred spaces</a> to find positive accounts of reduced noise.</p> <p>This needs correcting. Sound intensity matters if cities, buildings or public spaces are to foster hospitality and “<a href="https://www.metrolab.brussels/publications/the-qualities-of-hospitality-and-the-concept-of-inclusive-city">support people in their activities by facilitating their stay</a>”. </p> <p>What quiet hour teaches us is that an inclusive or welcoming city is a city that “<a href="https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Resonance%3A+A+Sociology+of+Our+Relationship+to+the+World-p-9781509519927">resonates</a>” with different kinds of minds, bodies and styles of sensory processing. </p> <p>Quiet hour might therefore be both an inclusion strategy and an experiment that forces us to think more deeply about our cities and how they sound.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em>This article originally appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-kind-of-meditative-peace-quiet-hour-shopping-makes-us-wonder-why-our-cities-have-to-be-so-noisy-193461" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Conversation</a>. </em></p>

Travel Tips

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Our final moments of life have one thing in common

<p dir="ltr">Whatever our beliefs are, a fear of what comes after death can spark anything from mild discomfort for some to a panic attack for others - but the process isn’t quite how we expect or fear.</p> <p dir="ltr">“We live in a death-denying culture,” Dr Merran Cooper, an end-of-life doula and physiotherapist, told <em><a href="https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/final-moments-of-life-have-one-thing-in-common/news-story/b1307a91f646948f0d6cd95c16a631a5" target="_blank" rel="noopener">news.com.au</a></em>.</p> <p dir="ltr">“By denying the possibility we might die, and having conversations about it, we deny ourselves the opportunity to have the most important conversations of our lives with the most important people.”</p> <p dir="ltr">With between three and ten percent of people reporting feelings of being more nervous than others about thoughts of dying according to <a href="https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22830-thanatophobia-fear-of-death" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cleveland Clinic</a>, it’s safe to say thanatophobia or ‘death anxiety’ is a common experience.</p> <p dir="ltr">Though there is fear surrounding the concept of dying, experts who work with death and dying have revealed that it’s more peaceful than we might expect.</p> <p dir="ltr">Camilla Rowland, the CEO of Palliative Care Australia, told <em>news.com.au</em> that her experiences are “usually very peaceful” and that it’s common to feel someone’s ‘spirit’ or ‘energy’ fill the room.</p> <p dir="ltr">“My experience has been that usually as the different organs start to shut down, people come in and out of a semiconscious state, and it is usually very peaceful,” she explained.</p> <p dir="ltr">“I’ve had that experience, and also many other members of my palliative care team have said that as well, that they felt the spirit of the person around them. And that’s not necessarily a religious thing, it’s just a feeling that occurs. I’ve had people from all walks of life and all different belief systems say the same thing.”</p> <p dir="ltr">CEO of Touchstone Life Care Dr Merran Cooper shared similar experiences, noting that even if it seems frightening or distressing to someone watching, the person dying is having a different experience.</p> <p dir="ltr">“Everyone dies differently but most commonly, when death is expected, a person begins to sleep more, and breath more shallowly until it is very hard to tell whether they are breathing or not,” Dr Cooper said.</p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-f67babe3-7fff-0039-815d-201613ccd2f1"></span></p> <p dir="ltr">“It can be a peaceful thing to watch. There are noises that worry the person watching, and even bleeding which is distressing to watch, but for the person dying, they slowly move to a place of deeper and deeper unconsciousness until they do not take the next breath.”</p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image: Getty Images</em></p>

Retirement Life

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"Peace, comfort and courage": Dame Deborah James farewelled

<p>Dame Deborah James has been farewelled at a private funeral in London after losing her five-year battle with bowel cancer. </p> <p>The cancer campaigner, also known as Bowel Babe, died on June 29th at age 40.</p> <p>A service for the mum-of-two, who raised £7.4 million ($12.8 million) for multiple cancer charities in her final weeks, was a private service for family and friends which took place in West London's St Mary's Church.</p> <p>Local police shared their sorrow at the event taking place, tweeting: "Incredible and inspiring, Dame Deborah James! Your memory will live forever!</p> <p>"Our thoughts are with the family and friends! Wishing you peace, comfort and courage at this time of sorrow," they said.</p> <p>Deborah's husband and two children were among the procession that followed the hearse through the streets of the suburb in a sombre tribute. </p> <p>The 40-year-old's wicker coffin was adorned with roses named in her honour at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show earlier this year.</p> <p>Among the close friends and family in attendance were a small number of famous faces, including TV presenters Lorraine Kelly and Gaby Roslin. </p> <p>Deborah's husband, Sebastien Bowen, gave the eulogy during the service, while their son Hugo, 14, and daughter Eloise, 12, read poems.</p> <p>Ahead of the day James's brother Benjamin James penned an emotion tribute to his older sister on social media.</p> <p>"Saying bye is never going to be easy, but knowing you achieved more than any of us could ever dream of…and so, so much more…makes it that little bit more bearable," he said. </p> <p>"Take it easy up there. Here's to you x".</p> <p>The family <a href="https://oversixty.com.au/news/news/vale-dame-deborah" target="_blank" rel="noopener">announced</a> Deborah's death on June 29th, saying she "passed away peacefully" at home where she has been receiving hospice care.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images </em></p>

Caring

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How the right property strategy can help you retire with peace of mind

<p>If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we need to have a backup plan in place when it comes to our financial situation. In the early days of the lockdowns, people were unable to work and just how financially vulnerable most people are was laid bare for all to see.</p> <p>While this might have been exceptional circumstances, what we do know is that 56 per cent of Australians do not have enough money to retire. For most people, retirement is not a shock. We know it’s coming and approximately when. The issue is that people simply don’t put enough focus on it early enough and end up without enough money put away.</p> <p>For that reason, it might be worth looking at an asset like property to help accelerate your journey to financial security. Here’s how.</p> <p><strong>Invest wisely</strong></p> <p>The most important realisation that most people need to make is that trading time for money is not going to get you where you need to go. While saving diligently and sticking to a budget are critical components of wealth building, ultimately it’s where you put that money to work which is the most critical element. The traditional retirement model involves putting away a portion of your weekly income and investing that into a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds through a superannuation fund.</p> <p>While this is a good thing to do and we know that stocks, in particular, have increased in value over time, it’s missing one of the most powerful elements that can really help your investments grow - that’s leverage.</p> <p>The great thing about property is that you can typically put down a relatively small amount of money and control a much larger asset. Typically that would be a 10-20 per cent deposit not including other costs such as stamp duty and closing costs.</p> <p>What this effectively does is increase the return on your money thanks to the power of leverage. While a stock portfolio might increase in value over time, you still have to invest 100 per cent of the funds.</p> <p>By using debt in an intelligent way, you’re able to borrow from the banks to help accelerate your wealth building. For example, if your property increases in value by 5 per cent and you put down a 20 per cent deposit, your cash has actually grown by 25 per cent.</p> <p><strong>Strategy is key</strong></p> <p>You don’t typically go out and try to purchase one property and then retire. For most average income earners, this is going to be a process that takes place over time.</p> <p>It’s vital that you look to invest in property in the correct way with a strategy that is going to allow you to reach your financial goals over time.</p> <p>In the early stages of building your portfolio, you are doing everything in your power to acquire properties. This will involve both working and saving to help fund the early deposits and you’ll also be working within the limitations of what a bank will allow you to borrow.</p> <p>Depending on how risk-averse you might be, you will look to purchase properties more or less aggressively. During this stage, you will normally be buying multiple lower-priced properties to capitalise on the higher yields combined with growth.</p> <p>You are able to use the increased equity from your early purchases to continue to buy more properties and expand your portfolio. During this stage, getting the overall balance right between growth and cash flow is critical as you will need capital growth to continue buying and enough rental income to be able to maintain your serviceability and pay the costs of holding the properties. Having a diversified portfolio spread across the country also helps to reduce risk and can improve the odds of growth.</p> <p>Once you’ve built up a solid base of properties and you’ve seen your portfolio appreciate in value to where you’ve hit your goal, you can then begin the process of deleveraging and paying down your outstanding debt by selling some of the properties in the portfolio.</p> <p><strong>Why most people fail</strong></p> <p>The main reason 90 per cent of property investors fail to build a property portfolio that is able to provide a passive income that they can live off, is because they undertook the wrong strategy to begin with.</p> <p>Most people are typically able to purchase 1-2 properties before they run into borrowing capacity issues or a lack of capital growth. This keeps them stuck at this level unless they can increase their income - which was the very issue they were trying to avoid in the first place.</p> <p>Serious property investors treat property as a business and do not just purchase any old property and hope for the best. They build out a detailed plan about how they are going to reach their financial goals and what the steps are they are required to take.</p> <p>Additionally, they target certain locations that provide a combination of strong growth potential and cash flow and build a portfolio that always considers both factors.</p> <p>They also don’t do everything by themselves. They look to surround themselves with a team of professionals who can help them in all areas of their journey. This normally includes a mortgage broker, lawyer, accountant, financial advisor and buyers agent. </p> <p>If you’re going to be one of the 1 per cent of people who are able to retire financially free thanks to property - you can. </p> <p>You simply need to forget about speculating on property and start treating it like a business and work with a strategy that is going to get you there.</p> <p><strong><em>Rasti Vaibhav is the author of The Property Wealth Blueprint (RRP $39.95) and CEO of Get RARE Properties, a bespoke independent buyers’ agency that has been helping hundreds of clients across Australia secure their financial freedom through property. For more information visit <a href="http://www.getrare.com.au">www.getrare.com.au</a></em></strong></p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p>

Real Estate

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New Zealand mosque shooting survivor completes Walk for Peace

<p dir="ltr">A New Zealand man who was shot nine times completed a two-week walk and bike ride stretching across the country - all in the name of peace.</p> <p dir="ltr">Temel Atacocugu retraced the steps of the gunman who attacked two Christchurch mosques and took 51 lives on the <a href="https://www.oversixty.com.au/health/caring/three-years-on-since-mosque-terrorist-attack" target="_blank" rel="noopener">third anniversary</a> of the shooting.</p> <p dir="ltr">“I wanted to fix this damage,” Atacocugu told the <em><a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/03/15/1086599199/shot-9-times-at-new-zealand-mosque-survivor-walks-for-peace" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Associated Press</a></em>. “Because three years ago, he started that journey with hate.”</p> <p dir="ltr">The 47-year-old said he wanted to bless the 360-kilometre route from Dunedin to the two Christchurch mosques and raise funds for charity along the way.</p> <p dir="ltr">Though he initially intended to make the entire journey on foot, temperamental weather and the onset of severe blisters and blood poisoning saw him spend several days in a local hospital about halfway through.</p> <p dir="ltr">“The best point was meeting lots of beautiful people and getting great support from them,” he said.</p> <p dir="ltr">“The low point was being in the emergency room. But I was not going to give up. I got on my bike straight after discharge.”</p> <p><span id="docs-internal-guid-2423fe0d-7fff-3a03-4924-820c848f6e59"></span></p> <p dir="ltr">Travelling by bike also helped him make up for lost time.</p> <p><iframe style="border: none; overflow: hidden;" src="https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fatacocugutemel%2Fphotos%2Fa.109136465031924%2F120754257203478%2F%3Ftype%3D3&amp;show_text=true&amp;width=500" width="500" height="375" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></p> <p dir="ltr">On Tuesday at 1.40pm - the exact time he was shot during Friday prayers in 2019 - Atacocugu entered the Al Noor mosque after walking the final stretch with about 50 supporters.</p> <p dir="ltr">“I made a speech, it was very emotional,” Atacocugu said. “I was so happy. It was a big relief to have completed my mission.”</p> <p dir="ltr">Having been shot in the mouth, his left arm and both legs during the attack, Atacocugu said he often felt pain from his injuries on his journey.</p> <p dir="ltr">Afterwards, he said he planned to recuperate with a long sleep and perhaps a sauna and spa.</p> <p dir="ltr">As his gruelling journey came to an end, an <a href="https://givealittle.co.nz/fundraiser/temels-walk-for-peace" target="_blank" rel="noopener">online donations page</a> showed that Atacocugu had raised $NZD 64,000 ($AUD 43,000) for three charities benefiting children: the Child Cancer Foundation, Save the Children New Zealand, and The Key to Life Charitable Trust.</p> <p dir="ltr">As of Wednesday afternoon, the sum came to a whopping $NZD 72,215 ($AUD 67,870).</p> <p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-2e1e544c-7fff-4eaf-80b5-5d5bdc146a3a"></span></p> <p dir="ltr"><em>Image: Temel’s Walk for Peace (Facebook)</em></p>

Caring

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Australia’s oldest dinosaur was a peaceful vegetarian, not a fierce predator

<p>Ipswich, about 40 kilometres west of Brisbane, seems an unlikely place to find dinosaur fossils. Yet the area has produced the oldest evidence of dinosaurs in Australia.</p> <p>A fresh look at these fossils now reveals they aren’t what they first seemed, and it’s prompting us to reconsider how the story of Australia’s dinosaurs began.</p> <p>In research <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2021.1984447">published</a> today in Historical Biology, we reanalyse a sequence of 220-million-year-old tracks from the Ipswich Coal Measures, thought to have belonged to a carnivorous dinosaur.</p> <p>We show they actually belonged to an early sauropodomorph — a distant relative of the plant-eating sauropods that roamed the planet much later, during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. This is the first time fossil evidence of early sauropodomorphs has been found in Australia.</p> <h2>Subterranean dinosaur tracks</h2> <p>The Ipswich area was once the principal source of coal for Queensland. Its suburbs including Ebbw Vale, New Chum and Swanbank were dotted with underground mines during the late 1800s and the first half of the twentieth century.</p> <p>These mining operations involved the creation of deep shafts and tunnels, from which miners could access deposits of coal sandwiched between other layers of rock. Some tunnels would descend hundreds of metres below the surface.</p> <p>The coal would be removed from the seam by hand, and pillars were left in its place to support the ceiling of the resulting underground “room”. It was difficult and dangerous work.</p> <p>In 1964, miners working at the Rhondda colliery in New Chum made a startling discovery. As they removed the coal from a seam they were following 213 metres below the surface, a series of giant, three-toed tracks became exposed in the ceiling of the mine shaft. For the miners, it was as if a dinosaur had just walked over their heads.</p> <p><a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427699/original/file-20211021-16-1f6x0w5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=1000&amp;fit=clip"><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427699/original/file-20211021-16-1f6x0w5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="" /></a></p> <p>These tracks remain the oldest-known dinosaur fossils in the entire continent. They’d been made by a dinosaur walking across a layer of swampy vegetation, which would be extracted as coal 220 million years later. Buried under fine silt and mud, they’d been preserved as natural casts.</p> <p>It had been assumed some type of predatory dinosaur made the tracks. The only problem was the footprints were reportedly about 40–46 centimetres long. This would suggest the track-maker was just under 2m high at the hips.</p> <p>This isn’t necessarily large for a theropod such as <em>Allosaurus fragillis</em>, which was about this size. <em>Tyrannosaurus rex</em> was even bigger, with a hip height of about 3.2m.</p> <p>But the tracks found in Ipswich were created during the Late Triassic about 220 million years ago — 65 million years before <em>Allosaurus</em> and 150 million years before <em>T. rex</em>. And fossil evidence from around the world indicates theropods of a larger size didn’t appear until the start of the Early Jurrasic Period, 200 million years ago.</p> <p>Was something unusual afoot in Australia during the Late Triassic?</p> <p>As part of a broader review of Australian dinosaur tracks, we decided to take a closer look at the Rhondda colliery tracks. The mine has long been closed, so the original tracks are no longer accessible, but archival photographs and a plaster cast are held at the Queensland Museum.</p> <h2>Dispelling the myth of the ‘Triassic terror’</h2> <p>Using the photos and cast, we created a 3D digital model of the track to allow a more detailed comparison with other dinosaur tracks from around the world.</p> <p>Our study revealed two important things. First, the footprints were not as big as initially reported. Excluding drag marks and other unrelated surface features, they are close to 32–34cm long (not 40–46cm as previously documented).</p> <p>Second, the shape of the footprints and the sequence in which they were made is more consistent with early sauropodomorphs. Sauropodomorphs were the distant relatives of the lumbering sauropods of the Late Jurassic and subsequent Cretaceous Period.</p> <p>The towering Triassic terror of the Ipswich Coal Measures was no more. In its place was a peaceful plant-eater.</p> <p><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/427698/original/file-20211021-24-ztn4dr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&amp;q=45&amp;auto=format&amp;w=754&amp;fit=clip" alt="Australia's oldest dinosaur, reconstructed based on a fossilised tracks founnd in 220 million year old rocks from Ipswich." />The remains of early sauropodomorph dinosaurs have been found in Upper Triassic rocks, aged between 220 million and 200 million years, in continental Europe, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa.</p> <p>And by the start of the Jurassic, 200 million years ago, they had achieved a near global distribution, with fossils in North America, China and Antarctica. This isn’t surprising, given the continents at the time were still connected in a single landmass called Pangaea.</p> <p>Our new interpretation of the Rhondda colliery tracks shows early sauropodomorphs lived in Australia, too, and that Australia’s first dinosaurs were friendlier than we thought.</p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/steven-w-salisbury-3400">Steven W. Salisbury</a>, PhD; Senior Lecturer, School of Biological Sciences, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland-805">The University of Queensland</a></em> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/anthony-romilio-131227">Anthony Romilio</a>, PhD, Independent Researcher, <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/the-university-of-queensland-805">The University of Queensland</a></em></span></p> <p>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-oldest-dinosaur-was-a-peaceful-vegetarian-not-a-fierce-predator-170275">original article</a>.</p> <p><em>Image: Anthony Romilio</em></p>

Family & Pets

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Peace talks between Harry, Prince Charles and William "didn't go as hoped"

<div class="post_body_wrapper"> <div class="post_body"> <div class="body_text redactor-styles redactor-in"> <p>Prince Harry has allegedly been unable to fix his fractured relationship with his family, a royal insider has revealed.</p> <p>The Duke of Sussex spoke with his father, Prince Charles and his brother Prince William as well as other family members at Prince Philip's funeral on Saturday.</p> <p>It's also been revealed that Prince Harry wrote his father a "deeply personal note" to explain why he and his wife Meghan Markle decided to move to the US with toddler Archie.</p> <p>“Truth be told, Harry didn’t really know what to expect before he came home, which is why he reached out before seeing everyone,” a royal source told<span> </span><em><a rel="noopener" href="https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/prince-harry-failed-repair-relationship-23945312?utm_source=twitter.com&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_campaign=sharebar" target="_blank">The Mirror</a>.</em></p> <p>“He wrote a deeply personal note to his dad to try and set things straight.”</p> <p>The insider said that "tensions were still running high" as "things haven't ironed out the way he had hoped".</p> <p>“There had been a kind of unspoken agreement between everyone to park whatever has been on each person’s mind, and solely concentrate on supporting the Queen ahead of Prince Philip’s funeral.</p> <p>“The feeling inside the camp was that it wasn’t the time nor the place to go over things, especially at such an emotional time for everybody involved.”</p> <p>The insider said: “Harry didn’t expect everything to be completely back to normal but his feeling after seeing his family was there is a lot of ground to make up.</p> <p>“Whether that is harder or easier to do on the other side of the world remains to be seen."</p> </div> </div> </div>

Relationships

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A most peaceful passing: Folk-rock legend quietly passes away onstage

<p>Singer and songwriter David Olney has passed away at age 71, after falling silent and dropping his head while in the midst of a performance at the 30A Songwriters Festival in Florida on January 18.</p> <p>The performer had taken a pause on his stool, leading audience members and musicians playing alongside him to think he was simply taking a moments break, before realisation dawned and they lowered him to the stage.</p> <p>Olney was giving his second performance of the day at the festival as part of an “in the round” song-swap show with Amy Rigby – who was sitting next to him and described his last moments.</p> <p>Rigby wrote on Facebook. “He was very still, sitting upright with his guitar on, wearing the coolest hat and a beautiful rust suede jacket we laughed about because it was raining like hell outside the boathouse where we were playing — I just want the picture to be as graceful and dignified as it was, because it at first looked like he was just taking a moment.</p> <p>“Scott Miller had the presence of mind to say we needed to revive him. Doctors in the audience and 30A folks were all working so hard to get him to come to … We all lost someone important last night.”</p> <p>Miller himself said the situation was as “gentle” as he was.</p> <p>“David was playing a song when he paused, said ‘I’m sorry’ and put his chin to his chest. He never dropped his guitar or fell of his stool. It was as easy and gentle as he was. </p> <p>“We got him down and tried our best to revive him until the EMTs arrived. … The world lost a good one last night. But we still have his work. And it still inspires. And always will. RIP.”</p> <p><img style="width: 500px; height: 281.25px;" src="https://oversixtydev.blob.core.windows.net/media/7834086/sg-2.jpg" alt="" data-udi="umb://media/96a14a6178c54dfca52d157aa3f83f73" /></p> <p style="text-align: center;"><em>David Olney performing during the Dave Alvin's ' West of the West ' train tour at the Soiled Dove in Denver, Colorado on April 23, 2015.</em></p> <p>Olney was considered a remarkable figure in his own right, for his contribution to the folk-rock genre and along with producing over 20 albums, many artists including Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Del McCoury and his former roommate Steve Earle went on to cover his music.</p> <p>The late Townes Van Zandt famously said of Olney: “Any time anyone asks me who my favorite music writers are… I say Mozart, Lightnin Hopkins, Bob Dylan and Dave Olney. Dave Olney is one of the best songwriters I’ve ever heard — and that’s true. I mean that from my heart.” </p> <p>Emmylou Harris brought attention to Olney’s song writing skills with her covers of “Jerusalem Tomorrow” in 1993 and “Deeper Well” on her essential 1995 album “Wrecking Ball.”</p> <p>Olney first came to attention as a member of the band<span> </span>X-Rays<span> </span>which was signed to the Rounder label in the 1980s and notably opened up for Elvis Costello.</p> <p>The singer had only just finished recording a new album for fans.</p> <p>Brett Ryan Stewart wrote on his Facebook page: “Yesterday, myself, Anana and Irakli had spent the day making final revisions to the album we made with David Olney.</p> <p>“In the very same moment that we hit the save button, collectively yelling ‘We did it!’ we got the news that David, who was in Florida performing, had passed away, on stage. </p> <p>“It’s all very surreal. … I am so grateful for our time together. I recognized a kindred spirit in him from day one. His stories, his encouragement, his wisdom.</p> <p>“Hands down was of the funniest, gentlest, most thoughtful and charming curmudgeons to have graced the earth. Was really looking forward to more.” </p> <p>Olney was completing his third performance of the fest when he sadly passed away, having performed the previous night in-the-round with Amelia White and Mary Bragg before his solo show Saturday afternoon.</p> <p>Olney was scheduled to appear this week at the Folk Alliance gathering in New Orleans.</p> <p>Emmylou Harris said Olney had a way of telling “marvellous stories, with characters who cling to the hope of enduring love, all the while crossing the deep divide into that long, dark night of the soul.”</p> <p>Olney is survived by his wife, Regine, daughter, Lillian, and son, Redding. Services have not yet been set.</p>

News

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How music can unite as well as divide us

<p>September 21 is <a href="http://www.un.org/en/events/peaceday/background.shtml">International Day of Peace</a>, the UN’s annual call for a global ceasefire. This year, in the lead-up, celebrities have curated a <a href="http://www.peaceoneday.org/playlist">Peace Day Playlist</a> available through streaming services. James Morrison, Yoko Ono, Michael Caine, UB40 and others have nominated songs such as Michael Jackson’s Heal the World, Joan Baez’s We Shall Overcome and John Lennon’s Imagine, alongside One, a Peace Day anthem featuring artists from across the African continent. The premise for the playlist is that music “is a unique vehicle to amplify the message of the day, bringing people together in the name of peace.”</p> <p>For many people, such songs have become associated with anti-war protests and notions of freedom, equality and social justice. But just as music can unite us behind a cause, it can also drive us apart. Music must be deployed carefully if we are to really <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlKX-m17C7U">give peace a chance</a>.</p> <p>Music is often called humankind’s “universal language”: an all-embracing and inherently benevolent form of communication. Music can indeed deepen feelings of affinity and social cohesion. But these same qualities can also <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;id=6HwAAwAAQBAJ&amp;oi=fnd&amp;pg=PA26&amp;dq=cynthia+cohen+music+peacebuilding&amp;ots=drSKRRgpRk&amp;sig=9TR_4s0MC0IwAF0G5YbWpnRcyc4#v=onepage&amp;q=cynthia%20cohen%20music%20peacebuilding&amp;f=false">strengthen divisions</a>.</p> <p>During the 1990s Yugoslav civil wars, for example, Slobodan Milošević’s far-right Serbian regime <a href="http://www.suedosteuropa.uni-graz.at/sites/default/files/publications/SEEU_036_02_Archer-1_published%5b1%5d.pdf">appropriated</a> <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;id=_iqrCwAAQBAJ&amp;oi=fnd&amp;pg=PP1&amp;dq=turbo-folk+music&amp;ots=fhtd90pnHE&amp;sig=x2JPN7sdBHE7pvy7B1T5P3PJKNE#v=onepage&amp;q=turbo-folk%20music&amp;f=false">turbofolk</a>, a mix of <a href="https://josotl.indiana.edu/index.php/aeer/article/download/330/405">regional folk and electronic European pop music</a>, to promote cultural nationalism for political purposes.</p> <p>Music played in the flute bands of Northern Ireland has similarly strong and contentious associations. Some tunes were so potent that in some parts of the country, whistling a short phrase has <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=99I7xvnA6KIC&amp;pg=PA89&amp;dq=music+and+conflict+northern+ireland&amp;hl=en&amp;sa=X&amp;redir_esc=y#v=onepage&amp;q=music%20and%20conflict%20northern%20ireland&amp;f=false">resulted in violence</a>.</p> <p><a href="http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=93161">Other research</a> shows some American soldiers used metal and rap music in Iraq to heighten aggressiveness and inspire warlike behaviour. Despite the stereotype of violence and rap and metal music, this is <a href="http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198567424.003.0004">not a result of these music genres</a> per se, but the bonding qualities of music. As we’ve seen, conflict can be just as easily fanned by dance and folk music.</p> <p><strong>What makes music work?</strong></p> <p>We can explain how music brings people together through the lens of <a href="https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?cluster=3837670639352116525&amp;hl=en&amp;as_sdt=2005&amp;sciodt=0,5">empathy</a>. Empathy involves being able to identify other people’s emotional states and respond appropriately. It can also involve the capacity to reflect other people’s emotions back at them. Empathy, therefore, is both knowing and feeling.</p> <p>We can see these same qualities when groups come together around music. <a href="http://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/music-of-kindness-playing-together-strengthens-empathy-in-children">Research</a> has shown how making music together can enhance children’s emotional skills such as empathy. <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0305735612440609">The study</a> looked at musical components that promote empathy such as emotionality (music’s ability to both induce and express emotions); imitation (the repeated patterns of the music itself as well as in the act mimicking other performer’s movements); and synchronisation (exemplified through the sense of a mutually felt pulse).</p> <p>Some researchers have even suggested making music goes beyond empathy, as performers share emotions, intentions and experiences to such a degree that the <a href="https://scholar.google.com.au/scholar?hl=en&amp;q=Musical+group+interaction%2C+intersubjectivity+and+merged+subjectivity.+In+D.+Reynolds+%26+M.+Reason+%28Eds.%29%2C+Kinesthetic+empathy+in+creative+and+cultural+practices+&amp;btnG=&amp;as_sdt=1%2C5&amp;as_sdtp=">boundary between them becomes blurred</a>. When singing or humming in unison with a large group of people, for example, it can be difficult to distinguish one’s own voice in the total sound being produced.</p> <p><strong>Healing old wounds</strong></p> <p>Importantly, though, feeling belonging with other people does not automatically mean peace. The key to this is whether music is being used to bond people who <a href="https://theconversation.com/does-empathy-have-limits-72637">already consider themselves to be alike</a>, or whether it connects those who for whatever reason consider each other “different”.</p> <p><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0305735616680289">Recent findings</a> demonstrate that even brief exposure to music from a particular culture can increase listeners’ positive attitudes towards people from that culture. However, this approach <a href="http://www.musicandartsinaction.net/index.php/maia/article/view/conflicttransformation">has been criticised</a> for emphasising the differences between groups, reinforcing the boundaries the projects aim to dismantle.</p> <p>To avoid hardening the borderlines, some projects have harnessed musical styles that are perceived to be politically or culturally neutral. For example, in modern-day Kosovo <a href="https://www.musicianswithoutborders.org/">Musicians without Borders</a> steer away from popular but divisive turbofolk, connecting youth in the ethnically divided city of Mitrovica through <a href="https://www.musicianswithoutborders.org/programs/places/mitrovica-rock-school/overview/">rock music</a>.</p> <p>Rock music provided a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19401159.2014.988521">similar respite</a> during The Troubles in 1980s Northern Ireland, offering Protestant and Catholic youths somewhere to socialise and enjoy each other’s company, despite political disparities. <a href="https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9781315693699.ch32">Research</a> also shows how sharing lullabies across language groups helps people recognise the universal aspects of human nature.</p> <p>In other places, music can help people confront difference. <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&amp;lr=&amp;id=oMLkUmraBCAC&amp;oi=fnd&amp;pg=PA63&amp;dq=music+and+reconciliation+anne+marie-gray&amp;ots=gMqHkLW5sV&amp;sig=kwUbdk7Y9-QN7pHhb7YG6u6o6JY#v=onepage&amp;q=music%20and%20reconciliation%20anne%20marie-gray&amp;f=false">Scholars have suggested</a> that music from South Africa’s history could provide insight into the experiences of both black and white South Africans before 1994, when the country became an inclusive democracy, ending the final vestiges of apartheid.</p> <p>In South Sudan <a href="http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/UNIS/article/viewFile/44815/42225">Muonjieng (Dinka) songs</a> have long served as avenues for public truth-telling and disclosure of past violent abuses. With civil war ongoing, these mechanisms for peacebuilding could be significant in the establishment of formalised justice systems.</p> <p>Through his music, John Lennon asks us to “imagine all the people living life in peace.” It is not always as simple as that, but when carefully deployed, music can give us spaces to work towards enacting this peace.<!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><span><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/samantha-dieckmann-336452"><em>Samantha Dieckmann</em></a><em>, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Music, ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-melbourne-722">University of Melbourne</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/jane-davidson-100007">Jane Davidson</a>, Deputy Director ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-melbourne-722">University of Melbourne</a></em></span></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/giving-peace-a-chance-music-can-drive-us-apart-as-much-as-it-unites-82745">original article</a>.</em></p>

Music

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Social media and technology mean that dead celebrities can't rest in peace

<p>“To be dead,” wrote the 20th century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, “is to be a prey for the living.” Even Sartre, though, would have struggled to imagine casting James Dean in a movie 64 years after the actor’s death.</p> <p>The <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/afm-james-dean-reborn-cgi-vietnam-war-action-drama-1252703">curious announcement</a> that Dean, who died in a car crash in 1955 having made just three films, will star in a movie adaptation of Gareth Crocker’s Vietnam War novel Finding Jack, has been met with <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/james-dean-finding-jack-digital-actor-backlash-controversy-172502291.html">outrage</a>.</p> <p>It would be a remarkable CGI achievement for any studio to resurrect an actor who has been dead since the Eisenhower administration.</p> <p>True, the Star Wars movie Rogue One featured the late Peter Cushing “reprising” his role as Grand Moff Tarkin. But the new role given to Dean would reportedly be far larger and more complex. Cushing, at least, had already played Tarkin while he was alive.</p> <p>In Finding Jack, “James Dean” will supposedly be starring in a film based on a novel written 80 years after he was born, set near the end of a war that started after he died. He will reportedly be reanimated via “full body” CGI using actual footage and photos; another actor will voice him.</p> <p>The reaction to this goes beyond mere scepticism, however. Nor is it simply the now-familiar post-truth anxiety about no longer being able to tell what’s real and what isn’t. The rise of “<a href="https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&amp;rct=j&amp;q=&amp;esrc=s&amp;source=web&amp;cd=12&amp;cad=rja&amp;uact=8&amp;ved=2ahUKEwi_392QhdjlAhVLdCsKHQ_zC5gQFjALegQIAhAB&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.nytimes.com%2F2019%2F06%2F10%2Fopinion%2Fdeepfake-pelosi-video.html&amp;usg=AOvVaw2qK3CZZjtPtJJcix9JXZ4X">deepfakes</a>” presents a much greater threat on that front than bringing dead actors back to life.</p> <p>What’s at work here is another pervasive challenge of the online era: how we should live with the digital dead.</p> <p>People die online every day. Social media is increasingly full of <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13347-011-0050-7">electric corpses</a>; at some point <a href="http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2019-04-29-digital-graveyards-are-dead-taking-over-facebook">the dead will outnumber the living</a> on platforms like Facebook. This already poses a range of <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10676-015-9379-4">ethical and practical problems</a>. Some of these are the subject of a <a href="https://www.lawreform.justice.nsw.gov.au/Pages/lrc/lrc_current_projects/Digital%20assets/Project-update.aspx">NSW Law Reform Commission inquiry</a> into how we should deal with the digital assets of the dead and incapacitated.</p> <p><strong>Reanimation</strong></p> <p>These issues only get thornier once you add in the prospect of reanimation.</p> <p>For most of this decade, digital immortality was confined to press releases and fiction. A string of start-ups promised breathlessly to let you cheat death via AI-driven avatars, only to disappear when it became clear their taglines were better than their products. (The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/media/shortcuts/2013/feb/18/death-social-media-liveson-deadsocial">Twitter app LivesOn’s</a> “When your heart stops beating, you’ll keep tweeting” was undeniably clever).</p> <p>“Be Right Back,” a 2013 episode of the TV series Black Mirror, imagined a young woman who signs up for a service that brings her dead partner back to life using his social media footprint: first as a chat bot, then as a phone-based voice simulator, and finally as a lifelike automaton. It was brilliant, bleak television, but thankfully, it wasn’t real.</p> <p>Then in late 2015, 34-year-old Roman Mazurenko died in an accident in Moscow. As a tribute, his best friend, fellow tech entrepreneur Eugenia Kuyda, <a href="https://www.theverge.com/a/luka-artificial-intelligence-memorial-roman-mazurenko-bot">built the texts</a> Mazurenko had sent her into a chat bot.</p> <p>You can download Roman Mazurenko right now, wherever you get your apps, and talk to a dead man. Internet immortality might not be here yet, not quite, but it’s unsettlingly close.</p> <p><strong>Between remembrance and exploitation</strong></p> <p>Sadly, it’s not an immortality we could look forward to. When we fear death, one thing we particularly dread is the end of first-person experience.</p> <p>Think of the experience you’re having reading this article. Someone else could be reading exactly the same words at the same time. But their experience will lack whatever it is that makes this your experience. That’s what scares us: if you die, that quality, what it’s like to be you, won’t exist anymore. And there is, to mangle <a href="https://ethics.org.au/ethics-explainer-what-is-it-like-to-be-a-bat/">a famous line from Thomas Nagel</a>, nothing it is like to be a bot.</p> <p>But what about living on for other people? The Mazurenko bot is clearly a work of mourning, and a work of love. Remembering the dead, <a href="http://sorenkierkegaard.org/works-of-love.html">wrote Kierkegaard</a>, is the freest and most unselfish work of love, for the dead can neither force us to remember them nor reward us for doing so. But memory is fragile and attention is fickle.</p> <p>It seems reasonable that we might use our new toys to help the dead linger in the lifeworld, to escape oblivion a little longer. The danger, as the philosopher <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/05568641.2015.1014538">Adam Buben has put it</a>, is that memorialisation could slip into replacement.</p> <p>An interactive avatar of the dead might simply become a stopgap, something you use to fill part of the hole the dead leave in our lives. That risks turning the dead into yet another resource for the living. The line between remembrance and exploitation is surprisingly porous.</p> <p>That is what’s ultimately troubling about resurrecting James Dean. To watch a James Dean movie is to encounter, in some palpable way, the concrete person. Something of the face-to-face encounter survives the mediation of lens, celluloid and screen.</p> <p>To make a new James Dean movie is something else. It’s to use the visual remains of Dean as a workable resource instead of letting him be who he is. Worse, it suggests that James Dean can be replaced, just as algorithm-driven avatars might come to replace, rather than simply commemorate, the dead.</p> <p>We’ll know in time whether Finding Jack can live up to its likely premature hype. Even if it doesn’t, the need to think about how we protect the dead from our digital predations isn’t going away.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important; text-shadow: none !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127211/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: http://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/patrick-stokes-10346">Patrick Stokes</a>, Associate Professor of Philosophy, <a href="http://theconversation.com/institutions/deakin-university-757">Deakin University</a></em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="http://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/chat-bots-james-dean-can-the-digital-dead-rest-in-peace-127211">original article</a>.</em></p>

Technology

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RSPCA’S rehoming program gives peace of mind to worried pet parents

<p>For Susan Koleda and her husband, their West Highland Terriers are more than dogs. They consider the two of them, Bonnie and Chloe, their “fur children”. </p> <p>But they’re reaching a time in life where they need to think about the future, about all those uncertainties that tend to accompany getting older. What will happen to their home? Their belongings? Their dogs?</p> <p>“My biggest fear is that if something happens to us, they won’t be looked after in the way that they are used to,” Susan told RSPCA NSW.</p> <p>So, in order to dispel that worry, Susan signed up for the RSPCA NSW Home Ever After program.</p> <p>The program aims to rehome the pets of people who have passed away or become permanently incapacitated, ensuring they’re looked after and cared for well into the future.</p> <p>The Home Ever After process begins with a preliminary interview with the owner to create a pet profile. Our team endeavours to learn everything there is to know – which toys are their favourite, preferred treats, sleeping habits, whether they like to be scratched behind the ear – all the things only a doting parent would know after years of love and care. </p> <p>Then, in the event that the owner is no longer able to care for their pets, the Home Ever After team springs into action. They collect the pets and take them into the care of RSPCA NSW. They are then rehomed with an appropriate family using all the information provided by the owner, ensuring the pets retain all the things they are accustomed to. The Home Ever After team also keeps in touch with the adoptive family to make sure everything is running smoothly.</p> <p>“<u>W</u>hen pet owners enrol in the program, they are safeguarding their pet’s future by creating their next forever home with the knowledge of the person who knows them best,” Home Ever After Coordinator Maria Natera said. “The program may never be needed but it’s so important to be prepared just in case it ever is.”</p> <p>The RSPCA doesn’t ask for payment for this service but asks supporters to consider leaving a gift in their Will, so they can continue its vital work helping animals in need around the state.</p> <p>“You know their vet history and their special personalities,” Susan said. “It just gives me great peace of mind knowing that I now have a plan in place, and my girls will be placed in a loving home if I am no longer able to look after them.”</p> <p>If you’ve ever asked yourself the question, “If something happens to me, what will happen to my pet?”, <a href="https://www.rspcansw.org.au/what-we-do/home-ever-after/">Home Ever After</a> is able to provide an answer.</p>

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