One of the four pillars of good conversation is levity. You needn’t be a comedian, you can but have some funTetra Images, LLC/Alamy Conversation lies at the heart of our relationships – yet many of us find it surprisingly hard to talk to others. We may feel anxious at the thought of making small talk with strangers and struggle to connect with the people who are closest to us. If that sounds familiar, Alison Wood Brooks hopes to help. She is a professor at Harvard Business School, where she teaches an oversubscribed course called “TALK: How to talk gooder in business and life”, and the author of a new book, Talk: The science of conversation and the art of being ourselves. Both offer four key principles for more meaningful exchanges. Conversations are inherently unpredictable, says Wood Brooks, but they follow certain rules – and knowing their architecture makes us more comfortable with what is outside of our control. New Scientist asked her about the best ways to apply this research to our own chats. David Robson: Talking about talking feels quite meta. Do you ever find yourself critiquing your own performance? Alison Wood Brooks: There are so many levels of “meta-ness”. I have often felt like I’m floating over the room, watching conversations unfold, even as I’m involved in them myself. I teach a course at Harvard, and [my students] all get to experience this feeling as well. There can be an uncomfortable period of hypervigilance, but I hope that dissipates over time as they develop better habits. There is a famous quote from Charlie Parker, who was a jazz saxophonist. He said something like, “Practise, practise, practise, and then when you get on stage, let it all go and just wail.” I think that’s my approach to conversation. Even when you’re hyper-aware of conversation dynamics, you have to remember the true delight of being with another human mind, and never lose the magic of being together. Think ahead, but once you’re talking, let it all go and just wail. Reading your book, I learned that a good way to enliven a conversation is to ask someone why they are passionate about what they do. So, where does your passion for conversation come from? I have two answers to this question. One is professional. Early in my professorship at Harvard, I had been studying emotions by exploring how people talk about their feelings and the balance between what we feel inside and how we express that to others. And I realised I just had this deep, profound interest in figuring out how people talk to each other about everything, not just their feelings. We now have scientific tools that allow us to capture conversations and analyse them at large scale. Natural language processing, machine learning, the advent of AI – all this allows us to take huge swathes of transcript data and process it much more efficiently. Receive a weekly dose of discovery in your inbox. Sign up to newsletter The personal answer is that I’m an identical twin, and I spent my whole life, from the moment I opened my newborn eyes, existing next to a person who’s an exact copy of myself. It was like observing myself at very close range, interacting with the world, interacting with other people. I could see when she said and did things well, and I could try to do that myself. And I saw when her jokes failed, or she stumbled over her words – I tried to avoid those mistakes. It was a very fortunate form of feedback that not a lot of people get. And then, as a twin, you’ve got this person sharing a bedroom, sharing all your clothes, going to all the same parties and playing on the same sports teams, so we were just constantly in conversation with each other. You reached this level of shared reality that is so incredible, and I’ve spent the rest of my life trying to help other people get there in their relationships, too. “TALK” cleverly captures your framework for better conversations: topics, asking, levity and kindness. Let’s start at the beginning. How should we decide what to talk about? My first piece of advice is to prepare. Some people do this naturally. They already think about the things that they should talk about with somebody before they see them. They should lean into this habit. Some of my students, however, think it’s crazy. They think preparation will make the conversation seem rigid and forced and overly scripted. But just because you’ve thought ahead about what you might talk about doesn’t mean you have to talk about those things once the conversation is underway. It does mean, however, that you always have an idea waiting for you when you’re not sure what to talk about next. Having just one topic in your back pocket can help you in those anxiety-ridden moments. It makes things more fluent, which is important for establishing a connection. Choosing a topic is not only important at the start of a conversation. We’re constantly making decisions about whether we should stay on one subject, drift to something else or totally shift gears and go somewhere wildly different. Sometimes the topic of conversation is obvious. Even then, knowing when to switch to a new one can be trickyMartin Parr/Magnum Photos What’s your advice when making these decisions? There are three very clear signs that suggest that it’s time to switch topics. The first is longer mutual pauses. The second is more uncomfortable laughter, which we use to fill the space that we would usually fill excitedly with good content. And the third sign is redundancy. Once you start repeating things that have already been said on the topic, it’s a sign that you should move to something else. After an average conversation, most people feel like they’ve covered the right number of topics. But if you ask people after conversations that didn’t go well, they’ll more often say that they didn’t talk about enough things, rather than that they talked about too many things. This suggests that a common mistake is lingering too long on a topic after you’ve squeezed all the juice out of it. The second element of TALK is asking questions. I think a lot of us have heard the advice to ask more questions, yet many people don’t apply it. Why do you think that is? Many years of research have shown that the human mind is remarkably egocentric. Often, we are so focused on our own perspective that we forget to even ask someone else to share what’s in their mind. Another reason is fear. You’re interested in the other person, and you know you should ask them questions, but you’re afraid of being too intrusive, or that you will reveal your own incompetence, because you feel you should know the answer already. What kinds of questions should we be asking – and avoiding? In the book, I talk about the power of follow-up questions that build on anything that your partner has just said. It shows that you heard them, that you care and that you want to know more. Even one follow-up question can springboard us away from shallow talk into something deeper and more meaningful. There are, however, some bad patterns of question asking, such as “boomerasking”. Michael Yeomans [at Imperial College London] and I have a recent paper about this, and oh my gosh, it’s been such fun to study. It’s a play on the word boomerang: it comes back to the person who threw it. If I ask you what you had for breakfast, and you tell me you had Special K and banana, and then I say, “Well, let me tell you about my breakfast, because, boy, was it delicious” – that’s boomerasking. Sometimes it’s a thinly veiled way of bragging or complaining, but sometimes I think people are genuinely interested to hear from their partner, but then the partner’s answer reminds them so much of their own life that they can’t help but start sharing their perspective. In our research, we have found that this makes your partner feel like you weren’t interested in their perspective, so it seems very insincere. Sharing your own perspective is important. It’s okay at some point to bring the conversation back to yourself. But don’t do it so soon that it makes your partner feel like you didn’t hear their answer or care about it. Research by Alison Wood Brooks includes a recent study on “boomerasking”, a pitfall you should avoid to make conversations flowJanelle Bruno What are the benefits of levity? When we think of conversations that haven’t gone well, we often think of moments of hostility, anger or disagreement, but a quiet killer of conversation is boredom. Levity is the antidote. These small moments of sparkle or fizz can pull us back in and make us feel engaged with each other again. Our research has shown that we give status and respect to people who make us feel good, so much so that in a group of people, a person who can land even one appropriate joke is more likely to be voted as the leader. And the joke doesn’t even need to be very funny! It’s the fact that they were confident enough to try it and competent enough to read the room. Do you have any practical steps that people can apply to generate levity, even if they’re not a natural comedian? Levity is not just about being funny. In fact, aiming to be a comedian is not the right goal. When we watch stand-up on Netflix, comedians have rehearsed those jokes and honed them and practised them for a long time, and they’re delivering them in a monologue to an audience. It’s a completely different task from a live conversation. In real dialogue, what everybody is looking for is to feel engaged, and that doesn’t require particularly funny jokes or elaborate stories. When you see opportunities to make it fun or lighten the mood, that’s what you need to grab. It can come through a change to a new, fresh topic, or calling back to things that you talked about earlier in the conversation or earlier in your relationship. These callbacks – which sometimes do refer to something funny – are such a nice way of showing that you’ve listened and remembered. A levity move could also involve giving sincere compliments to other people. When you think nice things, when you admire someone, make sure you say it out loud. This brings us to the last element of TALK: kindness. Why do we so often fail to be as kind as we would like? Wobbles in kindness often come back to our egocentrism. Research shows that we underestimate how much other people’s perspectives differ from our own, and we forget that we have the tools to ask other people directly in conversation for their perspective. Being a kinder conversationalist is about trying to focus on your partner’s perspective and then figuring what they need and helping them to get it. Finally, what is your number one tip for readers to have a better conversation the next time they speak to someone? Every conversation is surprisingly tricky and complex. When things don’t go perfectly, give yourself and others more grace. There will be trips and stumbles and then a little grace can go very, very far. Topics:

By TREVOR HOGG Images courtesy of Chocolate Tribe. Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt, Owner and CEO, Chocolate Tribe After initially pursuing a career as an attorney, Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt discovered her true calling was to apply her legal knowledge in a more artistic endeavor with her husband, Rob Van den Bragt, who had forged a career as a visual effects supervisor. The couple co-founded Chocolate Tribe, the Johannesburg and Cape Town-based visual effects and animation studio that has done work for Netflix, BBC, Disney and Voltage Pictures. “It was following my passion and my passion finding me,” observes Maketo-van den Bragt, Owner and CEO of Chocolate Tribe and Founder of AVIJOZI. “I grew up in Soweto, South Africa, and we had this old-fashioned television. I was always fascinated by how those people got in there to perform and entertain us. Living in the townships, you become the funnel for your parents’ aspirations and dreams. My dad was a judge’s registrar, so he was writing all of the court cases coming up for a judge. My dad would come home and tell us stories of what happened in court. I found this enthralling, funny and sometimes painful because it was about people’s lives. I did law and to some extent still practice it. My legal career and entertainment media careers merged because I fell in love with the storytelling aspect of it all. There are those who say that lawyers are failed actors!” Chocolate Tribe hosts what has become the annual AVIJOZI festival with Netflix. AVIJOZI is a two-day, free-access event in Johannesburg focused on Animation/Film, Visual Effects and Interactive Technology. This year’s AVIJOZI is scheduled for September 13-14 in Johannesburg. Photo: Casting Director and Actor Spaces Founder Ayanda Sithebe (center in black T-shirt) and friends at AVIJOZI 2024. A personal ambition was to find a way to merge married life into a professional partnership. “I never thought that a lawyer and a creative would work together,” admits Maketo-van den Bragt. “However, Rob and I had this great love for watching films together and music; entertainment was the core fabric of our relationship. That was my first gentle schooling into the visual effects and animation content development space. Starting the company was due to both of us being out of work. I had quit my job without any sort of plan B. I actually incorporated Chocolate Tribe as a company without knowing what we would do with it. As time went on, there was a project that we were asked to come to do. The relationship didn’t work out, so Rob and I decided, ‘Okay, it seems like we can do this on our own.’ I’ve read many books about visual effects and animation, and I still do. I attend a lot of festivals. I am connected with a lot of the guys who work in different visual effects spaces because it is all about understanding how it works and, from a business side, how can we leverage all of that information?” Chocolate Tribe provided VFX and post-production for Checkers supermarket’s “Planet” ad promoting environmental sustainability. The Chocolate Tribe team pushed photorealism for the ad, creating three fully CG creatures: a polar bear, orangutan and sea turtle. With a population of 1.5 billion, there is no shortage of consumers and content creators in Africa. “Nollywood is great because it shows us that even with minimal resources, you can create a whole movement and ecosystem,” Maketo-van den Bragt remarks. “Maybe the question around Nollywood is making sure that the caliber and quality of work is high end and speaks to a global audience. South Africa has the same dynamics. It’s a vibrant traditional film and animation industry that grows in leaps and bounds every year. More and more animation houses are being incorporated or started with CEOs or managing directors in their 20s. There’s also an eagerness to look for different stories which haven’t been told. Africa gives that opportunity to tell stories that ordinary people, for example, in America, have not heard or don’t know about. There’s a huge rise in animation, visual effects and content in general.” Rob van den Bragt served as Creative Supervisor and Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt as Studio Executive for the “Surf Sangoma” episode of the Disney+ series Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire. Rob van den Bragt, CCO, and Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt, CEO, Co-Founders of Chocolate Tribe, in an AVIJOZI planning meeting. Stella Gono, Software Developer, working on the Chocolate Tribe website. Family photo of the Maketos. Maketo-van de Bragt has two siblings. Film tax credits have contributed to The Woman King, Dredd, Safe House, Black Sails and Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning shooting in South Africa. “People understand principal photography, but there is confusion about animation and visual effects,” Maketo-van den Bragt states. “Rebates pose a challenge because now you have to go above and beyond to explain what you are selling. It’s taken time for the government to realize this is a viable career.” The streamers have had a positive impact. “For the most part, Netflix localizes, and that’s been quite a big hit because it speaks to the demographics and local representation and uplifts talent within those geographical spaces. We did one of the shorts for Disney’s Kizazi Moto: Generation Fire, and there was huge global excitement to that kind of anthology coming from Africa. We’ve worked on a number of collaborations with the U.K., and often that melding of different partners creates a fusion of universality. We need to tell authentic stories, and that authenticity will be dictated by the voices in the writing room.” AVIJOZI was established to support the development of local talent in animation, visual effects, film production and gaming. “AVIJOZI stands for Animation Visual Effects Interactive in JOZI [nickname for Johannesburg],” Maketo-van den Bragt explains. “It is a conference as well as a festival. The conference part is where we have networking sessions, panel discussions and behind-the-scenes presentations to draw the curtain back and show what happens when people create avatars. We want to show the next generation that there is a way to do this magical craft. The festival part is people have film screenings and music as well. We’ve brought in gaming as an integral aspect, which attracts many young people because that’s something they do at an early age. Gaming has become the common sport. AVIJOVI is in its fourth year now. It started when I got irritated by people constantly complaining, ‘Nothing ever happens in Johannesburg in terms of animation and visual effects.’ Nobody wanted to do it. So, I said, ‘I’ll do it.’ I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, and four years later I have lots of gray hair!” Rob van den Bragt served as Animation Supervisor/Visual Effects Supervisor and Nosipho Maketo-van den Bragt as an Executive Producer on iNumber Number: Jozi Gold (2023) for Netflix. (Image courtesy of Chocolate Tribe and Netflix) Mentorship and internship programs have been established with various academic institutions, and while there are times when specific skills are being sought, like rigging, the field of view tends to be much wider. “What we are finding is that the people who have done other disciplines are much more vibrant,” Maketo-van den Bragt states. “Artists don’t always know how to communicate because it’s all in their heads. Sometimes, somebody with a different background can articulate that vision a bit better because they have those other skills. We also find with those who have gone to art school that the range within their artistry and craftsmanship has become a ‘thing.’ When you have mentally traveled where you have done other things, it allows you to be a more well-rounded artist because you can pull references from different walks of life and engage with different topics without being constrained to one thing. We look for people with a plethora of skills and diverse backgrounds. It’s a lot richer as a Chocolate Tribe. There are multiple flavors.” South African director/producer/cinematographer and drone cinemtography specialist FC Hamman, Founder of FC Hamman Films, at AVIJOZI 2024. There is a particular driving force when it comes to mentoring. “I want to be the mentor I hoped for,” Maketo-van den Bragt remarks. “I have silent mentors in that we didn’t formalize the relationship, but I knew they were my mentors because every time I would encounter an issue, I would be able to call them. One of the people who not only mentored but pushed me into different spaces is Jinko Gotoh, who is part of Women in Animation. She brought me into Women in Animation, and I had never mentored anybody. Here I was, sitting with six women who wanted to know how I was able to build up Chocolate Tribe. I didn’t know how to structure a presentation to tell them about the journey because I had been so focused on the journey. It’s a sense of grit and feeling that I cannot fail because I have a whole community that believes in me. Even when I felt my shoulders sagging, they would be there to say, ‘We need this. Keep it moving.’ This isn’t just about me. I have a whole stream of people who want this to work.” Netflix VFX Manager Ben Perry, who oversees Netflix’s VFX strategy across Africa, the Middle East and Europe, at AVIJOZI 2024. Netflix was a partner in AVIJOZI with Chocolate Tribe for three years. Zama Mfusi, Founder of IndiLang, and Isabelle Rorke, CEO of Dreamforge Creative and Deputy Chair of Animation SA, at AVIJOZI 2024. Numerous unknown factors had to be accounted for, which made predicting how the journey would unfold extremely difficult. “What it looks like and what I expected it to be, you don’t have the full sense of what it would lead to in this situation,” Maketo-van den Bragt states. “I can tell you that there have been moments of absolute joy where I was so excited we got this project or won that award. There are other moments where you feel completely lost and ask yourself, ‘Am I doing the right thing?’ The journey is to have the highs, lows and moments of confusion. I go through it and accept that not every day will be an award-winning day. For the most part, I love this journey. I wanted to be somewhere where there was a purpose. What has been a big highlight is when I’m signing a contract for new employees who are excited about being part of Chocolate Tribe. Also, when you get a new project and it’s exciting, especially from a service or visual effects perspective, we’re constantly looking for that dragon or big creature. It’s about being mesmerizing, epic and awesome.” Maketo-van den Bragt has two major career-defining ambitions. “Fostering the next generation of talent and making sure that they are ready to create these amazing stories properly – that is my life work, and relating the African narrative to let the world see the human aspect of who we are because for the longest time we’ve been written out of the stories and narratives.”

Donald Trump’s military parade in Washington this weekend — a show of force in the capital that just happens to take place on the president’s birthday — smacks of authoritarian Dear Leader-style politics (even though Trump actually got the idea after attending the 2017 Bastille Day parade in Paris).Yet as disconcerting as the imagery of tanks rolling down Constitution Avenue will be, it’s not even close to Trump’s most insidious assault on the US military’s historic and democratically essential nonpartisan ethos.In fact, it’s not even the most worrying thing he’s done this week.On Tuesday, the president gave a speech at Fort Bragg, an Army base home to Special Operations Command. While presidential speeches to soldiers are not uncommon — rows of uniformed troops make a great backdrop for a foreign policy speech — they generally avoid overt partisan attacks and campaign-style rhetoric. The soldiers, for their part, are expected to be studiously neutral, laughing at jokes and such, but remaining fully impassive during any policy conversation.That’s not what happened at Fort Bragg. Trump’s speech was a partisan tirade that targeted “radical left” opponents ranging from Joe Biden to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. He celebrated his deployment of Marines to Los Angeles, proposed jailing people for burning the American flag, and called on soldiers to be “aggressive” toward the protesters they encountered.The soldiers, for their part, cheered Trump and booed his enemies — as they were seemingly expected to. Reporters at Military.com, a military news service, uncovered internal communications from 82nd Airborne leadership suggesting that the crowd was screened for their political opinions.“If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don’t want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out,” one note read.To call this unusual is an understatement. I spoke with four different experts on civil-military relations, two of whom teach at the Naval War College, about the speech and its implications. To a person, they said it was a step towards politicizing the military with no real precedent in modern American history.“That is, I think, a really big red flag because it means the military’s professional ethic is breaking down internally,” says Risa Brooks, a professor at Marquette University. “Its capacity to maintain that firewall against civilian politicization may be faltering.”This may sound alarmist — like an overreading of a one-off incident — but it’s part of a bigger pattern. The totality of Trump administration policies, ranging from the parade in Washington to the LA troop deployment to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s firing of high-ranking women and officers of color, suggests a concerted effort to erode the military’s professional ethos and turn it into an institution subservient to the Trump administration’s whims. This is a signal policy aim of would-be dictators, who wish to head off the risk of a coup and ensure the armed forces’ political reliability if they are needed to repress dissent in a crisis.Steve Saideman, a professor at Carleton University, put together a list of eight different signs that a military is being politicized in this fashion. The Trump administration has exhibited six out of the eight.“The biggest theme is that we are seeing a number of checks on the executive fail at the same time — and that’s what’s making individual events seem more alarming than they might otherwise,” says Jessica Blankshain, a professor at the Naval War College (speaking not for the military but in a personal capacity).That Trump is trying to politicize the military does not mean he has succeeded. There are several signs, including Trump’s handpicked chair of the Joint Chiefs repudiating the president’s claims of a migrant invasion during congressional testimony, that the US military is resisting Trump’s politicization.But the events in Fort Bragg and Washington suggest that we are in the midst of a quiet crisis in civil-military relations in the United States — one whose implications for American democracy’s future could well be profound.The Trump crisis in civil-military relations, explainedA military is, by sheer fact of its existence, a threat to any civilian government. If you have an institution that controls the overwhelming bulk of weaponry in a society, it always has the physical capacity to seize control of the government at gunpoint. A key question for any government is how to convince the armed forces that they cannot or should not take power for themselves.Democracies typically do this through a process called “professionalization.” Soldiers are rigorously taught to think of themselves as a class of public servants, people trained to perform a specific job within defined parameters. Their ultimate loyalty is not to their generals or even individual presidents, but rather to the people and the constitutional order.Samuel Huntington, the late Harvard political scientist, is the canonical theorist of a professional military. In his book The Soldier and the State, he described optimal professionalization as a system of “objective control”: one in which the military retains autonomy in how they fight and plan for wars while deferring to politicians on whether and why to fight in the first place. In effect, they stay out of the politicians’ affairs while the politicians stay out of theirs.The idea of such a system is to emphasize to the military that they are professionals: Their responsibility isn’t deciding when to use force, but only to conduct operations as effectively as possible once ordered to engage in them. There is thus a strict firewall between military affairs, on the one hand, and policy-political affairs on the other.Typically, the chief worry is that the military breaches this bargain: that, for example, a general starts speaking out against elected officials’ policies in ways that undermine civilian control. This is not a hypothetical fear in the United States, with the most famous such example being Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s insubordination during the Korean War. Thankfully, not even MacArthur attempted the worst-case version of military overstep — a coup.But in backsliding democracies like the modern United States, where the chief executive is attempting an anti-democratic power grab, the military poses a very different kind of threat to democracy — in fact, something akin to the exact opposite of the typical scenario.In such cases, the issue isn’t the military inserting itself into politics but rather the civilians dragging them into it in ways that upset the democratic political order. The worst-case scenario is that the military acts on presidential directives to use force against domestic dissenters, destroying democracy not by ignoring civilian orders, but by following them.There are two ways to arrive at such a worst-case scenario, both of which are in evidence in the early days of Trump 2.0.First is politicization: an intentional attack on the constraints against partisan activity inside the professional ranks.Many of Pete Hegseth’s major moves as secretary of defense fit this bill, including his decisions to fire nonwhite and female generals seen as politically unreliable and his effort to undermine the independence of the military’s lawyers. The breaches in protocol at Fort Bragg are both consequences and causes of politicization: They could only happen in an environment of loosened constraint, and they might encourage more overt political action if gone unpunished.The second pathway to breakdown is the weaponization of professionalism against itself. Here, Trump exploits the military’s deference to politicians by ordering it to engage in undemocratic (and even questionably legal) activities. In practice, this looks a lot like the LA deployments, and, more specifically, the lack of any visible military pushback. While the military readily agreeing to deployments is normally a good sign — that civilian control is holding — these aren’t normal times. And this isn’t a normal deployment, but rather one that comes uncomfortably close to the military being ordered to assist in repressing overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations against executive abuses of power.“It’s really been pretty uncommon to use the military for law enforcement,” says David Burbach, another Naval War College professor (also speaking personally). “This is really bringing the military into frontline law enforcement when. … these are really not huge disturbances.”This, then, is the crisis: an incremental and slow-rolling effort by the Trump administration to erode the norms and procedures designed to prevent the military from being used as a tool of domestic repression. Is it time to panic?Among the experts I spoke with, there was consensus that the military’s professional and nonpartisan ethos was weakening. This isn’t just because of Trump, but his terms — the first to a degree, and now the second acutely — are major stressors.Yet there was no consensus on just how much military nonpartisanship has eroded — that is, how close we are to a moment when the US military might be willing to follow obviously authoritarian orders.For all its faults, the US military’s professional ethos is a really important part of its identity and self-conception. While few soldiers may actually read Sam Huntington or similar scholars, the general idea that they serve the people and the republic is a bedrock principle among the ranks. There is a reason why the United States has never, in over 250 years of governance, experienced a military coup — or even come particularly close to one.In theory, this ethos should also galvanize resistance to Trump’s efforts at politicization. Soldiers are not unthinking automatons: While they are trained to follow commands, they are explicitly obligated to refuse illegal orders, even coming from the president. The more aggressive Trump’s efforts to use the military as a tool of repression gets, the more likely there is to be resistance.Or, at least theoretically.The truth is that we don’t really know how the US military will respond to a situation like this. Like so many of Trump’s second-term policies, their efforts to bend the military to their will are unprecedented — actions with no real parallel in the modern history of the American military. Experts can only make informed guesses, based on their sense of US military culture as well as comparisons to historical and foreign cases.For this reason, there are probably only two things we can say with confidence.First, what we’ve seen so far is not yet sufficient evidence to declare that the military is in Trump’s thrall. The signs of decay are too limited to ground any conclusions that the longstanding professional norm is entirely gone.“We have seen a few things that are potentially alarming about erosion of the military’s non-partisan norm. But not in a way that’s definitive at this point,” Blankshain says.Second, the stressors on this tradition are going to keep piling on. Trump’s record makes it exceptionally clear that he wants the military to serve him personally — and that he, and Hegseth, will keep working to make it so. This means we really are in the midst of a quiet crisis, and will likely remain so for the foreseeable future.“The fact that he’s getting the troops to cheer for booing Democratic leaders at a time when there’s actually [a deployment to] a blue city and a blue state…he is ordering the troops to take a side,” Saideman says. “There may not be a coherent plan behind this. But there are a lot of things going on that are all in the same direction.”See More: Politics

Hell is Us has been on my radar since it was first announced in April 2022, and I’ve finally been able to spend some time with it via its demo. The war-torn world of Hell is Us is immediately chilling and the demo’s brief glimpse of the gameplay, despite some minor hang-ups, has me eager for more. You play as Remi as he ventures to the fictional country of Hadea. A civil war has broken out, dividing and devastating Hadea’s people. Remi must travel through the war zone in search of his parents, and quickly comes across a farmer who exposition-dumps plenty of information that may or may not stick. Essentially, shit is bad, tragically so, and Remi is about to discover just how bad. You wander around a forest while an unsettling Returnal-esque score accompanies you. Eventually you gain access to ruins that turn out to have been some sort of dungeon for prisoners long ago. It’s here that Remi encounters the first of hopefully many “oh, shit!” moments. He comes across a creepy-ass enemy I can best describe as if Spot from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was designed to horrify — a pale white humanoid with a black circle for a face who contorts around the level like a marionette. A mask-wearing woman shows up out of nowhere to take down the creepy foe, but dies saving Remi. Without explanation, Remi decides to don her poncho, take her drone, and wield her BGS (big glowing sword). Turns out he’s pretty good with a sword. Remi will encounter a couple dozen enemies throughout the demo; the combat is easy to pick up and is somewhat standard third-person-melee, though it does rely heavily on stamina management. Your max stamina is also reduced when you take damage, so you really don’t wanna get hit much. You can heal using consumable med kits as well as a pulse mechanic. Attacking enemies creates floating particles around Remi and once those particles form into a circle, you can press your controller’s right bumper to activate a healing pulse. It’s an interesting mechanic, and I like how Hell is Us is giving players a way to recoup health in the midst of combat. However, actually doing it is a bit clunky; keeping one eye on an enemy and the other on the particles around Remi is distracting, and timing the pulse is a challenge — you can only activate it during a brief window, and you’ll likely be in the middle of a combo when a pulse opportunity presents itself. While Hell is Us’ combat has surface similarities to Soulslikes — like parrying blows from creepy enemies — it felt less punishing and more forgiving than what you’d expect from a FromSoftware title. I only died once in the demo, compared to countless deaths in the opening hours of Soulslikes such as Lies of P or Elden Ring. Notably, enemies don’t respawn when you save your game, so you don’t have to worry about repeatedly striking down the same foes. Because dead enemies remain dead, exploration is encouraged in Hell is Us. Developer Rogue Factor boasts that the game has “no map, no compass, no quest markers,” so you’re free to wander around the game’s world without a guiding hand and discover its secrets. For example, that farmer I mentioned earlier told Remi about how three of his sons died in this war. Later on, when exploring the World War I-like trenches outside of the ruins, I found a note from a soldier on the other side of the conflict bragging about killing three brothers “cowering in a farmhouse.” The note also mentioned taking a gold watch from one of the boys, which I grabbed and returned to the farmer — without a quest marker to guide me or a journal entry saying “give this item to the farmer.” This completed a “Good Deed” and I was told a reward may come from it later in the game; I’m curious how these types of quests will play out in the full release. The prospect of doing good deeds in this torn-asunder country is especially appealing. A Soulslike-adjacent game placing greater emphasis on user-guided exploration than combat sounds enticing, and Hell is Us is delivering on that promise so far. Its demo is available on Steam through June 16 before the full game launches Sept. 4 for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X.

“Is that concrete all around, or is it in my head?” asked Ian Hunter in “All the Young Dudes,” the song David Bowie wrote for Mott the Hoople in 1972. Concrete is all around us, and we haven’t quite wrapped our heads around it. It’s one of the indispensable materials of modernity; as we try to decarbonize the built environment, it’s part of the problem, and innovations in its composition may become part of the solution. Understanding its history more clearly, the Skyscraper Museum’s new exhibition in Manhattan implies, just might help us employ it better. Concrete is “the second most used substance in the world, after water,” the museum’s founder/director/curator Carol Willis told AN during a recent visit. For plasticity, versatility, and compressive strength, reinforced concrete is hard to beat, though its performance is more problematic when assessed by the metric of embodied and operational carbon, a consideration the exhibition acknowledges up front. In tall construction, concrete has become nearly hegemonic, yet its central role, contend Willis and co-curator Thomas Leslie, formerly of Foster + Partners and now a professor at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is underrecognized by the public and by mainstream architectural history. The current exhibition aims to change that perception. The Skyscraper Museum in Lower Manhattan features an exhibition, The Modern Concrete Skyscraper, which examines the history of material choices in building tall towers. (Courtesy the Skyscraper Museum) The Modern Concrete Skyscraper examines the history of tall towers’ structural material choices, describing a transition from the early dominance of steel frames to the contemporary condition, in which most large buildings rely on concrete. This change did not happen instantly or for any single reason but through a combination of technical and economic factors, including innovations by various specialists, well-recognized and otherwise; the availability of high-quality limestone deposits near Chicago; and the differential development of materials industries in nations whose architecture grew prominent in recent decades. As supertalls reach ever higher—in the global race for official height rankings by the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat (CTBUH) and national, corporate, or professional bragging rights—concrete’s dominance may not be permanent in that sector, given the challenge of pumping the material beyond a certain height. (The 2,717-foot Burj Khalifa, formerly Burj Dubai, uses concrete up to 1,987 and steel above that point; Willis quotes SOM’s William Baker describing it as “the tallest steel building with a concrete foundation of 156 stories.”) For the moment, however, concrete is ahead of its chief competitors, steel and (on a smaller scale) timber. Regardless of possible promotional inferences, Willis said, “we did not work with the industry in any way for this exhibition.” “The invention of steel and the grid of steel and the skeleton frame is only the first chapter of the history of the skyscraper,” Willis explained. “The second chapter, and the one that we’re in now, is concrete. Surprisingly, no one had ever told that story of the skyscraper today with a continuous narrative.” The exhibition traces the use of concrete back to the ancient Roman combination of aggregate and pozzolana—the chemical formula for which was “largely lost with the fall of the Roman Empire,” though some Byzantine and medieval structures approximated it. From there, the show explores comparable materials’ revival in 18th-century England, the patenting of Portland cement by Leeds builder Joseph Aspdin in 1824, the proof-of-concept concrete house by François Coignet in 1856, and the pivotal development of rebar in the mid-19th century, with overdue attention to Ernest Ransome’s 1903 Ingalls Building in Cincinnati, then the world’s tallest concrete building at 15 stories and arguably the first concrete skyscraper. The exhibition includes a timeline that depicts concrete’s origins in Rome to its contemporary use in skyscraper construction. (Courtesy the Skyscraper Museum) Baker’s lectures, Willis reported, sometimes pose a deceptively simple question: “‘What is a skyscraper?’ In 1974, when the World Trade Center and Sears Tower are just finished, you would say it’s a very tall building that is built of steel, an office building in North America. But if you ask that same question today, the answer is: It’s a building that is mixed-use, constructed of concrete, and [located] in Asia or the Middle East.” The exhibition organizes the history of concrete towers by eras of engineering innovation, devoting special attention to the 19th- and early-20th-century “patent era” of Claude Allen Porter Turner (pioneer in flat-slab flooring and mushroom columns) and Henry Chandlee Turner (founder of Turner Construction), Ransome (who patented twisted-iron rebar), and François Hennebique (known for the re-inforced concrete system exemplified by Liverpool’s Royal Liver Building, the world’s tallest concrete office building when completed in 1911). In the postwar era, “concrete comes out onto the surface [as] both a structural material and aesthetic.” Brutalism, perhaps to some observers’ surprise, “does not figure very large in high-rise design,” Willis said, except for Paul Rudolph’s Tracey Towers in the Bronx. The exhibition, however, devotes considerable attention to the work of Pier Luigi Nervi, Bertrand Goldberg (particularly Marina City), and SOM’s Fazlur Khan, pioneer of the structural tube system in the 1960s and 1970s—followed by the postmodernist 1980s, when concrete could express either engineering values or ornamentation. The exhibition highlights a number of concrete towers, including Paul Rudolph’s Tracey Towers in the Bronx. (Courtesy the Skyscraper Museum) “In the ’90s, there were material advances in engineering analysis and computerization that helped to predict performance, and so buildings can get taller and taller,” Willis said. The current era, if one looks to CTBUH rankings, is dominated by the supertalls seen in Dubai, Shanghai, and Kuala Lumpur, after the Petronas Towers (1998) “took the title of world’s tallest building from North America for the first time and traumatized everybody about that.” The previous record holder, Chicago’s Sears (now Willis) Tower, comprised steel structural tubes on concrete caissons; with Petronas, headquarters of Malaysia’s national petroleum company of that name, a strong concrete industry was represented but a strong national steel industry was lacking, and as Willis frequently says, form follows finances. In any event, by the ’90s concrete was already becoming the standard material for supertalls, particularly on soft-soiled sites like Shanghai, where its water resistance and compressive strength are well suited to foundation construction. Its plasticity is also well suited to complex forms like the triangular Burj, Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka 118, and (if eventually completed) the even taller Jeddah Tower, designed to “confuse the wind,” shed vortices, and manage wind forces. Posing the same question Louis Kahn asked about the intentions of a brick, Willis said, with concrete “the answer is: anything you want.” The exhibition is front-loaded with scholarly material, presenting eight succinct yet informative wall texts on the timeline of concrete construction. The explanatory material is accompanied by ample photographs as well as structural models on loan from SOM, Pelli Clarke & Partners, and other firms. Some materials are repurposed from the museum’s previous shows, particularly Supertall! (2011–12) and Sky High and the Logic of Luxury (2013–14). The models allow close examination of the Burj Khalifa, Petronas Towers, Jin Mao Tower, Merdeka 118, and others, including two unbuilt Chicago projects that would have exceeded 2,000 feet: the Miglin-Beitler Skyneedle (Cesar Pelli/Thornton Tomasetti) and 7 South Dearborn (SOM). The Burj, Willis noted, was all structure and no facade for a time: When its curtain-wall manufacturer, Schmidlin, went bankrupt in 2006, it “ended up going to 100 stories without having a stitch of glass on it,” temporarily becoming a “1:1 scale model of the structural system up to 100 stories.” Its prominence justifies its appearance here in two models, including one from RWDI’s wind-tunnel studies. Eero Saarinen’s only skyscraper, built for CBS in 1965 and also known as “Black Rock,” under construction in New York City. (Courtesy Eero Saarinen Collection, Manuscripts, and Archives, Yale University Library) The exhibition opened in March, with plans to stay up at least through October (Willis prefers to keep the date flexible), with accompanying lectures and panels to be announced on the museum’s website (skyscraper.org). Though the exhibition’s full textual and graphic content is available online, the physical models alone are worth a trip to the Battery Park City headquarters. Intriguing questions arise from the exhibition without easy answers, setting the table for lively discussion and debate. One is whether the patenting of innovations like Ransome bar and the Système Hennebique incentivized technological progress or hindered useful technology transfer. Willis speculated, “Did the fact that there were inventions and patents mean that competition was discouraged, that the competition was only in the realm of business, rather than advancing the material?” A critical question is whether research into the chemistry of concrete, including MIT’s 2023 report on the self-healing properties of Roman pozzolana and proliferating claims about “green concrete” using alternatives to Portland cement, can lead to new types of the material with improved durability and lower emissions footprints. This exhibition provides a firm foundation in concrete’s fascinating history, opening space for informed speculation about its future. Bill Millard is a regular contributor to AN.

PERFORMANCE ART With technical improvements, Pokemon Scarlet & Violet are utterly transformed on Nintendo Switch 2 What a difference a frame rate makes. On more powerful hardware, Pokemon Scarlet & Violet are practically different games Article by Alex Donaldson Assistant Editor Published on June 4, 2025 I can scarcely think of a game as hampered by its performance as the original Nintendo Switch release of Pokemon Scarlet & Violet. I can think of loads of games that perform worse, of course - broken, shattered releases - but I struggle to think of a great game so thoroughly compromised just from how it runs. That was the log behind my 2022 review of the games, where I called the games a “super-effective new vision” for the series but bemoaned how it ran. The game became famous for stop-motion windmills and distant cliffsides that looked like they’d fallen out of a Nintendo 64 game. The truth is, Scarlet & Violet’s brilliant design and peppy attitude deserved better. Now, three years on from release, Scarlet & Violet is about to get better with a Switch 2 update that I’m going to go ahead and call a total I was invited by The Pokemon Company to take an early look at the patched Switch 2 version of the game - which is always a sign of confidence, given I was quite a noisy detractor of the original game’s performance. I’m honestly not sure what to say other than: wow, what a difference. It is absolute night and day stuff. To the sort of people who say that frame rate doesn’t really matter, I challenge them to play Scarlet & Violet on Switch 2 and then go back to the original. I dare you. As friend of the site Joe says in Serebii's video preview embedded below, it ain’t doable. Watch on YouTube With a crisp presentation at a higher resolution and with a frame rate that as far as I can tell sits at a rock solid 60fps for the vast majority of the time, this is a world apart from the stomach-turning rollercoaster highs and lows of the original release. Distant Pokemon and world elements are no longer slideshows - yes, those infamous windmills are fixed! This isn’t just about technical bragging rights. The difference in how this game now runs is profound enough that it changes the flow and feel of the game. Scarlet & Violet were by design the most footloose and expansive Pokemon games of all time, channeling the open world chops of everything from Skyrim to Breath of the Wild into a Pokemon setting and setup. The performance was a drag on that - if the frame rate tanks every time you whip the camera around to see a nearby approaching threat or take in a distant vista, you’re ripped right out of the game. By stabilising everything, the performance is utterly transformed. Aside from the nebulous concept of ‘game feel’ being improved by the technical advancements, there are also real boons in terms of gameplay. Wild Pokemon spawn in and swarm across the rolling fields and the like in greater numbers. The subtle delay that you’d perceive, that hitch when encountering a wild Pokemon, is eliminated. Menus that were sluggish are now snappier and more responsive. Pokemon Box sprite icons now spring to life instantly. These are small quality of life changes that add up to something greater. Perhaps most importantly battles are now less plodding in their pace, which was frequently obliterated by certain move animations could send the frame rate crashing. It has to be said, it’s not all perfect. The level of detail settings remain pretty aggressive - which means as you’re galloping along at a glorious 60 frames atop your trusty Poke-steed, flowers and other micro detail pop in around you. It’s not ideal. Also, to be honest, the game now being technically accomplished does help to expose the art style for what it is - which is in need of a bit of tightening, I feel. The addition of HDR does really help the colorful exuberance of Paldea to shine, though. In all it’s a triumph, anyway. This is the game Scarlet & Violet should’ve been. Moreover, it feels like the most technically accomplished main-line Pokemon game… possibly ever? Certainly of the 3D era. As with 120fps mouselook Metroid, playing 3D Pokemon at 60fps feels like you’re doing something illegal, frankly. But this is now the way to play these excellent games - and with good-performing Pokemon games now on the table, my excitement for this year’s Pokemon Legends Z-A has skyrocketed.

It's the same every year. Like clockwork, both social media and real media clamour to do what they do best: moan. Not about politics. Not about the trains. Not even about the weather. No, it's Glastonbury Festival time, which means it's time for the annual whinge-fest over how much it costs and how bad the line-up is. It's a tradition as sacred as Glastonbury itself. Within minutes of the headliners being announced, someone somewhere will tweet "WHO?" as if that settles the matter. The tickets, they declare, are extortionate. The food is overpriced. The toilets are... well, they're not wrong there, to be fair. And yet Glastonbury sells out. Every. Single. Time. In minutes. Not hours, not days, but minutes; just 35 of them, this time around. A digital stampede of fans crashes the ticketing servers, elbows each other out of the virtual queue, and desperately parts with £373.50 of their hard-earned cash. If people really thought it wasn't worth it, why would that happen? Deep down, Glastonbury fans know it is worth it. Not just for the vibes. Not just for the bragging rights. In terms of basic maths alone, it remains a much cheaper way to see all your favourite bands compared with buying tickets to individual gigs. Let's break it down. From this year's stacked, genre-hopping, generation-spanning line-up, these are my 10 ride-or-die bands, the ones I'm determined to see come hell or high water at this year's Glastonbury. And next to them is a reasonable estimate of how much it would cost to see them individually on tour. Alanis Morissette: £60-£135 Charli XCX: £85-£200+ English Teacher: £25-£35 Gracie Abrams: £100-£400+ John Fogerty: £35-£130+ Lola Young: £25-£40 Olivia Rodrigo: £120-£200+ Raye: £50-£100+ Wet Leg: £30-£40 Wolf Alice: £40-£60 You can quickly see how these individual tickets would add up, and that's before the beer-soaked chips and £17 parking surcharges at the O2. But at Glastonbury, they're all included, alongside more than two thousand other acts. Plus five nights of camping, firewood, circus performers, standup comedy, theatre performers, secret gigs, DnB raves, late-night poetry slams, kids' clubs, drone shows, the visionary chaos of Shangri-La, a bloke dressed as a badger doing tai chi at 4am, and the very real possibility of watching Chris Martin duet with a kestrel. All for less than the price of one premium Olivia Rodrigo ticket at the Birmingham NEC with a half-decent sightline. © Amy Fern © George Harrison © Amy Fern No one involved with the festival will ever say this out loud... but in truth, this is underpricing. Glastonbury doesn't cost too much; it's that it's charging less than it's worth. The organisers know it, the scalpers know it, and deep down, so do we. Why else would the event remain massively oversubscribed year after year? The lesson for freelancers Herein lies the lesson for anyone who's ever said yes to a freelance gig, then immediately regretted it because the fee barely covers your oat milk habit. Every time you flinch at raising our rates, worrying, "What if they say no?" you need to remember that people will always complain about the price. But then they pay it anyway, if what you're offering is good. Just like a Glastonbury ticket, your work has value that goes beyond the sum of its parts. Clients might baulk at a day rate, grumble at a quote, or attempt the classic "Can you do it for exposure?". But if they really want you, they'll find the budget. Sure, you could try to undercut your peers. Offer the cheapest design package. Throw in extra concepts for free. Discount your fee before they even ask. But all that gets you is the creative equivalent of being the sad burger stand next to the rave tent: underpaid, undervalued, and slightly sticky. Here's the uncomfortable truth: clients don't always know what things should cost. They base their expectations on their last hire, a Fiverr ad, or what their mate's cousin paid a graphic design student in 2017. © George Harrison © Yushy Pachnanda © JodyHartley But it's not your job to price yourself within their comfort zone. It's your job to price yourself according to your value. If clients can't afford you, that's not rejection; that's redirection. Someone else—someone better, someone ready—will always pay you what you're worth. Just like someone always buys the last Glastonbury ticket. So ignore the noise. Just like the festival, you're not for everyone, and that's fine. Your rates should make you feel slightly nervous, not make your client feel overly comfortable. That's how you grow. That's how you stay booked. That's how you avoid burnout and build a business rather than a bargain bin. In other words, next time you feel the urge to knock 20% off your quote "just to be safe", picture yourself standing in a Somerset field surrounded by 200,000 sweaty strangers who all agreed—despite the price, despite the moaning, despite the toilets—that it was absolutely worth it. And then charge accordingly.

LUBBOCK — Every winter, after the sea of cotton has been harvested in the South Plains and the ground looks barren, technicians with the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District check the water levels in nearly 75,000 wells across 16 counties. For years, their measurements have shown what farmers and water conservationists fear most—the Ogallala Aquifer, an underground water source that’s the lifeblood of the South Plains agriculture industry, is running dry. That’s because of a century-old law called the rule of capture. The rule is simple: If you own the land above an aquifer in Texas, the water underneath is yours. You can use as much as you want, as long as it’s not wasted or taken maliciously. The same applies to your neighbor. If they happen to use more water than you, then that’s just bad luck. To put it another way, landowners can mostly pump as much water as they choose without facing liability to surrounding landowners whose wells might be depleted as a result. Following the Dust Bowl—and to stave off catastrophe—state lawmakers created groundwater conservation districts in 1949 to protect what water is left. But their power to restrict landowners is limited. “The mission is to save as much water possible for as long as possible, with as little impact on private property rights as possible,” said Jason Coleman, manager for the High Plains Underground Water Conservation District. “How do you do that? It’s a difficult task.” A 1953 map of the wells in Lubbock County hangs in the office of the groundwater district. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] Rapid population growth, climate change, and aging water infrastructure all threaten the state’s water supply. Texas does not have enough water to meet demand if the state is stricken with a historic drought, according to the Texas Water Development Board, the state agency that manages Texas’ water supply. Lawmakers want to invest in every corner to save the state’s water. This week, they reached a historic $20 billion deal on water projects. High Plains Underground Water District General Manager Jason Coleman stands in the district’s meeting room on May 21 in Lubbock. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] But no one wants to touch the rule of capture. In a state known for rugged individualism, politically speaking, reforming the law is tantamount to stripping away freedoms. “There probably are opportunities to vest groundwater districts with additional authority,” said Amy Hardberger, director for the Texas Tech University Center for Water Law and Policy. “I don’t think the political climate is going to do that.” State Sen. Charles Perry, a Lubbock Republican, and Rep. Cody Harris, a Palestine Republican, led the effort on water in Austin this year. Neither responded to requests for comment. Carlos Rubinstein, a water expert with consulting firm RSAH2O and a former chairman of the water development board, said the rule has been relied upon so long that it would be near impossible to undo the law. “I think it’s better to spend time working within the rules,” Rubinstein said. “And respect the rule of capture, yet also recognize that, in and of itself, it causes problems.” Even though groundwater districts were created to regulate groundwater, the law effectively stops them from doing so, or they risk major lawsuits. The state water plan, which spells out how the state’s water is to be used, acknowledges the shortfall. Groundwater availability is expected to decline by 25% by 2070, mostly due to reduced supply in the Ogallala and Edwards-Trinity aquifers. Together, the aquifers stretch across West Texas and up through the Panhandle. By itself, the Ogallala has an estimated three trillion gallons of water. Though the overwhelming majority in Texas is used by farmers. It’s expected to face a 50% decline by 2070. Groundwater is 54% of the state’s total water supply and is the state’s most vulnerable natural resource. It’s created by rainfall and other precipitation, and seeps into the ground. Like surface water, groundwater is heavily affected by ongoing droughts and prolonged heat waves. However, the state has more say in regulating surface water than it does groundwater. Surface water laws have provisions that cut supply to newer users in a drought and prohibit transferring surface water outside of basins. Historically, groundwater has been used by agriculture in the High Plains. However, as surface water evaporates at a quicker clip, cities and businesses are increasingly interested in tapping the underground resource. As Texas’ population continues to grow and surface water declines, groundwater will be the prize in future fights for water. In many ways, the damage is done in the High Plains, a region that spans from the top of the Panhandle down past Lubbock. The Ogallala Aquifer runs beneath the region, and it’s faced depletion to the point of no return, according to experts. Simply put: The Ogallala is not refilling to keep up with demand. “It’s a creeping disaster,” said Robert Mace, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment. “It isn’t like you wake up tomorrow and nobody can pump anymore. It’s just happening slowly, every year.” [Image: Yuriko Schumacher/The Texas Tribune] Groundwater districts and the law The High Plains Water District was the first groundwater district created in Texas. Over a protracted multi-year fight, the Legislature created these new local government bodies in 1949, with voter approval, enshrining the new stewards of groundwater into the state Constitution. If the lawmakers hoped to embolden local officials to manage the troves of water under the soil, they failed. There are areas with groundwater that don’t have conservation districts. Each groundwater districts has different powers. In practice, most water districts permit wells and make decisions on spacing and location to meet the needs of the property owner. The one thing all groundwater districts have in common: They stop short of telling landowners they can’t pump water. In the seven decades since groundwater districts were created, a series of lawsuits have effectively strangled groundwater districts. Even as water levels decline from use and drought, districts still get regular requests for new wells. They won’t say no out of fear of litigation. The field technician coverage area is seen in Nathaniel Bibbs’ office at the High Plains Underground Water District. Bibbs is a permit assistant for the district. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] “You have a host of different decisions to make as it pertains to management of groundwater,” Coleman said. “That list has grown over the years.” The possibility of lawsuits makes groundwater districts hesitant to regulate usage or put limitations on new well permits. Groundwater districts have to defend themselves in lawsuits, and most lack the resources to do so. A well spacing guide is seen in Nathaniel Bibbs’ office. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] “The law works against us in that way,” Hardberger, with Texas Tech University, said. “It means one large tool in our toolbox, regulation, is limited.” The most recent example is a lawsuit between the Braggs Farm and the Edwards Aquifer Authority. The farm requested permits for two pecan orchards in Medina County, outside San Antonio. The authority granted only one and limited how much water could be used based on state law. It wasn’t an arbitrary decision. The authority said it followed the statute set by the Legislature to determine the permit. “That’s all they were guaranteed,” said Gregory Ellis, the first general manager of the authority, referring to the water available to the farm. The Braggs family filed a takings lawsuit against the authority. This kind of claim can be filed when any level of government—including groundwater districts—takes private property for public use without paying for the owner’s losses. Braggs won. It is the only successful water-related takings claim in Texas, and it made groundwater laws murkier. It cost the authority $4.5 million. “I think it should have been paid by the state Legislature,” Ellis said. “They’re the ones who designed that permitting system. But that didn’t happen.” An appeals court upheld the ruling in 2013, and the Texas Supreme Court denied petitions to consider appeals. However, the state’s supreme court has previously suggested the Legislature could enhance the powers of the groundwater districts and regulate groundwater like surface water, just as many other states have done. While the laws are complicated, Ellis said the fundamental rule of capture has benefits. It has saved Texas’ legal system from a flurry of lawsuits between well owners. “If they had said ‘Yes, you can sue your neighbor for damaging your well,’ where does it stop?” Ellis asked. “Everybody sues everybody.” Coleman, the High Plains district’s manager, said some people want groundwater districts to have more power, while others think they have too much. Well owners want restrictions for others, but not on them, he said. “You’re charged as a district with trying to apply things uniformly and fairly,” Coleman said. Can’t reverse the past Two tractors were dropping seeds around Walt Hagood’s farm as he turned on his irrigation system for the first time this year. He didn’t plan on using much water. It’s too precious. The cotton farm stretches across 2,350 acres on the outskirts of Wolfforth, a town 12 miles southwest of Lubbock. Hagood irrigates about 80 acres of land, and prays that rain takes care of the rest. Walt Hagood drives across his farm on May 12, in Wolfforth. Hagood utilizes “dry farming,” a technique that relies on natural rainfall. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] “We used to have a lot of irrigated land with adequate water to make a crop,” Hagood said. “We don’t have that anymore.” The High Plains is home to cotton and cattle, multi-billion-dollar agricultural industries. The success is in large part due to the Ogallala. Since its discovery, the aquifer has helped farms around the region spring up through irrigation, a way for farmers to water their crops instead of waiting for rain that may not come. But as water in the aquifer declines, there are growing concerns that there won’t be enough water to support agriculture in the future. At the peak of irrigation development, more than 8.5 million acres were irrigated in Texas. About 65% of that was in the High Plains. In the decades since the irrigation boom, High Plains farmers have resorted to methods that might save water and keep their livelihoods afloat. They’ve changed their irrigation systems so water is used more efficiently. They grow cover crops so their soil is more likely to soak up rainwater. Some use apps to see where water is needed so it’s not wasted. A furrow irrigation is seen at Walt Hagood’s cotton farm. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] Farmers who have not changed their irrigation systems might not have a choice in the near future. It can take a week to pump an inch of water in some areas from the aquifer because of how little water is left. As conditions change underground, they are forced to drill deeper for water. That causes additional problems. Calcium can build up, and the water is of poorer quality. And when the water is used to spray crops through a pivot irrigation system, it’s more of a humidifier as water quickly evaporates in the heat. According to the groundwater district’s most recent management plan, 2 million acres in the district use groundwater for irrigation. About 95% of water from the Ogallala is used for irrigated agriculture. The plan states that the irrigated farms “afford economic stability to the area and support a number of other industries.” The state water plan shows groundwater supply is expected to decline, and drought won’t be the only factor causing a shortage. Demand for municipal use outweighs irrigation use, reflecting the state’s future growth. In Region O, which is the South Plains, water for irrigation declines by 2070 while demand for municipal use rises because of population growth in the region. Coleman, with the High Plains groundwater district, often thinks about how the aquifer will hold up with future growth. There are some factors at play with water planning that are nearly impossible to predict and account for, Coleman said. Declining surface water could make groundwater a source for municipalities that didn’t depend on it before. Regions known for having big, open patches of land, like the High Plains, could be attractive to incoming businesses. People could move to the country and want to drill a well, with no understanding of water availability. The state will continue to grow, Coleman said, and all the incoming businesses and industries will undoubtedly need water. “We could say ‘Well, it’s no one’s fault. We didn’t know that factory would need 20,000 acre-feet of water a year,” Coleman said. “It’s not happening right now, but what’s around the corner?” Coleman said this puts agriculture in a tenuous position. The region is full of small towns that depend on agriculture and have supporting businesses, like cotton gins, equipment and feed stores, and pesticide and fertilizer sprayers. This puts pressure on the High Plains water district, along with the two regional water planning groups in the region, to keep agriculture alive. “Districts are not trying to reduce pumping down to a sustainable level,” said Mace with the Meadows Foundation. “And I don’t fault them for that, because doing that is economic devastation in a region with farmers.” Hagood, the cotton farmer, doesn’t think reforming groundwater rights is the way to solve it. What’s done is done, he said. “Our U.S. Constitution protects our private property rights, and that’s what this is all about,” Hagood said. “Any time we have a regulation and people are given more authority, it doesn’t work out right for everybody.” Rapid population growth, climate change, and aging water infrastructure all threaten the state’s water supply. [Photo: Annie Rice for The Texas Tribune] What can be done The state water plan recommends irrigation conservation as a strategy. It’s also the least costly water management method. But that strategy is fraught. Farmers need to irrigate in times of drought, and telling them to stop can draw criticism. In Eastern New Mexico, the Ogallala Land and Water Conservancy, a nonprofit organization, has been retiring irrigation wells. Landowners keep their water rights, and the organization pays them to stop irrigating their farms. Landowners get paid every year as part of the voluntary agreement, and they can end it at any point. Ladona Clayton, executive director of the organization, said they have been criticized, with their efforts being called a “war” and “land grab.” They also get pushback on why the responsibility falls on farmers. She said it’s because of how much water is used for irrigation. They have to be aggressive in their approach, she said. The aquifer supplies water to the Cannon Air Force Base. “We don’t want them to stop agricultural production,” Clayton said. “But for me to say it will be the same level that irrigation can support would be untrue.” There is another possible lifeline that people in the High Plains are eyeing as a solution: the Dockum Aquifer. It’s a minor aquifer that underlies part of the Ogallala, so it would be accessible to farmers and ranchers in the region. The High Plains Water District also oversees this aquifer. If it seems too good to be true—that the most irrigated part of Texas would just so happen to have another abundant supply of water flowing underneath—it’s because there’s a catch. The Dockum is full of extremely salty brackish water. Some counties can use the water for irrigation and drinking water without treatment, but it’s unusable in others. According to the groundwater district, a test well in Lubbock County pulled up water that was as salty as seawater. Rubinstein, the former water development board chairman, said there are pockets of brackish groundwater in Texas that haven’t been tapped yet. It would be enough to meet the needs on the horizon, but it would also be very expensive to obtain and use. A landowner would have to go deeper to get it, then pump the water over a longer distance. “That costs money, and then you have to treat it on top of that,” Rubinstein said. “But, it is water.” Landowners have expressed interest in using desalination, a treatment method to lower dissolved salt levels. Desalination of produced and brackish water is one of the ideas that was being floated around at the Legislature this year, along with building a pipeline to move water across the state. Hagood, the farmer, is skeptical. He thinks whatever water they move could get used up before it makes it all the way to West Texas. There is always brackish groundwater. Another aquifer brings the chance of history repeating—if the Dockum aquifer is treated so its water is usable, will people drain it, too? Hagood said there would have to be limits. Disclosure: Edwards Aquifer Authority and Texas Tech University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here. This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune, a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

A lot of games have been released for the Playdate since it launched in 2022, as a quick browse of itch.io or the Catalog shop will attest. But still, there’s something unique about the handheld’s seasonal format, which just kicked off its second iteration. When it first launched, the Playdate came with 24 games from notable indie developers that were steadily released on a weekly cadence, making a perfect introduction to the little yellow device and its crank. Now, a few years later, we finally have season 2, and it’s off to a solid start — and it even includes a bizarre mystery.Fulcrum Defender. Image: Subset GamesThe new season runs for the next six weeks and totals a dozen games, two of which will drop each week. The entire collection will run you $39. To start, we have a pair of very different games. Fulcrum Defender, from FTL: Faster Than Light developer Subset Games, is sort of like a modern take on Asteroids. You control a little ship in the middle and fire guns at little squares flying toward you. The twist is that you use the crank to rotate the ship around and aim your shots. There’s also something of a roguelike element, where you steadily unlock random upgrades like new weapons or a larger spread for your bullets. The goal is to last for 10 straight minutes.It’s a pretty challenging game — so far, I’ve only really had success on easy mode — but it’s also surprisingly chill, eliciting that sort of zen state that the best shooters and puzzle games can create. This is helped by its lo-fi soundtrack that pretty much demands you play with headphones on. It’s an absorbing game.Dig! Dig! Dino! Image: Dom2D and FáyerOn the other end of the spectrum is Dig Dig Dino!, developed by Dom2D and Fáyer, who brag that the game “is perfect to play while watching TV! No time pressure, no quick reflexes needed!” It’s a puzzle game where you travel to different dig sites to uncover dinosaur bones, artifacts, and trash. You only have a limited amount of moves per dig, but you can upgrade your capacity over time — while also getting new tools to smash rocks or dig deeper — letting you dig both more and for longer. It’s sort of like a really cute take on Minesweeper, one clearly designed for short play sessions. It’s not exactly difficult, but there’s still something satisfying about uncovering a large dinosaur bone when you’re just about to run out of moves.These two games do a good job of showing the breadth of games possible on the Playdate; one is meant for quick bursts, the other for longer, more focused sessions. But the launch week package is rounded out by something a whole lot weirder. It’s called Blippo Plus and, well, it’s a series of TV channels you can flip between using the crank. Some are nothing but static, while others have giant FMV videos of strange TV shows or commercials. One show, called Tantric Computing, is nothing but closeup shots of someone using a computer mouse. Another, Werf’s Tavern, is some kind of musical talk show. There’s also a messaging tool and some kind of fax service.What’s most interesting about Blippo Plus, though, isn’t just that it’s odd. It’s also a mystery that seems like it will evolve over the course of the season. Playdate maker Panic says that “Playdate season 2 owners should tune in weekly and make sure they are connected to WiFi when season 2 updates at 10 AM PT on Thursdays.” There are lots of other promising games planned for season 2, including the point-and-click adventure Shadowgate PD and whatever the heck Long Puppy and Tiny Turnip are.But an FMV mystery that unfolds over the course of weeks is something that’s pretty unique to this format — and further evidence that the Playdate exists in its own parallel universe.See More: