In new places, what we look at first could be as unique as a fingerprint

A Dartmouth study finds no two people take in a new scene the same way, instead focusing on objects with personal meaning

Dartmouth College

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Participants in a Dartmouth study explored real-world scenes in virtual reality while the headset tracked their gaze. Where each person looked, and for how long, was distinctive enough that an AI model could tell participants apart by connecting the objects they focused on thematically and determining the personal meaning they held. In follow-up tests, the AI model correctly predicted what would grab participants' attention in new settings.

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Credit: Caroline Robertson/Dartmouth

Walk into a crowded coffee shop, and what catches your eye as you take in the scene could say as much about you as the spirals on your fingertips or the mutations in your DNA.

Eye movements are so unique, in fact, that they could be used to identify you through the objects that have personal meaning, according to a new study by Dartmouth researchers in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The findings reveal the depth to which we subjectively evaluate what's around us, while also suggesting that in a world of constant surveillance, we may be giving away more personal information than we realize.

Psychologists have long studied where people consciously or unconsciously focus their attention as they scan a new environment. While we usually come away with a similar understanding of the place itself, each person has distinct perception of how they got there, where they look, and for how long.

It's that variation that the study’s senior author, Caroline Robertson, and her team studied.

“From the earliest moments of taking in a new environment, we make radically different choices about what we pay attention to,” says Robertson, who is an associate professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth. “This work suggests that our latent conceptual priorities are embedded in the signatures of our gaze.”

A conceptual priority is a kind of personal bias that shapes what jumps out at us visually. A flag and a football, for example, look nothing alike physically, but they are connected by abstract ideas of identity such as patriotism or the United States. The study suggests that, in new environments, we spend more time seeking out information that is conceptually rich and personally meaningful to us.

And what people look for in an unfamiliar environment can distinguish one person from another by the objects and concepts that mean something to them, like a personality fingerprint, the researchers report.

Looking at where people look

Robertson studies visual attention and became focused on the individual differences that kept popping up in her experiments. With the study’s first author, Amanda (“AJ”) Haskins, who received her PhD from Dartmouth in 2024, and former research assistant Katherine Packard ’23, Robertson had about 60 study participants wearing VR headsets immerse themselves in a series of images of everyday scenes, including an auto repair shop, a public swimming pool, and an airport. Participants were free to turn their heads, move their bodies, and look where they pleased in the 16 seconds allotted for each image.

Meanwhile, the researchers used eye-tracking data recorded by the headsets to model each individual’s gaze pattern. They created a machine-learning model to recreate where participants looked within each space; a vision model to recreate the objects that held their attention; and a large language model, or LLM, to look at the conceptual themes that tie these objects together. 

The LLM, which are the deep-learning systems that power artificial intelligence, generated captions for each image it processed that hinted at potential storylines. For example, one caption read, “a flag that is on the wall and could be signaling national identity,” while another read, “a missile that is for military equipment and could be part of an aeronautics display.”

When the researchers analyzed the results, they found that the vision model and the LLM could identify individuals by their unique eye movements, and that the LLM, which specifically encoded their conceptual preferences, could do this most accurately. The conceptual map, in other words, was most predictive.

Objects that don't look alike but are thematically linked could be used to tell participants apart when considered as a whole. For example, one person taking in an office scene first looked at writing-related items such as keyboards and notepads, while another individual focused on architectural elements like moldings and decorative backsplashes. These objects' conceptual similarities reveal each participant's unique preferences or interests.

These individual preferences were long lasting, the researchers find. When half the group returned a week later to explore a new set of scenes, the models built from their earlier eye-tracking data accurately predicted the visual features that would grab their attention.

“This suggests that individual differences in gaze patterns contain stable, personality-level preferences that extend beyond testing days,” Robertson says.

Though their gaze patterns varied, the participants had three main perceptual stages. In the first two seconds of taking in a new scene, their gaze focused on spatial dimensions, like the image’s horizon and center, before shifting to prominent visual elements, and after about eight seconds, to the meanings encoded in them.

That intuitively made sense to the researchers. We typically orient ourselves in space and then check out objects and people before transitioning to an interpretive mode that attempts to understand what it all means.

The richer the conceptual information that the LLM received, the more fine-grained distinctions it could pick up on. The researchers found that longer captions containing more context, such as “a hat that is on her head and could be keeping the sun from her eyes,” seemed to elicit more distinctive responses than just “a hat that is on her head.” The more distinctive the eye patterns, the easier they were for the LLM to pick up.

What the eyes give away

The researchers point out that eye-tracking data alone may not reveal our politics or personalities. But their findings suggest that VR and AR could be more intrusive than we realize, potentially giving away more personal data to advertisers than we do now with our clicks across the web.

The study may be the first to use an LLM to model visual gaze—and it will likely not be the last. The researchers are hopeful that the novel AI methods used in the study could have clinical applications.

“Individual gaze differences aren’t random, but rather, are consistent from place to place and stable over time,” says Haskins, now a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Diego. “That’s important if we want to use gaze as a clinical marker of conditions like autism.”

One hallmark of autism is a reduced focus on faces, but it’s been unclear whether face avoidance is more visual than conceptual. The approach the researchers used could help to distinguish between the two.

It could also make earlier diagnosis of autism possible. Symptoms can show up as early as two years old, but currently the national average age at diagnosis is four. “The sooner you could know that a child is processing the world differently, the sooner you could augment the teaching environment,” Robertson says.

The team’s next steps include exploring whether multimodal models that track both visual and cognitive attention could improve predictions further. They also want to test whether the conceptual priorities they’ve identified vary systematically across cultures or clinical groups.

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Journal

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

DOI

10.1073/pnas.2604369123 

Method of Research

Experimental study

Subject of Research

People

Article Title

Conceptual priorities shape individual gaze patterns during naturalistic visual attention

 

Ice baths, saunas and hypoxic chambers: inside Erling Haaland's routine

Copyright AP Photo/Frank Franklin II

By Marta Iraola Iribarren

Published on 06/07/2026 - EURONEWS

“I feel tired, but I tell my body I’m not,” that’s a motto of Erling Haaland, who leads Norway towards a first World Cup quarter-final. He shared his great performance secrets that include ice baths, fatty steaks and enough sleep with fans on YouTube before the World Cup.

Over 1,200 players are participating in the men’s World Cup 2026, which is taking place in Canada, Mexico and the United States.

With 92 games already played, however, some players are outshining others. This is the case with Erling Haaland. The Norwegian forward scored two goals against Brazil to book his country's place in the quarter-finals for the first time, one step closer to the final on 19 July.

“Maybe this will write history in Norway,” Haaland said after the game. “Everyone just needs to enjoy themselves. This is just an insane day. It’s one of the most insane days in Norwegian history. Just enjoy it, embrace it and enjoy the moment.”

He has been a key part of the national team since his debut in 2019.

What is his secret? Part of the answer may lie in his background: Haaland comes from a sports family and both his parents were professional athletes.

Alf-Inge Haaland is a former professional footballer with an extended career both in Norway's national team and at English clubs. Gry Marita Braut was a national champion heptathlete, competing at the top level in Norwegian track and field.

But genetics is only part of the story, Haaland points to a disciplined daily routine, built around training, recovery and nutrition, as the foundation of his form.

“You need to be a 24/7 athlete; it's not just the two hours of the game,” Haaland said on his YouTube channel.

“Our bodies can handle so much more than we think; a lot is in the mind,” he added. “I feel tired, but I tell my body I’m not. It’s a psychological thing.”

For Haaland, the 90 minutes of football are the end result of everything else he does during training.

“It’s how you sleep, how you prepare yourself for the next training, how you prepare yourself for the next game, how you recover from the game,” he added. “It’s a whole package.”

As with any professional footballer at such a high level, Haaland follows a tight routine designed to get the maximum out of his body.

Related

• Norway and England advance to World Cup quarterfinals as Brazil and Mexico head home

Pro training conditions

Haaland lives in Manchester, where he plays for Manchester City and won the Premier League twice, in 2023 and 2024.

In between stretches, strength exercises and cardio, flexibility is a key factor in Haaland’s training.

“I have a natural good flexibility in my groins and hips, which is so important for me to keep, because how do you score these goals? We need to have good mobility or flexibility to score these crazy goals,” he added.

As part of his training at Manchester City’s facilities, he performs some of his exercises in a hypoxic chamber.

This chamber is designed to create a controlled low-oxygen environment that replicates higher altitudes. It can also increase heat and humidity levels.

According to Haaland, training in these conditions helps him recover faster between sprints during matches.

“You need to find what’s good for you, because everyone is different,” said Haaland. “The important thing is to move your body and stay active.

Even 10 or 15 minutes of stretching or mobility can make such a big difference, he noted.

Importance of recovery

The same way the game doesn’t start with the first kick, it doesn’t end with the final whistle.

For Haaland, recovery is essential to his routine. An ice bath and sauna are part of his post-training regime, something he tries to do four or five times a week.

Many athletes take ice baths as a way to soothe muscle pain and alleviate soreness.

In the video, Haaland also uses red light — a treatment that uses low levels of red light to reportedly improve your skin’s appearance, like reducing wrinkles, scars, redness and acne —which he says compensates for the lack of sunlight that he gets in Manchester.

There is ongoing research to determine whether red light treatment is effective. Some early studies suggest it might help certain skin problems such as acne and psoriasis, but the evidence is still limited.

Haaland has also stated in multiple interviews that sleep is the most important thing in the world and that a healthy sleep schedule is non-negotiable.

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• 'The Trump Card': Reactions and viral memes to FIFA’s controversial US red card reversal

‘Simple nutrition’

Another important aspect of Haaland's daily routine is food and nutrition. In the video documenting a typical day, he begins the morning with a coffee containing raw milk and maple syrup.

Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurised, a process that removes disease-causing germs by heating milk to a high enough temperature for a certain length of time.

It is not recommended by public health authorities and its sale is strictly regulated.

Good nutrition is essential for any high-performing athlete.

"I like to read and try out new things. Why not? For my life and also my career, why not try to optimise some easy small things as much as I can?" Haaland added.

He said that "nutrition is simple". He prefers a straightforward breakfast and fatty steaks. "I love food, and I said it before; I live to eat food no matter what happens in the day."

 

One plant, three kingdoms, five trips

Weizmann Institute scientists decipher how a well-known psychedelic substance is created, then engineer a plant to produce several psychedelics at once

Weizmann Institute of Science

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Long before scientists began studying them in the lab, mind-altering substances were already being gathered from plants, fungi and even animals for use in rituals, healing practices and mental health treatment. Researchers at the Weizmann Institute of Science have now managed to bring together in a single organism five psychedelic substances that in nature are scattered across the tree of life. After uncovering how plants naturally produce one of the best-known psychedelic compounds, DMT, they were able to reengineer that process step by step inside a model plant – along with four other psychedelics. The result is what amounts to a biological factory that could, in the future, be used to simultaneously produce multiple psychedelic molecules, including some that do not naturally occur in plants.

The study was led by Dr. Paula (Shirley) Berman, who worked at the time in Prof. Asaph Aharoni’s lab in Weizmann’s Plant and Environmental Sciences Department; she is now a principal investigator at the Agricultural Research Organization – Volcani Institute. The findings were recently published in Science Advances.

The five compounds in the study – all well-known psychedelics – come from three different kingdoms of life. The plant kingdom contributed DMT, the brain-active component of ayahuasca, a ceremonial hallucinogenic brew long used in shamanic Amazonian rituals for spiritual healing. The researchers derived DMT from several plant sources, including the leaves of a woody shrub from the coffee family, native to the Amazon rainforest, and the bark of an acacia species native to the Australian outback.

From the kingdom of fungi they took psilocybin and psilocin – the compounds responsible for the effects of “magic mushrooms,” with psilocybin once having been central to Aztec ceremonies. Representing the animal kingdom was the Sonoran Desert toad; it has glands on its head and skin that release a milky defensive secretion when it is stressed. This secretion contains bufotenin, as well as a more potent relative of DMT called 5-MeO-DMT, known to induce distinct psychedelic experiences – a fact well-known by those who have sought out the toad with the express purpose of licking it.

Despite their diverse origins, all five compounds belong to the same chemical family and share the same starting point: tryptophan, a common amino acid found in all living organisms. This is also the starting point the human body uses to produce serotonin, a neurotransmitter involved in regulating mood and well-being. That shared origin helps explain why psychedelics act on the same receptors in the brain as serotonin.

“At the heart of the study was the challenge of making DMT,” explains Aharoni.

Although scientists had previously mapped the general route of DMT production in nature, the exact genes and enzymes responsible were still unknown, and identifying the complete biosynthetic DMT pathway remained elusive. The researchers began by identifying the key genes, particularly those encoding the enzymes that drive each step of the pathway. They then inserted these genes into a model plant – Nicotiana benthamiana, a tobacco relative widely used in research – effectively teaching it to produce DMT. Within days, the engineered plant began generating the compound.

When the scientists produced the other four psychedelics individually in separate tobacco plants, one of them – 5-MeO-DMT – was manufactured in surprisingly low amounts. To address this, the team collaborated with Prof. Sarel Fleishman and Dr. Olga Khersonsky of Weizmann’s Biomolecular Sciences Department, experts in protein design. They identified a subtle problem: a molecule that did not fit well into the active site of one of the enzymes. By changing a single building block – one amino acid – in the enzyme’s structure, they improved the fit.

The result was dramatic. “We mutated one amino acid in the sequence and got a 40-fold increase in the production of 5-MeO-DMT,” Berman says.

The scientists then introduced genes for the five compounds into the same plant. The system worked. A single plant was able to produce all five psychedelics: plant-origin DMT; fungus-origin psilocin and psilocybin; and animal-origin bufotenin and 5-MeO-DMT.

“In effect, we created a kind of biological ‘cocktail’ – not by mixing substances externally, but by combining the underlying pathways inside one organism,” Aharoni says.

At the same time, the experiment revealed an important limitation. When multiple pathways were activated at once, they began to compete for the same starting material. In biological terms, the system reached a bottleneck, and production efficiency dropped.

Finally, the team pushed the system beyond what occurs in nature. By adding bacterial enzymes, they produced modified psychedelic molecules carrying chlorine or bromine atoms in specific positions – something that evolution had apparently left out of the plant’s job description but might prove therapeutically valuable. Several such molecules have already shown intriguing biological activity, including antidepressant-like effects, as part of the growing search for new treatments for disorders such as depression, anxiety, PTSD and addiction.

The research points toward new ways of producing psychedelic compounds. Many are currently obtained from slow-growing plants, rare fungi or animal sources, often raising ecological and ethical concerns. The Sonoran Desert toad, for example, is increasingly threatened by habitat loss and overcollection. Plants used for ayahuasca are also under growing pressure due to land loss and rising demand.

Producing these molecules in fast-growing laboratory plants could provide a more sustainable alternative, reducing the need to harvest vulnerable species while making production more efficient and scalable. Plants are grown, the genes are introduced, and within about a week, measurable amounts of the psychedelic can be extracted. 

More available molecules mean more opportunities for research. One open question is why plants produce these compounds in the first place. Psychedelic molecules did not evolve so humans could “trip,” or to treat anxiety or depression; they likely serve ecological roles, such as defense or interactions with microbes and insects. By engineering plants to produce them in controlled settings, researchers can begin to study these possibilities directly.

“If we can move these pathways into a model plant that grows quickly and is easy to manipulate, we can start asking what these compounds actually do for the plant,” Berman explains. Researchers can examine how they affect the plant’s defenses or whether they influence its growth or stress responses.

The scientists are now also exploring the possibility of engineering a plant that produces the full ayahuasca mixture. In traditional preparations, DMT is combined with another compound that allows the brew to be active when swallowed. In the Amazon, this is achieved by mixing leaves containing DMT with twigs bearing another substance that facilitates DMT’s absorption from the digestive tract. Scientists now aim to create a single plant that would contain both components.

Yet another potential direction involves producing therapeutic psychedelics in edible plants, so the substances could be consumed in carefully regulated doses.

All in all, the Weizmann study is not only about psychedelic compounds. It points to a broader shift in the relationship between plant biology and drug development – one in which plants are no longer just sources of rare molecules, but living platforms for studying, reshaping and potentially producing the next generation of psychiatric treatments.

Also taking part in the study were Janka Höfer, Herschel Mehlman, Efrat Almekias-Siegl, Dr. Sagit Meir and Dr. Ilana Rogachev of Weizmann’s Plant and Environmental Sciences Department; Dr. Let Kho Hao of Weizmann’s Plant and Environmental Sciences Department and the Agricultural Research Organization – Volcani Institute; Drs. Yonghui Dong, Uwe Heinig and Yoav Peleg of Weizmann’s Life Sciences Core Facilities Department; Dr. Shahar Cohen from the Agricultural Research Organization – Volcani Institute; and Dr. Liron Sulimani and Prof. David Meiri from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology.

Prof. Asaph Aharoni’s research is supported by Marc & Joëlle Melviez-Zysman; the Sklare Family Plant Growth Facility Fund; Monica Rosenzweig Armour; Magnus Konow in honour of his mother Olga Konow Rappaport; the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Plant Molecular Genetics Research Center; the Knell Family Institute for Artificial Intelligence; the Melvyn A. Dobrin Center for Nutrition and Plant Research; the Charles W. and Tillie K. Lubin Center for Plant Biotechnology; and the Tom and Sondra Rykoff Fund for Plant, Environmental, and Sustainability Research.

Prof. Aharoni is the incumbent of the Peter J. Cohn Professorial Chair.

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Journal

Science Advances

DOI

10.1126/sciadv.aeb3034 

How some in Palestinian diaspora find connection, identity and resilience in traditional embroidery

(AP) — From refugee camps to stitching circles and from museum halls to online classes, many in the Palestinian diaspora communities worldwide engage with tatreez as far more than a decorative aesthetic.

Mariam Fam
July 2, 2026 

AP

Decades later, Samar Kabouli still fondly recalls gathering with women in her family and sipping cardamom-spiced coffee as they embroidered fabric with colorful threads in traditional Palestinian patterns.

Born in Lebanon to Palestinian refugees, Kabouli had never seen her parents’ homeland. But more than just making pretty designs, the threads in her needle were stitching a connection to her heritage.

It’s known as “tatreez,” and Kabouli, 48, started doing the traditional form of Palestinian embroidery in her teens to make money. Besides an economic lifeline, tatreez has provided her with a bridge to the land her parents fled during the 1948 mass displacement that Palestinians call their Nakba, or catastrophe.

Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled or fled their homes in present day Israel during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation. Israel refused their return.

Kabouli’s work allows her to send a message of resilience, of survival.

“We’re still here,” she said. “All what has been happening in Gaza … and we’re still standing and we’ll not forget the cause.”

From refugee camps to stitching circles and from museum halls to online classes, many in the Palestinian diaspora communities worldwide engage with tatreez as far more than a decorative aesthetic.

They’re finding in it a celebration of cultural heritage, a bridge to their homeland and dispersed communities and — with its myriad embroidered symbols — a visual language of storytelling. To many, refugees or not, it’s become a symbol of Palestinian identity and pride, a vehicle for documenting history and a form of resistance.

With the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, some have also used it to raise funds for people there or stitched designs to focus attention on Palestinian suffering in the enclave.

“We had a lot of people who came and they’re like, ‘OK, we want to do a T-shirt with a Gaza chest or we want to do a scarf with the Gaza motif,’” said Ali Jaafar, general manager of Inaash Association, where Kabouli works. The Lebanese organization provides Palestinian women in refugee camps in Lebanon with much-needed income through tatreez, while also aiming to help preserve and promote the heritage. It sells embroidered fashion, home decor and art pieces, and showcases the art form in exhibitions and museums.

Protecting heritage and ‘struggling through culture’

Efforts to preserve and raise awareness about tatreez in Palestinian communities at home and abroad are part of a larger push to safeguard a heritage and connections to a history and a place that many fear are at risk of being erased.

“Palestinian tatreez is an identity and a document of our presence in every Palestinian village and town,” said Maha Saca, founder and director of the Palestinian Heritage Center in Bethlehem in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, adding that old embroidered thobes, or dresses, show the presence of Palestinians in particular locations before the dispersal of many.

“The Palestinian woman has written the story of her village through motifs from her surrounding environment and her beliefs,” Saca said. “We’re struggling through culture and saying we have roots.”

The Palestinian embroidery art form was added in 2021 to UNESCO’s list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

In New York, Lina Barkawi, whose small business teaches tatreez, said the “constant fight for liberation and having a Palestinian identity that’s recognized globally is really what has been driving a lot of this documentation.”

A generational practice and window into history

In Arabic, tatreez refers to embroidery in general as well as the specific Palestinian form, which is often a social practice taught through generations by grandmothers and mothers. Some seek formal training.

With motifs that Palestinian women had historically adopted from their surroundings, the old embroidered thobes can offer clues through stitched patterns, design and color about facets of a woman’s personal story, her environment and regional identity, Saca said.

In the Palestinian context, such connections to time and place, including areas now in Israel, gain added importance as testament to what was, she said. “How do we have a Jaffa thobe if we hadn’t been in Jaffa?” she said. “We write history on our thobes.”

There’s also an element of continuity. Saca said her grandmother’s embroidered wedding thobe bears the hallmarks of Bethlehem dresses, and that her own granddaughter’s baptism dress included embroideries copied from that dress.

Tatreez also can be political, both through preservation and creation.

“Just being able to have some of the dresses from pre-1948 is a political act,” Barkawi said.

There’s also the making of the so-called “intifada thobe” that included embroidered political and Palestinian symbols, such as the flag. It’s linked to the “first intifada,” or uprising, which erupted in 1987 against Israel’s occupation and was met with a fierce Israeli response.

Stitching, mourning and documenting

After the war in Gaza, which was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, fashion designer Hama Hinnawi expressed grief through tatreez work. Tatreez is usually colorful, she said. But that was no moment for color.

The result? Black embroidery on black fabric, a statement of mourning for the killings, destruction and displacement in Gaza. She’s also experimented with turning some iconic scenes from the war into new embroidery motifs.

“We have a big responsibility on our shoulders to tell this story, not to be buried for the next generations … through tatreez, through art, through speaking.”

Born in Jordan to Palestinian parents, Hinnawi wanted to bring awareness to heritage through her fashion brand by marrying tatreez with contemporary fashion.

To her, tatreez simply means home. It’s “identity, pride, storytelling,” said Hinnawi, who shuttles between Chicago and Jordan.

She’s provided embroidery work opportunities to Palestinian women in refugee camps in Jordan and talked in the U.S. about tatreez. Before the war, she also worked with women in Gaza.

Barkawi runs an online community of Palestinian and non-Palestinian embroiderers, some of whom have created designs sold to raise funds for Gaza families. One incorporates a “water and seeds” motif with an embroidered message to “Feed Gaza Now.”

Members in different countries recreated a tapestry that once hung in a bombed Gaza home, each stitching a part and mailing it to another.

Born in the U.S. to a Palestinian father and Panamanian mother, Barkawi said learning about tatreez deepened her Palestinian identity.

New dresses with woven stories

Embroidering her first thobe took two years. Barkawi incorporated motifs with personal meanings, such as palm trees that represent her name in Arabic. She added orchids, the national flower of Panama, for her mom.

Technically imperfect, it was the perfect dress for her Islamic marriage ceremony.

“I embedded my story as a Palestinian in the diaspora into this dress.”

In Lebanon, Kabouli, too, once dreamed of owning a tatreez piece for her wedding trousseau. She couldn’t afford one.

After their parents died, an older sister had turned to tatreez with Inaash to help support the large family. Kabouli learned from her.

Now a production supervisor at Inaash in Beirut, Kabouli sees her younger self in the women working in refugee camps in Lebanon, many in the south, which was hard hit by the latest Israel-Hezbollah war. The vibrancy of tatreez often contrasts with harsh living conditions in camps amid employment and other restrictions the refugees face. Contending with power cuts, women, eager to finish a piece and get paid, may work on rooftops to grasp the last ray of sunlight, Jaafar said.

Besides the income, Kabouli said doing tatreez can be grounding, almost meditative.

She has another yearning: to see her parents’ homeland. They came from an area in what’s now Israel.

For now, tatreez provides her with hope.

“I don’t feel like I am far away. I keep working on Palestinian heritage, following the cause,” she said. “It connects me to my homeland, especially since we’re deprived of it.”

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Robert Reich reveals July 4th plan for 'mourning' US ideals assaulted by Trump

Economist Robert Reich on April 17, 2025 (Phil Pasquini/Shutterstock.com)

Thomas Kika 

July 04, 2026 

ALTERNET

As the U.S. celebrates its 250th birthday, the "ideals that this country began with" are under assault by President Donald Trump, prompting commentator and economic equality activist Robert Reich to plan a symbol "mourning" to mark this year's Fourth of July.

Reich is a veteran lawyer who previously served as the first Secretary of Labor under former President Bill Clinton, and he remains an outspoken liberal political voice. In the latest edition of his "Coffee Klatch" video series, he revealed the surprisingly mournful way he intended to mark the country's 250th on Saturday, in order to convey the gravity of damage done by Trump and his allies.

"Well, this is a pretty special 250th," Reich told co-host Heather Lofthouse. "I'm going to wear a black armband, because it's mourning... in America, with regard to the ideals that this country began with, and I think it's important to recognize this is not just a celebration today."


Reich also added that he planned to read aloud the Declaration of Independence in a small town square in California that he is "very fond of," with the public welcome to join him.

Speaking further about this year's historic Fourth of July proceedings, Lofthouse and Reich mourned as well the degree to which Trump has stolen the spotlight of the momentous occasion away from the country, and put it on himself.


"He takes the oxygen out of whatever room, whatever celebration," Reich said. "You know, there was originally going to be, Congress set aside years ago... some money for a special commission that would do all of these Fourth of July on the [National] Mall and every place else, and he supplanted it, and he created his own 'Freedom 250'... It's all just gaudy and gilded, but it's all about Trump... It's a big campaign celebration of Donald Trump."


Lofthouse argued that Trump must now be fuming, given how badly the Freedom 250 events are "failing," rendering him and his plans a global "laughingstock." Reich suggested that Trump is too surrounded by "sycophants" to ever hear about how poorly his plans are going over with voters.

"He really learned from his first term," Lofthouse said. "He learned to get rid of people who had opinions and strength and obligation to some kind of moral code."

 

Beyond the 24-hour day: How employee biological clocks and beliefs drive workplace cooperation

Portland State University

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Employees’ biological clocks do more than determine when they reach for coffee; they fundamentally shape how, when, and why people help each other at work. A groundbreaking new study published in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes introduces the concept of "Time-Extension Self-Efficacy" (TESE) — an individual's belief in their ability to successfully wake up earlier or stay up later than usual.

Across multiple studies, the research demonstrates that an employee's chronotype (whether they are a morning person or a night owl) predicts their TESE. In turn, this specific confidence predicts when employees are most likely to go the extra mile and engage in helping behaviors at work.

Importantly, while a person’s biological clock is stable, the researchers discovered that TESE is surprisingly malleable. A simple, brief recall exercise — asking individuals to think about past successful attempts to extend their day — significantly boosted their TESE. This suggests that organizations can actively influence these beliefs to encourage greater collaboration and flexibility.

"Most people assume that time is experienced the same way by everyone. We all have 24 hours," said June Ryu, assistant professor of management at Portland State University and lead researcher. "But this research shows that morning people and night owls actually perceive their available time differently, and that difference drives when they choose to help others at work. What I find most exciting is that while your chronotype is biologically grounded and hard to change, your beliefs about how far you can push the boundaries of your day are not. Those beliefs can be shifted, which suggests there is more room for people to act beyond their biological tendencies than we previously thought."

For organizations looking to foster a more adaptable and supportive workforce, the study offers actionable strategies to unlock employee potential regardless of the time on the clock.

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Journal

Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes

DOI

10.1016/j.obhdp.2026.104506 

Article Title

Can I extend my day? The impact of chronotype on organizational citizenship behaviors via time extension self-efficacy

Op-Ed: The decoy effect — how Beijing steers western mining capital

Nicholas Vafeas | June 29, 2026 | 

Sometimes the thing everyone is looking at isn’t the thing that matters most. AI-generated stock image by Nicholas Vafeas .

It’s no secret that I, like many, have a habit of assuming that when China makes a policy move, the topic is almost never the goal. It’s a masterclass in misdirection.

Have you ever heard of the Decoy Effect?

Imagine this. You walk into a coffee shop, and you’re presented with two options: a small cup for $2 or a large for $4. You don’t really need that much coffee, so you settle on the small. Then the barista casually mentions there’s also a medium for $3. Suddenly, the medium seems like the sensible choice because it’s only $1 more. But then you think, “well, if I’m already willing to spend $3, I may as well spend $4 and get the large.” See what happened there?

You weren’t really given more choice. Your perception of value was manipulated. It’s a fairly well-known psychological sales technique. Now consider it in geopolitics.

Every time China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) updates its export licensing catalogue, expands its dual-use controls, or announces a new regulatory framework, Western media rings the alarm bells. The response from Washington, Brussels, and Canberra is entirely predictable: a reactive rush of state-backed subsidies, emergency stockpiling, defensive capital injections into any project with a halfway decent drilling result, and countless Op-Eds about China’s dominance (the irony is not lost on me).

But what if we’ve been focusing on the wrong problem? What if the threat of scarcity isn’t the strategy at all, but the decoy? Whilst Western governments scramble to defend themselves against the possibility of restricted supply, consumed by “focused discussions” and “strategic talks”, Beijing is busy deploying its real weapon, the one nobody notices: aggressive oversupply.

The asymmetric weapon

The beauty of a good decoy isn’t that you believe it, it’s that it stops you from paying attention to anything else. By periodically rattling the sabre of export restrictions, such as the recent targeting of Western upstream producers like MP Materials and USA Rare Earth, Beijing deliberately keeps geopolitical anxieties at a boil. Governments and investors naturally interpret the problem as one of access, encouraging policies centred on securing raw material supply.

Ignore the regulatory theatre and look at the actual pricing. Across much of the critical minerals midstream, pricing has been under relentless pressure. Lithium, cobalt and nickel prices have fallen sharply from their post-pandemic highs, whilst treatment and refining charges for metals such as copper and nickel have been squeezed as processing capacity has expanded faster than raw material supply. Coincidence?

Figure 1. Price trends for lithium, cobalt, and nickel from mid‑2022 to mid‑2026, showing sharp declines relative to their post‑pandemic highs (Source: Tradingeconomics.com). 

Sure, market cycles undoubtedly play a role, but it would also be naïve to ignore the role industrial policy can play in shaping those markets. China has spent decades expanding processing capacity, supporting domestic refiners and backing major overseas projects (from Indonesian nickel to domestic rare earth separation hubs). This raises a more strategic possibility: that oversupply has itself become an instrument of industrial policy.

The decoy (i.e. the loud threat of a ban) keeps the West focused on exploration and securing raw supply. Meanwhile, the reality (persistently weak prices) ultimately starves alternative refining capacity of the private financing it needs to exist in the first place. After all, no private equity fund or commercial bank can honestly justify financing a multi-billion-dollar refinery when a state-backed competitor can comfortably dump refined material onto the market at a whim, well below Western operating costs.

That is market capture 101. This decoy nudges the West to waste its capital on upstream exploration, whilst oversupply ensures that nobody else gets to refine it.

The fallacy of linear substitution

This brings us neatly to the core flaw of the West’s standard defensive response: I call it the “fallacy of linear substitution”. The logic goes something like this: “If we mine one tonne of critical minerals in an allied country, we have successfully replaced one tonne of Chinese supply.” It sounds perfectly reasonable, but it also completely misses the point. Critical minerals are not liquid, generic commodities like crude oil in the 1970s. There is no allied critical minerals “cartel” to help maintain stability and control. They are highly integrated, highly bespoke chemical, metallurgical and manufacturing value chains.

The recent G7 Critical Minerals Alliance meetings in Evian highlighted a rather belated realization that Western projects cannot compete on pure geology or raw operational efficiency when pitted against a state-backed monopoly that sets the reference price.

By the time a mining project has fought its way through the five-to-ten-year permitting, financing and construction process, the Chinese supply machine has already adjusted the global price floor to ensure the new entrant can never service its debt. The hole in the ground becomes a stranded asset before it even achieves commercial scale.

And I’ll give you one guess who picks up that stranded asset for pennies on the dollar. It’s a cycle that has been playing out for years and one which most of us have watched in real time.

Breaking the cycle

If the West wants to escape this scarcity trap, it must stop reacting to Beijing’s administrative theatre and start targeting its economic leverage.

Funding more extraction is a pointless exercise if the resulting material is destined to drown in a flooded, uncommercial global market. Genuine supply chain resilience requires moving beyond basic mining grants toward robust market-insulation mechanisms. “Sew the bag before you collect the marbles”.

Governments must stop offering simple grants and start deploying real, binding, long-term offtake guarantees and price floors for allied-produced materials. Essentially creating a regulatory firewall that protects midstream refiners from predatory pricing.

Investors must decouple the strategic value of processing capacity from volatile, spot-market commodity prices. The capacity to refine must be valued as long-term security, not a cyclical mining play (granted, this is something that would almost certainly need the support of national policy).

From an industry and societal perspective (this is a personal point of contention), we must become far more serious about material retention. Every gram of refined critical metal already inside the allied economy should be treated as a permanent strategic asset. Once it enters the system, the goal should be simple. Never let it leave!

So, just as you leave that hypothetical coffee shop holding a large cup, feeling rather grand with yourself for spending “only $1 extra”, the West will continue to chase a supply chain mirage until we recognize that China’s primary weapon is the decoy effect. The danger isn’t that China will refuse to sell us these minerals. It’s that it will sell them so cheaply that we never build the capacity to refine them ourselves.

By the time the coffee shop closes, we’ve forgotten how to roast the beans.

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* Dr. Nicholas Vafeas is an economic geologist specializing in critical raw materials, mineral value chains, and strategic resource policy.