Remarkable courage from Iran’s students against a theocratic fascist regime that will attempt to murder them for the crime of protest.

It's so cool that the fbi is basically the make a wish foundation for one podcaster

NEW on Wonkhe: Student loan reform is coming. But not without a proper review wonkhe.com/wonk-corner/...

The genius of the current English HE system is that it has left young graduates feeling enraged about the costs to them *at exactly the same time* it has resulted in many universities being on the precipice of bankruptcy AND not adequately matching skill supply to skill demand in the economy.

This reveals the major problem with the student loans debate: it cannot be solved only within the confines of the loan system- you have to change at least one other aspect of HE. And that can only *sustainably* be done by a proper review of HE funding, governance and regulation.

8 visits to Kremlin. 0 visits to Kyiv.

Ten glorious years of a guy who has mostly been the president and always been the main character of American political life doing posts like this and everyone trying to figure out what cable news segment he saw, misunderstood in the way a dog might misunderstand a crossword, and made into policy.

Just saw GOAT. It was not very good.

I think this is a correct response to Wuthering Heights. Everyone should read it once (or twice if you first read it as an impressionable teenager who only finished the first bit) but it's a deranged, claustrophobic fever dream of a novel that is far closer to Gothic horror than a romance.

Written like a parent explaining to a five year old why they can't stay up until midnight every night.

My favourite part of the 'turn parliament into a museum' suggestion is... the place is a fire hazard/asbestos shrine! It could not reopen as a museum without... billions of pounds of investment!

As you age you that realise different friends are for different things. Some provide fun, some are there to support you in difficult times, some marry your clergyman cousin when you are sensible of the honour of his proposals but it is impossible for you to do otherwise than to decline them, etc.

A fruitful source of influence, leading to those great works: Idle Thoughts of The Proletarian Revolution And The Renegade Kautsky and Three Men In A Gulag.

Stations on the HS1 line: where “international” means “you can watch Eurostar trains go through here”. Would be a great boon to turn both Stratford and Ashford into properly intl stations and let Eurostar passengers board there!

i often think about this review

🧪🏺 Update - authors have new paper showing how useless gen- #AI is for archaeological illustration. All 400 images were multiply inaccurate (physically, socially, technologically, environmentally), even with improved prompts. JUST USE HUMAN EXPERTS & ARTISTS www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

You may laugh, but the Macbeths are a much better role model for a marriage than Romeo and Juliet. They discuss their problems (killing the king of Scotland), share their hobbies (killing the king of Scotland), and resolve their conflicts (by killing the king of Scotland).

‪Doctors say that vaccines protect children from dangerous diseases. A nepo baby who barbecues dogs and snorts cocaine off toilet seats says that vaccines make children vulnerable to 5G radiation. For busy parents, it can be hard to know who to trust.

The obviously correct answer is “Don’t Look Back In Anger” because it was the closing theme for the final episode of “Our Friends In The North”, which is one of the best tv series ever made and one that all British politicians should be compelled to watch.

A fair bit of it was illegal then…

Team USA Curler Rich Ruohonen: "We'd be remiss if we didn't at least mention what's going on in Minnesota...I am a lawyer, as you know, and we have a constitution... and what's happening in Minnesota is wrong. There's no shades of gray. It's clear."

This is entirely correct, but moving away from helpful untruths runs another risk Labour is prone to: justifying everything they do as something in an ideal world, they wouldn’t do. We don’t live in an ideal world, and if your policies only work in one, they’re fantasies, not politics.

The University of Salford is delighted to announce a new free, hands-on National Saturday Club for teenagers to explore podcasting and documentary filmmaking 🎥🎙️ Read more here - https://ow.ly/2lLr50Y8KF3 #salforduni

This would seem like an ideal case study for a legitimate cause for the King to reject the PM’s advice—because there almost certainly is a viable government to be formed from the current House.

This week on Wonkhe: As John Blake is announced as the first Director of The Post-18 Project, he argues that politicians must not ignore the feelings running ever deeper about the student loans system

I have actually missed whatever this story is, so this was a weird sentence to wake up to. And now I’m going to have to try to find out without making my search history really weird.

I’ve lived through every stage of the building of England’s fees and loans system — and as it has evolved, it has become something that is a good deal on paper, but feels unfair and is effectively inexplicable. My first piece in my new role as Director of The Post 18 Project.

Sir Ian McKellen performing a monologue from Shakespeare’s Sir Thomas More on the Stephen Colbert show. Never have I heard this monologue performed with such a keen sense of prescience. Nor have I ever been in this exact historical moment.TY Sir Ian, for reaching us once again. #Pinks #ProudBlue

"Graduate tax could replace ‘doomed’ student loans, says ex-watchdog"

NEW on Wonkhe: As John Blake is announced as the first Director of The Post-18 Project, he argues that politicians must not ignore the feelings running ever deeper about the student loans system buff.ly/QkEdnSj

I have joined The Post 18 Project as our first Director: my first intervention is to pour out my thoughts about why our student loan system is doomed, no matter how good policy works think it is. post18.co.uk/a-review-of-...

This is actually very interesting because that’s what people get wrong about the Middle Ages as well. Simply put: you might know how to build aqueducts from self healing concrete but you might lose the need *and* capability to do so. Three separate things. Many misunderstand how societies adapt. 1/

New post on Substack Durable Mastery: How to design for knowledge that survives profbeckyallen.substack.com/p/durable-ma...

The Thick of It, whilst hilarious, did incalculable damage to our political culture by teaching an entire generation of politicos that the best way to get on in politics was to behave like a dick.

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Yeah, and I really do not believe anyone should be leaning into it because it will have bad downstream effects

The student loan system is (mostly) fair and reasonable*. It is also almost completely impossible to explain that to anyone who isn’t knee deep in its long history and changes. This is, I suspect, a problem.

Not previously but I can’t imagine a day will go by now on which I don’t.

One of the things we expect of law enforcement agents is to be able to deal with people who are behaving in ways that may be uncooperative or even illegal WITHOUT MURDERING THEM.

Contrary to what many might expect, the Civil Service does very little "Big Thinking" on policy ideas. But why would they? Their job is to implement policy, not develop it.

As @duncanweldon.bsky.social points out, it's also a question of ministerial will and direction. But I also think it's significant that the departments which travelling fastest on reform have people who are politicised policy wonks with serious think tank backgrounds working as senior advisors.

Also, would you like to hear the story of how the Fugitive Slave Act worked out for the security and peace of the Republic?

In Printz v. United States, #SCOTUS held that the Constitution bars the federal government from forcing or otherwise compelling local or state governments to enforce federal law. The liberal squish who wrote the majority opinion in that case? Justice Antonin Scalia: tile.loc.gov/storage-serv...

“Compelled speech is not free speech”…

In Westminster for the first time in a while for an exciting discussion on the government’s Skills ambitions. Even better, the cafe I’m has just cranked on Irene Cara’s “Fame”, so I’m just off outside to splits jump over a taxi.

A very sensible and responsible move by @ox.ac.uk: any additional complexity in the university admissions system will inevitably hit less privileged students the hardest, so more common activity by highly selective providers on admissions testing is welcome.

My "if you make us feel bad, we will have to shoot you" press conference is prompting the exact response I was trying to stop.

Next shot: people shouting in Norwegian about how it’s actually a horrific shape changing monster of danger to everyone on Earth … but the penguin sticks with him anyway.