Much respect for @fryrsquared.bsky.social but I'm not convinced English Lang / Lit GCSE is a good analogy. Fair bit of hate out there for the nebulous nature of GCSE Lang. Science has been struggling with this question for whole of the C21st. Might be a better comparator. www.tes.com/magazine/new...

TGT on Thursday celebrates the birthday of Penn Jillette. The talkative half of Penn & Teller, Penn doesn't pretend their act is anything other than deception and sometimes, but not always, shows the audience how it's done. Discuss magic entertainment with your tutees. bit.ly/TutorGroupThink.

Nice! Whilst there is obviously a lot of work needed to achieve a fully low carbon electricity supply, and here in the UK that might involve potentially vulnerable undersea cables, it's not like the last 10 years have shown us oil and gas are stable and secure options.

Grammarly has very quickly pivoted from better-than-Word proof-reading, to essay mill on speed.

Wednesday's TGT remembers Rob Grant who died last week. Discuss comedy writing, working partnerships or just bask in the silly of some Red Dwarf clips. bit.ly/TutorGroupThink

I'm very grateful a friend told me to get Lasting Power of Attorneys sorted many years before my parents needed them. When the time came, we were all dealing with so much. We didn't have to do that as well. Have the conversation early.

Another little reminder that being a headteacher is a pretty demanding job, often underappreciated outside education. 👇

Don't know why I just saw this, but anyone who marks GCSE will be giving that answer a big, fat 0, without a moment's hesitation.

Interesting post on Europe v USA productivity. sethackerman.substack.com/p/europes-pr... I'm not even slightly an economist so have no idea what's right. I do know that my experience of the US is...

Please don't underrate human beings' ability to produce uptight, lifeless prose on their own

If I signed up to a finance deal for a Mustang and then some massive natural disaster meant I only got a 2nd hand Fiesta, but I was charged the same price anyway, I'd be thinking about suing as well. Can understand the problem for universities, but the principle seems pretty reasonable to me.

British Growth and the Graduate Premium. tomforth.co.uk/graduateprem...

The privately educated are still heavily overrepresented at the top of British society. Since we last looked at elitism in 2019, little has changed 👎 Britain’s most powerful people are still 5x more likely to have been privately educated than the general population.

Always going to be possible to deliver plausible falsehoods faster than anyone can live factcheck them. Like the small print retraction of a front page article at the bottom of p.11 a week later, we're only going to deal with this if the retraction is forced to be as prominent as the invention.

It seems a fairly extreme position if this saying that playing video games, giving house points at school, training a dog not to jump up, and paying your child to wash the car are examples of torture. I may be misunderstanding. Is there another meaning of reinforcement in cognitive psychology?

Whenever I think about the transition to EVs, I think about the two houses we've owned. First one, on road parking very tight - usually just enough space for all cars in this and surrounding streets but no way you could also fit built out charging points on those roads...

Can't imagine this will make any noticeable difference. It's not like there's no money crossing the Atlantic at the moment for undermining government policies.

News from the edge of the visible universe: JWST has confirmed this galaxy, MoM-z14, as the most distant one yet studied. We're seeing it as it was 13.5 billion years ago, 98% of the way back to the beginning of time. (MoM stands for "miracle or mirage.") 🧪🔭 science.nasa.gov/missions/web...

Opinion: There’s a remarkable disconnect between how professors and administrators think students use generative AI on written work and how we actually use it, writes Owen Kichizo Terry. https://chroni.cl/4bmkw9s

Fascinating, suprising, from @hannahritchie.bsky.social blog hannahritchie.substack.com/p/biofuels-v...

@snellarthur.bsky.social particularly good on the obnoxious rambling about Afghan from 'old bone spurs'. arthursnell.substack.com/p/an-especia...

73 aint a bad innings for the C18th. Must be a Daily Mail health and lifestyle article in this.

Shows just how partisan US politics is. Starmer is at something like 18% and he hasn't ordered the army into Bristol, or said he'll annexe Iceland, yet. Just please tell me we don't have to elect Farage twice for people to find out what they really think of him.

With Wonyong Park and the ASE, we are running a survey on science teachers' use of research to inform teaching. If you are a science teacher, please consider taking 10-15 minutes to complete the survey. Participants may opt into a prize draw. southampton.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

For Friday's 500th edition of TGT tell your students about Andre Michelin, who produced a free guidebook and restaurant rating system as a way to encourage people to drive further to eat and wear the tyres on their cars out more quickly. Genius. bit.ly/TutorGroupThink

Holy hell, what an obituary

Looking forward to more extensive coverage of the civil war about to break out in our hellhole cities.

Well worth a read from @daisychristo.bsky.social substack.nomoremarking.com/p/maybe-llm-...

One of so many contradictions in what people want - they want lively town centres full of shops but also want to buy everything online for the lowest possible price.

everything needs more money but no one wants to pay more money part 5647

Hard agree with this.

Tuesday's TGT remembers the anniversary of Alfred Wegener's public proposal of continental drift in 1912. Discuss geology and timescales involved, how this exemplifies the scientific method, or discuss whether Wegner is famous enough given the scale of his idea. bit.ly/TutorGroupThink

Should the Dept of Education put schoolchildren on a site where this is now the norm/culture, not a surprise or exception? Now surrounded by porn, bots & racists too. The Public Sector Equality Duty says no. For reasons of inertia, fame/£ & political class groupthink, different rules for Elon Musk

I can just about understand that some people don't get embarrassed for the misguided, terrible auditions for, like, the X Factor, and just find it funny and laugh at them. But I'm not sure how you can watch this and not be in one or other of those camps.

Ocean Heat Content Sets Another Record in 2025 'Global ocean warming continued unabated in 2025 in response to increased greenhouse gas concentrations and recent reductions in sulfate aerosols' I'm hoping this preliminary @mercatorocean.bsky.social estimate for 2025 is wrong...🫣

I miss the days when political leaders only lied occasionally, feeling a bit guilty as they did so, and pretty much never just made 💩 up.

Nicely nuanced post by @hannahritchie.bsky.social on the effect on US life expectancy of the grim death rate for young Americans. But even accounting for that, the US spends a very high amount on healthcare given the below par outcomes for older people. hannahritchie.substack.com/p/life-expec...

Just learned, via @timleunig.bsky.social excellent substack, that USS owns a very large stake in Thames Water, bought after Macquarie Asset Management had loaded it up with debt.

The idea of the "Green Desert of Wales" is quite controversial, but significant in relation to questions about UK biodiversity and the impact of house building and development.

Just another little bit of evidence rather than anything definitive, but it does show an infant screen-time / adolescent anxiety correlation, with a suggested mechanism. www.thelancet.com/journals/ebi...

Ah, yes, "a new book..." Duckworth is an extraordinary person (see cv) and it's not entirely her fault that so many people jumped on the Grit bandwagon without asking if it was a personality trait that responded to well-meaning interventions, but my impression is she's leaned into that pretty hard.

The list of innovations in neonatal medicine this one man was responsible for is so impressive. Not the least the famous kangaroo care (he run an RCT showing its effectiveness). He was our alumnus @kingscollege.bsky.social! Rest in peace, Professor Whitelaw and thank you for everything

🤣🤣🤣https://foddy.net/Athletics.html

I'm appalled at discovering this is what happens to Snakes and Ladders across the pond.

Cracks me up when I'm trying to sign into Outlook on my phone and I have to get the 2FA number from... my phone. 'ping'

We've already passed the earliest sunset of the year and have started the long, slow drag back towards light evenings. However, no sign of it today. 💨🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️🌧️💨

Had to do the Sun, Moon, and stars first?

Saw a child go from daily ear defenders to never using them. The panels made such a difference to her stress levels.

I have a question for other #ITeachPhysics people. I have several masses in my collection that are labeled "500 G." They are most certainly *not* 500 g. All of them are around 146g. One even says "500 G Actual 146.7g" Any idea what I'm looking at? This has bothered me for years.

Is this the same public that understands the state pension will have to go?