Niche post, but as someone switching to a heavily Microsoft environment it is baffling how poorly Loop compares to @notion.com. Not just the absence of simple relational databases (Notions' USP) but basic stuff around subpages, page covers, etc. Makes me glad for the Notion team, I guess.

It’s fascinating comparing the front page coverage of the Huntingdon train attack (below) with how the British press treated another case 30 years ago. I’m referring to the 1995 Netto supermarket attack in Birmingham in which a man stabbed 10 people, killing one of them.

Ukrainian computer game-style drone attack system goes ‘viral’ www.theguardian.com/world/2025/n...

A majority of voters, and a plurality of white voters, think that Reform is a racist party with racist policies.

“We are spending scarce resources in ways that have little impact on the teacher quality needed to help pupils.” The findings from today’s @teacherdevtrust.bsky.social ‘CPD Landscape 2025’ report are concerning.

Trying to imagine what the reaction would have been if the Govt had casually announced they were replacing A-levels with no details, as they have done with post-16 vocational qualifcations today. Probably not total indifference.

The Bunny Vs Monkey event with @jamiesmart.bsky.social was a joy. Yeah, the kids there liked it, fine, but I got to spend an hour sketching stuff like the insane cat Looshkin and a FARTING TREE with a bum in it. So I was happy.

I finally read the 2013 Sun article about Zack Polanski the right is weaponising. Weird bits I'd not heard mentioned was that the writer 1) felt it worked and; 2) thinks Zack's a hottie ("He’s in dark slacks and a tight-fitting jumper but I try to ignore the resemblance to Marvin from JLS.")

Starts humming tunes from the opening act of DDLJ

No, it's not. It's all a lie. The blunt truth is across the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them.

The Conservatives’ plans to slash arts degrees shows a depressing lack of understanding about Britain’s creative industries. For crying out loud, it's 12 years since the “Next Gen” report emphasised that the games and film industries needed arts graduates as well as those who'd studied comp science.

feels like yet again time to mention that the *videogames* industry (that's a creative industry, which people do creative degrees in) brings in more than twice the amount to the British economy as the fishing and steel industries *combined*

Everyone who advocates for turning the UK into the UAE assumes they'll be the one with a marina penthouse rather than the guy working on a building site in 50c heat

I know statistics are poorly understood and are misused. But facts matter Between the 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021 Census *every* ethnic group in the UK has become *less* geographically segregated and *all* groups, majority and minorities, are more likely to interact with people not like them

Kemi Badenoch on #R4today refusing to condemn Jenrick’s line about not seeing “another white face” in Handsworth then…immediately quoting Martin Luther King was peak cringe even for the current Tory party.

Sad to hear the news about Jilly Cooper. She was one of those rare public figures who was exactly as you’d hoped she would be in real life. Back when she was writing her 2006 school-set novel Wicked! she phoned up The Times Educational Supplement for advice on inspections and got put through to me.

Political reporters continue to cover the centre-left according to the old standards of honesty and legality while shrugging at the right: "Ah well, you know what these guys are like. What can you do?"

As a fan of Paul Thomas Anderson and Pynchon (plus someone who appreciates DiCaprio’s comic chops) I was surprised One Battle After Another wasn’t 5⭐️s to me. Didn’t help that the Odeon messed up the Vistavision projection so it flickered badly throughout.

No, it never existed, and then the imaginary target was scrapped by the Conservatives years ago anyway. The rise in numbers going to uni was entirely down to higher demand from students.

I cannot tell you how many parents I met across the last few events who said that comics started their kids reading. Just comics. It’s the one thing that worked. 🫡

A quarter of a million people recently attended a rally (Tommy Robinson's) where preacher Brian Tamaki was cheered for calling for the banning of ALL religions in the UK apart from Christianity. But the stupid leaked memo suggests it's Labour supporters who are raring to organise a pogrom. 🙄

I wonder what attracted him to a party led by a massive Putin fan… www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

I had DigID when I was living in the Netherlands. It was incredibly practical for accessing national and local tax info, pensions, healthcare, Covid jabs, setting up bank accounts and so on. It’s just stupid that those most angry about “illegals” seem to oppose it.

Love buying a train ticket on my phone on the platform and getting two emails saying Luke, get ready for YOUR PLACE OF WORK! It’s *almost* time, Luke!!! YOUR PLACE OF WORK AWAITS! Better get ready because YOU’RE GOING THERE!

Useful reminder from Peter Kellner on the problems we refuse to acknowledge are getting better, and the politics of hopelessness that this breeds open.substack.com/pub/kellnerp...

I'm sorry, I had to do it. (Apologies to @tomgauld.bsky.social)

Kudos to the many from @neunion.bsky.social who made up such a large share of those brave enough to march against Tommy Robinson today.

Trump supporters in the US: “We don’t believe he’s in Epstein’s birthday book!! His signature’s been FAKED!!” Labour Party supporters in the UK: “Yeah, that’s totally plausible as something Peter Mandelson would do.”

The cost of train tickets in the UK compared to the Netherlands continues to piss me off. Along with their huge unreliability, unusable wi-fi and the constant pointless “Ooh - let’s pretend I’m the captain of a plane” tannoy messages

If the government doesn't want the police to enforce certain laws, it has a great mechanism to make that happen: it can repeal them. Having laws on the books that police are supposed to selectively enforce depending on political judgment is very much *not* the way through this stuff.

Once upon a time, it seemed open and free links to reliable legal information would undermine such flights of political-media fantasy, but no. The links are there, un-clicked. People don't care what the actual law is and what judges actually said. They want to believe.

I keep thinking of the YouGov poll showing 61% of the most send-them-home group of voters would keep refugees who came by “legal” routes. Perhaps we need informative verification on government websites?

“I waited for love / with a cricket bat” is a cracking opening lyric for a song. @cmatbaby.bsky.social open.spotify.com/track/6VXIZW...

This is a cool tool for local (and not so local) journalism.

Finding key information shared at council meetings takes time and effort. Today, we've launched a tool that allows you to search verbatim quotes from council meetings in the UK and Ireland, without the need to watch long recordings or sift through extensive notes. council-search.bellingcat.com

I’m beginning to think Reform hasn’t thought through ‘perverse incentives’.

The biggest issue is most Reform voters (wrongly) believe there are safe legal channels for all genuine refugees. That’s why even when you poll harder “send them home” voters, the majority of them (61%) are actually OK keeping genuine asylum-seekers. They just can’t imagine Channel crossers count.

I’m still astonished to have learnt that sex offence convictions among white Britons have gone up over the last 7 years but are… down… for the remaining ethnicities in the UK if you add them together. Not the story people are hearing now. mrmichaelshaw.medium.com/theyre-misle...

Can we have lessons for all the adults too?

I've got so grumpy about how Reform politicians, the Telegraph and the Centre for Migration Control spin the stats about foreigners committing sex offences I've written a blog about it. mrmichaelshaw.medium.com/theyre-misle...

The story of the weekend looks like about 3000+ people protesting asylum, 2000+ counterprotestors while 210k people do parkrun

Everyone is arguing about whether AI is overhyped and overvalued or not, so I've decided to be a bit retro – what if the whole concept of "big data" was overhyped, and never really panned out? Sounds mad, but hear me out… www.jamesrball.com/p/what-if-bi...

I actually believe Tommy Robinson’s claim he personally didn’t do the tweet about the grandpa - it will have been one of his (frequently posh) interns. This happened with another Islamophobic tweet (see the book “Hate Club”) But he’s still responsible and a bigot.

This is fascinating. A lot of previous ed research on keyboards has focussed on the context of note-taking, where they’re seen to be negative for retention. But it makes intuitive sense that it’s different for assessment. www.theguardian.com/education/20...

Told an ex-teacher colleague I was seeing a horror film tonight about a teacher who arrives in her classroom to find only one learner is there. Her reply: “Oh, so it’s a horror film that plays on teachers’ nightmares in August about going back to school?”

You hear stories about what an academic household does to children but today at bedtime my precocious rising kindergartner said “father will you read me a story about university leaders who believe LLM-based chatbots have made language teaching irrelevant?” and fortunately I had just the thing

Just finished Hate Club by @lucymarionbrown.bsky.social. We’d both still disagree on politics and my god has she made some terrible choices. But…for me her book was genuinely unputdownable. It’s a must-read for anyone trying to understand Tommy Robinson & his brigade.

The lack of willingness to challenge outright lies told about asylum-seekers is something I’ve found infuriating so bravo to @francesryan.bsky.social for this.