Day 4 of wet play. The classroom smells like damp jumpers and crushed dreams. You've refereed 17 friendship tribunals, confiscated 9 “harmless” projectiles and learned that UNO is basically a contact sport. Pray for us.

TIL: CDs were originally smaller in diameter, and could only hold an hour of music, but were made physically larger during development so they could hold 74 minutes of music, specifically so that they were big enough to hold a full performance of Beethoven's 9th symphony.

I feel very happy that the figure skating allows the phrase ‘safely through that twizzle sequence’ to be uttered in total seriousness. #WinterOlympics

Everyone is Very Tired of Wet Play.

The initiative will provide €325 (£283) a week to 2,000 eligible artists based in the Republic of Ireland. This follows a pilot (for which 2,000 artists were randomly selected from 8,000 applicants). ‘The scheme recouped more than its net cost of €72m’ www.theguardian.com/world/2026/f...

🧵So, what works when teaching reading comprehension in the classroom? To a whole class? I dedicated a entire chapter of my Phd thesis to exploring the literature on this. In fact, we do not know a lot about what works when teachers teach, to whole classes. 1/8

#Music Miles Davis, Blue in Green. #Jazz youtu.be/TLDflhhdPCg?...

#Photography Saul Leiter (1960), Harlem, New York City.

Yesterday we posted a series of blogs outlining the direction we would like curriculum reform to go in and airing some of our concerns about where it might go. Here's an additional blog focusing on assessment www.englishandmedia.co.uk/blog/curricu...

This is an incredibly important blog by my colleague Lucy Hinchliffe on behalf of @engmediacentre.bsky.social All English teachers should take a look & DfE should definitely be talking to us about this. If they get this wrong, nothing else will go right in the Nat Curric for English.

Issue 48.03 is now online, featuring: Seamus Perry on pluralism and poetry James Wolcott on John Updike @jamesmeek.bsky.social on the Romanian right Claire Hall on Archimedes John Gallagher on early modern news @lalehkhalili.bsky.social on the US Special Forces Read online at lrb.co.uk

Edward Wolfe's laid-back portrait of the diplomat Curtis Thomas (c1936) with its rich furnishings and patterns is an evocative foil for his silver-grey tailored suit. Thomas was a diplomat to Morocco and had met Wolfe in Tangiers.

On this day in 2016 a bird was flying to the Moon. 🔭 🧪 🎨 #astrophotography #SciArt #photography #StormHour #ThePhotoHour

Does anyone else, in response to their pet giving a random whimper, meow, or bark, lovingly respond “I know” when in fact, you actually…don’t know?

A picture of North Korea's founder Kim Il-sung decorates a building in the capital Pyongyang, October 5, 2011. #Photography Damir Sagolj (This photo was awarded first prize in the World Press Photo Daily Life Singles category./Reuters)

"Old age was growing inside me. It kept catching my eye from the depths of the mirror. I was paralyzed sometimes as I saw it make its way for me so steadily when nothing inside me was ready for it." ― Simone de Beauvoir, La Force des choses #BookSky #Photography Daido Moriyama

'Travel Underground to the Theatres', Drury Lane (commission for Underground Electric Railway Company Ltd, 1930) by Herbert Ashwin Budd (Private collection)

This week's theme was Covent Garden 🎭🥂🌹 Hope you enjoyed it! Take a look over the timeline for full details of these and the rest of the featured pieces.

‘6 strategies to support shared reading for students with SEND’ “… the solution for pupils who struggle with reading is not to only offer them a thin diet of levelled/banded reading, but instead to better scaffold the reading of complex texts.” alexquigley.co.uk/6-strategies...

Happy 94th Birthday to 🇺🇸American composer, conductor and pianist #JohnWilliams KBE born #OnThisDay in Queens, New York City

It’s cold. It’s rainy. It’s February at its greyest and grimmest. So I thought that #RecipeOfTheDay just needed to be this Sticky Chocolate Pudding! www.nigella.com/recipes/stic...

Agreed. I think that’s why local institutions matter so much - schools, clubs, libraries, faith groups, volunteering. They’re where people learn to disagree and still belong. Without them, everything turns tribal - and we're seeing the rotten fruits of that all around us. It's sad. It really is.

Just a friendly reminder that you’re not being “unreasonable” if you wish to pull a book from a bookshelf and find that it opens a secret door. If anyone tells you otherwise, they were never your friend to begin with.

📚 The Yeats Family Library is now available to consult at the NLI! An intimate glimpse into the reading lives of one of Ireland’s most celebrated artistic families: https://catalogue.nli.ie/Collection/vtls000925164 📖 Learn more: https://www.nli.ie/news-stories/stories/inside-yeats-family-library

Pls read whole piece. Neither Mandelson or Mosley were asked about Mandelson’s role in fixing Starmer’s visit to Palantir & subsequent £240m deal. It finally made headlines on Weds when a q was asked in Parliament. But honestly, BBC also has qs to answer open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

#OnThisDay 100 years ago, The Plough and the Stars by Sean O'Casey premiered at the Abbey Theatre. At its original production in February 1926, the audience rioted. Now regarded as a masterpiece, this provocative play is an essential part of our understanding of Irish history and Irish theatre.

This is a great story, and very odd. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Sweet 16 🤩 🚀 Sixteen years ago today, the largest space window was on its way to the International Space Station aboard Space Shuttle Endeavour. 🌍 Enjoy the views from Europe's bay window onto Earth. 📸 @esa.int/ @astro-slawosz.bsky.social

Modernist poet Marianne Moore died #OTD in 1972. Her book, 𝘊𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘗𝘰𝘦𝘮𝘴, won the #Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award & the Bollingen Prize in 1951. For her full body of work, she was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature by Nobel Committee member Erik Lindegren, 1968. #poetry #booksky

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

#OTD in 1995, astronaut Eileen Collins became the first female pilot of a NASA space shuttle. She piloted the Space Shuttle Discovery during mission STS-63, a mission that included the first-ever rendezvous between a US space shuttle & the Russian space station Mir. #WomenInSTEM #AstronautEnvy 🚀

Remember her name: Aliya Rahman Her testimony is everything and it deserves to be heard, by everyone. Decide for yourself. It’s powerful. It’s gut-wrenching. And no one should have to survive what she did. ICE MUST GO‼️

💧Healthy wetlands are essential for healthy rivers. This World Wetlands Day, we’re celebrating the incredible benefits wetlands bring. From improving water quality and reducing flood risk, to supporting wildlife and strengthening resilience across entire catchments. #WorldWetlandsDay

rules for watching Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (1979) - try to guess the age of everyone in screen - shout “78!” or similar - look cast up on IMDb - discover they are all younger than you are now

In an interview with NPR, Melinda French Gates confirmed that she ended her marriage with Bill Gates because of allegations contained in the Epstein files.

Good evening. This week's theme is Covent Garden 🎭🥂🌹 ------ 'Broad Court, Covent Garden' (2024) by Melissa Scott-Miller chrisbeetles.com

William Orpen was the quintessential Edwardian painter. His portraits are coloured by the glamour of the age, his painting of 'Mrs Evelyn St George,' (1906/1914) one of his most dramatic formal arrangements.

“It takes a long time to sound like yourself.” — Miles Davis

🎶 'Alas, what hast thou done? Thou art a pynke ponye girle Yn the daunse at the clubbe!' 'Nay, modir! Ich am but seekinge mirthe On the stage yn myne heeles It ys wher Ich belonge: Downe at the Pynke Ponye Clubbe! Ich shal keepe on daunsinge, Downe yn West Hollywoode' [LUTE SOLO] 🎶

We captured the moment Leo Boix, guest co-editor of our latest British Latinx issue, first holds the magazine in his hands! There’s something truly special about that tangible magic of print media … Order your copy here: buff.ly/I9TjqSS

I love the term Kartoffel-Flut www.theguardian.com/world/2026/j...

Don't miss the final episode of our @EmpirePodUK 1857 series THE FALL OF LUCKNOW linktr.ee/empirepoduk

British Black History books for children and teens, including titles by Floella Benjamin, David Olusoga, Benjamin Zephaniah, Alison Hammond, Jeffrey Boakye, Catherine Johnson, Troy Deeney and more. schoolreadinglist.co.uk/genres/briti... #kidlit

A government-funded speech and language screening initiative found an unexpected proportion of young children have unidentified needs, an evaluation report has said

Judge orders 5-year-old Liam Ramos and his father be released from immigration detention, source says. https://cnn.it/4t9wLN5

There's a lot of focus in the Brit press on the Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor photos. What is appallingly not the focus is the female figure looks unconscious at worst, inert at best. That's a horrifying image bt everyone seems to be too busy playing spot the celebrity to notice #EpsteinFiles

I think we need this again today.

At the end of the day, don’t we all just want to read Edgar Allan Poe in front of a crackling fire in a mysterious Victorian mansion on a cold winter's night during a full moon with the sound of wolves in the distance whilst enjoying a plate of freshly-baked croissants?

'Preparing London for the Summer: Exhibition Road, South Kensington' (from The Graphic, 23 April 1927) by Stanley Roy Badmin chrisbeetles.com/artwork/4283...

This is why I’m staying in tonight. Disney+ www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio...