Tuesday, 18th August (Cres)

Posted on August 18, 2026 by roycross

1. More – perhaps the last word, for this blog at least – on Jason Arday, again from Tyler Austin Harper (whose Why I Quit the Tenure Track piece I included last Thursday) in The Atlantic, The Truths That Failed Jason Arday: systemic, ritualized dishonesty undid the Cambridge professor https://tinyurl.com/mtj76un7

Two images have rattled around in my head since the news of Arday’s death. The first is from a 2023 BBC clip celebrating his hiring at Cambridge. Cremin, Arday’s Cambridge colleague, clasps both of his hands in the manner of a cherished loved one as they stare into each other’s eyes. The camera zooms in on their white and Black hands interlocked and lingers there. The second image was posted on X last night: a screenshot of a list of article headlines about the Arday scandal, stretching to several pages, published by one British outlet alone. It represents but a few watts of the international spotlight that had been trained on the academic.

I’d be surprised if either Deborah Prentice or Hilary Cremin, vice-chancellor and head of the Faculty of Education at Cambridge University respectively, survive the year.

2. Another gift article, this one by Tom Calver for The Times, Why have we lost pride in a country that has so much going for it? https://tinyurl.com/yc4etws7

In 2011, a year characterised by the London riots and a weak economic recovery, the cross-party think tank Demos found pride in Britain to be remarkably resilient. A net 74 per cent of us were proud to be British citizens, expressing near-universal adoration of Shakespeare, the Union Jack, the army and the pound. The following summer’s Olympics still rank as something of a cultural zenith for millions of Brits. How things have changed. In a study published on Sunday, Demos has repeated the exercise, with sobering results. Pride in being a British citizen has plummeted to 47 per cent. Just 13 per cent are proud of Britain’s role in the world …

And should I feel guilty when I wonder whether it does have so much going for it?

3. They’re all gift articles from The Guardian – for how much longer I wonder? Here’s a strongly-worded recent piece by Katherine Rundell, ‘I hate what AI is doing to the minds and happiness of the young’: Katherine Rundell on the view from the classroom https://tinyurl.com/yc7uawrk

There are many things I hate unequivocally about AI. I hate that it can make counterfeit people; computer-generated humans that risk destabilising our entire civilisation. I hate that much of AI’s LLMs were built on an illegal pillage of human labour. I hate the environmental catastrophe that AI brings with it: the yearly electrical demand of AI-optimised data centres is predicted, by the end of this decade, to exceed that of the whole of Japan. I hate that it may be the factor that tips the Earth’s ecosystems into irreparable chaos. And I hate what it is doing to the minds, and the happiness, of the young.

4. I’ve only just noticed that there’s a downloadable PDF version of each ELT Buzz Digest by David Deubelbeiss. Below is the PDF for the 9th of June issue, which you can also find on Substack here https://eltbuzz.substack.com/p/the-elt-buzz-digest-aug-9th Twenty-five items, by my count, covering a host of topics.

Elt_Buzz_Digest_AugDownload

5. And, finally, the video version of Timothy Snyder’s University of Toronto course, Hitler and Stalin Today https://www.utoronto.ca/news/timothy-snyder-brings-his-u-t-course-hitler-and-stalin-youtube Works equally well as a podcast, as he doesn’t use many slides!

Here’s the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy at the University of Toronto’s home page, where you can find the rest of Snyder’s Hitler and Stalin Today course https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEvfzpvnlq_zY_IONa7xUZQ

and here’s his personal home page https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmY71FGkk5kMwde_TP3KbnQ where you’ll find among other things his Making of Modern Ukraine course that I mentioned (to my astonishment five minutes ago) way back in 2022.

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Thursday, 13th August (Cres)

Posted on August 13, 2026 by roycross

1. If you follow Geoff Jordan on LinkedIn, you’ll know that he’s a man of strong views https://www.linkedin.com/in/geoff-jordan-0a7658219/

Courtesy of Geoff, here’s a whole book of strong opinions to start with tonight, English Language Teaching Now and How It Could Be, which he co-wrote with Mike Long. PDF below.

In 2016, I started a blog aimed at criticizing coursebook-driven English Language Teaching (ELT). My main argument was that the increasingly pervasive use of General English coursebooks, plus all the supplementary materials that now go with them, means that millions of teachers today are forced to teach English as a second language in a way that contradicts robust findings in second language acquisition (SLA) research. I later started another blog where I applied this argument especially to those responsible for second language teacher education, accusing leading figures in this area of largely ignoring SLA research, and of misrepresenting its findings on the few occasions when they referred to it. Mike Long, already a good friend, told me how much he liked many (but not all!) of the posts, and in 2018, he proposed that we write a book together, giving an up-to-date summary of SLA research and its implications for ELT, a critical review of current ELT practice, and suggestions for how it might be improved. Of course, I was delighted and honoured to accept. Since we were both anarchists, we agreed that the book should reflect our view that education is a political act; that current ELT reflects the ideology and economic consequences of neoliberal state capitalism; and that radical reform is necessary.

Jordan&Long2023Download

2. We’ve heard a great deal in the UK about Professor Jason Arday over the last two weeks. Here’s a gift article in similar vein from The Atlantic, Why I Quit the Tenure Track: the insufferable hypocrisy of elite academia, by Tyler Austin Harper https://tinyurl.com/3pjw994d

It had been obvious to me since my arrival at Bates that I was what conservatives like to call a “DEI hire” – that is, I likely wouldn’t have gotten the job were it not for the color of my skin. True, I’d gone to a top Ph.D. program, had prominent advisers, scraped together an above-average amount of teaching experience, and graduated with distinction. I was more than qualified for the job I was hired to do. But was I more qualified than every other candidate who’d applied? Probably not.

And just in case you’ve not been able to keep up to speed on the Arday affair, here’s a thoughtful piece from Joseph Harker in The Guardian, The Jason Arday affair must not spell the end for diversity. Here’s how – and why – we should defend it https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/13/jason-arday-diversity-how-and-why-we-should-defend

Last month Arday faced allegations of plagiarism over his PhD thesis, and amid massive scrutiny he resigned last week. Cambridge University has now announced an independent inquiry into its appointment procedures, but many academics already believe that Arday was given the job more for his remarkable backstory than for his academic ability. Arday was, they felt, not at the level you would expect for a professorial chair at such an elite institution. But he was the man who said he couldn’t talk till he was 11, and couldn’t read till he was 18; who had run 30 marathons in 35 days, the last third of them with a leg fracture. What an amazing story. Arday gathered headlines and media appearances. He became a walking advert for how an institution with such a poor record on diversity had progressed so far. Or had it?

3. Beware the power of prediction is a TED talk by Carissa Véliz https://www.ted.com/talks/carissa_veliz_beware_the_power_of_prediction

What do the story of Oedipus and your insurance premiums have in common? They are both driven by self-fulfilling prophecies. Philosopher and TED Fellow Carissa Véliz traces the hidden power of prediction, from Roman emperors who banned prophets to the AI algorithms quietly making decisions about your life right now. We tend to associate predictions with knowledge, she says, but they’re actually attempts to grab power. So the next time someone tells you a specific outcome is inevitable, remember: they aren’t describing the future — they’re selling it.

4. From ArtReview by Jenny Wu, The Digital Jungle: On Datacentres and Slaughterhouses https://artreview.com/the-digital-jungle-on-datacenters-and-slaughterhouses-jenny-wu/ The two are more similar than you might think, she suggests!

Datacentres are at once, as architecture critic Niklas Maak wrote in 2022, ‘the most important new building typology of the twenty-first century’ and ‘meant to be the opposite of architecture: saying nothing, betraying nothing’. The ones in the countryside are bland and seemingly ahistorical shells tasked with encasing and temperature-controlling what we assume are more interesting government secrets and salacious personal emails. One can compare the edifices of Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Meta et al to warehouses and hangars, or the US National Security Agency’s sprawling, white-walled data-storage facility in Bluffdale, Utah, photographed by Trevor Paglen in 2012, to a remote airfield. But we call interconnected computers ‘server farms’, Maak points out, ‘as if a server rack were something like a digital cow’. Unconsciously, then, these structures point to another, bygone typology: the nineteenth- and twentieth-century industrial slaughterhouse.

5. And, finally, a little Schiller from JSTOR Daily. The Case for Aesthetic Education by  Marco Elvis Joven Domínguez https://daily.jstor.org/the-case-for-aesthetic-education/

Why Friedrich Schiller believed art belongs at the heart of education—and why it matters for equal opportunity today.

Those last three all from Maja Mandekić – thank you, Maja! I’ve been a little preoccupied with NILE’s Erasmus+ courses for next summer!

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Tuesday, 11th August (Cres)

Posted on August 11, 2026 by roycross

1. Jeff Dean, Chief Scientist for Google Research and Google DeepMind, gave a talk at Princeton University earlier this year on Important Trends in AI: How Did We Get Here, What Can We Do Now, and Where are We Headed? https://youtu.be/UTTeXZrpMR0 Accessibly complicated!

2. The UK Department of Education have just published a range of papers (all downloadable) on Identifying and supporting the needs of children with SEND in mainstream settings, described as findings from a series of rapid evidence assessments on what works to identify and support the needs of children and young people with SEND in mainstream and early years settings that cover the identification of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), effective methods of support and collaborative practices in relation to:

  • cognition and learning needs
  • sensory and physical needs
  • social, emotional and mental health needs (SEMH)
  • stammering, speech, language and communication needs
  • autism

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/identifying-and-supporting-the-needs-of-children-with-send-in-mainstream-settings

3. The typically rich August issue of Humanising Language Teaching has just been published https://www.hltmag.co.uk/aug26 It includes, very sadly, a tribute to Jill Hadfield who died in May (with a lovely picture of her) https://www.hltmag.co.uk/aug26/good-bye-jill-in-memory-of-jill-hadfield PDF of the tribute to Jill below.

August 2026 – Good-bye Jill – In Memory of Jill HadfieldDownload

4. Philip Larkin’s birthday would have been last Sunday, and I joined an excellent talk that evening on Larkin and Birthdays by Philip Pullen (which I hope I’ll be able to share the recording of soon). Also in celebration of his birthday, The New York Review of Books has made four of his poems that they published in 1964 free to view for the next few days https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1964/06/11/four-poems-byphilip-larkin/

Here’s one of them, Home is So Sad

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,

Shaped to the comfort of the last to go

As if to win them back. Instead, bereft

Of anyone to please, it withers so,

Having no heart to put aside the theft

And turn again to what it started as,

A joyous shot at how things ought to be,

Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:

Look at the pictures and the cutlery

The music in the piano stool. That vase.

5. And, finally, Charlotte Brontë as EFL teacher from David B. Wilson (via the University of Warwick website). Two of her novels – The Professor (published posthumously in 1857) and Villette (1853) – drew on her experiences as a student of French and teacher of English as a foreign language in the Pensionnat Héger, Brussels in 1842–44 https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/collections/elt_archive/halloffame/women/bronte/ PDF below as well.

wilson-2026-the-martyrdom-of-miss-charlotte-bronteDownload
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Thursday, 6th August (Cres)

Posted on August 6, 2026 by roycross

1. Cross fingers crossed for this first one, a BBC video of Gregory Burke’s play, The Black Watch, described by the BBC as a “hard-hitting play, based on interviews with former soldiers, that combines words, music and song to deliver a frank and unvarnished account of a Scottish regiment serving in the Iraq war” https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b007xrqx/artworks-scotland-the-black-watch

A great piece of theatre from the then very recently founded National Theatre of Scotland which we saw back in Edinburgh in 2006. My fingers are crossed that the reason I’m able to watch it here in Cres is NOT because my laptop thinks it’s still in Cambridge!

2. I mentioned Ruben Hassid on Tuesday. Here’s a complete list of his posts on his How to start with AI blog, including How to bypass AI detectors and A survival guide to AI (written like IKEA instructions) https://tathastu-rh.notion.site/How-to-start-with-AI-3069464bdbf9809e8012ea1703525a55 Opinions may vary on the endorsement value of ‘written like IKEA instructions’!

3. Here’s two pieces on The Odyssey, film and book:

A piece for The Spectator by Iqbal Ahmed, What’s the real meaning of The Odyssey? https://spectator.com/article/whats-the-true-meaning-of-the-odyssey/

The Roman poet Ovid summed it up in a couplet two millennia ago.

Or what’s the Odyssey except a woman

Wooed by the suitors while her man’s away?

and a piece by Emily Wilson (who herself translated The Odyssey) for The London Review of Books, An Uncomplicated Man https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v48/n14/emily-wilson/an-uncomplicated-man

Christopher Nolan’s $250 million action movie version of Homer’s ancient Greek poem is an entertaining way to hide from the high temperatures for a few hours. Nolan’s trademark jumps and twists in the narrative structure are relatively easy to follow, and appropriate for The Odyssey, a narrative of tales nested in tales. My teenagers had a good time. Unlike some of Nolan’s other films, The Odyssey is not boring, thanks to the source material, which is impossible to mess up entirely. It’s a family-friendly audiovisual spectacle, like an elaborate Fourth of July fireworks display – and with about the same level of narrative and emotional depth.

Both those pieces seem to be open access: Cross fingers crossed again!

4. Here’s Jack Shelbourn’s take on Elon Musk, Grok and The Odyssey, Elon Musk says AI will make a ‘historically accurate’ Odyssey – here’s why that’s impossible https://theconversation.com/elon-musk-says-ai-will-make-a-historically-accurate-odyssey-heres-why-thats-impossible-288333

Elon Musk has promised that before the year is out, his AI tool Grok Imagine will produce a full-length film of Homer’s Odyssey that is, in his words, “historically accurate and true to the art of Homer”. The claim, posted on X in July alongside a three-minute AI-generated scene, arrived days after Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster version reached cinemas worldwide – a film Musk has spent months attacking for being “woke”. Set aside, for a moment, that The Odyssey is a 2,800-year-old poem that includes a witch who turns men into pigs and a one-eyed giant shepherd, to ask a simpler question: accurate to what?

5. And, finally, a gift article from The New York Times, The 50 Best Thrillers of the 21st Century, which makes it clear that it’s well overdue that I read some Tana French! https://tinyurl.com/2ze2hkz3 PDF attached of the checklist of books for you to tick them off on.

50 Best Thrillers of C21Download
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Tuesday, 4th August (Cres)

Posted on August 4, 2026 by roycross

1. Field Station describes itself as

an action lab investigating the future of work, the reach of technology, and the shape of society. Based in North East England, working globally. We study digital sovereignty and build civic tech, in the open.

Here’s a piece by its two founders, Tom Watson & Doug Belshaw, Decisions Have No Autopilot: AI doesn’t replace organisational judgement — it amplifies whatever decision-making culture already exists https://notes.fieldstation.xyz/essay/decisions-have-no-autopilot/

At just before half past two in the morning on 1 June 2009, three pilots with more than 20,000 hours of combined flying experience were at the controls of Air France Flight 447, cruising over the Atlantic on autopilot. When ice crystals blocked the plane’s speed sensors and the autopilot disconnected, the aircraft asked its pilots to do the one thing they had stopped practising: fly it themselves. They disagreed about what the instruments meant, corrected against each other, and ran out of altitude before they ran out of confusion. The automation hadn’t failed. The judgement underneath it had gone soft, and nobody noticed until it was needed. Organisations are doing something similar with AI, at lower stakes and much greater speed.

2. Ruben Hassid is a BIG fan of Claude. The latest post on his blog, How to AI, is 27 Claude tips after 1,800 hours https://ruben.substack.com/p/1800-hours-of-claude

You loaded 40 files into a (Claude) Project, and now every answer is a remix of your own documents. Claude answers FROM your files instead of thinking. That’s why your post all sounds the same. Project is awesome if you want to write a contract or standard procedures. But it’s not as good for creative work. The rule: use Projects for repeated tasks with fixed material (client reports, weekly formats). Use a normal, empty chat every time you want a new idea.

It’s not obvious that Ruben’s on the Claude payroll, but I might well be being naïve!

3. I thought I’d mentioned the HELE (History of English Language Education) Studies Society in this blog before, but I can find no evidence of my having done so – remiss of me! A recent HELE initiative is a webinar series, ongoing, that has so far looked at English education in missionary schools in 19th–20th century China, ELT textbooks in the Soviet Sixties, the history of English textbooks in Italy, and soft power and standardized testing in the Middle East. The series was opened with a discussion between two of the prime movers in HELE, Amol Padwad & Richard Smith https://youtu.be/62AboYBOiVA Here’s all the other talks in the series https://www.youtube.com/@HELESociety

4. The July/August issue of EL Gazette, which has a focus on AI, is out https://elgazette.com/elg_archive/ELG2607/mobile/ You’ll need to create a free account if you haven’t already got one, but PDF below just this once!

ELG2607 Jul Aug Issue 501Download

[file x 1]

5. And, finally and more challengingly for this last item than usual, courtesy of OLDaily, On Exercising Epistemic Agency by Mona Simion https://www.mona-simion.com/_files/ugd/a31fb2_67539ed4bcd6414fac7905d2e2398c88.pdf PDF below.

Scepticism about epistemic agency is widely spread. Agency is about making our own decisions in an importantly autonomous fashion. We can’t form beliefs at will, however, so the epistemic is simply not the proper locus of agency.

Or so the sceptic thought goes. In contrast, optimists about epistemic agency point out that the sceptic is making a mistake in thinking that agency requires a level of control that eludes belief formation. Agency, they argue, simply requires the capacity to act for reasons. Mutatis mutandis, the thought goes, epistemic agency is cheap: insofar as your belief formation is evidence responsive, you’ve got the capacity to act for epistemic reasons. You’re fine.

This paper is an exercise in optimism …

On Exercising Epistemic Agency SIMIONDownload
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Thursday, 30th July (Cres)

Posted on July 30, 2026 by roycross

The wifi’s much better if you sit at the front of the library, it seems!

1. Pride of place today to English Teacher – a memoir by John Drew, described by John as

a compilation of portraits and anecdotes shading into autobiographical memoir recording what it was like to be a student and teacher of English Literature in various parts of the world between Canada and China in the late 20th century… PDF below.

People often talk loosely of inimitable style. John’s is. Here’s a sample:

I must confess to a bias. Over the years I have had various jobs that might qualify me for the title of man of letters: journalist, postman and, yes, English teacher. But, as the latter, I too have never been altogether comfortable with the idea of literature as a subject or a discipline. Keats once bemoaned that reducing all to rule and line was to unweave a rainbow.

Keats’s perfect complement, Shelley, who unlike him never did load every rift with ore, suggested the analyzing faculty was not sufficient for creating or understanding poetry. When a scholar with such a forensic mind as A.E. Housman, noted for his ability to restore lacunae in texts by the Roman poet Manilius, wanted to write poetry of his own he resorted to a pint of beer to dull the cutting edge of his mind.

EnglishTeacherDownload

2. By way of follow up to the piece about Peter Gray’s views on parenting yesterday, here’s How Not to Screw up Your Kids by psychologist and parenting expert Dr Maryhan, intended for “parents, grandparents, educators, and anyone else who wants to be part of a movement to raise confident children who grow up believing in themselves”. One of The Guardian’s top five podcasts for parents https://open.spotify.com/show/0FODMv29UzdFZYRvI1zdfM

Try this episode with Sam Wass from the University of East London, Why Your Child can’t Concentrate: Focus, Distraction and ADHD, If you’ve ever wondered why your child can spend 40 minutes talking about Minecraft but can’t concentrate for four minutes on homework https://open.spotify.com/episode/0GeNH24BszANs1DqWcVBTs

3. This month’s free IATEFL webinar is at 15:00 UK time this Saturday, 1st August: Boosting Non-Native Students’ Confidence in Pronunciation Through AI-Assisted Teaching with Patricia Ibiapina https://www.iatefl.org/event-details/#/?id=848

In an increasingly globalized world, effective pronunciation is key to confident communication in English. This webinar explores how AI-assisted teaching can empower non-native students to improve their pronunciation, fostering both accuracy and confidence. Participants will discover innovative strategies that integrate AI tools into language learning, offering personalized feedback and adaptive support tailored to individual needs.

4. The History of Libraries from William Whyte from Oxford University https://youtu.be/r3GKoMBRHqc “takes us on a journey from the earliest libraries (i.e., a box) through to gleaming 21st-century symbols of learning. Along the way, he explains why damp-proofing shouldn’t involve sources of ignition and why jealousy may have inspired Europe’s great libraries”.

5. Imitation Game by Evan Gorelick is his account for The New York Times of how chatbots “navigate the gray areas – it feels like everyone’s talking to chatbots these days. The questions we’re bringing them are getting more personal, and a lot less black and white” https://tinyurl.com/29tvcenn

6. And, finally, some short holiday reading from The Conversation, The ten best short novels under 150 pages – chosen by experts https://theconversation.com/the-ten-best-short-novels-under-150-pages-chosen-by-experts-284253 Chosen by experts, mark you, rather than a bloke I met in the pub last night!

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Wednesday, 29th July (Cres)

Posted on July 29, 2026 by roycross

Time moves a little more slowly here on the island, as does the wifi, which is why this message is a little late!

1. A piece from Ol’ Grumpy, a.k.a. Richard Watson Todd, with which to resume normal service, Brave New Academic World https://grumpy.hcommons.org/2026/07/27/brave-new-academic-world/

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you. Er, for what?”

“Your work as Associate Dean for Research, of course. Your faculty has seen the biggest improvement year on year ever, so I think congratulations are in order.” The VP for Research smiled. “In fact, I think the other faculties could learn from you. I’d like you to talk about how you made so much progress so quickly at next month’s university research meeting, say, 20 minutes at the beginning, OK?”

“Yes, be happy to.” Inside I was grimacing. What on earth had we done to make so much progress? What could I present?

(…)

Then I noticed that 3 teachers, who I had down as research journeymen, had suddenly quadrupled their output. Ajarn Noi was a case in point. Previously, she had published one or two surveys of dubious value in local journals every year, just meeting the university requirements for research. Now she was close to an article a month, all in Scopus journals. Since she had previously shown little interest in developing her research skills, where had this sudden spurt come from?

2. A gift article from The Atlantic, How Netanyahu Lost America: the prime minister, a self-styled expert on the U.S., has shattered his country’s standing by Franklin Foer https://tinyurl.com/y3a2k3ye

In 1982, Benjamin Netanyahu was the marketing director of a Jerusalem-based furniture maker when Israel’s ambassador in Washington decided that the 32-year-old had been pitching the wrong product. Instead of selling cupboards to Israelis, he should have been selling Israel to Americans. The ambassador, who met Netanyahu at a conference a few years earlier, brought him to Washington as his deputy. Almost instantly, Netanyahu became the face of Israel on American television—a fixture on Nightline and Larry King Live, pugnacious, eloquent in unaccented English acquired as a boy in the suburbs of Philadelphia.

3. Another piece from The Atlantic, What if It’s Not the Phones? An evolutionary psychologist is challenging the popular understanding of kids and technology by Kaitlyn Tiffanyi https://tinyurl.com/yet44pbw

When the 82-year-old psychologist Peter Gray describes the way he grew up, he punctuates the anecdotes by saying that modern parents would be arrested for letting a child have such fun. When he was 4 years old, he would walk to a store in Minneapolis to buy cigarettes for his grandmother. When he was 11, he would sometimes stay home from school in Hill City, Minnesota, to operate a newspaper printing press owned by his mother and stepfather. His parents were not arrested, and that’s because the childhood they permitted him to have was basically normal at the time (…)

4. From Cambridge University’s CRASSH – which seemed like a good acronym at the time? –  its Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, Cambridge Conversations: Digital Humanities transforming how we understand the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nq9d41bFKPU

Joanna Page, Director of @CRASSHCambridge and fellow panellists explore the emergence of Digital Humanities as a leading interdisciplinary field and reflect on how new areas of research develop and flourish within today’s academic landscape. Drawing on their diverse experiences, the speakers examine the growth of Digital Humanities, the opportunities created by interdisciplinary collaboration, and the ways digital methods are transforming research across the humanities. Whether you’re a researcher, student, alumnus, or simply curious about the future of scholarship, this conversation offers valuable insights into one of the most exciting developments in contemporary academia.

Here’s a recent piece from the CRASSH blog on 25 Ideas that shaped us https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/blog/25-ideas-that-shaped-us/

5. And, finally, Involuntary Musical Imagery (INMI), known to most of us as earworms: a piece from BBC Music magazine,  Why’s that tune stuck in your head? The science behind earworms. Read to the end to find out how to get rid of one! https://tinyurl.com/ya7p6bd8

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Tuesday, 30th June (Cambridge)

Posted on June 30, 2026 by roycross

This will be the last ‘Free Resources’ message until Tuesday 28th July, by which time (Cross fingers crossed) we will have installed a new boiler in Boba’s Zagreb flat, not (Cross fingers still crossed) had to fish Mateo out of a canal in Venice, and made more trips than I can count (on my uncrossed fingers) by ferry to and from the island of Cres. See you in four weeks!

1. From Andy Brock’s blog, Re Education, a guest piece by Sharon Tao, Founder and Director of Level The Field, What Happened to Girls’ Education? The quiet erosion of a global priority https://abrock.substack.com/p/re-education-issue-32-what-happened

The History / Herstory

A decade ago, girls’ education sat at the centre of international development. It was difficult to attend a major education conference, donor meeting or global summit without hearing commitments to girls’ learning. Governments competed to demonstrate leadership. New funding streams emerged. Large-scale programmes were launched. Champions spoke confidently about transforming the lives of millions of girls. Today, the mood is very different. At a time when nearly 133 million girls remain out of school and millions more face harmful gender norms that limit their learning, support for girls’ education is receding. Whilst this is often explained by shrinking aid budgets, funding tells only part of the story.

Here’s Level The Field’s mission statement:

Why we focus on marginalised girls

​Throughout the world, groups of people are marginalised due to poverty, rurality, caste, disability or displacement, amongst others. These marginalised groups often have a very limited share of power, respect, resource, participation and safety within their contexts and societies. Within these marginalised groups, any privileges that remain are rarely distributed equally amongst men and women, and boys and girls. This is due to unequal gender norms, which disadvantage girls even further. Level The Field aims to address this situation so that marginalised girls can realise their full potential. This is not meant to advantage girls to the detriment of boys. Rather, the focus on marginalised girls is an effort to correct for generations of unequal treatment, rather than create it. In the end, when girls and boys have a level playing field – no matter what their background – everyone will benefit. The multiplier effect that comes with gender equality means that families will be better off, people will be healthier, there will be less violence and more security, and economies will develop. We think this is a goal well worth aiming for.

2. A gift article from The Atlantic – hope I’m not giving you too many! – by David Brooks, The People Who Will Thrive in the AI Age: what will differentiate people is not how smart they are but their relationship to mental effort https://tinyurl.com/7pkbyta6

Remember when AI was going to take away our jobs and leave humans with nothing to do? So far, that doesn’t seem to be happening. Researchers from ActivTrak analyzed the digital activity of more than 10,000 workers and found that when people adopted AI, their work life became more intense, not less. The time that these early adopters spent on email, messaging, and chat apps more than doubled. Their use of business software rose by 94 percent. Researchers from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business found that when using AI, workers started taking on tasks that they had previously outsourced, because activities such as coding and engineering became easier to do. They squeezed in work bursts in the evening, on weekends, in waiting rooms, and whenever else they had a spare moment and AI was handy. They also did a lot more multitasking, supervising a bunch of bots doing different things simultaneously.

3. On the same topic, here’s a good paper from The World Economic Forum, Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Entry-Level Work: A Framework for Safeguarding and Reinventing Early Career Pathways https://www.weforum.org/publications/artificial-intelligence-and-the-future-of-entry-level-work-a-framework-for-safeguarding-and-reinventing-early-career-pathways/ PDFs below of both the full report and the executive summary only.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping work, and this is most visible at the entry level. Globally, more than one in three (37%) young workers are employed in occupations with medium to high exposure to AI-driven task change, including three in four young workers in Eastern Asia (75%) and two in three young workers in Northern America (69%) and Europe (63%). Sectors with the highest exposure include Financial Services, Information and Communication, Professional Services, Science and Education, whereas entry-level roles in sectors such as Agriculture, Construction and Food Services are comparatively less affected.

The World Economic Forum website has lots of good content but is almost too clever/interactive for its own good – for me at least! https://intelligence.weforum.org/ See what you think.

WEF_Artificial_Intelligence_and_the_Future_of_Entry_Level_Work_2026 EXEC SUMMARYDownload
WEF_Artificial_Intelligence_and_the_Future_of_Entry_Level_Work_2026Download

4. Yet more on the AI theme, a typically engaging video from Hannah Fry, Why AI Agents are either the best or worst thing we’ve ever built https://youtu.be/WnzR5aOElvw

I built an AI agent. She opened a shop selling novelty mugs, emailed a journalist without being asked, and then leaked our passwords to a total stranger. AI agents don’t just answer questions – they act. They can browse the web, send emails, and spend your money. Anyone can build one. So my friend Brendan and I did. We gave it a bank card and a few weeks to show us what it could do. The mugs she designed can be bought here https://www.teepublic.com/user/cassandralabmugs Although frankly why you’d actually want one is beyond me.

No CassandraLab mugs in stock any more: they must have sold out!

5. And, finally and degenerately, Why did so many people want to see “Degenerate Art” in 1937? from Katja Hoyer, with a lengthy extract from John-Paul Stonard’s new book, ‘The Worst Exhibition in the World’ https://www.katjahoyer.uk/p/why-did-so-many-people-want-to-see

The Nazis were hoping that by viewing some of the 21,000 items they had seized, people would “gain harrowing impressions of Jewish cultural Bolshevism,” and leave “the exhibition with a feeling of gratitude towards the Führer, who had had these products of madness removed from the museums.” In an effort to give the impression of moral depravity, the authorities banned anyone under the age of eighteen from visiting. According to the Nazified press, the Weimar showing was a resounding success, with some 6,000 people visiting the State Museum in the first week alone. It’s impossible to know who attended and why …

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Friday, 26th June (Cambridge)

Posted on June 26, 2026 by roycross

One day late, occasioned by a late train home from London yesterday evening!

1. Frank Cottrell-Boyce is the current Waterstones Children’s Laureate here in the UK. He gave the annual ‘Laureate Lecture’, The Kids Are Not Alright, earlier this week. He invited a number of guests speakers to share his lecture with him. Well worth a listen/watch! https://youtu.be/_HvrXL50Vb4

Frank and his guests spoke about the impact on children of technology and the digital world, the power of reading to build communities, and all the wonderful work he’s seen across the country during his Laureateship, as different services collaborate and support families to read together.

2. What does good teaching at university level look like? Here’s one university’s take, this year’s Pilkington Prize winners for ‘excellence in teaching’ from Cambridge University https://www.cctl.cam.ac.uk/pilkington-prize/2026

3. Growing apart – The evolution of the disadvantage gap is the title of a sombre recent report from the Education Endowment Foundation https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/growing-apart-evolution-of-disadvantage-gap PDFs of Executive Summary and of full report below.

The summary of the summary? Once you’ve fallen behind with your education, it’s very difficult to catch up again – especially so if you fell behind early on, likely through no fault of your own.

growing_apart_the_evolution_of_the_attainment_gap EXECUTIVE SUMMARYDownload
growing_apart_the_evolution_of_the_attainment_gap_v.1.0.0-1Download

4. Here’s a robust exchange about Brexit between James O’Brien and a hapless caller called Richard with whom one could almost – almost – sympathise https://www.facebook.com/reel/1630519421540696

5. And, finally, from an age when you could still smoke on television chat shows, Orson Welles’s meetings with Hitler and Churchill https://youtu.be/YDecEVfVhcw

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Tuesday, 23rd June (Cambridge)

Posted on June 23, 2026 by roycross

1. A piece by Gal Beckerman for The Atlantic, The Theory That Explains Trump’s UFC Fight https://tinyurl.com/3ar6zjz3

Bo Nickal, his face shiny with Vaseline, had just finished pounding the nose and eyes and ears of his opponent, Kyle Daukaus, who lay on his back like an overturned, squashed bug. Immediately, Nickal jumped over the edge of the Octagon and landed just in front of Donald Trump, who stood up and grabbed the fighter’s hand. Still panting, Nickal thanked the president: “This wouldn’t be possible without you.” So ended the second bout of last night’s UFC 250, the extravaganza of squirting blood and patriotic kitsch that took place—to the stupefaction of all, including a giddy Joe Rogan—on the South Lawn of the White House.

Not an easy read, references to Roland Barthes included, but a good one!

2. UKCISA, the UK Council for International Student Affairs, have just published a new report on International students’ experiences of English language requirements https://www.ukcisa.org.uk/our-work/international-students-experiences-of-english-language-requirements/ PDFs below of the executive summary and of the full report.

Across the UK higher education sector, there is increasing scrutiny and discussion about English tests and requirements for international students, as well as their English language proficiency and preparedness for study. However, the experiences of international students themselves have been underrepresented. UKCISA’s new research report, ‘International students’ experiences of meeting English language requirements for UK higher education’, brings student voice into a debate that can too often focus only on systems, standards, risk, compliance and immigration rhetoric.

international-students-experiences-meeting-english-language-requirements EXEC SUMMARYDownload
international-students-experiences-meeting-english-language-requirementsDownload

3. The Observer got the big guns out quickly in support of Andy Burnham, Andy Burnham’s credo of business-friendly socialism is winning backers from Will Hutton https://observer.co.uk/news/columnists/article/andy-burnhams-credo-of-business-friendly-socialism-is-winning-backersScrew

One of the tragedies of Sir Keir Starmer’s premiership has been his avowed disinterest in ideas; witness his much-quoted, off-the-cuff line in opposition that there will be no such thing as “Starmerism”. In his world, progress is to be achieved by a diligent process of case-by-case reasonable compromises, and, as one insider once told me, so achieving socialism by stealth. Except it has worked neither as a political project nor as a compass for driving forward the fissiparous British state – let alone leaning into the intellectual zeitgeist to offer any kind of vision. Starmerism has become synonymous with indeterminacy.

4. Here’s a recent episode of the How Not to Screw up your Kids podcast from Maryhan Baker, Why Your Child Can’t Concentrate: Focus, Distraction and ADHD https://tinyurl.com/3kx4vpyz

If you’ve ever wondered why your child can spend 40 minutes talking about Minecraft but can’t concentrate for four minutes on homework, this episode explains everything. I’m joined again by Professor Sam Wass (who) breaks down what concentration actually is from a neuroscience perspective, why young children are wired to be easily distracted, and why some children struggle far more than others in noisy classrooms, during revision, or when faced with a blank page. We dig into the two types of concentration every child needs, why the frontal cortex develops painfully slowly, how screens hijack attention, and why understanding something is the single biggest predictor of whether a child can focus on it.

5. And, finally, from Hyperallergic, the story of May Morris and her father William, How a Father-Daughter Duo Changed the Course of Textile Art https://hyperallergic.com/how-father-daughter-duo-william-may-morris-changed-the-course-of-textile-art/

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