1. Two recent posts about young children’s behavioural development on the BOLD blog:

Do tablets help or hinder children’s play? with Salim Hashmi & Kathryn Bates https://boldscience.org/do-tablets-help-or-hinder-childrens-play/

When children are with another person, they tend to benefit from playing on a tablet much as they do from playing with traditional or physical toys (…) But the situation is different when children play with tablets and toys while they are alone. Children playing alone speak less and talk about thoughts, feelings and desires less often when they play with a tablet than when they play with a doll.

and Helping children help each other with Jellie Sierksma & Annie Brookman-Byrne https://boldscience.org/helping-children-help-each-other/

The main finding is that children do not help all peers equally, and their help can perpetuate inequality. The 7- to 9-year-olds in my study provided the least beneficial help to peers who struggled with a task, and the most beneficial help to peers who were already good at that task. In other words, children did not promote learning and skill development in those who needed it the most.

2. I’m two days earlier than promised with this one from The Spectator by Katy Balls, Starmer’s Trump charm offensive gets underway https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/starmers-trump-charm-offensive-gets-underway/ Am I right to think that Starmer looks a little anxious? (You’ll need to register. It’s free and you can tick a ‘Please don’t send me subscription offers’ box when you do so!

3. James Howells is considering buying a council dump in south Wales after his former partner accidentally threw away a hard drive containing his bitcoin wallet. Howells has already lost a high court case to allow him to search the tip for the hard drive, which he believes contains bitcoin worth £600 million. Here’s an analysis of his chances of finding it by Craig Anderson, a senior lecturer in statistics from Glasgow University, Man wants to search dump for lost hard drive with bitcoin fortune – here are his odds of finding it https://theconversation.com/man-wants-to-search-dump-for-lost-hard-drive-with-bitcoin-fortune-here-are-his-odds-of-finding-it-249889

4. 7.4 million people have already watched this video, Honda – The Cog,  but let’s hope some of you haven’t! https://youtu.be/Z57kGB-mI54

5. And, finally and possibly spiritually depending upon your point of view, here’s the results of a recent opinion poll in the US. How would you have answered?