1. The latest issue of the European Language Gazette has just been published. Here’s all the issues, including the latest one (you can also sign up for the newsletter yourself) https://www.ecml.at/Resources/Newsletter/tabid/1385/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

Here’s a page I’d not noticed earlier, a comprehensive Multilingual glossary of key terms in language education https://www.ecml.at/Resources/ECMLglossaries/tabid/5484/language/en-GB/Default.aspx

2. A piece from Tribune by Owen Hatherley, Socialism at the Milk Bar https://tribunemag.co.uk/2025/02/socialism-at-the-milk-bar/

The authoritarian socialist regimes of the twentieth century tried to rescue people from ‘kitchen slavery’ through communal eateries. In Poland, they survive and thrive.

A note on the history of Tribune, another of those magazines I’ve lost sight of over the years: Tribune was established in 1937 as a socialist magazine that would give voice to the popular front campaigns against the rising tide of fascism in Europe. For eighty years it has been at the heart of left-wing politics in Britain, counting giants of the labour movement like Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot among its former editors.

3. As reported in Publishing Perspectives, recent statements from the UK Publishers Association and Cambridge University Press condemning Meta’s use of copyrighted content to train its AI model, UK Publishers and Cambridge University Press call out Meta and piracy in Generative AI training https://publishingperspectives.com/2025/03/uk-publishers-and-cambridge-call-out-meta-and-piracy-in-generative-ai-training/

When employees at Meta started developing their flagship AI model, Llama 3, they faced a simple ethical question. The program would need to be trained on a huge amount of high-quality writing to be competitive with products such as ChatGPT, and acquiring all of that text legally could take time. Should they just pirate it instead? Guess what they did?

4. The Last Climbing Boy film tells the tragic story of George Brewster https://vimeo.com/1067652561?share=copy

Exactly 150 years after George’s death, a blue plaque has been unveiled in his honour at Fulbourn, just outside Cambridge. He was the last ‘climbing boy’ to die in England, and his death triggered a much greater transformation of British industrial society. On 11th February 1875, George was forced by his master to climb and clean a chimney at what was then the County Pauper Lunatic Asylum in Fulbourn. Fifteen minutes after entering the chimney, he became stuck. In an attempt to rescue him, an entire wall was pulled down. He was eventually pulled from the chimney but died shortly after.

5. And, finally, a good listen for your next bus, train or plane ride, the most recent episode of ‘The Writer’s Voice’ series in The New Yorker: David Bezmozgis Reads “From, To”, his story from the April 14 2025 issue https://tinyurl.com/53cykftx Lots more writers reading their own stories here https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-writers-voice