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