Links
More on the Job Ready Graduates Program, a failed, deeply inequitable policy that needs immediate reform:
“The [2025] modelling… shows the number of students with debts over $50,000 has increased by 70%, and humanities students are set to pay off their debts into their 40s.”
When considering what’s the purpose of Anzac Day, we should pay as much attention to what people do as to what they say:
“…a number of crowd members booed loudly and repeatedly during an Acknowledgment of Country by Uncle Ray Minniecon…
“We have experienced this type of racism for over 200 years,” he told media after the service. “One of the questions that we have in our minds is: What crime did we commit to attract this kind of racism?””
Loud boos mar Anzac Day dawn services in Martin Place and Melbourne - SMH
I thought you’re not supposed to go to war with your own client states (he says nervously)
Could Trump withdraw US support for UK sovereignty of Falklands? - The Guardian
“…we have a choice about who we want to be as a society. For me, that choice is clear. I want to live in a country where people seeking safety are not treated as risks to be managed, but as people to be protected. Because safety should not come with conditions. And belonging should not depend on how we are described.”
Angus Taylor’s comments remind refugees like me that our belonging is conditional - Thouraya Lahmadi
In March, research published in the international science journal Nature found that ocean levels had been underestimated due to inaccurate modelling. In some areas of the global south, including south-east Asia and the Indo-Pacific, they may be 100cm to 150cm higher than previously thought.
FAFOing intensifies: A rogue AI led to a serious security incident at Meta
Jürgen Habermas has died, aged 96.
Guardian obituary Jacobin article Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry if you’re not familiar with his work
Well this is grim:
However, the terms demanded extensive sharing of national health intelligence, including epidemiological surveillance data and pathogen samples, while offering no binding guarantees that Zimbabwe would receive equitable access to medical technologies developed from them.
Will she read novels? I hope so, because a novel is one of the last technologies that still trains attention as an ethical act. It makes you inhabit another mind without extracting a summary.
The Atlantic, so take it with a mountain of rock salt, but interesting to ponder:
The Film Students Who Can No Longer Sit Through Films
I’m looking forward to degrees in vertical microdrama.
New preprint: We got 400 postgrad students to use AI in an assessment and critically reflect on it, rather than banning it. Here’s what happened.
Might be useful as you head into the new teaching year, especially the design principles.
How far back in time can you understand English? A story where each paragraph travels back in time.
Unless you’ve studied middle English I doubt you (like me) will make it back further than 1200.
tl;dr: I have a digital twin, you have a digital avatar, he is a deepfake.
Article on “Can synthetic avatars replace lecturers?“
The job-ready graduate scheme has been amongst the worst educational policies in recent history, and that’s a competitive and crowded policy field. It’s cratered enrolments in creative, cultural, and artistic fields at a time when these are becoming the only meaningful fields of distinctly human activity.
Empirical evidence on the value of US EPA regulations, too bad it's now powerless
Public health and environmental protection are deeply intertwined - and attacks on one affect the other. From a recent study:
Lead (Pb) is well known to be toxic to humans. We use archived hair from individuals living along the Wasatch Front in Utah to evaluate changes in exposure to lead over the last 100 years. Current concentrations of lead in hair from this population average almost 100 times lower than before the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency. This low level of lead exposure is likely due to the environmental regulations established by Environmental Protection Agency.
Cerling et al. Lead in archived hair documents a decline in lead exposure to humans since the establishment of the US Environmental Protection Agency, PNAS 123(6):e2525498123, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2525498123 (2026).
In March last year the Trump administration announced plans to deregulate most of the EPA’s functions.
Don’t bug me, I’m reticulating splines.
Utah pilot program allows AI to autonomously order prescription refills for 190 common meds. Sounds dangerous, frankly.