Alex J-W
@alexjw.bsky.social
Maths educator. Often confused by the world. Follow me if you are interested in maths and stats education or professional development in general.
If I wanted to demotivate and alienate the Reform base, if I wanted to communicate just how culturally alien I was to them, if I wanted to hide information in a place they’d never find it in a million years, then ‘a book’ would be the tool that I would deploy.
Stack of Books on a Table
ALT: Stack of Books on a Table
static.klipy.com
Buy my book, it won’t send any kind of message and I have no desire to create any kind of army. But hey, at least you’re not giving money to Suella Braverman. geni.us/BreakingMicW...
Breaking: How the Media Works, When it Doesn't and Why it Matters
Out now!
geni.us
Alex Andreou@sturdyalex.bsky.social · yesterdaySuella Braverman: "It is our last chance to save the country... If everyone in this room buys my book, we can send a message to the establishment that the People's Army is not going anywhere." I. Shit. You. Not.
Farage champions the wrong values, lies about them, and fails every test of competence delivering on them would require. This scandal gives us an opportunity and the evidence to say so, and we should. dmitryopines.substack.com/p/on-farage-...
On Farage, Values, Authenticity, and Judgement
Surprised my computer let me type his name and those nouns in the same line.
dmitryopines.substack.com
Simple fact. Right populists are not held to the same standards as others. Whether in the UK or other countries. You wish it different. But it isn't. And it probably won't be, because that's where most of the big money is heading these days.
With all respect to the BBC, the reason this story "matters" is not about whether it distracts from Reform's conference. It "matters" because it is important our leaders are not conspiring to break the law.
#alevelmaths does anyone use the AMSP further maths support programme? Are you able to claim the uplift funding for a 4th subject if so any idea how that is included when the funding form is submitted??
"[A] democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power." - FDR (1938)
a man stands at a podium with microphones that say wor on them
ALT: a man stands at a podium with microphones that say wor on them
media.tenor.com
The #solar panels on 1 container ship will generate more lifetime electricity than the cargo of 50+ LNG ships or 100 ships carrying #coal. More interesting charts on solar here: interactive.carbonbrief.org/factcheck/so...
The world's most notorious custard-pie thrower is dead. What an obituary. He got Bernard-Henri Lévy seven times.
All of this scrambling to be ahead of the queue on AI readiness is of course downstream of tech giants launching something without ethics or safety research (and often ignoring or firing ethicists who pushed back within their companies) meaning it landed wholesale on an unready scrambling market
www.bbc.co.uk/sport/footba... the sums involved in transfers this year have been ludicrous. Is it real money because if it is it has become absolutely obscene. Over 100 million for good but not amazing players.
Bradley Barcola: Liverpool agree £123m deal for PSG forward
Liverpool agree a deal worth up to £123m for Paris St-Germain forward Bradley Barcola.
bbc.co.uk
What needs to happen in 11-18 education to make language learning possible and normal? whoteacheslanguages.blogspot.com/2026/08/chal...
Challenging the System Part 6: Next Steps...
In a previous post, I offered a vision of what a functioning languages ecosystem in the English state sector could look like. With a posit...
whoteacheslanguages.blogspot.com
Languages threatened by the end of the ebacc and the boosting of creative subjects? What's it like in a school that has faced this for 20 years? whoteacheslanguages.blogspot.com/2026/05/gcse...
GCSE Options, Take-up, Ebacc? Pupil survey.
Year 9 Survey April 2026 We have surveyed our Year 9 pupils after they picked their GCSE options, to see if we can find useful information...
whoteacheslanguages.blogspot.com
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... not being funny but are we building cisterns and water towers with reservoirs to capture the water when we have it. Low powered solar pumps could fill towers and/or cisterns slowly over the autumn/winter providing water for irrigation during the summer?
The race to stop England running out of water
Who is to blame for the summer drought, and can England future-proof its water supplies?
bbc.co.uk
This is an important point and also holds true (with somewhat different political and structural context) for Europe, too. Nowhere is looking to soak up lots more academics, there's no demand (at an institutional level) for a larger pool of faculty / staff — any movement from the US displaces others
Ted McCormick@tedmccormick.bsky.social · last wk.missing context for stories like these is that Canadian universities are in a crisis of their own -- including McGill, which recently laid dozens of staff and faculty off this isn't about Canada's enthusiasm for bettering the human condition; it's about poaching stars while casualizing the rest
RE: freedom of speech, academic freedom, and race science. In this (long) thread, I’m going to 1) establish my bona fides on academic freedom and race science, 2) show why academic freedom and freedom of speech are different and… 1/34
Excellent! From today the ‘Right to Repair’ law is now in force across Europe. By no means perfect, but over time it will make it easier to repair what we use every day. www.repairmystuff.ie/repair-direc...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article... go near there during the summer - unless it was a 5am start I guess
Yr Wyddfa rows between people queuing and those skipping the line
There has been disagreement between queuers and others skipping the line to reach the top of Yr Wyddfa.
bbc.co.uk
If Eastern Europeans reported the world like the world reports Eastern Europe https://www.badbaltic.com/if-eastern-europeans-reported-the-world-like-the-world-reports-eastern-europe/
If Eastern Europeans reported the world like the world reports Eastern Europe
Here’s what those tropes, clichés, and stereotypes sound like in reverse.
badbaltic.com
Teach to the test was already understood to be a massive problem in national education systems in, like, the 80s. That's forty years ago. Making those tests nationally standardised and having admission to every structure after them determined by them is not, in fact, the solution.
Meta paid its lowest effective federal tax rate in company history last year while raking in record profits. Earlier this year, Meta began laying off 8,000 workers as it ramps up AI investment. Zuckerberg is now worth $190 billion. The irony of a Big Tech King buying a castle is not lost on me.
Meta’s Zuckerberg buys 19th-century castle in southeast of Ireland
Strancally Castle was built around 1830 on land overlooking the River Blackwater and underwent extensive renovation in 2
nbcnews.com
This is part of a pattern where a new, transparent thing is set up because of a terrible, opaque thing, and there’s a media response of “we found something suboptimal in the new thing [thanks to the transparency], therefore it should be shut down.” The thing is worse in the terrible, opaque thing!
jon ben-menachem@jbenmenachem.com · 2w agothere is a repeated media cycle across cities where concerned citizens hand-wring about the costs of alternatives-to-police programs (be careful not to compare those sums to the historical police budget tally!) www.startribune.com/minneapolis-...
“The term 'feeding frenzy' originates in animal behaviour and is defined as 'a total loss of control triggered when an intensely competitive predator group is overwhelmed by an abundance of prey'. Actually, I cannot think of a more complete explanation of what happened.”
A tragedy, in black & white
Podcast Episode · Quiet Riot · 20 August · 54min
podcasts.apple.com
Quiet Riot@quietriotpod.bsky.social · 3w ago💔 New Episode: Professor Jason Arday. On today’s show we reflect on the treatment of Jason Arday and the uncomfortable truths it forces us to confront. May he rest in protest. 🎧 open.spotify.com/episode/1sc8... 🍏 podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/q...
On BBC Radio 4's Moral Maze tonight: “Slavery - Right or Wrong?” Some people say it’s morally wrong. On the other hand, it makes a tonne of money. On the panel: Edward Colston, King Leopold II, Tommy Robinson and Matt Goodwin. Join us as we discuss one of the great moral dilemmas of the day.
I compared The Great ADHD Myth? to an earlier Channel 4 documentary — The Great Global Warming Swindle (2007) — in my newsletter today. It looks like they have even more in common. That one also featured contributors being wildly misrepresented.
Robin Ince@robinince.bsky.social · 3w agoWe wondered on @cosmicshambles.com podcast whether Professor Katya Rubin knew how her interview was going to be used , well, surprise surprise (remember this was the documentary that Channel 4 boasted was “science led”)
