Back to books - Sweden's schools cutting back on digital learning Swedish classrooms swap laptops for books, pens and paper, raising concerns from the tech sector.

The sooner the better.
www.bbc.com/news/article...

'But because it does so covertly rather than through a transparent framework, these interventions cannot be debated, scrutinised, or held to account, and their interactions with each other and with the other control factors go entirely unexamined.' 2/2

'It is a matter of some irony that, despite ferocious (and justified) resistance to the general idea of government control of HE curricula, the state is already exercising control over curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment through funding conditions, regulatory metrics, and market pressure.' 1/2

Blood, debt, toil, and arrears: why thirty years of policy struggle has left us without the higher education system we deserve New thinking, ideas & policy solutions for post-18 education in the UK

'The fundamental problem is that the relationship between the English state and higher education – what this paper terms the “HE/state nexus” – is broken....This mechanism has failed, by every metric its architects set for it, and its failure is structural, not incidental.'

Stark and to the point.

Y'all are gonna lose your minds when you hear about horses.

I'm not joking when I say mRNA technology is more important than "AI" and it's a tragedy we're throwing billions into one while our government is aggressively defunding the other.

The study is here, and it's fascinating: arxiv.org/pdf/2604.04721

[P]

Instead of asking chatgpt, why not ask a librarian? You'll get real answers and they won't tell you to kill yourself.

In general, (re)orienting education wholly or chiefly to specific perceived market needs is always going to produce disaster once the near term passes. It also eviscerates institutions that might otherwise help people weather change, intellectually and in other ways

I remember back when I did my librarianship MA they deliberately de-emphasised specific tools when it came to things like search design and information retrieval "because any tool we teach you about will be obselete early in your career". Instead it was hugely about underlying principles.

I wrote a thing recently about humanities and 21st century information literacy, the opening line of which deliberately, overly-provocatively says that humans’ ability to navigate the current information ecosystem is a bigger social crisis that climate change…

My college is rolling out an AI buddy for students and I… want them to have real friends? I am still close friends with people I met in college. They changed my life for the better. They remind me of who I was. When I was great, when I was shitty. One night some of them saved my life.

I would just like to repeat something I overheard from another coffee table earlier:

Your own mind is a data centre - and it’s more powerful and efficient and effective than any others

I’m done ceding my brain — the core of all that makes me who I am — to the financial interests of a small number of technology billionaires or the shortsighted conveniences of hyperactive communication styles. It’s time to move past fretting about our slide into the cognitive shallows and decide to actually do something about it.

What he said

www.nytimes.com/2026/03/27/o...

Chromebook Remorse: Tech Backlash at Schools Extends Beyond Phones

“But after tens of billions of dollars of school spending…studies have found that digital tools have generally not improved students’ academic results or graduation rates. Some researchers &organizations like UNESCO even warn that overreliance on technology can distract students and impede learning”

How Fast Was the Mail? Explore mail transit times via railway between major U.S. cities, 1882–1908.

📣 New historical data visualization! "How Fast Was the Mail?" is an interactive map showing how long information took to travel across the US between 1882-1908: cblevins.github.io/mail-time/ +

The Jetsons lied to us

It's appalling that this is considered a scholarly project. It's not. If you look at the author, his portfolio is just websites for oil well drillers, paving contractors, the American Racing Pigeon Union... this guy is just a tech bro. He's not a digital humanist.

craigvandergalien.com

March 18, 2026 Today, civil rights leader Dolores Huerta issued the following statement:

Dolores Huerta's statement on Cesar Chavez: “I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for... I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences"

LMFAO SOMEONE MADE IT A REAL THING

sweepthestrait.com

Long-time buddies Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were out for a pleasant van drive in Oklahoma when, all of a sudden, their lives would change.

Information Literacy

We assume everyone uses the web in the ways that we do, based on the norms of when and where we started to use it. I can just about imagine how you could be on your phone and laptop all day and never actually use a browser to go to a search engine and look for things

Country Joe McDonald holding a guitar in 1981. A card reads: "1942-2026: Country Joe McDonald, Artist Whose Antiwar Song Became an Anthem, Dies at 84. Photo by United Archives, via Getty Images."

Country Joe McDonald, one of the starring acts at Woodstock whose satirical anti-Vietnam War song “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” became an anthem, died on Saturday. He was 84. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/08/a...

You see it, most ironically, in the Domesday Book. In 1986, the BBC marked the 900th anniversary by making a modern version. It conducted a new census of the nation, taking down thoughts, feelings and occupations, all recorded using a technology lIth-century scribes would have marvelled at. A technology that was, a few years later, defunct: the LaserDisc. A few years after that, no computer could read it. The original Domesday Book persisted, unchanged, on vellum. The modern one barely lasted a generation.

Books will outlast your puny digital technology
www.thetimes.com/article/74a7... @whippletom.bsky.social

Challenge for people who believe Claude *is* conscious and use it anyway: Explain how you’re not a slaver.

An original Nashville sit-in member, along with Diane Nash, James Bevel, and John Lewis. Trained in non-violence by James Lawson. At age 21, he signed a will before the Freedom Rides, knowing he could die.

May his soul be at peace, and may we all have such courage in the face of oppression.

Dear Shabana, I notice today that you referred to me in your speech on immigration at the IPPR think tank. You said: “A party leader should not be on the beaches of France encouraging people to make a perilous crossing on small boats.” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised especially after the hateful Labour campaign in Gorton and Denton, but this is just the latest in a string of lies peddled by a discredited Government who intentionally fan the flames of racism and division. When I went to Calais, I was not there to encourage people to travel to the UK. I was there to see at first hand the suffering your Government and successive Governments have done in demonising migrants in a pathetic bid to pander to the base instincts of Reform and the flawed strategy of Morgan McSweeney. As you will know, if you even bothered to research my visit instead of taking Reform talking points, I was there to witness the brutality of families living in tents in freezing temperatures. I filled water tanks and picked up litter. What that visit did do is confirm my belief that if we are to smash the boat gangs and stop the boats, we need to offer safer and managed routes for migrants to come to this country. Showing compassion as a politician is not a crime. In fact, we need to see much more of it. It reminded me of a young MP who in October 2015 spent three days in Lesbos helping migrants fleeing war-torn Syria. She posted videos on X, talked about handing out water and croissants to refugees and food parcels. When she returned to the UK, she wrote a very moving piece in the New Statesman. She said “we have to work with our European partners and create new, safe, and legal routes for refugees to get to Europe. We cannot abandon them to their fate, left as prey for smugglers whilst risking death on the seas.” She said “maybe we can make ourselves feel better by saying no-one is making them get on the boats. And again, the Home Secretary is not entirely wrong when …

Dear Shabana,

Let's clear some things up around migration and remember we're talking about people's lives.