If a kid in the UK would ask me ... I'd have no idea what to recommend them 🤷 other than "find out who offers T-levels & good luck finding an apprenticeship.

the door on them choosing an extended path towards a degree, because who knows what starts as a fascination for baking, starch & yeast at age 11 gradually becomes a biochemistry interest at age 17 ... or the other way around.

learning, or more 'theoretical' tracks leading either to entry into higher level vocational / professional programmes (+ 2-3 yrs), or into higher-level pre-polytechnic (+2 yrs) or pre-university (+3 yrs) programmes. It's not perfect, but allows kids to follow their interests early without closing

highly valued by most SME's. A Dutch 11-year old with a faible for baking bread and a dislike for sitting in classrooms all day would, at age 12, go to the 'vmbo' branch of the vocational & professional programmes. They can opt for 4-year tracks leading to bakery jobs with increasing on-the-job

I actually don't think de-industrialisation plays a role. In the Netherlands and Germany these vocational & professional programmes include all kinds of "non-industrial" professions such as those in hospitality, retail, care, landscaping & gardening, farming, ..., you name it. As a result they are

Blue Origin rocket grounded after satellite 'mishap' The firm founded by Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos is investigating the failed launch.

BBC missing the point here. The loss of the satellite is an insurance matter. The real issue was whether the New Glen's 2nd stage is still in some orbit & why it failed mid-burn. Yesterday it still seemed unclear what precisely happened to it🤔 share.google/IXnS3Ev15nCB...

Latest (TODAY) Nino indices posted by CPC. Neg (blue) is on La Nina side of neutral, pos (orange) on El Nino side. Pos/neg values <0.5 considered neutral. The 4 indices show wide spread indicating complexity of current state. We'll have far more clarity in a month or so.

I've been taking myself for walks for many years now ... it's actually quite enjoyable 😄

In 16 years here so far, I have struggled to see much structure in how the UK organises professional and vocational education. Countries like the Netherlands & Germany seem (to me) have things organised better, more transparent & more equitable in this sector.

There's always been some degree of standardised testing in secondary education, and it surely has a time and place in education. But over the years it has become the sole focus from the start of year 7 till the last day of year 12. That's a choice which the UK made in a more extreme way than others.

Bee-fly feeding on a Green Alkanet flower

Close up of a Buff tailed bumble bee (I think?)

Hairy-footed Flower Bee (I think?) feeding on a bluebell flower

Hairy-footed Flower Bee (?) in flight towards bluebell flower

Photos from the garden - 19 April 2026
1. Bee-fly feeding on a Green Alkanet flower
2. Close up of a Buff tailed bumble bee (I think?)
3. Hairy-footed Flower Bee (I think?) feeding on a bluebell flower
4. Hairy-footed Flower Bee (?) in flight towards bluebell flower

Proxy Living When everything becomes a means to something else, you forget how to live

wanderingminded.substack.com/p/proxy-living

It's somewhat 'rich' of a system that's been consistently disempowering teachers, budget-cutting on teacher training, and narrowing curricula in the name of pushing "employability skills" to now go "teacher opposition was right, and here's how *we* (the 'caste' that made the mess) will fix that".

The focus on the test-score as an outcome proxy didn't come from nowhere. It came from the 'evidence-based' practice of correlating "educational outcome" proxies to proxies for "long-term outcomes" often in data extracted from the 'performance' of a previous generation, or worse.

This is spectacularly optimistic about the depth of the failure. At best the UK system excels at *sorting*, full stop. In my own experience I see plenty of signs to doubt whether "academic ability" plays much of a role. It's the testscore that's the outcome: a concept of life-by-proxy.

‘Exam-obsessed’ schools leave pupils unready for work, Alan Milburn says Former minister leading review into young people and work cites survey showing most teachers decry lack of ‘soft skills’

The UK's secondary school system has becomes a standardised testing industry, where test-results are equated to debatable proxies for outcomes, and teaching & learning are "to the test".
www.theguardian.com/education/20...

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Prediction Markets Are a Scam (With a Chart) YouTube video by Patrick Boyle

Wanna know about the bid-ask spread on a precipitation swap?
www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0ns...

If you’re just waking up, here’s what we know so far about last night’s firebombing of a Synagogue.

Yes, another one.

www.jewishnews.co.uk/kenton-synag...

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Vibe-hacking is a thing, isn't it 🤔

‘I feel like I’m losing her’: the families torn apart by older relatives going far right It starts with a ‘back in my day’ nostalgic meme – then suddenly your elders are sharing AI-generated ‘boomerslop’ and repeating conspiracy theories …

‘I feel like I’m losing her’: the families torn apart by older relatives going far right
www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

In 2026 that "island-status" protection is no longer a real thing, and the devolution that has occurred within the UK means it is now only England that stubbornly wants to live in a past that is what they imagine it to be. The UK is a political project under strain from England's refusal of reality.

The problem is not the political project, it is the UK's inability to think about that political project in sound terms rather than reflexing back into 19th century myths about the naturalness of nation-states. A myth, in the case of the UK, protected by its island-status from being outed as a myth.

Smoke alarms are essential.

But they're also a gigantic pain when the battery runs out at 3:23am and you have to bumble along to the other end of the house to find a step-ladder to reach the beeping monstrosity, or have your ear drums assaulted every 30s all night long.

Yawn.

As long as the UK keeps artificially restricting the EU-debate to assessing short-termist, transactional advantage, EU membership isn't going anywhere and will remain trapped in the self-enforced unreliability of self-centred fickleness & marginal majorities swapping back & forth driven by vibes.

The UK's debate on EU membership is still entirely *transactional*, there's no room for conviction in the merits of the political project. The UK is condemning itself to fickle, short-term transactionalism.What looks great now is one migration-spike away from being derided as the source of all evil.

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This is a well-documented pattern in medical research and reflects systemic gender bias in pain assessment and treatment.👇