December 2018

the UK government is giving £14 million to a shell company with no assets, for no-deal Brexit "ferry services" - Guardian - Facebook

Ghent University opts out of the rat race - UGent [via @ruawall]

the UK government is stirring xenophobia with "boat people" rhetoric - @ColinYeo1

the wrongness of "one size fits all" education - NPR [via VisibleChild]

Sylvia Pankhurst received an Ethiopian state funeral - Guardian

analysis of Mexican genomes reveals some of the region's untold histories - ScienceMag

the United States has betrayed the Kurds again - Atlantic

allow six year olds to vote? - Guardian

How Cycling Can Save the World/Economy - Bike Nation + Bikenomics [my review]

the economic case for unions (in the United States) - Bloomberg

Bangladesh's economic success - Nikkei

it takes the six biggest selling science fiction and fantasy authors to match Agatha Christie's sales - MarkLawrence [via @j4]

is Indonesia using white phosphorus weapons in West Papua? - SaturdayPaper

teenagers should "choose sleep over homework in order to improve their stress levels and grades" - ScaryMommy

how the Guardian migrated its backend database from Mongo to Postgres - Guardian - Reddit

give money to the homeless directly and unconditionally - NewStatesman

Indonesia hit by tsunami from Anak Krakatau - Forbes

how the BBC has failed in its duty to inform - Byline

forget the STEM obsession, career "success is based on being self-motivated, being sociable, and working well with others" - TeacherTom [via VisibleChild]

Jacqueline Wilson reviews Rumer Godden's _An Episode of Sparrows_ - Spectator

Putin gives the UK advice on the meaning of "democracy" - Guardian

Alberto Manguel on breaking up his 35,000 book collection - ABC

a $1.6 billion freeway brings some people slightly shorter commutes - NYT

smartphones are worse for children than television - Conversation

teachers in Texas are required to make an Israeli loyalty pledge?! - Intercept

mathematics history should be central to mathematics education - Medium [via @Mathgarden]

Indian MP jailed for role in 1984 massacres - Guardian

sustained demonstrations in Budapest against Orban's government - NYT

a citizens assembly on Brexit would be a great idea (though it should really have been convened three years ago, it's a bit late now) - Guardian

Ivan Rogers offers nine Brexit lessons - Liverpool

"it is Britain's unique ignorance that makes Britain so boring" - Politico

learning chess, at 4 and 40 - Nautilus

the US, the UK and Saudi Arabia are starving millions of people to death - NYT [via @blazing]

a second EU referendum would be complex - Guardian

"A chemistry professor at Lund University dispatched a team of mercenaries into an Islamic State war zone to free one of her doctoral students and his family." - TheLocal

let's do it Oxford! civilising the city centre - Movement and the Public Realm (Phil Jones)

nine cases show how genomics is changing modern medicine - Genomic Quirks: The Search for Spelling Errors

by far the nicest set of early readers I've found - Walker Stories [my review]

a Christmas present for me and Helen, Satyamurti's retelling of the Mahabharata - AndrewLogan

the Stansted 15 are heroes, not terrorists - Guardian

a Dutch evaluation of cycling in Copenhagen - BicycleDutch

squeezing the British education system to the edge of "scandalous failure" - TES

we need to work out how to improve well-being without increasing GDP - ForeignPolicy

UK schools hide how religions are "multifarious, complex, social phenomena" - Religions - Secularism

"Cars are becoming as big of a threat to the climate as coal-fired power" - NewRepublic

trying to save the UK's lost footpaths: a 2026 deadline for rights-of-way - Guardian

China's social credit surveillance system extends across Europe, GDPR notwithstanding - Medium

the UK's future may hinge on the fate of Standing Order 24B - Politics

the great insect die-off - Guardian

we've sorted out smoking, when are we going to take on traffic? - SubversiveSuburbanite

don't abandon picturebooks for graded readers and chapter books! - PublishersWeekly

H.W. Bush: the overlooked president - Slate