Based on wastewater testing, @ABSStats estimates the share of tobacco consumption from illicit sources in Australia has risen from 12% in 2017 to a staggering 80% in 2025. Despite repeated tobacco excise hikes, the quantity of nicotine consumed per person has increased by 22%.

“I think critical thinking should be a school subject. I've always encouraged my kids to question absolutely everything.” ~ @sequi_simon Completely agree. Critical thinking should be on the school curriculum. But governments hate critical thinkers.

The Economist, in its “fighting back the tears” obituary for Khamenei, salivates with true depravity over Trump’s future death in grisly, if ecstatic, terms: “...when Mr. Trump’s body was ashes, eaten by worms and ants.” It makes the Washington Post and its infamous “Austere Islamic Scholar” obituary for Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi seem very quaint indeed. But I read the whole thing so you don’t have to. The key takeaways: 1. The USA is the Great Satan—no scare quotes. 2. For readers who don’t know what “Israel” is, the Economist helpfully translates it in parentheses as “the little Satan.” 3. Khamenei, otherwise known as “God’s Dictator,” had “divine right on his side” and had “countless reasons to hate the West,” which is an America-led “phalanx of morally corrupt countries.” 4. Khamenei was a sainted and humble man, dragged to power against his will, selfless and “heroically flexible” and unassailable—a “humble cleric from Mashhad who inherited the earth.” 5. Honourable in life, but perfect in death: what could be sweeter than delicious martyrdom? What could be “more deserving of paradise-to-come than to drink the pure draught of a martyr’s end”?! 6. According to the Economist, “Freedom, human rights, dress codes for women” are “tiresome Western tropes.” Yes, really. 7. All his troubles were economic: he was tormented by the West and by foreign enemies. All the crimes he ordered—beatings, killings, and so on—were, naturally, merely “a response” to those Western crimes. 8. He “rules by divine authority,” and “his tongue could channel God.” 9. He was just a ”mild-mannered cleric” gazed benignly from billboards and was a great teacher of forgiveness”. We have now surely reached the apogee of the decay of the legacy media in the West. Surely it can't sink lower than this?

Part of my job as a teacher in the last few years has been as a learning support specialist, focussed on helping students who are struggling with skills and content in the intermediate and middle school grades. It's hard to calculate the damage done to kids' lives and learning by education professors like this one, who have spent years discouraging teachers from teaching, leaving thousands of kids drowning in more difficult material for which they were never prepared. Private tutoring options like Kumon, Oxford Learning, etc., are absolutely booming across Canada, and it's because too many of our publicly funded schools have adopted the kind of thinking on display here. But parents should not have to pay extra to have their kids learn their times tables--that is the job of the education system we all pay for. Kudos to @rastokke and her team for drawing attention to this nonsense, which we need to get out of our schools yesterday, and for proposing solutions that actually work.

WASPI women never had a case. Language of outrage around decision devalues where real outrage appropriate. MPs in opposition or on backbenches have been cynical in offering support for billions of compensation that was never going to be paid. thetimes.com/article/74a2a0f…

🚨🚨🚨Today @SilviaGriseld and Jack Buckley release new research on the state of teacher workforce, with a particular focus on attrition. 🌟The main message? 🌟Teacher attrition isn’t rising — in fact, it’s now the lowest of any occupation in Australia. But challenges remain. [1/n] Here to read the report and a summary below e61.in/who-stays-who-goes-a-…

Slides for my keynote speech at the Florence EUI conference "Future of Regulation and Competitiveness in Europe – Making the Draghi Report Actionable". Some stuff familiar to SiliconContinent readers, with new diagnosis and proposals. More to come soon! dropbox.com/scl/fi/xtsflm0hf…

Quite the quote.

Can you have too much certainty? Says writer and pedagogical innovator @daisychristo: Yes—well, sometimes. Hear her analyze both the benefits and drawbacks of technology-driven decision-making in areas from football to education. Explore w @econtalker: loom.ly/hONLuKs

imagine a sociologist who never read du bois, or a psychologist who never read freud. what would that even look like?

Join us at Verity Lane on 2 October as we hear four contenders in the upcoming ACT election explain how they plan to tackle Canberra’s housing shortage and create a more sustainable, liveable and connected city. Free tickets available at the link below eventbrite.com.au/e/planning…