Ruby retweeted
Back in the day there was a floor standard: 30% passing 5 GCSEs. My school was always below it. We struggled to believe that 30% of our kids could pass 5 GCSEs.
Just down the road a new school opened called Mossbourne. It had even higher FSM than us. 84% of their kids passed.
I think that as a society we need a clearer debate about the standards we think most students are capable of achieving.
I personally think most students can achieve the standard represented by grade 4 in maths & English. I am not pretending it will be easy, and I am not trying to be utopian, but I do think it is possible.
Others will disagree, but because it's bit impolite to say "I don't think some kids can ever get to a grade 4", they come up with euphemisms and it's difficult to have a proper discussion.
But I think we need to be honest and to have the debate! If it really is not possible for a third of kids to reach grade 4 English & maths then that does have big implications for our system!
substack.nomoremarking.com/p…
Ruby retweeted
Can someone explain to me the awful things Keir Starmer has done since his landslide election that has led to him having to resign?
Ruby retweeted
It’s not an aarti ritual. They’re bringing in the mehndi that is brought in with diyas. Maayoon, mehndi, dholak, ghori charhna, ubtan/haldi/mehndi lagaana, vail dena, and a lot else are all part of our syncretic culture.
60% of Pakistan is Punjabi. These are Punjabi traditions. There’s zero ‘identity crisis’ around them for most people.
Ruby retweeted
The Arabic word for "jinn" and the Arabic word for "baby" come from the same root.
So does "paradise." So does "madness." So does "shield." So does "heart."
Three letters. ج - ن - ن
One meaning: hidden.
Let me show you how deep this goes.
Ruby retweeted
Literature is humanity’s longest conversation with itself about what it means to be alive. It has been going on for thousands of years. You are not late, you are not unqualified, you are not too much or too little or too broken. Pull up a chair. This conversation was always about you.
Ruby retweeted
Civilization was built by people like this, and there is a stunning lack of gratitude in our culture for their work.
In this specific case, at least half of the apple varieties in Brown’s collection were considered “lost” until he personally tracked them down and saved them.
He literally went on quests where he did things like, tracking a lost variety back to a stump of a long-ago-cut-down tree near an abandoned homestead in remote Appalachia, took cuttings from the green shoots coming out of the stump, brought them back and planted them.
Absolute legend.
Tom Brown, a retired engineer, dedicated 25 years to preserving approximately 1,200 apple varieties from extinction.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
While this story is true, this photo has been ever so slightly edited with AI which might make me people question its authenticity. Here you can see the apple varieties written cleanly, with no AI interference.
x.com/rainmaker1973/…
Ruby retweeted
The sun you see right now exploded 7 minutes ago and you'd have no way of knowing. You'd still feel its warmth. Still see it in the sky. Still orbit it. For 8 minutes and 20 seconds, you'd live in a universe that no longer has a sun and have absolutely no way to detect the difference.
This is because gravity also travels at the speed of light. If the sun vanished, Earth would continue orbiting the empty space where it used to be for the same 8 minutes and 20 seconds. Einstein proved this. The gravitational wave carrying the information "the sun is gone" propagates at exactly c. Light, gravity, and information all share the same speed limit.
Now scale the paradox in this post. 90 light-years is nothing. The Andromeda galaxy is 2.5 million light-years away. Every photograph of it is a 2.5 million year old snapshot. The entire galaxy could have collided with something catastrophic 2 million years ago. We'll find out 500,000 years from now.
The James Webb Space Telescope routinely photographs galaxies from 13.4 billion years ago. Those galaxies no longer exist in any form we'd recognize. The stars burned out. The civilizations, if any, rose and fell billions of years before Earth formed. Webb is photographing ghosts.
The deepest implication: "right now" is a local phenomenon. It exists only in the space you can physically touch. Beyond that, everything you see, measure, or interact with is a time-delayed recording. The further you look, the older the recording gets. There is no method, even in principle, to know the current state of anything beyond your immediate surroundings.
The entire observable universe is a 13.8 billion year old museum where every exhibit is labeled with a different date and nothing is current.
Ruby retweeted
If you believe free speech is for you but not your political opponents, you're illiberal.
If no contrary evidence could change your beliefs, you're a fundamentalist.
If you believe the state should punish those with contrary views, you're a totalitarian.
If you believe political opponents should be punished with violence or death, you're a terrorist.

















