Latest news with #Hay
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Forget smartphones and wokery. There's an even greater threat to our children's education
Given that today's children appear to spend much of their time in school being taught that the Vikings were champions of diversity and that human beings should be encouraged to choose between one or more of 72 different genders, you may fear that educational standards in this country are slipping somewhat. But perhaps we should be grateful. Because, believe it or not, things could actually be worse. Say, for example, we were to follow a radical proposal made the other day by Daniel Susskind. Dr Susskind is an eminent economist, as well as the author of a book entitled A World Without Work: Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond. And, speaking at the Hay festival, he argued that the traditional school timetable should be ripped up, so that children can instead focus on learning to use artificial intelligence. 'We should be spending a third of the time that we have with students teaching them how to use these technologies,' he declared. 'How to write effective prompts and use these systems, get them to do what we want them to do…' I appreciate that Dr Susskind is an exceptionally learned and intelligent man. None the less, I for one think his proposal sounds horrifying. We often talk about the need to ban smartphones in schools. Which is fair enough. But my priority would be to ban AI. The fundamental purpose of education, after all, is to teach children how to think. AI, however, does the opposite. It teaches them that they don't need to think. Because it will do their thinking for them. For proof, look at what's already happening in universities. In April, The Chronicle of Higher Education – an American journal – reported that ever-growing numbers of students were essentially outsourcing their studies to AI. When a professor at New York University tried to prevent his students from using AI to complete their assignments, he was met with consternation. Some students protested that he was interfering with their 'learning styles'. Another complained: '[If] you're asking me to go from point A to point B, why wouldn't I use a car to get there?' Meanwhile, one student asked for an extension to a deadline, 'on the grounds that ChatGPT was down the day the assignment was due'. Still, I suppose we'd better get used to this sort of thing. It seems that a new educational era is upon us. One in which teachers get AI to set homework, pupils get AI to complete it, and then teachers get AI to mark it. Soon enough, there will be no need for human involvement at any stage of the process. So, as schools will effectively be superfluous, the Government might as well just shut them all down. In fact, I urge it to do so as quickly as possible. Such a move would immediately free up tens of billions of pounds a year. And since, in due course, AI will be taking all the jobs that today's children could have grown up to do, we'll need the money to pay their benefits. Heartfelt thanks to Ash Regan, the Scottish nationalist and one-time candidate to succeed Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister. Because on Sunday, she provided us with the one of the most memorable political quotes of the year. Even if not necessarily on purpose. Ms Regan was being interviewed by The Herald newspaper about her plans to clamp down on prostitution in Scotland, by criminalising the buying of sex. Wasn't there a risk, asked The Herald's reporter, that these plans might inadvertently drive prostitution underground? Ms Regan scoffed. Plainly she'd never heard anything so absurd. 'If you even think for one second, you cannot possibly drive prostitution underground,' she snorted. 'If you had a lot of women in underground cellars with a locked door, how would the punters get to them?' Having digested these extraordinary words, we can, I believe, draw only one conclusion. Ms Regan is 51 years old. And yet, during over a half a century on this planet, she has never heard – or at least, never understood – the phrase 'driven underground'. And so she'd taken it literally. After the interview, we must hope, a kindly aide will have taken her to one side, and gently explained that the expression is purely figurative. Otherwise, I fear that, despite Ms Regan's initial scoffing, she'll begin to worry that the reporter had a point – and that Scottish pimps really will take to opening brothels deep beneath the Earth's surface. If so, we must wait to see what revisions Ms Regan might make to her plans. Perhaps she will recommend that the Scottish NHS supply all prostitutes with free vitamin D tablets, to make up for the lack of sunlight they'll be getting. 'Way of the World' is a twice-weekly satirical look at the headlines while aiming to mock the absurdities of the modern world. It is published at 6am every Tuesday and Saturday Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
The Journal
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Journal
Sitdown Sunday: Their chart-topping album got millions of streams - but was anyone really listening?
IT'S A DAY of rest, and you may be in the mood for a quiet corner and a comfy chair. We've hand-picked some of the week's best reads for you to savour. 1. Streaming fraud Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Two musicians released a jazz album on streaming services that shot straight to No 1 on the Billboard chart. A week later, it disappeared. The album got millions of streams. Except, as it turned out, no one was actually listening. Kate Knibbs does a deep dive on the first AI music fraud case in the United States, and what the industry is facing. ( WIRED , approx 13 mins reading time) Pulling up Spotify's dashboard for artists, Hay scrutinized the analytics for the pair's work. Listeners appeared concentrated in far-flung places like Vietnam. Things only got stranger from there. Here's how Hay remembers it: He started receiving notices from distributors, the companies that handle the licensing of indie artists' music. The distributors were flagging Smith and Hay's music, from Jazz and from other projects, for streaming fraud and pulling it down. Smith told Hay it was a mistake and that Hay had messed up securing the proper rights for samples. Hay frantically tried to correct the issue, but the flagging persisted. Hay, panicking, badgered Smith to help him figure out what was happening. Finally, Hay says, Smith offered some answers: Smith had instructed his staff at the medical clinics to stream their songs. It didn't sound like the full story. 2. 'Are the bricks evil?' Sally McGrane speaks to residents who live in a German village that was built in the lead-up to World War Two as an 'elite community' for the Nazi S.S. They feel they have a responsibility to both remember and conquer its past. ( The New York Times , approx 11 mins reading time) 'Hannah Arendt called it the 'banality of evil,'' said Matthias Donath, a historian specializing in Berlin's Nazi architecture, in an email. Recently, Mr. Donath's research made headlines when he was able to draw a direct line from Waldsiedlung Krumme Lanke to Auschwitz, where former village resident Joachim Caesar was the head of agricultural operations. 'The residents found ideal living conditions — an idyll,' he said. 'And at the same time, they planned monstrous crimes.' How the residents here have reckoned with the past — or not — has followed larger cultural trajectories. For decades, it was swept under the rug. 'One method of survival in a destroyed and morally devastated Germany was repression,' Mr. Donath said. As a result, some of the village's residents are unaware of its history, until neighbors tell them about it. 'Some people say, 'It's 80 years ago, it has nothing to do with me,'' said Susanne Güthler, 67, a teacher of disabled children who moved here with her family in 2000. 'For me, it's the opposite. I want to know what happened, here in my house. It's intimidating, to hear about families drowning themselves in the Krumme Lanke, or hanging in the attic. But you can't move forward with silence.' 3. The battle over Toumaï Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo A fascinating article on the discovery of an ancient skull and the 20-year fight over what it tells us about the history of humanity. ( The Guardian , approx 35 mins reading time) Advertisement When he returned from Chad, Brunet was furious. According to Macchiarelli, he immediately spent several days studying the femur in the laboratory, behind closed doors. He soon asked to meet with Bergeret in his office. 'Mademoiselle Bergeret, you were entrusted with study materials that were unidentified,' he told her, Bergeret recalled. 'It was not your role to make an identification.' A laboratory meeting was convened in the presence of a university dean to discuss a 'leak of scientific information', as the minutes put it. One researcher alleged that there were 'people who take advantage of our being away in the field to rifle through our collections'. Brunet spoke of 'a Judas'. 'A grave professional offence has been committed,' wrote the dean. In the meantime, Bergeret left for several days of fieldwork. When she returned, she found that her research materials had been confiscated; the fossils were being 'renumbered', she was told. At one point, however, Bergeret said, one of her advisers appeared with the femur in his hand. 'This piece,' he warned, holding it before her: 'You forget you ever saw it.' 4. Microplastics They're everywhere – including, scarily, our blood. Elyse Hauser tried to measure the kinds of microplastics in her bloodstream using a $150 home test kit that she bought online. The results weren't great. ( Slate , approx 8 mins reading time) Having microplastics in the human body does not sound good. To better understand why this isn't good, I called up Heather Leslie. She's a scientist who does consulting on environmental and health issues, and she's an expert on blood-borne plastic specifically. In 2022 she led the research team that found microplastics in human blood for the first time. Microplastics were first observed in humans in 2018, when researchers at the Medical University of Vienna detected them in the digestive system. After that study came out, Leslie felt it was important to check the bloodstream. Finding plastic circulating there proved that it was actually absorbed by our bodies, rather than something that simply passed through us. Since then, microplastics have shot into our collective health consciousness—and knowing that we can absorb them has motivated some, myself included, to cut down on plastic use. I've filled my kitchen with Pyrex instead of Tupperware. I quit reusing Ziploc bags. I check clothing labels, looking for natural fibers. 5. Tom Hardy Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo The English actor has played quite a few gangster roles on screen, from the Krays in Legend to Alfie Solomons in Peaky Blinders. Here, he chats about his hit new drama series MobLand, which tells the story of two warring London crime families. ( Esquire , approx 24 mins reading time) When MobLand came along, he says, it offered a 'similar solar system' to the one he'd just left: 'You know, still a studio production, still a big vessel, but it's different muscles. Some are older muscles that I'm warming up again, like villains and criminals…' Plus it was the right time for it, spiritually. 'I needed to go somewhere. To move forward. I needed to draw a line, because otherwise I'd be looking back, going 'Sony, will you have me back? Reignite the flames!' That's a desperate place to be as a human being.' There were some obvious attractions to MobLand in its own right, too: not only actors such as Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren and Paddy Considine, who play members of the nefarious dynasties for whom Hardy's character, Harry, acts as a very capable go-between, but also another go at working with Guy Ritchie. The British director has had something of a revival recently with the success of his TV series The Gentlemen — a huge hit for Netflix — although Hardy hasn't worked with him since 2008, when he appeared in a high-octane caper called RocknRolla as a closeted getaway driver called Handsome Bob. He's got some thoughts. 6. Guitar heroes A profile of an obsessive duo who have collected some 600 of the instruments, which will soon go on display in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. ( The New Yorker , approx 26 mins reading time) The lion's share of the collection—almost six hundred instruments—was destined for the Met. A hundred and seventy-three had already travelled there last spring. (An earthquake hit when they finished loading the U-Haul.) Two more shipments were scheduled. 'The collection presents a representation of the American guitar that is pretty much complete,' Margouleff said. 'There's nowhere else on planet Earth where this exists.' Margouleff, who built out the warehouse himself, keeps some of his own collectibles here, too. He produced a battered guitar in a display case, with 'Do Not Touch' scrawled on the body and the headstock snapped off. This was Old Yellow, the longtime test guitar at Manny's, which customers used to compare amplifiers. Another Rosebud. 'Everyone handled that guitar,' Margouleff said. 'Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton. It's the first guitar I ever saw in a music store. When Manny's got sold to Sam Ash, they hung it on the wall. And then Sam Ash went bankrupt. I finally got to buy it.' …AND A CLASSIC FROM THE ARCHIVES… Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo 99 years ago today, Marilyn Monroe was born. In this longread, Daphne Merkin examines the enduring contradictions of her life, image, and death. ( The New Yorker , approx 21 mins reading time) Sometimes I think we respond to Marilyn Monroe as strongly as we do not because of her beauty or her body but because of her desperation, which was implacable in the face of fame, fortune, and the love of celebrated men. Every few years, she comes around again, the subject of yet another revelatory book (there are more than a hundred to date) or of a newly discovered series of photographs. Her films continue to be watched and reassessed, her image pilfered by everyone from Madonna to Monica Lewinsky. We will never have enough of Monroe, in part because there is never sufficient explanation for the commotions of her soul, and in part because we will never tire of hearing about the native sadness behind the construction of glamour. The damaged creature behind the pinup, the neglected foster child who became a blond vision in sequins: her story has entered the realm of myth. Its unhappy ending makes her less the exemplary heroine of a fairy tale than its cautionary victim—a glittery example of female entrapment in the male star-making machinery. Note: The Journal generally selects stories that are not paywalled, but some might not be accessible if you have exceeded your free article limit on the site in question. Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
Scoop
27-05-2025
- Sport
- Scoop
Auckland FC Assistant Coach Danny Hay Handed Two Game Ban For Outburst
Auckland FC assistant coach Danny Hay has been handed a two game suspension following a verbal outburst at the end of their A-League semi-final loss to Melbourne Victory. Hay was handed a red card by the referee at Mount Smart on Saturday night in the game that Auckland lost 2-0. It was determined that Hay committed the offence of 'Use of offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or gestures'. The minimum sanction for the offence is one match. Tempers flared on the Auckland bench when the hosts had a goal disallowed that could have at least forced extra time. The assistant referee decided that a cross that led to Auckland's goal had drifted out of play and it was disallowed. Auckland went into the second leg match with a 1-0 lead. Auckland FC's next match will be in the Australia Cup next season.
Scoop
27-05-2025
- Sport
- Scoop
Auckland FC Assistant Coach Danny Hay Handed Two Game Ban For Outburst
Auckland FC assistant coach Danny Hay has been handed a two game suspension following a verbal outburst at the end of their A-League semi-final loss to Melbourne Victory. Hay was handed a red card by the referee at Mount Smart on Saturday night in the game that Auckland lost 2-0. It was determined that Hay committed the offence of "Use of offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or gestures". The minimum sanction for the offence is one match. Tempers flared on the Auckland bench when the hosts had a goal disallowed that could have at least forced extra time. The assistant referee decided that a cross that led to Auckland's goal had drifted out of play and it was disallowed. Auckland went into the second leg match with a 1-0 lead. Auckland FC's next match will be in the Australia Cup next season.
Yahoo
24-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Small town cemetery prepares for Memorial Day weekend
EGAN, SD (KELO) — Cemeteries across KELOLAND have been sprucing up as they get ready to welcome visitors over the Memorial Day weekend. That includes cemeteries in small, rural communities where upkeep can be a challenge. The cemetery in Egan, in Moody County, is a source of community pride for all eternity. What is unclaimed property and how to get it Egan Hillside Cemetery is the final resting place for 11-hundred people who are buried here, including four generations of John Hay's family. 'My great-great-great-grandfather was a Civil War veteran and he's buried just over here and so my great-grandparents, my grandparents and my parents are all here,' Hay said. The cemetery dates back to 1881. The all-volunteer staff relies on donations to keep it operating. 'The donors are generally relatives, family members of the deceased. So they've been very good at supporting the cemetery,' Hay said. Maintenance of the cemetery involves a division of labor between the men and the women. 'The women make sure that there's enough money to pay for the mowing and to help chip-in with the men with the big projects, sometimes that are very expensive. The men take care of the heavy work,' Ladies Cemetery Association member Joy Chamley said. But Hillside is confronted with the same dilemma as many other small-town cemeteries: who takes over when the current group of volunteers ages out? 'That is a concern. Someone's going to have to step forward and I think part of our group of our association is just to recruit young people,' Men's Cemetery Association President Perry Johnson said. Johnson says that the recruitment effort is finding some success. It will eventually take a new generation of leaders to ensure the cemetery remains a peaceful hillside destination for reflection and remembrance. 'You never stop loving these people that we've lost and that shows in the community,' Johnson said. Cemetery expenses include $75-hundred a year just for mowing, alone. If you're interested in donating to the cemetery, we have a link to the South Dakota Community Foundation's website. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
