Tracy Craig

Roses are redde
Noble are the manatees
For a bettir future
Teach artes and humanityes

Classroom Notes Published in International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology (Vol. 57, No. 1, 2026)

From our editor-in-chief: everything you ever wondered about Classroom Notes.

Full article: Classroom Notes www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

My first ever job was at a supermarket. I worked with an older gentlemen who must’ve been in his late 70s and while I can’t name the supermarket due to an ongoing legal dispute the guy must be dead by now so I’ll just use his real name: Barnaby.

A book from the 19th century that depicts the Rhine Valley by creating an impression of three-dimensionality and spatial distance.
@MasayukiTsuda2 #globalmuseum #books #travel #19thcentury

Pillars of Creation but with googly eyes and printed on a 1000-piece puzzle. Don't ask.

Today is the last day to order my #puzzles, so I'm sharing this monstrocity again 🤣

Yip yipp yippp!

Pillars of Googly Eyes available as 1000-piece puzzle 🧩

🔗 sciencesocks.co/pages/puzzle...

🔭🐡🧪🎨 #ArtAdventCalendar

Gracefully carving through the solar corona, a mini eruption of filament plasma erupted from the Sun earlier today! Beautiful.

Voyager 1 artist’s depiction.

in case you didn’t know, in a year voyager 1 will be 1 light-DAY away from earth.

it took almost 50 YEARS of travel time to reach that distance and will be the first human-made object to reach this distance.

Fundraiser by Simphiwe Mfazwe | Help me through Year One of a Musical Theatre Masters in Cologne Simphiwe Mfazwe Needs Your Help | About this crowdfunder : My name is Simphiwe Mfazwe. I come from the Kimberley in the Northern Cape province in South Africa. I have been accepted for the Ma...

I have donated to this fundraiser to send a South African opera singer to Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln. He won a prestigious chance to attend, but cannot afford travel & accommodation. Please consider contributing.
whydonate.com/fundraising/...

#opera #southafrica #kimberley #cologne #music

MARTHINUS VAN STADEN: The cancer killing SA universities Parasitic industries drain resources, but something far more sinister is at work on campuses

🔒MARTHINUS VAN STADEN: The cancer killing SA universities. Parasitic industries drain resources, but something far more sinister is at work on campuses. www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2...

Cape Town journalists march in solidarity with media workers killed in Gaza A march in Sea Point, Cape Town, on Sunday was the latest in a series of protests aimed at spotlighting the targeted killing of media workers in Gaza. Local journalists led the demonstration, expressi...

Capetonians march in solidarity with media workers targeted and killed in Gaza. “Every colonial project survives on two weapons: physical extermination of the colonised people and control of the narrative. The power to erase, distort and rewrite reality.” www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2025...

The Dane saga of Breda: A Late Medieval Account of Viking Endeavour and Vernacular Devotion: The Medieval Low Countries: Vol 11 Found in the municipal archives of Breda (present-day North Brabant, Netherlands) is a conspicuous but ill-studied late fifteenth or early sixteenth-century codex, whose contents are deemed to have been composed within the late medieval town. Although characterised as a local cross legend, the Middle Dutch work is customarily referred to by its modern moniker of Denensage (i.e. Dane saga) due to the presence and pursuits of ‘viking’ mariners over the course of its verse narrative. By imparting how a group of Danes found their way to Breda and established a stronghold there – refashioning a prominent local tree into a cross in the process – the work occupies a distinct confluence of historiographical, devotional, and literary authorship. Situating the Dane saga in its sociocultural context, this article explores the wide-ranging narrative influences underpinning it, whilst determining its potential authorship and intended audience(s). Lastly, as well as furnishing a new edition of the manuscript, it offers the first English translation of this important, idiosyncratic text.

Beyond excited that my study of the medieval 'Dane saga' of Breda is finally out (OA 🔓) alongside a first English translation! This anachronistic oddity of devotional/literary storytelling posits how a group of 'vikings' arrived and troubled the city for years.

www.brepolsonline.net/doi/epdf/10....

With Tom Lehrer's passing, I suppose this is a moment to share the story of the prank he played on the National Security Agency, and how it went undiscovered for nearly 60 years.

A man wrapped up against the cold, surveys a frozen plain

The secret German weather station on the Arctic island of Svalbard. Part of the 'Weather War'.

The team, led by Lieutenant Wilhelm Dege, were the last German troops to surrender in WW2, finally doing so FOUR MONTHS after Germany had officially surrendered.

It was not for want of trying. /1

A square arrangement of 9 individual biscuit tiles painted in rich shades of blue and made to look old, chipped, and cracked. On the top row, there is: a ship with billowing sails approaching a dock with two stylized ducks or geese in the foreground; a delicate flower motif in the centre of a bright white tile with deep blue detail at each corner; a cracked tile depicting two figures in rustic historical dress looking out to sea, accompanied by a small dog. The middle row features: a roughly painted castle surrounded by an octagonal frame; an intricate floral arrangement with an angel at each of the tile’s four corners; a cluster of rustic buildings with boat sails and a flock of birds in the distance. Finally, the bottom row of biscuits includes: a figure fishing in the foreground of a multi-storey round tower; a woman wearing a flowing eighteenth-century gown, encircled by a deep blue floral pattern; a small vase of flowers in the centre of an aged white biscuit.

Delftware tiles!

There were hundreds of fabulous examples to choose from in the Victoria & Albert Museum’s online catalogue, but I eventually settled on nine.

These 18th-century ships, shepherds, castles, figures, and flowers brought me joy. I hope they’ll do the same for you, too.

#TudorTuesday
Man’s Cloak
1580-1590
Spain
Italian velvet

Silk velvet with applied border of silk satin, couched with silk cord

www.instagram.com/p/DKI9M7pNpn...

#Cloak #MansCloak #GentlemansCloak #SilkVelvet #Velvet #Clothing #ItalianVelvet #Spain #History

Trump Makes False Genocide Claims. South Africans Respond With Humor.

Trump Makes False Genocide Claims. South Africans Respond With Humor. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/22/w...

55 Unhinged Baby Names Parents Actually Picked "Twins in the NICU, one boy, one girl named Brock Lee and Callie Flower."

Life sucks. Laugh at these baby names instead
www.buzzfeed.com/kristatorres...

But are these various educational interventions worth burning the planet so that tech CEOs can get more wealthy?

That being said, I still feel pressured to use these tools somehow. People won't stop yelling at me (however metaphorically) until I do so. And that makes me unhappy.
(8/8)

I know the team and have huge respect for them. www.utwente.nl/nl/tnw/nieuw...
(7/8)

3) educational. Yes, this is only point 3. I have seen very few examples of using "AI" in a way that helps students learn in ways that are not already achievable by other means. The one that recently won the Brinksma Innovation Grant at my University of Twente is an exception.
(6/8)

2) sociopolitical. I loathe the idea of putting more money in billionaires' pockets. If these LLM companies were mom and pop businesses or young entrepreneur start ups, then that would be one thing, but they're not. www.forbes.com/sites/phoebe... #billionairesshouldnotexist
(5/8)

... uses 5-10 times as much energy and water resources as a browser search. www.unep.org/news-and-sto..., news.mit.edu/2025/explain...
(4/8)

1) environmental. Casual use of LLMs (because, let's be clear, my colleagues using AI in medical imaging and the like are using serious AI, not chatGPT) is really, really bad for the environment. For example, two reports here say that using chatGPT for what amounts to an online search ...
(3/8)

As time goes on and I become more familiar with the options and possibilities, I become increasingly reluctant to follow this advice.

My reasons for not wanting to use AI in my teaching or in my education research are:
(2/8)

I feel crowded by people and communities insisting, with varying levels of urgency, that I employ "AI for education" in my classrooms and that I use it as a context for my maths education research. It is presented as an opportunity, a valuable tool, an unproblematic Good.
(1/8)

It’s Mary Anning’s birthday, so time to share @katebeaton.bsky.social’s brilliant cartoon again.

Open this photo up and look for the small, white dot just left of centre.

It looks like Venus, shining brightly in the twilight sky.

But it's us.

It's Earth.

From Mars.

Gorgeous!

Annie Jump Cannon sat at a desk. She is clearly not a fan of a clear desk policy as it's messy with papers and open drawers. She is a white woman with pale hair.

#OnThisDay, 9 May 1922, the International Astronomical Union formally adopts Annie Jump Cannon's stellar classification system. The principles in it still underpin modern classification.

#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #WomensHistory #Astronomy #WomenInSTEM #AmericanHistory 🗃️

Oh, this?

Just sunlight reflecting off a lake.

A lake of liquid methane.

On an icy world 1.4 billion kilometres away.