Putting your CV together? Complete honesty might not be the best policy

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Tom Lane, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Newcastle University

PeopleImages/Shutterstock

Writing a CV requires important decisions. What should you include, what should you leave out – and how honest should you be?

One particularly tricky dilemma that might come up is whether to disclose weaknesses on your CV or remain silent about them. Common sense suggests it’s not advisable to advertise your flaws, but what about important information that employers might expect you to supply? Could the omission of such details look suspicious?

Research my colleague and I conducted looks at this specific question, focusing on the academic qualifications of new graduates entering the job market. And it provides a clear, evidence-based answer: if your grades are low, you are better off not disclosing this.

Complete honesty is not the best policy.

In the UK, where we did the research, most universities award undergraduate degrees on a scale: first-class, upper second (2:1), lower second (2:2) and third. While a first or 2:1 is often seen as evidence of strong performance, lower degrees are held in lower esteem.

A graduate jobseeker with a lower classification has a choice of what to reveal on their CV. They can be upfront about it, or they could simply state that they have a degree, without mentioning the class. (A third option, to lie about the class is probably a bad idea because employers can and do ask for proof.)

Perhaps surprisingly, traditional economic theory would probably favour fronting up. Interactions like this, where a “seller” (in our case, a jobseeker supplying their skills) holds information about their quality that they can voluntarily disclose or not to “buyers” (here, employers), have been popular subjects for analysts of game theory (the mathematical study of strategic interactions).

The idea starts with the notion that people who fail to supply available evidence about their quality look like they have something to hide. Some economists have concluded that buyers will assume non-disclosing sellers must be not merely bad, but of the lowest possible quality level.

In our context, this means employers would think that any graduate whose CV omits degree classification information has a third-class degree, and should treat them accordingly. To avoid this, it would be in the interests of any applicant who earned a 2:2 or higher to disclose it.

To see how jobseekers actually behave, we analysed the CVs of recent graduates on the job website Monster. We noticed that a substantial minority left their degree class undisclosed. Included among them, presumably, were plenty of applicants with at least a 2:2.

To work out whether these applicants were making a mistake, we also conducted a large experiment, sending more than 12,000 applications to genuine graduate job vacancies. These varied only in the jobseeker’s degree classification, and whether this was disclosed on their CV, with other details kept the same.

Success was measured by how often applications resulted in invitations for an interview or further communication. As expected, the most successful of our applications were those with a first-class degree.

However, those who said nothing about degree class were not the least successful. Instead, their success rate was in between that achieved by jobseekers disclosing 2:1s and 2:2s. Applicants who openly reported a third-class degree were the least likely to receive a response.

Put simply then, full disclosure harmed their chances.

The third degree

Our findings challenge the neat logic of traditional economic theory. If employers always assumed the worst about missing information, hiding poor grades should not help.

Yet in practice, it seems recruiters do not have time to scrutinise every detail. Faced with hundreds of applications, they may skim CVs, focusing on standout positives or negatives. If the grade is not there, it may simply go unnoticed.

Of course, interviewers might ask about grades later in the application process, but by initially concealing this information, otherwise unattractive applicants can help themselves get to the interview stage, at which point they can use other qualities to impress.

Graduates throw caps into the sky.
Don’t mention it.
Roman Samborskyi/Shutterstock

The practical message of our research is clear. If you have strong academic credentials, highlight them proudly. But if your results are weaker, you are under no obligation to advertise them. Omitting them will not guarantee success, but it may increase your chances.

The graduate job market remains highly competitive. Yet our study suggests that lower grades do not need to define a candidate’s prospects, provided they make careful choices about self-presentation.

Strategic omissions may help level the playing field for those whose academic record does not reflect their potential. So if you have recently graduated with a third, there’s no need to panic, and no need to mention it either.

The Conversation

Tom Lane does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

ref. Putting your CV together? Complete honesty might not be the best policy – https://theconversation.com/putting-your-cv-together-complete-honesty-might-not-be-the-best-policy-263679

Recipes from the middle ages have much in common with how our grandparents used to cook

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Diane Purkiss, The William F Pollard Tutorial Fellow in English, University of Oxford

Painting of a banquet from the manuscript of The Romance of Alexander the Great, mid-15th century. Wiki Commons

“You have to keep beating it for longer,” my grandmother instructed me. “It isn’t pale yet. It’s still too yellow.” I didn’t ask how long this would take. I was nine years old, and I understood what my grandmother meant. You have to keep doing something until it works. It’s like asking: “Are we there yet?”

I watched for the miraculous transformation. The eggs, golden when first beaten, were lightening to a soft lemon colour. The texture was changing. You couldn’t see the sugar anymore; it had looked like sand, but now it was invisible, cloaked in the egg. My grandmother stopped beating, and lifted up the beater. A stream of thick liquid hung down, like the wet sand you used to reinforce a sandcastle. “Yes, that’s enough. Now add the melted butter. Slowly. Then the flour. We’ll need a bit more.”

My grandmother taught me to cook. She never weighed anything. The only measurement she used was a pink breakfast teacup, and it was more a useful scoop than a measure. Instead, she worked towards a desired result. You didn’t cook things for five minutes. You cooked things until you got the result you wanted. The first thing she taught me to make was bechamel sauce. She didn’t call it that. She called it white sauce with flavour. I could make it when I was five, and I still do it the same way.

Her cooking was preliterate, or, more exactly, a special kind of literacy, a grammar of ingredients and heat and air.

I’m a food historian and the author of English Food: A People’s History. I have never found the recipes of the middle ages as difficult to understand as most food historians. Perhaps because they look a little like my grandmother’s instructions.

Cooking in the middle ages

A medieval recipe
The recipe for sambocade from Add MS 5016.
British Library

Take and make a crust in a trap, and take cruddes and wryng out þe wheyze, and drawe hem þurgh a straynour, and put in þe straynour crustes. Do þerto sugar the þridde part and somdel whyte of ayren, and shake þerin blomes of elren, and bake it up with eurose, and messe it forth.

This is a recipe for “sambocade” from a middle ages manuscript held in the British Library. Sambocade is an elderflower cheesecake of sorts. It uses curds – the beginnings of cheese – and the recipe gives quite detailed instructions on how to make them, a method a little like making Greek yoghurt. You add sugar, egg white and elderflowers, along with rosewater. Then you serve it.

A recipe like this is not a series of instructions. It is meant to act as a reminder, a series of quick notes to recall to mind something taught orally – something taught as my grandmother taught me.

Just as Google Maps will not tell me how to walk by putting one foot in front of the other, this kind of recipe doesn’t tell me what I’m looking for or how to achieve it. It doesn’t give exact measurements. It doesn’t really give any measurements at all. But if you made this recipe half a dozen times, you would soon understand the process required. And then, it would be yours, in a way that a recipe tested or created by another cook can never quite be yours.

Medieval image of a baker putting bread into an oven
A baker with his assistant making bread rolls, from a book of hours manuscript (circa 1500).
Bodleian Library

In my kitchen I still keep my mother’s recipe book, a manuscript volume in which she tried to preserve recipes that were gifts from friends. All of it is in her handwriting.

It contains a recipe for cheesecake from the days when cheesecake was a little-known novelty; it notes that the recipe comes from an American friend. It contains exact quantities and exact baking times, although the result is a lot more strongly baked than the majority of cheesecakes now. The exact quantities preserve a memory of the effect that’s difficult to reconstruct from recipes that come from earlier times.

In the same way, I have only my memories of my grandmother’s cooking to preserve what she did; she was barely literate, and her own recipes consisted solely of lists of ingredients. These were kept in a shoe box and after she died, my mother threw it away on the grounds that it was of no possible value to anyone. All the same, every time I make a sponge cake, I say to myself, is it pale enough yet?


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The Conversation

Diane Purkiss is affiliated with Keble College, University of Oxford.

ref. Recipes from the middle ages have much in common with how our grandparents used to cook – https://theconversation.com/recipes-from-the-middle-ages-have-much-in-common-with-how-our-grandparents-used-to-cook-264139

Curious Kids: why do we need to do homework?

Source: The Conversation – UK – By James Williams, Emeritus reader in science education and communication, University of Sussex

PeterPike/Shutterstock

Why do we need to do homework when we already spend all day in school? – Grace, aged nine, Belfast

If you’ve ever stared at your homework feeling stuck, you’re not alone. Many children say it makes them feel stressed, bored, or even anxious. Why do teachers keep giving you work to do at home when you’ve already spent hours learning at school?

The available research suggests that for secondary school students, well-designed homework can lead to about five extra months of progress in subjects like maths and English. In primary school, the impact is smaller – around three months – but still useful.

Homework helps you practise what you’ve learned, remember it better and build skills like time management and independence.

However, research shows that how you feel about homework depends on a few things. If you find your homework boring, it might be because the activity you’ve been given to do really is pretty boring. Not all homework is equal.


Curious Kids is a series by The Conversation that gives children the chance to have their questions about the world answered by experts. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskids@theconversation.com and make sure you include the asker’s first name, age and town or city. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we’ll do our very best.


A worksheet that doesn’t connect to your lessons is not so helpful. A task that challenges you to think, create, or explore concepts and ideas is much better.

Teachers have to think hard about the tasks they set and how they explain them. If the task is explained clearly and if students get helpful feedback, the chance they will complete it is much higher. Teachers must also choose meaningful tasks help you see homework as part of learning – not just extra work.

Girl doing homework with pen, paper and laptop
Sometimes homework really is boring.
Studio Romantic/Shutterstock

Homework that’s creative or linked to your passions is more enjoyable. Then comes the idea of success. If the task feels impossible, it’s easy to give up. Finally, does it make sense? Homework that connects to what you learned in class feels more useful.

As a science teacher I would always try and set the homework early in the lesson rather than right at the end. Knowing what is going to be expected means that the children better understood the task and could link it to the work being done in the lesson.

How you do homework

Your attitude toward homework isn’t just about the task – it’s also about the people around you. If you have parents or guardians who encourage you, help you plan your time, or show interest in your work, this can make homework feel more positive. That said, there is research that shows that while it’s helpful for parents to ask whether you’ve done your homework, helping you do it isn’t actually useful.

Some children also face bigger challenges. Not everyone has a quiet space to work, or someone at home who can help. This is called the “homework gap” and it can make school feel unfair.

It’s up to schools whether they set homework, and some schools are rethinking homework altogether. They are looking to make it more accessible and creative. Some schools make homework optional rather than demand it for every subject. Schools are also looking at how they can make homework fair for everyone. This includes ideas such as homework clubs, where you can get help and work with friends.

Homework isn’t going away any time soon. But it doesn’t have to be a burden. When it’s well-designed, supported by teachers and parents, and connected to learning, it can help you grow – not just as a student, but as a thinker.

So next time you sit down with your homework, ask yourself: What can I learn from this? And if it feels too hard or pointless, speak up. Your voice matters.

The Conversation

James Williams does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

ref. Curious Kids: why do we need to do homework? – https://theconversation.com/curious-kids-why-do-we-need-to-do-homework-262992

Les robots collaboratifs, des collègues de travail comme les autres ?

Source: The Conversation – in French – By Thierry Colin, Professeur des universités en Sciences de gestion, Université de Lorraine

Le concept de cobot a été inventé par l’industrie automobile. L’objectif : créer des robots capables de travailler aux côtés des humains, sans risque d’insécurité. Gumpanat/Shutterstock

Les robots collaboratifs, ou cobots, ne remplacent pas seulement les humains : ils peuvent travaillent avec eux. Quel est leur impact sur la division du travail ?


Les robots sont omniprésents dans la production industrielle. Leur diffusion a toujours été au cœur d’enjeux humains, sociaux, économiques et en management, entraînant très tôt de nombreux questionnements.

Une nouvelle interrogation émerge aujourd’hui avec l’apparition des cobots. Capables de travailler non seulement à la place, mais aussi avec les humains au sein des ateliers, les robots collaboratifs sont-ils en train de devenir des collègues comme les autres ? Légers, flexibles, relativement accessibles et conviviaux… sont-ils susceptibles de remettre en cause les codes de la division du travail ?

Nos recherches récentes, basées sur des études de cas comprenant des entretiens et des observations en situation, ont permis de repérer quatre types d’usage des cobots : configuration simultanée, alternée, flexible ou coexistence. Elles rentrent dans le cadre du projet Impact « C-Shift » (Cobots in the Service of Human activity at work) qui vise à étudier l’impact de la mise en œuvre de dispositifs collaboratifs intelligents tels que les cobots dans le cadre des défis de l’industrie du futur.

Qu’est-ce qu’un cobot ?

Le terme cobot est créé par la contraction des termes anglais « collaborative » et « robot ». La paternité en est attribuée à des universitaires états-uniennes qui cherchent à la fois à limiter les troubles musculosquelettiques et à améliorer la productivité dans des usines de production automobile – Ford et General Motors.

Un robot collaboratif est un robot qui peut être installé dans le même espace de travail que les opérateurs humains, sans barrière de protection physique. Ils sont équipés de capteurs et de programmes déclenchant un ralentissement du mouvement ou un arrêt complet si un risque de collision est détecté. Ils sont capables de réaliser la plupart des opérations industrielles – visser, percer, poncer, souder.

Les cobots ne sont pas conçus pour des usages prédéfinis. Ils sont caractérisés avant tout par leur flexibilité. Facilement programmables grâce à des interfaces accessibles sur des tablettes, ils sont faciles à déplacer. Ils peuvent aussi bien mettre des produits cosmétiques dans des cartons, que faire du contrôle qualité à l’aide d’une caméra en bout de chaîne de production ou souder des pièces métalliques.

Marché multiplié par quatre d’ici 2030

Les cobots ne sont plus de simples prototypes de laboratoire. Ils sont désormais couramment utilisés dans des usines de toutes tailles et dans divers secteurs – automobile, logistique, santé, agroalimentaire –, bien que leur adoption reste encore loin d’être généralisée. La part des cobots dans les ventes mondiales de robots serait de l’ordre de 3 % et, selon ABI research, le marché des cobots pourrait être multiplié par quatre d’ici 2030.

Courbe
Prévision de croissance du marché mondial des robots collaboratifs (cobots) de 2020 à 2030 en millions de dollars états-uniens. »
Statista et ABI Research, FAL

Les cobots ne visent pas à remplacer les robots traditionnels en raison de plusieurs limitations :

  • Leur charge utile est réduite : leur légèreté et leur petite taille les empêchent de manipuler des objets lourds.

  • Leur vitesse d’exécution est volontairement limitée pour garantir la sécurité des humains qui travaillent autour. Cela freine leur productivité et les rend peu adaptés aux productions à très grande échelle.

  • Installés dans les mêmes espaces que les humains, les cobots soulèvent des problèmes de sécurité lorsqu’ils sont équipés d’outils dangereux – outil coupant ou torche de soudage.

Leur potentiel réside avant tout dans de nouveaux usages et une approche différente de l’automatisation. Ainsi, dans une PME spécialisée dans la tôlerie qui a fait l’objet d’une étude de cas, les soudures sont effectuées par un robot de soudure traditionnel pour les grandes séries récurrentes. Pour les séries de taille moyenne et par des soudeurs pour les petites séries ou des soudures trop complexes, elles sont effectuées par des cobots.

Quatre usages des cobots en usine

Si par définition les cobots ont la possibilité de travailler dans le même espace que des opérateurs humains, leurs usages ne sont pas nécessairement collaboratifs et nos recherches nous ont permis de distinguer quatre configurations.

Projet C-SHIFT, cobots et industrie du futur, de l’Université de Lorraine.
Université de Lorraine, Fourni par l’auteur

Coexistence avec l’humain

À un extrême, les cobots viennent se substituer aux opérateurs pour prendre en charge les gestes les plus pénibles et/ou gagner en productivité. On qualifie cet usage de coexistence, car il n’y a aucune interaction directe avec les humains.

Dans l’industrie automobile, des cobots vissent des pièces sous les véhicules, là où les positions sont particulièrement difficiles pour les opérateurs.




À lire aussi :
Comment rendre les robots plus adaptables aux besoins de leurs collaborateurs humains ?


Configuration simultanée

Dans la configuration simultanée, cobots et opérateurs travaillent ensemble en adaptant mutuellement leurs mouvements, côte à côte ou face à face. Si cette configuration est largement réalisable en laboratoire, elle est assez rare en condition réelle. La raison : le temps nécessaire à sa mise au point et sa certification sécurité obligatoire.

Chez un équipementier, le cobot positionne une colonne de direction pour automobile avec précision, évitant le port de charges et les chocs, et l’opérateur effectue des tâches de vissage sur la pièce.

Configuration alternée

La configuration alternée correspond à une situation où l’opérateur utilise le cobot, mais n’interagit pas directement avec lui. Il le programme pour une série de tâches, et le laisse travailler seul, dans un espace différent. Cette configuration garantit une meilleure sécurité pour l’opérateur humain. Ce dernier optimise la répartition du travail entre ce qu’il confie au cobot et ce qu’il continue de faire lui-même.

Chez un fabricant d’échangeurs thermiques pour la production de gaz industriels, les soudeurs délèguent aux cobots les soudures les plus simples et se concentrent sur des soudures plus complexes ou moins répétitives.

Configuration flexible

Dans la configuration flexible, la répartition du travail entre humains et cobots évolue au cours du temps, en fonction du plan de charge. Une fois la technologie maîtrisée, les cobots peuvent être réaffectés à différentes activités en fonction des exigences du moment. Le même cobot peut être utilisé pendant une période pour une activité de chargement de machines, puis réoutillé, il peut servir pour du ponçage, puis des opérations de peinture, etc.

L’efficacité réside dans la capacité des opérateurs, des techniciens et des ingénieurs à travailler ensemble pour inventer constamment de nouveaux usages. Cette configuration semble particulièrement adaptée à des PME dans lesquelles les séries sont courtes et variables.

Cobots et IA

Les cobots font partie d’un vaste mouvement technologique. Le contexte de l’industrie 5.0 et l’utilisation croissante de l’IA permettront aux cobots d’être encore plus adaptables, voire capables d’improvisation. Ils pourront être intégrés dans des « systèmes cyberphysiques de production », c’est-à-dire des systèmes très intégrés dans lesquels l’informatique contrôle directement les outils de production.

Cette intégration n’est pas évidente à ce stade. Si elle est possible, on peut penser que c’est la capacité à « combler les trous » de l’automatisation traditionnelle qui sera dominante, reléguant la flexibilité et l’aspect collaboratif au second plan. Inversement, le recours à l’intelligence artificielle peut aider au développement de configuration flexible misant sur la collaboration au sein des collectifs de travail.

Si ces évolutions technologiques ouvrent de nombreux possibles, elles laissent ouverte la question des usages en contexte réel. Les tendances futures dépendront des choix qui seront faits en termes de division du travail et de compétences.

Les configurations dites coexistence et activité simultanée ont finalement peu d’implications sur l’évolution des compétences ou de modalités de collaboration entre ingénieurs, techniciens et opérateurs. À l’inverse, le choix des configurations flexible ou activité alternée suppose que les opérateurs développent de nouvelles compétences, notamment en programmation, et que de nouvelles formes de collaboration verticales se développent.

En d’autres termes, les cobots redistribuent moins les cartes en matière de collaboration homme-machine qu’ils n’invitent à revoir les logiques de collaborations entre humains au sein des organisations.

The Conversation

Thierry Colin a bénéficié d’une aide de l’Initiative d’Excellence Lorraine (LUE) au titre du programme France 2030, portant la référence ANR-15-IDEX-04-LUE. Il a aussi bénéficié d’une aide de l’ANACT dans le cadre de son AMI “Prospective pour accompagner la transition des systèmes de travail”

Benoît Grasser a bénéficié d’une aide de l’Initiative d’Excellence Lorraine (LUE) au titre du programme France 2030, portant la référence ANR-15-IDEX-04-LUE. Il a aussi bénéficié d’une aide de l’ANACT dans le cadre de son AMI « Prospective pour accompagner la transition des systèmes de travail ».

ref. Les robots collaboratifs, des collègues de travail comme les autres ? – https://theconversation.com/les-robots-collaboratifs-des-collegues-de-travail-comme-les-autres-260231

The War of the Bucket: What one medieval battle tells us about history and myth

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Kenneth Bartlett, Professor, Department of History, University of Toronto

A depiction of the War of the Bucket with victorious Modenese troops toting the bucket taken from the rival city of Bologna. (Museum of the History of Bologna)

Se non è vero, è ben trovato (even if it isn’t true, it makes a good story). This traditional Italian observation reflects a good deal of human history.

One such colourful event was the 14th-century War of the Bucket between the Italian cities of Bologna and Modena. The story is that after years of tension, a group of Modenese entered Bologna and stole the bucket from the town well.

The Bolognese demanded its return, but the ruler of Modena refused, and war ensued, culminating in the Modenese victory at the Battle of Zappolino in 1325.

It is an engaging story, but is it fact?

The reality is that the two cities were on either side of an ideological division that characterized the northern Italian states from the early 12th century. At the root of the conflict was a struggle for power and authority over Europe that pitted the Holy Roman Empire against the papacy.

The Guelphs and Ghibellines

a medieval era painting of two sets of men facing each other on a city street brandishing swords and pointing guns at each other.
Depiction of a 14th-century fight between Guelph and Ghibelline factions in Bologna, from the ‘Croniche di Luccha’ by Italian author Giovanni Sercambi.
(Giovanni Sercambi)

After the collapse of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century, Italy was a mosaic of small states trying to defend their territory while attempting to expand at the expense of their neighbours.

Rulers of city states sought alliances with powers who could defend and legitimize their rule. But who had the power to grant the right to rule in these often unstable, violent times?

One claimant was the Holy Roman Emperor, who claimed the authority of the ancient Roman Empire after the coronation of Charlemagne in St. Peter’s Basilica in 800 CE.

The other was the pope, who claimed universal dominion over Christendom as the heir of St. Peter, Christ’s vicar on Earth and the legal recipient of Roman imperial authority.

The papacy’s legal claim was based on one of history’s greatest forgeries: the Donation of Constantine. This was purported to be a document that Constantine I, the first Christian emperor of Rome, issued to Pope Sylvester I before the emperor moved his capital to Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) in 330 CE. It granted full imperial authority to the pope in gratitude for curing the emperor of leprosy and his role in leading a Latin Christian empire in the West.

Although there is no evidence of the donation existing before the eighth century, it was widely accepted. It was not proven to be a forgery until the mid-15th century when Italian scholar and priest Lorenzo Valla revealed it to be fraudulent through textual analysis. Nevertheless, it was still referenced well into the 16th century, including in the Sala di Costantino (Hall of Constantine) at the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican.

Those who saw ultimate authority in the papacy were called Guelphs, an Italianization of the House of Welf, who thwarted claimants to the imperial throne. Those who supported the Holy Roman Emperors were called Ghibellines, another Italianization of a German word: Waiblingen, the name of the castle and the battle cry of the House of Hohenstaufen, the family that most seriously threatened the papacy in the 12th century.

This ideological division was not only an abstract reflection of divergent concepts of sovereignty. It was a practical division often determined by class, geography, events and opportunity. If your enemy was a Guelph, you were a Ghibelline; if a usurper overthrew a rival who was Ghibelline, he claimed to be Guelph, generating immediate support from within and outside the city.

a large renaissance fresco with many characters in a large room. On the left a seated man in papal cassock is handed a gold figurine by a kneeling man.
The ‘Donation of Constantine’ in the Apostolic Palace, painted by assistants of the Renaissance-era Italian painter Raphael between 1520-1524. The painting depicts a kneeling Emperor Constantine offering Pope Sylvester authority over the Western Roman Empire.
(Vatican Museums)

The War of the Bucket

This struggle between the Guelphs and Ghibellines was the real issue in the Bucket War. Bologna was a leading Guelph city, later forming part of the Papal States and guarding passes through the Apennine Mountains of Italy. Modena was a state that depended on support from the Holy Roman emperors, who had entered Italy and granted authority to their supporters.

As two cities on the edges of this divide, tension was inevitable, leading to the story of the purloined bucket. But the reality was much deeper and more dangerous.

A far more likely cause of the war was not the theft of a bucket but the capture of the Bolognese fortress of Monteveglio by Modena in September 1325, a serious threat to Bolognese defenses and a reason to seek redress.

A photo of an old wooden bucket with a metal handle
The stolen bucket on display at the Palazzo Comunale in Modena.
(Palazzo Comunale di Modena)

After years of border incursions, the capture of Monteveglio was the final straw. Two cities and their rival world views were in conflict, so every small victory was celebrated.

In November 1325, a greatly outnumbered Modenese army met the Bolognese at Zappolino. The pope had excommunicated the Modenese leader, declaring him a rebel against God.

The Bolognese had superior numbers but were largely untrained, whereas the Modenese had professional German soldiers sent by the emperor. The result was a decisive Modenese victory, with many Bolognese casualties.

Such victories often occasion popular mythologies, and the bucket story was one. It is far more likely that the bucket was taken after the battle, not before, and its symbolism was codified in the 17th century with the creation of a mock epic poem by the poet Alessandro Tassoni, La Secchia rapita.

To this day, many people continue to believe the story. In Modena, the original bucket is proudly displayed in the town hall, and a replica in the Ghirlandina Tower of the cathedral, where the original had been kept for centuries.

History and myth are often merely different narrative techniques, and both can be used to stimulate national pride and cohesion and to celebrate events that defined a people. This is the significance of the War of the Bucket, a real war with real causes now characterized by charming, if unlikely, actions of distant but not forgotten ancestors.

The Conversation

Kenneth Bartlett does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

ref. The War of the Bucket: What one medieval battle tells us about history and myth – https://theconversation.com/the-war-of-the-bucket-what-one-medieval-battle-tells-us-about-history-and-myth-264751

Bail reforms across the US have shown that releasing people pretrial doesn’t harm public safety

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Henry F. Fradella, Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Arizona State University

Nine of every 10 detained defendants in the U.S. remain in jail awaiting trial because they cannot pay bail money. AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, File

President Donald Trump recently signed two executive orders targeting “cashless bail,” the policies that permit the release of people arrested for crimes pending trial without requiring them to pay money.

One executive order directs arrestees in Washington, D.C. to be “held in Federal custody to the fullest extent permissible under applicable law.” The other order calls for the withholding of federal funds to states that “substantially eliminated cash bail as a potential condition of pretrial release from custody” for many offenses.

Cashless bail does not mean that everyone is simply released unconditionally to await trial. Instead, judges have the ability to detain people who pose a specific threat to another person or the community. And they can impose conditions on those who are released, including stringent measures like electronic monitoring.

Trump has criticized cashless bail policies for threatening public safety because they can release dangerous people from detention.

As legal and criminal justice scholars, we have studied bail reforms across the United States.

We have found that jurisdictions that reduce reliance on cash bail can maintain public safety. And they can also curtail mass pretrial incarceration that overwhelmingly locks up people who are too poor to afford bail. That includes three jurisdictions that we examine in detail below: Washington, D.C., New Jersey and Illinois.

The rise of bail bonds

Bail is a promise by an accused person to show up at court hearings in exchange for being released from custody pending the resolution of criminal charges.

In many U.S. jurisdictions, however, people pledge money or property as collateral for their pretrial release. But some people are released unconditionally, referred to as release on their own recognizance. Others are denied pretrial release altogether because they pose a risk of flight, a risk of failing to appear, or pose a danger to the community.

Historically, the bail system worked on promises and one’s reputation, not money. Money bail became more common around the turn of the 20th century with the rise of commercial bail bonds, in which a bail bond business would front the bail money, charging the arrestee a portion of the bail amount as a fee.

This created a system in which people with money could buy their pretrial freedom for many crimes – even serious felonies. Conversely, between 60% and 90% of people remained jailed despite the availability of bail bonds. This was not because they were dangerous, but because they lacked the financial resources to come up with the 10% of their bail amount to purchase their pretrial freedom.

The problems with cash bail

On any given day, approximately 664,000 people are locked up in jails in the United States. Only about 30% of these people are serving sentences following criminal convictions. The remaining 70% in jail are awaiting trial.

Typically, this is not because a court has judged them a risk to public safety. And usually it’s not because a judge decided they are unlikely to appear at scheduled court hearings.

Instead, they remain in jail because they cannot pay the money bail that has been set in their cases. This can have serious or even tragic consequences, such as lost homes and jobs, and even suicides. Indeed, suicide is the leading cause of death in jails, and pretrial detainees are six times more likely to die by suicide than those serving jail time after convictions.

A fluorescent sign reads 'bail bonds.'
In 2017, the jailing of people who could not afford bail cost U.S. taxpayers $38 million daily.
AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File

A 2012 study in New York City found that “even when bail is set comparatively low – at $500 or less, as it is in one-third of nonfelony cases – only 15% of defendants are able to come up with the money to avoid jail.” In 2017, the jailing of people who could not afford bail cost taxpayers US$38 million each day – an amount that exceeds $50 million today, adjusted for inflation.

And it has allowed commercial bail businesses – and the nine insurance companies that back the roughly 30 corporations that underwrite more than $14 billion in bail bonds issued each year – to earn profits in excess of $2.4 billion annually.

Conversely, money bail systems allow people with financial means, even those who might be dangerous or pose a genuine risk of flight, to be released because they can afford to post bail.

Bail reform in Washington

Washington abolished cash bail in the early 1990s. The city replaced it with a system that overwhelmingly pairs pretrial release with levels of supervision tied to the risk that a court determines a defendant might pose. As a result, roughly 87% of all people arrested in Washington are released pending trial without needing to pay or pledge any money.

Despite the lack of money bail, the city has experienced high court appearance rates and low reoffending rates. Between 2019 and 2024, 89% of defendants awaiting trial in the city showed up to their scheduled court appearances – and 90% remained arrest-free. Even among those accused of violent offenses, 98% were not rearrested for violent crimes while on pretrial release.

Washington shows that when people are given the tools and reminders they need, they are overwhelmingly likely to comply with court obligations. That includes phone calls, text messages and email reminders about court dates or access to pretrial services. Moreover, these results illustrate that alternatives to cash bail can function effectively, without compromising public safety.

The Illinois and New Jersey experiences

New Jersey overhauled its bail system
in 2017 by virtually eliminating cash bail. The state replaced it with a framework that relies on judicial assessments and pretrial monitoring to decide whether defendants should be detained or released.

Within two years of New Jersey’s bail reforms, the state’s pretrial jail population decreased by roughly 44%. Most notably, the state did this by reducing the number of defendants held in jail for more than a day or two.

This reduction was not accompanied by an increase in failures to appear in court or in new criminal charges.

A recent Drexel University–Boston University study echoed those findings, confirming that the decline in incarceration came without increases in gun violence. The study also found that the number of people held on low bail amounts – $2,500 or less – fell sharply, from more than 12% of the jail population in 2012 to just 0.4% by 2021.

Early data analyses after Illinois eliminated cash bail in September 2023 show that jail populations declined with no uptick in failure-to-appear rates.

Further, violent crime and property crime rates in Cook County have decreased since the law took effect, including a 15% reduction in Chicago.

Broader considerations

In 2024, the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute, analyzed data from 33 cities, comparing 22 that had enacted bail reforms with 11 that had not. The researchers found that there was no relationship between bail reform and crime rates. When combined with the data from Washington, New Jersey and Illinois, it seems clear that jurisdictions can protect public safety while also reducing unnecessary and harmful pretrial detention.

In New Jersey, for example, thousands of people – many from communities of color – were able to remain employed and housed while awaiting trial. Rather than destabilizing people’s lives by unnecessary incarceration, the state contributed to greater stability for them, their families and communities.

The question moving forward is how to build on these successes.

As policymakers consider next steps, these empirically supported results can provide guidance. They provide evidence that cashless bail is not a threat but an opportunity for fairer, smarter justice.

The Conversation

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

ref. Bail reforms across the US have shown that releasing people pretrial doesn’t harm public safety – https://theconversation.com/bail-reforms-across-the-us-have-shown-that-releasing-people-pretrial-doesnt-harm-public-safety-264448

Why journalists are reluctant to call Trump an authoritarian – and why that matters for democracy

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Karrin Vasby Anderson, Professor of Communication Studies, Colorado State University

A free election can still result in authoritarian rule. Photo illustration: Douglas Rissing, iStock/Getty Images Plus

In an authoritarian state, the leader engages in unconstitutional or undemocratic practices for the purpose of consolidating power.

Key components of authoritarianism include rejecting democratic rules; denying the legitimacy of opponents; tolerating or encouraging political violence; and curtailing the civil liberties of opponents.

Since he took office for a second time, President Donald Trump has sent National Guard troops to Los Angeles and Washington, named other cities run by Democrats as targets for military intervention, deployed masked and unidentifiable agents in immigration raids, explicitly threatened the city of Chicago with a military invasion and used government power to persecute his perceived political enemies.

But many journalistic outlets have yet to call him what he is – an authoritarian.

As a political communication scholar, I study how media framing shapes people’s understanding of the world.

Because authoritarianism is most visible in hindsight, people often don’t recognize it until it’s too late. Erica Chenoweth, a Harvard political scientist, notes that when it comes to democratic backsliding, “there are no bright lines … people often find out the world they’re in after the fact.”

That’s why it’s particularly important for journalists to label authoritarians as such when the evidence warrants. In Trump’s case, I believe the U.S. is well past that point.

A group of armed soldiers walk in front of a building on which hangs a large banner of Donald Trump.
Armed National Guard soldiers patrol near the Labor Department in Washington, where a banner of President Donald Trump is displayed, Aug. 26, 2025.
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

Trump’s authoritarianism

Scholars with expertise in authoritarianism have been sounding the alarm about Trump for years.

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s book “How Democracies Die” describes how, during the 2016 campaign and his first presidential term, Trump exhibited the key indicators of authoritarian behavior. He undermined the legitimacy of elections Republicans lost, baselessly described his rivals as criminals, refused to unambiguously condemn violence committed by his supporters, and threatened to punish critics and members of the media.

Levitsky and Ziblatt argue that “no other major presidential candidate in modern U.S. history, including Richard Nixon, has demonstrated such a weak public commitment to constitutional rights and democratic norms.”

That intensified when Trump returned to office in 2025.

Levitsky and Lucan A. Way documented Trump’s “path to American authoritarianism” for the journal Foreign Affairs in early 2025. In March, Levitsky told New York magazine that things were going worse than even he expected, asserting, “We’re pretty screwed.”

Levitsky is not alone in that view. In a February 2025 survey of political scientists conducted by Bright Line Watch – an academic organization that researches democratic health – the percentage of scholars plummeted who said that the U.S. “mostly or fully” meets the standard for democratic health.

That was before Trump, via social media, promised to go to war in Chicago. When asked about his post, Trump said, “We’re not going to war. We’re going to clean up our cities,” but he did not back away from the intent to deploy troops against the wishes of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker.

Pritzker responded to Trump’s post by noting, “This is not a joke. This is not normal.”

On Sept. 7, 2025, New York Times opinion columnist Ezra Klein itemized some of Trump’s authoritarian actions, concluding, “This is not just how authoritarianism happens. This is authoritarianism happening.”

A social media post with President Trump dressed as a character from Apocalypse Now.
President Donald Trump’s Sept. 7 post threatening the city of Chicago with federal intervention.
Truth Social Donald Trump account

What journalists have been saying

Although other opinion journalists like Jamelle Bouie, M. Gessen, Jonathan Chait and nearly every MSNBC anchor have been labeling Trump an authoritarian for some time, much hard news coverage of the Trump administration has not.

When Trump deployed troops to Washington, The Atlantic’s Quinta Jurecic dismissed it as “farcical” and “not a likely prelude to full authoritarian takeover.”

A CNN analysis similarly minimized the action as a “gambit,” a “distraction” and a “neat political trick.” CNN characterized concerns about authoritarianism as “hyperbolic warnings of looming tyranny that circulate all day on liberal media programs — whatever Trump does” and asserted that such reports “don’t really help voters understand what is going on.”

The New York Times’ Aug. 3 story by Peter Baker on Trump’s “tendency to suppress facts he doesn’t like and promote his own version of reality” bore a headline that read “Trump’s Efforts to Control Information Echo an Authoritarian Playbook,” suggesting that his actions were authoritarian without applying the label to Trump directly.

During the April 14, 2025, broadcast of CNN News Central, anchor Jessica Dean spoke with Nikolas Bowie, a Harvard Law School professor participating in a lawsuit against the Trump administration.

Bowie repeatedly called Trump an authoritarian for illegally freezing federal research funding awarded to Harvard.

When Dean noted that the “Trump administration says it’s doing all of this in an effort to combat antisemitism on campus,” Bowie responded that “antisemitism is really just a pretext for what is really an authoritarian attack on higher education.” Federal Judge Allison Burroughs later agreed with that interpretation in her ruling against the Trump administration.

Dean, however, sidestepped that interpretation, saying, “What I’m hearing is you think that enough was done to combat antisemitism, that this is about something else.”

A screenshot of a headline that reads 'Do Trump's D.C. moves echo an authoritarian playbook?'
The headline on a recent NPR story, echoing other journalism outlets’ use of the terms ‘echo’ and ‘authoritarian playbook.’
NPR

Competitive authoritarianism

There are reasons why journalistic outlets may hesitate to identify the “something else” as authoritarianism, or portray it as a looming threat rather than a current danger.

Trump’s propensity to sue journalists, and large media corporations’ decisions to settle even when the law was on their side, have likely made journalists and editors hesitant to describe Trump as an authoritarian.

And the imperative for balance sometimes results in a “both sides-ism” that misrepresents what authoritarianism actually looks like.

When California Gov. Gavin Newsom gave a speech asserting Trump’s military response to immigration protests in California was an assault on democracy, the New York Times covered it, quoting Newsom at length about the danger Trump presented. The article also quoted Republicans who alleged that Newsom’s public health directives during the COVID-19 pandemic made him “the ultimate authoritarian.”

But the particular nature of the authoritarianism the U.S is facing in the 21st century also plays a role.

Levitsky and Way have written about “competitive authoritarianism,” a new version of authoritarianism that doesn’t look like 20th-century fascism.

Many laypeople associate the word authoritarianism with military dictatorships and totalitarian rule. In competitive authoritarian regimes, however, there’s a constant push and pull between democratic and autocratic impulses. Levitsky and Way write that elections are held, but they may not be fair. The authoritarian regime uses power gained democratically to break democratic norms, undermine democratic institutions and tilt the playing field in its own favor.

Constraining free speech

Journalistic norms of independence can pressure even ethical journalists into acquiescence to competitive authoritarianism because they want to avoid looking partisan when all coverage that falls outside the authoritarian’s approved message gets characterized as resistance.

Paramount settled what one free speech advocate described as a “widely derided lawsuit brought by Donald Trump against ’60 Minutes,’” and CBS recently pledged to stop editing recorded interviews on “Face the Nation” after complaints lodged by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

The Paramount and CBS cases suggest that, left unchallenged, a competitive authoritarian leader will use their leverage to influence what should be independent journalism.

Words matter. And how a democratic society responds to its leaders can make the difference between a free society and one in which a leader increasingly suppresses the voices, rights and will of the governed.

The Conversation

Karrin Vasby Anderson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

ref. Why journalists are reluctant to call Trump an authoritarian – and why that matters for democracy – https://theconversation.com/why-journalists-are-reluctant-to-call-trump-an-authoritarian-and-why-that-matters-for-democracy-263778

Social media is teaching children how to use AI. How can teachers keep up?

Source: The Conversation – Canada – By Johanathan Woodworth, Assistant Professor, Education, Mount Saint Vincent University

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how students write essays, practise languages and complete assignments. Teachers are also experimenting with AI for lesson planning, grading and feedback. The pace is so fast that schools, universities and policymakers are struggling to keep up.

What often gets overlooked in this rush is a basic question: how are students and teachers actually learning to use AI?




Read more:
AI in schools — here’s what we need to consider


Right now, most of this learning happens informally. Students trade advice on TikTok or Discord, or even ask ChatGPT for instructions. Teachers swap tips in staff rooms or glean information from LinkedIn discussions.

These networks spread knowledge quickly but unevenly, and they rarely encourage reflection on deeper issues such as bias, surveillance or equity. That is where formal teacher education could make a difference.

Vox looks at how AI is impacting education.

Beyond curiosity

Research shows that educators are under-prepared for AI. A recent study found many lack skills to assess the reliability and ethics of AI tools. Professional development often stops at technical training and neglects wider implications. Meanwhile, uncritical use of AI risks amplifying bias and inequity.

In response, I designed a professional development module within a graduate-level course at Mount Saint Vincent University. Teacher candidates engaged in:

  • Hands-on exploration of AI for feedback and plagiarism detection;
  • Collaborative design of assessments that integrated AI tools;
  • Case analysis of ethical dilemmas in multilingual classrooms.

The goal was not simply to learn how to use AI, but to move from casual experimentation to critical engagement.

Critical thinking for future teachers

During the sessions, patterns quickly emerged. Teacher candidates were enthusiastic about AI to begin with, and remained so. Participants reported a stronger ability to evaluate tools, recognize bias and apply AI thoughtfully.

I also noticed that the language around AI shifted. Initially, teacher candidates were unsure about where to start, but by the end of the sessions, they were confidently using terms like “algorithmic bias” and “informed consent” with confidence.

Teacher candidates increasingly framed AI literacy as professional judgment, connected to pedagogy, cultural responsiveness and their own teacher identity. They saw literacy not only as understanding algorithms but also as making ethical classroom decisions.

The pilot suggests enthusiasm is not the missing ingredient. Structured education gave teacher candidates the tools and vocabulary to think critically about AI.

Inconsistent approaches

These classroom findings mirror broader institutional challenges. Universities worldwide have adopted fragmented policies: some ban AI, others cautiously endorse it and many remain vague. This inconsistency leads to confusion and mistrust.

Alongside my colleague Emily Ballantyne, we examined how AI policy frameworks can be adapted for Canadian higher education. Faculty recognized AI’s potential but voiced concerns about equity, academic integrity and workload.

We proposed a model that introduced a “relational and affective” dimension, emphasizing that AI affects trust and the dynamics of teaching relationships, not only efficiency. In practice, this means that AI not only changes how assignments are completed, but also reshapes the ways students and instructors relate to one another in class and beyond.

Put differently, integrating AI in classrooms reshapes how students and teachers relate, and how educators perceive their own professional roles.

When institutions avoid setting clear policies, individual instructors are left to act as ad hoc ethicists without institutional backing.

Embedding AI literacy

Clear policies alone are not enough. For AI to genuinely support teaching and learning, institutions must also invest in building the knowledge and habits that sustain critical use. Policy frameworks provide direction, but their value depends on how they shape daily practice in classrooms.

  1. Teacher education must lead on AI literacy. If AI reshapes reading, writing and assessment, it cannot remain an optional workshop. Programs must integrate AI literacy into curricula and outcomes.

  2. Policies must be clear and practical. Teacher candidates repeatedly asked: “What does the university expect?” Institutions should distinguish between misuse (ghostwriting) and valid uses (feedback support), as recent research recommends.

  3. Learning communities matter. AI knowledge is not mastered once and forgotten; it evolves as tools and norms change. Faculty circles, curated repositories and interdisciplinary hubs can help teachers share strategies and debate ethical dilemmas.

  4. Equity must be central. AI tools embed biases from their training data and often disadvantage multilingual learners. Institutions should conduct equity audits and align adoption with accessibility standards.

Supporting students and teachers

Public debates about AI in classrooms often swing between two extremes: excitement about innovation or fear of cheating. Neither captures the complexity of how students and teachers are actually learning AI.

Informal learning networks are powerful but incomplete. They spread quick tips, but rarely cultivate ethical reasoning. Formal teacher education can step in to guide, deepen and equalize these skills.

When teachers gain structured opportunities to explore AI, they shift from passive adopters to active shapers of technology. This shift matters because it ensures educators are not merely responding to technological change, but actively directing how AI is used to support equity, pedagogy and student learning.

That is the kind of agency education systems must nurture if AI is to serve, rather than undermine, learning.

The Conversation

Johanathan Woodworth does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

ref. Social media is teaching children how to use AI. How can teachers keep up? – https://theconversation.com/social-media-is-teaching-children-how-to-use-ai-how-can-teachers-keep-up-264727

Where does your glass come from?

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Aki Ishida, Professor and Director, College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Design, Washington University in St. Louis

Visitors get the sensation of floating above Manhattan at the Summit at One Vanderbilt. These rooms are built with low-iron glass, made with ultrapure silica sand. Benno Schwinghammer/picture alliance via Getty Images

The word “local” has become synonymous with sustainability, whether it’s food, clothes or the materials used to construct buildings. But while consumers can probably go to a local lumberyard to buy lumber from sustainably grown trees cut at nearby sawmills, no one asks for local glass.

If they did, it would be hard to give an answer.

The raw materials that go into glass – silica sand, soda ash and limestone – are natural, but the sources of those materials are rarely known to the buyer.

The process by which sand becomes sheets of glass is often far from transparent. The sand, which makes up over 70% of glass, could come from a faraway riverbed, lakeshore or inland limestone outcrop. Sand with at least 95% silica content is called silica sand, and only the purest is suitable for architectural glass production. Such sand is found in limited areas.

Rock formations stick up from sandy ground next to a lake
Klondike Park, outside St. Louis, was once a mine for St. Peter sandstone, used in glass production. This is one of the few U.S. locations with 99% pure silica.
Aki Ishida

If the glass is colorless, its potential sources are even more limited, because colorless low-iron glass – popularized by Apple’s flagship stores and luxury towers around the world – requires 99% pure silica sand.

Glass production in Venice

The mysteries of glass production have historic precedent that can be traced back to trade secrets of the Venetian Empire.

Venice, particularly the island of Murano, became the center for glass production largely due to its strategic location for importing raw materials and production know-how and exporting coveted glass objects.

From the 11th to the 16th centuries, the secrets of glassmaking were protected by the Venetians until three glassmakers were smuggled out by King Louis XIV of France, who applied the technology to create the Palace of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors.

A large hall lined with mirrors, with a painted ceiling, statutes and large chandeliers.
The Palace of Versailles’ famed Hall of Mirrors was made by glass artisans trained by the Venetians.
Myrabella/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

Venice was an otherwise unlikely location for glassmaking.

Neither the primary materials of sand and soda ash (sodium carbonate) nor the firewood for the medieval Venetian glassmakers were found in the city’s immediate vicinity. They were transported from the riverbeds of the Ticino River in Switzerland and the Agide River, which flows from the Austria-Switzerland border to the Adriatic Sea south of Venice. Soda ash, which is needed to lower the melting point of silica sand, was brought from Syria and Egypt.

So Venetian glass production was not local; it was dependent on precious resources imported from afar on ships.

An engraving of people working on glass factory, with a large furnace in the center
Glassmaking has been a labor- and fuel-intensive process. This engraving from 1877 shows the production of glass cylinders, which are cut and unrolled to make glass sheets.
L’Illustrazione Italiana, No 51/De Agostini via Getty Images

Rising demand for low-iron, seamless glass

In the past few decades, low-iron glass, known for its colorlessness, has become the contemporary symbol of high-end architecture. The glass appears to disappear.

Low-iron glass is made from ultrapure sand that is low in iron oxide. Iron causes the green tint seen in ordinary glass. In architecture, low-iron glass doesn’t affect the performance – only the appearance. But it is prized.

Two men wearing gloves roll large sheets of clear glass, taller than themselves, on a cart.
Most glass has a greenish tint, caused by iron oxide in the sand. Low-iron glass is more clear, but the ingredients come from exclusive sand mines, which can mean more transportation emissions, particularly for large panels produced in a limited number of factories.
Bluecinema/E+ via Getty Images

In the U.S., this type of sand is found in a few locations, primarily in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois and Missouri, where sand as white and fine as sugar – thus called saccharoidal – is mined from St. Peter sandstone. Other locations where it can be found around the world include Queensland in Australia and parts of China. Less pure sand can be purified by methods such as acid washing or magnetic separation.

Perhaps no corporation has popularized low-iron and seamless glass in architecture more than the technology giant Apple.

Glass has become fundamentally linked with Apple’s products and architecture, including its flagship stores’ expensive and daring experiments in architectural uses of glass.

Apple’s first showroom, completed in Soho in New York in 2002, showcased all-glass stairs that were strengthened with hurricane- and bullet-resistant plastic interlayers sandwiched between five sheets of glass. The treads attach to all glass walls with a hockey puck-size titanium hardware, making both the glass stairs and the shoppers appear to float.

A large glass cube lit up at night with glowing Apple logos on the sides and stairs leading down to the store below.
Apple’s New York flagship store, dubbed the Cube, was built in 2006 with 90 panels of low-iron glass, then rebuilt in 2011 with 15 panels.
Ben Hider/Getty Images

The company’s iconic flagship store near New York’s Central Park is an all-glass cube measuring 32½ feet (10 meters) on each side and serving as a vestibule to the store below. The first version was completed in 2006 using 90 panels, which was a technical feat. Then, in 2011, Apple reconstructed the cube in the same location, same size, but with only 15 panels, minimizing the number of seams and hardware while maximizing transparency.

Today, low-iron glass has become the standard for high-profile architecture and those who can afford it, including the “pencil towers” in Manhattan’s Billionaires’ Row.

A view of part of the NYC skyline across Central Park, with several skinny towers sticking up on their own.
New high-rises like the supertall towers in New York’s Billionaire’s Row are largely clad floor to ceiling in glass.
Aerial_Views/E+ via Getty Images

Glass’s climate impact

Glass walls common in high-rise buildings today have other drawbacks. They help to heat up the room during increasingly hot summers and contribute to heat loss in winter, increasing dependence on artificial cooling and heating.

The glassmaking process is energy intensive and relies on nonrenewable resources.

To bring sand to its molten state, the furnace must be heated to over 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit (1,500 degrees Celisus) for as long as 50 hours, which requires burning fossil fuels such as natural gas, releasing greenhouse gases. Once heated to that temperature, the furnace runs 24/7 and is rarely shut down.

Glass manufacturer Pilkington shows how glass is made.

The soda ash and limestone also release carbon dioxide during melting. Moreover, glass production requires mining or producing nonrenewable natural resources such as sand, soda ash, lime and fuel. Transporting them further increases emissions.

Production and fabrication of extra-large glass panels rely on specialized equipment and occur only at a limited number of plants in the world, meaning transportation increases the carbon footprint.

Architectural glass is also difficult to recycle, largely due to the labor involved in separating glass from the building assembly.

Although glass is touted as infinitely recyclable, only 6% of architectural glass is downcycled into glass products that require less purity and precision, and almost none is recycled into architectural glass. The rest ends up in landfills.

The increasing demand for glass that is colorless, extra large and seamless contributes to glass’s sustainability problem.

Sand pours through a person's fingers
This 99% pure silica, a sugarlike sand, comes from a St. Peter sandstone mine once used for glassmaking. It’s now Klondike Park in St. Charles County, Mo.
Aki Ishida

How can we make glass more sustainable?

There are ways to reduce glass’s environmental footprint.

Researchers and companies are working on new types of glass that could lower its climate impact, such as using materials that lower the amount of heat necessary to make glass. Replacing natural gas, typically used in glassmaking, with less-polluting power sources can also reduce emissions.

Low-e coatings, a thin coat of silver sprayed onto a glass surface, can help reduce the amount of heat that reaches a building’s interior by reflecting both the visible light and heat, but the coating can’t fully eliminate solar heat gain.

People can also alter their standards and accept smaller and less ultraclear panels. Think of the green tint not as impure but natural.

The Conversation

Aki Ishida does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

ref. Where does your glass come from? – https://theconversation.com/where-does-your-glass-come-from-263421

How does AI affect how we learn? A cognitive psychologist explains why you learn when the work is hard

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Brian W. Stone, Associate Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Boise State University

When OpenAI released “study mode” in July 2025, the company touted ChatGPT’s educational benefits. “When ChatGPT is prompted to teach or tutor, it can significantly improve academic performance,” the company’s vice president of education told reporters at the product’s launch. But any dedicated teacher would be right to wonder: Is this just marketing, or does scholarly research really support such claims?

While generative AI tools are moving into classrooms at lightning speed, robust research on the question at hand hasn’t moved nearly as fast. Some early studies have shown benefits for certain groups such as computer programming students and English language learners. And there have been a number of other optimistic studies on AI in education, such as one published in the journal Nature in May 2025 suggesting that chatbots may aid learning and higher-order thinking. But scholars in the field have pointed to significant methodological weaknesses in many of these research papers.

Other studies have painted a grimmer picture, suggesting that AI may impair performance or cognitive abilities such as critical thinking skills. One paper showed that the more a student used ChatGPT while learning, the worse they did later on similar tasks when ChatGPT wasn’t available.

In other words, early research is only beginning to scratch the surface of how this technology will truly affect learning and cognition in the long run. Where else can we look for clues? As a cognitive psychologist who has studied how college students are using AI, I have found that my field offers valuable guidance for identifying when AI can be a brain booster and when it risks becoming a brain drain.

Skill comes from effort

Cognitive psychologists have argued that our thoughts and decisions are the result of two processing modes, commonly denoted as System 1 and System 2.

The former is a system of pattern matching, intuition and habit. It is fast and automatic, requiring little conscious attention or cognitive effort. Many of our routine daily activities – getting dressed, making coffee and riding a bike to work or school – fall into this category. System 2, on the other hand, is generally slow and deliberate, requiring more conscious attention and sometimes painful cognitive effort, but often yields more robust outputs.

We need both of these systems, but gaining knowledge and mastering new skills depend heavily on System 2. Struggle, friction and mental effort are crucial to the cognitive work of learning, remembering and strengthening connections in the brain. Every time a confident cyclist gets on a bike, they rely on the hard-won pattern recognition in their System 1 that they previously built up through many hours of effortful System 2 work spent learning to ride. You don’t get mastery and you can’t chunk information efficiently for higher-level processing without first putting in the cognitive effort and strain.

I tell my students the brain is a lot like a muscle: It takes genuine hard work to see gains. Without challenging that muscle, it won’t grow bigger.

What if a machine does the work for you?

Now imagine a robot that accompanies you to the gym and lifts the weights for you, no strain needed on your part. Before long, your own muscles will have atrophied and you’ll become reliant on the robot at home even for simple tasks like moving a heavy box.

AI, used poorly – to complete a quiz or write an essay, say – lets students bypass the very thing they need to develop knowledge and skills. It takes away the mental workout.

Using technology to effectively offload cognitive workouts can have a detrimental effect on learning and memory and can cause people to misread their own understanding or abilities, leading to what psychologists call metacognitive errors. Research has shown that habitually offloading car navigation to GPS may impair spatial memory and that using an external source like Google to answer questions makes people overconfident in their own personal knowledge and memory.

Girl doing school with phone and notebook.
Learning and mastery come from effort, whether that’s done with a powerful chatbot or AI tutor or not, but educators and students need to resist outsourcing that work.
Francesco Carta fotografo via Getty Images

Are there similar risks when students hand off cognitive tasks to AI? One study found that students researching a topic using ChatGPT instead of a traditional web search had lower cognitive load during the task – they didn’t have to think as hard – and produced worse reasoning about the topic they had researched. Surface-level use of AI may mean less cognitive burden in the moment, but this is akin to letting a robot do your gym workout for you. It ultimately leads to poorer thinking skills.

In another study, students using AI to revise their essays scored higher than those revising without AI, often by simply copying and pasting sentences from ChatGPT. But these students showed no more actual knowledge gain or knowledge transfer than their peers who worked without it. The AI group also engaged in fewer rigorous System 2 thinking processes. The authors warn that such “metacognitive laziness” may prompt short-term performance improvements but also lead to the stagnation of long-term skills.

Offloading can be useful once foundations are in place. But those foundations can’t be formed unless your brain does the initial work necessary to encode, connect and understand the issues you’re trying to master.

Using AI to support learning

Returning to the gym metaphor, it may be useful for students to think of AI as a personal trainer who can keep them on task by tracking and scaffolding learning and pushing them to work harder. AI has great potential as a scalable learning tool, an individualized tutor with a vast knowledge base that never sleeps.

AI technology companies are seeking to design just that: the ultimate tutor. In addition to OpenAI’s entry into education, in April 2025 Anthropic released its learning mode for Claude. These models are supposed to engage in Socratic dialogue, to pose questions and provide hints, rather than just giving the answers.

Early research indicates AI tutors can be beneficial but introduce problems as well. For example, one study found high school students reviewing math with ChatGPT performed worse than students who didn’t use AI. Some students used the base version and others a customized tutor version that gave hints without revealing answers. When students took an exam later without AI access, those who’d used base ChatGPT did much worse than a group who’d studied without AI, yet they didn’t realize their performance was worse. Those who’d studied with the tutor bot did no better than students who’d reviewed without AI, but they mistakenly thought they had done better. So AI didn’t help, and it introduced metacognitive errors.

Even as tutor modes are refined and improved, students have to actively select that mode and, for now, also have to play along, deftly providing context and guiding the chatbot away from worthless, low-level questions or sycophancy.

The latter issues may be fixed with better design, system prompts and custom interfaces. But the temptation of using default-mode AI to avoid hard work will continue to be a more fundamental and classic problem of teaching, course design and motivating students to avoid shortcuts that undermine their cognitive workout.

As with other complex technologies such as smartphones, the internet or even writing itself, it will take more time for researchers to fully understand the true range of AI’s effects on cognition and learning. In the end, the picture will likely be a nuanced one that depends heavily on context and use case.

But what we know about learning tells us that deep knowledge and mastery of a skill will always require a genuine cognitive workout – with or without AI.

The Conversation

Brian W. Stone does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

ref. How does AI affect how we learn? A cognitive psychologist explains why you learn when the work is hard – https://theconversation.com/how-does-ai-affect-how-we-learn-a-cognitive-psychologist-explains-why-you-learn-when-the-work-is-hard-262863