Accurate.

Oh good grief, we all look so young.

This is a work of art.

The Most 50 TV Shows of 2024 Yes, that’s not a typo. Or at least, not an accidental one. Lots of newspapers, magazines and websites are currently parading their list of The 50 Best TV Shows of 2024 (spoiler: you haven&#8…

BLOG UPDATE: Enough of the "50 Best TV Shows of 2024" lists. What about the 50 Most Inescapable TV Shows of 2024? The ones you simply can't avoid. Here's the definitive list. brokentv.uk/2024/12/20/t...

Glad to see *that* joke is still going strong: almost as much a New Year's tradition as a concert from Vienna...

Sir Humphrey Appleby - the quintessential civil servant in dark suit, tie and somewhat smug expression - raising a tea cup in the manner of a toast.

...an overall greater measure of satisfaction than would otherwise have been the case?

....with appropriate perspective - to have presented themselves in a manner that you might have found at the very least not to have been at all remotely disagreeable, and even - one might venture to the point - conducive to having produced... (cont.)

...to one's personal preferences, may turn out in such a manner that you, and if relevant and appropriate those whom you would wish to consider your family and friends, may consider them - with full and careful consideration, viewed in the round and... (cont.)

...to your own wishes, intentions and beliefs, a desire and (if I may be so bold) an expectation that the present closing phase of the calendar year, notably the various institutions, traditions and festivals, religious and secular, according of course... (cont.)

In the manner of one of our most distinguished civil service forbears, albeit of the fictional variety, may I just briefly intrude upon your attention to discharge a by-no-means disagreeable obligation by taking this opportunity to express, with all due deference... (cont.)

Two? 1996 and 2020?

Applications for candidates to be the next UK judge of the European Court of Human Rights are now open on the link below, with a closing date of 13 January.

The courtroom of the European Court of Human Rights: a curved brown judicial bench with many blue chairs sits in front of a white wall, with a large blue carpet with twelve gold stars in front of it.

Are you, or do you know, a distinguished lawyer with the highest experience in leadership, collaboration, legal reasoning, and decision-making? We'll soon open the competition to find three exceptional candidates to succeed Tim Eicke KC as ECtHR judge. judicialappointments.gov.uk/applications...

The most inadvertently brutal use of the word “enthusiastically” this whole year.

There’s a lot in there for The Guyliner to get his teeth into. Small plates! A savage 8! An inability to count to three!

Irresistible force meets immovable object: recycling truck with collections to make meets scaffolders' lorry determined to block the road. Phenomenal stand-off ensues.

A group of 20 people, including the author, grouped on a flight of steps and smiling for the camera. They are smartly dressed. There are tall columns and large windows behind them.

The top of a large building in bright sunshine against a blue sky. The building is pale green and dark orange, with tall elegant windows. There is a blue UN flag flying, and the sign says "Palais Wilson".

Geneva, for the second time this year: having run the UK delegation to the Human Rights Committee back in March, it was nice this time for the Committee on Racial Discrimination to concentrate ‘only’ on answering questions in MoJ's remit. Doing it in 32° heat was somewhat less fun.

…and other tough times. It was a jolt, too, to realise that I’ve been back for three years, almost as long as I spent there; and looking through the approval signatures, to remember my first ambassador, the late Christopher Yvon, whom we lost far too young. Where does time go?

This weekend, I cleared out my travel receipts from my time in Strasbourg, having punctiliously kept them just in case someone audited me (they didn’t). It was bittersweet to glance through them: so many fun trips and so much important work, but also so many Covid tests… (cont.)

Say what you will about the Harry Potter franchise (but do so somewhere else, please), but it was surprisingly adorable watching the reactions of groups of foreign teenagers approaching Kings Cross “Platform 9¾” with various shades of shock and excitement.

Even though I’m post here only rarely anyway, I’ll be going quiet for the next six weeks during this outbreak of democracy, barring maybe occasional cake or concert photos over on the ’gram which I’d hope can’t possibly be considered political. Have a nice election, y’all.

Spring must be coming: on this morning's run, I definitely spotted the seasonal emergence of the "oh $#!+ I'm doing that (half) marathon in X weeks" runners. My condolences to their knees.

At this time of year, I don’t know whether I prefer going to work in the dark, when you can’t really see how bad the weather is, or in daylight, when you know for sure.

The great satisfaction of Maidstone United being in FA Cup round 4 is that all those annoying pedants arguing whether or not it was our first time in round 3 (reformed club, you see) can now all comprehensively shut up: this is the first time, ever. And it’s gonna be fun.

“Radio 1 Happy” - yeah, it’s a cruel thing on a Saturday morning - just played Olivia Rodrigo’s “good 4 u”. Great song, sure, but I suspect that someone didn’t listen to the lyrics when programming that: happy‽

A lot more owners seem to tolerate their dogs jumping up at strangers in public these days. Is this a product of people who got dogs during lockdown and never trained them properly? They're sort of social distancing guard dogs whose jobs are now redundant.

But then on the talk page, you have careful debate about whether declaring this as destroyed constitutes original research; what constitutes an authoritative source for the Goat's status; and the need to clarify 'damaged' vs 'destroyed'. Ah, Wikipedia, stay beautiful.

A screenshot of a table on Wikipedia's website, with columns for year, security additions, date of destruction, method of destruction and notes. The rows for 2020 and 2022 record that it survived, with a green background, whereas 2021 records that it was destroyed by fire on 17 December. The 2023 line records the date of destruction as "little by little throughout December", the method of destruction as "eaten by jackdaws" - both on a yellow background - and in notes says, "Due to the straw used to construct the goat containing higher than usual amounts of seed, the goat was severely damaged by flocks of jackdaws foraging for food."

As of right now, the Wikipedia article at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4... records that it *was* destroyed "little by little throughout December" by jackdaws, but gives the row a yellow background rather than the red one used for when it burned.

The Gavle Goat, a large wooden frame in the shape of a long-horned goat standing in a town square with trees and buildings all covered with snow. The goat is adorned with red ribbon, but most of the straw used to build around the frame has been stripped away, some piled around the base of the structure.

I've greatly enjoyed Wikipedia's editors trying to decide whether this year's Gävle Goat has been destroyed or not. This is what it looked like as the New Year dawned, somewhat threadbare thanks to the birds hanging suspiciously around the scene of the crime. 🧵1/3

(I fear it says something about my brain's desire to find patterns everywhere that I find it really satisfying to write 2024 like that.)