CN at home. NG in chambers. Lord know what that says about me.

Being a good parent is exhausting sometimes. Particularly when ep 1 of Murderbot drops and you’ve promised your daughter you’ll watch it together when her A levels are done. Almost a month from now.

Alongside the other billion and one reasons why my daughter is fabulous is telling me about this screensaver. That I’ve never noticed it before is mortifying. But as a 35-year Mac veteran, all the way back to System 6, this is Clarus-level joy for me. #hiChicago

Clearly a cat problem. Not a "my cat" problem.

I wish I was surprised.
I realise they’re probably dirt cheap. But businesses that use Evri are telling a story about how much they value their reputation, and our custom. I’ll be happy to pay close attention to that story in future.

New life rule.
If I buy something from you and you ship it to me via #Evri (and don't give me an alternative), I won't buy from you again.
Twice in two weeks an Evri delivery has been left somewhere utterly stupid. The first time, it was stolen. The second, thankfully not. Never again.

The hardest working font in Manhattan A story of a 150-year-old font you have never heard of – and one you probably saw earlier today.

Nothing I’ve ever done screams “nerd” quite as loudly as the fact I’ve just read this inordinately long piece about a font from top to bottom.
Still recommend it, though. It’s lovely. The font AND the piece.
(Thanks to the wonderful statusq.org for the link.)

aresluna.org/the-hardest-...

French train passenger fined €150 for using phone on speaker A passenger on the French rail network SNCF has revealed that he received a €150 fine for using his phone on loud speaker within a train station.

am I a bad person for being onboard (sorry) with this?
www.thelocal.fr/20250206/fre...

2025ii4, Tuesday: Fruit. We often think of the roads less travelled in our lives. More often than we might think, that phrase should end with the word "yet" - my becoming a barrister in my 40s is testament to that. (And somet...

Interesting work from @danneidle.bsky.social and taxpolicy.org.uk on Companies House failings has prompted thoughts on broader strict liability "control offences" - and a spot of personal history to boot. www.jcsj.uk/2025ii4-tues...

Who Flourishes Because You Have Power? Theologically, I've always had an ambivalent relationship with power.

This resonates. Loud and clear. A key question, always.
open.substack.com/pub/richardb...

Mornings like this - crisp and clear, with the light just the right shade of gold on the water - make it such a privilege to work in this city. The walk from fenchurch street to the temple along the Thames path is a blessing. Especially now there’s no more need to detour along upper Thames street.

Wow.

Gang Starr & Branford Marsalis / Jazz Thing (Instrumental) / 1990 YouTube video by tw19751

Jason Kottke (that global treasure) took me to the astonishing Questlove mix of SNL music (kottke.org/25/01/questl...). And that led me here... a beloved, multi-handed work of genius which for 35 years has taken me to a place where the soul flies free. A blessing.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJXb...

We're bringing Pebble back! Eight years later, you still can't beat a Pebble

I've still got my Pebble somewhere. Don't really use it. But it was an absolute masterpiece when it came out more than a decade ago. Just wonderful.
So, yes. Of COURSE I've signed up to express interest in buying a new one... repebble.com

2025i26, Sunday: Silk I can't be alone, thank goodness, in taking a particular joy in other people's success. It's great to win, of course. One's own victories are sweet indeed. But I think there's something truly specia...

Two people I care about are to be KCs. Amid my huge delight for them, a few musings on progression - and personal relationships.

www.jcsj.uk/2025i26-sund...

After 35 years of Mac use, there’s always something new to learn. An inadvertent keypress showed me that ctrl-Enter pops up a context menu (at least in Word, Notes, Bear and other text entry situations).
For lovers of keyboard shortcuts, very useful.
(Apologies to those who’ve known it for years!)

This whole thread. And especially this.

That’s beautiful and worthy indeed, Adam. A reminder that faith (in others, in a future worth fighting for), hope and love are the great virtues - and it doesn’t matter whether religion underpins them or not.

I hope it won’t feel rude if I remember you and your mum on Friday. Her echo lives on.

Sure am. Hoping you’ll find your way there one day…

From left to right, I had numbers 2 and 4 at one point… just wonderful.

58 Jazz Musicians Were Photographed for ‘Harlem 1958.' Only One Remains. Art Kane’s “Harlem 1958” gathered giants of the music. Sonny Rollins, 94, looks back at the historic picture.

I always loved this pic. My beloved gave me a poster of it long ago and it stayed on our wall for years. And this story - www.nytimes.com/interactive/... (shared by the great managingeditor.substack.com/about) - sung its soul good and loud. Blessings.

This, from a piece by Tim Goodman about why professionals don’t vote Tory, is hilarious. Unrecognisable in its lack of connection with reality. A picture-perfect example of someone seeing their own biases and mistaking them for the outside world.

“May have”. Hypothetical nerd purchases are the best nerd purchases.

One of my most firmly-held beliefs is the critical importance of finding beauty in the small things.
The view south-east from the platform at Milton Keynes Central just now. This alone makes the morning a thing to treasure.

The battle around ‘around’ and other awful woolly words The fuzzy meaning space is becoming depressingly overcrowded

Yes, a thousand times yes. “Around” in this usage makes me seethe, too.
www.ft.com/content/b589...

Point. But it could be built into the first appearance which is always going to take place, and perhaps one part of such a reform would be that all such first apps are before a district judge, not a bench.

Your 1 and 3 might combine well - part of the prelim hearing might be to justify the Full Code Test reasoning, for instance. One could still offer privileged advice; but a statement of why a case passes the test could be public, and open to scrutiny and argument.

There’s a place for private prosecution, in a world where the public sector just doesn’t (or can’t) turn up. But better controls, and real and painful sanctions for misconduct, are a must.
As for SJP: only a fundamental rethink (at the very least) will do. Or scrapping it and starting over.

I continue to treasure - honestly! - all the (many) occasions when mine started a sentence with “I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but…” before delivering some devastating, but deserved, critique. All the more effective because genuinely delivered with love and sincerity, and without malice.

Underrated ways to change the world How to get a good heart unstuck

This post ends: “Experimental History is a RUNK in progress.” It is. It absolutely is. (That’s a compliment, btw.)

For those (like me) who didn’t know what a RUNK is - and you’ll want to, it’s a thing with buckets of *positive* explanatory power - read on.

open.substack.com/pub/experime...