Weather forecasting got quietly, enormously better and nobody noticed because we only remember the times it was wrong.

Cricket is the only sport where you can go for lunch, come back, and nothing has happened, and that is a feature.

The state of the roads is the most politically radicalising thing in this country and nobody in national politics has noticed.

Most of what psychology published before about 2015 does not replicate, and the field has been much more graceful about admitting it than any other would have been.

Splitting the bill evenly is a tax on whoever ordered the salad, and everyone knows it, and everyone does it anyway because saying so costs more than the difference.

Cash is going and I notice I spend more without it, which is embarrassing but seems to be true of nearly everybody I ask.

Most productivity advice is survivorship bias with a system bolted on. Setting the system up feels like work, which is the whole appeal.

Being late is a decision that your time is worth more than mine. There is no version of it that isn't that, however pleasantly it gets phrased.

Everyone I know who is good with money either earns a lot or was quietly given something early. The budgeting apps are for the rest of us to feel busy with.

I've come round to thinking most productivity advice is just a way of feeling organised for about a week.

Nuclear is the safest energy we have per unit generated, and thirty years of being squeamish about it is a large part of why we are still burning gas.

We will still be typing passwords in ten years. We have been promised their death for two decades and I am still resetting one most weeks.

I have changed my mind about anonymity online, and I want to set out why, because I argued the other side for years. The case I used to make was straightforward. Anonymity protects the vulnerable — whistleblowers, people in hostile countries, anyone whose opinion could cost them a job. Real-name policies were introduced by companies with a commercial interest in identity, and they were sold with a safety argument that the evidence never really supported. All of that is still true and I have not stopped believing any of it. What changed is that I stopped treating anonymity as one thing. There is anonymity from the state, anonymity from your employer, anonymity from other users, and anonymity from the platform itself. These are four different properties. A system can give you the first three and none of the fourth, and for almost everyone that combination is what they actually want. The mistake I was making was arguing about a slider when the real question was who each end of it protects you from. Once I separated them, most of the disagreements I had been having turned out to be people defending different columns of the same table.

Half of what gets called "doing your own research" is reading until you find somebody who already agrees with you and then stopping.

"Just be more confident" ignores that confidence is downstream of having been right in front of people a few times, and nobody can give you that. You can only be handed the room, and whoever is giving the advice is usually the one who decides who gets the room.

The honest reason I have not switched energy supplier, bank or insurer is that it is dull, and the entire industry is built on exactly that.

My handwriting has become genuinely illegible and I only found out because I had to fill in a form in front of somebody.

Everything is a franchise now and the honest reason is that an unknown thing is a risk somebody has to personally sign off on.

Live music is the one thing that has actually got better, and it is because everything else got worse. Nobody can make money from a recording any more so they all have to be able to play.

Owning things is overrated, says the man with a garage he cannot park in.

Getting a GP appointment has become a competitive sport and the people who are worst at sport are the ones who need it most.

Follow the rules that make no sense anyway. The alternative is everybody deciding privately which ones are silly, and that unravels faster than you would think.

The best manager I ever had appeared to do almost nothing. It took me three years to work out that was the job.

Why is every app now trying to be a social network? I want the thing to do the thing.

Polarisation gets the blame, but the lasting damage from social media might be flattening — every subject arrives at the same size, in the same box, with the same three reactions available, whether it is a war or a sandwich.