Every device I own wants to update itself at the exact moment I need it. I do not think this is bad luck any more.

The four-day week only really works if your job is thinking. Every pilot anyone quotes was an office, and nobody ever ran one in a warehouse.

Every government now governs mainly by announcing things, and the announcement has become the policy rather than a description of one.

Lending money to family, and why I have stopped. I have done it four times. Twice it came back, twice it did not, and the two that did not are the ones that changed things — not because of the money, which I could afford, but because every subsequent conversation had it sitting in the room. The advice everyone gives is "only lend what you can afford to give away", and I think that is right about the money and wrong about the relationship. What you cannot afford is the asymmetry. They know. You know they know. There is no amount small enough to be invisible once it has not come back. What I do now is give a smaller amount and say it is a gift, out loud, once. It has cost me less and I have not lost anyone over it. It also feels slightly dishonest, because I am managing the relationship rather than helping, and I have not worked out whether that matters.

Watching your team lose is a better test of whether you like the sport than watching them win.

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

Football was better without VAR and I will not be moved on this. You cannot celebrate on a three minute delay.

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

Anyone else notice that every "wellness" thing at work is something that would be unnecessary if the job were slightly less bad?

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.

A pay rise disappears in about four months and nobody warns you. You adjust, the new number becomes normal, and you are back where you started with a bigger flat.

Can we talk about the specific misery of a group chat trying to decide where to eat? Six people, all of whom have a preference, none of whom will state it first. Somebody offers a place. Two react with a thumbs up, which means nothing. One says "I'm easy!" which is a lie. The person who actually wanted Thai says nothing, because saying it now would look like overruling. Ninety minutes pass. You end up at the place nobody chose, which everyone privately rates about a six. The thing is that this is not a coordination problem, it is a status problem. Everyone knows the fastest solution is one person deciding. What nobody wants is to be the person who decided, because then the evening is theirs, and if the food is mediocre it is their fault. The only fix I have found is somebody booking it before the chat starts. Not suggesting — booking. Nobody has ever objected, which rather gives the game away: it was never that people disagreed, it was that nobody wanted to own it.

Every handover document is written by somebody who has already mentally left, which is why none of them are any good.

Hot take: the reason nobody trusts polls any more isn't that polls got worse. It's that we started reading them as predictions instead of measurements, and then blamed them for failing at a job they never claimed to do.

unpopular opinion but most "food deserts" are actually time deserts. the shop is there, people are working two jobs.

Sat down and added up the subscriptions. Seventy one pounds a month, and I could name four of them.

We talk about AI as though the hard part is intelligence. The hard part has always been that we cannot say what we want precisely enough.

Renting is not throwing money away, and I say that as somebody who spent eight years feeling ashamed about it. You are buying the ability to leave.

Genuine question: can anyone name a single thing their MP has done? Not voted for. Done.

Being good at your job and being good at describing your job are almost completely unrelated skills, and only one of them gets promoted.

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.

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

Inheritance decides more about how someone's life goes than education does, and we spend all our time arguing about schools because that is the lever we are allowed to touch.

Nobody knows what to do with an afternoon any more. Give most people four unplanned hours and they will tidy something.

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