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.

Weddings have got completely out of hand and everybody involved seems to be having a worse time than they would at a decent party.

Everyone I know is one broken boiler away from a genuinely bad month and we have all agreed not to bring it up.

Every health app I have tried eventually becomes a thing I am failing at rather than a thing that helps.

Nobody has ever said "we should document this properly" and then documented it properly.

Every awards ceremony is now three hours of people who have already won things being given more things by people who won them earlier.

A cricket match that ends in a draw is a better result than most wins and this is the single hardest thing to explain to anyone who did not grow up with it.

A university degree is now mostly a signal about who your parents were, and only incidentally about what you know. The tell is that employers screen on institution rather than transcript, and institution is set by admissions, which is set by schooling, which is set by money.

T20 made Test cricket better, not worse, and the people who say otherwise have not watched a fourth innings run chase lately.

Reading a hard book slowly is not the same activity as reading an easy book slowly, and treating them as one thing is why reading targets are useless. Counting books is like counting meals — the number is accurate and it tells you almost nothing about whether anything was absorbed.

I have never regretted spending money on a good mattress or decent shoes. Almost everything else I have regretted.

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.

Most "we need better communication" is really "somebody needs to make a decision and nobody wants to be the one who did".

Remote work has made engineering teams worse, and the bit that broke is the part nobody wrote down: juniors learning by overhearing.

Everybody says they want politicians to admit mistakes and everybody punishes the ones who do, and I include myself in that.

Nobody says out loud that getting fitter in your forties is mostly about being willing to be bad at something in public.

Every sport eventually optimises the fun out of itself, because the people playing are trying to win and nobody is trying to make it enjoyable to watch.

Startups are a worse deal for employees than they were ten years ago. Same hours, same risk, a much thinner slice, and the exit that justified it happens far less often.

"Free delivery" is not free and we all know it is not free and we all still pick it, which I think says something slightly embarrassing about all of us.

Living in a city is greener than living in the countryside, which reliably annoys everyone who moved out for the fresh air.

Football fans do not want their club to be successful, they want it to be theirs. That is why every ownership row goes the way it does.

Antibiotic resistance is the slowest emergency we have and being slow is the entire problem. Nothing that takes thirty years to arrive ever gets a budget.

Long covid got dropped from the conversation very abruptly and I do not think anything about it was resolved.

Buying a house is the only serious purchase where you bid against a number nobody will show you, and everyone has agreed to find this normal.

We built an entire economy on the idea that people will keep buying things they already have, and then act surprised when the things are designed to stop working.