Back in the US now but one of the highlights of last week’s trip to Paris was seeing the Hanami cherry blossom festival at Parc de Sceaux. Another one of the glories of Paris in the spring

Funny to read a book published in 2015 and see a line about how remote a Cubs championship feels

Currently reading Sara Paretsky’s Brush Back as part of my read through of her V.I. Warshawski novels, which means soon I will have finished every book in each of three great American female PI novel series – Warshawski, @lauralippman.bsky.social’s Tess Monaghan, & Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Millhone.

Labour’s collapse is morbidly fascinating. I was chatting with a former senior UK civil servant and he was shocked by how much Starmer’s team genuinely doesn’t get it. From my point of view it seems like they have a completely cynical and unrealistic view of the electorate

“The city’s transition away from the car, tho fantastically chaotic, has become a global role model. Under mayor @annehidalgo.bsky.social, Paris was ‘the most influential city in the world’ says Canadian urbanist Brent Toderian. Hidalgo, stepping down after 12 yrs, exulted: ‘The bike beat the car.’”

Up at 6:30am on Easter Monday, a holiday here in Paris. It’s been a wonderful spring break trip and it’s sad to have to leave.

“this person is smart. racism is stupid. therefore this person can’t be racist.” be pretty cool if it worked like that, wouldn’t it

The Pope from Chicago on his South Side

I’ve worked in many different areas of policy in my career - law, finance/treasury, environment, foreign affairs, government performance, economic development - but one consistent animating theme of my work is how important getting systems right is over relying on people to do the right thing

Depluralise a movie: Sliding Jim Morrison

In general I would be much happier with more Shakespearean and other literary references and allusions in media, instead of the general sound and fury

It’s a different Claire (Claire Wilmot) but incredible use of Titus Andronicus in the intro

I’ve gotten a number of responses to this that sum up to “Daryl has a skill issue” and while that may be the case I should say one consistent belief I have is that if you want something to happen then it must not only be possible for skilled users

I’ve always liked the sentiment of “if they can pronounce Tchaikovsky they can pronounce Uzoamaka” and similar variations that people now use online, but let’s be real people are mostly not pronouncing Tchaikovsky or Nietzsche correctly either

Please suggest good sources of malarkey, japes, and whimsy on Bluesky!

I spent this evening at Parc des Princes catching a PSG game with my son, and that was an amazing experience, watching a match that counts and singing along. Plus riding in the Metro afterwards surrounded by happy fans, plus others because it’s Paris and of course the Metro is crowded on Fri night

In the spirit of being the change I wish to see: I am in Paris this week steadfastly ignoring both work and the news; Paris in the the springtime is everything it is hyped up to be. Food, parks, art – it has been all glorious. On Easter weekend, I celebrate the memory of cheeses

Not sure why we’re talking about Bluesky dying but part of that seems to be that Bluesky only has two conversations: 1) U.S. politics; 2) meta conversation about Bluesky

In Paris for the 3rd time in 8 months and it remains a magical city. Also like those previous 2 trips everyone has been really friendly, it’s kind of funny how much has changed since I first came here in 1998

I hope anti-AI sentiment kills the use of the phrase “and honestly” by regular people. I’ve always hated that! Next up: “to be honest”, “not gonna lie”. Please LLMs start using those so regular people stop. (All that said, I do enjoy a British-style “honestly” as an expression of exasperation)

It amuses me that one of the documented cases of overreliance on AI causing health issues was from a guy who replaced salt in his diet based on ChatGPT's advice and got bromism from all the sodium bromide. Guy literally got Na bro toxicity www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Nithya was my college dorm neighbour and it’s amazing to see her advocate for all these measures to grow housing

Within any infrastructure policy sphere, you’ll always find policymakers that really reject design-related solutions. Like they think it’s cheating to get to the outcomes you want as a natural result of how you design the processes and infrastructure instead of through laws and enforcement

As a former MFA diplomat, this is exactly what I would expect to hear from Minister Balakrishnan and from the MFA. We’re trained to take the world as it is, not as we wish to see it

This is quite something from Singapore's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, in an interview with Reuters. The end of the post-war order, diagnosed in technocratic language. www.mfa.gov.sg/newsroom/pre...

I highly recommend OperaVision as a way to watch opera, I’m not particularly equipped to be an opera critic which is part of why I don’t post much about it but I think it’s a good entry point into the art form. Nice mix of classics and newer composers operavision.eu/performances

It's weird how there's been a backlash against "slop" without a corresponding revival in high culture. I see approximately 60,000 posts bemoaning "slop" for every post about opera or ballet or literature above the YA level.

Weirdo remains a classic

I am enjoying the NYT Crossplay game (a takeoff on Scrabble) but I wish there was a Scrabble-type game that let you play words in English, French, and Spanish (or others!) in the same game

Today I had to live code a formula involving a geometric series in Excel in a meeting… good thing I remembered it

In a world where many democrats have embraced pie-in-the-sky middle class tax cuts, leave it to a democratic socialist like Mamdani to seriously engage with budgeting tradeoffs and embrace an efficient broad based property tax increase

Back in 1996 as the equivalent of a high school senior I sat for the English S paper, which is basically an advanced A level where I got to design my own syllabus. I had forgotten the full range of books I had chosen for my topic of 1960s American novels, and so asked Claude to prompt my memory

A number of books that shaped me (fiction category, roughly in order of reading) THHGTTG, Adams Love in the Time of Cholera, Garcia Marquez The Bell Jar, Plath Emma, Austen Crying of Lot 49, Pynchon Richard Farina, Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me High Fidelity, Hornby Ulysses, Joyce

Couldn’t stop laughing at this (The Chinese says “There’s no perfect woman in the world. Me:” but really you don’t need it)

I do love the sneering contempt that Left-NIMBYs have for people who are willing to engage with economics and policy, it gives away what this is actually about

This is how you know Bluesky has become too mainstream, it’s now filled with “old man yells at Claude” posts

It’s not even all fossil fuels, this is specifically an oil & gas crisis and calling it that makes the nature of the issue much clearer

Missed this initial post but I just bought this!

Yeah, this one really squares my boobs as a sociologist. Arlie Russell Hochschild made one of the most important contributions to the sociology of labour ever, updating the Marxist concept of alienation for the late 20th century and it got sludged into "I don't want to call my mom."

Robbie Avila really does have the best nicknames in basketball. Cream Abdul-Jabbar. Milk Chamberlain. Shaquille Oatmeal. Magic The Gathering Johnson. The list just goes on.

Nice and easy Friday NYT crossword. 4:55

Austin built 120,000 homes after the pandemic, increasing its supply by almost a third. Rents dropped 4% from 2021 to 2025 — nearly 20% adjusting for inflation. Sorry to Hell Gate and whoever else is mad at Ezra Klein, but building homes brings down rents: www.pew.org/en/research-...

Just once when I ask the parking person for validation, I’d like them to say “you’re a good person and worthy of love”

Happy St. Patrick's Day, New York.

Also and I know this is not the Chic, Cool Leftist position favoured online, but there is a literal, still ongoing Peace Process in Northern Ireland which works on the basis that it is up to the people of Northern Ireland to decide their future, with equal respect for both traditions.

At this point I think I could have a nice side business advising law firms on how to use AI to actually achieve what they want, such as more comprehensive semantic searches for apt real cases to cite. As a bonus, I’ll also teach them how to use AI to spot when opposing counsel is making stuff up

I didn’t like today’s starter word so I’m glad I can retire it and rotate to another suitable starter Wordle 1,732 1/6* 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I never thought i could actually just buy the library KikStep step stool but it’s such a high quality item and would go so nicely with my bookshelves that I’m now tempted

Every time I see a reference to Limerick Generating Station I imagine a power plant that can generate 5-line AABBA humorous poems en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limeric...

HOTSPUR: By heaven, [Tudor] thinks it were an easy leap / To pluck bright honour from the pale-faced moon