I count 10 cities in 2025 that are on track to have the fewest murders since at least 1970. Newark is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1956 (though only have data through Oct this year) and San Francisco is on pace to have the fewest murders since 1942.

Today may be setting the new single-day record for most spam emails and texts

Terrifying headline if you don’t realize they are sports teams.

Settling litigation:

From “Child Labor in the United States” by Robert Whaples

Meathead and Spinal Tap

The US economy is imperfect but most people are consuming more than ever before. In general, America is more affordable than ever before. Even the most notable exception - housing - is complicated. Panic over "affordability" is reactionary nostalgia, given a respectable policy veneer.

commodifying excess capacity is good thedailyeconomy.org/article/what...

Viscerally negative and personal reactions to this on Bluesky suggest some folks’ distaste for profit hungry tech bros may distract from assessing prediction markets’ value at making predictions that help a wide variety of people pursuing a wide variety of goals

who decided to call it Secret Santa when Nondisclosure Claus was right there

Great location for 1L study groups:

Introduce yourself with five concerts you’ve seen: James Brown opened by Wilson Pickett The Who opened by the Clash Springsteen Nirvana Melissa Etheridge opened by Jewel

Literally dividing the pie in a way that could maximize total value, which is often metaphorically described as “growing the pie“

Feeling older now

publishing isn’t driven by some kind of shadowy business interest but almost entirely by increasingly cutthroat competition for eyeballs in the attention economy. stories that validate people’s resentment and fear, their pessimism, that predict doom, that tell people they’re victims - they perform

If Nvidia had just stuck to soaps and moisturizers they probably wouldn't be mired in all this mess.

Bought a new computer and spent much of the day typing in six digit codes

Super knowledgeable discussion of Trump 2.0 and beyond by @aaronrosspowell.com @shikhadalmia.bsky.social and @andycraig.bsky.social www.theunpopulist.net/p/america-wi...

Leaf pile < mulch mow 

Incredible work from the president, collecting another $1 trillion from tariffs in less than 10 hours

“Anybody can sue anybody” — good to be reminded of its importance

Running with this analogy, remember when we successfully distracted him for a day by getting him fixated on shower heads? Other bathroom fixtures will likely work too

yeah I actually think the development of a staggering array of new medical procedures and treatments that are vastly more effective than what was available even a decade or two ago is a significant component of material prosperity that greatly improves quality of life, not just a joke

Rule of Law

What drives me absolutely insane about this debate is how claims like “there has been a generational stagnation of purchasing power” have taken on the tenor of religious faith among progressives, and seemingly cannot be disproven with any evidence, no matter how overwhelming. It simply isn’t true!

Housing in metro areas is a real problem. But Will has a point about "affordability," which is really about "affording what you *want*," not what you might need. Health care and housing? Yes, problems. The rest, not so much.

Newly published article on #contracts #consent adhesive #arbitration agreements, incl #comparative discussion of US v EU, UK, Japan contracting away #7thAm & #dueprocess in "jury waiver" forum selection consent-to-jurisdiction #SecuredTransactions papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

What reduces deaths from climate change? Economic growth, much driven by tech—including mobile phones, crop breeding, vaccines, and yes, AI. By Bill Gates  link in comment

National Guard in DC:

European universities starting their fall semesters now makes me wonder how they can start nearly 2 months after US universities yet manage to finish in spring only a week or two after US schools

The AI boom has exposed America’s electricity crisis. Regulators can’t keep up, but entrepreneurs can. New Hampshire just passed a bill freeing off-grid providers to deliver power without the usual bureaucratic roadblocks. Competition and innovation—not monopoly utilities—are the way forward.

(European food + American music) > (American food + European music)

Red Sox are in the Bronx on an October night—good to know with all the craziness in the world that some things continue as they should

Inflation and immigration

A few years ago, my team looked at household sizes around the world. The household size experienced by the average person ranged from 2.7 people (in Germany) to 13.8 people (in Gambia). www.pewresearch.org/religion/201...

"Roughly three-quarters (73%) of H-1B workers whose applications were approved in fiscal 2023 were born in India. A majority of approvals every year since 2010 have gone to workers born in India." www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

Trump's abuses lend additional weight to the great economist Ronald Coase's classic 1959 argument for abolishing the FCC. We don't need a govt agency that licenses broadcasters, and such an agency is inherently dangerous to liberty: reason.com/volokh/2025/...

Listening to Democratic Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro interviewed on a podcast and thinking he sounded more conservative than I would have guessed. Then I realized it was Ben Shapiro being interviewed.

A university distinguished professor of law at the University of Kansas says President Donald Trump's use of tariffs is destroying international trade law and will result in harm to the U.S. economy and global standing. via @kansasreflector.com

I've repeated this quote before, but Stanley Rosen is reputed to have once said in a grad seminar at BU: "You liberal grad students think postmodernism is cute, but just wait until the right gets a hold of it."

Interesting corporate #arbitration post, including a Delaware law that makes me wonder about FAA preemption

#USOpen now is a good match, enjoy

This is one of the rare times I’ll disagree. They definitely imagined Trump. Half the Federalist Papers are about Trump.

Woke up early today and took my coffee out to the deck for something I have not felt in months – – a morning chill

This is why physical media is still so important.

The younger nation is not as wise as the mother country but has the flexibility and energy to learn and adapt and persist

Good morning #SEALS2025! Nice place to present my research on #arbitration agreements in #bankruptcy and other #insolvency cases and to learn about several other areas of law from friends ranging from University of Kansas School of Law colleagues to international visitors

I agree with the first half of this sentence and would like to learn more about the second half