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Welcome to Original Jurisdiction, the latest legal publication by me, David Lat. You can learn more about Original Jurisdiction by reading its About page, and you can email me at davidlat@substack.com. This is a reader-supported publication; you can subscribe by clicking here. Thanks! A version of this article originally appeared on Bloomberg Law, part of Bloomberg Industry Group, Inc. (800-372-1033), and is reproduced here with permission. Shortly after the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.

Here’s part of a recent conversation I had with John McWhorter about attempts to increase “racial diversity” in schools by changing the standards for admission. Both John and I find this trend extremely worrisome. Not only does it risk damaging educational institutions by deemphasizing student academic achievement; it delegitimizes the accomplishments of those students who work hard to achieve at a high level. Such a strategy reeks of racism, though not of the kind we’re used hearing about.

This is the second entry in my ongoing “songs that visited me, and decided they wanted to stay” series. Found Out About You - Gin Blossoms (1992) All last summer, in case you don't recall I was yours and you were mine Forget it all Is there a line that I could write That's sad enough to make you cry? And all the lines you wrote to me were lies

This week I was invited to speak to several hundred high school students about the “soul of economics.” I decided to do the entire presentation in memes. Here’s what I said. If I ask “What’s the soul of economics?,” you might be incredulous: “Economics has a soul??” I’m here today to try to convince you that it does. What I mean by “soul” is what the Oxford English Dictionary calls an “essential, fundamental, animating, or vital part or feature of something abstract.

I’m back from parental leave! Sort of! I am / we are still careening around on the Log Flume of Fourth-Trimester Exhaustion, my absolute least-favorite amusement-park ride. But I’ve missed writing this newsletter, and I want to slowly inch my way back in. I’ve been debating how, exactly, to do it. In all honesty, I cannot yet commit to resuming my pre-baby schedule of weekly newsletter posts. But here’s what I can commit to: I will write as often as I can.

Emily Calandrelli, known to many as @TheSpaceGal on social media and host of Emily’s Wonder Lab on Netflix, just published her ninth (!) children’s science book, Stay Curious and Keep Exploring: Next Level. To greet her fans around the country, the MIT engineer is wearing the most fun — and feminine — outfits. Think: Tulle skirts, sparkly shoes, and pearl headbands. Calandrelli has loudly and proudly turned her book tour into a fashion show, too.

I have been writing on various topics from different corners of the world for a while. This morning, as I sat at the table and began to write again, I realized that there are so many specific words about socializing in many cultures. Although it seems very natural for the Mediterranean, northern countries are interested as well, Fika shows it. Socializing is so vital for everyone that special words are formed to represent it.

I opened up the bird feeder to top up the seed and as I did so I heard a rustling in the bushes at my side, turning quickly I could make out a feathery mass in the bush, at shoulder height, so I reached out and parted the branches for a better look. To my utter amazement there was a sparrowhawk struggling, with a sparrow in its clutches, now squawking, tangled in the fine twigs.

There are paragraphs, maybe even whole pages, of The Spear Cuts Through Water that you could show to a longtime fantasy fan, and they would say “Hmm, yes, well written, fun stuff. But what’s so different about it?” But start at the beginning, and you can’t mistake what Simon Jimenez has done for a standard fantasy adventure novel. You can find one within it, sure, but it’s wrapped up in layers of the kind of literary structure you just don’t find in most genre novels.