iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 3h

For example, something that interests me is that when you visit the average NT stately home, the fact that it had to be sold / donated is often seen as a tragedy & if the family have clung on to a wing then that is a good thing.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 3h

I have wondered how much of it is linked to the class system. One might have thought for most people the breakup of large estates would be seen as a good thing, economically & socially but that would attack one of the fundamental aspects of the class system which seems reflexively popular to most.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 3h

I'm not sure if that is better or worse than the last time I used a laundrette, in Japan, where the entire thing was done through a smart-phone app!

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 3h

Mamod is, incidentally, a recent victim of counterterrorism laws: the solid fuel tablets that were used in recent decades (instead of a meths burner) were regulated out of production in 2024 and the company failed to find a viable workaround. www.world-of-railways.co.uk/news/ban-on-...

world-of-railways.co.uk

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 3h

Yes. I can see all of that

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 3h

Did you know the illiberals have now come for our tiny model steam engines? (Mamod failed to find a workaround and shutdown in 2024 after 80ish years of trading.) www.world-of-railways.co.uk/news/ban-on-...

world-of-railways.co.uk

Ban on solid fuel tablets

World of Railways is the UKs biggest Railway themed website, incorporating British Railway Modelling, Garden Rail, Narrow Gauge World & Traction

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 4h

The thing that interests me is that this is the problem rather than the other way around. I find myself far more annoyed with articles that are overconfident than undersold!

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 4h

I don't think this is usually a problem but it can be when lawyers go so far that they cease providing advice. I spent a lot of time saying that I offer no guarantees but I am almost certain X will happen / won't happen.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 4h

I think there are two related issues: 1) law values accuracy & that means if you say "x can never happen" the word "never" means "0%" not "<0.001%"; 2) there is very little certainty in law & few absolutes meaning to be accurate you have to hedge "x can never usually happen" etc.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 17h

I didn't realise they had so many members! (And so many members who would put up with this rather than just go and look at the Sutton Ho collection again!)

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 18h

I hope you are visiting the Cité du Train!

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 19h

This reminds me me of the close of Larkin's Arundel Tomb 😉 ... The stone fidelity They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almost-instinct almost true: What will survive of us is love.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 19h

As a lawyer, who mostly hedges, almost all of the time. I feel somewhat unreasonably targeted by at least, but not exclusively, the first one.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 20h

I guess we need to examine the record of H'Angus the Monkey again! Incidentally, I do feel that the arguments in favour of compulsory voting are most points of principle dressed up as utilitarian ones. Does Australia actually have better politicians because of it?

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 20h

Wouldn't it, in the UK context, result in a lot of spoof candidates doing well, and probably getting elected in local elections?

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 23h

What could I contribute to this? Perhaps I might start with Rabbi Shimon ben Gamliel writing two millennia ago: “I have found nothing better for a person than silence. Study is not the most important thing, but actions; whoever indulges in too many words brings about sin.”

sefaria.org

Pirkei Avot 1:17 | Sefaria Library

Shimon, his son, used to say: all my days I grew up among the sages, and I have found nothing better for a person than silence. Study is not the most important...

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 23h

A regrettable feature about this site is that when my feed blows up with people discussing Anglo-Judaism, it is always in relation to a single topic. Like the four children, some takes are wise, some are wicked, some are simple & some are broadcasting for people who don’t know how to ask.

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Reposted by Jacob Gifford Head

Joumana Medlej @majnouna.com · 06/10/2026

Good morning! After years of wanting to do this, I'm finally releasing my first print edition done in the #mokuhanga technique, with my own botanical inks: WELLSPRING, buckthorn lake and white gold. #printmaking Shop: payhip.com/b/7F41j Among the letter ع 'Ayn's many meanings is spring, source,

Frontal shot of a print made up of a stylised letter ayn in yolk-yellow ink with white gold dots, in a round-windowed matte, signed and numbered in pencil.

The same print shown propped up on a wooden shelf, the woodblock plate beside it.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 06/10/2026

Oh, no. Never a good sign when you reach for this card...

Lord Archer may have been a "bloody fool" for attempting to cover up a liaison with a female friend, but he was not a criminal, his barrister said yesterday.

In his closing speech at Archer's trial for perjury at the Old Bailey, Nicholas Purnell QC told the jury: "Being a bloody fool may be a male prerogative. But being a bloody fool does not make you a criminal. It may make you do things you regret."

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 06/10/2026

That's a cool if completely impractical label!

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 06/10/2026

Like the people who inhabit Abbott's 2-dimensional Flatland, the more sides you have the higher your social standing.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 06/10/2026

There's some really beautiful Georgian calligraphy out there!

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 06/10/2026

That might be my mistake not his!

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 06/10/2026

Let us all remind ourselves of this remarkable dicta. www.tbtas.org.uk/wp-content/u...

16. As to culpability, while we of course accept that there is no prohibition on drinking at
lunchtime, any barrister should bear in mind that context matters. It is difficult to conceive
of a situation more likely to cause public disquiet than a barrister engaged in a trial sitting
in the driver’s seat of a car in the Crown Court car park drinking directly from a bottle of
spirits.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 06/10/2026

The other person who spoke who ended up in prison was Max Clifford. I remember more about his talk, though it was mostly gossipy stuff. He was the only person who grandly started by saying it was under Chatham House Rules: an interesting way of impressing a bunch of teenagers, I guess.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 06/10/2026

Due to its location, lots of politicians could be persuaded to come to my school to give talks. One was Lord Archer, who I think spoke in early 1998. I have no memory of what he said at all but it was fascinating to what what happened to him over the next few years: an interesting lesson.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 06/10/2026

Thanks, as always, to Legal Futures for flagging this up.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 06/10/2026

I hope the initial prosecutor has recovered and that there was more cogent evidence for the very serious allegation made against him than appears within the judgment.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 06/10/2026

R. Horne v [2026] EWCA Crim 1226. Day 1: prosecuting counsel had a suspected heart attack in court resulting in defence counsel giving him first aid and preparing a defibrillator & his hospitalisation. Day 2: a new prosecutor is instructed and they carry on. 🤯 www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWC...

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

Sigh. I did wonder. What the enemy bombers never managed, the town planners achieved...

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

The only thing that happened in recent decades which I don't like is that the grand front entrance is no longer open. I hate it when that happens to buildings: I always think there should be other solutions.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

I love the Horniman. Most of their recent work has been top notch, including the rehanging of the ethnology galleries and even smaller things like the replanting of the formal gardens, so I have high hopes for this work too wheb it finishes.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

I'd forgotten that every time I visit for court I usually end up parking in what seems like a bomb-damage site. (Not sure if they are but they remind me of those in central London, of which there are fewer and fewer these days.)

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

Whoever put a crucifix on a box containing a dybbuk deserves any haunting that is coming to them...

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

... X or Y, does it amount to a breach of the Premier League's rules?" Those sorts of arguments are more common on appeals where a lot of the focus is on legal points.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

Not really. These sorts of cases have disputes about law and facts. A factual dispute is something like "does this contract actually represent a legitimate business transaction or not?" That's quite hard to appeal in England for various reasons. A legal dispute is something like "if ManCity did ...

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

I would have thought some sort of legal argument would be more fruitful.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

I think non-lawyers don't quite appreciate how hard "clear factual errors" are to establish in a case like this where I think every point under the sun was taken by competent lawyers. It's is a really tough threshold to meet.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

It's reassuring it didn't go the other way! What you put up with would drive most people to the bottle...

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

I still can't get my head around that brewery being more than a local London one!

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

Hah! My sympathies! Was it 18th Century English poetry or contemporary Southeastern American poetry?

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

It looks great in that setting!

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

I did take a bit of a punt on it because I could find no information about it online and the copy was very firmly shrinkwrapped! Thankfully it wasn't all in Georgian! Nor was it a reprint of the Soviet-era anthology I already own.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

I was very pleased to find this book in Tbilisi since finding anthologies of Georgian literature in translation is about the most painful exercise in online book-shopping known to man! "No, Google, not that Georgia." "No, not that one, either."

The front cover of a book called an Anthology of Georgian Poetry.

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

...against your will were you formed, against your will were you born, against your will you live, against your will you write commentaries on the Pirkei Avot...

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

There's a sad inevitability to the last sentence...

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Jacob Gifford Head @giffordhead.co.uk · 05/10/2026

I don't really know why basically all the flight options to Tbilisi are terrible!

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