Constitutional unconstitutionalism

I’m pretty tired, so I won’t dive into the big thing of the week—constitutional unconstitutionalism is what I’ve been calling it, and yes, sure, in a formal legal sense this is probably permissible, and yes, sure, there’s good political theory in favour of (at least some degree of) parliamentary supremacy (though there’s also good stuff in favour of judicial review! there are no absolutes!), and yes, of course, it’d be great if kids could be in school, but this is a chilling attack on labour, which makes pretty much everything possible, so it’s right to be up in arms, and it’s well past time for workers to get their due. Each of those breathless sentence segments warrants at least a paragraph of its own, but that’ll (have to) do for today.

• This piece on socially acceptable anxiety came at a great time. As a friend at work put it, “it must suck to think so much, about everything”, and, whew, were they ever right. Sometimes, alas, we can’t simply think our way out of things—that does suck, but it’s an important start to recognize it, and flow accordingly.
• Craig Mod walks a lot. This week, he reiterated his key tips for a good walk.
• brr is a delightful blog, chronicling the author’s experience leading up to and during their (currently ongoing) placement as an IT tech in ANTARCTICA. It’s great fun—very cool, you might say. I liked: “Hut Point!” for an example of the small rules and incredible amount of cooperation and planning that enable a year-round village at the end of the world; “Onboarding Timeline” for an overview of the many (MANY) overlapping approval and clearance processes; and, well, all the posts—there’s so much to learn, and I’m looking forward to more!
• Some fine folks have filed a class-action lawsuit over GitHub Copilot, the automagic code completion (writing!) tool that’s taken developers by storm. As the accompanying background investigation discusses, this has potentially enormous implications for questions of “fair use” and open source code—an area with relatively little case law to date. Matthew Butterick, co-leading the case, noted his initial legal misgivings about Copilot earlier this year.
• Oh wait, ha! You thought I was really just going to do a breathless mini-rant about shutting down labour, without at least one related link? As some scholars at Active History remind us, it’s thanks to a labour strike that we have—checks notes—widespread maternity leave (which has since evolved into parental leave). One way or another, this week has been the start of something big.

Ooooookay—all the best for the week ahead! Particularly to those on the picket lines.

Lucas