Ian C. Stephens

Spotify must have a trash ad algorithm because I just got a tequila ad followed by a country music ad on the Super Simple Songs channel.

Prosecutors' Duty To Justice Sometimes Demands Mea Culpa - Law360 Two recent cases — U.S. v. Lucas and U.S. v. Echavarria — demonstrate that prosecutors’ special ethical duty to seek justice can sometimes be in tension with other obligations and incentives, but it n...

I recently published an essay in Law360 ethics in appellate prosecution. With two recent cases, we examine how the prosecutor's special duty to justice demands a different approach to appellate work than other lawyers take and sometimes requires concession.

www.law360.com/articles/236...

The New Zealand Parliament maintains a list of "unparliamentary language" that are disallowed in debate, and I think it's about to be my go-to source of creative insults next time I need to call someone a "fungus farmer."
www.parliament.nz/en/visit-and...

A Centennial Crossroads: Reimagining the U.S. Federal Arbitration Act in the Light of International Commercial Arbitration - Kluwer Arbitration Blog This year marks the 100th anniversary of the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), a statute that has profoundly shaped arbitration not just in the United States, but around the world. As we pause to reflect...

I recently had the privilege to write a post on the @wolterskluwer.com Arbitration Blog with @gjgarciasanchez.bsky.social, previewing our upcoming article. A hundred years from the FAA, now's a great time to look back on how we got to now.

arbitrationblog.kluwerarbitration.com/2025/06/28/a...

I saw a Reel where somebody was explaining how to jump start a car with a chain saw and had to think to myself, "why do you think that I don't have jumper cables but DO have a chain saw?"

I tried to look up the classic Billy and Mandy episode where Mandy misleads Billy into believing that the opposite of cinnamon is frogs and Google AI tried to convince me that the opposite of cinnamon really is frogs.

Hearing "per stirpes" spoken for the first time and realizing that it's pronounced "stir-pees" has really thrown me for a loop.

Pan Am is returning to skies in 2025, and packages start at $65K: What’s included? Longing to return to the airline industry’s “Golden Age” of travel, with spacious seating, in-flight freebies and an open bar? Be prepared to pay for it.

“The flights … will feature lie-flat seats, an open bar”—that seems like a recipe for disaster.

www.kxan.com/news/pan-am-...

I feel like every time someone talks about creating an “everything app” you pretty quickly realize that they’re just proposing to recreate WeChat.

I did a project about this issue years ago and something I still remember was not just how much money was made off athletes, but the danger involved. That they put themselves through such strain and risk of life-altering injury to benefit another really stuck with me. I’ll cheer this outcome.

Over on the other app I tried to use Grok to ask about a particular Twitter feature, because if nothing else that’s what it should be good at. Alas…

One of the quirks of the Texas judiciary is that are our highest criminal court, has "judges." Meanwhile, our intermediate appellate courts have "justices." I'm not aware of other state claiming the topsy-turvy result of judges reviewing justices, and it's incredibly unintuitive.

Restaurant ideas:

A Vietnamese-burger fusion restaurant called Pho-ddruckers

A sandwich and margarita restaurant called SubLime

An ice cream and coffee shop called Cool Beans

I recently sent the final draft of my newest article to the editors of the Gonzaga Law Review who will be publishing it this fall. It offers a solution to the questions left open in a recent landmark Title VII case. I look forward to seeing it in print!

A fun thing about Google Street View is that a lot of it is submitted by people other than Google, and if you look down in the right place you might see a logo left in by the picture taker or even the person taking the picture

I've been lightly interested in for years in how people talk about IQ as if it's a well-established, immutable scientific fact. The truth is it's often arbitrary and varies widely from test to test. Really, our fixation with IQ only reveals our brains' need for categorization.

I just found out that there’s a scam that’s managed to contact every adult in Canada. On the one hand, I could see that as a dystopian indictment of the consequences of the internet. But as an optimist, I choose to respect the hustle.

Putting “Loyalty Day” on May 1st feels … deliberate.

Elon’s been a double agent the whole time.

It’s 700 trillion miles away. No one was ever gonna go check. Just let us dream.

I’m reading Rebecca Allensworth’s, “The Licensing Racket,” right now, and I think this compliments it well.

She talks about similar ideas and points out the tendency to focus on professions that maybe don’t need to be licensed at all while giving a “free pass” to professions like law and medicine.

Reading this article when I *just* learned how to use semicolons properly feels like sitting down at the barber and asking for this haircut.