This seems like the same issue I ran into years ago, with older versions of NR and macOS and on Intel hardware. Nick and I discussed it briefly, without coming to any conclusions, except that it is probably a real thing. Now that I can shut down and restart my system much more quickly than before, I will try some experiments when I have time.
I wonder If I filed my issue in the wrong place, or if it's just me and no one else is seeing this problem? But it seems a serious issue to me:
Hi @RvG
there is an open pull request with a fix for this issue - Fix JSONata in file nodes by kazuhitoyokoi · Pull Request #4246 · node-red/node-red · GitHub
It will get addressed.
Thanks, that's good to read.