Imagine you get a phone call where someone asks, "would you like to be a member of the order of the British empire?" and you're like, "oh yeah, that sounds like a normal thing for an artist/intellectual to be part of, count me in."

Oh. "According to the findings, there is no generally valid coupling between the oxygen content measured by MRI and neuronal activity." www.tum.de/en/news-and-...

Am I in a state of cognitive decline or did transformers not used to be so insanely complicated?

Updating the list of things that terrify our 5yo to include: the dance of the sugar plum fairy.

An academic system run by pensioners? I, uh, I wonder what that would be like. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

The true spirit of Irish Christmas is chatting to an older female relative, and she casually tells you a random family anecdote, and it's the darkest thing you've heard in your life.

My friend the writer and geographer Clive Barnett died four years ago today. I am thinking of his daughters, his partner, all those dear to him, for whom 24 December is so painful. I miss you Clive. I tried to write about your early writings earlier this year eprints.gla.ac.uk/359789/2/359...

Shout-out to the Italians, I guess, for convincing people that expensive stale bread in a box is a Christmas must-have for some reason.

The most telling thing here is that she won't even name the state that is threatening Denmark. The EU elites are completely inadequate to this moment.

Dire article obviously, but it's worth noticing how much we've all moved in about 20 years, such that one of the few outlets friendly to Irish social conservatives - who have no traction at home - is *the guardian.*

Letting hunger strikers die, arresting Greta Thunberg — this is not incompetence or even indifference. The UK state is deliberately making examples of people to ramp up the crushing of basic civil liberties and silence opposition to genocide

Fond memories of the time Banksy did a mural on a house in our neighborhood in Bristol, and within ~48 hours the owner/landlord had dismantled half the house with heavy construction equipment so he could sell it on. Really makes you think!

We need a position that's extremely anti AI but also very anti academics making a fetish out of 19th/20th century knowledge infrastructures & practices.

Important to realise that one of Alice Sullivan's demands in her legal letter to University of Bristol is for the university to withdraw its Trans Inclusion Policy profalices.co.uk/wp-content/u... (the policy is already listed as under review by the university www.bristol.ac.uk/inclusion/lg...)

Still waiting for the account that situates the ongoing role of sociology in the UK anti-gender movement as a major moral and epistemic crisis for the discipline. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Lol. I mean I know it's the imperial war museum, but come on. Have some respect for yourselves if nothing else.

Strong start to the solstice

Anyway, if you were thinking of taking two under-6s to hamleys on regent st, on the last Saturday before Christmas, my advice would be don't.

I genuinely think these schemes are worse than useless. The tiny scale, and the temporary nature of what's offered, make them look opportunistic more to hang anything. Also why specify the USA of all places where academic freedom is challenged? uni-freiburg.de/frias/call-f...

Folks, I've been in London for 24 hours and can confirm that Guinness is indeed now the drink of choice for your standard-issue London corporate gobshite. Choose your stout accordingly. #speirgorm

Very delighted to announce this news as one of the biggest pleasures I’ve had in moving to UCC has been working with Des and everyone else at the Lab, it’s a very special group of people!

Genuinely sorry to do a "delighted to announce" while the world is in such a state, but anyway, @lauramca.bsky.social are now the co-directors of @radhumslab.bsky.social and I'm actually delighted about it. Lots of very cool stuff incoming. Look out for more vomit-inducing announcements in 2026! 🥳🤮

People in Britain marched in support of Irish hunger strikers. Least we could do...

Every UK academic has an out of office on that's like, I'm on strike and I'm dying of lurgy, piss off [paraphrase]

Personally I prefer to work through my sense of professional underachievement the old-fashioned way, ie with a slim, cruelly revelatory memoir of my early childhood.

The holiday reading for xmas trip to the big smoke (London obvs, not "Dublin").

Hashtag Judith Butler obviously, but I'm really struck by the dynamics of public/collective grief around celebrity death atm, and what these outpourings are actually doing in an age of reinvigorated mass public killing.

Let's all keep each other accountable, ok? And if you are a researcher at UCC and you observe or are encouraged to engage in such activities, there are process in place for confidentially reporting violations of academic integrity and research misconduct. www.ucc.ie/en/research/...

I just rewatched the video of Soul Asylum's 'Runaway train' for a thing I'm writing, and Jesus Christ, it's a miracle that anyone who was a teenager in the 90s is even half normal.

Genuinely I think the story here is that it's impossible to work at an elite university for any length of time and ultimately have good politics/be a good person. www.thenation.com/article/soci...

Update !

Delighted to receive this in the post - 'Bigfooters and Scientific Inquiry' by @drjamielewis.bsky.social and Andy Bartlett. This book is in the finest STS tradition of showing how an apparently marginal or obscure scientific practice opens up an entire epistemological world.

My kids love everything about K-Pop Demon Hunters, except the actual film, K-Pop Demon Hunters, which terrifies them.

Worth reading Wolfgang Streeck on the politics of Germany's "intensifying pro-Israelism," with particular reference to the disgraceful role of its social science establishment in general and Jürgen Habermas in particular. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

Fascinated to learn that the principle victim of Wendy Larner's massive programme of job cuts at Cardiff is... Wendy Larner. www.timeshighereducation.com/depth/wendy-...

We are having A Sunset at @ucc.ie

For anyone looking for a Christmas present for Scouse friends or family or anyone interested in understanding modern Britain, may I humbly and unsurprisingly suggest that my book might make a good fit! Below is a thread with some extraordinary facts from the book about Liverpool's twentieth-century.

Obviously there's lots of family and work reasons that people can't avoid the US - but who in the name of Christ is still going there for *tourism*?

Writing in the library today!

Very excited to welcome Alan Butler (@alanbutler.info) as the first Arts Council Digital Artist in Residence here at Digital Humanities in @ucc.ie and delighted that he has chosen to share some of his practice with us: www.ucc.ie/en/dah/news/... @uccresearch.bsky.social

I mean, one assumes that FIFA has an ethics code in the same way that the local slaughterhouse has an animal welfare policy, but sure, why not I guess. www.nytimes.com/athletic/687...

We could not be more thrilled at UCC @radhumslab.bsky.social that our brilliant colleague, Dr Eugene Costello, has been awarded a €2m European Research Council Consolidator Grant for his project, "DeepCattle." www.ucc.ie/en/news/2025...

I'm trying hard not to read this poem as straightforwardly colonial, and alas not succeeding. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... #speirgorm

'Over-diagnosis' may have become adopted by the Right, but the experts leading Streeting's review (www.ucl.ac.uk/psychoanalys...) are entirely unlike the economistic, cognitivist ones who worked to deliver Osborne's cuts circa 2011

Genuinely, has there been any serious introspection/rumination across the water vis-a-vis their last-but-one prime minister making her living as a low-rent fascist youtuber?

At a certain point, quite a few countries are going to question the viability of a political union with Germany at its centre.

Big river today

I saw this referenced in a talk last week and bought it instantly for the title alone.

It'd make you nostalgic for the understated dignity and grace of Sepp Blatter though.