The film about the pop star made $217m globally since last Wednesday. That is huge money, especially with *terrible* reviews. It also implies that the vast majority of people don't think he was ever guilty of any of the allegations made against him, which comes as a surprise to me at least.

Did someone just watch that Take That concert from 15 odd years ago and go 💡? And they think they could charge €25 to go stand beside it??? Gas. Stupid. Get in the sea.

An absolute treat on the @underworldlive.bsky.social mailing list today where they are giving away three legendary mini albums from 2005/2006 in CD quality. You can read about them here.

Today’s Dáil drama is really just a fig leaf covering up Sinn Féin’s indecision during the protests. The vote of no confidence was only called a couple of hours after an external opinion poll told them that 46% of the public blamed the government and 96% of SF voters supported the protesters.

Honestly, fair play to the headline writer from the Indo on this video of a government press event. In case they decide to change it before you see the thumbnail, it reads “Coalition caves with €505m bid to buy off fuel blockade protesters”.

The animation in the new Star Wars: Maul - Shadow Lord show is just astonishing at times. There is a lightsaber battle in the latest episode that is breathtaking. It’s pitched at a teenage audience I’d say but worth checking out none the less.

An instruction I don’t think I’ve ever read before and certainly never followed in my 49 years on the planet.

I think civil disobedience as a form of protest is a good thing. But if you engage in it, you have to expect to be arrested or even jailed for your cause. Five days in to this particular protest there hasn’t been one arrest or blockade cleared. Is the government afraid of its coalition collapsing?

So the lesson I’m taking from the fuel protests is that the government will cave if there is sufficient civil disobedience. Have I got that right?

You know what would be nice? If our government invested so much into wind, solar and wave power technology that we became immune to fossil fuel price shocks. 🤷‍♂️ We have the natural resources, the space and the (Apple 😅) money. And ban the no-jobs, energy and water sapping data centres too. 🙂

RTÉ reported earlier that the fuel price protestors chased PBP people away (who were there to support them them), shouting anti-immigrant stuff at them, which tells you a lot about who’s really organising it all. Meanwhile government sit on their hands because they can’t afford to upset “farmers”.

Or, how about we don’t treat housing as a for-profit business that extracts more than people can afford, leaving them with no quality of life and no savings, trapping them in rent-induced poverty forever?

Re: AI hallucinations. Has anyone actually looked inside one of these vast data centres? Maybe they are just full of vaguely well-read people who have all taken acid and are typing out the results by hand. ChatLSD! I’ll take my €1,000,000 seed capital now please. 💶

The irony being that we’d all probably end up in court if we said publicly what we think about the actions of the people involved in this story. Still, the findings of the tribunal stand even if the DPP won’t act on them. 🤷‍♂️

Vapes: a get out jail free card for the tobacco industry, creating a new generation of nicotine addicts with a new kind of long term lung damage, and now seemingly a major fire hazard on every high street and in every shopping centre. What’s not to like?

The new Harry Styles track reminds me of David Kitt and recent Tame Impala. Take of that what you will.

As good and as thematically relevant today as it ever was. youtu.be/bVZBao3L9kI?...

Bit of a lucky win in the end there for Ireland. Didn’t take some good early chances and let Italy come within one play of a draw. #irevita #6nations

Italy deserved that try. Ireland seeming a little lost over the last 10 minutes. #irevita #6nations

Glad to see that first Irish try finally after squandering a couple of good chances earlier. #irevita #6nations

Some of the most enjoyable comics of my youth were the ones where the plot was pretty tangential to whatever The Big Story of the era was. They could explore an idea or a character without having to worry about how it might affect 100 other story arcs. The Wonder Man TV show feels like this. 👍👍

Sometimes forget just how good this video and performance is. Honestly, hang it in the Louvre.

I’d love to see a journalist owned news outlet in Ireland run to the standards set out below. Maybe a co-op or an employee ownership trust model? It would probably need a friendly multimillionaire to get it off the ground though. 💸

The 3rd point here is probably the least talked about aspect of why AI doesn’t work for business today. I’d argue that the massive failure rate of current AI projects is due to the need for real people to check and correct everything it does. You would fire a person who got so much wrong so often.

Modern feudalism. “Ireland's 11 billionaires are wealthier than 66% of the country's population, according to a new study from Oxfam.”

Both @empiremagazine.bsky.social and @kermodeandmayo.bsky.social podcasts featured Claire Foy / clairvoyant puns. Didn’t see that one coming. 🤷‍♂️

Given how much coverage Those American Idiots got for their baseless claims, it’s worth boosting this story which obviously won’t get nearly as much coverage.

Somewhere in RTÉ there’s a Chemical Brothers loving sub editor who’s just chuffed with this headline. 🙂

I’m glad to see X feeling a little political and legal heat this week, but I have very little faith in either system to hold them to account. We’ve already witnessed the news and music industries having their content stolen en masse by platforms, eventually paying pennies on the dollar years later.

The ERSI rightly points to the disproportionate amount of “news” coverage (my quotes) that immigration gets as a reason people overestimate its impact on societal issues. RTÉ and others might do well to reflect on this after covering the report themselves.

Even if you’ve seen it before, watch it again all the way to the end. Take 6 minutes off the bad news merry-go-round and just enjoy something. 🙂

I wonder if the cabinet discussed this at their meeting today to force through planning for more and more data centres here? 🤷‍♂️🤦‍♂️

The best time to delete your Twitter account was years ago. The second best time is right now. You either want to be part of an ecosystem that enriches a fascist billionaire via deepfake porn, unabashed racism, and now CSAM, or you don’t. I need to be there for work is no excuse in my opinion.

This legislation seems bonkers to a lay person like me, and I’d expect President Connolly to be calling the Council of State and the Supreme Court if it gets that far. I’m in favour of faster delivery of critical infrastructure, but surely the way to avoid delays is better planning & consultations.

An all time favourite that I still DJ with all the time. RIP

Do this in Ireland next please. And add a couple of zeros for good measure. And seize the unlicensed properties and convert them to social housing.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.

Tall buildings in other cities get nicknamed. I’m going to suggest The Carbuncle for this one. I’m not against tall buildings in general, but this one is truly hideous, and totally out of place in that location.

Neither the Minister for Housing, nor the Taoiseach, nor the Tánaiste, nor any other cabinet minister made themselves available to Prime Time or the other major news bulletins this evening to talk about their absolutely critical 6 year plan. They don’t believe in it themselves. No one else should.

In better news, there was minimal phone use at the Baxter Dury gig, which was excellent. I took one bad photo as a keepsake.

There isn’t a single thing mentioned in this RTÉ report that would give you the slightest confidence that this government knows how to move the needle on housing. A plan a year in the making and they have spectacularly failed to grasp to nettle.

Going to a gig as a punter for a change. Looking forward to the the music and the show. Hoping that the expected slightly older crowd might not be as inclined to video the whole thing on their phones. Time will tell!

Memeception

FFG has been told by a state department that it has fucked up housing so badly that even if tries quite hard (which it steadfastly refuses to do) it’ll take at least 15 years to catch up. So FFG has decided to point the finger at asylum seekers to deflect and distract, consequences be damned.

Simon Harris’s comments on immigration won’t win FG any new votes and will alienate some of their existing base. It happened to Sinn Fein when they tied something similar. It has happened to both Labour and the Conservatives in the UK. It’s incredibly poor leadership after their electoral defeat.

The constitution worked perfectly. It kept grifters, layabouts, and the ultra entitled off the ballot paper, and saved us weeks of racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic dog whistles in the process. You wanted to be on the ballot? You had 7 years to figure out your plan. #spoofers #aras25

Only FFG could preside over a housing emergency for over a decade and *still* be making things worse not better year after year. It’s also generally accepted that we need roughly 60K new units p/a just to stand still, so setting a target of 41K is just them saying “we don’t want to solve anything”.

My big take away from that debate was that Heather Humphreys, like many modern politicians, is incapable of directly answering a question, preferring to stick to and repeat talking points. Catherine Connolly seemed to be at least trying to directly engage with the questions. #rtept #aras25

Amazing what can be done when “viability” aka profit isn’t the only thing concerning developers.

Anyone willing to listen to Ivan Yates is already voting for Humphreys, but hopefully some undecided people see it for the smug, entitled, dishonest bullshit it is, and it helps push them towards Connolly.