Rewatching Desk Set and being reminded that it’s actually a Xmas film. And realising its also about AI 😬

Yes, my main meal of today will have been cold pork crackling foraged from the fridge and eaten with cheese and pickled onions. What’s your point? #speirgorm #betwixtmas

COMMISSION SOME SITCOMS, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.

"I don't always sit in boxes, but when I do, it's a box that contained something expensive you bought me for Christmas that I don't give two shits about"

Rooting about in the DVD drawer I just found this tucked behind two cases, I’m guessing it must be over 20yrs old. The return to physical media marches on and if anyone wants me, I’ll be Wombling free.

So far the new cat tunnel is the hit of Christmas Day 🐈 🐈‍⬛

Merry Christmas from Howth Summit!!

I’m moving into the cocktail phase of Christmas (a Paper Plane, which is basically a Jaffa cake in cocktail form, highly recommend). Merry Christmas #speirgorm 🍸🎅

Although this is the first year they'll actively be trying to shoot him down.

We have decided to take over our next-door neighbour's house for security reasons. From their back garden burglars can get into ours, and it's just not an acceptable risk. Also we want their trampoline.

You know, the udon noodle fairy. Do try to keep up 🧚‍♀️

And this mainly focuses on older, unpublished material. I work on 20thC Irish media history and while the newspapers are mainly digitised, a full 99% of magazines aren’t. And that’s successful, long-running publications from within living-memory!

Livestream from Newgrange, worth seeing as sunlight is starting to light the tomb right now ☀️

One of my potentially most unpopular opinions is that genealogy is a gateway drug to dubious if not downright poisonous politics/social attitudes. Which is alarming when you consider how popular genealogy is and how much worse DNA testing has made all this.

Christmassy characters gathered in Asakusa, Tokyo, today.

I was looking for an old tweet about Manhattan Peanuts and stumbled upon this photo. A peanut salesman from 1890, now the ghost haunting No Nut November.

It's Carlow Post Office, the sequel!

Riiiiiiight

No-one warned me that adult life in 2025 would involve a doom-loop of trying to log-in to the bin company’s online “portal” (why, for the love of god, why?) to find out what date they’ve moved our Xmas bin collection to.

A break from Christmas content to enjoy this capybara eating a banana. From François Froger's 'A relation of a voyage ...' (London, 1698).

You’d think that having crubeen would be enough for them, but no. Cork just doesn’t know when to stop with the epicurean delights.

If I’m reading this right, Cavan is a place where sex workers pay you, sometimes against your will 🤔

Awful as this is, it's nowhere near as bad as it could have been if William McGonagall had been here to commemorate it

Hey, when someone cites gen AI as an authoritative source of info, send them to: stopcitingai.com

Soncho-san, a warm and nostalgic southern rockhopper penguin, is the mascot for Penguin Village, who promote SDGs and regional revitalization.

I’ve only just discovered that there’s a Hallmark Christmas princess movie not only filmed in Ireland and using Powerscourt as the palace, but much of it is set and filmed in Tayto/Emerald Park!!

This is a genius idea, but I suspect would have no impact on me starting each morning picking up the baubles our cats fecked off the tree overnight 🌲

There isn't a single problem "solved" by edtech that couldn't be fixed with smaller classes led by well-paid teachers given real academic freedom

Is it just me, or is it not ok that this shite is for sale at an official Dublin Corporation Xmas market stall on Henry St? #speirgorm

A serious win here from the @fsuireland.bsky.social with “maximum flexibility” agreed that will now allow hundreds of staff members to go back to common sense remote working arrangements. Always forward, never back. www.thejournal.ie/aib-staff-to...

Hahahaha 🤣 imagine voluntarily giving your DNA to the US government!!

surely it's the ruling-class graft which is destablizing the country?

Impossible to photograph, but this morning in Maynooth village there was an amazing murmuration of rooks, hundreds and hundreds of them wheeling low in the sky and filling every treetop. I’ve only seen this a couple of times before, and it’s always on winter mornings.

My immediate presumption here is that all of his human-shield-children have grown too heavy for him to lift onto his shoulders.

I wonder if real Irish filmmakers know that Udárás na Gaeltachta are not only running a competition for “AI filmmaking”, but have decided to name it after “storytelling”. Ffs. filmfreeway.com/AnTograScealai

“It's being referred to as "Operation Irish Goodbye."” And like much else in America’s descent into open fascism, masterminded by a parade of Irish-Americans too, I’ll wager. Fuck them all, I hope they die roaring.

Any other business

for those of you already tired of your Christmas tree on December 10th, Kildare County Council has got you covered. Very fecking festive 🙄

"The pictures posted by Sheridan were taken at a Christmas party in Nashville, Tennessee, hosted by Alp, a nicotine pouch brand launched by Carlson". Not just politically-poisonous, but also absolutely tragic individuals.

Long Distance by Man Ray, 1916 https://botfrens.com/collections/212/contents/137688

🎶…it’s the end of the world as we know it🎶

A missed opportunity surely, when everyone knows that Garamond is the One True Font #RETVRN

I actually didn’t realise O’Brien was this genuinely funny. I yelped with laughter at end!

Dead Ringers (Cronenberg, 1988). I wouldn't have stayed to the end except I was there with other people and we were in the middle of a full row, so I just put up with it for what seemed like days.

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This is brilliant. That box cover was SUCH a feature of my childhood and I always did wonder about it myself!

I notice we’re all giving tech examples. Another one for me is loading and using a 35mm slide carousel for showing images in lectures. And learning the hard way that if you didn’t put the lid on before using it the slides would fly out and hit people on the front row in the face 😱

"The reduced-calorie meals could also be more appropriate for shorter men, who need to eat less than the average man". So waiters will have to do gender checks on women AND measure men's height before any of us get our dinner.

having one of those days where it’s fortunate I’ve been doing this job for long enough to be more or less unembarrassable up on the podium in lecture theatres 🤦‍♀️

@kylzjarrett.bsky.social!!