It’s sweltering (by our endearing standards) but I stewed oxtail for 6 hours because I’m a monster

In a healthy media environment, the Taoiseach’s party getting 4% in a Dublin by-election would be a bigger deal. There’s actually more emphasis on Sinn Féin’s slightly disappointing (but much better) performance

So Alberta is having a referendum about whether to have a referendum www.bbc.com/news/article...

Apologies for my delayed reply; I was cultivating a sense of inner peace

There’s a by-election here and a quirk of the electoral system is the sheer amount you get canvassed and mailed - there being 3-4 centre left and 4-5 centre right candidates alone contesting the seat

Why do faculty and students have so little say in the governance of American universities? This terrific new paper by Daniel Hemel and David Pozen asks why American universities are liberal autocracies rather than stakeholder democracies. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

I think it’s funny how French has such a varied and sophisticated vocabulary for food – even multiple different terms for ‘food’ depending on context - but the only word for pasta basically means ‘dough’

How are algorithms going to rule the world when Netflix can’t even stop recommending things I’ve already watched

It’s amusing to have so much attention devoted to which vapid career centrist will lead the uk Labour Party at a time when an apocalyptically significant proportion of the world’s energy and fertiliser supply continues to be blockaded within a war zone

Academic departments deserve to be saved, supported, resourced, allowed to grow even if they're not "best in the country," "first in the REF," "top-ranked," "at a Russell Group uni," or whatever other austerity-brained nonsense senior managers have been using to flimflam you out of solidarity

A thing that strikes me about UK politics is that the same fragmentation is happening to its party system as has already happened e.g. in Ireland (where no party won more than 1/4 of vote in last three G.Es), but where unlike Ireland the electoral system wil give that a perverse expression

Daughter said I was ‘giving crunchy mom vibes’ ( I had to look it up) after I admired some beautiful trees and now she is annoyed that I keep sardonically but inaccurately nicknaming myself ‘crispy mom’

Italy has fallen😅

The recommended wine serving here (.1L) is very … *looks sideways in Northern European*

Did a 707 day Italian streak on Duolingo and now I’m in Sicily for a few days with my daughter but everyone just takes one look at my pale meaty head and just automatically speaks English 🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

Is the objection that mind altering substances are in principle morally wicked while working, or that alcohol might make somebody cast the wrong vote, or confuse say privatisation with nationalisation? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Also fascinated. I’m guessing: France: stricter drink driving laws. US: general collapse of social cohesion. General uptick everywhere post 2020: something to do with pandemic

Published this dull but worthy op Ed, which despite the headline is really about the peculiar process by which the Irish president considers whether to refer bills to the Supreme Court to decide their constitutionality www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

Every time I read a piece about somebody with an “ai-assisted editing process” I feel like I’m watching someone trying to intellectualize a deliberate choice not to think or concentrate

Apropos of nothing, when reading Hemingway I feel mildly stressed about how dehydrated all the characters must be, between the alcohol and the heat

Global crisis when you think there might not be global crisis for five minutes

Utterly depressing political moment in Ireland as a lot of people obviously do seem to believe their interests are at one with those of haulage companies blocking the country’s only fuel refinery, where the electorally unsuccessful hard right feels empowered by it and even left feels has to pander

An amusing way in which I am turning into my father becoming obsessed with the temperature of hot drinks ( is it an age thing?) cup must always be heated l. (Moka pot supremacy)

Just sent my book manuscript to Bristol University Press. It’s about the turn to a ‘symbolic’ style of constitutional referendum in Ireland in the period 2011-2024, and the politics of what I call rights-affirmation by referendum. Never thought I would complete it.

Have to show off my wild garlic lasagne, made from a mixture of soft and hard cheeses lurking around my mother’s fridge

Obviously dystopian shit but also how much ‘freer’ is the public life of liberal capitalism when you look at what passes for the public realm actually works

POV: one of your antlers fell off but you still think you’re tough AF

Timeline cleanse: it’s giving spring

Since I have an impending work deadline naturally I am now obsessed with the recent history of naming conventions for citrus and non-citrus based jams and ‘marmalades’ www.bbc.com/news/article...

Daughter #1 calling daughter #2 a ‘passenger princess’ (a wonderful phrase I’d never heard)… I really wish I could deliver sibling shade with such spontaneity and aplomb

I always smirk to myself when I encounter a professional ethicist behaving terribly. If I were smarter would weave this into a take more sophisticated than saying … it’s ironic

My latest column: Ireland’s data centre policy will drive significantly greater fossil fuel use, contradicting multiple statutory and policy targets which require rapid reductions instead. www.irishtimes.com/environment/...

This headline actually cheered me up given how one would be low-key worried these days about more literal forms of ‘apocalypse’ www.bbc.com/news/article...

Congrats to my colleague @donnchalaw.bsky.social as well as @conorom.bsky.social and others on their appointment to the Council of State (advisory body to the President of Ireland on the exercise of her discretionary powers) www.rte.ie/news/politic...

Is ‘no kings’ American for ‘we should be at brunch?’

Also more commonly known as ‘the Iranian flag’ 🙄🙄

I think lamenting extended longevity on the grounds of older people being a ‘burden’ to others is grotesque www.theguardian.com/science/2026...

AI inevitablism is fascinating from the POV of the concept of sovereignty. The discourse is not even that we *shouldn’t* not want it, but that we have no power or say.

The most surreal phenomenon to witness on academic social media is constitutional lawyers discussing internal Israeli affairs in the pretence that it is a normal liberal democracy rather than a quasi fascist state apparently bent on depopulating and annexing neighbouring countries

Great article by my colleagues Roja and Joel www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

ChatUpGPT

The absolute state of the debate in autism circles. An obsession with terminological correctness . Latest thing is people saying ‘spectrum’ is inappropriate because it covers such different abilities. Which still sounds just like … a spectrum

Settling down to watch the Theroux ‘Manosphere’ documentary just to give myself a cortisol spike before bed xx

President Catherine Connolly has described the situation in the Middle East as a "deliberate assault on international law".

‘It’s international women’s day so will you let me paint your nails’ was such an audacious pitch from the 9 year old that I didn’t feel able to refuse

I too remember the earlier, woke wars. tons of spent microaggression munitions strewn about everywhere, friends crying out for God as they were slowly cancelled...look, if you weren't there, you'll never understand

How do academics who are ostensibly committed to egalitarian ideas of social organisation, try to apply those ideas to the generally hierarchical nature of their workplaces? (I.e. promotion schemes?) Would it be unfair to observe that they generally don’t try?

No disrespect to my colleague but a lot of this really just boils down to a vague idea we should transform arts and humanities education ‘to prepare students for an AI world’, when if we are being honest, nobody really understands what AI will look like in a decade www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

Certain Euro leaders going full-on indignant and all ‘strategic autonomy’ when a self governing European territory is hypothetically threatened, but reverting to full vassalage mode when a Middle Eastern country is actually attacked, really is a classic case of: