‘There was comedy at all times’: Andrew O’Hagan on 15 years of funny, frank and champagne-fuelled friendship with Edna O’Brien www.theguardian.com/books/2025/s...

😭

Found this when searching for the SchoolsWeek piece on how it feels to pay the parenthood penalty - very useful! blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandp...

I'm surprised this is exprssed as a question. How could the answer be anything other than that it's horrible? And no, they're mostly not finding gratification elsewhere or enjoying greater work-life balance. It's just worse pay and worse work. schoolsweek.co.uk/how-does-it-...

Remarkable piece for many reasons. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

The sign-off on BBC R4 just now was 'good night and oíche mhaith' 😭 💔

Interesting. I agree with the reviewer, I think. Being a parent doesn't mean I think about the future - I don't have time or bandwidth. I would prioritise differently - probably better and more morally - if I didn't have children observer.co.uk/culture/book...

💚❤️

This is very good on collective responsibility and collective shame: www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

Gorgeous Corpus!

:-( www.gov.uk/government/p...

My advisor has an effect named after him. I want that too now. The problem is I'd have to achieve something and I don't wanna do that. Suggestions? jonathanweisberg.org/post/zollman/

A clean run of BlueSkiers commenting on the hurling! The sad face from the UCC stats prof counts too... Well played Tipp who were flying in the second half Hard luck Cork

I played a very small garden party years ago at Ripon College Cuddesdon, when I was an accordionist in scratch bands Gaz Coombes from Supergrass came up with his toddler and said 'look Raya, music!' Which was stretching the definition 😂

Sorry but I think this is hilarious 😂 A reply to the Marie Le Conte thread on English devolution (there are many, many replies...) Have sent to my cousins in Paris to find out how precise this is

So it looks like clever weighting has its limits.

Prince of Humanists: Erasmus, influential Dutch Renaissance scholar, known for Greek-Latin parallel text edition of New Testament, & Praise of Folly composed at his friend Sir Thomas More’s London house; painted by Holbein 1523; died #OTD 1536. National Gallery

Very interesting and detailed scrutiny:

New publication alert-pleased to share my new article on misogyny and in game chats in online gaming- a review article that is part of a phenomenal special issue on gaming & extremism. Open access, thanks to american university library support for faculty authors www.frontiersin.org/journals/psy...

Indeed, every blade of grass

Are they really latent classes and are there really seven of them - how do we know?

Elly Bay was the site of Bingham's Castle Gradually dismantled from the 1920s, until it disappeared

I love the audacity of some nature/science papers on psych "you're wondering about nature v nurture? cool we studied ALL THE KIDS IN FRANCE" (upshot is that sex differences in math performance are driven by schooling, not age) www.nature.com/articles/s41...

The thing I periodically used to tweet about during heatwaves - wanting to wrap my house in flexible solar panels, releasing them when it's really sunny, to cool the house - now exists!!! (Might need to wait for it to mature for prices to come down) www.retractableawning.co.uk/ra-solar-pow...

feel like this is probably karma for me repeatedly telling Brits to simply get better at handling heat but this is my first actually warm summer in this flat and I'm so done, the flat is basically impossible to be in if it's over 26 degrees out, I just want to feel comfortable in my home again, help

Random memory: A quietly bickering couple take out their packed lunches on the train. Guy takes out a Tupperware lunchbox full of boiled eggs. Her: My God, how many did you bring? Him: Six. Her: We're not going to eat six eggs! Him: well they only sell them in sixes or twelves.

I love this on problem-focused research - and how funding structures as well as volume support or constrain it:

It's been years since I discovered a paper that could enter my all-time top-10 list, but now it happened: Shager, Togg & Huberman's "A graph-dynamic model of the power law of practice and the problem-solving fan-effect" is one of the coolest papers I've ever read. 1/3 www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

One for London folk:

So the ancient English landscape isn't redeeming and healing after all? Disappointing

Short article from me today in @theconversation.com on self-determination theory and wellbeing, drawing on ideas from my book Beyond Happy: theconversation.com/self-determi...

Prompted by a BlueSky as Gaeilge, I just looked up the origins of days of the week for those less like the French or English I'd had no idea about Wednesday-Friday: 'The day of the first fast' 'The day between two fasts' 'The day of fasting' killererin.galwaycommunityheritage.org/content/topi...

This is great! ukcivilservant.substack.com/p/blue-plaqu...

It’s dark right now, but July 4 always cheers me up—because just ten more days until Bastille Day

Happy 4th of July!

Always good to get a broader perspective - for example from the Irish newspaper of record today:

Enjoyed More or Less this a.m. scrutinising church attendance trends in the light of the recent Bible Society report @stephenkb.bsky.social was sceptical at the time! Especially David Voas' expert input. I had early sight of his recent Conversation piece: theconversation.com/is-there-rea...

Joseph Inikori apparently vindicated.

What @brianklaas.bsky.social said. open.substack.com/pub/briankla...

My grandmother and I were very close, and she used to talk about her great-grandfather, whom she knew and spoke with often, who was a child during the Famine and fled to New York at age 8 or so. 1 degree of separation for me.

Up Mayo! Eat your way across Mayo: From garden to grill, the county is fast becoming a food destination www.irishtimes.com/life-style/t...

Not for nothing, but a reminder that, on July 4, 1776, the average of of the "founding fathers" was 44. Many were in their 20s and 30s – powdered wigs notwithstanding. Marquis de Lafayette & James Monroe: 18 Nathan Hale & Alexander Hamilton: 21 Jefferson: 33 www.bunkhistory.org/resources/ag...

103 years ago #OTD Dublin's Four Courts, including the Irish PRO, was destroyed at the start of the Irish Civil War. Last year we enjoyed a fascinating talk by @petercrooks.bsky.social on @virtualtreasury.bsky.social's efforts to reconstruct these lost records, the latest batch of which is out now!

People say you can't prepare for the experience of having children, but if you could somehow arrange it so you got mugged six to eight times a month while maintaining a moderate to severe confusion throughout you'd be some of the way there

What happens when you (randomly) have more girls in a high school classroom? ... ... ... ■ Girls' STEM test scores/course-taking durably increases ■ Girls' participation in class increases ■ Boys misbehavior decreases Improvements driven by disadvantaged students www.iza.org/publications...

Thrilled to see this review - my cousin Aaron is the lead I remember hearing when he was a young boy that he was going up to Dublin (from Mayo!) for singing lessons And heard him sing at his grandparents' golden wedding mass 💔 www.ft.com/content/9cc4...

Younger child has just given me a thank-you card with a caveat