We are digging coal

Richard Claremont Oil on canvas #art

Near the grandest of stretch tonight. 7 secs to go. #TheGrandslStretch #Sherkin #StretchMaxxing

Lightning struck a camp in Baden-Württemberg as temperatures soared around the country. Several people were injured. #EuropeNews ➡️ https://l.euronews.com/5Uvh

MELONI, to Trump: “.. my popularity is none of your concern. I suggest you focus on yours.”

Comparisons between Andy Burnham and Boris Johnson are unfair. Johnson was never a genuinely popular Mayor of London, while Burnham is not a bone idle, liar, grifter and cheat.

SpaceX is a rocket company, a complex financial instrument, and a meme, @cwarzel.bsky.social argues. He examines the company’s bewildering valuation, and how Elon Musk’s own image has boosted its appeal:

News you can use from the opinion editors of the Italian right-wing daily Libero: "TRUMP IS AN ASSHOLE" www.liberoquotidiano.it/news/esteri/...

"Assembly" installation in the old Cork Savings Bank on Lapps Quay. Concept is around creating a space for assembly and discussion. Beautifully crafted structure. #Speirgorm #Cork

The great @jonathanpienews.bsky.social here encapsulates Trump's (and America's) humiliation by Iran like nobody else can.

Ballybunion, Co Kerry bringing the blue sky right now. #speirgorm

The centre-right leaning are a huge force in British politics. At the very least you need them to be happy enough with your side to stay home. It's not clear Farage can do that.

One of the nice things about the GAA is seeing an all time great Gaelic footballer humping goalposts around on a Saturday morning for a kids mini league.

You think you look cool in your new bandana until your east Belfast mum looks you up and down and says you look like the Plymouth Brethren.

Nearly two-thirds of France is now under an orange heatwave alert as people battle extreme temperatures across the country. #EuropeNews

To give an idea of just how much power these new mega scale AI campuses pull, one would consume all yesterday's renewables. Even small AI DCs would consume half of solar compared to say 20 typical "streaming" data centres and maybe 100 old fashioned, but still common, "computer centres". #sperigorm

🇮🇪 Yesterday wind was ~19% of Ireland electricity generation (18GWh). Solar was ~6% (5.5GWh). Source: EirGrid #Ireland #windenergy #solarenergy

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has given Belarus a one-week ultimatum to remove relay equipment on its territory that he says is helping Russia attack Ukraine, warning that Kyiv will otherwise intervene itself to halt the transmissions.

To expand on my theme slightly, people often misunderstand the purpose of a law degree. It is, emphatically, *not* to learn "The Law." That changes daily. By the time my first degree was over, Irish property law (as an example) had been overhauled beyond recognition. What a law degree is for is...

#SpeirGorm RTÉ recently up dated the RTÉ News app. the menus on the bottom i’ll get used to but i can’t zoom in to see photos better any more and just why, why, why did they do that? ☹️

Interesting piece this. Depressing for those of us who have had much of Spain beyond the beaches to ourselves up to now, but the right strategy for the country. It will collapse when the (far) right takes power and building and environmental controls are abandoned for get-rich-quick speculation.

Everyone massively overreacted to the Uxbridge by-election. Looking back, Starmer's response was an early warning sign, while Khan's showed us someone with genuine political sense and bravery. The Burnham win has spared us countless articles getting the Aberdeen South result wildly wrong.

17yr old ELIZABETH TAYLOR washing her dog - Amy - in 1949.

alright, fucking fine, I've cracked, I've bought a fan

EXCLUSIVE I toured the world as a pop star but I prefer my life now as a roofer via The Mirror

Good point from @paulcrider.liberalcurrents.com: “The push to tax billionaires comes not from a zero-sum mentality, but from witnessing massive wealth weaponised against liberal democracy itself.” economist.com/letters/2026...

Hungarian President Tamás Sulyok — increasingly synonymous with the remnants of former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s fallen regime — is vowing to resist the new government’s efforts to force him from office.

A celebration of the magic and messiness of misspent youth, this museum is for every teenager that once scrawled RAWR on their wrist, wore their eyeliner too thick, and refused to accept the world as it was. #Art

Zürich has come to a standstill. It was 40°C here today, it is now pouring rain, and the wind is so high that tree branches have fallen across the streets. The police have cleared the roads.The lobby of my hotel is filled with drenched people wrapped in towels. It looks like a disaster film.

Coyne: I don't know how many times we have to keep relearning this lesson that the flatter Trump strategy doesn't really work.

Americans – whether leftist, liberal, MAGA or anything else – really, profoundly do not understand how they are looked upon by the rest of the world. No nation is looking over and thinking "I want me some of that".

I heard that there are thousands and thousands of cases of Rep. Claudia Tenney drowning kittens in her kitchen sink. It happens all the time. But Rep. Claudia Tenney will tell you it doesn't happen because you can't prove it.

"Tell Jabba I'll get him his money..."

I've seen Meloni's reaction variously translated as "shocked", "astonished" and "stunned". If anything, the original Italian word she used, "allibita", is stronger than any of these.

The specifics of the Meloni/Trump kerfuffle are unimportant but the fact that everyone is apparently increasingly comfortable calling Trump out seems notable

The joy today is that hatred lost. Doesn't matter what you think of Burnham. Farage tried to invite a race riot. He dealt in explicitly racial rhetoric. If he'd won, many journalists would have considered it a vindication of his approach and branded our outrage evidence of how out of touch we are.

Israel may no longer need a prime minister with an American accent - opinion via The Jerusalem Post

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump are re-segregating the American military by race and sex Secret Vetting and Blocked Promotions: Inside Hegseth’s War on Diversity www.nytimes.com/2026/06/19/u...

It's a mystery how she only lasted six weeks

They’re calling it the quote on British politics that ended the need for all other quotes

Donald Trump is an actual miracle worker cos if you'd previously told me that one day - even if only very temporarily and in very specific contexts - I'd be rooting for Giorgia fucking Meloni and the fucking Iranian Revolutionary Guard, I'd have had you taken into care

The Ale of Bad Decisions.

#SpeirGorm the closing date for consultation on the new digital wallet closes on June 24th (next Wed) Have your say folks and spread the word www.gov.ie/en/departmen...

Not surprising as tend to be in industrial estates, which in turn are traditionally collocated with cheaper residential building land that contain a lot of our council & cheaper-end private estates. If I had to live next to an industrial site, I'd prefer one with data centres than solvent factories

It seems all the cuckoos, from as far west in Ireland to as far east in China, all go to the Congo to spend the winter, Irish ones use Italy as their transit point from Europe. #speirgorm

The movements of three Irish cuckoos are being tracked this year as part of conservation efforts to better understand their decline and safeguard their future

The next PM could - and in my view should - properly stick it to Trump (as Meloni has just done); announce a plan to undo Brexit; put immigration to bed for at least one electoral cycle; take their government off Twitter; unequivocally condemn Netanyahu & resurrect Leveson 2… A boy can dream.

what's Italian for "Hugh Grant"?

As the UK joins a growing list of countries looking at banning or severely curbing children's access to social media, data shows girls have higher levels of problematic social media use than boys across Europe. #EuropeInMotion