Knocking at the door of $18k; just about 2 weeks left to subscribe to THE SKULL & LAUREL and help us plan for a long-term home for short New Weird Fiction in its infinite guises🖤☠️ www.kickstarter.com/projects/mad...

You have to love Irish snow. ‘Imagine water, but like, it’s freezing cold and can gather in piles before it soaks in:’

I’m so smug about this I can barely stand to be in the same room as myself.

"Native grasses and flowering plants were reintroduced in early 2018. Five years later, total insect abundance had tripled, while native bee numbers were up 20-fold. The most numerous insect groups observed were beetles, flies and moths."

It's Nollaig na mBan here in Ireland! (Jan 6th!) The twelfth and final day of Christmas, January 6, is known in Ireland as Nollaig na mBan or Women’s Christmas / Little Christmas. Time to take down the decorations! www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

Hootenannyyyyyyyy

So RTÉ refused to broadcast TENI statement. You can réad it here. teni.ie/teni-stateme... If you need support Gender Identity Family Support Line +353 (0)1 907 3707

Simon Harris tried when he was Minister for Health started to try reform Trans Healthcare, these two gatekeeper refused to engage with the Minster or take part in the process, causing the committee and working group to collapse. #Transrightsarehumanrights.

It's super important that allies stand up for trans folks here as trans people often have their own social media posts shown to them by ther service and are threatened with the withdrawal of care if they talk about their bad experiences.

I had no idea Ian Gibson was dead. A huge influence on me as an artist. Go in peace and thank you for enriching my mind.

Ian Gibson’s family are having a GoFundMe for funeral costs and a proper headstone. Comic artists don’t die rich, even the very best ones. Reckon all the joy the man gave might make it worth throwing some pennies in the hat, if he made your growing up cooler, funnier, richer. gofund.me/40276a97

As someone with severe nearsightedness, I wish more folks knew this trick. Focal point focusing using nature's camera obscura: Your hand. By squeezing your pointer finger in an okay-like hand position, you can generate a hole small enough that looking through helps akin to wearing glasses.

😂😭😂😭😂😭

Dear GOD people don’t ask a writer how their sales are going. Unless you’ve seen them on the NYT bestseller list, that’s a declaration of war.

Ukraine’s largest mobile operator, Kyivstar, said it had come under a powerful cyberattack on Tuesday that knocked out service and affected internet access for millions of people. The country relies on phone alerts to warn of close Russian bombardments.

Preliminary results from the first 6 months of the basic income pilot in Ireland are out and artists spent 3.5 hours more per week on their art and 3 hours less doing other work (in other words 0.5 hours more work per week overall). Depression and anxiety also significantly decreased by 10%.

Thanks to Kunak McGann for letting me know about this. Please pass it on

A huge chunk of clients I see as a therapist wouldn’t need me if they had UBI. It’s soul-destroying work to be a counsellor when someone’s mental health is impacted by their material situation because no amount of talking can lift someone out of poverty.

I wonder how many more times we need to prove that the only people who collectively work LESS with UBI are new parents and students, aka the people we hypothetically WANT to be able to work less I’m sure it will perpetually be “after the next study is complete”

This is something very dangerous for him to say as the president of the country with the second largest Jewish population. Jewish safety in the US does not depend on other countries; it depends on democracy and fighting back the creep of fascism and religious fundamentalism.

The children of Narges Mohammadi, Iran’s most prominent human rights activist, who is locked inside an Iranian prison, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf. In a speech Mohammadi prepared, she called for a “globalization of peace and human rights.”

I have to agree with the New European

Imma keep it short this time: Companies are using our work without compensation. That's the point of AI The endless debates over whether this is "true art" or not, or whether it's gonna take over the world some day, are a distraction from the indisputable fact that this is pure exploitation

“Looking closely at Putin’s recent speech, it’s clear he’s more confident and willing to escalate the flames of war beyond Ukrainian borders. Dismissing his statements as just propaganda…as was done in 2021, would be a mistake.” euromaidanpress.com/2023/12/08/p...

One of the most exhausting things about being a freelance artist can simply be the lack of routine. Routine actions save on decision-making, which is mentally tiring. If your work day changes all the time, and you have to constantly initiate different kinds projects, it can drain you long-term.

The last native Irish rainforests are being killed by invasive sika deer + goats eating every last tree seedling. The EU is planning to classify sika as invasive, but here, deer hunting orgs are opposed. Why? They just want lots of stuff to shoot, and to *hell* with ecosystems. 🌍

he’s gone 🥲

[ENQUÊTE] Une enquête de l'Agence France-Presse sur la frappe dans le sud du Liban qui a tué un journaliste de Reuters et blessé six autres, dont deux de l'AFP, désigne un obus de char uniquement utilisé par l'armée israélienne dans la région #AFP 1/8 ➡️ u.afp.com/enquete13oct

Every time I hear the business news on morning Ireland I wonder why we can’t have a three minute Arts update before or after. Imagine the potential impact: shows opening this week, books being published, what’s in cinemas. Read a poem! It might… bring joy? And support thousands of jobs and the like

Good piece. This was such an appalling unforced error by Amazon. They didn't just ruin the very interesting and worthwhile business they'd acquired, which had an enormous market share in a culturally vital industry, they persisted in ruining it for years upon years until it finally just keeled over.

I've had to really start defining my own success metrics, cause whew boy, this biz gives you bar after bar without end

Feeling lucky to live in a country where opposition to genocide isn’t a criminal offence

The wildest part of that interview wasn't even the GFY. It was Musk saying "The only reason I am here, Jonathan, is because you are a friend." And the interviewer, Andrew Sorkin, responding: "I am Andrew."

I keep finding myself having to message people - who I know are well meaning - saying "please don't boost this person you have promoted/quoted/RT'd, they are an anti-semite" PLEASE check who you are promoting. There are a lot of awful people abusing the Palestinian cause to launder their own racism

FFS

I regularly buy movies from Youtube. Just went to buy Something in the Dirt there, and realised that it costs €3 extra to buy from my iPad than from my mobile phone. Why??

Thanks for the supportive comments. Want to make a real difference? Seek out human artists whose work speaks to you. Share their work and shop links. Buy their stuff if you are able. Vote with your $ and your engagement. THAT is how we will win. 🙏

...and the response is columns about how we need to 'debate' immigration and gifting the guards widespread surveillance powers through facial recognition that's probably against EU law and a possible human rights violation. That's what we learned? Tafuk!?!?

...Then a senior guard leaks the national origin of the attacker to a far right publication which incites a riot ring led by the same fascists the guards were permitting into libraries to intimidate staff, create vigilante checkpoints outside towns and burn asylum seekers tents...

🧵So an Irish citizen - with a history of legally documented violent outbursts related to serious MH difficulties and who received no help - stabs multiple people including a child of immigrants and is stopped by an immigrant, a contributor to the stardust inquiry and someone visiting from the US...

The thrill I got when those revered names popped up on screen

I made a long, long comic about AI and my toddler. It's a repudiation of techno-solipsism and it’s in The New Yorker. Is my toddler a stochastic parrot?

Sorry Fintan, the rioters who burned Dublin literally are “us”. They’re white males born in Ireland who have been radicalised into hating migrants. Until you start asking how it happened, it will continue.

The Irish media bears no responsibility for the rise of far-right mobs and the Dublin riot, it must have been completely organic, now to take a massive gulp of coffee and look at a random editorial from this Monday’s edition of the Irish Independent