My favourite description of Christmas and the reason it matters so much, written by Dickens in 1843, and still holds today

i post this story every christmas, and will keep doing so until it stops making me cry merry christmas xx

Thank you everyone for the kind messages re ‘journalist of the year’ at the Irish Journalism Awards. Here is a link to what I said in the acceptance video they played there: www.instagram.com/p/DQ97qCSjvQv/ (video too long for Bluesky). 🙏🙏 www.irishtimes.com/media/2025/1...

“Committed acts of caring let all students know that the purpose of education is not to dominate, or prepare them to be dominators, but rather to create the conditions for freedom.” bell hooks, Teaching Community

“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.” bell hooks’ fantastic, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. Providing a necessary reminder of the power of teaching, how teaching transforms us all.

Please dm me if you can help.

Sally Rooney understands exactly what is required from someone of her profession and social standing in this moment. We've seen so much cowardice from so many quarters in recent times that it's almost a shock to be reminded what a person of conscience acting with true integrity looks like.

Full article: Witnessing silence: the Palestinian genocide, institutional complicity, and the politics of knowledge www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The Free Speech Warriors are mysteriously silent when it comes to the rights of Palestinians protesting against genocide. By @nicemangos.bsky.social

Its not post modern to supprt trans liberation-Judith Butler writes ‘if you think of rights stripping as a form of state repression, on a spectrum with detention & deportation, then you see that authoritarian powers include all three kinds of legal destitution’ socialistworker.co.uk/lgbt/judith-...

if you are a cis person it costs you nothing to just say today that you see & hear your trans sisters & brothers & others over in the UK today -- and around the world, too, knowing that rulings like today's ripple out in ugly ways.

I just cried in my office after having another student in here talk about precautions they're taking about their status. I have received calls all week from people who need their names removed off publications or letters I was part of organizing. I feel sick and helpless and so so angry.

27th consecutive year of watching Mayo in championship. Hope is the thing with feathers. #mayogaa

One of the deepest shames of this period is how little attention has been paid to the Islamophobia at its heart.

Evidence of ‘execution-style’ killings of 15 Palestinian aid workers by Israeli forces, doctor says

My students are amazing, part 512 (right took me a second but is just spectacular)

Germany is deporting three EU citizens (two from Ireland, one from Poland) and a US citizen for taking part in Palestine protests. The only one charged with a crime was charged with calling a police officer a "fascist", for which he was acquitted. www.972mag.com/germany-depo...

Chart of cumulative protests reported from Jan 22 - Feb 28, 2017 vs 2025:

fix your heart or die www.brightwalldarkroom.com/2017/09/25/f...

Feels like the glory days of, *checks notes*, 2009 all over again here.