hell yeah tune in 🔉 and have yourself a merry little christmas ❄️

final pod of the year! Meet Me in St. Louis rules! also I finally had a contextual excuse to drop a song about shooting the President of the United States!

our government should be taking a principled stand for Sahrawis' right to self-determination, not sending out former parliamentarians for PR tours of Occupied Western Sahara en.le7tv.ma/2025/11/08/d...

I find it moving that David Lynch loved IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE so much he couldn't talk about it without crying. His sincere belief in the redemptive possibilities contained in that film and what it said about people seems to me like a key element of understanding his own work.

nice of the Taoiseach to just openly say he sees European "rearmament" as a business opportunity for Irish companies, saves me the trouble of having to persuade people that he wants to dismantle our neutrality so Irish companies can get a slice of the war racket

not enough squeamish debate imo. we never even had a big national conversation about the implications of Irish soldiers training Malian soldiers who went on to commit war crimes

Excellent article about foreign influence astroturfing campaigns here in Ireland. We need to get smart about this.

CitizenGo’s attempted intervention in the presidential election was clumsy but remarkable: a foreign political organisation whose board includes a corrupt ex-politician linked to an international money laundering scheme tried to influence an Irish election www.ontheditch.com/the-foreign-...

my latest in The Ditch. Ireland is not immune to foreign interference, but it comes in many guises, not just from state actors. and it won't always be this clumsy

the government should not be forcing state agencies to have "an AI component" to anything, generative AI is an unreliable and unproven new technology, there's literally no justification whatosever for a whole-of-government embrace of its use

crazy that Clint Lorance, the former soldier convicted of ordering the murder of Afghan civilians, later pardoned by Donald Trump, is currently practicing law as a member in good standing of the Missouri Bar

I too have known many Geoffs mattbruenig.com/2025/12/21/t...

there is no greater act of projection than those who seek to end Irish neutrality calling those who seek to preserve it a "loud minority"

I'm not surprised Trump appointed a "special envoy" to pursue his designs on Greenland, but why on earth did he pick the sitting governor of Louisiana?

incidentally, this is also why it's presumptuous to speak of Jeffrey Epstein as an agent of any particular state rather than as an independent operator in the criminal overworld who worked with elements within various states over the years

Taylor Lorenz should get a Pulitzer for making Neera Tanden log off

I feel like this should be obvious but it is not "taking security seriously" to keep referring to the alleged drone incursion near Dublin as if it's been demonstrated that it happened at all, let alone who did it or why. truth still matters, however much we'd like to write it off

And yes, trigger-happy air defenses *have* shot down civilian aircraft before elsewhere, this isn't an unrealistic scenario

Whether or not they were Russian drones or a misidentification, the Irish navy appears to have made the correct decision to not potentially endanger civilian aircraft by attempting a shootdown. It is quite incredible the gardaí don't seem to understand this?

Justice Humphreys clarifies this is general commentary and not specific to McGreal, but as far as "seeking money in doing so" goes, I would note that McGreal has been crowdfunding his efforts since last year and has received tens of thousands to support his "work" in the courts

astute commentary on the "idiosyncratic pseudolegal autodidact" from Justice Humphreys in one of the many decisions made against Patrick McGreal over the last couple of years

when i eat too much tylenol

the rest of the press didn't exactly cover themselves in glory with their reporting on the Dundrum "injunction", but Gript absolutely deserve the lion's share of the blame for giving McGreal credibility among media outlets they did a glossy story on it with photo and video

Patrick McGreal continues to be a menace to the courts. this follows an attempt by McGreal to citizen's arrest a state solicitor /in court/ during a case that had nothing to do with him. he's been using the courts to harass public servants for years now www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/just...

it's nothing that hasn't been reported before, but: the former President of Colombia says he met Jeffrey Epstein at an event in Dublin in 2002, and his claims match up with Epstein's flight logs. that would be this event: achievement.org/summit/2002-2/

People are not going to like hearing this but some of the more deranged lefty anti-semitic discourse, eg the unhinged stuff about that actress currently ongoing, is that a lot of people online have dedicated a lot of effort to making it okay to say insanely racist things about Israelis

the fact that David Walliams is a creep is such a poorly kept secret I genuinely thought he'd already been outed, cancelled and welcomed back into the industry

to all who wondered who's that guy that looks like Gerry from Parks and Rec who was mysteriously present at Jim Ferguson's little shindig with Irish far right figures earlier in the year:

I haven't done a deep dive for Irish connections in the newest Epstein materials, but this is from an email the late golf course developer Jerry Barton – developer of Doonbeg – sent to Epstein with subject line "My Extraordinarily Talented, Outrageous Friend"

I've finally discovered how to bond hydrogen and oxygen in a chain: HO-HO-HO. It's a Christmas molecule.

Trump is putting up inscriptions that denounce some previous rulers while fabricating historical continuity with others and getting his name added to buildings and monuments that bear their names. this is such late empire behaviour it's beyond on the nose

Barry Heneghan's oft cited political inspiration and campaign member Eleanor Lanigan repeatedly expressing support for RFK Jr and related conspiracies. #iepol #speirgorm

some stand-up specials from this year I liked: - Alfie Brown: The Last Cancelled Comedian - Beth Stelling: The Landlord Special - Dusty Slay: Wet Heat - Gianmarco Soresi: Thief of Joy - Marc Maron: Panicked - Robby Hoffman: Wake Up - Sarah Squirm: Live + In The Flesh

the ringleader of this scheme, Ray Heney, was inexplicably present at "nationalist unity talks" between Derek Blighe, Michael Leahy and Malachy Steenson earlier this year (chaired by hard right British unionist Jim Ferguson for some reason) www.tipperarylive.ie/news/your-co...

good read. hope the EU please stop trying to shred international law internationallaw.blog/2025/12/15/r...

it's really fun how every time John Magnier gets a black eye from the Barne estate case, it's immediately followed by a black eye from Alan Moore of Hedgerows Ireland m.independent.ie/irish-news/c...

something about this happening at the same the US is engaged in an illegal naval blockade of Venezuela AND people are desperately trying to make sanctions evasion a causus belli (e.g. the Russian shadow fleet) is just breaking my brain

In case there was any doubt, the Department of Justice's classification of "safe" countries is a farce. Excellent, if bleak, reporting from @shamimmalekmian.bsky.social in @dublininquirer.com

wrote about one of my favourite performances!

in 2017, as Enda Kenny approached fifteen years as leader of Fine Gael, Leo Varadkar positioned himself for the leadership by attacking people on welfare in 2025, as Micheál Martin approaches fifteen years as leader of Fianna Fáil, Jim O'Callaghan is doing the same with migrants

you can tell Dan O'Brien takes defence policy seriously and studies it rigorously because he's constantly sharing Twitter threads, LinkedIn posts and substacks by deranged bloggers and calling them "essential reading" for Ireland

Anytime I read a Dáil exchange involving any Healy-Rae I’m embarrassed hearing such a blatant liar do his one true voice of the country side routine

"That's reprehensible. It's wrong, it's inconceivable, and it didn't happen" sorry, it's /inconceivable/ that a man who kept his candidate a secret from the most senior members of his party for at least a month would withhold other information from them? www.irishexaminer.com/news/politic...

Building social cohesion by identifying certain groups in society, blaming them for all ills and demanding they be cast out I am very smart. Make me Taoiseach.

I was wondering why the hell Tipp TD Ryan O'Meara was suddenly pushing the digital wallet identity verification thing so I checked and of course he was one of the TDs that Meta directly lobbied about it www.lobbying.ie/return/13174...

not convinced by the idea it benefits Micheál Martin to have had the report come out just before Christmas. the Dáil is in recess from Friday so he may well have just given his foes a month to plot the heave

Jim O'Callaghan is a threat to our human rights protections. Ireland has long been a champion and a beneficiary of the ECHR. Why is Jim O'Callaghan undoing that position? Why is he aligning us with UK? Who in government has okayed this?

my contribution to the debate about how realistic Wake Up Dead Man was in its portrayal of far right Catholicism is that earlier this year a parish priest in Clonmel used a homily to rant about how woke lefties destroyed Lucinda Creighton's political career

I just saw the AI Coca Cola Christmas ad for the first time and genuinely got a shiver down my spine! it's so bad! it's so creepy!