Top tip for sorting your tree lights and other xmas lights. Get a kitchen towel or toilet roll carboard tube, wind the lights around it as you take them down or off the tree. Wind the lights around the cardboard tube, and put them away until next year. #Spéirgorm

Congestion pricing is a heckuva street safety strategy www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

'Legal and digital experts have labelled the Government’s new age-verification plans for social media as “intrusive”, “illegal” and an “expensive national embarrassment” waiting to happen' m.independent.ie/irish-news/g...

This poem is dedicated to anyone heading back into work and having to endure dull conversation about what they got up to during the Christmas holidays.

Some good local news for Dublin - the next phase of the traffic plan is due to improve Gardiner St and the area around Connolly Station and Busáras this year. Hopefully the positive outcome from the last phase will stop the usual suspects from panicking this time: www.irishtimes.com/ireland/dubl...

I disagree with the assertion I'm now seeing frequently that being fooled by AI is the fault of those being fooled and not of those creating the fraud machines.

Literally a publication for eight-year olds 40 years ago

Somebody on here quipped earlier that we live in precedented times. It hit home with me. In 2003 I watched US troops roll in to the oil rich Iraqi city of Kirkuk and roll straight out the other side to take up defensive positions around the oil refinery. 1/

I take it he's going to reduce default speed limits to 30km/h, implement progressive fines for speeding, roll out automated camera enforcement and set up a dedicated traffic unit for the Gardaí. I could go on, these are just the first 4 things that sprung to mind (without turning over any stones).

A vital project. The Govt. PR after the stories of such human devastation is just crass 🤦🏾‍♀️ “An ongoing photography project documents the reality of life in Ireland for many people forced to move back in with older family members”. www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p... #spéirghorm #IrishPol #Housing

Hoping to do a Home Exchange in Europe next summer (we did one 2 years ago in the Basque Country and it was great) but am slightly afraid of being stuck somewhere in a heatwave. 40 degrees plus in lots of Spain and Italy last August, which is no good. #SpeirGorm hivemind, any ideas?

Has the Minister for Keeping Children Safe on the Internet commented on X/Grok yet? Was he asked?

Ireland and the EU should be actively shouting about US breaches of international law right now - failure to do so contributes to normalisation of a new era of colonial gangsterism.

Your brain needs this.

Writing this piece about the connections made between AfghanI refugees and local Irish people was quite heartening www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

What just happened ... Comedy: Jamie Kaler

This

We live in a rich country with fertile land, a moderate climate, a location that shields us from the madness of the powerful and a literate imaginative people with a strong culture and sense of community. The pessimism reflects failed expectations - why isn’t this the best place on earth to live?

In 1887, British forces kidnapped & exiled the King of Opobo in today’s Nigeria. British Palm oil traders had persuaded the government that the tariffs he imposed restricted their profits. It was a milestone in the Scramble for Africa and indirect rule by Britain. alanlester.co.uk/blog/antisla...

"What we need is a transport system that supports heath. This means safe, high-quality infrastructure for walking and cycling integrated with high quality public transport that is complimented by car use when needed." Excellent article by Dr. Catherine Conlon. www.thejournal.ie/readme/road-...

What if none of these things is a distraction from the other things and instead they're all just horrible things

OMG, RTÉ is copy-n-pasting the yellow journalism that sane-washes this crime straight onto its website.

If you're using the Grand Canal Cycle Route or going a bit further towards Harold's Cross Bridge, please watch out for these:

Top level european diplomacy on a years long streak of spectacularly failing to meet the moment

We're about to witness unprecedented levels of cowardice from our Government.

A note that just because the President of the United States used the word 'captured' doesn't mean news organisations should just use it without attribution... or maybe at all really?

Time to sanction the regime? What do we do about www.trumphotels.com/ireland/golf ?

none of this looks good for Taiwan (amidst a deluge of negative and wholly unconsidered - by the US regime - consequences of invading a country and kidnapping its leader)

I know the EU is still on holiday (complimentary) but we should see the same speed of response here. And what happened to Minister Patrick O’Donovan’s plans to protect children on the internet, now X dot com is generating actual CSAM of real children? Is he only interested in surveillance?

We need to do something about our over reliance on US FDI #SpeirGorm Will Micheál Martin condemn the attack on Venezuela or does he think it would be merely “performative” like he does with the Occupied Territories Bill?

Adding screenshots for when this is inevitably pulled down

The way the press is treating chatbots, like they have agency and they “know” things all of a sudden, crossed the line recently from dumb and obsequious to something else entirely. Treating them as alive and making conscious decisions is an almost religious belief. It won’t age well.

Just as well we’re not in a society handing vast amounts of power to this technology and its owners without regulation, isn’t it?

A picture is worth 1000 words... This appeared on the BBC News today, showing the increase in solar electric generation in the UK. Not sure who produced it, but genuinely think this is a genius piece of scientific communication - the construct and choice of colour scale is near-perfect. Chapeau!

hey @newschambers.bsky.social or any other Irish journalist with a backbone, fancy asking Martin or Harris if they are comfortable still using a platform which generates CSAM? #speirgorm

One thing I wrote about here is how technology has made buses *way* more convenient while techno-futurists were obsessed with flying taxis and self-driving cars.

This is quite an important point; if you are a UK citizen with Twitter on your phone, opening it up is like playing Russian roulette that the algorithm might commit a strict liability offence on your behalf.

This salient information abiut Healy-Rae should have been in the first or second paragraph; in the Irish Times article, it is in the last. We need to ask why.

I know of a nearby village where a couple moved to, thought it was lovely and proceeded to buy the next 11 houses on the market and the urn them into Airbnbs, outbidding several others who wanted to move to the place.

This is a crime in Irish law too - if your twitter app buffered this image when you scrolled, thats 12 months in prison for possession of CSAM under the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998. bsky.app/profile/dsqu...

Ex-Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun has Lunch with the FT and in one of those instances so rare that you know he didn't sign an NDA, says exactly why as.ft.com/r/e503690d-8...

podcasts

People keep claiming it's a "better window to the world" but actively posting and engaging on a platform where interactions and content are now effectively interchangable with 4Chan and whose own AI puts images of children in tiny bikinis on demand is a choice. There are far less harmful windows.

Mamdani: "The cost of childcare will no longer discourage young adults from starting a family, because we will deliver universal childcare for the many by taxing the wealthiest few"

Controversial take but I agree that if you have even center left politics you should be barefoot wearing a barrel with suspenders. You should have a wallet with a single moth and nothing else in it. You should be slicing up a single bean paper thin and eating it slowly on a trash can lid

day one in mamdani’s new york

Welcome to the Public Domain, I GOT RHYTHM (1930) 🎷 Rhythm changes + a swinging 32-bar progression x now free for everyone to play = remix & rediscover! Who could ask for anything more? Learn more ➡️ blog.archive.org/public-domai... #PublicDomainDay #PublicDomain #CopyrightFree

Happy New Year to all our members and supporters. We enter 2026 with a renewed focus to make walking & cycling safe and accessible for all ages & abilities. If you haven't already, please join us www.irishcyclingcampaign.ie/civicrm/cont...

pound for pound this might be the funniest thing ever written

Listening to this on vinyl and feeling thankful to live in a world with Sonny Rollins in it. Jim Hall playing all the good notes as usual (this is about as sophisticated as my music criticism gets, look elsewhere for jazz essays!) www.discogs.com/release/2446...