One of the lads, a G.E. consultant, had a life hack for us this afternoon: if you're abroad and facing institutional food at a conference, in a hospital etc, you'll be far safer if you tick the Vegetarian box on the form at all times. "And in Ireland, John?"

But it was interesting to hear a man trot out as his own profound insight something that most of us had read in one of the quality papers: this digital levelling of the information playing field really hampers oneupmanship in luncheon conviviality.

Forty years ago we used to gather in the elegant drawing rooms of their parents to play Trivial Pursuit, to gasp at sideshows of rock-climbing expeditions to Fair Head or El Capitan, or to eat cherry cheesecake. Now they live in Dartry or Ballsbridge and invest in Serbia. Where did I go wrong?

A man was persuaded (and convinced very easily) to show us snaps of the new two-storey extension to his house. "Your extension is bigger than many houses, Peter!" a good conversationalist gushed, and he was chuffed.

I learned too this afternoon from these captains of industry that 'there's good money to be made by investing in Serbia these days'. I may have a flutter.

Formerly within my grasp, he escaped and married (a woman), but he has now shaken her off and is back on the market and the apps. This is when I pounce.

"Whatever happens, we have got / The Tariff gun, and they have not."

"... at the beginning of his personal rule."

He might inadvertently be about to reveal to the world that the bully country is not omnipotent.

Australia and its allies. www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/202...

The Federal Chancellor may be overestimating how much the LOTFW cares about soccer, and how much the people of the Home of the Brave do.

It's an honorary DLitt that UCD should be giving Ryan Tubridy for published work and not a tuppenny ha'penny medal for 'services to broadcasting'. He'd look well under one of those floppy hats that the professors' assistants like swanning around in. (Note the books even here in his workplace.)

Man Polish! Who would have imagined this brave new world had such things in it? (And all because I bought something frivolous for someone using the Prime account.) amzn.eu/d/ineHT4b

We presume that 'Mughal' is the real issue.

If only the important Robert Schuman Centre would become active on Bluesky in this, Europe's time of trial through treachery. bsky.app/profile/eui-...

The canny shopper: bought for pence quasi-new from a major online retailer, delivered by Prime of a Saturday. No obvious damage, except a suggestion that someone might have opened it at pp 244-5 and then turned tail.

My live event? I don't like the sound of that. Don't like that at all, whatever it might mean. I think that too will be a 'no'.

Sir Tony Blair KG disappoints.

Such a difference one letter makes: Ava and Ave.

Sir Tristram is having a huge Schiaparelli exhibition in the V&A, starting in March: why wasn't I told?

Nature can be extraordinary.

"We're looking at a decade lost with catastrophic consequences to local businesses," he added. Business, business, business.

Down in Daingean Uí Chúis, as they call their town.

"The mistake people make is taking him at his own measure. You should assess what he says in objective terms: most of it is just pedestrian nitpicking."

"High Fried Oil": how he pronounces the name of the grand old hymn tune, and will not be told.

"There will be a new pop-up food poisoning stall at the formers' market today. Get there early for the best selection. Try the sweet & sour: you won't forget it."

You would now have to admire senior scholars in the hollowed out disciplines of political science and American constitutional law for keeping going keeping going. How long can they last? How long did the alchemists? How long the medieval manuscript copyists?

"And what will you do when you leave school?" I asked my niece last night. "Law, I think," she said lightly. "I like the corporate attire."

"We do death unusually well in this country." The speaker seemed pleased with himself and seemed to believe this nonsense last evening; his insight prompted much muttered agreement. "Pints?"

'Ironically' when no irony has been committed; 'no pun intended' when there's no pun in sight.

"No, that is very clearly not a dress shirt. It's not even white."

I learned tonight to my surprise that Physical Education is a subject for the Leaving Certificate. To my greater surprise I learned that, besides football, tennis and the like, Irish step-dancing is one of the sports that's accepted.

If the Bois de Vincennes in Paris, France has an area of 995 hectares, how then is the Phoenix Park in Dublin, Ierland the

Bermuda, the Bahamas and Clipperton Island must surely be threats to America.

One always feels for an ordinary person who replies approvingly to a grandee's post in the hope of a public pat on the head, only for them to be told they don't know what they're talking about. Much asymmetry here.

The next thing will be one of the Tory newspapers in England formally going over to Reform and announcing it in a self-important front page editorial. "We're backing Britain!"

Even here it's the same: ordinary people are denounced for satisfying Godwin's law in what they post so unsophisticatedly, but the grandees of Bluesky are treated as insightful geniuses (and likely to follow back in return for a repost) when those grandees post *exactly the same thing* (afterwards).

He will be aghast when they tell him it has shrunk.

This new practice of turning on subtitles on American films as well as foreign ones is doing the self-esteem no end of good: the merest entertainment for ordinary people now feels like watching improving art-house foreign films. The urge to boast about watching the trash has to be suppressed.

"This is not who we are."

Odd things, cat trees: I rarely see cats in real garden trees (though they might well see me). Indeed, a cat in a tree seems so often to precede a call to the fire brigade.

Even a thousand points of light can be extinguished.

A complaisant city upon a hill.

Richard Wagner's overture to Tannhauser can be quite disturbing when played well. (It can also be disturbing when played badly, but for different reasons.).

"When did you realise he was a tenured IR scholar?" "It was when he called it 'the Mossad' instead of Mossad." "You should be in intelligence."

By the great Edrich Siebert (London 1903 - Maidenhead 1984), whose real name was Stanley Smith Masters. We know his work from popular films.

Emerging intermittently and unpredictably from total Bluesky silence and issuing a stream of posts in a few minutes like a numbers station coming to life while never touching a reply might suggest someone formally meeting a particular job requirement, but not. All that is thought melts into AI.

These days many of us act as if and even perhaps believe that we are something other than we are. ("But I'm really a ...") The late Quentin Crisp had a paragraph about this. Something like civil servants or some other sort of drudges believing that deep down they were ballet dancers or some such.