Hi @news.rte.ie is there any chance your sports correspondent could check how to pronounce the names of the players at Roland Garros. He’s mangled them all week culminating in tonight’s rendering of world No1 Aryina Sabelenka as Ariana. It’s so disrespectful and unprofessional

Listening to Theo Usherwood on @news.sky.com suggesting that Brit holiday makers will go to countries other than EU because they’re implementing border controls for non EU members. But other countries have border controls too. Being part of the EU meant travel within it was easier. Brexit!

It’s a dichotomy that governments give support to fossil fuel industries as well as the tech companies yelling at us that if we don’t adopt AI we will be left behind. Subsidising both from consumer taxes while it’s the consumer and not the industries being told to change!

I know times change but Roland Garros isn’t the same without Rafa Nadal

Possibly the most Swedish thing ever. Bought a container in IKEA. Didn’t realise it came with a lid. Was detained by staff at self checkout because I didn’t have the lid. I said it didn’t matter, I didn’t need it. They were horrified. Had to wait 20 mins while they got a lid. Wouldn’t let me leave😂

I just saw a pic from a US cabinet meeting and everyone around the table has a Maga-style cap in front of them. Merch on display? They are humiliating themselves ever single day

Make sure you cool down & chill out with a good book and an icy drink during these scorching temperatures 🌡️🍹

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits. ~Albert Einstein

I accept that Japan’s PM might be using this as an excuse but how in the name of all that’s tech can it possibly take a year to alter a cash register for zero tax? Simply reducing the rate to almost zero would apparently take 6 minths! www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m...

This could just as easuly be an article on Trump’s America: “even if those around him understand the reality of the situation we dont know if he himself understands” and “many of the oligarchs are privately horrified by the war” but say nothing www.theguardian.com/world/ng-int...

Watching a movie. someone has had their ear shot. A lot more blood than when it happened to Trump. His ear looks more messed up too. I realise that there’s fiction and makeup involved……

Next books on the TBR pile span central Europe, Japan and Ireland. Books can bring us to so many different places and introduce us to so many different people!

What depresses me most about the current state of the world is that the media normalises corrupt behaviour and gives as much weight to opinions as facts simply because it is more profitable for them to have people in a state of constant rage

What would be really lovely as a woman in her sixties would be to wake up one morning and find that no part of my body has a niggling ache (however am quite pleased to be waking up every morning!!)

What happens when white collar workers, medical staff, artists, musicians, creatives, lawyers, accountants and everyone else is replaced by AI? How does society function? Who buys stuff? Do the billionaires all live together on the top of a mountain like the villains in a James Bond movie?

Cartoon by @andertoon.bsky.social.

@mrjamesob.bsky.social is very well read. I wonder has he seen this new title?

Hi America: just in case you want to read how other countries see your President. And because @nytimes.com and the rest of the US media won’t say it www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

If AI was all that great I wouldn't have to waste my time going through a list of things with a Virtual Assistant that a real person would've solved in 10 seconds

Not a conscious decision but I realise I haven’t watched any US drama lately. Am enjoying Blanca and Astrid as well as a variety of Walter Presents shows from different European countries. Slower pacing, great locations and actors whose faces move!

Dear AI: no I don’t want you to summarise the email. I want to read what was written and how it was written. I want to get a sense of the person who wrote it. And if it was written by AI I will know that too

daaaamn london

Im in a WhatsApp group which has been joined by a guy called Jesús and honestly my Irish Catholic upbringing makes me think it’s the son of God messaging me every single time 😂

Could part of the problem be the 24 hour news cycle with its constant need to create drama, as well as society’s need for impossible instant fixes? www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Pope:”Reading nourishes the mind, helps cultivate a conscious and well-formed critical sense, guards against fundamentalisms and ideological shortcuts.” Reading is “an antidote to closed-mindedness which manifests in rigid attitudes and reductive views of reality.” www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news...

#caturday #cats

Delighted to share some of the lovely reviews Secrets Between Friends has received, you never know how a new book will go but I’m so happy so many readers have enjoyed it! Sx 💖

“Nigel Farage’s success is the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party meme come to life”: it is definitely a deliberate decision of the UK media not to hold him to the same standards as other politicians www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

Or maybe it was the uniformly positive media coverage with lack of scrutiny of Reform and its leader by the UK press while the coverage of left leaning parties was unflinchingly negative www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

My husband, who is in charge of the laundry in our house, is going away for a few days and has given me an in depth explainer on how to use the washing machine 😂tho has stressed that I can leave the laundry til he gets back

I don’t know which is worse. That he thinks this or that his constituents have voted for a man who thinks this. The USA is toast

Pundit on @news.sky.com “voters are intelligent enough to know what they want”. Actually voters are swamped by the views of the (mainly) right wing press that continues to big up Reform, belittle Lib Dems, denigrate Labour and dismiss the Greens (and Conservatives)

I’m Irish and I love being part of the European Union. Doesn’t matter where on the continent I travel I feel at home when I see the EU flag 🇪🇺 (obviously I love seeing an Irish flag 🇮🇪 too but it’s great to be part of something bigger and to know my rights are the same in EU countries)

Seriously do people who voted reform believe that Farage gives a flying *** about them?

If you are having a staycation or vacation it’s the perfect summer read, Secrets Between Friends is for you 🌅

I’m astonished that the polls in the UK are suggesting huge wins for Reform, led by Farage, the man whose track record is Brexit. If he got the sunny uplands of that so wrong, what else can he **** up spectacularly. And he’s being funded by billionaires. Which has definitely not worked out for USA

Why do commentators keep saying Trump needs to save face in the illegal war he started? There should be no face saving. He and his “war” secretary are incompetent buffoons who shouldn’t be in charge of a Lego battleship let alone a real one. He caused this. He owns it. No face saving

Wordle 1,781 X/6 50/50 on the last guess went for the wrong one 😡 🟨⬛⬛🟨⬛ ⬛🟩🟩⬛⬛ ⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩 ⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩

I’ve been listening to Hugh Bonneville reading selected Holmes short stories for the past few months and he’s magnificent. Loving The Hound of the Baskervilles too. Highly recommended

Somebody posted that journalists have to go easy on Republicans because otherwise they won’t do interviews or come on their shows. Given that every word that comes out of their mouths is a lie it would be preferable if they didn’t and journalists did their job of actually reporting the truth

www.theguardian.com/world/2026/m... there’s no need to spend time “understanding “ this. In the same way as Trump removed tariffs on whisky because he likes King Charles he’s removing troops because he doesn’t like Mertz. There’s no strategy here, only ego

In no Hollywood movie is the good guy the billionaire owner of a tech company hell bent on inflicting its product in the world….just sayin’

Leaving aside the whiskey/whisky issue this simply shows that he’s using tariffs as weapons and revenge. He’s such a sack of ****

Leaving books behind for a few days and traveling to Madrid for the Mutua Madrid tennis. Love train journeys and letting renfe do the hard work 😍

Trump is one man and one man alone is limited in what he can do. It’s the venal, amoral and rapacious Republican Party members who are putting their own greed ahead of the people who (sadly) elected him who should be blamed for the catastrophic demise of the USA

I’m really tired of shiny Botox foreheads (make & female) especially on actors. I want to see their faces move!

Nice write up about SBF in the @irishexaminer.bsky.social if you were still unsure about picking up a copy! 🥹 “If you want to open your heart up and let three incredibly brave and independent women tell you their story, Secrets Between Friends could be the perfect read for you.”

Tras la liberación de París en 1944, Albert Camus escribió en el periódico francés Combat: «Fue en España donde mi generación aprendió que uno puede tener razón y ser derrotado, que la fuerza puede destruir el alma y que a veces el coraje no obtiene recompensa».