For the BBC, I wrote about the divisive legacy of Requiem for a Dream, 25 years on. www.bbc.com/culture/arti...

»Am Tage, da ich meinen Paß verlor, entdeckte ich mit achtundfünfzig Jahren, daß man mit seiner Heimat mehr verliert als einen Fleck umgrenzter Erde.« Stefan Zweig wurde von den Nazis azsgebürgert (28. November 1881 - 22./23. Februar 1942) 

Roth schrieb an Stefan Zweig schon im Jahr 1933 „Inzwischen wird es Ihnen klar sein, daß wir großen Katastrophen zutreiben.. Es ist gelungen, die Barbarei regieren zu lassen. Machen Sie sich keine Illusionen. Die Hölle regiert." Joseph Roth und Stefan Zweig tauschten Briefe und waren befreundet

Inside the Mind of Trump

🇮🇪 I just concluded my 10-day official visit to #Ireland, where I observed important progress in protecting the environment, but these achievements are at risk. Press release: www.ohchr.org/en/press-rel... @un-spexperts.bsky.social

I am really, really tired of the generational revisionism as regards the provisional IRA.

Definitely. No one should be on X.

Educate. Evict. Emigrate. The Irish way

Cover reveal for my new book, A Hosting, to be launched Tuesday, April 21 in Hodges Figgis. Designed for @lilliputpress by the brilliant Niall McCormack using the Louis le Brocquy print The Táin. Army Massing, 1969. Greatness by association.

I see the 'gay' jokes are still happening in schools, my son was told if he didn't get "out of the library, he's gay", to which, given we are particularly tolerant he responded that it'd be perfectly normal if he was anyway. I never heard that crap until at least secondary school in the 90s.

‘Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

A small German state’s quiet revolt against Microsoft – and what it means for Europe www.irishtimes.com/world/europe...

Growing up in NI during the Troubles involved turning on the news most days with trepidation but i especially remember how the murders of ‘troublesome’ nationalist HR lawyers - inc also Rosemary Nelson - made us feel particularly vulnerable and not only unprotected but targeted by the state.

I've been reading & rereading @ravoon.bsky.social's debut Dirt Rich the last couple of weeks. It's the best new collection I've read in a very long time. It reclaims the techniques of Auden and MacNeice for the 21st century, while mining layers of memory – personal. familial, social – …

'Absolute hell’: Irishman with valid US work permit held by Ice since September www.irishtimes.com/world/us/202...

"We are now seeing eviction rates that have not been seen in Ireland since the 1850s." A damning reality laid bare in this piece of well-researched analysis.

A study at U Mass Amherst finds that Elon Musk manipulated Twitter to bolster the voice of the Neo Nazi Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) before the German 2025 parliamentary elections. No surprises here. groups.cs.umass.edu/equate-ml/20...

Ok. You're right. But why stop at cyclists? Let's make pedestrians wear high-vis and helmets too! It's safer right? Actually, let's make absolutely everyone wear high-vis and helmets at all times everywhere (except people in cars obviously!) so people driving cars feel better

5 people told Politico “the planned 🇺🇸🇩🇪 meeting collapsed after State Department officials told the German Embassy in Washington that it was prepared to receive only Christian Democratic and AfD lawmakers, excluding the SPD and the Greens.“ Norbert Röttgen (CDU) rejected that idea. Good on him!

It's tough to feel proud of our country's athletic successes when the current heads of state treat international sport as another opportunity to propagandize. I always think of Jesse Owens and his legacy post-Berlin. Of course, we remember him personally embarrassing Hitler's propaganda machine.

Context: this speech is from SIR THOMAS MORE, a history written, as near as scholars can tell, in the early 1600s by 6 or 7 people including Dekker, Heywood, Chettle, Shakespeare, and Munday. It was never performed, because Jacobean England was a police state and it was banned by the censor.

I don't know what it is about idiots who buy newspapers without understanding why they exist or what their business is, but I think gutting books coverage is some kind of canary in the coalmine. These jackasses don't read books, so they assume no one else does either.

Diese starke neue Recherche von Yasemin Said @taz.de zum seit Jahrzehnten von der extremen Rechten genutzten ehemaligen #HASAG- Außenlager des KZ #Buchenwald in #Leipzig zeigt neue, teilweise bizarre Details: Dazu ein kleiner Thread aus meiner Perspektive. 1/x

‘Both illuminating and wise … The work of a great writer with a deep concern for humanity.’ Eoghan Smith, The Irish Examiner Delighted to see ESCAPE FROM THE ANTHILL by the singular Hubert Butler reviewed in the Examiner over the weekend 💫 Butler is Ireland’s answer to George Orwell, and his -

To commemorate Holocaust Memorial Day this year, I describe the unparalleled experience of dialogue forums with the descendants of Nazis. The unexpected acts of emotional and historical repair we achieve together forge unbreakable bonds of friendship. bit.ly/49M5kBq

Anne Frank's family had their German citizenship stripped from them under the Eleventh Decree to the Law on the Citizenship of the Reich in 1941. Since they had never become Dutch citizens, they were officially stateless at this point, lacking what Arendt termed "the right to have rights."

Am old enough to remember when getting a trade deal with India was a justification for leaving the EU

People are right to be incensed, but there are more names to uplift. ICE killed an immigrant man named Silverio Villegas González in Chicagoland. He had children. Victor Manuel Diaz was kidnapped in Minneapolis and died in ICE custody on January 14. Their names deserve to be repeated, too.

Minneapolis Police Chief O'Hara: "It looks very untrained. It looks unprofessional. It looks very chaotic…People should be able to have an expectation that the federal government can enforce federal immigration law without these poor tactics & really unconstitutional practices."

Really interesting and worrying piece from @henrymance.ft.com about the future of humanitarian aid in an increasingly isolationist world - he embeds with the UN high commissioner for refugees www.ft.com/content/8600...

Four-time Grammy Award nominee Jesse Welles performs his song "Join Ice." Bob Dylan once said a single folk singer could defeat an entire army. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have our man.

The exhibits about slavery at the President’s House in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park have been removed amid pressure from the Trump admin www.inquirer.com/politics/nat...

I was present for the birth of the web, the explosion of personal sites, and the blogging revolution, and you know what we never had to do? Beg people to use our shit.

The OECD has warned that the uncritical adoption of generative AI as a tool in education could inadvertently undermine the development of key human skills such as critical thinking and evaluative judgment in students

Great, we - the EU & the UK - are in a hybrid-war with both Russia & the USA now.

No Nobel peace prize? Trump says give me Greenland. EU countries must push back hard. europeangreens.eu/news/hands-o...

What an incredible surprise! Donnacha Ó Beacháin, friend and Professor at the Dublin City University, who already endorsed The 44-Day War, suddenly, yes suddenly, enters the Brussels Press Club as we were starting the discussion of the book and Armenia-Azerbaijan relations.

A source confirms to me that this disturbing letter from Trump to the Norwegian PM is real.

Europe has some cards too...

🔴 The humanitarian crisis unfolding in Kyiv plays out on a whole new scale. As temperatures steady at around −15°C ❄️, people are trying to survive in unheated flats, with very little running water, only a couple of hours of electricity each day, and the threat of renewed russian attacks.

Reading that while from Kyiv with no light, no heat, no warm water and working with a hot bottle on my lap from under my duvet so yes, I will indeed point out that Ukrainians are going through hell than marvelling at their resilience. ❄️ Temperature outside is -15°C...

First statement from Macron: “Tariff threats are unacceptable and have no place in this context. Should they materialise, Europeans will respond in a united and coordinated manner. We will ensure that European sovereignty is upheld. In this spirit, I will speak with our European partners.”

Speaking truth to power. "Do not speak of the security of the Arctic, when its greatest threat is YOU" Greenlandic citizen at Nuuk demonstration. Source: dr.dk

I love that the literal translation of escalator into Irish is “living stairs”

Lots of interesting lines in this: “If you came from a working-class background you saw through the supposedly left progressivism that was determined to put manners on the working class because they hadn’t kept up with the latest codes and jargon."

“The vice president's comments justifying the death of Renee Good are a moral stain on the collective witness of our Catholic faith.” www.ncronline.org/opinion/ncr-...

“Family reunification accounts for little more than 1% of migration into Ireland. Telling people granted refugee status to wait three years – until their children no longer recognise them – is not the stance of a country that professes to cherish the family unit.” www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

This image was all over #Connewitz today #le1701.

As Justine says, restricting family reunification solves no real problems. It’s performatively cruel & also bizarre given how many separated from their families get jobs minding ours. I’ve written in the past about carers (not just refugees) in similar situations www.irishtimes.com/health/your-...