Dear god @irishtimes.com Your framing here is going to get a subscription cancellation. I dislike media which supports fascism.

Interesting thread. I have some questions about some of the points, but it sure is an interesting and productive way to view things. And I heartily agree that fact-checking is neither here nor there. It misses the point.

"They stole my face... my identity... I don't remember who I was three years ago." This is Lucy. Her life changed utterly after she became a victim of deepfake image abuse. Forced to move jobs & home... change every aspect of her daily life... she has a strong message for victims and legislators

One gets the feeling, particularly when coupled with the Microsoft CEO saying that the AI bubble would burst without wider AI adoption, that the timescales required for investment returns on the development of AI have become undeniably impossible to meet. futurism.com/artificial-i...

Universities should be following suit. Painful, but necessary.

Tomorrow: The first of two reports from women speaking out for the first time about having their images manipulated explicitly without their consent. They've suffered years of trauma, panic attacks and unsolicited messages from men. This is why the Grok issue matters. @virginmedianews.bsky.social

We have decided to move to a social media platform more in keeping with our mission and values. So here we are! We'll be posting about goings-on in Algebra & Geometry, Analysis & Probability, Financial & Actuarial Maths, Relativity & Astrophysics, and Maths Education.

Maths at @dublincityuni.bsky.social is now on @bsky.app with the handle @dcumaths.bsky.social :)

I’m telling you, this is a line we should not allow to be blurred. Assert that what has been done is illegal. Have it investigated as illegality. Bring prosecutions of company officials on illegality. Describe the basis of each step clearly and without obfuscation or imprecision.

More wind, less gas -- the Irish grid emitted less CO₂ in 2025 than any other year in recent memory. But is it enough? "A Year in Review: The Irish Grid in 2025" arrives Monday in all our newsletter subscribers' inboxes. Sign up for free today and ensure your copy! 📊 🔌 📩

When is it not appropriate? And why is it, again atomised to individuals when Section 9 of the 1998 Act specifically assigns corporate bodies liability as well.

And this, @andrewhesselden.bsky.social and @francevisafree.bsky.social, is why it is probably advisable to stop talking using "passport" as a word for "citizenship". It misleads people and, as I mentioned before, it is offensive.

Reported on Google Play. The link to the relevant act is www.irishstatutebook.ie/eli/1998/act... There's an issue in that they want the specific url etc, but I only provided the link to X itself.

Back after my Christmas break in New Zealand. Some New Year thoughts about the future for us Europeans. hayest.substack.com/p/scribblings

It's unbelievably hard, nigh on impossible, to influence a zealot in a few tweets. Engaging with the worst trolls in good faith doesn't produce results, it just amplifies them and fuels their hate. They don't want to be influenced by your alternative viewpoint.

AI Minister has gone way up in my estimation. It is important to look coldly at AI, and not get up in the currents created by marketing. On at least this issue Niamh Smyth is calling things as they are. Ireland should suspend Grok and X. The Gardaí absolutely should be raiding X offices.

The idea that journalists, politicians, groups or - you know, women, people of colour, LGBTQ+ people - should "stay on the pitch" doesn't really hold up. Foreign Minister's account has 60k followers - 40 likes, 13k views? Blue ticks straight to the top of the queue with misogyny, bile.

"Consequence-free physical and sexual abuse of children was part of the deal the institutional Church offered the Irish state for to run schools, hospitals and other expensive-looking services. This week the Taoiseach demonstrated the same mental habits." www.thegist.ie/the-gist-the...

There doesn’t need to have been an intent to create CSAM, just a requirement that the company “facilitates” the making of the material for an offence under Section 5(1)(d) of the Child Trafficking and Pornography Act 1998 to have been committed But if the changes to software were made “knowingly”

X is based in Ireland. Under Irish law what they are doing is illegal. I didn't have "Irish government arguing against removing CSA images" on my 2026 bingo card. I'm fully astonished by FFG here. Anyone who voted for them want to weigh in? #Speirgorm

Oh wtf lads. What a complete inability to face up to the events. A lot of times slow and careful is the best approach, even though it can be frustrating and unpopular. Sometimes, like now, you just take action based on the overwhelming evidence. We are a sovereign country for a reason.

I'm almost certainly late to this, but the list of risks for the Claude in Chrome beta is 👀. Essentially, you the human need to be extremely cautious so that the AI agent can be permissive support.claude.com/en/articles/...

Much has been written about potential safety benefits of AVs. Given the lack of AV data transparency, I cannot speak to whether, or to what degree, AVs are safer than an average human driver. What I can say: This is the wrong question. 🧵 www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...

Yep. Just get off X. It really isn't appropriate for govt and institutions to be preferentially focused on what the FT referred to as a deepfake porn site for comms.

So much of this "Trump says" stuff is really just news entertainment, rather than news. He was wrong about "running Venezuela", for example. Nothing he says is really relevant to reality.

Things stepping up. ICCL and Digital Rights Ireland have written to the Garda Commissioner calling for an urgent investigation of X.

The US' behaviour regarding oil in the 21st century is sort of reminiscent of the UK's behaviour regarding steam in the 20th. The UK was very good at steam locomotives - so good that it stuck to them even as the world moved on to diesel. The world is now moving on to electricity.

Hilarious. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Is it just me ... why on earth does the Irish Times keep referring to Ireland as the Republic? No official source does now, not even the UK (the latter since the Good Friday agreement).

Great, short thread.

"around 11 per cent of United States regime-change operations over a century ended up creating democracy"

What an interesting take ⬇️👇

Great thread. Also, totally agree about not being able to change anything in the US: let's not waste too much energy getting upset about stuff we can't change. Fascists are gonna fash, after all.

Maith thú Mamdani: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

OpenAI trying to get the State to force and subsidise use of its products? We have yet to see much evidence that AI adoption (I mean using LLMs) will have much positive impact: Fewer Irish people using ChatGPT than in other countries, OpenAI told Taoiseach www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026...

Good to see this type of report coming out. I'd note two things though: 1. Cost: oral assessments are incredibly expensive. A tax on AI could be used to fund these assessments on an ongoing basis. www.irishtimes.com/ireland/educ... 1/2

This is so frustrating. There's demand but the lack of investors and high costs/bureaucracy is killing probably the single best environmental transport solution! Yet fecking O'Leary and his cabal continue to get subsidised to the hilt (€36bn annually in fact!). #speirgorm

From next year, all new company cars in Belgium must be emission-free. From 2027 onwards, companies offering cars to their employees will also need to provide all enployees with the option of a mobility budget, which incentivises modal shift, remote working and electric car-sharing.

Dunno why the @irishtimes.com, RTÉ and other Irish media don't seem to be covering this, since it is so centrally important for us. For anyone who thinks the US is an ally in any meaningful sense, here's a British report: www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

La France dénonce avec la plus grande fermeté la restriction de visa prise par les Etats-Unis à l'encontre de Thierry Breton, ancien ministre et Commissaire européen, et quatre autres personnalités européennes. 1/3

Simplistic and inaccurate views of AI expressed in this article by some folks: the push to make AI, in some form, a crucial part of our education system is simply a reflection of AI's lack of impact so far: if it had an impact it'd already be in the curricula www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

The idea that what is needed to bring in more affordable accommodation is *yet more* cash in the housing system has been shown, year after year after year, to be false. How people can continue to peddle this stuff with a straight face ... www.irishtimes.com/business/202...

Now that the US and Russia are, in many respects, allies it will be interesting to see how anti-US/pro-Russian commentators align themselves. I have absolutely no idea what they'll do, because I've never been very sure of their motivations.

Tell me how we are supposed to use AI "ethically" in education when, by AI, most people mean LLMs controlled by private individuals or corporations.

Yep - investing heavily in good public transport is indeed a necessity.

To judge from this article, it seems UK political leaders are still too ill-informed to have a proper discussion of the UK joining the EU. What on earth is the education system doing over there? Brexit’s back: Starmer flirts with EU as economic growth flatlines www.irishtimes.com/world/uk/202...

New preprint! @marentierra.bsky.social @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I have been working on what CAIL means to showcase & propagate the idea of thinking very differently to tech industry norms on "artificial intelligence" Towards Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacies doi.org/10.5281/zeno... 1/

This is a good thing. And we must also recognise that the national publicly-funded research agenda ought not have an emphasis on commercially important research. In any well-designed, healthy ecosystem such research should (mostly) be the preserve of commercial organisations.

There is a solution: a migration border in the Irish sea. If NI is already treated as a self-contained "territory" by the UK then this isn't such a big change: Northern Ireland may be left in a migration limbo. That’s a problem for the Republic www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...