New (old) books In the shop stoneclub.bigcartel.com/products

Seeing another round of hope vs. despair discourse play out in climate circles, so allow me to once again put a plug in for rage.

Palestine Protest. Leonardo Hotel, Dublin, Ireland. shorturl.at/OPvoV #photography #bnwphotography #citylife #sony #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephotography #streetphotography #candidphotography #ireland #protest #palestine #gaza

I keep thinking about David Cullinane on The Tortoise Shack saying that Climate Targets are no good because "people know in their heart they won't be met" That is climate denial & if SF aren't willing to meet targets, then they're not willing to hold FFG to account to meet them either. #IrishPol

...and much, much worse than you can even imagine in terms of the consequential harm to our species. No elected authority conducting business with Nazi Freakshow Inc. is to be trusted, period.

'Assimilation' - Oils on panel 24×18 #surrealism #painting #human #art #dark #freedom #dystopian

Africa's highest court is about to hear something historic. For the first time, we're arguing that the climate crisis is a violation of African people's rights and that polluters must be held accountable under African law. Add your name: act.gp/4lCrlH4

Global markets have brough an age of uncertainty all round - including many of the apparent winners who work for globally successful companies. Weirdly they have also strengthened parochialism so everyone also thinks their problems are uniquely bad.

“I have come in contact with many very bright people over my academic career But I have also encountered plenty of colleagues who were somewhat intellectually mediocre – and the latter were by no means confined to academia’s low ranks and obscure corners” Something I have noticed in my career too!

5th June, 1971: "Doctor Who: The Daemons" episode 3. #DoctorWho

Often, when I'm out walking the farm, I'll just sit awhile and drink in the changes. Like in this spot where the foreground is rapidly transitioning from species-poor grass and bracken to megadiverse habitat, crammed with inverts, birds, and other wildlife. Rewilding is a soul tonic.

I feel like I've been reading the same article about the State's failures for 30 years www.irishexaminer.com/news/politic...

21% ‼️ That’s INSANE

It’s important that Europeans get used to sitting in the dark so that energy-hungry data centres have an uninterrupted supply of electricity. Ireland, lest we forget, has Europe’s highest percentage of data centre electricity usage. Don’t forget to buy some candles 🕯️

Irish Weather: Rains steadily for months. Then a few days of record-breaking heat. A few of us make some points about climate change. Irish Weather: Right, well have some more feckin’ rain then, you ungrateful bastards. #SpeirGorm

"Israel is committing war crimes before our eyes" - Wes Streeting, in a private message. So it turns out that government ministers were not, after all, incapable of understanding what is happening there. Just incapable of saying it in public, and of acting on that knowledge. #MorallySupine

A very moving image: thank you! Extraordinary to realize how the atoms of your own body form one of the later structures arising from such origins. What creatures will in turn coalesce from the ingredients which we see here. #cosmos #origins #life

Let's hope - for I would wish this on no-one - Seema Malhotra does not become one of the women, like my wife featured in this piece, who are confronted by vigilantes in her changing room for the crime of having suffered breast cancer.

My review: pluralistic.net/2025/04/23/z...

This isn't just SF. This is FF and FG too. No ideas, empty vessels, waiting for ideas to be poured in by their civil servants and passing lobbyists. No ambition or vision for what they will do in power, just want to sit in the big seat.

Show of Strength youtu.be/twPsCjyDBhk?...

Sir Max Hastings here, ennobled for his service to journalism, running that all too familiar line: "the problem with Isræl is Netanyahu." This has always been a nice way for Atalnticists to pretend the settler colony they created isn't monstrous, it's just controlled by a monster.

Manhunter (1986) Written and directed by Michael Mann based on the 1981 novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris. #FilmSky #Movies

Evening rainstorm passes. 28.05.2026

I think voters across the western world increasingly see this clearly, even if some of their governments are still tying themselves in knots trying to explain why it’s appalling when Russia does it but not when Israel does it.

My copy of a 1761 French textbook by scholar and historian Lenglet Du Fresnoy opened to a foldout, copperplate engraving of different models of the universe including the Ptolemaic model, Copernicus's heliocentric model, Tycho Brahe’s geoheliocentric, and Descartes Système des Tourbillons. 🔭 📚💙

This lecture by @johnnyryan.bsky.social from @iccl.bsky.social is exceptional. He lays it out in stark, unambiguous terms. Ireland is the major structural weak point in tech regulatory governance & social media corporate accountability globally. We have to fix this.

Cue those in power mugging their usual insult-to-the-intelligence excuses at the camera and fatalistic shrugs at the local level. 1/ www.rte.ie/news/environ...

He says it himself "... including services in the bill could potentially damage Ireland..."in terms of potential impacts on US multinationals based here back in America". Once again, Martin confirming that he legislates at the behest of another nation. Fianna Fáil are bought. #Spéirgorm

Incident in the garden considered as a Bruce Pennington book cover for Frank Herbert's Dune series. The only acceptable book covers for these works in my view. #brucepennington #dune #classicbookcovers

Sublunar Tales. Dawn breaks over Clavius and Copernicus: a sight timeless and deeply temporal in one.

It shouldn't come as a surprise to learn that a company that uses dishonest tactics to spy on you for profit will also use dishonest tactics to sell the resulting surveillance data. 1/

The Great Jon Pertwee as the Doctor #DoctorWho #JonPertwee

A fascinating and concise discussion about the nature of differentation and routes of influence.

Astronomy Picture of the Day A Martian Eclipse: Phobos Crosses the Sun Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, ASU MSSS, SSI apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap26052... #APOD #Mars 🔭🧪

Watching The Quatermass Experiment. The opening shot is a landscape at dusk, live action and a matter painting, with the far hills dotted with…quite Samuel Palmer style trees. I’m now including Quatermass as part of Samuel Palmer’s unearthly England.

It is one year since over 450 legal professionals in Ireland, including barristers, solicitors and academics, wrote to the Taoiseach expressing "deep concern" at the Irish Government’s failure to meet its international legal obligations regarding Palestine. No response was ever received.

22nd May, 1971: "Doctor Who: The Daemons" episode 1. #DoctorWho

🛰🔴 Dernière ligne droite pour la mission MMX ! 🇯🇵 La sonde est arrivée au Japon pour ses ultimes préparatifs avant son lancement vers Mars et ses lunes prévu en octobre 2026. Si vous souhaitez en savoir plus, on fait le point sur Cnes.fr : cnes.fr/actualites/m... @dlr-spaceagency.bsky.social

If you don't subscribe to the idea that the governing class are doing this deliberately, then your only fallback is that they are idiots. It's one or the other, it might even be both, but it can't be neither.

You think a taoiseach might have a smidgin of power. BUt Micheál Martin devotes long hours to convincing everyone there's nothing to be done. And we see and hear it so often, it starts to sink in. Nothing to be done. Change isn't possible. Then Mamdani does more in four months than FFG in a decade.

Falling Earthwards, always Earthwards... #cosmos #place

Image showing feathers of cirrus cloud forming faces in the upper air above East Galway at sunset. #cielo #ciel #sky #天空 #سماء #空 #Himmel #ουρανός #taivas #하늘

Image showing feathers of cirrus cloud forming in the upper air over East Galway. #sky #ciel #spéir #سماء #天空 #cielo

Cirrus formation, Co. Galway, Ireland. May 2026 #sky #ciel #spéir #سماء #天空 #cielo

A contrail spreads across the upper atmosphere to impose a cloudscape of its own making upon the sun. Co. Galway, May 2026.

'She turned her focus sharply to identifying and exposing the presence of bias in psychology. Her core thesis was that it was flawed because most research was based on men’s experiences and treated male behaviour as the “normal” standard, leading to distorted and damaging views of women' ...