We have a political and media which values stasis but we have a world which is delivering jarring changes all the time. Our state is chasing returning to past status quo, instead of looking forward to preparing for our futures. Bluntly, the country is being run by nostalgia-riddled Facebook uncles

"Dude. No. Way." They really had an excellent adventure up there

I did a 200km audax cycle around the midlands yesterday and while it wasn't the main thing on my mind I was keeping an eye on road diesel prices at the pumps, mostly 2.06 to 2.09 € per litre, this morning I get my usual text and I can buy the same (in bulk) for €1.67. That's taking the piss

Sitting in my tractor agitating slurry before it's spread today listening to @philipb-h.bsky.social talking about an electric Fendt tractor and decided to do some sums with the help of Claude. When I started we were burning 15.5 lt/hr of diesel, it's dropped a little now

This piece by economist Sinead O’Sullivan really dives into the wealth disparity, decades of under funding of public service, leading to the ground swell of public anger driving much of the support for the fuel protests in Ireland

We now have Gardai behind the wheels of a number of vehicles - it looks like their owners decided to hand over the keys rather than see any damage caused to them by towing. (@corkbeo.bsky.social) #Whitegate #FuelProtests #Ireland #SpeirGorm

Because I'm part of a farmers purchasing group I get 2 text alerts every morning with fuel prices, the first just arrived today, diesel is down 21c/lt this morning after a 5c/lt fall yesterday. Hopefully that will take some of the heat out of the fuel protests which seem to be heating up #speirgorm

I just resigned from NASA. It breaks my heart to leave, but I’ve become convinced the best path forward is to do the best science I can, and that can’t be here anymore. I’m still in love with the promise of those four magic letters. Ad astra per aspera, and remember: Earth is the only good planet.

The pain from the Strait of Hormuz crisis will be felt far beyond the pump www.vox.com/future-perfe...

Today's the day when the price we're being quoted (pre VAT) for bulk deliveries of green agri diesel passes out the price auto diesel was before the US and Israel started bombing Iran. It's gone from just under €0.85/lt to just under €1.40/lt. #farming #agriculture #ireland #speirgorm

Wintzell’s Oyster House in Mobile, Alabama, has a sign that reads: "Free oysters to any man 80 years old accompanied by his father.” So Jimmy Rush recently claimed his free oysters with his 98-year-old dad. https://wapo.st/4rugLmQ

When you are recovering from an injury having the #barrowblueway to ride on is a life saver, much preferable to #cycling on a turbo trainer. Happy #stpatricksday to all.

🚨 UPDATE: fireball over Europe – 8 March 2026 At 18:55 CET on Sunday, 8 March, a very bright fireball streaked across the skies of Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, glowing for around six seconds before fragmenting. 🧪🔭 🎥 Allsky7

Probably should have been painted Hi-Vis, how can you see them coming otherwise????

Big dawg El Niño coming this summer and fall! This is a bit science-y… but easy. So follow along. You are looking at a vertical cross section of the tropical Pacific Ocean at the Equator with depth downward deep into the ocean. Left side is west near Asia. Right side is east near South America 1/

You're trapped in the last TV show you watched, where are you? Tehran, looks as if S4 will need a bit of a rewrite.

Just migrated my account to eurosky.social, a very painless process, no particular reason for doing it except that it seems sensible to have my data held in Europe rather than elsewhere. Everything seems to work OK so far, we'll see how it goes.

I firmly believe there are people who would still be alive today if not for the government delaying the blanket 30km/hr speed limits for urban areas. More will die while we wait for local councils to act #spéirgorm

Gonna need bigger bike lanes electrek.co/2026/02/26/f... @cyclingactionnz.bsky.social

It's finally Opening Weekend, to most folk that won't mean anything but to me and others like me it's like Christmas or the Toy Show, except it's every weekend till the end of Spring. It's time for the hard men to come out to play...

"Struck by a car" #AbsentDriver

If you liked this experiment, I published a full piece today in the same vein: a text that gets 100 years older with every section, from a modern blog post to a medieval chronicle. It's a single story spanning 1000 years of English. See how far you get. www.deadlanguagesociety.com/p/how-far-ba...

This thread is worth reading to see the spectacularly, wilfully, boorish reaction from a pundit presented with reasons and data why his hot take is wrong. The “comment is sacred, facts are free” school of punditry really has debased public discourse.

I don't think AI is coming for small Irish farmers just yet, it might even help with the form filling, but it looks like it's going to cause a bit of an earthquake in some sectors if the linked article is correct.

Don't give anything an Emmy until it's as good as this.

I made a map of 3.4 million Bluesky users - see if you can find yourself! bluesky-map.theo.io I've seen some similar projects, but IMO this seems to better capture some of the fine-grained detail

25% of February's #RRTY #audax in the bag, benign conditions for the time of year, but it's early days yet. Next stop the Shannon

I was wearing hi vis when a motorist drove into me. Passengers in the car got out to tell me the driver was really upset because she didn't see me. I didn't have much sympathy as I was picking gravel out of my hands. I was visible. She didn't look.

I’m having a hard time thinking of an interview between two human beings I enjoyed more than tonight’s interview of the great Ian McKellen by the great Stephen Colbert. Every moment of it was a pleasure that I highly recommend… but then came the most REMARKABLE ending that you really HAVE to watch.

"A majority of members of the Danish parliament, 63 per cent, commute to work by bike" I would be *very* interested to see the equivalent figure for our Oireachtas

Peter Dinklage reading Amanda Gorman's poem about Renee Good, a fellow poet.

This is an up-close photo of Saturn's rings, but it also shows so much more. Those two little dots are actually the Earth and Moon as seen from over 1.4 billion kilometers away by the Cassini spacecraft. Everything you know and love is on that dot. #Astronomy ⚛️🧪

It should not take a court order to get a toddler out of a prison.

I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free

📣 Research just published with R. Egan & H. Julienne, funded by @seai-ie.bsky.social. The paper presents an analysis of vehicular cycling in Ireland with the e-cargo bike, focusing on the interview accounts of participants based in four Irish cities Open access www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

We fixed your headline for you RTE The driver killed the woman with his vehicle… please speak to your editors www.rte.ie/news/regiona...

Downfall Bovino Edition. You're welcome.

Although it makes grim reading “If current rates of biodiversity loss continue, every critical ecosystem is on a pathway to collapse.” it’s good to see biodiversity loss being considered as the threat to our national security which it is. Response requires understanding 🧪 www.gov.uk/government/p...

Stage 2 is for Europeans to buy Trump the most vulgar, expensive globe they can find (preferably gold plated) and gently point out to him that Greenland is not much closer (100 miles) to the US than it is to Denmark.

Unreal colours in the sky over West Kildare just now, the phone camera picks it up really well. #aurora #kildare #Ireland

Here's an excellent short documentary about the making of Blue Monday featuring all members of the band plus Martin Usher who engineered the track #BlueMonday (THREAD 4 of 10) youtu.be/-BQnlJXFBXc

Winter #audax spins usually mean cold and damp conditions but today's 200km lap of Kildare featured more than the usual amount of mud flying. Brian and John were good company though, the KMs go by easier when there's someone to chat with and share the load. #cycling

2025 global climate highlights are out: 🌡️ 2025 was 3rd warmest year on record, 1.47ºC above the preindustrial level 📈 2023-2025 is the first three year period above 1.5ºC (according to ERA5) 🌍 The last 11 years have been the warmest 11 years on record See: climate.copernicus.eu/global-clima... ⚒️🧪🌊

"For years, people walking and cycling have accounted for about 40% of all road deaths and serious injuries. Those who pose the least danger are paying the highest price for a broken system, a fact Judge O’Donohoe seems to have overlooked." - Ciaran Cannon 👏

Excellent overview of the strength of Europe's farm lobby in this Politico article by Bartosz Brzezinski today www.politico.eu/article/euro...

A 2024 study found that ants best humans at tests of collective intelligence. Learn more: https://scim.ag/42nMvQJ #ScienceMagArchives

Our Solar System is orbiting the center of our Galaxy at about 220 km/s so in 2025 we collectively traveled something like 7 billion kilometers across the Milky Way. Once in a while, when you have a moment, it’s worthwhile to take a look around, see where you are, and appreciate how far you’ve come.

It seems like only yesterday that the Taoiseach told us he would do "everything possible" to stop the killing on our roads. 🤷‍♂️

After a slow start my #cycling year got better as the year went on, happy enough with that and hopefully a problem free 2026 to come. Some great days out on the bike, with good company from my clubmates and also people you meet along the way.