In what's now become an annual tradition, I've written another piece for The Gist about how and why I hate A.I. On a bubble about to burst, a future rotted to its core, and the limits of the Mrs Doyle Theory of artificial intelligence. www.thegist.ie/guest-gist-2...

An app that connects your kindle to the weather forecast so the last paragraph of The Dead accurately describes the weather in Ireland at the time of reading. It's what Joyce would have wanted.

1892! That must be one of the oldest vape shops in the UK.

This is stupid, and that's before you get into the endlessly elastic definition of 'woke'. The biggest films of 2025 include an anti-colonialism, anti-whaling epic (Avatar 3), an anti-racism animation (Zootopia 2), and an anti-war superhero flick (Superman).

For those who enjoyed #Eternity in the cinema, the director's previous film, the gorgeous #DatingAmber is on at 01.30 on RTE2 #Speirgorm (I'm sure @patrickfreyne.bsky.social will vouch for this recommendation)

While I'm at it, my favourite new books of 2025*: Elaine Feeney's Let me Go Mad in My Own Way and Roisin Lanigan's I Want to Go Home But I'm Already There. They haven't much in common bar having sentence long titles & being strange & beautiful and ultimately about what "home" means.

Had some great, rather random, Christmas time reading: Tessa Hadley's beautiful After the Funeral short stories, Mary Lavin's also beautiful the Shrine & Other Stories, Frances Wilson's new Muriel Spark biography Electric Spark & Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock (less good but reliably mental).

This set of observations is produced by my scrolling Reddit and otherwise listening to people talk about "how to write." A) there is no requirement that any of your characters has any sort of "arc" let alone a redemption. B) there is also no requirement that your fiction has a plot.

I can't wrap my head around how using AI to undress random women using their clothed image is not considered image-based sexual harassement, and how a social media site whose AI doubles as a nudify app is allowed to carry on as normal.

This reporting was possible because of funding from the Simon Cumbers fund and the Irish Times' commitment to foreign reporting. The latter shouldn't be taken for granted. It's hugely expensive and doesn't make much commercial sense but it's really important.

And at the end of it all I wrote this piece about what I came away thinking about the whole thing (also, that's the baby that chewed my notebook in the previous piece about the women's centre in the Adre camp): www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2025...

This is the first piece we wrote form Chad - it ran while we were still there - it was about the effect of US Aid cuts on a region where people are already experiencing severe hunger. We visited an MSF hospital filled with malnourished babies. It's heartbreaking www.irishtimes.com/world/africa...

This is Zahra Adam Khimes, a Sudanese refugee & social worker, who while dealing with unimaginable loss herself set up a women's centre in the unofficial Adre refugee camp Chris and I report on here. www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

Most Sudanese refugees in Chad are women & children. The RSF are ethnically cleansing Darfur of Masalit people. We met some women in the Aboutengue refugee camp who set up a women's group. Their stories are very upsetting but their dignity & bravery is incredible www.irishtimes.com/world/africa...

This piece largely reported from the unofficial city of 235,000 refugees at the edge of the small border town, Adre. There are a lot of upsetting stories here but the thing I can't get over is how generous and kind people were. I can't get over this in particular: www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

in April, Chris Maddaloni & I reported from the border between Chad & Sudan where 750,000 refugees, brutalised by the RSF, live in the desert. They’re still there. Still suffering. Here’s Chris’s video. (I’m going to repost each piece) www.irishtimes.com/video/video/...

I have been very lucky to read some proofs this year, and this is up there as one of the very best, and maddest (my favourite thing) — just brilliant writing! Anakana is definitely one of the most original Irish writers working today

I wrote about AI and stuff www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

A cracking start to the year. @ronanhession.bsky.socialwill be speaking to James Naughtie on BBC Radio 4 - Book Club. Sunday 4th January at 4pm. www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m... Marvelous. @thebookseller.com @bookcornerhx.bsky.social @forumbooks.bsky.social @drakebookshop.bsky.social

And the other question, the one I start with is: who controls this tech & do I trust them? Irrespective of whether the tech is good or not I don’t believe we’ll reap the benefits. Are they allowing content creators they‘re training it on reap any benefits now? www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

Some lines I wrote were included in this Best Sentences of 2025 piece in the New York Times (bizarrely from a column I wrote on hunks (Love Triangle UK)) www.nytimes.com/2025/12/29/o...

"In The IT, @patrickfreyne.bsky.social reviewed a dating show "Meeting the contestants is also an opportunity to see job descriptions that the labor economist Richard Scarry never dreamed of … Fake tan and the Spice Girls are, of course, Britain’s main industries since Brexit.” tinyurl.com/yzfpx2hz

Why is the writing on shampoo bottles getting smaller? Baboons stole my plimsolls at Longleat.     Halloumi makes my teeth squeak. So why have my children hidden my culottes? £12 for a jar of coffee? I got my forearm stuck in a fruit machine in Powys. 2/3

Some thoughts on themes and touchstones across the arts in Ireland in 2025.

Top Adrian Chiles Columns of 2025: I’ve given up wild swimming. So why does my Volvo smell like mince? Should I tell the postman he has halitosis? My first wife wouldn’t let me wear shorts. I buried my father with my bare hands. It’s time we stopped talking about glamping. 1/3

The last few days did not move the main story forward AT ALL. It's just a guy eating little treats and doing nothing. And so many plot holes. He says, "no more little treats," and then he's eating another little treat in literally the next scene.

Knives out: the upper middle class are squabbling vicious children who do not deserve their inheritance Glass onion: the new elite are the stupidest murderous cunts alive and deserve your scorn Wake up dead man: those preaching anger as salvation are leading you to death, hope and kindness matter

I’m relatively agnostic on whether LLMs could eventually be as good as they say (though i definitely think its abilities are oversold right now). I just think even the optimistic narrative is dystopian www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

I also spent a day in the park in Dhaka and wrote about it here: www.irishtimes.com/world/2025/1...

Great reporting

We Didn't Start the Fire. With Bardot's passing three people mentioned in the song remain alive

My car is basically a steam engine from the olden days and anytime I rent a car and get something with all the screens I find it hugely distracting and I don’t know how people use them all the time

I wonder does @patrickfreyne.bsky.social know he’s quoted in a Big Important History Book? I also wonder how long the @irishtimes.com has really been “a thorn in Britain’s imperial side”…

And the other question, the one I start with is: who controls this tech & do I trust them? Irrespective of whether the tech is good or not I don’t believe we’ll reap the benefits. Are they allowing content creators they‘re training it on reap any benefits now? www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

I’m relatively agnostic on whether LLMs could eventually be as good as they say (though i definitely think its abilities are oversold right now). I just think even the optimistic narrative is dystopian www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

Look, it occurs to me that this is quite ranty but I believe every spittle flecked word of it www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

I've written a novel, Experts in a Dying Field. It's out on Penguin Sandycove in June. It's about about a band and a tragedy & art for art's sake & aging & loss & community & Dublin. There's a fox in it. & sheet music. The beautiful cover's by Jack Smyth. You can preorder: linktr.ee/expertsinady...

will also add - yes, this is my personal crusade - that turning podcasts into videos implicitly asks women to once again make more effort than men, as the bar for "camera-ready" for one gender is obviously higher than for the other

Look, it occurs to me that this is quite ranty but I believe every spittle flecked word of it www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

I wrote about AI and stuff www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

For me, in WAKE UP DEAD MAN, this scene is the *heart* of the movie. I still think about it two weeks later. It has no role in the plot nor mystery. Rian simply reminds us all to have grace, and find time, to be there for one another.

‘Acute shortage’ of care workers amid ageing demographics, official analysis finds

Upstairs at the front of the bus should have one of those fake steering wheels for, um, children. Yeah. For children

When we say "no, everything hasn't been digitized," I need you to understand that we really mean is that virtually nothing has been digitized. This is because the realm of primary sources that historians use is incomprehensibly large.

I spent time in a hospice in Roscommon and it was very sad but also moving and strangely life affirming. www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

yes of all the horror stories of AI, I think the use of "synthetic publics" to do research on might be - in a very crowded field - the worst one? *as a novelist* - I can write you fake characters who believe whatever you like. it is just stories. this is a whole culture developing AI psychosis.

I finally got my band the NPB’s first and definitely maddest and probably best album onto Spotify and other platforms. listen to me sound young! open.spotify.com/album/588ocM...

I spent time in a hospice in Roscommon and it was very sad but also moving and strangely life affirming. www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...