Lovely coffee and prep revision for my conversation this morning with TUD drama students who are working on a piece on anti treaty Cumann na mBan women in the North Dublin Union in 1923. Of course the NDU building is now part of the lovey Grangegorman campus #spéirgorm

Mr B Ahern is now defending George Mitchell - what’s the matter with a few emails eh! I really can’t understand how those named & those defending them can said they didn’t know or see - Epstein was a sexual predator hiding in plain sight! Men, look at the emails & believe the victims. #epstein

Happy Birthday to suffragist and Irish revolutionary Constance Markievicz, depicted on this postcard as Joan of Arc. Did you know we have two collections with records documenting Markievicz?'s life? See more here: findingaids.bc.edu/agents/peopl... @bc-irish-studies.bsky.social

Toxic patriarchy in action-questioned by a female reporter about the Epstein releases,Trump gets nasty because she’s not smiling. Powerful men want smiling acquiescence from women-complicit women give it unfortunately. Good on this journalist that she does not! #dontsmileforthepatriarchy #spéirgorm

The Paris Prosecutor's office announced they are leaving X by stating they raided their offices. What a way to leave X.

1. People don’t ‘bin-dip’ unless they have to. 2. The Deposit Return Scheme/Consumer Tax made a pre-tax surplus of €51m last year. Get them to pay for street cleaning. 3. My preferred option is to make Eamon - I destroyed the Irish Green Party - Ryan clean the streets everyday with a toothbrush.

Most read on #RTEBrainstorm: How the emergence of St Brigid's Day as a public holiday marks a renewed engagement with Indigenous Irish ways of understanding time, land and belonging. By Jennifer Manning @maynoothuniversity.ie www.rte.ie/brainstorm/2...

Judith Butler warns world is ‘witnessing restoration of patriarchy and racism www.thepinknews.com/2025/10/01/j...

from his 1989 collection ‘Love of Ireland - Poems from the Irish’. ‘Saint Brigid’s Prayer’, trans Brendan Kennelly #BrigidsDay ‘I’d sit with the men, the women and God,
There by the lake of beer,
We’d be drinking good health forever
And every drop would be a prayer’. #irishpoetry #spéirgorm

Gas that all the right wing culture war bully bros-P Tóibín, D Quinn, P O’Gorman are having hissy fits over Imbolc, Goddess Bride, Brigid … according to them real Irish celebrate only the sanitised, domesticated version of St Bridget -have they nothing better to be doing with themselves? #spéirgorm

Brigid is associated with blacksmiths, spring, and cattle, among other things, and stories like blinding herself to repel men's unwanted attention. The three-armed cross here represents both the triple goddess and the trinity. Lá Fhéile Bríde shona daoibh 🌸 Prints: www.ciaraioch.com/artprints/p/...

Academics vying for a spot in Epstein‘s world. There are so many. I feel the need to make a thread, so I don’t keep confusing them. 1/

The eagerness of some people for Ireland to follow the UK in its anti-trans crusade is genuinely worrying. If the UK jumped off a cliff are we supposed to follow?

Curious to learn more about #StBrigidsDay? 👂Podcast exploring Brigid in folk tradition through the National Folklore Collection at UCD: shorturl.at/pLs0G 📔Assoc Prof Elva Johnston writes on Brigit of Kildare as the first Irish saint to be celebrated in detail by early writers: shorturl.at/l0OFD

Don’t forget to put out your brat bríde tonight to get the blessing of healing from Brigid as she passes over the land #laféilebríde #brigidsday #spéirgorm

The post-Me Too era has really taught me that the underlying issue with the persistence of sexual violence isn’t exactly women’s credibility, as the “believe women” slogan suggested, but rather with rape’s moral status. It’s not that people think it doesn’t happen. They think it doesn’t matter.

"Nobody asked for this. Nobody needed it. Nobody lay awake whispering into the void, please God, give me ninety minutes of Melania in soft lighting. This thing exists the way a hemorrhoid exists—uninvited, throbbing, and insisting you deal with it. And nobody went. Boston’s biggest theater sold […]

In case you missed this in August, an Israeli army database reveals that at least 83% of casualties in Gaza are civilians, and they admit this percentage could be even higher. They know what they're doing. They don't care. www.972mag.com/israeli-inte...

Our special bonus episode just dropped and I'm very happy to have been part of this recording with @davidstifter.bsky.social and @niamhwycherley.bsky.social. If you ever wanted to listen to some early Irish poetry and prose being read out loud in their original, here's your chance!

UCD Centre for Gender, Feminisms & Sexualities - 2nd CGFS Conference CFPs:Thinking Gender Justice: Oppression, Resistance, Liberation' UCD, 17-19 June 2026 Proposal Deadline: 27 February 2026. Proposal Submission form: forms.gle/4qkYr9riQ1yW... #feminism #genderstudies #spéirgorm

It's all so "she made me do it" blaming the victim, and this iteration closely echoes a previous admin. one. Rhetoric justifies bloodshed in this frame, and his rhetoric uses the passive tense/vagueness to avoid saying 'we will shed blood.'

Celebration of resistance and hope #láfhéilebríde #spéirgorm

Four young fellas flying on e-scooters on the pavement on Manor St. in Stoneybatter - in the dark & with no visibility - they have learnt nothing from the death of that lovely young woman. What I thought of & wished them isn’t publicly printable, but it’s what they deserve … gobsh*tes! #spéirghorm

The Boss weighs in

Lecture on Kathleen Lynn #spéirghorm #history #skystorians

‘A crystal bowl of shamrock humbly presented to the man who gave Conor McGregor the White House podium on our national day last year? There’s a three word riposte for that. It begins with “go” and ends with “yourselves”.’ Truth … from Kathy Sheridan #spéirghorm www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

This sounds like a fascinating conference. Abstracts to be by 1 March 2026.

19th March 2025 - Dr Mary McAuliffe @drmarymcauliffe.bsky.social, 'Dr Kathleen Lynn: A public and private radical' youtu.be/r6q6Cb1GcdQ?...

#irishhistory #history #spéirghorm

Time to restore Brigit’s distaff as a symbol of peace and healing www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

Trump is ‘power-crazy’ and Board of Peace a delusion of power, Mary Robinson says Mary Robinson has the integrity, nerves of steel, backbone, intellect and politician nous we should wish for in our Taoiseach #spéirghorm www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

@chiitan.love gcn.ie/uk-council-e... chiitan help "The Council of Europe resolved that the sovereign country has seen enough of an increase in transphobic rhetoric and rising hostility to place the UK alongside other EU countries with openly anti-LGBTQ+ policies."

Bring back the 46A! Would improve my life immeasurably

For perhaps but hopefully not the last time this year I would like to say:

The wealthy fantasise about an apocalypse that they will survive - but the post apocalyptic world is not one they’d image where they are rulers of the planet - instead they will likely have a nasty few years and then die of starvation, disease, accident, or go mad, just like everyone else … gobdaws!

What's most amusing in this context is to translate "apocalypse-proof" into what it would really mean, "Keeping me alive a little bit longer before the food runs out, I have a nasty accident, someone or something bigger than me kills me, or I go stark raving mad with despair..."

Wonderful to be at the Dublin launch at another great book on Irish queer history - ‘Love in the Lav; A social biography of same sec desire in Ireland, 1922-1072’ by @aearls.bsky.social #irishhistory #history #irishqueerhistory is such an exciting area for scholars these days … finally! #spéirghorn

‘Multiple apps encouraging Irish users to swap women's faces onto pornographic images & videos’ I just have had it with this deeply, & it seems, irredeemably misogynistic world. Anyone who creates, likes, shares or does not protest this non consensual ‘nudification’ is guilty jrnl.ie/6932674

Sweden's support for Greenland

Born #OTD 1931, Evelyn Owens was a true pioneer: the first female president of an Irish trade union for both sexes, the first woman to chair the Labour Court and, as a member of the presidential commission, the first woman to sign an Irish bill into law. www.dib.ie/biography/ow... #DIBLives

The Good, Brendan Kennelly Decided to read this at the Kerry Association poetry and song event this evening. Reminds us that in these beleaguered time there are many good people among us. #spéirghorm

‘As for free speech (Senator) Keogan told the gathering she didn’t know where they would be without X [which is] currently fighting for world freedom to undress a child or to show the bullet-ridden corpse of a woman & mother of a 6-year-old in a bikini’ #spéirghorm www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

January orders are finally out for delivery, AND it's the last few days of the sale - if you've had your eye on something, please take it off, it's making the print slightly soggy. www.ciaraioch.com/artprints

You have to hand it to the current Irish government - they'll do absolutely whatever it takes to keep the housing crisis going.

President Catherine Connolly has warned that "the consequences of a 'might is right' mentality are now "crystal clear before our eyes" amid a period where "countries can be invaded at will, or threatened with invasion"

Judge left 'speechless' by evidence in worst domestic violence case he has ever seen #GBV #spéirghorm jrnl.ie/6933593

On Kerry Today with @jerosullivanrk.bsky.social - All-Ireland champions Dingle's rapturous return home - Tens of thousands of carers facing tax bills - Taylor Swift and the New Year's Eve Ball in Tralee that raised almost a quarter of a million for charity. - This and more between now and 11.

Let’s focus on the two first confirmations of illegality. Tell me where X Internet Unlimited Company in Fenian Street doesn’t do this.

He actually have to find a backbone to even chance standing up to the orange turd! And he’s never shown evidence of a backbone. #spéirghorm