New York doesn't have a monopoly on this kind of picture. Construction of Co-operative Insurance Society tower, Manchester, 1960s (Manchester Libraries).

Three Irish Traveller boys - Billy, Steven and Paddy - using an abandoned car as their makeshift playground in Carrowbrowne, Galway. Photo by American photographer Rebecca Moseman, part of a series 2017-23.

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

“Countries have to wake up to the harsh and dangerous realities,” UNRWA's Jonathan Fowler tells DW News, after Israeli authorities seized a UN site, the UNRWA Headquarters in #EastJerusalem, in blatant breach of international law. International law must be upheld.

It’s the continued existence of the normative state that lulls a population to sleep. It makes you discount the warnings of others. “Surely,” you say to yourself, “things aren’t that bad. My life is pretty much what it was.”

The media will follow if political parties have the moral courage to lead. X has lost its position in Ireland. It’s no longer a serious centre of political or media influence: its advertising audience is down 18.3%, a 6.5 point drop. Clinging to a declining platform isn’t strategy — it’s inertia.

Buzzard on Whitethorn in a wintry sky, East Cork. #Birds

Some good news …

Niall Stanage doing Irish journalism proud here, and the fact that such an exchange is a relative rarity in that room tells its own story.

"On Wednesday, January 7th, we stopped to support our neighbors. We had whistles. They had guns."

Forget, for a moment, that AI is a plagiarism machine and a psychotic environmental vandal (though it is both those things). Of particular importance in the aesthetic sphere (though of course not only there) is that AI is also, as @himself.bsky.social* has pointed out**, a mediocrity engine.

So, about these AI data centres …

Sometimes I think it’s going to be the librarians who will save us all.

If a sizeable number of people in Britain believe immigration harms the country the government’s job is to reeducate them not to use their prejudices as the policy making springboard. It’s a Labour government founded on the principles of socialism, compassion and solidarity not expedient cruelty

The new Pope has made an edict that time spent on the platform at Limerick Junction can be deducted from time in purgatory.

What Carrie says:

'It's a lost map!' 'Where did you find it?' 'In the Map Drawer, in the Map Room of the Map Library'. OH is seriously thinking about doing a talk on data and discovery entitled 'why we keep biscuits in the biscuit tin'. Seems appropriate.

Worth a read …

Academics in Assyria in the 7th c BC complain that admin is preventing them from doing research and teaching

Three @theguardian.com books cartoons from previous halloweens: 1. Haunted Bookshop

Not yet Samhain, but soon… #speirgorm #wildatlanticway #sunsetphoto

Saying that it's "too hard" to get on the Irish president ballot when an independent woman got the entire Irish left to back her, got the biggest vote ever and beat two historically dominant parties is not just wrong - it is breathtakingly offensive and outrageously dishonest. #Aras25 #Speirgorm

Turns out voting for Catherine Connolly is a rural pursuit.

One of our most frequent #ruralPursuits #aras25 #rtept

We knew this would happen. Note how realistic the visuals and voices are. This AI deepfake video of Catherine Connolly ‘withdrawing’ from presidential contest and that Friday’s poll is ‘cancelled’ is live and viral on Facebook tonight. 1000s watching, commenters believing it.

Cork and worldwide: I can't believe I have to protest genocide. #áras25

As the electorate goes to the polls next week, one presidential candidate has been far more active on podcasts than the other. PR and communications expert Eoghan Tomás McDermott explains to us why this matters. jrnl.ie/6847584t

Useful 🧵 here:

“The miracle that saves the world, the realm of human affairs, from its normal, ‘natural’ ruin is the fact of natality... in other words, the birth of new & the new beginning, the action [people] are capable of by virtue of being born.” Happy Birthday Hannah Arendt, 14/10/1906 💙🚬

Good point, worth remembering this week

Great article by our friend Sarah Clancy, who was kidnapped by apartheid Israel in international waters trying to get aid into Gaza. Our governments' complicity in the genocide of Palestinians compels us to act in all the different ways we can. #FreePalestine www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/comm...

doomscroll break

Delighted to have had the opportunity to review Margaret Wards book on rebel women in Northern Ireland-it is a meticulously researched work - offers fascinating insights into the afterlives of northern revolutionary women #speirgorm womenshistoryassociation.com/book-reviews...

Tá an scríbhneoir agus an déantóir cláir fhaisnéise agus taistil, Manchán Magan, imithe ar shlí na fírinne. jrnl.ie/6833855

16 Irish citizens have now been detained by Israeli authorities including poet Sarah Clancy @sarahmaintains.bsky.social www.rte.ie/news/middle-...

Please read and reshare our statement on the Global Sumud Flotilla. We at Irish PEN/PEN na hÉireann offer solidarity in this time of crisis. irishpen.com/2025/10/02/g...

Israel has just arrested Greta Thunberg and many others. Statement from the Global Sumud Flotilla: “People of conscience have been abducted. The flotilla broke no laws. What is illegal is Israel’s genocide, Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza, and Israel’s use of starvation as a weapon.” 1/3

Presidential Debate 2025: This is why Catherine Connolly thinks you should vote for her in the upcoming presidential election. #TonightVMTV 👇

The free press fights back... open.substack.com/pub/broligar...

“We have been left with no choice but to stop our activities, as our clinics are encircled by Israeli forces... This is the last thing we wanted.” We have been forced to suspend our activities and leave Gaza City.

Me, watching the techno-fascists take over the world, smug in the knowledge that I am protected from their nefarious schemes by years of consistently refusing cookies from websites, every click of ‘Reject All’ a blow struck in the great battle for data.

Delighted to have a chapter in this new book about Dr Kathleen Lynn and the other great, innovative female doctors during the first decades of St Ultan’s hospital for sick infants. #speirgorm #irishhistory #history

Catherine Connolly promises to 'always stand up for the underdog' at official campaign launch Connolly said her upbringing gave her insight into being both an insider and an outsider.

Well I guess that’s what Fleetwood Mac band meetings were like. #TraitorsIRL

Digitization alert! We recently digitized materials by and about Irish patriot and suffragist Maud Gonne. The materials include correspondence, photo, articles, Women's Prisoners' Defence League records, and more. Check them out: https://findingaids.bc.edu/repositories/2/resources/254/digitized

Some big news: the University of Birmingham is launching a new MA in Gender & Sexuality. It's interdisciplinary, with a focus on combining theory & practice. It's going to be amazing. I'm convening it: message or email with questions. www.birmingham.ac.uk/study/postgr... @unibirmingham.bsky.social

Still remember the impact Maeve Kelly's collection _Orange Horses_ had when I first read it in the early 1990s. Rest in power. www.irishtimes.com/obituaries/2...

Fifty-two young Palestinians from Gaza are due to arrive in Ireland today and in the coming days to begin a new life as students in Irish universities.