I've given this a lot of thought and the thing is that I'm absolutely willing to bear with Holmes being totally insufferable to every member of the general public he comes into contact with, but I need him to be nice to Watson. like you have to believe he actually respects him and that they have fun

Third rule? Blame your wife when you get caught redhanded: Fellow comedian DiStefano, conversely, told Halkias he accepted the invitation: "I didn't want to do it either," he said, adding that it was his wife who urged him to take the money.

I regret to inform you that Lester the Jester has accepted an invitation to the Riyadh Comedy Festival.

Okatsuka posted the censorship rules for the controversial comedy festival, noting how many "You can’t say anything anymore!" comedians have signed on. www.avclub.com/riyadh-comed...

I can't imagine being as intelligent as John Banville and looking at this world and seriously believing the problem is people being woke. He'd have to put some serious and sustained effort into believing that.

AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations”

This whole section really.

The Saudi Comedy Show doesn’t clash with the beliefs of the many of its participants’ who made complaining about Cancel Culture their thing. Because their stated arguments were never their beliefs. That was obvious at the time, just as it is obvious now. They were arguing in bad faith.

I don't think we'll ever get another sentence which sums up everything the New York Times embodies quite like "Some legal experts have called it a crime to summarily kill civilians".

One of the advantages of not being a professional journalist is being able to ignore events of little consequence.

How weird that this should have disappeared from the Telegraph archive...

I would like to see this idea tested. Perhaps by the Disney Corporation. It could be illuminating for all.

“U.S. trade authorities… say that, by protecting consumer data that PIX collects, the Brazilian government is hurting American companies that use such information to make business decisions and develop new products.” This is a complete rejection of data protection. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/29/w...

Keir Starmer and Number 10 upended a previously low-profile digital ID policy last week, and made it the stuff of headlines – and mandatory. They have no idea of the size of the landmine they've stepped on by doing so. They've set up a new culture war. www.thenewworld.co.uk/james-ball-t...

Anyway, please read this thread through the wider lens of seeing what filling word counts at set intervals can do to anyone’s ability to think like a normal human.

Thank goodness the government has finally eliminated climate change.

A few years back Ta-Nehisi Coates was asked why he didn’t have a column and he said because he didn’t have an important idea weekly. Streets ahead on self-awareness and knowing what’s happening.

Writing opinion pieces *on a regular schedule* induces insanity because nobody has enough good ideas on a regular schedule.

I’m letting you all know right now that it’s legal for me to rob you unless you go online to fill out my form, to opt out of being robbed.

[free post]

2003: Michael D with Catherine Connolly (and her two sons out of pic) in a protest against the disastrous war on Iraq. 📸 Joe Shaughnessy #Áras25

Quote with your yellow art.

New Gist: A Presidential Trio "Jim Gavin (or Don Uachtaránacht as he's also known to the less observant poster reader) ...can't wait to visit some community groups, he explains in his interviews with the zeal of a man eating a slice of waterlogged bread" www.thegist.ie/the-gist-a-p...

We do this all the time, though. Gender pay-gap reporting? The absolute best source of info on this is @zenbuffy.bsky.social 's paygap.ie, because the gov - despite legislating it - hasn't bothered doing anything with the reports. We're relying on one person's (awesome!) passion project!

Reminder: Our Govt is obsessed with shutting off Court oversight of bad environmental decisions. www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41...

As a society, our financial system around information is insane. It is the kind of system you would create if you wanted everyone to go insane.

This is a short, punchy, set of facts. It is worth reading the piece directly. But also, if we wanted a reliable ad archive (and we do) we should have legislated for it, and not rely on public policy whims of the companies who profit from them.

Google has deleted its political ad archive for the EU, thus the last 7 years of ads, of political spending, of messaging, of targeting - on YouTube, on Search and for display ads for countless elections across 27 countries are gone www.thebriefing.ie/google-just-...

Good morning, and rememver, no matter how bad a day you may have, you’re not Samuel Pepys who, overnight, had shit in the chimney. Twice.

"AfD is not just Germany’s problem, Vox is not just Spain’s, and MAGA is not just America’s. They are expressions of a single political current, localised for context but feeding into the same transnational authoritarian project." www.euractiv.com/opinion/the-...

THE MEME IS REAL

Sharing this again because it's a good guide for finding useful tech tools, but it's becoming more important to cut ties from US tech

I have been haunted by this statement all day www.kgw.com/article/news...

Another word about the media: because our presidential elections are basically vibes-based popularity contests, they are extremely exciting for the press, most of whom are militantly apolitical, especially the ones who cover politics. I'll be doing my best to avoid the coverage.

The winner is the one who can take the most second preferences. I'll be voting Connolly, but unless her campaign can craft a coherent narrative and stay focused on it (instead of whatever question the media lob at her on any given day) then the smarter money might be on Humphries

Did I show you these? You stick them into your notebook and it adds a monthly planner to it, as a location in the book that suits you.

We are one day into the official launch of Gavin's campaign, he's imo a dreadful candidate, I can't believe I'm having to defend him already. The print media has utterly debased itself this week. What is going on

epistemological horror ass sentence lol

Sorry, I did not realise that Ezra Klein agreed to be interviewed by Ta-Nehisi Coates. This is as if I decided to have a public argument with Niels Bohr about physics.

Very disappointed to see Jim Gavin reaching already for bland "both-sides-ism" ("I’m not for extremes, to the right or to the left..."). The road to fascism is paved with such platitudes... www.irishtimes.com/politics/202...

This fellow, at 81 years old has spent the last year seizing control (with his family) of a significant bloc of the US media ecosystem. Trump has appointed his company as new part owner of TikTok US (think what Musk did with the invisible Twitter algorithm) and his son just captured CBS.

I have approximately zero following on this app, sharing in the hopes it can get in front of the right person. A man I went to college with’s wife was kidnapped by ICE at a green card hearing, and he’s trying to find a reporter who will speak to him about the situation

This is a good stand by @paulmurphy.pbp.ie here. The seeming unwillingness of these reporters to recognise the insufficient balance between describing a bad-faith edited video and the only refutation being a "claims" quote from the accused is very frustrating. www.reddit.com/r/irishpolit...

not true

I found out this afternoon that Kaleb Horton died suddenly yesterday and I am horribly shocked and sad, not just at the loss of a friend, but at the loss of one of the most talented and humane non-fiction writers around, someone after my own heart in so many ways. A beautiful, kind, vulnerable soul.

No mean feat

" Jim Gavin , the human snooze button." I've still coffee coming down my nose from laughing at this .

“Lex Luthor's army of screaming monkeys at keyboards may prove counter-productive as you command Oireachtas members to let you throw your Hermès handbag into the ring.” 🫨

"It's up to the candidates to try to prepare themselves for the unknown. And it's up to the rest of us to have to pick one of them. Look, it's a difficult time all around." #speirgorm www.thegist.ie/the-gist-a-p...

"Don Uachtaránacht, human snooze button, is ready to deliver." "Where Jim Gavin offers a sort of living absence, Heather Humphreys is the Government made present." @tupped.bsky.social masterfully maintaining a solid zinger to paragraph ratio in the latest offering of The Gist 👏 I lol'd 😂 #Áras25