I think the departure of the left presence just strips the site of its use value for the primary thing Nate appears to care about, through traffic. To say nothing of influence. Musk effectively stripped his machine for fascism of its primary use value.

I am reading (listening to) Diana Wynne Jones for the first time. She is just as amazing as y’all said she was and I cannot believe it’s taken me so long. It’s like if Sylvia Townsend Warner and Muriel Spark decided to write for teens?

A different perspective. Always helpful.

Watching Tati’s Mon Oncleand I have just been laughing in bursts at the absurdities. I think my favourite is the terrible fish fountain you have to turn on before letting anyone see your garden, to pretend it is always on.

imagine if i happened to be a trillionaire and bought twitter and 80% of the stuff on the site was just about big pants. you couldn't escape it. just an endless deluge of big pants propaganda

Chinese government decides to regulate AI from the right to personal likeness, child safety and addiction angles. www.reuters.com/world/china/...

But shall this crazed old man be tamely suffered to drag a whole ship’s company down to doom with him?

Two weeks ago, the Hungarian opposition was bracing for a false flag operation, an "emergency" that would allow Viktor Orban to turn the tide or even cancel an election he is losing. Now it appears to have arrived

Yes this seems like the usual Easter Sunday fare.

why did he say praise allah. that's weird right

The underground king*, Simon McGarr ( @tupped.bsky.social) is back on the shack talking big tech legal woes, Ireland’s EU Presidency and matching your jumper with your wall. Out soon at patreon.com/tortoiseshack *he insisted that I call him that.

New Gist: Not Mandatory, Not Compulsory, Not Legal The DPC has fined the Department of Social Protection €550,000. This is the Gist. (at no point do I use the words "I told you so") www.thegist.ie/the-gist-not...

Things are going to get really bad, and I don't think media, after years of both-sidesing everything, are really prepared to cover a crisis which is literally one guy's fault

19/ This is highlighted in the map below by JP Morgan, which shows when the last Gulf tankers are due to arrive at various destinations. Europe is next to receive its final shipments, with the last jet fuel tanker due to arrive on 9 April. bsky.app/profile/chri...

18/ The remaining supply of Persian Gulf oil and refined products is rapidly running out as the last tankers from the region arrive at their destinations. Europe and the US are are facing the impact last due to the lag time in tanker arrivals. Shortages have already hit Asia.

1/ Goldman Sachs analysts report that the biggest oil crisis in history is about to hit globally, with profound and highly destructive consequences. A new report asks ""Are We Running Out of Oil?", and concludes that the answer is yes. ⬇️

Sources: 🔹 "Are We Running Out of Oil?" (April 2026). Yulia Zhestkova Grigsby (lead), Alexandra Paulus, and Daan Struyven at Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC. 🔹 qna.org.qa/en/news/news...

It has come to my attention that not all of you are aware that this exists. So, here it is. It exists. Dozens of channels of randomized music videos and bumpers. Choose your era and return to your childhood. Bookmark it for when you need to escape back. wantmymtv.vercel.app/player.html

*pats Colonel Sanders rug* Room for one more... www.thrillist.com/news/nation/...

I know none of you are surprised the author of YOU RUIN IT WHEN YOU TALK thinks sex, being gay and independence for women are all extremely important. But if you want to know how these topics folded into trends in movies this year, click the link 📽️ www.thegist.ie/the-gist-sar...

LOOK AT THIS BIRD!

Lotta rainbows going out there today

I am going to NYC later this month for an awards ceremony at the Cipriani since the AP package I contributed to won an Overseas Press Club of America award. I'd like to meet people doing cool or interesting work in the cybersecurity/privacy/human rights/etc. space. Anyone I should connect. with?

Kind of curious what other open secrets does every DC reporter just keep among themselves these days.

Whenever Maria Steen is not in the Irish Times, everyone in the Irish Times must go "where is Maria Steen?"

These boots are made for walking.

I’m reading Careless People at the moment, and while it’s fair to say that nobody connected to Facebook comes out of it well, this piece of deathless prose is approaching “call a bondulance, James Name’s having a stronk” levels of the absurd

The ring of truth here is like the bells of Christ Church. But it reveals something deeper. The parties in government are exhausted of ideas. They’re just casting about for something, anything, (a billionaire) suggested. They are empty.

Feb-March 2025 the tortoise shack was knocking out a weekly average of 9,208. The weekly average for March 2026 was 15,093. That’s a fraction of the BIG podcasts. But it’s not nothing. For some reason people liked the @fplogue.bsky.social one. Nobody tell him. podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/t...

Sure, they’ll ring @seamas.bsky.social’ s dad to factcheck a family tale. But the headline describing the bedrock of the Post-WW 2 alliance? YOLO!

WRONG!

Hello, I am mental.

Arrgh!

I mean. Janey.

The story here shouldn’t be TikTok removing the video, the story here should be Meta *not* removing the video. Even the odious scumbag “influencer” can spot it. He’s exploiting the different content moderation standards on different platforms to his advantage…

I confess that, at times, I resist joy for fear of its loss, or because something bad is happening or is about to happen. "Don't be afraid of its plenty" calls me in the opposite direction. I'm grateful. #NationalPoetryMonth

Blessèd Relief.

That a thousand drones can be disguised as the Titanic in Belfast, without the Irish army knowing, is a wake-up call for the work-shy peaceniks and neutrality-mongers | the Business Post view on the need for wage restraint in SME’s

The horse op-ed is an instant classic. I can't tell you how much joy this piece gives me. It should be taught in every introductory writing class in no small part because the horse arguments are so compelling. "I have noticed that human children get to eat cake. But I am bigger than the children."

Somewhere up in heaven, Richard Scarry is like “fuck yeah, told you so”: www.bbc.com/news/world-u...

Who are the Waffle House teleportation experts? How many are there?

This is an incredible piece of work. Dublin history, personal history, hope, pain and impossible things. Please read it. www.dublininquirer.com/a-man-wonder...

you, a naive fool: i do believe there are some things the nytimes won’t both sides the nytimes:

No public statute has such a unexpected twist as the Butterkrust Bakery Eiré.

Getting updates on the Irish right-wing twitter grifters

Next Friday, 'Mr Brightside' is due to clock up 400 weeks in total on the charts in Ireland: why is it still so popular? Here, after its 375-week landmark last September, I tried to make sense of the phenomenon: irishnumberones.com/2025/09/01/m...

yes. they pay more based on income in taxes for the thing that is then “free” for everyone. this is how public services work

The blunt problem here - touched on, but not made explicit - is that the entire Starmer project was an utterly bleak fraud and it can’t be explained by focusing on Sir Keir personally, any more than you can understand what McDonalds is by staring hard at the statue of the clown beside the front door

The US reportedly waited to strike the bridge in Iran a second time until rescue workers and others in the area gathered to help the wounded, which then killed at least eight people. Authorities in Iran are describing it as an act of terrorism.