i think if you ride public transit enough you learn that most weird behavior is not dangerous, and conversely i think driving a car teaches you that everyone is trying to kill you at all times

Now that the left has had a huge victory in Ireland I guess the centrist parties must promise to listen to the electorate and move to the left. I mean they feel compelled to ape the right whenever those headbangers win a few council seats.

Can some band please record a song called ‘Put in Your F*cking Headphones’, so I can play it out loud on the Luas as needed

stop fucking replying to this about headphone jacks. i don't give a shit about if you have to figure out bluetooth. YOU DO NOT NEED TO BE WATCHING A VIDEO AT ALL TIMES. JUST FUCKIN PUT IT DOWN. READ A FUCKIN BOOK OR SOMETHING

people playing music/videos on their phone speakers in public is more than just mildly annoying and is instead a leading indicator of the decline of community and empath

Major election coming up in Ireland next week, and election interference is a real concern. I contributed to this online resource to help inform voters about how to spot and report illegal election interference - please use and share! sites.google.com/view/electio...

Did you know that if you buy my book on Amazon, Jeff Bezos makes 5 times as much as I do on each copy sold? Sharing some behind-the-scenes book math on why buying directly from presses is best for EVERYONE (except Bezos) in my newsletter today! aubreyhirsch.substack.com/p/book-math

Our dog found an actual string of sausages today! I thought that only happened in The Beano 😆

Writer @jmcm.bsky.social gives such generous support to the writing community in Ireland, through Frazzled Lit & the creative community sessions she organises - please consider supporting her in raising the funds she needs for a learning opportunity gofund.me/6663f9001

"We're going to create superintelligence" How about making outlook search work first. How about that

If your Klein be Naomi, then listen, homie; But if your Klein be Ezra, disregard what he sezra

At this Stand Up for Palestine gig in Vicar Street, there’s a deadly raffle with lots of gig tickets as prizes, and turns out you can enter it from anywhere - grab a ticket and support the cause ☺️🇵🇸 raffall.com/397084/enter...

i think how we got here is that the right's favorite move is working the ref and the radical centrist's favorite move is self flattery that they could never be worked

This is VERY funny www.thejournal.ie/presidential...

We built a calculator that doesn't work, but don't worry, it's also a plagiarism machine that will tell you to kill yourself. It runs on the world's oceans and costs 10 trillion dollars.

feel like slim and fat chance should be a different amount of chance

I do wish people would treat transphobia as the serious red flag it is, because if someone is repeating bullshit pseudoscience talking points from right wing cranks, that's just as bad as conceding to anti-vax nonsense and undermining trust in science and medicine, alarm bells should be sounding!

“You can’t simply proscribe Sally Rooney and be done with it. You can’t reach into the London Underground and pull her books out of the hands of commuters who want to live vicariously and cathartically through her throuples and hunks on the verge of tears.” This week’s Surrealing.

I'm not right wing but some of this "woke" stuff is a little over the top [6 months later] Slavery was fine. Your city is under martial law

Saw 28 Years Later last night. It’s not unenjoyable but it’s a giant mess. Anyone else seen it?

No interviews with anyone who knows anything about LLMs. No indication the author understands that LLMs are designed to tell you what you want to hear, not necessarily what you need to hear. If you substituted "tarot cards" for "ChatGPT" you'd end up with the exact same story, beat for beat.

You know when a work meeting ends early and your boss says, "I'll give you back your time"? I found out what not to reply is, "What about my soul?"

Great read 😁

There's a REALLY quick and easy survey for the public consultation on the Basic Income for the Arts scheme - it only takes a few seconds, anyone can fill it in, and it could make a huge difference to arts workers in Ireland. Take a few ticks to places a few ticks here: ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/run...

Every single interview with a person who has decided to get some publicity by claiming they will run for Irish president should start with this question: What exactly are the powers and constitutionally mandated role of the presidency?

My least popular (and most correct) view is that cars should be automatically limited to the local speed limit. Put the pedal to the floor and you still can't go over 25mph in a residential area. (15 in Manhattan btw)

Stat about mental illness, insurance company logo, platitudinous slogan. The asterix beside the stat has no accompanying footnote or source btw. What’s this ad campaign even supposed to achieve?

i keep thinking about this more and more with each passing day

Oh boy oh boy I love this poem (from an interview with @austinkleon.bsky.social and Laura Lippman)

Just to highlight that our politicians have been pandering to and supporting the dehumanization of people crossing the sea in boats and while they're less open about it, they're causing deaths and shouldnt be exempt from the scrutiny around this

Thia is disgusting and you'd have to be a real piece of shit to have anything to do with it BUT it's worth remembering that many very respectable politicians voted for a massive policy that will drown people at sea. Drown people, as a policy

how do you not die inside, at least a little bit, typing ‘woke left’ and hitting post

Oddly the Achewood strip I think of most lately as our current moment of American fascism is both so very bad and so very dumb.

you know, they really did do this

People travelling to Southern Europe in the summer despite years now of dangerous heatwaves and then complaining about the heat… I don’t know www.thejournal.ie/extreme-heat...

Anyone with knitting/crochet knowledge I'd appreciate help. I'm looking to find a throw/blanket like one i had growing up. It weighed a lot but the pattern was full of big holes so it had no thermal benefit. Does this sound familiar? I'm struggling to find the right terminology for a search.

Ok I’ve started watching Dept Q on Netflix and so far it’s p annoying, but I do want to know what’s going on in the cold case with the lawyer. So I need to know, is that mystery solved in this season or does it end on a cliffhanger?

"I found people in serious relationships with AI partners and planned a weekend getaway for them at a remote Airbnb. We barely survived." absolute must read on @wired.com, fully riveted from start to finish, please make this a reality show already!!!

Everyone I knew who covered disinformation got laid off, their bosses got bullied into firing them, or they changed their beats from actual Nazi harassment campaigns. It cannot be stressed the damage the paid-for Substack “free speech” guys did in the service of fascism and against real free speech.

dude this party is such an echo chamber. it's just friends hanging out and chilling and having a good time. you need to invite some people over who want to kill you with hammers

Hi, pardon me, hello: mass protest in the face of fascism is a great idea and in fact the only thing that works to actually combat it. anyone saying otherwise is an idiot. sorry, i cannot anymore with this shit. do the fucking reading!

When I lived in Croydon on a main road, half the cars driving past were nine-foot-tall off-road monstrosities. I now live in a country where half the roads aren’t paved, 3kms into the hills on a gravel road & the average car going past is a 10yr-old Hyundai saloon.

Only because of all the novels it stole.

Everything that’s happened over the past six months has been a response to an imaginary crisis. There is no immigrant invasion. No trade crisis. No scientific or governance crisis. Just people completely high off their own supply trying to fundamentally reorder society. None of this had to happen.

We have indeed been thinking!

Anybody who thinks that Bluesky is a bubble where people just reinforce each others’ opinions should try sharing an opinion on Bluesky.

I think Greta Thunberg is the best example of how there is no way of protesting that will satisfy the scolds. It'll either be called too aggressive or a self-serving publicity stunt.