It is staggering how many club owners have no idea what they are doing. Utterly clueless rubes trying to run billion-euro businesses.

The automatic subtitles on a news report about a gazillion cops arriving at the blockade of the Whitegate refinery informed that the ‘Public Ardour Unit has been deployed’.

This is both an impressively accurate transcription of the journalist’s accent, and the solution to so many of our problems.

A quick look at social media and live streams showing all the anti immigrant, anti IPAS, anti trans crew all over the blockades spinning rubbish re climate crisis etc.

For many of us in Ireland, it's probably still The Burning of Bridget Cleary, by Angela Bourke. A remarkable book.

Where the former paper of record allows a columnist to slander the Irish left as antisem*tic without any evidence whatsoever.

It’s really odd to witness newspapers worry about fake news, disinformation, enshittification, and so on, while turning them into editorial values.

‘No one saw this coming’: will the surprise Telegraph winner change the paper’s direction? Daily Mail owner could take long-term hit after being gazumped at the 11th hour by Germany’s Axel Springer

‘Since the late 1960s, Axel Springer staff have had to sign a pledge to support the principles of its corporate constitution including support for Israel’s right to exist, a free-market economy and the alliance between Germany and the US’

WTAF

www.theguardian.com/media/2026/m...

Importing the fabricated anti-trans hysteria of the UK's intentionally divisive fabricated culture wars to Ireland. Culture wars that were planned expressly to advance modern fascism. If he's not a fellow traveler, Bakhurst is either thick or only interested in clicks. Either way not fit for the job

In the context of the Triple Lock, notice how the Govnt and prominent commentators in the media sound like Trump when talking about the UN.

'Dysfunctional', 'no longer fit for purpose', and even, 'no longer relevant'.

Dangerous and irresponsible words.

How liberals lost the internet | Robert Topinka In the first part of our series on digital politics, we look at how centrists have lost ground fighting disinformation – when the real battle is over emotion and attention, says digital media academic...

The 1st of my 3-part series on digital politics is out in the Guardian.

Read, comment, tell me I'm wrong, attack me. As I argue:

'The real battleground is over emotion and attention, which is what determines whether information – good or bad – finds an audience.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Check it out. An Clogán website is now live.

US court allows ICE to arrest and pepper-spray peaceful protestors in Minnesota

Appeals Court Stays Restrictions on Federal Tactics in Minnesota The Eighth Circuit granted the Trump administration’s request to block, at least for now, a lower court’s injunction limiting how federal agents interact with protesters in the state.

One court decision, two different headlines.

Guardian on the left, NY Times on the right. Which one more directly conveys information and the stakes to the reader?

I need to get a professional headshot done for a book and I really hate being photographed like that, so I was googling how best to go about it and Google informed me that ‘real snipers tend to avoid them.’ That AI thing is working out really well.

Please spare me the Davos straight talkers, posturing as revivalist internationalists while the genocide they supported and trashed their democracies for continues to kill people they can’t even pretend to see as fully human.

A caricature of Brian Cowen in the nip led to the scrubbing of RTÉ news archives and a Garda visit to a radio station within 24 hours, just to give a sense of proportion to this foot-dragging.

Telegraph headline - Suzanne Moore: This must be the year Britain finally kills off trans ideology

It would not be difficult, practically speaking, for someone from within the journalist/commentary clique whom Suzanne considers peers, to drop her an email and ask her what the 'killing off' of 'trans ideology' would look like, in real terms, including and especially for those immediately affected.

As Tressie McMillan Cottom said recently about GenAI, nothing is inevitable, in getting academics to think GenAI is inevitable we work to make it so.

Palestinian reporters have paid a terrible price in another horrific year for journalist killings | Jane Martinson The Al Jazeera reporter Anas al-Sharif was the most prominent name among so many targeted for simply bearing witness to the truth, says journalist and media professor Jane Martinson

Palestinian reporters have paid a terrible price in another horrific year for journalist killings | Jane Martinson

DEPARTMENT Homeland Security @DHSgov The stakes have never been higher, and the goal has never been more clear: Remigration now.

‘Remigration’ is a term that comes out of the European far right. Its use by the DHS account is a sign of democratic and epistemic collapse

Poems Can Trick AI Into Helping You Make a Nuclear Weapon It turns out all the guardrails in the world won’t protect a chatbot from meter and rhyme.

With 6.5 poets per acre, Ireland is especially vulnerable

www.wired.com/story/poems-...

Alexandra Reza | Death over a Low Heat On 30 October, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National introduced a bill to revoke the 1968 accord and put Algerian...

‘For the Gilets Noirs, an anti-racist collective of undocumented migrants, detention and asylum are their own kind of prison:

“In Africa we get killed directly. Here it’s death over a low heat. You wake up in the morning and someone has gone mad in the night.”’

www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/no...

Thanks Ian!

Ten blog posts emerging from a discussion group I’ve been part of on the ‘cultural locations of fascism’ with a great bunch of writers, organised as part of the relaunch of the States of Cultural Analysis blog of the Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies.

reframe.sussex.ac.uk/statesofcult...

I wish I didn’t have to share this. But the BBC has decided to censor my first Reith Lecture.

They deleted the line in which I describe Donald Trump as “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” /1

The fact that he was found guilty of criminal damage doesn't make the headline, and the person whose property he damaged is described as a "transgender activist" but Linehan has "well-publicised strong views on gender issues". 🙄
This is not journalism failing trans people - it's failing EVERYONE.

Ireland is getting its first cross-border college as Queen's and DkIT partner up Dundalk Institute of Technology will be established as a university college of Queen’s University Belfast.

My first academic job was in DKIT, and I had a great time working there - this seems like a really exciting move for them.

Home secretary to tackle UK's 'excessive generosity' with sweeping immigration reforms In a statement to MPs on Monday, Shabana Mahmood is expected to tighten up the rules to allow for more deportations, and reduce the "pull factors" that attract migrants to the UK.

We are one of the most petty, miserable, mean-spirited, spiteful little islands in the world. The process we force these people through is already dehumanising and a stain on the moral character of us all.

And this ghoul thinks it is too generous.

I'm gonna lose it.

news.sky.com/story/home-s...

OPINION INTERESTING TIMES Did Women Ruin the Workplace?

Give me a chance, it’s only Thursday. I’ll ruin it eventually I’m sure.

DHS: ‘Daycare Workers Have Walked Freely in This Country For Far Too Long’ WASHINGTON—Reaffirming the Trump administration’s promise to crack down on individuals providing supervision and instruction to youngsters across the United States, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi ...

DHS: ‘Daycare Workers Have Walked Freely in This Country For Far Too Long’

It's almost like... like maybe the fascism *never* actually arose from working class "economic anxiety"... like maybe the working class *weren't* actually the ones radicalised by bourgeois resentment of "cancel culture" and "wokeness"... like maybe the working class have... more pragmatic priorities

"All hot dog stands will be replaced with goat meat stands."

hold up. tell me more about that