Jesus man, don't be giving James O'Brien ideas!

Morgan McSweeney arriving in Dublin Airport rips off a latex mask to reveal the familiar face of Gerry Adams.

"Well", he intones to the waiting gaggle of reporters, "I said I'd bring down the British government..."

The Irish far right: Ireland can't take any more immigrants. We don't have enough housing. The country is full.

Also the Irish far right: Irish women should be having more babies.

So Ireland's full because we don't have enough housing?

If he truly believes that, he'd surely want to see policies aimed at discouraging those already here from having children. At least until more housing is available.

Unless it's not about housing and it's just some bullshit to hide racism. Hmm

Tim Cook donated $1M to Trump’s inauguration.

He fawned over Trump and gifted him a 24-karat gold plaque (as Apple lobbied for tariff exemptions).

Apple donated to Trump’s White House ballroom.

And it removed ICE tracking apps from its stores following a demand from the DOJ.

Remember this.

Rogue Trooper was always my favourite 2000AD strip (the deep weirdness of Strontium Dog makes it a close second).

This "teaser" trailer for Rogue Trooper is far too short to tell us much about the film, but I'm excited it's coming.

Yeah, your optimism on the pod made me smile. I don't quite share it. At least not yet. This season has given my own Spurs optimism a solid kicking.

But tonight's result at least means my hope hasn't been extinguished completely.

Almost cruel the way that result delivers a sliver of hope, but only a sliver. If West Ham had won, I was resigned to us going down. If Palace had won, I'd convinced myself that would mean we were staying up.

A draw just prolongs the agony.

These things obviously change with mood. But I generally settle on a top 3 of:

1. Low
2. Ziggy
3. 1.Outside

which is a fair bit higher than most I would guess. But yeah, good to see it in the top 10 on a fan-voted list.

Ninth out of 26 isn't too bad. Higher than I would have expected. But lower than I would have put it.

(I guess my sense of what Bowie fans think of that album has been coloured by that experience.)

I remember seeing him play live in the mid-90s in a smallish venue and -- honest to god -- about a quarter of the audience left in disgust after 20 minutes (when the intro to Hallo Spaceboy kicked in) because the set was so "Outside" heavy (well, he *was* touring the album!)

It was odd.

But of course, each to their own. Most Bowie fans think I'm mad when I say 1.Outside is one of his best albums.

Have to disagree. For me, Tonight and NLMD represent Bowie's low point, but Tonight has Loving The Alien on it (which is one of his best songs). The first 2 tracks on NLMD are good but I don't think I've ever included a song from it on a Bowie mix. Whereas Loving The Alien often makes an appearance.

What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

(I'm not doing this right, am I?)

Been listening to Bowie's final album, Blackstar, this evening. I don't play it as often as it deserves because it can make me quite maudlin, but by god it's amazing.

Probably going to watch some cute dog videos on YouTube before bed, though, lest I carry that maudlin mood into my dreams.

As Steven points out, any procedural is going to have dud episodes and there are certainly a few, but overall Elementary is hugely underrated.

Personally, for a few reasons, Jeremy Brett will always be "my Sherlock". But Miller is a close second (and Liu is definitely my favourite Watson).

Still not seen it.

It's (loosely) based on one of my favourite books, and I have an odd reluctance to watch it as a result, despite the, mostly, glowing reviews.

I'll cave eventually. Just hope I'm not too disappointed.

Another week goes by with much of the Irish media pretending the far right don't exist despite, paradoxically, giving them a huge amount of coverage.

It's a hell of a trick.

I'm guessing the far right doesn't seem quite so far to the right if you're already halfway there.

GIVEN that 99.9% of us are incapable of making a record of any description, I think it is grossly unfair that artistes who have achieved a solitary success on the hit parade are insultingly referred to as 'One-Hit Wonders'. Let me assure your readers that, had I written Kung Fu Fighting, I would spend every waking hour waving my cock around and referring to everyone I met as 'no-hit cunts'. Kevin Caswell-Jones, Gresford

This is how I feel about having made the bestseller list at #15 for a single month in February 2020

I don't have a searchable version of TTTE, so I can't confirm if he explicitly uses the phrase "virus of the mind" about language but he does talk about language being an alien entity that "hijacks [...] mental processes".

So me... I still give the idea to Burroughs (even if not the literal phase).

The pedant in me can't help but insist that the notion of a "mind virus" did not originate with Dawkins.

Dawkins published his essay "Viruses of the Mind" in 1993.

But William Burroughs wrote The Ticket That Exploded in 1962; a book that partly revolves around the idea that "language is a virus".

Some may charitably suggest O'Brien was upset when he realised the amount of violent hatred being aimed at Corbyn and didn't want to add to it.

But I never felt he was chastened. Certainly I didn't detect regret that he might have added to that hate.

It felt more like "Job done. Best I step back".

I recall O'Brien using the phrase "cult leader" every single time he referred to Corbyn. He described Corbyn's supporters as "brainwashed" and "dangerous".

Then the story came out about soldiers using images of Corbyn for target practice.

At that point, O'Brien stopped with the "cult" stuff.

Irish journalists and columnists are apparently learning for the first time that Sinn Féin might have populist tendencies. Bless 'em.

Obviously, the end of the novel proper is still about as bleak as it gets.

But the epilogue offers hope. It contains the message that, eventually, authoritarianism always crumbles.

My copy of 1984 has a foreword by Thomas Pynchon and he makes exactly this point. The "Principles of Newspeak" epilogue, far from being a kind of academic curiosity, actually completely changes the novel. Precisely because it's written in the past tense.

It's been up and down all day for me.

Anthropic say their new AI model can find vulnerabilities and hack any computer system or OS. They felt it was too powerful to release in case it got into "the wrong hands".

Now though, they're going to give it to a bunch of bankers.

Bankers have never turned out to be "the wrong hands" before.

All these companies firing their staff, replacing them with AI, and then realising the people who used to buy their products are now on the dole and can't afford them anymore.

Welcome to the future.