I've spoken before about this happening in my own family - but it started a really long time ago. It didn't start in lockdown, I am trying to work out when it did but I certainly remember speaking about the impact of Facebook before the 2017 GE.

Tommy Greene: Stormont can’t keep ignoring the evidence on Lough Neagh sand dredging New research shows sand dredging is "negatively affecting water quality, habitats, and biodiversity"

New research suggests that sand dredging at Lough Neagh is negatively impacting the entire ecosystem, including water quality, habitats, and biodiversity.

Can Stormont keep ignoring the evidence?, asks journalist @tommygreene.bsky.social

Boots on the Ground, by Massive Attack, Tom Waits 1 track album

New & Notable: Massive Attack and Tom Waits team up on a haunting new single.

Research Fellow at University of Birmingham Discover Research Fellow jobs and more in higher education on jobs.ac.uk. Apply for further details on the top job board.

This is a great opportunity for someone with research expertise in processes of autocratisation and democratic resilience to work on a cool project with nice people. www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DQY811/r...

Our researchers have discovered Lough Neagh is under threat due to commercial sand dredging, in a first-of-its-kind study from Queen's in collaboration with Newcastle University.

Click here to find out more: https://ow.ly/hi5c50YJNNY

New article! 🚨

'Removing the Basis of the Historic Conflict? The Downing Street Declaration and the Contested Role of European Integration in the Northern Ireland Peace Process'

Open access here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

The book cover for Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation. It shows two men sat on a bench in the 1930s.

"Belfastmen: An Intimate History of Life before Gay Liberation" is published TODAY by @cornellupress.bsky.social! I tell the story of how queer men didn't just exist in Belfast but could be accepted by friends, family & colleagues... at least until a moral panic about homosexuality in the 1950s. 🧵

Civic Parties in Divided Societies: Northern Ireland and Bosnia-Herzegovina Published in Nationalism and Ethnic Politics (Ahead of Print, 2026)

I reviewed Cera Murtagh's new book on civic parties in divided societies for Nationalism and Ethnic Politics. It's very good. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Tune in to BBC Radio 4 at 10:45 this evening for the first of 10 instalments of #FewAndFarBetween on Book at Bedtime. Beautifully read by Tara Lynne O’Neill and produced by Michael Shannon @doubledayuk.bsky.social

I know this is me still mourning a long dead world but it does feel remarkable that, not that long ago, British papers on the right would have run editorials and columns arguing that Hungary showed that only a solid, reliable centre-right party could defeat dangerous populists, but now? [crickets]

'If you've lived in the North, you'll recognise the sticking plaster approach to issues' In the late 1950s, Terrence O’Neill proposed draining Lough Neagh to create a seventh county for the North. In Jan Carson's latest novel, she imagines a scenario where the drainage scheme goes ahead, ...

Here’s a wee essay I wrote about Lough Neagh for the Irish Examiner (this was the photoshoot with the attack swans but they’ve failed to make an appearance here) #FewAndFarBetween www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/pe...

There's a few editors of conservative magazines out there with a bit of a headache about filling the next issue

Israeli strike kills infant girl in south Lebanon during father's funeral Wrapped in bloodied bandages, Aline Saeed, 7, barely survived an Israeli strike on her home. She was there to bury her father when a new strike killed her infant sister and other relatives.

The horror of bombing a funeral & killing a child in the process is staggering.

If your first response is “there were also terrorists” or “but Hezbollah", please stop. Reflect.

This child was an entire world. Her killing is another loss to our collective humanity. www.reuters.com/world/middle...

And it's back. #LoughNeagh www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Except it's a driver's hands.

I feel like I take my life into my hands every time I use that crossing.

Oil slick from bombed Iranian ship threatens protected wetland Shahid Bagheri leaking fuel towards Hara mangrove forest, home to migrating birds and endangered turtles

Oil from an Iranian ship struck near the Strait of Hormuz threatens to poison one of the region's most important wetlands.

Local fishing communities depend on the mangrove forest for food.

If oil reaches them, it's likely to kill the fish they need to survive.

share.google/hpVAKkuAVy9J...

We should never forget this was a war of choice, over military objections, with a clear outcome (closing of Strait) forecast decades in advance and warned of in the moment, at great human cost, initiated by one man (pushed by another), who wanted to play the tough guy with a military now depleted.

Happy 35th birthday to Blue Lines by Massive Attack, released on this day in 1991. Here's a playlist featuring the brilliant LP along with tracks that were sampled and covered in its making
🔥▶️ open.spotify.com/playlist/3Pu...

A star scientist showed that better genetics lessons could reduce racism. It was the death knell for his career Brian Donovan had persuaded high school teachers and education researchers that prejudice might be ended by changing how genetics is taught.

“We’ve lost out on the ability to continue to improve this work to make it more effective, and to explore how to apply it to other areas…There are a lot of different ways that genetics has been used to justify prejudice and…that human-made social categories interface with biological categories“🧪

A combination of personal experience, anecdotes and intuition suggests that the academic job market in pol/IR is in a rough state. This thread offers conclusive supporting evidence.

Kanye West being booked to headline Wireless Fest on all three nights feels like a major and utterly grim cultural shift. Ten years ago, a huge artist who recorded and released a tune called “Heil H*tler” would have gone to the wilderness and stayed there. But he has been welcomed back in through the front door. And this is on the heads of the festival organisers, each of whom should be publicly grilled about this choice. Indulgence of anti-Semitism is one of the early warning signs of the return of old horrors, and it doesn’t get more indulgent than this.

How Do You Count 1.4 Billion People? India Is Trying.

Brief but useful overview of India's 2027 census.

Here's a slapdash #THREAD of the history of Indian census, for those interested --

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/w... #India #Census

Author Jan Carson: ‘I Googled what would happen if you drained Lough Neagh’ Author’s fourth novel, Few and Far Between, is inspired by a politician’s madcap scheme

My interview with Jan Carson about her latest novel, Few and Far Between, inspired by Terence O’Neill’s madcap plan to drain Lough Neagh and turn into another county. It is included in A Hosting: Interviews with Irish Writers 1991-2026, published by Lilliput Press
www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...

Panelists sit behind a table at the first Ethnopolitics Specialist Group panel of the 2026 Political Studies Association Annual Conference

Panelists pose for a photo at the second Ethnopolitics Specialist Group panel of the 2026 Political Studies Association Annual Conference

Panelists sit behind a table at the third Ethnopolitics Specialist Group panel of the 2026 Political Studies Association Annual Conference

Thanks to everyone who joined us for our panels at @polstudiesassoc.bsky.social #PSA26 earlier this week!

I research green transitions in UK agriculture. Honestly a lot of the time I really do wonder what exactly the point is, this is what we're up against.

We're excited to be in Oxford for #PSA26! If you're in town, do join us for some or all of our three Ethnopolitics Specialist Group panels on Wednesday at 09:30, 13:30 and 15:30, all in Wadham College, Seminar Room 4. We also have our SG AGM at 11:30 today in Examination Schools, Room 8.

Justice for Lough Neagh: The First Hearing 👇

This week, River Action took part in the first hearing of a legal case which asks the court to decide whether the Northern Ireland government is doing enough to tackle the water pollution crisis in Lough Neagh... riveractionuk.com/news/justice...

Iran’s black rain is latest grim example of weather in war zones Strikes on oil facilities burned thousands of tons of stored fuel, producing a pall of toxic smoke

Iran’s black rain is latest grim example of weather in war zones