The perils of freelancing - when you are editing documents on Merino wool in one tab and San Marino's foreign policy in another.

Booking for the West Cork Literary Festival 2026 is open!

Whistleblower says Trump officials thought USAID did 'just abortions,' asked for 'Barney-style' slides before gutting agency, per new book Read an exclusive excerpt from Nicholas Enrich's "Into the Wood Chipper"

what it's like to be in a room with war criminals.

The language of genocide. Overt, and unabashed.

Not one of these people should ever again be able to set foot outside the USA without fear of arrest.

As a lifelong BBC Radio 4 fan could not be happier to tell you all that #FewAndFarBetween will be Book at Bedtime airing every evening at 10:45 for 2 weeks. Beautifully narrated by Tara Lynne O’Neill and expertly produced by Michael Shannon. Listen along live or listen back on BBC Sounds

Today I was sitting in a café next to a group of older women who were discussing the Louis Theroux documentary.

'There's a name for it, you know', one of them announced gravely -
'It's male toxicology'.

#overheard

Landscape format in acrylics on canvas. Bottom half is water, rippling in shades of blue including some navy ripples in foreground and stretches of pale aqua blue in the distance. Sparkles of light are rendered in many white dots along the crests of the ripples. 9 small boats are moored in the bay. Some are sail boats with their sails down and some are very small. One is in the foreground - a small boat on the left seen from the side facing right, in shade and backlit light throwing up yellow and turquoise into its little wheelhouse. The rest are in the middle distance, where just past all but one is a boat ramp on the left, silhouetted as a black triangle with a lit up warm top. Beside it is a row of dark piles. At far end of bay is sliver of a beach on the left reaching across to an island on the right. The island has its own little beach and clumps of trees on its steep side and on its top tilted towards us a couple of sloping bright green fields. Behind is a low band of pale green and lilac gently undulating hills and behind it large pale blue mountains. Across the top are white fluffy clouds with a horizontal flat pale grey bottom. The pale blue sky is along the very top edge disappearing behind the very soft smoky top edges of the bank of white clouds. Signed bottom right in very dark blue, Liam Daly

Another #painting from the southwest of Ireland. "Bantry Bay II" came out of a perfect day cycling in West Cork, where in the middle of it myself and the bike had some lunch as we took in the views of all three hundred and and sixty degrees of beauty.
#art #SpeirGhorm #ColorADay #BlueTue

If anyone is into knitting or crochet, a Bantry business that was hit by the floods could really do with a bit of support. #speirgorm
bantryyarns.ie

This is disgusting. Rationalizing the bombing of a school that reportedly killed 108 girls.

But since she asked,

"Currently, 161 public schools operate on military installations across the United States."

www.militaryonesource.mil/education-em...

Wonderful! Congratulations!

Communities fight 'corporate' bid for seaweed rights Communities on Ireland's west coast say they will fight to safeguard their traditional seaweed rights against what they describe as a "corporate takeover "of their livelihoods.

Myself and Colin Breen have written in "Maritime Ireland" about seaweed harvesting on Ireland's coastline, in 19th century. These are local rights, well known and established through built features (e.g. wrack walls, kilns, etc). There is no way that such rights be taken over by foreign companies.

The president, who drones on about protecting women’s sports, publicly mocked the women’s gold-medal hockey team. A reminder this was never about protecting women’s sports and it was always about transphobia and misogyny.

After Pope Leo declined to join President Trump’s Gaza “Peace” Board, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt — a Catholic — criticized the pope as “partisan, political, and controversial.”

Meanwhile, Leo’s top Middle East envoy dismissed the board as a pay-to-play “colonialist operation.”

"I say! Are you Georgina?" The child in the opposite bed sat up and looked across at Anne. She had very short curly hair, almost as short as a boy's. Her face was burnt a dark-brown with the sun, and “Famous Five 01 - Five On A Treasure Island” By Enid Blyton 7 her very blue eyes looked as bright as forget-me-nots in her face. But her mouth was rather sulky, and she had a frown like her father's. "No," she said. "I'm not Georgina." "Oh!" said Anne, in surprise. "Then who are you?" "I'm George," said the girl. "I shall only answer if you call me George. I hate being a girl. I won't be. I don't like doing the things that girls do. I like doing the things that boys do. I can climb better than any boy, and swim faster too. I can sail a boat as well as any fisher-boy on this coast. You're to call me George. Then I'll speak to you. But I shan't if you don't." "Oh!" said Anne, thinking that her new cousin was most extraordinary. "All right! I don't care what I call you. George is a nice name, I think. I don't much like Georgina. Anyway, you look like a boy."

To give you an idea of how deranged the UK has become about gender stuff, here's Enid Blyton - the absolute avatar of classic English conservatism and a huge fan of racist "gollywogs" - casually describing a gender non-conforming kid in the 1940s and having their friends be totally cool with it.

You know you're editing an international relations book when you've finished all the referencing up to the end of T and you still have 6 pages to go.... #editing

As a keen forager whose speciality is seaweed and sustainable sourcing I beg you to sign this. There are currently two corps with applications to strip the Irish west coast of seaweed. We cannot let this happen.

Please sign and share. #irish #ireland

The death of medical care for Afghan women | Letter Letter: Dr Carol Mann says the world is silent while women in Afghanistan face a bleak future, in response to an article on the Taliban’s birth control ban

Gender genocide in Afghanistan: "after the demise of the present generation of female doctors, midwives, surgeons and nurses who are still permitted to work, women will receive no medical aid whatsoever."

Five very bargainous books. The rest are also available for cheap!

The whole series is discounted *for today only* so pass it on, tell a friend, stock your kindle etc etc but before midnight…

Quote from the Albanese interview:
"In 2024, Germany arrested more Jewish people than in any other year since the Holocaust. Why? Because they were standing against Israeli violence in Gaza."

US envoys to Israel blocked early warning of 'Apocalyptic Wasteland' in Gaza U.S. Agency for International Development staffers in early 2024 drafted a warning to senior officials in Joe Biden’s administration: Northern Gaza had turned into an “Apocalyptic Wasteland” with dire...

USAID wrote a 2024 cable warning that north Gaza had become an “apocalyptic wasteland” with dire shortages of food and medical aid.

Biden’s Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew blocked it from wider distribution amid a review of Israeli conduct in the war.

www.reuters.com/world/early-...

My dad remembers them too. He told a story once about finding a friend who had enough Irish to help young Connemara men find digs. They had ben sleeping on the site where he was working for Kennedys, I think. This would have been the second hald of the sixties.

The majority of organizing happening in Minnesota isn’t just peaceful, it’s INVISIBLE. Moms showing up who won’t be interviewed on TV, people whose ICE patrols don’t turn into viral video. The grocery runs, the donations, the people filming bc they happen to be there. Please remember this.

'I'm in love again,' exclaims my husband, rapturously, as he breezes past me to watch the post-match interviews. #manutd

“”We had this discussion with him two weeks ago or so, you know, that go ahead and protest, but do not engage, do not do anything stupid, basically,” Michael Pretti said. “And he said he knows that. He knew that.””

This is so difficult to read. apnews.com/article/immi...

The term martyr means “witness.” The man was murdered for bearing witness, literally bearing it, not arms but a camera. Murdered for seeing.

An NYT headline reads “Federal Officers Shoot Person in Minneapolis”

It has gotten so bad that the @nytimes.com has stopped using the passive voice to describe the violence.

I don’t want to hear anything from an elected official unless it’s a plan to defund the DHS and impeach Noem, Bovino, etc. No texts. No emails. No talk about the economy. Step up or step off.

Things you get the privilege to learn about editing international relations scholarship over many years (including the book I'm working on now)