This prompted me to check on my citizenship application (not based on Irish granny) and it looks like I’ve moved to “referred for decision”, so citizenship should be soon.

One imagines some slightly complicated things going on here than older US citizens digging out their Irish grannie’s birth cert. One wonders how this fits into the gross dog whistle rhetoric of Ireland being “full”.

To say "Ireland is full" is not to hold or outline a view - it's a formally meaningless statement of course - it's rather to make a signal to the violent minority for whom this phrase is a claim to racist and fascist solidarity. Time to stop treating II like a normal party maybe. #speirgorm

Blurry picture of a large fire on a hill with smoke.

Bonfire night in Knocknaheeny?

Got our deposit back. 😅 What a relief.

An excellent book.

A wonderfully creamy pint of Beamish.

For €4.90 maybe I’m a convert.

In response to a plea for help with accommodation for an incoming postdoc another member of staff (accidentally, surely!) hit "reply all" to suggest the person try the website daft[dot]com.

The all exchange users distribution list never fails to entertain.

Is it better to just ignore reader feedback you completely disagree with, or to defend your reasoning for ignoring it to the editor?
I usually try to bend over backward to incorporate all reader feedback, but the more I read (and re-read) this feedback it makes no sense for this manuscript...

A girl in some grass talking to diary cows in an adjoining field. Blue skies and clouds.

The neighbors have returned.

Blarney Castle with sheep in field and tulips and bluebell flowers.

Sunday evening walk with Clover. Till we get a gate at the house, I’ve been enjoying driving the 5 minutes to Blarney.

On my way 😅

So lucky, that. But we’ll take it

Welp, Arsenal

Clover approved sun spot.

Sunday morning sunshine is always welcome.

a man in a suit and tie has his mouth open ALT: a man in a suit and tie has his mouth open

I’m seeing a politician admitting to making a “hames” of things in a statement they made. Having heard said politician give an off-the-cuff wildly ill-informed speech to a room full of Irish Studies scholars a few years ago about Irish history and literature, I am shocked they’d do it again.

80 million people globally claim Irish ancestry – why the release of 1926 Irish census records is so momentus Plus, tips for your own census search once it’s released.

In advance of tomorrow's release here is a short piece on the historical Irish censuses based on my past and ongoing research #spéirgorm theconversation.com/80-million-p...

5/5 In any event, it is a strange transformation from an island that managed to agitate to eradicate landlordism to then become the land of endemic housing crises and a rentier government built for landlords, paid for by MNC, unwilling to invest in its institutions, infrastructures, or people.

4/5 British conservatives weren't wrong when they thought that the way to make Ireland amenable was to give people property and watch the peasantry transform into a conservative landholding class. Couple that conservatism with the rank clientelism of Irish politics and you've got a fatal combo.

3/5 One could argue, I think quite reasonably, that the obsession with property and land and respectability all stems from the various agrarian movements of the 19th-c., not to mention the uneven power relations that played out between Britain and Ireland.

2/5
One thing I think it gets pretty wrong is the section on protest. @brian-hanley.bsky.social has hinted at this in his reply.
I'll add that the mention of 'a long tradition of protest' that only stretches back to think about the last 15 years is not terribly helpful.

🧵 1/5 I am sure I'll be pondering this a lot, and it has put language to one thing that has always bothered me about Ireland - the idea of a "premature state: a country where wealth, sovereignty, and EU membership arrive before the institutional architecture required to make use of them was built."

Agreed - the Taoiseach was my closest TD up until three weeks ago. Would love to make him sit and read this, again and again.

Mind the Gap Ireland is the second richest country in Europe, and this week a single protest shut it down. Here's why.

This really is some read – an acute, damning, infuriating critique of the institutional failure of the Irish government to deliver a functioning state.

500L six weeks ago was about €490; today 500L is €880.

I was unaware of just how crazy the home heating oil market is until my wife informed me that we’re out of hot water and the boiler “doesn’t seem to kick on” 🫠.

Tell me you’re writing a book review without telling me you’re writing a book review:
Examines, explores, surveys, inspects, highlights, suggests, demonstrates, posits, argues…

Trying to explain St Augustine to the pope, the former head of the Augustinian order, who wrote his doctoral thesis on Augustine, on his way back from celebrating mass at the Basilica of St Augustine in Annaba, Algeria, overlooking the site where Augustine lived is peak Adult Catholic Convert.

Four cardinals in the Vatican library looking at a flip phone showing the tweet and furiously debating whether he's just profoundly misunderstood just war theory or if he just googled it and thinks the word "just" means "do a bit of, as a treat"