I don't think I've ever read a sentence as unappealing as "Jim Caviezel is Jair Bolsonaro."

the episode of Parks and Rec where Ann gets frustrated at Chris because he's so eager to solve her problems he forgets to just be there for her emotionally while she deals with them had a big impact on me. my partner and I still refer to it as Traegering when I occasionally lapse into old habits

I don't need a push note telling me Tim Cook is retiring. Why is that worth making me take my phone out of my pocket

"voters in rural Ireland are too conservative to vote for the left" vs my mam furiously asking me why the Soc Dems didn't run a candidate in Tipp at the last general election. no ye carry on trying to get a workable majority in the Dáil without building a base in rural Ireland (where 1/3 of us live)

yeah but their accents aren't silly enough, so that isn't populism, for some reason.

Dan O'Brien in a room slowly filling with poison gas: this graph says the air is only 3% poison gas so far, but alarmists would have you think we're all going to die in here

people really think we're all living like kings out here and the grievance is all about culture and vibe as opposed to, e.g. what a miracle it would be if every town and village in Tipp had running water at the same time for a full calendar month

A member of the Deborah Vance Fanclub addressing Deborah in Hacks The caption reads You haven't sent out Deborah's Dos and Don'ts

A member of the Deborah Vance Fanclub addressing Deborah in Hacks The caption reads in almost two years.

A member of the Deborah Vance Fanclub addressing Deborah in Hacks The caption reads I don't know what to do and what not to do.

A member of the Deborah Vance Fanclub addressing Deborah in Hacks The caption reads Sometimes I just sit in the dark.

I saw a headline claiming Hacks isn't funny anymore

Bluesky is a playable sim of what people think they remember 2014 Twitter being like

so they plaster their page with smartphone videos of sulky racing, and call the people involved evil scumbags, while racehorses are run to death in stunning HD on live TV, broadcast across the world, and they say nothing. nearly 20 horses so far this year on Irish racecourses alone

I know it's cowardice, not plain old hypocrisy because it is fairly obvious they oppose all horse racing if you read between the lines, but the path of least resistance for them, especially in terms of fundraising, is to hammer Travellers and working-class people and keep shtum about the posh folk

I find a lot about this outfit off-putting – the way they treat what they do as if it's a reality show, the fact they bring animals to Electric Picnic for some insane reason – but their utter cowardice about horse racing while they pander to prejudice and chest thump over sulky racing is the worst

yet they think they have the moral authority to come down from their farm and organise a march in Clonmel with two Tipp councillors who aren't from Clonmel, who don't live in Clonmel, who don't represent Clonmel, and who are cynically using this issue to raise their profile before the next elections

My Lovely Horse Rescue have shared a video of a horse with a sulky being raised up and made to go on after collapsing in the road in Clonmel. it's very distressing

last month, a horse in Clonmel fell when it was made to go on in a hurdle race despite its exhaustion. it was killed. MLHR said nothing

shout out to The Secret Bookstore, who enclosed a nice handwritten note with my book order this week, and who also use impressively high quality card for their bookmarks. I wanted to learn more about Irish agricultural policy, and managed to pick up a history of Irish state agricultural advisers

one of my formative memories was the death of Brian Rossiter, three years before Terence Wheelock. died in Clonmel Garda Station. yet you still have Mattie McGrath wistfully recalling the days of the heavy gang on local radio

yeah, I love Tipp, but it's for more than the cinemas I dream of getting back to Galway. oh to be swaddled in the cold anonymity of a city again

I've investigated some pretty dodgy stuff in the last couple of years, but the only time I've had multiple sources fear retaliation for speaking with me was for local news stories. it's one of the main reasons I pivoted away from local news. so many local institutions are run by smiling bullies

yup. stick your head above the parapet and risk losing it

and now some mystery benefactor has given him an X Premium sub so he can monetize his bullshit and cruelty. what a great world this is

he has several times posted photos of politicians' children with creepy comments about their bodies. the list of reasons people take issue with that account go on and on.

last year, I read The Red Book by Jerry O'Callaghan, an account of the Merck cattle poisoning case here in Tipp. it opens with the story of how local objectors to a pharmaceutical plant were threatened into withdrawing their objections. I found it refreshingly frank about rural Irish politics

there is a lot of intimidation in rural Ireland we don't talk about when it comes to politics. when the far right were on the move in Tipp, me and so many people I know got hit with abuse and threats, online and off, followed around when we were outside, etc. I know someone whose car was burnt out

Naming my security company after the giant evil eye that, crucially, was too distracted to see the actual threat sneaking in

That "Dublin Town" organisation sending a bloke around to clean stickers off the utility boxes is a bit on the nose isn't it. Keep our abysmal street clutter tidy lol

what seems more likely: some sort of conspiracy to (unsuccessfully) get an X account shut down, or several people independently decided that an anonymous coward who doxxes sex workers and demonises immigrants deserved to face any consequences whatsoever for being a creepy, amoral scumbag.

I've also spoken to several people, none connected to the DI, who've been trying to unmask him or get him kicked off X for years, each for their own reasons and none in coordination. but it suits his ego to pretend there's a plot against him rather than a lot of people just thinking he's a cunt

the anonymous shit stirrer, liar and harasser of women NWL is accusing the Dublin Inquirer of trying to "interfere" with his X account by reporting his posts, which I find interesting as someone who has reported his posts many times and has no relationship with the Dublin Inquirer

Back in those days, dark matter was just a worthless inert curiosity, and I was smashing it in a particle accelerator, in an ill-conceived attempt to create a more durable harpsichord wax.