i've seen "it would really stick it to the devs if we left bsky" posts & no it wouldn't. they want this web site to be boring crypto idiots who cool their phones off in pools chatting with AI reply bots. instead they have to put up with us and that's deeply funny
Headline: World’s biggest condom maker set to raise prices due to Iran war
oh great now where am I supposed to get my world’s biggest condoms
Bernadette Devlin campaigning for election. She's a white woman sat on a fence and holding a poster reading "vote people's democracy - jobs for all - houses for all - votes for all".
#OnThisDay, 22 April 1969, Bernadette Devlin makes her maiden speech in the House of Parliament in London. An Irish Republican, she had rejected their tradition of abstention in order to take her seat. She remained an MP until 1974.
#WomenInHistory #OTD #History #BritishHistory 🗃️
"logic of Musk’s empire is total. X shapes the discourse. Grok automates it. Grokipedia rewrites the historical record. Starlink can deliver it all, everywhere, to everyone. Each layer reinforces the others. It’s not about winning arguments in the public sphere. It’s about building a replacement."
if i lived in popeye town and one day i saw a ropy little sailor punch a huge guy so hard his skeleton flew out of his mouth thats the only thing i would talk about for the rest of my life
*Thought* I had beaten Chronos for the first time only for him to have a second phase, which I really should have expected TBF, where he wiped the floor with me because I took my eye off the ball
Sadly the current right-wing coalition government in Finland has foolishly cut the funding for the nation’s “Housing First” success story, and homelessness is predictably now on the rise again. That just reinforces the fact that such programs work, if lazy political ideology doesn’t get in the way.
“In Finland, the number of homeless people has fallen sharply. Those affected receive a small apartment & counselling with no preconditions. 4 out of 5 people affected make their way back to a stable life. And all this is CHEAPER than accepting homelessness.”
IT SAVES PUBLIC MONEY to house people.
The currently escalating tech backlash must be put in the context of:
“people have been listening to the most insufferable techbros in the world gleefully threaten everyone else with mass unemployment for over 6 years, and they’re sick of their shit”
Maybe we don’t call it a ‘singer’ if it doesn’t have vocal cords.Making a synthesizer reproduce violin sounds does not make it a violin.
Online abuse of politicians is a profitable business Senator Eileen Flynn's comments on far-right use of the tricolour have made her a lightning rod for online abuse - because viral hatred is highly profitable
In the space of a few weeks in 2025, Simon Harris required armed gardaí at his family home due to multiple bomb threats, while former taoiseach Leo Varadkar was subjected to a homophobic tirade by a self-styled citizen journalist who filmed the confrontation for social media. A man is due before the courts in July in connection with an alleged assault on Mary Lou McDonald and two canvassers the day before the presidential election last year. The incident was filmed and went viral online. So, last week when a video of Senator Eileen Flynn speaking about racism and nationalist propaganda went viral, a predictable and inevitable online pile on began, with posts attacking Flynn's "patriotism" or perceived
Much of the abuse directed at Ms Flynn came from Irish accounts run by people who benefit from algorithmically amplification (so called blue tick accounts), and content monetisation. Monetisation is now a commonplace feature on social media platforms like X/Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, that allows the company to "share" revenue. The more attention (likes, shares, comments etc) a post gets, the more revenue a user earns. Influencers also often have accounts on three or four platforms and post dozens of times a day, and can also benefit from tips, and paid subscribers so it is difficult to gauge how much they earn, but a single viral post on X can generate over €300 for an influencer, so this can become a quite lucrative activity for not a lot of work. Power
The abuse directed at Ms Flynn did not only come from Irish accounts; international social media influencers whose attention was already on Ireland since the fuel protests latched onto it too. Defiant Ls, an account run by a Macedonian influencer who promotes Maga content shared the video, as did the account LibsofTikTok, with the caption, 'Irish Senator Eileen Flynn says that she is "terrified" to see her nation's flag and thinks it's "disgraceful" to fly it', received more than 250,000 views and over 1,300 comments, mostly abusive. LibsOfTikTok has nearly five million fans and the account is run by Chaya Raichik, a right wing influencer who has previously targeted schools, hospitals and libraries across the United States. Victims of her attention have gone to be inundated with threats of violence.
I have a piece in the Examiner today on how content monetisation is fuelling a new wave of online harassment
Irish influencers with monetised accounts are mimicking the behaviour of people like Chaya Raichik, the owner of LibsOfTikTok, who has turned online abuse & harassment into a business model.
Meta just paid the lowest effective federal tax rate in its history.
Thanks to tax breaks and loopholes, it avoided $13.7B in 2025 federal income taxes.
But now it's planning to lay off 10% of its global workforce (8,000 people) by May 20 — with more job cuts later this year.
Trickle down hoax.
It's easy to succumb to outrage fatigue. But this was four days ago. 2,000 killed. 1.2 million displaced. Entire villages demolished. A 40km 'buffer zone' (10% of Lebanon's territory) annexed. It's barely raised a resigned shrug, but it meets the criteria for war crime. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
Any idea why the Gardaí are subject to "overzealous oversight"? Anyone?
www.dublininquirer.com/19-years-ago...
Palantir published a 22-point summary of CEO Alex Karp’s book “The Technological Republic.”, which i can boil down to a 1-point summary "Palantir will help you find and kill brown people"
The European Commission literally copy-pasted Microsoft's proposed confidentiality clause word-for-word into EU law, blocking public access to data centre environmental impact data. Legal experts say it violates the Aarhus Convention on environmental transparency.
Palantir are about six months away from ordering their employees to leave audio logs scattered around their offices
Joanne closed her helpline for single parents right around when she announced she'd be donating heavily to anti-trans causes. They closed because of lack of funding.
She's a billionaire.
She doesn't care about "single mums".
www.gingerbread.org.uk/our-work/new...
a two panel meme panel 1 - geordi signalling 'no' with the text data centres and images of data centres Panel 2 - geordi signalling 'yes' with the text "data centaurs" and a crudely edited image of the character data from star trek pasted on top of a centaur
do you ever wake up at 3am and think "shit that's a good idea, I better write that down so I can share it later on"
Quite a way to frame men importing an abusive power imbalance because current law gives women the choice to not be a sexual possession.
3 records Buzzcocks second album Anderson Paaks 1st album SOPHIEs 1st album
Support your local record store.
Long live physical media 👍
#recordstoreday
IT professionals have been warning against creating huge personal data repositories for decades!
It's a dangerous notion that keeps resurrecting again & again.
No safer now than it was in the 80's, 90's etc or now!
just heard someone refer to a regular bicycle as an “acoustic bike”
This video of a Ukrainian Yak-52 crew taking down drones with a shotgun is incredible, but the music is deeply, and profoundly inappropriate. There was really only one option. So I've fixed it.
Interesting information from @tripeanddrisheen.bksy.social
Next step McDonald's to arrange visits to schools ? Or reps from Flying CCTV Ltd. ?
#Speirgorm
This council home in Cork city centre has been boarded up since 2024
City council say they haven't resources/budget to bring hundreds of homes like this back into use
Despite dire need of so many
Yet they wrote off €3.7m in derelict site levies rewarding property hoarders & vandals
#speirghorm
# 301
Ready or Not 2
Somewhat ludicrous BBC headline: "staggering" I was not told Mandelson failed vetting, says PM
[climbing out of my car which is now embedded in my neighbours' front room, turning to them hands on hips] honestly I'm as mad about this as you are
Disappointing High Court judgment today suggesting deportation of a parent is less traumatising for a baby than it would be for an older child
If only there was some history in Ireland of enforced separation between babies and parents that might have suggested a different conclusion
#speirghorm
