Patrick Freyne: Here’s why AI is making us dumber and more lonely Writing forces people to resolve internal contradictions and confront their own bullshit. It’s why it’s hard. It’s why it’s beautiful

I wrote about why we should keep reading and writing

www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...

It's harder to measure but I feel like RFK Jnr shutting down funding for MRNA research is actually up there with DOGE cuts and this latest Iranian war as a contender for Most Evil Things Trump II has done. Accounted properly, this regime is really wracking up 20th-century-dictator kill counts imo.

Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media The artificial-intelligence-generated fake influencers have surged on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube in an apparent bid to hook conservative voters.

In the months leading up to the midterm elections, hundreds of accounts have emerged on social media featuring A.I.-generated pro-Trump influencers posting at a rapid pace. Several accounts have already amassed thousands followers. Some of the posts have more than half a million views.

How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres’ environmental toll A cross-border investigation has revealed how industry lobbying is shaping data centre regulation.

NEW: A cross-border investigation led by @investigate-europe.eu has revealed how industry lobbying is shaping data centre regulation in the EU.

jrnl.ie/7013368

Watching some opposition parties in Ireland once again point blank refuse to condemn the malicious blockading of critical state infrastructure last week. The same far-right elements mentioned in this thread were all in support. I have no love for this govt, but this is beyond reckless.

France is switching from Microsoft to Linux

"We must become less reliant on American tools and regain control of our digital destiny. We can no longer accept that our data, our infrastructure, our strategic decisions depend on solutions whose rules, pricing, evolution, and risks we do not control."

What happens to Britain's radical right if Orbán loses? Inside the money, power and patronage connecting Hungary and the British right

As Hungary votes, would recommend this piece about how Viktor Orban has used public money to bankroll an international ultraconservative network - including Roger Scruton cafes and €10k a month for failed Reform candidate Matt Goodwin

democracyforsale.substack.com/p/orbans-brits

Without energy efficiency, the EU would need — and pay — 31% more for energy today.

Since 2000, efficiency has removed 265 Mtoe of demand from the market entirely.

The best protection against a price shock is not finding cheaper oil and gas. It's needing less of it.

The purity of JD Vance’s moral nihilism is a thing to behold in itself—a man who consciously chose, as an adult, to shed all principles and commitments beyond sheer careerism—but it acquires an additional dark beauty when conjoined with his unusual ability to have whatever he touches turn to shit.

i think people have forgotten that vance is quite possibly the least experienced person to *ever* serve as vice president of the united states

“The reality is that we don’t have any food security in Ireland because the vast majority of what we consume is imported and the vast majority of what we produce is exported”
– Emma Howard, economist, Technological University Dublin.

Another excellent article by @codohertynews.bsky.social

Article Link: The Blockade Is the Message, How a fuel price spike became a fascist audition

I’ve managed to string together my thoughts through the rage this week, please read & share 💭✍🏼
#Spéirghorm #IrishPolitics #Fascism

🔗 tinyurl.com/wak45j7d

The only way to durably protect hauliers - and the economy - against fossil fuel shocks is to support them to electrify trucks.

Sales of electric trucks in China outsold diesel trucks last December.

So far this year, only one electric HVG was newly registered in Ireland.
#fuelprotests #speirgorm

Europe should regulate Big Tech instead of banning kids from social media, Estonia says The European Union should focus on regulating large social media platforms instead of imposing bans for minors to use them, Estonia’s Education Minister Kristina Kallas said on Friday. Europe…

Europe should regulate Big Tech instead of banning kids from social media, Estonia says

Is this from the current blockade?

Irish Independent Fuel protest organiser had tax judgments of €550,000 and was convicted of cruelty after 60 cattle died on farm James Geoghegan says: 'There's no point trying to bring up that sort of dirt on me now'

What a surprise.

Fire and ambulance services to be curtailed due to fuel shortages caused by protests Meanwhile, Micheál Martin has said Ireland may is on the precipice of “turning oil away” because of the blockades.

Fire and ambulance services are to be curtailed because of fuel shortages caused by the ongoing protests and blockades, the government's emergency group has said.

The public is also being urged not to stockpile fuel.
jrnl.ie/7008778

Excellent thread from the time of the riots in Nov 2023, and points out how much earlier the extremism was all developing.

During the Great Famine, John Milton Niles of Connecticut declared in the U.S. Senate that “Charity begins at home" as he argued against the U.S. Government sending direct aid to Ireland during the Great Famine.

The ignorance and selfishness of this ‘protest’ is beyond belief.

Analysis Finds That Google's AI Overviews Are Providing Misinformation at a Scale Possibly Unprecedented in the History of Human Civilization A new analysis commissioned by The New York Times suggests that Google's AI Overviews are wrong an astonishing percentage of the time.

This is catastrophic.

Let’s hope James doesn’t need access to emergency services any time soon. I saw cars deliberately abandoned on the M7 on Tuesday blocking the hard shoulder for emergency services. That section of the motorway is now closed affecting many medical emergencies in the Midwest region. Unconscionable.

You know that these fuel protests have far right loons at the heart of them because the Guards and the media are treating them like they are family members airing a grievance at Christmas dinner instead of calling for the army to shell them

Not totally sure if it counts as microhistory, but Jan Vansina‘s „Being Colonized: The Kuba experience in Rural Congo“ is an absolutely invaluable book for anyone interested in how the process of colonization actually looked on the ground from the perspective of those subjected to it.

I think a lot of Bluesky users are in the demographic of “people who simply will stop using social media entirely if all the text-based social platforms that aren’t run by unrepentant Nazis (like this one) go away,” myself very much included

What if we just went back to reading a bunch of books and thinking about them together, and that was the class? With syllabi no longer than three pages.

Refusing to accept big tech's AI-poisoned 'future of journalism' Humans, however flawed, are

New — I wrote about how journalists proudly using AI to help them write their stories obscures the deeply human process that makes journalism a societal necessity, and one that feeds the soul of those who create it.

Hope you’ll give it a read. I promise I wrote the whole thing.

To resolve this problem he purchased arms from soldiers on furlough from their service in France, as well as successfully bidding for a Mauser rifle at an auction. One Capt G.W. Finch had brought home this particular weapon from the Boer War and McGrath sourced the 7mm bullets for it in Dublin.

As a coincidental aside; my great-granduncle (and Republican leader/IRB member) Frank McGrath in the prologue to the War of Independence, was drilling Irish Volunteers in the Nenagh area (many were recruited from hurling teams) but they were desperately short on real arms to practice with.

254 acres in the townland of Tullamore
1641 owner: Daniell O’Hogan (Catholic)
1670 owner: Col. Simon Finch (Protestant)

80 acres in the townland of Fatthen
1641 owner: Daniell O’Hogan (Catholic)
1670 owner: Col. Simon Finch (Protestant)

Thus in terms of land ownership and land confiscations the legacy of this conquest and dispossession endured at a local level for almost three centuries.

217 acres in the townland of Gurteenakilla
1641 owner: Donnagh Hogan (Catholic)
1670: Col. Simon Finch (Protestant)