Tehran is a modern metropolis the size of London, full of ordinary people just like you and me. It seems stupid to even say it, but still it's worth being deliberate and insistent about it because the whole we consume news functions to make us forget it, even in all its obviousness
Happy International Women's Day - here's a piece celebrating some of Ireland's most interesting women, with a thread about each of them linked below:
bsky.app/profile/ciar...
Prints are also available here:
www.ciaraioch.com/artprints/p/...
Have said this before in other forms, but will reiterate it here: if you're doing long-form writing of any sort, reading the words aloud into a microphone is a completely unparalleled cheat code. It's free, easy, and so effective it feels like it shouldn't be allowed. I do it in a few stages...
i don't get it. you can lift at the gym. being a softhanded scribe is like the pinnacle of civilized life, tens of thousands of generations of your ancestors would have murdered to be a softhanded scribe
- The linguistic evidence, he adds, “points to a concentration of regional features from Somersetshire, East Anglia and Monmouthshire, in that order.”
What a viral speech in Ireland reveals about colonial history and Caribbean English www.theguardian.com/news/2026/ma...
Check out our new project with @yguichaoua.bsky.social @emorier.bsky.social and @vincentfoucher.bsky.social !
Cc @polscileiden.bsky.social
“Row between rival firms over control of Dublin security contract saw gardaí called, WRC told” @irishtimes.com completely misrepresenting a slavery case
www.irishtimes.com/business/202...
Well worth listening to on US and Israel’s attacks on Iran, and how it may play out it in Iran, the Gulf, US and Isreal. www.podbean.com/ei/dir-i9dja...
The NYT style guide
The EU high representative has managed to put out a 423 word statement at the conclusion of last night's emergency meeting of EU foreign ministers on Iran that manages to mention neither Israel nor the United States and makes it sound like Iran started the war.
Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started
Netanyahu Calls Iran Strikes Necessary To Prevent War He Just Started
As Democracy Volunteers are the source of the claim of "Family Voting" in the Gorton & Denton by election, I got curious about their claims and thanks to @joenoonan.bsky.social I came across this claim about "Family Voting" during the 2020 Irish General Election.
A brief 🧵
Timeline cleanser. Some of us need it after today.
Since the 1970s, Israel and Kenya have forged a strategic intelligence alliance. It became a “frontline” by hardening into a defense against transnational terror after the 1976 Entebbe (Uganda) raid. Today, Kenya acts as a vital hinge for Red Sea security, this article argues.
One thing about the enormous pressure journalists are under to make videos and TikToks and do streams that kills me is that, like… some of us are meant to be read and not seen. Commenters get SO MAD about the way I look whenever my face breaches containment! Just let me write!
They can fuck off
I’ll ride less for sure - get the car out. Unless of course my small town gardai turn a blind eye
Chinese spoons repurposed as souvenirs of Mozambique
set off in dark up to Maltby. Day 202. Press say later that we had bottles. Bricks. Catapults. Air-guns. Fired pellets --Liars. Bloody fucking liars. We've got clumps of fucking mud is what we've got. Aye, we take down branches to build barricades to stop scabs. Do that, that's true. Take down some trees from Maltby Wood - But mesh on front of their vans brushes them branches aside like they're not there -- Like nothing is. Don't stop, either. Keep right at us - Nowhere for us to go. Nowhere for us to run. Nowhere to hide - Two lots of their riot squad coming out of woods. Each side of road. Trap us in a pincer movement or what-have-you- Banging on their shields. Their dogs bloody barking -Frightening. Fucking frightening Nowhere to go. Nowhere but down -Just like last week at Silverwood. Same game - No more arrests. Just assaults -Duffel coats. Anoraks. Parkas. Hats and scarves. Wellington boots. Docs. Ordinary boots and shoes. That's all we have - Nothing that can save us. That can save us from them - Lad behind me goes down. Down hard - Perspex shield in back of neck. Truncheon on -
Apropos of the many ahistorical takes on how states on this side of the Atlantic have acted in the past, an extract from David Peace's brilliant novel about the miners' strike, GB 84 (2004). This is the voice of one of the striking miners.
me, emotionally writing an essay on the use of force by federal agents: ok but what if i packaged this in the most insane way possible www.theverge.com/policy/86857...
"UK chancellor Rachel Reeves said the existing US trade deal stands, and she had been in regular touch on WhatsApp with US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent."
WhatsApp?
www.theguardian.com/business/liv...
Europe and Canada are going to have to recognize that their future lies either in great power bloc subsumption, or solidarity with middle powers they've traditionally thought of as beneath them. It's vanity to think otherwise.
Ireland’s police force does what it likes
While I always enjoy someone appreciating the Kagera War, I am surprised that @jkass99.bsky.social and @lionsledbydonkeys.bsky.social didn't get into General Marwa who not only was another large lad, but who strutted around with his pipe and a gunbelt stolen from Amin www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3pN...
While the police forces & British courts pursue prosecutions relating to Palestine Action, an actual proscribed terror group is operating freely in N. Ireland and the police are covering up and downplaying white supremacist terror, violence and mass forced displacement of racial & ethnic minorities.
And they’re off. The annual mass escape from Dublin Castle, commemorating the real jailbreak of 1592 by Red Hugh O’Donnell & the O’Neill Brothers. Competitors will cover 62km through the night, across the mountains to Glenmalure Valley. That’s if they make it, unlike Art O’Neill, who died en route.
