Linda Máire

“In the new “global village” of incessant images, increasingly I see the failure of mass media to impart actual understanding. This overactive pluralism gives one the illusion of knowing a lot about a lot when actually you know a smattering about nothing at all...”

~ Mira Nair

EDITOR'S NOTE: Evergreen skeet.

Chic couture, bio-terror and a whole load of Mike Leigh: Lesley Manville’s finest films – ranked! With her 70th birthday around the corner, we assess the greatest screen outings of everybody’s favourite underrated doyenne of British cinema

I’ll watch ANYTHING with Lesley Manville in it. Her performance, with Peter Mullan, in the BBC series, ‘Mum’ was sublime.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed...This is not a way of life...it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

-Dwight Eisenhower 1953

Irish myths for modern women: ‘I grew up thinking my name brings sorrow to all men’ Banshee is a new collection of stories by contemporary women authors that retell Ireland’s myths and legends through a feminist lens

“It struck me then: these myths are not relics but frameworks. They can be used as a way of speaking about modern womanhood.”

There is artistry in how the photographer captures the essence of a moment, blending visual storytelling with aesthetics. I think some photographer’s work could be considered art—Don McCullin, Tish Murtha, Gordon Parks.

Simple everyday moments captured on 35mm film and archived for future generations… documentary photography is not art but of equal importance in recording daily life. A sheep farmer and his collie dog in rural Ireland 50 years ago… from my old negatives #35mmfilm #photography #documentary #Ireland

Listening to Distant Guns by Denise Levertov.

The case for a wealth tax is stronger than ever in Canada - CCPA An excerpt from “Cancelling Billionaires Before They Cancel Us: The Urgent Case for a Wealth Tax” by Linda McQuaig & Neil Brooks

The issue of wealth inequality is one of the most pressing social and economic problems of our time. States must take action to rein in the power of billionaires—and one key tool for doing so would be a wealth tax. By @lindamcquaig.bsky.social + Neil Brooks.
www.policyalternatives.ca/news-researc...

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YouTube video by Netflix The Singers | Official Trailer | Netflix

A love letter to underdogs: a group of down-on-their-luck men find unexpected connection and catharsis through an impromptu singing contest at a neighborhood bar. This film will break your heart, and then mend it back together.

Directed by Sam Davis

‘Mistakes will bring us here again, mistakes. And we are good at those.’ Oh, my…

‘The Alabama Solution’ directed by Andrew Jarecki and Charlotte Kaufman is brilliant.

Incarcerated men defy the odds to expose a cover-up in one of America's deadliest prison systems.

Available on: Apple TV, Crave

1997, how young they look

A brilliant read.

I think about this Tony Benn speech much more than I used to

Saturday morning, tea and ‘Ordinary Saints’ by Niamh Ni Mhaoileoin.

Reacting to Labour's devastating loss to the Green Party in Gorton and Denton, Keir Starmer claims that only Labour can unite communities. I agree. He convinced Muslims to vote for a white working class woman representing a party led by a gay Jewish man.

Andrew Scott To Star Opposite Emily Blunt In Pic ‘Walk The Blue Fields’ As Netflix Boards Project; Ciarán Hinds And Tom Cullen Among Those Rounding Out Cast Andrew Scott is set to join Emily Blunt in Walk the Blue Fields, based on the stirring romance short story by acclaimed author Claire Keegan

Andrew Scott is set to join Emily Blunt in Walk the Blue Fields, based on the stirring romance short story by Claire Keegan.

deadline.com/2026/02/andr...

On the beach: ‘Watermarks’

"Science describes accurately from outside, poetry describes accurately from inside. Science explicates, poetry implicates. Both celebrate what they describe. We need the languages of both science and poetry to save us from merely stockpiling endless ‘information’ that fails to inform our ignorance or our irresponsibility." from "Deep in Admiration" by Ursula K. Le Guin

"Deep in Admiration" was a talk given at the conference Anthropocene: Arts of Living on a Dangerous Planet at UC Santa Cruz in May 2014. The text appears as the foreword to the collection Late in the Day: Poems 2010-2014 (published by PM Press).

It was one of those days when you can see the ghosts of all the other lovely days. You drink a bit and watch the ghosts.

‘The bathrooms were rank, but we didn’t care’: how the grimy-but-great CBGB changed rock for ever Half a century ago, the famed New York venue run by a former marine and folk singer was ground zero for the punk and new wave scenes. Now the bands who played there are being celebrated on a 101-track...

“Inside, an array of young, unknown artists were making music that would change rock’s sound and look, attitude and aesthetic. These outsiders created a template for punk, spoken word, powerpop, new wave, no wave, mutant funk, hardcore and so much more besides.”

'The Interview': The Woman at the Center of the French Rape Trial That Shocked the World Podcast Episode · The Daily · 2026-02-14 · 1h 4m

This is the most extraordinary interview I have ever heard - Gisele Pelicot is a hero, though she should not have had to be. Her courage, strength, insight and backbone are awe-inspiring. Kudos to the NYT for giving this conversation the space and time it deserves. podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/t...

To writers, boneyards are lithic libraries. We borrow from them the names of the dead to clothe our characters. We read their stones and find whole stories to tell in their economy of words. We gather the whispers of the dead to give our tales life. – #DAKilroy, 1982 #Writing

New documentary series explores history of Irish women and the law A new documentary series is to explore seminal moments in Irish history where women took on the legal system. Ceartas Crua – Mná v An Dlí, a bilingual two-part documentary series t...

‘Ceartas Crua – Mná v An Dlí’, a bilingual two-part documentary series to be broadcast on TG4, covers legal action in the Irish courts and legislation enacted in the Oireachtas.

(TG4 streams online for free.)

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Four years have passed since Russia's full scale invasion of Ukraine. Russia was supposed to win in three days. Instead, Ukraine reinvented modern warfare, built a drone industry, and can destroy a thousand Russian soldiers in a day. Ukraine can win.

⁣Untitled (Yellow and Blue) ⁣
by Mark Rothko (1954⁣⁣)