Neil Michael 🇱🇧

. . . not the sort of photo I expected to take when I turned up for work today.

Murdered farmer Michael Gaine’s remains being taken from his cattle shed by a friend of his and a relative.

New from me 🚨

“Disinformation and Algorithms: Amplification, Reception and Correction”

I contribute to the theory around disinformation and misinformation studies and then carry out a corpus-based analysis of the use of tokens like ‘disinformation’ on Twitter.

www.cambridge.org/universitypr...

Orlando City Commissioner Tony Ortiz just switched from Republican to Democratic.

“The Republican Party is not the party I signed up with... The marginalization of Latinos and immigrants—many of whom have helped build this country—is not leadership. It’s fear-based politics.”

A personal statement apologising for provoking Deputy Lowry by filming him last week.
tinyurl.com/2s4x9k92

Thousands of protesters in New York

New York stands with Ukraine. #3E #USprotests #StandWithUkraine

Excerpt from a public letter Roald Dahl wrote encouraging people to vaccinate their children. Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything. “Are you feeling all right?” I asked her. “I feel all sleepy,” she said. In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead. The measles had turned into a terrible thing called measles encephalitis and there was nothing the doctors could do to save her. That was twenty-four years ago in 1962, but even now, if a child with measles happens to develop the same deadly reaction from measles as Olivia did, there would still be nothing the doctors could do to help her. On the other hand, there is today something that parents can do to make sure that this sort of tragedy does not happen to a child of theirs. They can insist that their child is immunized against measles. I was unable to do that for Olivia in 1962 because in those days a reliable measles vaccine had not been discovered. Today a good and safe vaccine is available to every family and all you have to do is to ask your doctor to administer it.

The measles outbreak in Texas is reminding me of the public letter Roald Dahl wrote about losing his daughter to measles in 1962, just before the vaccine was publicly available.

HSE commissioned external reviews into two stillbirths at MUH As well as commissioning external reviews at the Mayo hospital, the HSE also conducted additional internal reviews into another five stillbirths there in 2023

The narrative is - in effect: there really is not anything to be seen here. Everything is grand. Talk to mothers and fathers of babies that continue to die needlessly in Irish maternity units, and it's very far from grand. www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41...

The stock market is tanking so badly it almost feels like we are being governed by someone who went bankrupt six tim—

Oh wait.

High resolution image of #StormÉowyn yesterday as center moved away. I’ve had reports that all are safe on Aran Islands but no power of connectivity there at present.

Heavy rain and sleet moving into the West with thunderstorms in Southwest and lightning strikes in Kerry. Wind will increase as band of showers cross the country too.

I have a hope for 2025 and the next 4/5 years - it is that people here and “the other place” stop incessantly reminding everyone how odd, petty, sexist, ridiculous, tedious, nashty, etc etc “yer man” is. Those of us who cannot stand the guy can see most of it for ourselves. Please hear our groans.

A milder morning with a lot of cloud but some sunny spells developing today, feeling fresh in breeze.

CountryWide - RTÉ Radio 1 The CountryWide team feature the events, people and happenings that bring colour and life to communities, towns and villages across the country.

I'll be on RTE Countrywide with @philipb-h.bsky.social from about 8:15 to talk about this week's Draft Programme for Government.

Get the coffee on and join us! ☕️
www.rte.ie/radio/radio1...

BREAKING: Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has announced that the Gaza ceasefire will start on Sunday at 8:30 am [06:30 GMT].

🔴 LIVE updates: aje.io/dcziju

"You can't have trees and bikes replace the cars on this street. The Dutch just love their cars too much and it rains sometimes."
- Dutch automobile lobbyist, 1988

California Fire Facts | Governor Gavin Newsom Get the facts about the Los Angeles fires.

Gavin Newsom made a website to fight the misinformation about the fires. Give it a read.
REPOST

gavinnewsom.com/california-f...

Wow!

A screen shot of this morning’s Irish Examiner, which carries - as its main picture - a photo of a mother and her two children standing in the snow blocking the driveway to her house.

This morning’s @irishexaminer.bsky.social

Live updates: Pacific Palisades wildfire is most destructive in LA history with at least 1,000 structures burned The Palisades fire, Pasadena's Eaton fire and Hurst fire in the San Fernando Valley are raging in the Los Angeles area, fueled by powerful Santa Ana winds. At least two people are dead and over 1,000 ...

BREAKING: The Pacific Palisades fire is now the most destructive in Los Angeles city history, with an estimated 1,000 structures destroyed.

Follow AP's live coverage.
apnews.com/live/live-up...

Qualitative findings from North America’s first drug compassion club In Canada, the ongoing fatal overdose crisis remains driven by the unpredictable potency and content of the illicit drug supply. From August 2022 until October 2023, the Drug User Liberation Front [DU...

DULF's 3rd paper gives us a look at a Compassion Club and Fulfillment Centre.
What once stood as a safe haven, offering dignity and hope in a society bent on punishment, has been crushed under legal pressures and political scorn.

#Drugsky

journals.plos.org/plosone/arti...

Hear UCC scientists talk food, ancient scripts and dinosaurs at these free lectures Find out more for free.

Hear UCC scientists talk food, artificial intelligence, ancient scripts and dinosaurs at free public lectures!

Our popular @ucc.bsky.social Science in Society lectures will run from 14 January to 3 April, every Tuesday & Thursday at 6:00 PM in Boole 2. Details below

www.yaycork.ie/hear-ucc-sci...

'A deep, dark son of a bitch': Trump posts video of historian criticizing Netanyahu ***

Trump posts video of controversial economist Jeffrey Sachs calling Netanyahu "a deep, dark son of a bitch" who is responsible for orchestrating U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East

Safeguarding minister Jess Phillips says that Elon Musk's attacks have "turned her world upside down" and left her fearful for her own safety.

The X billionaire "knows absolutely nothing" about grooming gangs scandal, she tells @itvnewspolitics.bsky.social

Couldn’t agree more!

I spent most of my adult life watching schools say they can't expel professors for sexually assaulting and harassing students and colleagues only to see how quickly they react over social media posts against genocide

“To turn off, go to Settings > Apps > Photos on iOS and turn off Enhanced Visual Search. On Mac, open Photos and go to Settings > General to do the same. You must do it on each of your Apple devices.”

And around the same time, or certainly the same day, Bono accepted an honour from the man who - in effect - sanctioned that arms deal. Up until that moment, I had planned to see U2 live this year. Not now. I will never again pay to see them play live, or buy another of their albums.

Is it really NOT an import as stated, and did it really only have one owner as stated? I think I must have shelled out around €200 or so in Cartell and Motorcheck reports.