Mark Dignam MDANT

A lone daffodil against a stormy sky for today's photo taken in Glastonbury. As we welcome Meteorological Spring today I don't think Winter is quite ready to leave us being as it is now raining and very grey. 😂

I’m trying to fix my work space this weeks. My dining room is like a hoarder’s paradise. I keep removing things from my work room, including furniture, only to find things don’t fit back where they were. It’s infuriating… if you find a mathematical explanation, please do share it 🙏

YouTube video by Blinder Films He fixed the road - The Savage Eye

If you decided "family voting" was suddenly a problem in Ireland, you don't know our country's voting history

Conclusions We do believe that the presence of supervisory presiding officers also helped staff in these situations and praise their efforts to stop these breaches of the secret ballot.

Analysing Claims of Electoral Interference During the Irish Local and European Elections

Sunburst chart of election interfence claims by category during the Irish local elections, "family voting" does not appear.

For context, I have worked on counter-disinformation and election integrity investigations during the last three Irish national elections, and the threat, or even the term, "family voting" wasn't in my vocabulary before polls closed in Gorton and Denton. This is fabricated.

Too weird. Wide-eyed briefcase freaks wearing blue jeans and tucked in office shirts. You know the see-through sort. One is white and one is pale blue.

These normal guys are Democracy Volunteers, the only people who saw evidence of family voting, a term they invented.

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 🧵

I don't care what you think about Lenin. I don't care if you think he's a dictator. I don't care if you think he's outdated. I don't care if you think I'm a kook: reading Lenin will be an epiphany for you because you'll see what he talks about all around you, in our world, today.

Small enough that he doesn’t seem to understand that part…

The Ratio Cafe, Oxford.

Have a seat, sir. And prepare to Get Served.

James Butler | Just Voting The Green Party’s Hannah Spencer has won the Gorton and Denton by-election with 41 per cent of the vote. Progressive...

"Perhaps [Starmer] might pause to wonder how it came to be that a plumber who speaks of the value of hard work and equal treatment came to stand for a party other than the party of organised labour."
www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2026/fe...

Apollo with the dodgeball of prophecy

Years ago in another life I gave a guest lecture at The Hague warning “AI weapons” could be invoked to remove accountability for war crimes from the chain of command. I said “there are no autonomous weapons, only unsupervised ones,” and sadly it seems I was cooking with that one

😂😂😂

(I’m laughing because he’s so fucking stupid)

This headline is so extreme that you have to wonder if it constitutes an offence under s.19 of the Public Order Act 1986, namely "publish[ing] written material which is threatening, abusive or insulting [and] intend[ing] thereby to stir up racial hatred" (or likely to stir up racial hatred)

Headline: Als can't stop recommending nuclear strikes in war game simulations

Headline: Elon Musk's Grok Al to be used by Pentagon despite safety concerns

Iran latest: US and Israel launch attack on Iran, as Trump says 'major combat operations'

No need for alarm…

Really concerned to hear the Defence Secretary refuse to rule out UK's involvement in future strikes on Iran.

Iraq lessons must be learned.
Further escalation in the Middle East makes us all less safe.

Starmer must rule out UK involvement immediately.

And not just prejudice towards gender nonconformity, it's functionally a defence of base knee-jerk prejudice more broadly. Telling people "your reflexive hatred of a person based purely on aesthetic dislike of how they look is justified 'pattern recognition'" justifies basically any kind of bigotry!

#GetKeshed: you'll never leave

#GetKeshed by the sea in Cornwall

Honestly I loved it. It’s got a lot to say, and I’ll be thinking about it for a while, I reckon. The think that most impressed me though was the way that it created a physical sensation while I read it. Like a hand gripping onto my heart. I felt it in my chest. It’s the impact of the internal voice

Just to be serious for a moment, thanks to Mark for this series of posts, and to everyone else who's messaged, tweeted, whatever. It means the fucking world as a writer to know there are people who get your stuff, esp when it's as fucked up and challenging as mine can be.

1/

Jenrick and Goodwin appear clear that it will be only British citizens who can vote. (Obviously, that excludes Irish nationals). But they may say Irish and Asian/Black voters are different today.

"Under a Reform UK government, only British citizens will be able to vote".

Nigel Farage has proposed this morning made a call which obvs entails disenfranchising Irish nationals as well as Commonwealth nationals. I have asked him if that is his intention and his policy now.
x.com/Nigel_Farage...

Bonus bay windows on the gable end of these Balvicar St tenements, just next to Queen's Park on the south side of Glasgow.

#glasgow

One Very Thirty-Fortysomething Meeja Thing that gets my goat on here is the bleating from the “thank fuck January, February / October, November are over” crowd, as if the months were a blight on collective wellbeing. 1. You’re wishing away your lives, airhead noggins 2. You’re not in 6th Form now.

Just your regularly scheduled share of this masterpiece by @tomgauld.bsky.social

Same

When you sit there looking at all the shit that's going on and wonder how we ended up here...

I know where he'll end up. Out the back of that man's house in Drogheda alongside one of the Popemobiles.

EXPEL THE BRITISH AMBASSADOR

Murdering bastard speaks…