Des Fitzgerald

The cover of Every One Still Here by Liadan Ní Chuinn

This is really good, Irish short story fans.

Oh no!

The worst thing about having a job teaching hundreds of young adults in a fairly small town is that you can never go to a gym, bar, sauna, even supermarket etc without significant jeopardy.

Jesus Christ

Feels like we don't factor in enough how much US public culture is just generally invested in sadistic fantasy.

Yes, agreed. Though also maybe the final death blow that academic publishing needs.

I mean, one of them is half octopus and also a DJ.

<5yo looking up suddenly from gabby's dollhouse, a show he has been watching religiously for two years> dad, have you ever noticed all the cats in this show are really weird?

Honestly, I find this very convincing and agree that - with great sadness - it's time to shut down quantitative social science.

Congrats!!

It;s Mixed Feelings, which I confess I have not read, but I generally liked the Depression book (?!)

Holding up a copy of a book, Tales of the Suburbs: LGBTQ+ Lives Behind Net Curtains by John Grindrod, in front of two suburban semis and a speed bump

Wouldn't you LOVE to have me on your podcast/radio show/other modern communications thingy? Tales of the Suburbs is out next week, and it would be smashing to get word out as far as possible over the next few months via the medium of chat. Slide into my DMs or www.johngrindrod.co.uk/contact x

shame *in* the cybernetic fold, ugh [now experiencing shame]

I'm re-reading shame and the cybernetic fold for teaching and actually gasping with secondhand horror & delight how both mean and funny Sedgwick & Frank are about Ann Cvetkovich's (first!) book. The 90s!

Okay, granted, but also I need to say that anyone who bought a ticket for Roy Keane and Roddy Doyle at the Marquee at least somewhat had it coming.

A picture of Ruud Van Nistelrooy above the text, "Ruud Van Nistlerooy An evening with one of Manchester United’s greatest ever goal scorers. Sunday, 8 March | 8PM Tickets €80* | €160* | €330*

If things weren't bleak enough, someone is trying to charge THREE HUNDRED AND THIRTY EUROS for "an evening with Ruud Van Nistelrooy" at the cork opera house.

This is the only bit for which I would give them credit, haha

Hiring established scholars to junior Oxbridge roles imperils disciplines As lay-offs continue elsewhere, postdocs’ inability to land permanent roles will block the pipeline of future faculty, Cambridge academics argue

An incredibly embarrassing article, even by Cambridge standards of clueless self-regard. www.timeshighereducation.com/opinion/hiri...

I'm warning you now that someone is going to write a gushing essay about the new Pixar film, Hoppers, using the phrase "flat ontology."

In its own way, in understanding the war as bad only to the extent that it risks "American lives and resources," as a mere distraction from the real problems experienced by Americans, this statement is arguably more despicable than the open, gleeful racism of the US government.

UCC event poster for event w Prof Debbie Ging on March 5

Looking forward to Prof @debbieging.bsky.social’s talk on Thursday! Organized by @uccwomenstudies.bsky.social & the CASiLaC Political Technologies cluster and part of #IWD & our PG7044 PhD module!
@uccresearch.bsky.social @uccphilosophy.bsky.social @oliverjdavis.bsky.social @maybenansi.bsky.social

is that the boxing one? that's a great pub.

yeah the river has two channels so the city centre is actually on an island (was once many islands, but reclaimed over the centuries). weirdly i am very nostalgic for the albany in cardiff. it's the kind of pub we just don't really do here.

For sure (though, again, I'd honestly be surprised if it had a huge effect just given how wildly understaffed every irish uni is, and the sort of general agreement that this is a problem. But maybe that's complacent. Deffo something to watch anyway)

Hah! I mean, we are a department of 25 or so, and we teach around 1000 students in first year alone (not all in arts). So...

a picture of hannah spencer smiling in a really nice green coat, and with people holding green signs behind

when you are at the paddy's day parade and some lad with a banjo goes past on the back of a lorry

oh no, the bit with the shops is is the central island (also where ucc is). southside is death-suburbs. i live five minutes from maureens!!

We must reclaim and rejuvenate urban spaces WHEN my wife and I moved W back to Cork from the UK a few years ago, we agreed we'd only live in one of two places. We'd dig ourselves into the side of a rock somewhere in the Beara peninsula and settle in beside the sheep. Or we'd try to find some-where to live in Cork city centre. Where we absolutely would not live, we agreed, was where we had both grown up: The mind-numbing. spirit-crushing suburbs of the city's southside, and in particular the Suburbs are not the solution to our issues, writes Des Fitzgerald desolate borderlands of Ballinlough and Douglas, where dreams don't go to die, exactly, but do sometimes go to settle down quietly in a row of unchanging, semi-detached houses, each of them extended and rendered until any trace of interest or character has even care fully removed. The French anthro-pologist Marc Augé uses the term "non-places" to describe bland, tran-sient and interchange-able modern spaces, which seem to exist out-side of the usual human references to history, culture, and identity. That's probably a bit strong for, say, Bishop-stown. But still, there's something about the long roads and narrow footpaths of the south-side suburbs, the pre ponderance of shopping centres and petrol station forecourts, the near-total absence of commercial and civic excitement, that seems almost calibrated to prevent anything that

For the Cork crowd, the @irishexaminer.bsky.social has a big supplement on the future of the city today, and I have an article in it about how much I hate the southside in general, Douglas in particular. #speirgorm

I assume that's the model, or something like it. (Basically, that you'd enter a programme in english or languages or whatever it is). Part of the dynamic is that UCD did a revamp along these lines some time ago and it's generally seen as having been a big success in terms of attracting students.

Sure, it is depressing and I agree short-termist. I'm open to correction on this, but I'd be extremely surprised if existing staff negatively affected, given public employment protections (and I think everyone agrees SSRs are already drastic everywhere). At least I'd want to hear from the staff.