Laurie Winkless

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CANT COMPLAIN IF YOU DONT
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GOT TILL MIDDAY NZ

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┃╱╱╲╲
╱╱╭╮╲╲ GO VOTE
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CANT COMPLAIN IF YOU DONT
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GOT TILL MIDDAY #nzpol

Oh I love that. I suspect that's partly true, at least for some dialects. But Hiberno-English (English spoken by Irish people) is very much shaped by Gaeilge anyway, so possibly too tricky to disentangle that? Or (more likely) my ear is not sensitive enough!

Four people sit around a dining table in front of a grand fireplace: two men, two women. A chandelier can be seen reflected in a large mirror

Today was a pretty special day. I was invited back by the Physics Dept at my alma mater @tcddublin.bsky.social to give a seminar. It went really well and my two favourite Profs were there! Afterwards, we went to lunch together with the lovely third Prof who made the talk happen 😊 #physics 🧪👩‍🔬⚛️

A belated update - I ended up chatting to the two lads as we got off the train. Turns out one of them "lost" his Irish (like me) so he's been working on recovering it for the past couple of years, helped by his friend who is from a family of Gaeilgeoirí. Extremely cool.

Yes I'm being nosey. But hearing Irish "in the wild" feels wonderful. I'm inspired to start practising again - no one in my family speaks it fluently but by my early 20s (thanks to extracurricular activities) I got pretty close to that level. Maybe I still have more of it inside me than I realized!

There are two cool-looking guys in their 30s sitting across from me on the train back from Dublin. They're speaking the most gorgeous fluent Irish. I'm both envious and also kind of amazed at just how much of their conversation I can understand despite not having spoken Irish for 15+ years ☘️

SHAPIRO: OK, so you've spent your career creating television without Al, and I could imagine today you thinking, boy, I wish I had had that tool to solve those thorny problems... SIMON: What? SHAPIRO: ...Or saying... SIMON: You imagine that? SHAPIRO: ...Boy, if that had existed, it would have screwed me over. SIMON: I don't think Al can remotely challenge what writers do at a fundamentally creative level. SHAPIRO: But if you're trying to transition from scene five to scene six, and you're stuck with that transition, you could imagine plugging that portion of the script into an Al and say, give me 10 ideas for how to transition this. SIMON: I'd rather put a gun in my mouth.

David Simon, creator of ‘The Wire’, being interviewed by Ari Shapiro (NPR)

London hits clean air milestone 184 years early - ULEZ makes 'big difference' A professor has branded the success a 'truly remarkable turnaround for the city's air quality'

Thanks to London’s bold action, almost 10 million people are now breathing cleaner air.

That means fewer children will grow up with stunted lungs and fewer people will have to suffer from asthma, dementia and heart disease.

'Fatberg' weighing 100 tonnes removed from London sewer The removal of the "fatberg" from a sewer in Feltham was "hugely complex", Thames Water says.

Latest #fatberg news - this one weighed 100 tonnes! share.google/2VcYyFtFmtbj...

A Nobel medal

BREAKING: The Nobel Prize in Chemistry has been awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar M. Yaghi “for the development of metal-organic frameworks”

Stay tuned for more.
#NobelPrize

Yes, same here on both of those issues! I was super proud of my parents ❤️

Thank you x

Anyway. My goal on this trip is to not have a blinding argument with my mum, so Ieft it. She's a wonderful person in many ways - we just have very different ideas and priorities.

(PS: I'm sharing this here because none of my family uses Bluesky. Forgive the self-indulgence)

a black and white photo of a woman wearing a turtleneck sweater and a dress . Alt: a black and white photo of a woman wearing a turtleneck sweater and a dress . She shrugs dramatically

I'd argue that the statement "I worry about the future for my grandchildren" has less power and meaning if you dismiss who your grandchildren are voting for and instead continue to vote for the parties that are inflicting the damage

Irish people of that generation vote for ghosts - ideas of political parties forged in the Rising - rather than the actual politicians who are alive and working today. Policies and their influence be damned. The Party name is all that matters.

Foolishly suggested to my 80+ year old mother - as she loudly complained about the current Irish government - that for the next election maybe she should talk to her grandkids about who they're voting for and why, and perhaps allow that to influence who will get her vote.

She’d better be just fine

Or I’ll have to have words with whoever is responsible

Delta (& my husband) are in NZ while I'm visiting my family in Ireland. Doggy daycare tagged me in this video today 🤣😍

Every week I recruit more archaeologists and every week I run out of archaeologists again. Lol.

The Irish Times view on Manchán Magan: a singular expressive voice Ireland has lost a communicator of rare talent

The Irish Times view on Manchán Magan: a singular expressive voice

Ireland has lost a communicator of rare talent
www.irishtimes.com/opinion/edit...

Manchán Magan: writer and documentary maker dies aged 55 Author spoke of terminal illness in recent radio interview, saying he did not feel despair

So very sorry to learn that Manchán Magan has passed.

He was a rare talent, and a lovely guy, and still had so much more to give.
www.irishtimes.com/culture/2025...

Love this 🤣😅 (and I had Tayto today don't worry!)

Every trip back to Ireland, I go to the supermarket on the first day, partly to stay awake, partly to buy snacks I'll need when I inevitably wake up starving.

And that's why at 3am, I was in my childhood bedroom munching on peanut butter on rice cakes, grapes, a banana and an orange #jetlag

Oh no did I?! It wasn't raining in Wellington when I left, so I plead innocence 😅

Aaannnnnd I'm finally in Dublin. The planet is big, peeps. Still another hour in the car to go, but thankfully I am not the one driving.

Update: survived the 17.5hr flight from Auckland to Dubai. Now awaiting my 8.5hr flight to Dublin.

Posting this as a record of how long the journey is from my home in NZ to my family home in Ireland. Just left my house.

Thanks a mill Dave 😁 I am a happy frood!

The PM is off his rocker.

The SCIENCE tells us we can’t afford to burn even known reserves let alone new ones if we want a hope of having a liveable future…

Yet Luxon is asking @chrishipkins.bsky.social to support offshore gas exploration … for at least the next 10 years!

#ClimateCrisis

An iced coffee site beside a partly demolished peanut butter cookie

Nyom nyom nyom #birthdaytreat