Aidan O’Brien

Michael D Higgins regrets not calling out ‘disastrous capitalism’ more Former president said much of world’s wealth was now concentrated among ‘a few hundred people’

Michael D Higgins regrets not calling out ‘disastrous capitalism’ more

The real story is that foreign govts try to "interfere" all the time. In 2020 and 2024 we had mechanisms to catch them, call them out, & mitigate damage. Now, those mechanims are gone & the Trump admin would prefer to exploit "foreign interference" to justify a federal take-over of elections.

The point is they want these people killed, not displaced

Related point, if you are in misinformation research and have been launching study after study to see what Uncle Fred thinks after seeing misinformation PLEASE listen to what @katestarbird.bsky.social and I have been saying for years: effects on elite and official action is what matters most.

OFFS. When Iran tried to interefere in 2020, researchers caught them and called them out. Then the Benz-Weiss-Taibbi-Musk-Jordan-Trump axis labeled those researchers "censors" ... and set about defunding them and dismantling their organizations.

I’m really sorry to hear this Úna-Minh are you both ok?

In Iran, air power alone will not reshape the regime. Since WWI, dozens of U.S., Israeli & allied air campaigns have tried to force political change — none installed friendly governments. None! They strengthen nationalism and intensify resistance.

the guy who wrote the literal book on this stuff is dunking on the admin:

The writers killed his character with a plot line that Chase’s character wanked himself to death, which is quite something

bsky.app/profile/d-mo...

Because they are addicted to hate and this will give them an endless supply

The people who hate asylum seekers are cheering on an illegal war that will create millions of refugees…

This war could end tomorrow and the US and the region will be living with the consequences for many years.

You cannot put what Trump unleashed back in the box.

Trying to imagine a reactionary patriarch marching his submissive wife and children into a polling booth in Manchester to force them to vote for a blonde woman from a party lead by a gay Jewish man, and I’m not seeing it..

Point/Counterpoint This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won't

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism George W. Bush may think that a war against Iraq is the solution to our problems, but the reality is, it will only serve to create far more. This war will not put an end to anti-Americanism; it will fan the flames of hatred even higher. It will not end the threat of weapons of mass destruction; it will make possible their further proliferation. And it will not lay the groundwork for the flourishing of democracy throughout the Mideast; it will harden the resolve of Arab states to drive out all Western (i.e. U.S.) influence. If you thought Osama bin Laden was bad, just wait until the countless children who become orphaned by U.S. bombs in the coming weeks are all grown up. Do you think they will forget what country dropped the bombs that killed their parents? In 10 or 15 years, we will look back fondly on the days when there were only a few thousand Middle Easterners dedicated to destroying the U.S. and willing to die for the fundamentalist cause. From this war, a million bin Ladens will bloom.

Counterpoint No It Won't No it won't. It just won't. None of that will happen. You're getting worked up over nothing. Everything is going to be fine. So just relax, okay? You're really overreacting. "This war will not put an end to anti-Americanism; it will fan the flames of hatred even higher"? It won't. "It will harden the resolve of Arab states to drive out all Western (i.e. U.S.) influence"? Not really. "A war against Iraq is not only morally wrong, it will be an unmitigated disaster"? Sorry, no, I disagree.

This onion article was published nearly a quarter of a century ago…

theonion.com/this-war-wil...

I have nothing good to say about Anthropic just like I have nothing good to say about Muskrat during his spat with the orange man, or any of the orange man's associates when he turns on them. Anthropic knowingly partnered with the pentagon. Their other partner, Palantir,...

Screenshot of amendment to the Crime and Policing Bill with a new clause beginning: "AI search services safety: offence (1) It is an offence for the provider of a generative AI search service to allow the creation, viewing, listening to, sharing, broadcasting or storing, using that service, of content— (a) that would be illegal content, as defined by section 59 of the Online Safety Act 2023 ('illegal content' etc), (b) that would be content that is harmful to children, as defined by section 60 of that Act ('content that is harmful to children'), if the user is a child," and with a definition "(2) For the purposes of this section, a generative AI search service means a deep or large language model able to generate text, images and other content based on the data on which they were trained and user prompts."

Baroness Kidron has tabled an amendment that would criminalise most, if not all, general-purpose LLMs bills.parliament.uk/publications...

The offence says "generative AI search service" but there's no search or service element in the definition – just models.

#CPBill #genAI #censorship #techpolicy

Thread on the Irish actions of Democracy Volunteers in 2020

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

Like pretty much everything on their list implies ordinary things like poor literacy or numeracy skills, or English language comprehension or a disability, as "family voting".

Which is considered illegal under the 2023 Ballot Secrecy Act, it's insidious as fuck designed to suppress turnout

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.

As with many of Democracy Volunteers’ observations, our group was particularly concerned at the high levels of ‘family voting’ at polling stations. Not unique to Ireland, this issue denies many people their right to vote in secrecy, often when a family member or other citizen oversees and/or directs them how to vote. The levels of this seen in Ireland were 7.4% and a number of our observers witnessed situations where disagreements between voters committing this offence and presiding officers were heated

count centre officials would have been documented/reported or discussed, and yet I *cannot* find a single Irish media report corroborating their claims of personally witnessing these "heated exchanges" or supporting their estimates.

"Family voting" according to Democracy Volunteers, is a situation where family members pressure someone to vote; they based on their observations estimated 7.4% (over 100,000 times!) during the Irish General Election in 2020.

You would assume these "heated" exchanges been family members and...

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 🧵

Oh my god… play it cool Kev, play it cool…

THE GIANT STATUE of St Patrick raising a pint outside Dublin’s Temple Bar Pub has been taken down, less than 24 hours after it first appeared on the city centre landmark. The 10-foot figure, which was installed yesterday morning and depicted Ireland’s patron saint holding what appeared to be a pint of Guinness above the corner of the tourist trap pub, was removed earlier today. Workers were seen detaching the statue from the front of the building before loading it onto trailer this morning. A member of the installation team removing Saint Patrick this morning described it as a “pity”. The beer held in the hand of the installation yesterday was covered with green material and shamrocks this morning, presumably to give the appearance Saint Patrick is now holding a bunch of shamrocks, rather than a beer. Speaking to The Journal, the worker said he wasn’t sure what the pub’s plans for the huge bust are. “We do as we’re told, we were told to take him down. If we’re told to put him back up we will,” he said.

“We do as we’re told, we were told to take him down. If we’re told to put him back up we will,” he said. “Maybe he might go up now he has his shamrocks,” he added. When asked where the installation crew planned to cart the bust off to, he said they might “take him to the zoo now he’s seen Temple Bar”.

RIP the giant statute of St Patrick in Temple Bar, an iconic part of the Dublin skyline for nearly 24 hours...

I don't know if this is the same occasion, but –

The boat operator who does this tour once told me that a fella dressed as Chewbacca went up Skellig Michael and got to the top just as the heavens opened.

"You've never seen a sadder sight than a grown man looking like a drowned retriever," he said.

The claim that social media platforms do not change users' attitudes and beliefs while tech companies make hundreds of billions in ad revenue paid by companies who *use the platforms to influence users' attitudes and beliefs* has always struck me as ... fucking hilarious.

Absolutely wild that there were no instances, reports, or allegations of "family voting" documented in the Irish 2024 LE/EU Elections, or the 2024 Irish General Election, or indeed during our 2025 Presidential elections. I'd honestly never even heard the term before today.

Peter Griffin "you cant use that word! Only we can use that word"

Northern Irish people, when they see British politicians discovering the word "sectarianism"

Netflix Backs Out of Bid for Warner Bros., Paving Way for an Ellison Takeover

The richest man owns X.

The second and third richest men control Google.

The fourth richest man owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp.

The fifth richest man owns The Washington Post.

And now the sixth richest could soon take over both Paramount and Warner Bros.

See the problem here?