Pat Burke 🇺🇦

My grandfather, a conservative Catholic of a pre-Vatican II stripe, thought Life of Brian was very funny. He also thought Fr. Brian D’Arcy was an eejit.

This is possibly something you all knew already, but just read that the word for pupils (as in eyes) derives from the same root as puppet and puppy and it's because when you look in someone's pupils you see a small doll-like version of yourself

❤️

Emma and I have a huge amount in common in terms of our preferences but, as you suggest, the divergences are really rewarding. I will never love The Cure the way she does, but I’ll happily go see them with her this summer.

Well, as I suspected she would, @emmylounib.bsky.social loved Bugonia. And loved it even more, specifically, for the reasons that it annoyed me. Which is kind of why I was excited for her to see it.

Breaking Bad remains unbeaten at exposing weird assumptions about art and morality

I think we both expected to enjoy it! It wore thin very quickly.

Just remembered when, about twenty minutes from the end of Barbie, @emmylounib.bsky.social turned to me and declared, “Patrick, this is shite”.

I’m not going to be mean by naming them, but there’s a Guardian TV critic, whose writing I quite like, who is so consistently wrong about the shows she reviews that it’s almost an art form. Masterpieces get three stars, but she awards five stars to the most appalling dreck.

I had a brilliant philosophy lecturer who was forever doing MFAs in things like Art History and Film Studies, and the thing that stays with me is that his unembarrassed enthusiasm made him fantastic company. I’d sometimes run into him on the train, and I loved the conversations we had.

Reminds me of one of my all-time favourite @ericallenhatch.bsky.social posts 💜

I saw someone on Facebook posting about how they wish Ireland’s Green Party could be more like their British counterparts and, really, what can you say?

To a degree, but I vividly remember talking to friends in Madrid in the days afterwards, and they were livid about having been lied to.

This is great, E, but with one qualification: what really did for Aznar in 2004 was the government’s dogged insistence on blaming 11-M on ETA for propaganda purposes.

The follow-up album, Ghost on the Canvas is, I think, just as good. The title track is by Paul Westerberg from The Replacements, of all people, but it’s a perfect fit for Campbell.

A good deal of the argument that AI can produce publishable research is based on the fact that bad research already gets published. Hallucinations don’t matter, they say, because academics sometimes cite things they haven’t read. Guys, you aren’t making the argument you think you are.

“Do you think, as a committee, that it might be worth your while agreeing amongst yourselves what it is that you’re trying to do before you each contact me individually with duplicate, or contradictory, requests?”

Darragh O’Brien drafts in state agencies to find solutions to traffic congestion in the capital Transport Minister ‘not writing anything off’ in bid to ease problem in urban areas

Has he considered not shelving rail projects? Not cutting funding for expansion of public transport could be worth looking at too.

I often wonder, when people post that “mainstream/Western media aren’t covering (widely covered story)”, is it illiteracy, dishonesty, incuriosity, or something else?

You know, if I get this load out done in the next hour, I may just have time to put that on when I get home.

“People are going mad out there, there’s a load of cars after being clamped!”
“Where were they parked?”
“On the path.”

There is nothing quite like a stage school matinee. Like the Ride of the Valkyries scene from Apocalypse Now, but with buggies. My poor front of house staff.

Whenever I finally surface! x

And, less poetically, Brian Jones.

The view is, mercifully, less exciting than that. Curtain up shortly. First of two shows today.

Black and white selfie of a middle aged man with a beard wearing a headset.

47 today. Marking the occasion by working a 14 hour day, naturally.

Very much looking forward to seeing this.

Faced with any sort of choice beyond mere posturing, they demonstrate time after time that they are fundamentally unserious.

I’m always amused by references to SF’s much vaunted “party discipline”. Lynn Boylan, as climate spokesperson, lauds the EU Nature Restoration Act, and then the party’s sole MEP at the time votes against it.

That’s partly why I thought their position had improved. (That and their careful scrubbing of a litany of softly pro-Russian propaganda from their website and socials.)