Simon McGarr

He wore the RA's Gerry Beret - the kind you find in a second hand store?

Having done both solar and heat pump, I would have much preferred to get twice as much solar and no heat pump. It’s an absolute no brainer if you have the space for it.

Hannah Daly: Irish people are again paying a high price for our reliance on fossil fuels But renewable energy relies on resources that will never run out and cannot be cut off as act of aggression

In my @irishtimes.com op-ed today I argue that our climate law is the best framework we have for making energy secure and affordable, because it tackles the root cause of our vulnerability to energy shocks - our dependence on fossil fuels.

www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2026...

John McManus: We need a retrofit reality check; the figures don’t stack up and we can’t be bothered Most of us have concluded that retrofitting doesn’t make sense

“we were legally obliged to come up with a plan in 2024 for the EU. Rather than bite the bullet on tackling the impediment to developing renewable energy assets we cobbled together some magical thinking about retrofitting and electric vehicles.”

www.irishtimes.com/business/202...

The Irish govt have fallen for this trap. The Minister for Justice just said it’s not his job to be sensitive. To be clear, it very much *is* his job to be sensitive.

Look, the thread is good info. But the key point is that these are people in charge of the most powerful army in history, who *do not know what armies are for*.

They genuinely think the purpose of armies is killing, not policy advancement.

Being Action Man sounds great, but his head is hollow.

It's looking increasingly like these guys thought that if they could wreak more death and destruction than the other side then they would be respected as strong powerful men and they would "win" and that would make them big important heroes. Very possibly they had no rationale deeper than that.

Listen, to start with we still get to buy the solar panels from China. Plenty of thrills still available.

Russian gas and Gulf Oil are both, by now, very largely replaceable by solar (and wind).

We have to do this anyway to stop the planet from killing us.

It is the most obvious solution to a problem.

*I do not like having to explain what I have done. This consequence of my actions is unacceptable.*

Faced with rising oil prices caused by its own actions, on the 3rd March the US Govt quietly slipped out a Notice punching a hole in sanctions on Russia selling oil internationally.

ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actio...

I’m not surprised. We went through this process last year and while it’s great it is crazy expensive even with the heat pump / solar grant and it’s not certain that you will get the grant when doing the work. Policy needs to include low cost long term finance so people can afford this.

Yes, hello, is that God? Yeah, hi. I have a complaint. You gave me this brain that’s designed for finding berries and avoiding lions and now people are ‘just circling back’ to see if we can ‘move the needle’ on ‘key initiatives’? NONE of those things are berries.

This is the government's solution to the housing crisis: selling off the country piecemeal, so that you're endlessly paying rent to offshore landlords.
#speirgorm

In unrelated news, I have been waiting 6 months for one of our major energy providers to get back to me with a quote for solar panel installation.

AI cameras are everywhere — and people are paying the price for their mistakes Flock Safety's license plate readers are used by police in thousands of communities. When the cameras make mistakes, the consequences can be severe.

'Flock Flocked up'

How a license plate camera misread unraveled one man's life.

Horrifying story of Flock misreading plates.

The driver was then mauled by a police dog while officers comment he is acting like a petulant child.

The license plates weren't stolen, and he was the registered owner

This is like that bit in the first Iron Man where the last thing he sees before being knocked out is his own logo on the explosive, if instead of rethinking his life Tony has been like, "that could be any weapons manufacturer named 'Stark'!"

What’s your sign?

1. Are you currently using an AI tool for work-related tasks or projects? * Yes * No, but I would like to (PLEASE SKIP TO QUESTION 7)

My employer asks me to complete a survey on AI usage for which this is the first question (required):

People Hate AI Even More Than They Hate ICE, Poll Finds The only things less popular than AI in the poll were Iran and the Democratic Party.

“The complicity of AI companies in widely unpopular government actions worldwide has also contributed to the bad reputation AI is building for itself.”

Coin used as Leeds bus fare was 2,000‑year‑old currency The coin was handed down to Peter Edwards from his grandfather in the 1950s.

This is the sort of thing a cashless society robs us of, the opportunity to try to get away with paying the bus fare in Carthaginian currency www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Once again, another example for the “fascists unable to imagine what it is like to be Another Person”

In first, CIA acknowledges 1953 coup it backed to overthrow leader of Iran was undemocratic While other American officials have made similar remarks in the past, the acknowledgment by the CIA in a podcast about the agency’s history comes as much of its official history of the coup still rema...

I wonder what percentage of Americans knows that the CIA helped overthrow a democracy in Iran in 1953, installing a brutal dictator who tortured and murdered people. Republicans keep citing the 1979 Islamic Revolution as if that was the start of U.S.-Iran hostilities. Go back 26 years earlier.

All the videos of my son from when he was a toddler look like shaky, found footage reels of people chasing cryptids.

I really recommend it. It feels like an escape from the world, like a trip to the library, but for Looking.

Either that or fixing fishing nets on Inis Mór

Now, my version is clearly not an accurate reproduction of the Gallery’s.

Which is fine, as we already have one of those.

But it did give me the chance to look at the proportions of the arm, to see the folds of the shirt and the draping from the seat to his feet

None of which registered at first

One of the ways to see something properly- to get past letting your eyes slide over something and think you looked at it- is to stand and try to sketch it.

I was in the National Gallery and decided to draw a version of, I think it’s John the Baptist being woken up by an angel.

Her full follow-up explanation of the conversation is hilarious. She told people in Cushendall that she was trying to visit every part of the UK 😂😂😂

“Ah, well, that is an interesting question this time, because the key was to anticipate the transfers mid-way down the ballot”