Bad beat/Moaning/Venting thread - It's the end of the world as we know it

[Micknail]

I suspect I made a good decision not to watch it. Did Barnes do his usual?

Apparently he gave SA a penalty which was scored, then turned around to a NZ player and said he got it wrong.

[Solksjaer!]

DJ might still be alive, Billy Connolly but Chandler Bing apparently not.

[Mellor]

DJ might still be alive, Billy Connolly but Chandler Bing apparently not.

Yup confirmed. Found dead in his hot tub at home. Apparent drowning, but I suspect more to it given his history and how bad he looked at the reunion

[Opr]

[Opr]

Ngannou taking Fury the distance last night is pretty mad and he could probably should have got the decision.

[DeadParrot]

Randomly found a very nice dinner this evening. Doing a river tour tomorrow and going to LX Factory for lunch after. Will wing it from there but I like 73.75% of your suggestions.

Pont final is a fantastic spot as well. Book it first for the decent tables on the pier.

[DeadParrot]

Ngannou taking Fury the distance last night is pretty mad and he could probably should have got the decision.

Boxing saved itself with that

"It wasn't a robbery when everyone knew the outcome"

[Ed]

In Hanoi. Due to my inability to sleep on planes I've been awake for 28 hours and counting.

On the plus side, dinner was a shared starter, 2 mains and a couple of beers - €9. Madness

[Raoul Duke III]

In Hanoi. Due to my inability to sleep on planes I've been awake for 28 hours and counting.

On the plus side, dinner was a shared starter, 2 mains and a couple of beers - €9. Madness

Did you take my advice to drink through the flight to avoid jetlag?

Nice to see you again albeit fleetingly in the airport.

[Raoul Duke III]

Pont final is a fantastic spot as well. Book it first for the decent tables on the pier.

Pretty wet here today with lots of cloudbursts. Did a Hippotrip amphibious tour which was good fun then seafood lunch by the river. This was close to LX Factory so wandered up there for coffee and pastries. Then a walk through Estrela and Barrio Alto (steep-ass hills galore) before fleeing for the apartment as the heavens opened.

Weather meant to be good Mon-Weds so will try to do as much as teenagers will allow. Maybe a day trip to Sintra.

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

LLMs at a car dealership [a reddit post by someone]

I had a very interesting experience at the car dealership. As typically happens, the sales guy puts you in a small room with you and him and presents you with a ton of options to try and overwhelm you: warranties, coverage plans, etc. and starts monologuing on fear tactics to get you to buy stuff. He presented his plans in fancy graphics on an interactive touchpad desk. We told him we needed a minute and he left the room. We proceeded to screenshot his documents, pass them to ChatGPT and asked for consultation and advice. It gave great answers, commensurate with what my Dad or car subreddits or Google blogs would give, but catered to this specific situation. After all it has seen all of the above, and more: every car part manual, warranty agreement, etc.

What I’ve noted about this experience is now every interaction in our lives which requires judgement can now have an extra cognitive mediator in the room with you. Whether at the doctor, your divorce lawyer, car dealer, it is no longer just you, your problem, and the expert. There is another voice in the room who can receive a full literal picture of what’s going on and inform next steps. The super rich already have this with assistants and law teams to advise them at every step. But now, most people can too and this is only the beginning. Right now, it’s not culturally recognized that this is happening; we let the car dealer know we were consulting AI afterwards and told him all about ChatGPT and he was stunned and amazed. It is also clunky having to asynchronously type and interrogate ChatGPT and one could argue not much different than googling.

The dealer can still isolate you and use psychological tactics to get you to cave. But I’d argue this is fundamentally different—a new *type* of experience, which when fully integrated into our cultural awareness, will revolutionize how business is done. Imagine a world where two parties are trying to agree on some deal and both are aware the other is bringing in a GPT5-powered assistant, known to be more of an expert on both fields of interest and each parties’ situation than either of them. That changes how business will get done and how communication will occur in these settings. Sales tactics will change, interfaces will change, information will be revealed in certain order. Eventually I could see a communication channel open directly between both models, instead of the two humans being the effective information conduit. This will introduce even more layers such as running negotiation simulations and analyzing them, like being a jury of your own case.

People gripe and object: “GPT can’t make palindrome sentences or write a poem with “X” number of words” or some specific quirky limitation. Yes these models hallucinate, yes they have issues still. But what they can do in practical terms for people today is nothing short of astounding, especially considering where NLP was just a few years ago.

They're not wrong.

We are very much on the cusp of everyone, if they want it, having an army of assistants to help them do everything. Possibly a year or two years max where there is incredible personal competitive advantage to be gained by going all-in on it, and after that point probably everyone will have the capabilities.

[Opr]

LLMs at a car dealership [a reddit post by someone]

They're not wrong.

We are very much on the cusp of everyone, if they want it, having an army of assistants to help them do everything. Possibly a year or two years max where there is incredible personal competitive advantage to be gained by going all-in on it, and after that point probably everyone will have the capabilities.

I was using the advanced data analytics plugin a few days back to help draw up something on which I have very little knowledge. I had it cross referencing its own knowledge on the subject along with two pdfs I fed it with extra information and another pdf with guidelines and constraints. Its quite clunky and sometimes the ways in which it extracts information from the documents by doing some kind of brute force searching seems off as its not using the information in the context of knowledge but more a text it can look up which isn't ideal but I got some amazing results when it worked where it was cross referencing all the info and coming up with some great output. It is such a crazy way of doing something where you feel almost like you are directing this tool to create something and you end up in this kind of collaborative effort. If I could directly train it on these added pieces of data with enough weight that it holds them in some kind of higher context for the conversation but it is part of its training data rather than whatever way the plugin is handling it then that would be incredible.

That guy who heads up DeepMind that I posted the podcast with earlier thinks we will have full AGI within 5 years which means it will keep getting progressively better pretty aggressively so two years from now who knows what the capabilities with be at that point.

[Opr]

The way in which that guy from DeepMind talked about one of the leading solutions to the alignment problem made me laugh quite a bit. So one of the solutions a company is working on is to have another AI constantly asking it questions to make sure it is aligned. So before the first AI takes any action, it consults the second AI which probes it and after it feels like everything is alright then it green lights it to go head with whatever it is doing. So we are going to try and build a conscience for the AI.

[hotspur]

Speaking of AI and personal assistant, had anyone tried PI by Reid Hoffman's new company Inflection AI?

[Lazare]

More poetry


Hope

When did the dark encroach?
Emboldened by my depths
It dared to approach

Haunted by my restless dream
Ancient fell whispers scream
Black ink on waters swell

An empty bottle spins and rumbles
As I stumble to shutters drawn
And twist ragged cord to greet the dawn

Through amber leaves a pale light slopes
It's not the light the darkness flees
Its hope

That's excellent.

[Murdrum]

Speaking of AI and personal assistant, had anyone tried PI by Reid Hoffman's new company Inflection AI?

I thought Mustafa Suleyman (Co-founder of Inflection AI) was fantastic on this pod about the impact of AI on geo politics.

I only ordered his new book last night having listened to the pod a couple of weeks ago but I found him to be particularly memorable.

[dinekes]

Lazare

Thanks for the the feedback! Combination of way less booze, very little TV and more reading got me wanting to try my hand at something creative. That one came nearly fully formed, very happy with it.

[Solksjaer!]

Lazare

Thanks for the the feedback! Combination of way less booze, very little TV and more reading got me wanting to try my hand at something creative. That one came nearly fully formed, very happy with it.

Deffo keep it up . Dont come at us in a few weeks and say it was AI generated. That would be durty.

Ya have the flair/craft . 2 great poems so far. Inski for the dinkiebook.

[rounders123]

https://www.youtube.com/live/x8QqKXkK8Pc?si=e8kVePHBGqqlSuFU

DocFarrell on the FT of the IPO. 45k up top. Desmond.

[Ed]

Did you take my advice to drink through the flight to avoid jetlag?

Nice to see you again albeit fleetingly in the airport.

Good to see you too. I did not take your advice. My remedy of staying awake for an obscene amount of time did the trick

[dinekes]

Deffo keep it up . Dont come at us in a few weeks and say it was AI generated. That would be durty.

Ya have the flair/craft . 2 great poems so far. Inski for the dinkiebook.

Thanks, Jaysus you'll give me a big head! (Already big enough)
Its all me, dragged from my sub optimal grey matter!
Its kind of a strange experience as I'm working on several and I already know most of them won't work. I think mostly because there's no real truth in them.

Those two really flowed easily.

Its an enjoyable past time at any rate.

[zuutroy]

Bought a well regarded French butter based on the chats here a couple of weeks ago. Dont see the life-changing difference to Kerrygold at all.

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

Bought a well regarded French butter based on the chats here a couple of weeks ago. Dont see the life-changing difference to Kerrygold at all.

Which one?

[zuutroy]

Beurre de Baratte

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

Andy McDonald: Senior Labour MP suspended over 'deeply offensive' comments at pro-Palestine rally


Have a read to see the 'deeply offensive' comment that got him kicked out of his job, and perhaps, like me, conclude that the UK is a rather grotesque country. Like, how did we end up so different despite being right beside each other and indeed conjoined for about 800 years.

I feel this is my biggest doubt about SF - not anything they represent, but that they are so institutionally trained in British politics, that they will introduce some form of UK politics to Ireland. We already saw it a little bit when they made a go at civil servants a few months ago. I presume they are also behind the rise in anti-gardai sentiment also, which has no real basis in reality. But is all being imported into the country - the idea that you can't trust the institutions.

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

Beurre de Baratte

Yikes, that should be amazing tbh. I'm lost. Could you have covid?

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

Its some tune. That UK grime (??) scene is crazy.

[Strewelpeter]

I feel this is my biggest doubt about SF - not anything they represent,

What they represent is exactly the ethos of Hamas. A vote for SF is a vote that believes if is legitimate to torture, rape, murder and defile the bodies of civilians in pursuit of nothing more than maintaining power and control of the population.
the strict adherence to the party line is so tight and controlled that there is no room for any dissent.

[zuutroy]

Yikes, that should be amazing tbh. I'm lost. Could you have covid?

Well I also had an 18 hour smoked brisket today and it was fucking amazing so I blame the butter! Its lovely and all, but I would see it as something a bit different, rather than a massive improvement.

[Opr]

[balfejohn]

What they represent is exactly the ethos of Hamas. A vote for SF is a vote that believes if is legitimate to torture, rape, murder and defile the bodies of civilians in pursuit of nothing more than maintaining power and control of the population.
the strict adherence to the party line is so tight and controlled that there is no room for any dissent.

Lol

Great to have u back from your holidays
On the ball as always

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

What they represent is exactly the ethos of Hamas. A vote for SF is a vote that believes if is legitimate to torture, rape, murder and defile the bodies of civilians in pursuit of nothing more than maintaining power and control of the population.
the strict adherence to the party line is so tight and controlled that there is no room for any dissent.

ah they don't. They have a past they have to deal with, and can to some extent be proud of because of what it delivered to the Catholics of Northern Ireland. The current party are just not that. We need to move on and start being worried about their identity politics approach, which is all manner of problematic in a more subtle way.

[Lazare]

Thanks, Jaysus you'll give me a big head! (Already big enough)
Its all me, dragged from my sub optimal grey matter!
Its kind of a strange experience as I'm working on several and I already know most of them won't work. I think mostly because there's no real truth in them.

Those two really flowed easily.

Its an enjoyable past time at any rate.

I think creative flow like that needs to be borne of some sort of experience, as you said, they don't really work if there's no truth in them.

You have something really good. Nourish it.


There's a UK based poetry forum you should submit to, https://www.thepoetryforum.co.uk/forum.php

I'm not sure how active it is now, but I was posting a bit on it 9 years ago and the feedback was really nice.

Had a bit of a creative surge around then, just after my first kid was born. Wrote some poetry and a few songs.

Posted this one up there and got some nice feedback.


Amber Rain

Lamplight illuminated strangers
Autumn late night rain

Restless euphoric tiptoes
A drunkards emotion

Souls trudging forgettably, etched forever
Never knowing always there

Abandoned beautiful fronts chalked and torn

Art is to be born

Vertical rain of Amber, no longer melancholic

Silence, only breathing

Art is to be born

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

Has anyone yet posted about Scavengers Reign?


wow, its an epic piece of work

[dinekes]

Lazare

Strong atmosphere there Laz, can picture a new father walking towards the canal in the rain (lamplit) as the crowd thins, observing and ruminating. Art is to be born (there's layers to that conclusion I feel)

Yep, like that one very much

[Lazare]

Lazare

Strong atmosphere there Laz, can picture a new father walking towards the canal in the rain (lamplit) as the crowd thins, observing and ruminating. Art is to be born (there's layers to that conclusion I feel)

Yep, like that one very much

Thanks man

Has a lot of deep meaning for me.

[Denny Crane]

LLMs at a car dealership [a reddit post by someone]










They're not wrong.

We are very much on the cusp of everyone, if they want it, having an army of assistants to help them do everything. Possibly a year or two years max where there is incredible personal competitive advantage to be gained by going all-in on it, and after that point probably everyone will have the capabilities.

The bot negotiation is well under way, think I saw an example of that 6 months ago for a discount for broadband.

I think future training sets will be poisoned though. We're going to go through a period where the cost and accuracy of new content will fall, and misinformation will be rife. We might be overestimating how good the future assistants will be particularly in a combative environment

[Raoul Duke III]

ah they don't. They have a past they have to deal with, and can to some extent be proud of because of what it delivered to the Catholics of Northern Ireland.

They promised a 32 county socialist republic.

The SDLP were the ones who delivered for 'the Catholics of Northern Ireland'.

[Solksjaer!]

Clever Ad.

FB_IMG_1698751468392.jpg

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

They promised a 32 county socialist republic.

The SDLP were the ones who delivered for 'the Catholics of Northern Ireland'.

ah now ah now. The SDLP couldn't have done it without SF, and SF couldn't have done it without SDLP. But the actual voters of NI seem to have given the lions share of the credit to SF. You might think they are mistaken, but generally its a bit of a mugs game to assume mass stupidity.

[ArmaniJeans]

Some great language at the UK Covid enquiry on Sky News, I grinned like an 8 year old.

"To quote your whatsapp Mr Cummings, you refer to Cabinet Minsters as useless fuckpigs, morons and cunts?"

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

Horse racing chief says Leopardstown track is too valuable to build on

The last racecourse in the capital boosts local economy by €60m a year, says CEO of Horse Racing Ireland Racecourses Paul Dermody



Having produced some pretty weak economic analysis in my time, I can safely say that this is pretty weak economic analysis.

So the economic return from 220 acres of prime Dublin land is ... €60m a year. vs an alternative use of a many thousand homes. Even if those home-occupiers existed exclusively on a diet of minimum wages and beans they would generate hundreds of millions a year, as well as the billions generated from construction and general societal benefits.

[ArmaniJeans]

Andy McDonald: Senior Labour MP suspended over 'deeply offensive' comments at pro-Palestine rally


Have a read to see the 'deeply offensive' comment that got him kicked out of his job, and perhaps, like me, conclude that the UK is a rather grotesque country. Like, how did we end up so different despite being right beside each other and indeed conjoined for about 800 years.

Wanting peace but using the phrase "From the river to the sea" seems to be the issue, as it's part of a decades old Palestinian rally cry. So a really stupid or deliberately hostile thing to say.
Would seem similar to an Irish Republican saying "we all of us want peace on all sides, and hopefully Tiochaidh Ar La".
To a casual outside observer "We all want peace and hopefully our day will come" would seem completely innocent language.

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

Wanting peace but using the phrase "From the river to the sea" seems to be the issue, as it's part of a decades old Palestinian rally cry. So a really stupid or deliberately hostile thing to say.
Would seem similar to an Irish Republican saying "we all of us want peace on all sides, and hopefully Tiochaidh Ar La".
To a casual outside observer "We all want peace and hopefully our day will come" would seem completely innocent language.

This is Palestinian land. It is absolutely fine to aspire for, and call for, it someday to be returned to Palestinians. This is also the UN recognised position.

But your example perhaps proves my point better. Calling for a united Ireland would definitely not be a standing down offence in Irish politics. Nor would calling for a free Palestine - or an independent Taiwan, if thats your (mistaken) thing. Politicians expressing opinions on what they want is not a firing offence in Ireland, but seems to be a catastrophic event in UK politics if you go against the central line - we even had Jeremy hounded out of office over there for having the temerity to be interested in minority rights. Thats not a full democracy. You see it also on a smaller scale with the poppy and being outright hostile to people who don't want to wear a poppy.

[Denny Crane]

This is Palestinian land. It is absolutely fine to aspire for, and call for, it someday to be returned to Palestinians. This is also the UN recognised position.

But your example perhaps proves my point better. Calling for a united Ireland would definitely not be a standing down offence in Irish politics. Nor would calling for a free Palestine - or an independent Taiwan, if thats your (mistaken) thing. Politicians expressing opinions on what they want is not a firing offence in Ireland, but seems to be a catastrophic event in UK politics if you go against the central line - we even had Jeremy hounded out of office over there for having the temerity to be interested in minority rights. Thats not a full democracy. You see it also on a smaller scale with the poppy and being outright hostile to people who don't want to wear a poppy.

It would raise some eyebrows if a senior FG member called for a United Ireland.

This is Palestinian land. It is absolutely fine to aspire for, and call for, it someday to be returned to Palestinians. This is also the UN recognised position

It's calling for the destruction of Israel

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

Interesting story here about a Nobel-prize winning economist whose very controversial thing now is - "hang on a moment, global warming isn't necessarily all bad - there's quite a few places that would actually benefit from being warmer". Cue: absolute outrage.

A link to The Intercept article on it here, which is predictably outraged. Its hard to argue though that a country like Ireland wouldn't benefit from a few extra degrees of heat.

[ArmaniJeans]

This is Palestinian land. It is absolutely fine to aspire for, and call for, it someday to be returned to Palestinians. This is also the UN recognised position.

But your example perhaps proves my point better. Calling for a united Ireland would definitely not be a standing down offence in Irish politics. Nor would calling for a free Palestine - or an independent Taiwan, if thats your (mistaken) thing. Politicians expressing opinions on what they want is not a firing offence in Ireland, but seems to be a catastrophic event in UK politics if you go against the central line - we even had Jeremy hounded out of office over there for having the temerity to be interested in minority rights. Thats not a full democracy. You see it also on a smaller scale with the poppy and being outright hostile to people who don't want to wear a poppy.

All depends on the phrasing I think - wishing for a United Ireland wouldn't be a problem, but tagging on say a 'by any means' would be a career-stopper because of all it implies.
And politicians do lose the party whip over here (which I think is the equivalent of what has happened to Andy McDonald in the UK) if they go against the party line.

Is it really undemocratic though? Andy McDonald, if he doesn't get unsuspended, is perfectly free to stand in the constituency as an independent, for a different party or to create a new party.
Conversely if the central line of the Labour party on this issue is unpopular amongst their MPs/members then they can all leave and Sir Keir is left in a party of one.
Like it's flawed, but is surely the very essence of the political party system.

[Denny Crane]

Interesting story here about a Nobel-prize winning economist whose very controversial thing now is - "hang on a moment, global warming isn't necessarily all bad - there's quite a few places that would actually benefit from being warmer". Cue: absolute outrage.

A link to The Intercept article on it here, which is predictably outraged. Its hard to argue though that a country like Ireland wouldn't benefit from a few extra degrees of heat.

NASA has been saying that for years

https://www.nasa.gov/technology/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth-study-finds/

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

It would raise some eyebrows if a senior FG member called for a United Ireland.

Exactly - 'raise some eyebrows'. Which is not 'lose your job'.

It's calling for the destruction of Israel

It feels absolutely fine to call for the destruction of Israel? It was a country made by America and plopped in another country.

As in, there is one valid view that the Israelis had an ancestral right to that land (which ignores who it belonged to before the Israelis and that it was always shared even when a Jewish society lived there). But theres another absolutely equally valid view that it built on land stolen from another country. Thats also leaving aside the creep of occupation by Israel since its establishment - which is the thing the UN resolutions are against.

[Wombatman]

Watching KOTFL was like listening to a drunk tell what could have been an interesting story. Incoherent and rambling without much originality, style or charm. Unnecessary scenes overplayed and key bits practically missing. Probably not helped by a gormless protagonist and a one dimensional villain. Even DiCaprio's brilliance couldn't save it. His perma-scowl needs to improve to match DeNiro's. Clearly the obscure ending was the result of people throwing their hands up and saying we have to wind this mess us somehow. 2/5 ....... fuck ye......Wombats.

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

I wonder, given the explosive growth of the use of wombats as a measurement tool, if perhaps we need to add a wombat smilie? It would streamline communication and improve synergies.

[ComradeCollie]

Watching KOTFL was like listening to a drunk tell what could have been an interesting story. Incoherent and rambling without much originality, style or charm. Unnecessary scenes overplayed and key bits practically missing. Probably not helped by a gormless protagonist and a one dimensional villain. Even DiCaprio's brilliance couldn't save it. His perma-scowl needs to improve to match DeNiro's. Clearly the obscure ending was the result of people throwing their hands up and saying we have to wind this mess us somehow. 2/5 ....... fuck ye......Wombats.

I left the cinema after an hour. Self indulgent pile of wank. Not worthy of any Wombats!

[ArmaniJeans]

[B]Horse racing chief says Leopardstown track is too valuable to build on

That's a very strange headline on the article, as it's attributing a quote to him which he doesn't appear to have actually said.
His actual quote seems to be that "its too valuable to the bloodstock industry", which is a much smaller statement.

I'd assume he knows full well that the economic case for having horse-racing there pales beside the economic case for building apartments/hotels/office-space etc.
Same applies to anywhere really though as I've said before (Harolds Cross discussion a few years ago)- there's no actual economic case for St Stephens Green, The Concert Hall, The Abbey Theatre.
Billions of euros worth of land being used for sitting out at lunchtime 20 sunny days a year, or for 500 people to see a heavily subsidised play/classical concert every night.
Slam-dunk economic case for closing them and building on the land. Not so clear-cut though when we factor in what sort of city we want to live/work in.

[Solksjaer!]

Exactly - 'raise some eyebrows'. Which is not 'lose your job'.




It feels absolutely fine to call for the destruction of Israel? It was a country made by America and plopped in another country.

As in, there is one valid view that the Israelis had an ancestral right to that land (which ignores who it belonged to before the Israelis and that it was always shared even when a Jewish society lived there). But theres another absolutely equally valid view that it built on land stolen from another country. Thats also leaving aside the creep of occupation by Israel since its establishment - which is the thing the UN resolutions are against.

I think Dean Swift nailed it in 1720 something with the Liliputians and the Blefuscu warring over which end of an egg to break . The Jews//Islamic differences are just as redic in 2023 . 300 years later we are no futher up the path to resolving the egg question.

[Solksjaer!]

A very nice read.

SPOILER

Patrick Pearse spent much of the last summer of his life (1915) in Rosmuck, Connemara with his brother Willie and a friend named Desmond Ryan.

It was a relaxed holiday although Pearse found the time to write one of Ireland's most famous speeches - 'Ireland unfree shall never be at peace,' spoken at the graveside of O'Donovan Rossa and considered by many as a key moment in the lead up to the Easter Rising.

Ryan recalled the summer fondly:

"The next day we proceeded to Rosmuck by train, or rather part of the way, for Rosmuck lies nine miles from a railway station, and we had a long drive by side-car through granite and peat from Maam Cross Station over winding, peak-screened roads.

It was a stirring view along those serpentine roads, ever winding and twisting to avoid the bog.

The horse trotted bravely while an O’Malley drove, and Pearse explained what famous people the O’Malleys were in Connemara.

All the while, bluish granite mountains soared and all around spread the peat-bogs starred by the tiny lakes, each with a local name and every name known to Pearse, who declared for the hundredth time he could find his way blindfold on any road in Connacht.

The Twelve Bens came in sight and Pearse waved his hand here and there over the land, naming lake, mountain and district away to the Joyce Country under its purple mist.

He told us many stories he had learned from the people.

Away there on that gloomy mountain yonder a stranger had lived for years, coming suddenly in the night from nowhere, henceforth a hermit, perhaps doing a penance of solitude and silence for some deed of blood.

We passed a peculiar green building of corrugated iron, a Protestant Church, [Screebe?] and then Pearse remembered that many years before the Bible Societies had carried out a proselytising campaign, and even in 1915 a small remnant of the Irish-speaking Protestant colonies still survived.

Once on his rambles, Pearse had met one of the members, an old man up in a cottage among the hills who opened his Gaelic Bible, read it aloud and argued with Pearse for an hour until the old man’s daughter came in and told her father that he had no manners and that he did not know how to treat a learned man who knew enough Irish and enough Bible to make up his mind for himself, and the attempted conversion of Pearse went no further.

A lonely letter-box on a post at a crossroads led Pearse to tell of the extravagant family, long bankrupt and extinct, who had had the box erected as a monument to their exclusiveness, recklessness and pride.

A barracks rose beside the rattling wheels and Pearse knew that the sergeant within was a crusty and cantankerous fellow companioned by six splendid constables, enthusiastic Irish speakers who spent their time in shooting wild ducks, fishing and studying with zeal the poems of Eoghan Ruadh O’Sullivan.

The car stopped at the schoolmaster’s house and Patrick Connolly welcomed Pearse warmly. His wife came out too.

Inside like startled birds, the four daughters of the schoolmaster retreated from our gaze while their mother laughed and said they would grow out of all that, but when young people lived among lakes and bogs they became curlews and mountain birds, easily startled by wild young men from the cities and poets from Dublin, all this for Willie and me whose ties and locks must have startled her ducklings.

We proceeded to the cottage, a white, thatched, oblong building with green
door, porchway and two windows in front, approached by a peat-sodded path from the main road. Here was the spiritual home of Pearse, which in the last years he visited every summer to pay a last farewell.

Below lay a fifty-acre lake legend tenanted with a Water Horse.

Beyond the rare walls of the cottage, the Atlantic heaved and moaned with tales of lost ships or murmured a summons to ride on its bosom to the Aran Isles on a fair day.

On every side rose the purple hills and peat, agleam with unnumbered lakelets. Pearse sat at the kitchen table writing the closing tales in his book of short stories, 'The Mother.'

He turned aside to discuss the completed stories with Willie and me, and said he thought the best the grimmest one, a tale of a woman under a curse called the “Black Chafer.”

Then he sighed that he had never written a story about turf or shown up enough the
hard life of the people. He said this sadly with almost the air of a man who all at once comes upon an intolerable personal grievance.

Sometimes he went down and bathed in the lake while Willie guarded him from the banks with a long, strong rope as Pearse was no swimmer. This tickled the brothers so much that they gave up the attempt with loud merriment and mutual criticisms.

Returning, Pearse mused on his cottage and said that one of the builders had been an old man who took his task very slowly and seriously, making progress by inches, but consoling Pearse’s impatience with the sole remark:

“Won’t it be a fine house when it is finished. Indeed it will be a fine house when it is finished.”

Pearse was more outspoken than I had ever known him before.

Night by night he spoke to Willie and me about everything by turns.

Much about the future of the Irish language. Here in this self-contained community which he had once known as purely Irish-speaking, English was creeping in among the younger generation.

It amused him when we walked abroad in the day-time to speak to the men working
the land and smile at the English expressions speckling the Gaelic:

“Becripes, tá . . . bedamned but tá...' from those who knew no other words of English, but he said this was the beginning of the end unless some great change came.

And what the change would be sometimes broke through his thoughts...

Who could have guessed that behind his gentle words and look, an insurrection simmered, a certainty that his days were irrevocably numbered and in this place he would never see in another summer?"

Pictured is Patrick Pearse and his brother Willie, neither of whom would live to see the summer of 1916.

[Theresa]

Exactly - 'raise some eyebrows'. Which is not 'lose your job'.




It feels absolutely fine to call for the destruction of Israel? It was a country made by America and plopped in another country.

As in, there is one valid view that the Israelis had an ancestral right to that land (which ignores who it belonged to before the Israelis and that it was always shared even when a Jewish society lived there). But theres another absolutely equally valid view that it built on land stolen from another country. Thats also leaving aside the creep of occupation by Israel since its establishment - which is the thing the UN resolutions are against.

It is absolutely not fine to call for the destruction of Israel.

Also, it was the Brits not the Americans.

And the argument of who's land it was goes so far back as to be a little irrelevant and only serves to make everyone more stupid.

The big issues are the effective siege of Gaza and the forced poverty (which means it is almost impossible for any growth, wealth or comfort for the denizens of Gaza) and the violent and aggressive settlement of agreed on Palestinian land in the west bank and others.

Israel don't care about Gaza, that is almost undeniable now, if it wasn't before. A Hamas less gaza is fine, but who's gonna govern this new rock pile they are currently creating, and how are they going to convince the remaining populace to play ball after destroying every single thing they have. Israels policy towards the Palestinians is arguably just as evil as the Hamas policy towards Israel, and people will argue and cry terrorist and beheading and blah blah, but a slow strangulation is just as bad as a beheading in that both are dead. The only difference is that the slow strangulation can be explained away by people performing all their mental gymnastics.

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

That's a very strange headline on the article, as it's attributing a quote to him which he doesn't appear to have actually said.
His actual quote seems to be that "its too valuable to the bloodstock industry", which is a much smaller statement.

I'd assume he knows full well that the economic case for having horse-racing there pales beside the economic case for building apartments/hotels/office-space etc.
Same applies to anywhere really though as I've said before (Harolds Cross discussion a few years ago)- there's no actual economic case for St Stephens Green, The Concert Hall, The Abbey Theatre.
Billions of euros worth of land being used for sitting out at lunchtime 20 sunny days a year, or for 500 people to see a heavily subsidised play/classical concert every night.
Slam-dunk economic case for closing them and building on the land. Not so clear-cut though when we factor in what sort of city we want to live/work in.

I'd imagine the usage of Stephens Green, as the most comparable public space, is measurably vastly more than Leopardstown. Leopardstown is not a public space, and Stephens Green has demonstrated public demand that could probably be valued in the hundreds of millions per year. Same with Dublin Airport - uses a lot of space and some of their benefits are non cash, but can be valued in cash-equivalents in the billions to the economy. There's no reasonable equivalent value equation that can be made for Leopardstown - thats what the report they paid for tried to do and failed miserably at, to the extent that their own CEO had to argue against their own report.

Concert Hall and Abbey Theatre - I presume you are maybe trying to make a class argument here. But its easy enough to dismiss on economic grounds anyway. Sure, The Concert Hall and the The Abbey Theatre mightn't be able to fully justify their real-estate on a pure contribution-to-society model: I suspect they probably would though, but they aren't under-utilising the space by a factor of ten - which is what Leopardstown is probably doing. That that space could be worth 10 times its annual return if it was used for housing.

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

It is absolutely not fine to call for the destruction of Israel.

We are currently overseeing the genocidal destruction of Gaza by Israel. It should be perfectly acceptable to find this completely appalling and arrive at the conclusion that Israel are a virus in that region that the region would be better without. Like, people are perfectly entitled to get angry about things like this. We are literally just coming out of a year of cheering on every destroyed Russian invader soldier. This is what people do - they call out invaders and wish them destroyed. Israel seems to be literally the only country in the world that is allowed to treat people like slaves and kill them at will (3,500 kids so far killed in Gaza) and you are not allowed to criticise them. Its a very dangerous precedent that politicians, the UN secretary-general, and even pricks like Paddy, are being eviscerated like this.

[Hectorjelly]

It was a country made by America and plopped in another country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balfour_Declaration

There is no subject under the sun on which Hitch doesn't have a strongly felt opinion despite not knowing anything about it.

[Hitchhiker's Guide To...]

There is no subject under the sun on which Hitch doesn't have a strongly felt opinion despite not knowing anything about it.

Says the man who gave five wombats to KOTFL.