Damian O Brien

The ultra rich are hiding away colossal wealth in offshore accounts. Oxfam's 2026 investigation shows untaxed wealth by the richest 0.1% exceeds the entire wealth of the poorest half of humanity (4.1 billion people)--more than the GDP of France downtoearth.org.in/governance/unt…

The mess left behind by Foley is incredible.

Intense and fake interviews for teaching posts in one-horse towns irishtimes.com/ireland/educat…

It really is a problem that Irish media gives a huge, uncritical platform to business interests to whine and then we find the truth out later.

In Amending #Disability Act Govt Will Dilute Only Legal Right #Disabled Citizens Have -Right To Assessment Of Need -Appoint Unqualified ‘Grade 7’ Admin Staff To Review Medical Files &Reports To Triage Supports & Make Life Altering & Life Limiting Decisions For #Disabled & #Carers

Myth: If we tax billionaires they won't create jobs. Fact: Last year, billionaires got the largest tax break in history. Now, they are literally planning to replace every worker in America with a robot or AI. Trickle down economics is a scam. Tax billionaires out of existence.

“AI l cannot coexist with education - it can only degrade it.” Incredibly powerful piece from students at the University of Pennsylvania. thedp.com/article/2026/0…

Not a good look for the NCCA irishtimes.com/ireland/educat… It doesn't help that the NCCA doesn't want authors on Subject Development Groups.

@__scottsaunders The man is a walking, talking word salad. He has bent over backwards to try and say that up is down, right is wrong and pens are only pens when it's a United player making the foul.

Has he literally used the word ‘manhandle’ and then say it’s not a penalty? 😂

Guess which United game Stuart Atwell refereed next.

Orwellian double-speak in action

Probably the best summation of the disparity of treatment between Everton and Chelsea’s (courtesy of @AHunterGuardian)

🚨 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗰𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗶𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗖𝗵𝗲𝗹𝘀𝗲𝗮’𝘀 𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝗻𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗶𝘁 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗳𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗣𝗟… Chelsea cheated for over a decade - that is now fact. And the penalty for this cheating? A mere £10.75m fine that will be taken from Ukrainian war victims, a suspended transfer ban (that won’t happen if they’re not caught breaking more rules) and a short ban on academy transfers. The academy ban applies to inappropriate academy recruitment but it’s nothing to do with the First Team. Under Ambramovich’s ownership, Chelsea regularly paid people “off book” to secure first team transfers (i.e., not from Chelsea’s bank account but from other bank accounts, so that the transaction was never reported - it was hidden). They did this to secure the transfers for key players such as Hazard, David Luiz, Andre Schurrle, Ramires, Matic, Willian, Eto'o. Players that were instrumental in securing titles and major revenue from Champions League spots. The Premier League Board chose to settle with Chelsea, getting their agreement rubber stamped by a Disciplinary Panel, rather than actually putting them through a hearing. And effectively, Chelsea has suffered no actual consequences for the cheating they undertook with the First Team. And how did the PL Board justify this insanely lenient sanction? Using two reasons: 1., They re-calculated Chelsea’s historic accounts to see whether the supposed money spent off-book would breach PSR rules. It did not and as such, they implied that no sporting benefit had been achieved (applying the logic that they could have simply paid the money through the accounts and it would have all been OK). 2., Self-reporting and co-operation, making the PL believe that they know all of the wrongdoing and that the new ownership will not repeat it. Chelsea’s new ownership self-reported the breach to the PL after they took over. They claim they became aware of the breaches during the acquisition diligence process. They then co-operated with the PL to uncover as much as they could. However, both these reasons completely fall apart when examined. Reason 1., entirely relies on the deeply flawed assumption that they could have moved the transactions on-book. You remove this assumption and the whole rationale falls apart. Chelsea made the transactions off-book because they were bribes. They bribed player agents to act against their clients’ best interests and manipulate a move to Chelsea instead of other teams, including PL teams. This is an egregious breach of the rules (and illegal I might add) and it came at both a cost to other teams and massively advantaged Chelsea in sporting terms because of the players they were able to secure. Reason 2., entirely relies on the assumption that the self-reporting and co-operation were complete and from a place of good morals. But again, this is flawed. Much of what Chelsea’s new owners reported was made public shortly afterwards due to a hack of professional service firms known as the “Cyprus Confidential”. The hack took place just 2-3 months before the Chelsea sale was completed. It is highly likely that the professional service firms notified key clients, like Abramovich, of the hack. He would have been able to inform Chelsea’s buyers and cultivate a paper trail that they could use to self-report to the PL. One that limited its revelations to what the hacks would have revealed and other minor infractions. And the problem? We can’t ever know the truth because it was all done off-book. There could be even worse dealings. But why could one suspect this to be the case? Because why would there be any paper trail in Chelsea’s records to be found during DD if the transactions were made off-book? It’s a bizarre notion which goes entirely against all experience of these situations. It also begs the question as to why Chelsea’s auditors never found it! They have not been mentioned here, at all…

Reading Dune. Frank Herbert was cooking.

👇🏼

Scientists put kids through 100 hours of reading, then scanned their brains. New wiring had physically grown inside the language regions. Communication between brain areas sped up by a factor of 10. Kids who didn't read showed zero change. That was a 2009 Carnegie Mellon study. It gets wilder. In 2013, Emory University scanned 19 students every morning for 19 straight days while they read one novel chapter each night. Mornings after reading, the brain areas responsible for understanding other people's emotions lit up with new connections. So did the region that processes physical sensation. Their brains were simulating what the characters felt, as if it were happening to them. Those changes stuck around for 5 days after they finished the book. Now flip to scrolling. A massive review published in Psychological Bulletin last September pulled together 71 studies covering 98,299 people. Heavy short-form video use (TikTok, Reels, Shorts) showed a clear pattern: worse attention, weaker self-control, and more anxiety. Consistent across teenagers and adults, across every platform tested. Oxford didn't name "brain rot" its 2024 Word of the Year for nothing. A 2024 brain wave study found that people hooked on short-form video had weaker activity in the front of the brain, the part that controls focus and impulse control. Separate brain scans showed the same thing: heavy scrollers had less activation in the exact regions that deep reading strengthens. UCLA neuroscientist Maryanne Wolf has been studying this for decades. Humans were never born to read. There's no gene for it. Reading is something we invented, and it hijacked neurons that were originally meant for recognizing faces. Over time, it built entirely new brain circuits connecting language, vision, and emotion. But those circuits only survive if you use them. Stop reading, and they fade. Wolf's conclusion is simple: screens built for speed produce a speed-wired brain. Books built for depth produce a depth-wired brain. One honest caveat: most of these studies are snapshots, not long-term tracking. People who already struggle to focus might just prefer short videos. But the same pattern showing up across nearly 100,000 people is hard to shrug off. The tweet repeats the line seven times. The research backs it up with brain scans, EEG data, and white-matter imaging across tens of thousands of people.

“We stole all your knowledge and art, and now we’re gonna put a meter on it and sell it back to you. You’re welcome.”

Rise in home-heating oil prices in Ireland dwarfs other parts of Europe. The hike in prices has been eight times the EU average, figures obtained by Dublin MEP Lynn Boylan show. independent.ie/business/money…

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