james doyle

Today I released an investigative piece on something most people don't think about until they really need it - ambulances. The price of ambulances has skyrocketed since 2012. Why? It's likely... private equity. thebignewsletter.com/p/code-red-why…

Roald Dahl, 1983, about Beirut under Israeli bombs: "One finds it almost impossible to believe that a civilised people could perform such acts of fiendish barbarism upon women and children and patients in hospitals... The Israelis pinpointed and hit no less than thirteen out of the seventeen hospitals in Beirut, one of them a mental hospital and many of the others full of children."

@SmallerFishGAA Probably the greatest team ever would disagree Wooly ‘Their mantra? 'Better People Make Better All Blacks'. The result? An incredible win-rate of just over 86pc, and a Rugby World Cup.’

So Dublin U20's didn't even get out of their group Johnny Cooper said their ambition was "to deliver a programme that grows people as well as players, helping them develop with consistency and purpose" Concentrate on the football Johnny, it's a parents job to develop them as people. Players don't relate to that gobbledygook

@JoshEberley @JeremyAppel1025 T2 vs Terminator

Alien is excellent but Aliens goes so much harder

@brhodes @SPhillipsAB Amazing that you could write that entire paragraph without even a shadow of a mention of Israel.

In the best case scenario, Trump struck a deal to reopen a Strait that was open before the pointless war he started, with the IRGC demonstrating its control over the Strait and potentially extracting fees plus sanctions relief. Thousands of innocents - including hundreds of children - dead in Lebanon and Iran for no reason. U.S. troops killed and wounded. U.S. embassies and bases in the Middle East badly damaged. U.S. standing in the world obliterated. U.S. munitions badly depleted. Hundreds of billions spent. Prices up everywhere. More global economic fallout to come. Putin strengthened and enriched. Just a catastrophic situation even in the best of circumstances. A profoundly shameful episode in American history no matter what happens next.

@jasonc_nc @UrbanCourtyard x.com/musharbash_b/s…

This is a truly terrible situation Chicago is in and they aren’t alone. Here’s the thing. We know exactly why. And how to fix it. Stop buying overpriced, oversized all-custom trucks with poor reliability. Move to standard commercial chassis with specialized body, aka how it’s done everywhere else. In return is a more reliable emergency apparatus that costs less to buy, less to maintain, with less downtime. That can be easily repaired by a typical large truck shop with readily available (lower cost) OEM parts. US fire department’s addiction to big, custom trucks are a direct reason why so many trucks are sitting awaiting repair, rather than ready for service. It’s also now a very real public safety risk, while blowing ever more massive holes in city budgets to justify vanity decisions. Bonus: reduces ability to turn maintenance and procurement into an opportunity to steer overly expensive contracts to favored parties. Often former firefighters collecting a retirement pension while engaged in their new role as government contractor, “consultant” or so on. Sometimes collecting both from the very same city.

THREE MORE POINTS! 😮‍💨

Connolly was born & reared in Scotland Pearse was the son of an immigrant Clarke was born in England De Valera was American-born to a Cuban-Basque father Markievicz was an English-born Protestant Robert Briscoe & Michael Noyk were of Lithuanian Jewish descent Need I go on?

When you buy beef to feed your family, you can buy from a store that bought from a corporate packer and 'feeder' OR you can buy direct from a local rancher. The two are not the same. Mr. Levi and I both operate in the State of Oklahoma, but what we do is worlds apart. Most consumers truly don't understand the difference, and corporate operators don't want you to understand. If you did, really did, there's a good chance you'd think twice about where you buy. So here we go: 1. Meat Mixing: Your grocery store ground beef is a lottery ticket you don't want to win. When a packer grinds beef, they're commingling meat from hundreds of animals. One sick animal doesn't just contaminate one package, it contaminates thousands. Example? Hallmark/Westland recalled 143 million pounds of beef, the largest meat recall in U.S. history, after undercover footage showed workers using forklifts to force downed cattle to slaughter. Roughly 37 million pounds of that recalled beef had already been sent to the National School Lunch Program. That wasn't a one-off. Hudson Foods recalled 25 million pounds of ground beef in after E. coli spread through batch after batch because the plant carried over meat from one production day to the next. Topps Meat Company's recall started at 331,000 pounds and ballooned to 21.7 million because the same carry-over practice made it impossible to isolate contamination. This is what happens when you mix beef from hundreds of animals in an industrial grinder and can't trace anything back. Plus, packers and feeders don't care about the state of an animal's health--if its barely alive when it hits the kill floor, that's good enough. When you buy from your local rancher, you know the animal. You know the herd. If there's a problem, it's traceable to one animal and there is no mystery mix from six states. Plus, the processor we use cleans all equipment after every animal and processes our animals separately from any other. The cow's number is contained on every package. In fact we have clients who come to the farm and pick their steer with their family. One guy takes a picture and puts it by his grill. When they pray before their meal, they thank God for the life of the animal that fed them. They are city kids, but that annual visit instills an understanding and respect for the cycle of life and respecting the lives that sustain us. Visiting a feedlot or packer will instill something else entirely. 2. Confinement: Good old Levi doesn't want to talk about what confinement does to the animal and your steak. Feedlot cattle are packed into tight, concrete bound pens with no pasture, no movement, no life quality. If you've ever driven past one, you know the smell. If you've worked in one, it takes a week to wash it off you. The animals stand in their own waste all day, all night. They don't move. No blood flow. No exercise. Just grain and growth hormones until they hit target weight. It's one very small step above veal treatment. And it isn't just cruel. It's also scientifically a meat quality problem. Cortisol, the stress hormone, surges in confined, transported cattle and dramatically impacts pH levels, which determines color, tenderness, and bacterial exposure. When glycogen stores are depleted by chronic stress, the meat can't acidify properly. The result is dark, firm, dry beef. Darker, tougher, drier, with a shorter shelf life. So the big packers pump water and coloring through it to pretty it up. But it doesn't help the taste. Studies have shown elevated blood glucose and cortisol in feedlot-finished cattle versus pasture-raised, along with mitochondrial dysfunction and impaired oxidative metabolism in the muscle tissue of feedlot animals. In plain English: the feedlot animal's muscle looks metabolically sick. The pasture-raised animal's muscle looks like that of a healthy athlete. We always encourage our customers to take our ground beef and brown it next to something they bought at the store. It's eye opening. Constantly elevated cortisol also increases protein breakdown in living muscle, reducing structural integrity, water-holding capacity, and overall texture throughout the animal's life. You can't grain-finish your way out of biology. A stressed animal produces inferior beef. Period. 3: Nutrition: A 2024 study in Scientific Reports found that pasture-finished beef contained 3.1-fold higher phenolic antioxidants, 4.1-fold higher omega-3 fatty acids, 9.4-fold higher vitamin B3, and 3.1-fold higher alpha-tocopherol (vitamin E) compared to feedlot-finished beef. Oxidative stress markers like homocysteine and 4-hydroxynonenal glutathione were 2.5-fold and 2.3-fold higher in feedlot beef. Conversely, healthy antioxidants like urate and glutathione were significantly higher in rancher raised beef with grass access. The feedlot animal is metabolically stressed. You're eating their stress. A rancher-raised animal on open pasture? Moves freely and builds real muscle with blood flow and exercise. They forage on diverse grasses, legumes, and forbs and those phytochemicals transfer directly to the meat. Their system isn't chronically pumped with cortisol from confinement stress. Our animals They live a good life on real pasture, with trees and water, and their grain access is via a feeder. They truly frolic in the pasture, play, run, even at 1600 lbs. You will not see that with any animal who has spent more than a week in a feedlot. A rancher raised animal live a real life (well an animal raised by a rancher who cares--like any industry there are some who don't). Combining forage with responsible grain supplementation, low stress, free movement, and quality care and you get well-marbled, nutrient-dense beef from a healthy animal. When you buy from a local rancher you know the animal, the land, the practices. One animal per package, full traceability, no commingling. No industrial carry-over contamination. The animal lived on pasture, not in filth. Lower stress = better pH, better tenderness, better color, longer shelf life. Higher omega-3s, higher antioxidants, higher vitamins. Your dollars stay local The packer model is built on volume, anonymity, and speed. How many, how much, how fast. The rancher model is built on accountability and quality. You painstakingly care for every animal, and most days what it costs to help one get better, the injuries you sustain, the long nights, none of it is even a thought or factor while you are doing the work. For the feeder and packer, it's all just numbers on a spreadsheet. You can buy mystery meat from a system that recalls tens of millions of pounds at a time and feeds sick cattle to your kids at school or you can shake your rancher's hand and know exactly what you're putting on the table. Your call.

One Co Down family has already produced a European gold medal in athletics, and All-Ireland titles in GAA, while this week they dream of glory in Augusta. Read more: tinyurl.com/ynfp36yw

@mattgurney Occupying forces committing genocide makes a state non existent? Did Poland become non existent in 1939? That’s a hot take.

@jamdoy A functioning government with effective control over its claimed territory is a big one.

Jason Kenney talks Alberta separatism x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

⚠️💥NEW PSNI surveillance: 'The UN intervenes in Russia & Belarus. It’s NOT normal in the north of Ireland.' 👥The United Nations has taken the 'rare step' of directly intervening in a case involving two solicitors who were subjected to unlawful surveillance by the PSNI. Solicitor @darraghmackin told Chief Reporter @jamesgould23 the situation is deeply depressing and has made it difficult to have confidence in government. PSNI Chief Constable Jon Boutcher has apologised for the unlawful surveillance of solicitors Peter Corrigan and Darragh Mackin, following publication of the McCullough Review. UN Special Rapporteurs have now issued a formal communication to the UK government, seeking immediate action on the case. Peter Corrigan says a response to the McCullough Review was required but has been “ignored completely.” The government has been approached for comment. @PhoenixLawHR

@LukewSavage @JeremyAppel1025 The sharp-eyed amongst us will have noticed a grand total of zero Canadian flags in his profile picture, what kind of a patriot is this man?

I don't expect better from Jason Kenney, a man who has spent decades on the wrong side of things. But were I a former premier and federal cabinet minister I think I might try not to lie so brazenly in public.

Half man, half hurl. The pervasive use (abuse?) of AI tools simply exposes how little those who are inclined towards it actually pay attention to its actual output. It's pathetic.

Thanks to Down and Wexford for a super entertaining Saturday night. No goals and that’s in big part down to two great performances from the keepers. Super to see the talent of Ronan Burns and Darragh Brooks in nets. 👏👏👏

Job done ....key was to secure Sam Maguire football, that was what mattered ....the hard winter nights paid off in extra time 🔴⚫

To build a more equitable city, it’s Calgarians and our values that need to change first. In my latest essay, i argue that making room for more nuanced discourse, criticism, is an essential step to creating a society that builds better cities. 🔗 below

I’m sorry but the future belongs to those who read widely, who are able to write without the assistance of a machine, who haven’t allowed endless slop to kill their curiosity and cognitive abilities. Excess tech is going to melt many brains. Yours doesn’t need to be one of them.

A principled stance. Fair play. 👏