Séan Billings

Another death. Can we please stop ranting about the dangers of bikes and e-scooters and look at what's actually killing people? @IrishTimes @independent_ie @irishexaminer @patkennynt #Ireland #cycling irishtimes.com/crime-law/2023…

@culturaltutor Traditional uneven cobbles look nice and they are ok to walk or drive on. However, they are a terrible surface if you are using anything with wheels that doesn't have a car's suspension. Bikes, wheelchairs, prams, etc. rattle uncomfortably. Flat, even sets work for everyone.

What makes this street in Nuremberg, Germany, so charming? It isn't magic. Here are 10 (very) specific reasons why people find it beautiful — and which can improve almost any street in the world. 1. Cobbles When are cobbled streets not a good thing? They add texture and detail — every stone is slightly different, and so they create a wonderful, subtle interplay of light and shadow across the ground. It also feels more natural than flat and monotonous tarmac, since natural landscapes are rarely without some sort of variation and detail. We don't want cobbled highways, of course, but when it comes to narrow urban streets they are almost always an improvement. (These cobbles in Nuremberg are technically "setts", since they are squared off rather than round.) 2. No Adverts Sometimes adverts can be aesthetically pleasing, but many streets would be improved by getting rid of billboards and posters which are literally designed to distract us, co-opt our attention, and influence our behaviour. Any street is inevitably more peaceful to the mind and to the eye without adverts all over the place. 3. Greenery There isn't much here, but it makes a big difference. Those flowers hanging from the windows and gathered in front of the houses and shops add softness and variation to streets which could otherwise be rather angular and stony. Notice the canopy of a tree peering overheard; trees, too, almost always improve urban environments for a variety of reasons, from psychological health to temperature control. 4. No Vehicles A simple but profoundly important detail. Vehicles are not evil, but they do make most places uglier. Imagine if this street was lined with vans and motorcycles and trucks and, of course, cars. Safe to say that it probably wouldn't be quite as charming... 5. Street Lamps Another minor detail — but that's where the devil is, as they say. They aren't remotely fancy here, but they are rather pretty and essentially unobtrusive; the street lighting is aesthetically coherent with its surroundings. Sometimes aesthetic incoherence works well, adding excitement and vitality to an urban environment. But, if we want to figure out why this particular street is so appealing, the harmony between its architecture and street furniture is a big part of that. 6. Materials Cobbles (or setts), bricks, stone, iron, timber, and slate. Notice that almost everything we see on this street is made from one of these materials. They are all more detailed, subtly coloured, smaller in scale, and feel more natural than plate glass, stainless steel, tarmac, and plastic. It's hard to go wrong with good materials, used simply. 7. Colour This street is filled with colour — certainly compared with the grayscale urban environments most of us are used to. The houses themselves have a mixture of white or cream-coloured facing combined with the warm tones of old timbers, though some are painted brightly in orange or scarlet. The masonry is all varied in colour, from rugged grey to rusty gold to weathered ivory, and the flowers add greens and pinks and violets. All of this beneath the dark slates and tiles of the roofline, and above everything the whites and blues of the sky. A kaleidoscopic of mellow, colourful delight. 8. Variety This is a combination of the other factors. Although there is an overall aesthetic cohesion here, no two parts of this street are the same. Every house is slightly different, whether in its size or overall shape, the arrangement or colour of its timbers, and the design of its windows and doors. Even the cobbles, already mentioned, add to this sense of variation. Not to forget the curving shape of the street itself. There's nothing wrong with straight roads, but the way in which the cobbles and houses taper away from us, out of view, clearly adds to its aesthetic character. You don't get the impression of a rigidly imposed design blueprint here; this is the opposite of an insipid, cookie-cutter urban environment where everything is identical. 9. Human Scale The buildings are no more than four or five storeys tall and the street is fairly narrow. The concept of "human scale" has no precise definition, but you know it when you see it. If there are towering, faceless structures hundreds of metres tall on either side of a vast roadway filled with vehicles — that evidently isn't human scale. This street, however, surely is. And therefore it is more innately appealing to us. 10. Time The most powerful force of all. Time shapes everything, both in terms of how a specific structure changes with the passing years and how, from one generation to another, every building and street is consciously altered and modified. The end result is something which can't quite be created in one go. If you leave a street for long enough it will almost always become more interesting — whether because of the natural process of aging or the restless hands of humanity. It's entirely possible that you don't find this particular street appealing at all. Nor is there only one way to design a street, and it's not as if these ten characteristics should or even could be applied to every city or town. But, in a world where so many places sorely lack aesthetically pleasing urban environments, there are surely at least a few things we could learn from this charming Nuremberg street.

@Mark_J_Henry @OECD @VisualCap And yet they are living with their parents because they can't afford rent.

Ireland 🇮🇪 has one of the lowest youth unemployment rates in the world. 7% of those aged 16-24 who are in the jobs market are without a role – beating all but a handful of countries.👏 The unemployment rate is three times greater in Spain, Sweden and Italy.

@historyinmemes Alcohol.

Which drug has had the most significant impact on human history?

@josefoshea Don't worry, the guards will search a bunch of random lads, arrest those that have weed on them and everyone will applaud and pretend that helps.

It's 27C in Rotterdam and some genius has the heat laps on.

@thebeernut I wouldn't have thought there would be a lot of call for flat beer in the Netherlands.

@IrishCraftBeer Ah, the former Firkin. A weird historical artefact.

I'm in Den Haag. I was not expecting pints of cask beer.

Andy Heasman and Ross Lahive don't know what cunnilingus or vulvas are. These men are a walking advertisement for sex education! #handsoffourlibraries

@JamesRedNetwork Yep. And how does searching people help? Drug prohibition enforcement is not the same as protecting people from violent thugs. It's all crime though, so it looks really good in the stats, even if it doesn't make my neighbourhood safer.

@docum3nt It is, and that bit still works.

@IrishCraftBeer Is that one of the type with an actual bell that goes Ping!

How long is a microwave supposed to last? This one gave up the ghost after less than 35 years of frequent use. Shoddy.

@DUPleader It's a cynical ploy to corrupt the youth of Northern Ireland by exposing them to people from different cultures with different world views. This could lead to a disruptive broadening of the mind and catastrophic loss of support for sectarianism.

NEW: Jim Allister has condemned the Dublin Government's funding of Erasmus as he says it's obviously a ploy to condition Northern Ireland students to look more favourably on the EU.

@Seanaldinho They might not listen to the radio. I don't. I have heard of Taylor Swift but couldn't name one of her songs. She's not even on Bandcamp, so how am I supposed to be familiar with her music?

@DubLoony @soundmigration That's made my my day.

@IrishCraftBeer @soundmigration Quite the stash. Hope Gardai / CAB / SIPO asking some very hard questions. irishtimes.com/politics/2023/…

A lot going on here re infighting in Justin Barrett's hate group The National Party. 🧵 1. The expulsion of permanent deputy James Reynolds. Significant loss to the party. 2 Backroom organiser Paul Conroy is expelled too. Conroy holds all membership lists.

@AdamBronkhorst It's against the law in Ireland. Same with bikes/e-scooters on the pavement. However, our police view it as beneath their dignity to enforce these laws. Gardaí like to park on the footpath while they're getting coffe/lunch themselves, so no bother. Would your police be different?

@yascaoimhin To be fair, they heavily advertised diet coke to women when it was launched. I remember the "Diet Coke break!" adverts which had a set format involving a group of women drinking diet coke while leering at a shirtless, oiled up male model. The results are hardly surprising.

@2Otoole4School @Independent_ie You must have a terrible family. When I'm at the end of the road, if I've got nothing but more pain to look forward to, I'll end it myself, if I can. If I'm too ill to manage it myself and need help, it'll be my family who will help me. I don't want them to be punished for that.

@Independent_ie Can just see it now, christmas dinner becomes the family trying to pressure granny to end it all so they can sell the house

People Before Profit TD Gino Kenny has said he is hopeful politicians will move forward with laws that would allow people with a terminal illness to opt for assisted death buff.ly/3Dpnjwh

@RaghallaighJ If he was het and looking at a fit young woman footballers arse would it be bigotry? He got caught checking out a nice bum. It's funny.

the butt of the joke here being it’s because he’s a gay man. it’s not funny, it’s not clever, and the people sharing it are nothing more than bigots.

@DubLoony @soundmigration They fleece the ignorant and tap foreign hate groups for donations. Once they have the money, they can keep it in the bank invest in gold or keep cash under the bed (like Berty did), if they prefer. They have just run across the big reason people mostly use banks.

@soundmigration How does a micro party with no electoral success at any level have a vault, let alone one with gold? Who is funding them that they would want it to be untraceable?