Was tempted earlier by the idea that I could see The Odyssey a third time, this time on the Superduperimaxscreen when visiting London, but it seems every showing is sold out to the end of time. In fairness, it’s very good, and improves with the rewatching.

This is a superb statement by UEFA, and a model for those who think that not everything should have a price, that ownership of things we love and care about should be available to anyone with sufficiently deep pockets: www.uefa.com/news-media/n...

Statement on behalf of UEFA and its 55 national associations

UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions.

uefa.com

A trial of a limited print shop. 25 of my paintings available as prints for first time in almost a year. If in Ireland or UK you'd probably want to restrict yourself to Art Prints, Canvas Prints or Posters to avoid customs hassle. (No issue if in North America) fineartamerica.com/profiles/4-l....

Nine books for June, including some regular fiction for a change. The Véliz book could be the most important book you’d read this year, while I can see why Daniel-Rops is regarded as a classic and the Maritain is something for anybody thinking of rebuilding a broken and corrupted world.

Greg Daly@gregdaly.bsky.social · 2mo ago

Just seven books in a less book-rich May than I’d hoped, though it was fun catching up with Saga which I’d been neglecting, and the other books were all worthwhile, with the one on the Cáin Adomnáin - which should be much better known - being particularly good.

Looking forward to going to see Nolan’s take on The Odyssey next week, though it’s awful when people depict characters from poems set in Mycenaean times in Archaic Greek outfits and armour. (Or when they don’t go for the “Helen spent the war in Egypt, with a mere phantom in Troy” option.)

I’ll take “Things Dubliners would never say” for two hundred, please.

“Semiquincentennial” is an odd term, suggesting not a 250th anniversary but a halfway point on a journey to a 500th. There’s confidence there, anyway.

Syracuse proved an impressively theatrical place to visit. Can definitely recommend.

It’s striking that even now the phrase being used is “previously purchased Studio Canal content”. Not “previously purchased licenses to view Studio Canal content”. If the words “purchase” and “own” mean anything they surely exclude this kind of shenanigans, and I’m not sure how it’s legal.

Culture Crave 🍿@culturecrave.co · last mo.

PlayStation is deleting over 500 purchased movies from its customers' accounts 🎞️ • Includes films like 'Terminator 2', 'Rambo', 'Apocalypse Now', 'Hot Fuzz', and 'Moonlight' • No mention of refunds • Comes after a licensing deal ended

It’s a bit tiring watching @ryanairofficial.bsky.social assigning passengers unsuitable for the emergency seats to them and having to do a dance to accommodate their passengers properly and safely, with their cabin baggage stranded. The app should enable passengers to opt out of those seats.

Just seven books in a less book-rich May than I’d hoped, though it was fun catching up with Saga which I’d been neglecting, and the other books were all worthwhile, with the one on the Cáin Adomnáin - which should be much better known - being particularly good.

Greg Daly@gregdaly.bsky.social · 3mo ago

Five books for April, with finishing the depressingly timely Hannah Arendt and the often timeless Chesterton collection taking most of the month. The Batman book contained some fabulously spooky detective stories, while Boyer was fun and Bratten Weiss was seriously thought-provoking.

There are very good reasons why the Vatican is saying that the big tech companies “exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life” and that it would be appropriate for States and transnational bodies to regulate and police them for the good of all.

Shona Murray@shonamurray.bsky.social · 2mo ago

“I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation. Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if [Mark] Zuckerberg is an asshole.” www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

It’s misleading for +Barron to say, for instance, that the Pope’s new encyclical places the moral legitimacy of private property and the free market alongside the universal destination of goods when it explicitly says they are subordinate to it and to the principle of solidarity.

Some familiar spots on the flight this morning: the Menai Strait flying over Anglesey; Llandudno and Conwy; Brighton with the wonderful charred skeleton of West Pier just about visible; and finally Paris, where I’m currently waiting for my train. Meetings are on the cards.

I’m finding this book deeply frustrating. It’s readable, and I’m learning a fair bit, but it makes bizarre claims about the natures of friendship in the past and even on its own terms it has vast gaps that undermine the landscape it’s trying to map.

Headline-writers at @irishtimes.com, the winner getting one-and-a-half times the points of the runner-up is not “pipping them at the post”. I mean, be fair.

Honestly, I don’t see what the Pope has against manuscripts. We have some cracking ones in Dublin. Printed books are clearly for rank modernists.

I’m doing well on the auld culinary multitasking nowadays. Lunches are proving especially productive on the reading front.

It’s weird to read responses to this, seeing how many people have trouble distinguishing between a nation and a state. I wonder if this is because in the US the word “state” can mean a bit of a sovereign country, whereas elsewhere it means a sovereign country, with such including “nation-states”.

Mrs. Detective Pikajew, Esq.@clapifyoulikeme.favrd.social · 3mo ago

Now I know an ITALIAN is not trying to claim they have a more established nation— www.reddit.com/r/AskAnAmeri...

Five books for April, with finishing the depressingly timely Hannah Arendt and the often timeless Chesterton collection taking most of the month. The Batman book contained some fabulously spooky detective stories, while Boyer was fun and Bratten Weiss was seriously thought-provoking.

Greg Daly@gregdaly.bsky.social · 4mo ago

March was, I’m afraid, a pretty sparse month for reading - just two books completed, and me a chunk of the way through a third. Still: these were both worth the reading, with the Clark one being a fascinating study in stakeholder management in the context of NATO’s first sustained campaign.

Fun way to start my day - just a few weeks after the best royalty payment I’ve had in about a decade, I’ve finally used my author discount for the first time since I wrote my Cannae book half my life ago: www.amazon.co.uk/Cannae-Exper... Not a bad payoff for a master’s thesis!

As first days of summer go, that was a nice one. I enjoyed the company as I worked…

Over some light lunchtime reading, I’m struck by how Augustine thought war’s objective horrors less important than participants’ spiritual state, and how it’s odd anybody would think an attack called “Operation Epic Fury” - “Massive Tantrum” being too on the nose - might in any sense be a just war.

Not a bad evening, that: a glorious sunset over the Boyne, and the finale for what I’d be pretty confident in describing as by some way the best adaptation of “The Count of Monte Cristo” I’ve ever seen.

@naomiohreally.bsky.social Very much liked your piece on Vance et al and the Pope. I’ve strongly of the view that there’s an obvious term for when a certain vice president tells the Pope to stay in his lane and takes it upon himself to lecture him on what Catholic teaching actually is.

Greg Daly@gregdaly.bsky.social · 4mo ago

Folks, I think the word we want here is “Vansplaining”.

I really don't have time for this. Driving in Ireland is very different to driving in America. Why having a US driver's license (which could represent any of 50 different regulatory regimes) should entitle you to some kind of fast track I don't know.

Some exciting post today - the latest @plough.bsky.social and from @beehivebooks.bsky.social a really beautiful edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Wonder Book’ illustrated by the marvellous Das Pastoras.

Folks, I think the word we want here is “Vansplaining”.

I regret to inform you that it’s not looking good for the Cat in the Hat.

March was, I’m afraid, a pretty sparse month for reading - just two books completed, and me a chunk of the way through a third. Still: these were both worth the reading, with the Clark one being a fascinating study in stakeholder management in the context of NATO’s first sustained campaign.

Greg Daly@gregdaly.bsky.social · 5mo ago

February was a big month for reading - I used weekends, evenings, mornings, lunches, and commutes to bizarrely good effect. The Chesterton one, I should say, is a reread, which is often where books really come into their own. It’s his first essay collection and has a couple of his very best essays.