You really have to take a moment and think about how insane this is. That’s a quarter of the entire output of the country’s public infrastructure going to support about one hundred sites.

StephDickenson.bsky.social@stephdickenson.bsky.social · 4w ago

“Data centres accounted for almost one quarter of the electricity consumed in Ireland last year, up from 5% in 2015, the CSO said today. A total of 7,663 gigawatt-hours of electricity was used by data centres in 2025, up 10% from 6,973GWh in 2024.” www.irishtimes.com/business/202...

Farmer who supplies hay to me and many others yesterday said his pastures have only dried grass and without rain very soon he will have to start feeding his hay supply to his sheep, in an Irish summer -- something he has never had to in his farming life

Oisín McGann@oisinmcgann.bsky.social · 3d ago

The slow creep of stories like this. www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Losing my mind a bit at being the same age as the words "USB", "proteome" and "jorts" www.merriam-webster.com/time-travele...

Time Traveler by Merriam-Webster: Words from 1995

See which words were first recorded in 1995. Or search for other words by the year when they were first used.

merriam-webster.com

Wow, it's almost like all those protests weren't really about fuel... www.independent.ie/county/wexfo...

Fuel Support Scheme for farmers ‘under subscribed’ despite €87m budget and nationwide protests over costs

The deputy president of the Irish Farmers Association (IFA) says she does not know why the Fuel Income Support Scheme for farmers and agricultural contractors was significantly “under subscribed.”

independent.ie

I do feel the wildfires have been seriously under-reported

Emma Yeomans@yeomans.bsky.social · 2w ago

Large fires in the Peak District, Cairngorms and north Wales are now effectively competing for limited firefighting helicopter resources. On Saturday, Welsh farmers said they felt abandoned - while authorities had approved helicopter use, they were still waiting for one to be available.

Anyone making this argument should be asked to explain how the increased load of 25,000 public servants going back to full time commutes to central Dublin will be absorbed by the public transport system.

The Irish Times@irishtimes.com · 2w ago

Gerard Howlin: Scaling back remote working should be on the agenda as payback for public sector pay rises

The weakness of the Taoiseach’s response to a suggestion to collect data to allow policy to be made rationally suggests a strong wish for that data not to be made clear.

Social Democrats@social-democrats.bsky.social · 3w ago

This summer, water conservation is important. But hosepipe bans can be frustrating, especially when there is so little governance around water usage by data centres. Yet, when it comes to data centres, the Taoiseach is just sticking his head in the sand.

I just want more of the people doing cool shit to get the funding to do cool shit.

Incredible headline to come across while in the airport waiting for a Ryanair flight

RTÉ News@news.rte.ie · 4w ago

A man was nearly sucked out the window of a Ryanair flight when it "detached" mid-air en route to Germany, with other passengers pulling him back inside www.rte.ie/news/2026/07...

this is imo an example of how data center hatred isn't just reflexive nimbyism

Kevin J. Kircher@kevinjkircher.com · 4w ago

This is wild. 93% of the renewable electricity generation added to the Irish grid over that last decade now powers data centers, rather than reducing fossil fuel use. Data centers have pretty much annihilated the health and climate benefits those renewables could have provided.

The #WGDip team really enjoyed #SMBE2026! We shared posters from Zoe Vance, Anthony Redmond and Lucas Freitas, plus flash talks from Róisín Long and Lukasz Niezabitowski. Great to see growing interest in rediploidisation with lots of interesting chats! Thanks to the organisers for an epic meeting! 👏

The CSO has released data on metered electricity consumption for 2025. The extraordinary headline figures: - Electricity consumption from data centres grew by nearly 10% last year, and now accounts for 23% of Ireland's electricity demand.

Huge congratulations to #WGDip project partner Aoife McLysaght for receiving the Community Service Award from @official-smbe.bsky.social. This recognises Aoife’s outstanding contributions and commitment to building stronger research communities through collaboration, leadership, and generosity. 👏

why are people only ever described as "no-nonsense", what if you're a nonsense person, what then

Hup Aoife, award for community service at #SMBE2026 👏👏

Showing some @wgdip.bsky.social work at #SMBE2026! Swing by poster 217 for a chat about whole genome duplication in yeast and why many of the duplicated genes appear to have been created at different points in time

one anecdote: I was searching for a link to one of my old papers on Google, and the automated Gemini summary attributed all of my lab's work to my husband

Mel Andrews@bayesianboy.bsky.social · 2mo ago

When utilized in literature review, LLMs consistently 1. fail to mention female authors in female-led literatures, 2. insist that men are more influential or more heavily cited when this is contradicted by objective citation counts, and 3. attribute women’s work to hallucinated male scholars.

How many would support the idea of handing over your passport or your child's passport, or other ID, to a tech company. That's the real question and not one likely to be asked in polls like this

RTÉ News@news.rte.ie · 2mo ago

Almost three-quarters of Irish adults are in favour of a social media ban for under-16s, according to new research.

Tech bros have recommended pet politicos ban kids from social media, knowing it doesn’t work. & it gives tech more personal data about everyone. Regulating users, rather than tech, is yet another example of how authoritarian control is normalised & users exploited.

"But sending sexually explicit pictures to and from children – that’s not free speech, that’s basic protection." Says the man who has taken zero action on a social media platform producing a distributing child sex images for a year. Tough on teens, laisser faire on white supremacist billionaires.

Anti-fash counter-protests outnumber fash marches all the time and it would be cool if the press made a big deal about it.

Fox news is, of course, consistently amazing but saying about loyalists 'All they want to be is Irish' is just sublime.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · 2mo ago

Kilmeade to an agreeing Markwayne Mullin: "In Belfast they're standing up because their leaders have let them down. They're trying to take their country back. They want to label them as racist. All they want to be is Irish. They want Ireland back. I see a lot of the same fights here."

Per most recent figures, net migration to NI *over the past 22 years* has been ~62,000 people. Only 3% of Northern Ireland’s population currently belong to an ethnic minority. Pogroms in Belfast (as with Ballymena last year) are just gutter-level "One Is One Too Many" racism, and nothing else.

A fellow of the Royal Society slashed funding for disease prevention, leading directly to the deaths of uncounted children. He promotes white supremacy and is actively encouraging racist violence in the UK. But he's Elon Musk, a billionaire. So the Royal Society does nothing. @royalsociety.org

I just need to see comeuppance for people who do evil things at some point in my life, this whole thing of letting them do the most deranged shit with no consequences has been a disaster, I don't think it's good for anyone's soul to see monsters get away with it every day.

no other way to say it, this thing in the uk where every single time a non-white person is in the news being accused of a crime we have full on race riots is very very bad

If you can arrest a thousand people for holding signs that say "I support Palestine Action" you can arrest Tommy Robinson and Elon Musk for telling people to do this.

Saul Staniforth@saulstaniforth.bsky.social · 2mo ago

#BBCBreakfast: "... families had to be led to safety through the flames.. it wasn't just homes, cars were also torched by young masked men in these predominantly unionist streets, but the target here was immigrants.." This is what the likes of Reform are inciting.

Not just English commentators. Newstalk radio just 20 minutes ago doing a whole spiel on "legitimate concerns about immigration". No mention of Loyalist anything. When people ask why did nobody stop the Nazis, the answer is right there. Unfettered media-backed propaganda.

@nohostages.bsky.social · 2mo ago

English commentators need to stop analysing Northern Ireland through an English lens! When you see anti-immigrant riots in Belfast, Ballymena or Larne and immediately reach for "Britain's far-right problem", you're missing half the story. This isn't just racism. It's loyalist terrorism. 1/

Some outlets appear to be prepared to "legitimate concerns" their way through actual lynchings.