Cathy

CMAT TINY DESK NOT A DRILL TEENY TINY DESK CMAT youtu.be/xPIMk4d4ulI?...

Has a border with Russia vs doesn't have a border with Russia.

Halloween Marilyn in 1945 🎃

Just a reminder for these quieter afternoon hours, handling EU matters might be too complicated for Andy Haldane, but Andy Burnham has no choice if he wants to achieve his wider aims particularly on industry than to look again at freedom of movement.

Israeli turnout now at 55.7% as of 4pm — up 8% on 2022 and the highest ever recorded in Israeli history. There are still six hours left of voting from 4pm and the Central Elections Committee says polling stations must remain open if there are voters still queuing.

High Court quashes Visa refusal decision. Minister must reconsider the application.

The electoral implications of this cannot be underestimated. A 80% turnout among secular Jews and Arab voters means that none of the parties polling around 6-9 seats can feel safe of crossing the threshold. This includes all coalition parties except Likud, but also some of the opposition parties.

'75% of the far-right narrative volume mentioning Ireland comes from outside the state.'

How to fight the far right.

The leaders of Finland and Norway held a phone call with Vladimir Putin to restart the peace process. The overture comes as Brussels prepares for face-to-face contacts with the Russian side. ➡️ https://l.euronews.com/zqTx

“1,431 people, including at least 300 children and 130 women, have been killed since the US-brokered ceasefire deal began in October 2025 and Israel is aiming to "destroy, in whole or in part, the Palestinians in Gaza". news.sky.com/story/un-rep...

#Israel #GE

“Every unhappy nation is unique. But the mood overlap between countries such as Hungary and Serbia, both of which have recently thrown out rightwing populists in corruption-dominated elections, and today’s America is striking.” My column as.ft.com/r/c8ced69e-f...

Thousands turned out to celebrate in the Serbian capital after the country's student protest movement ousted Aleksandar Vucic from power in a landmark election. reut.rs/4BqRvns

Solar has overtaken nuclear. A decade ago it supplied 1% of the world's power. In 2025 it met three quarters of global demand growth. Almost nobody saw it coming. I spoke to Jocelyn Timperley at BBC Future about why. www.bbc.co.uk/future/artic...

1. Lose election 2. Assume Trump will steal election for him 3. Trump is flailing around and failing to steal his own election 4. Oh shit oh fuck

Sunrise and moonset on Tuesday morning in North Antrim! 📸 Anne Kelly Art and Photography • @annlizkelly.bsky.social

This is objectively very very funny

According to Zelenskyy, for nearly a month Pete Hegseth has not been signing off on the delivery of vital Patriot and NASAMS interceptor missiles for Ukraine that European allies have already paid for. Here is a video of Hegseth cynically wishing Ukraine “success” a week ago:

Russian diplomacy, a brief history.

Given Ukraine has been given cast iron guarantees before that haven't been worth the paper they were written on, and we now live in a world where Trump is USA president - what would such a guarantee even look like?

The moon….

Quoted in open letter issued by 47 Brazilian bishops before yesterday's second round of voting.

Perfect.

Microsoft is offering voluntary departures to approximately 60,000 employees in the United States, Canada, India and the United Kingdom (group)

My pal Danielle Koenig shared that her father Walter Koenig passed away last night at age 90. A performer whose kindness and warmth shone through the screen. He will be well remembered.

Various places that use AI productively, where there is a genuine use case, still find huge problems later. I think AI can produce code that works. I think one of the most lucrative professions in the world is about to be 'fixing AI generated code that works fine ... except where it doesn't'.

Another visit to Brexit-land. It seems to have become a common misapprehension in UK discourse that the UK could in some way "reactivate" its previous EU treaty opt-outs because "the protocols are still in the treaties". A 🧵 to debunk this - to turn to an appropriately British phrase - codswallop:

Ireland has some responsibility on this. One of the greatest contributions we could be making to collective EU & global democracy & security (far more useful then disastrous attempts to remove the triple lock) would be having the courage to step up to our role as digital regulator in a serious way.

The question is, why are the government lying to the public?

The bare-faced cheek of this in the Anthropic IPO S-1: "Our success is dependent, in part, upon protecting our intellectual property rights and proprietary information."

Reminds me of how important Repeal Shield was during the 2018 referendum. The amount of mental space that was freed up by just ignoring the anti-choicers instead of trying to argue with them. It let us focus on putting forward our own points

“Digital crimes must be dealt with like real-life crimes.” 💯

Meanwhile, 'Shares of major neocloud stocks fell on Monday after Elon Musk said that more than 200 companies in the sector could collapse.' 'Nebius, CoreWeave and Iren all dropped more than 4% in early premarket trading."

And it applies globally. Democracy is ours, and Big Tech should not be allowed steal it.

As Trump pretends that a Canada tariff deal is coming 'soon', Canadian & EU leaders prepare to meet in Montreal this week for a summit aimed at deepening their alliance. Leaders seek closer ties in areas including defense, artificial intelligence and critical minerals. www.rte.ie/news/us/2026...

9,086 Brazilian citizens from across Ireland travelled to the RDS yesterday to vote in the country’s presidential election - an official turnout of 54.3%. Of those, Lula won 80.2%, a good deal higher than the 72.6% he took in the first round a fortnight earlier.

People abroad don't understand the level of interference Meta & bots had in these elections. 5 days before the election a far-right politician posted a fake news video that got 157 MILLION views on Instagram in 24hs. For reference, GTA 6's reveal trailer got 90 million views on YouTube in 24hs.