MORE to follow.
MORE to follow.
A lyrical, trippy short written and directed by Lubomir Arsov. To wit:
Embark on a visionary journey through the fragmented unconscious of our modern times, and with courage face the Shadow. Through Shadow into Light.
“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.” – C.G. Jung
Doppeldieu
at
Grand Design
at
Behold: NGC 6814 – not to be confused with the Kevin McCloud Nebula.
The Kevin McCloud Nebula.
Hello? Is this thing on?
In the center of this serene stellar swirl is likely a harrowing black-hole beast. The surrounding swirl sweeps around billions of stars which are highlighted by the brightest and bluest. The breadth and beauty of the display give the swirl the designation of a grand design spiral galaxy. The central beast shows evidence that it is a supermassive black hole about 10 million times the mass of our Sun. This ferocious creature devours stars and gas and is surrounded by a spinning moat of hot plasma that emits blasts of X-rays. The central violent activity gives it the designation of a Seyfert galaxy. Together, this beauty and beast are cataloged as NGC 6814 and have been appearing together toward the constellation of the Eagle (Aquila) for roughly the past billion years.
(Image: ESA/Hubble & NASA; Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt)
Flowers for Dublin-born Elizabeth Dwyer, Morrissey’s mother, outside her home in Altrincham, Cheshire, England
Morrissey writes:
“The flowers of solace, comfort and consolation that have arrived at Beechmount – my mother’s home for over 30 years, and now, her premature place of rest, are all so Hindu sundar; so beautiful; so expensive; so lavish; so glamorous; so much more than I ever expected that anyone anywhere would bestow on my mother.
For my own life I don’t care anything, but how my worldwide friends have regarded my mother with such great respect and faithful love is a gift to me that no success, triumphs or riches could match.
I send you what remains of my love, and I hope that we all survive so that one day, one way, the halls of music and free expression will never again hold the power to exercise their malicious deception that keeps us apart.”
Friday: ‘A Service Will Be Held In Dublin Where Elizabeth Was Born. All Welcome’
Our new captain 🤩
— Liverpool FC Women (at 🏠) (@LiverpoolFCW) August 17, 2020
Galway’s Niamh Fahey (top) has been named the new captain of Liverpool FC Women.
Via Liverpool FC:
The 32-year-old Republic of Ireland international is preparing for her third season with the Reds after signing a new contract in the summer.
A centre-half who can also play as a defensive midfielder, Fahey has a wealth of experience in the game, with several league titles and FA Cups already secured during her career.
Niamh Fahey named new captain of Liverpool FC Women (Liverpool FC)
This afternoon.
Newbridge, County Kildare.
Drive-in HSE rona testing centre.
Meanwhile…
The number of new infections reported yesterday was 66, down considerably on the 200 cases cited on Saturday.
A significant reduction in outbreaks and community transmission was recorded last night.
As of 8pm last night, there were 19 patients with Covid-19 being treated in hospital. 8 of these patients are in intensive care.
A further 136 people who are suspected of having the virus are also in hospital, with 7 of these patients in ICU.
Health officials to meet after sharp rise in virus cases (RTÉ)
The mystery of ‘Dapper Dan’ has been solved
National Monuments writes:
A few years ago we posted a photo of a rather distinguished looking gentleman beside a wayside cross at Carpenterstown, Co. Westmeath
Fondly nicknamed ‘’Dapper Dan’ by the staff of the NMS Archive and Photographic Units, we are delighted to say that his identity has been discovered during the ongoing cataloguing of our Topographical File collection.
May we introduce you to a 30 year old Welsh born – Mr. John Hugh Williams, Assistant Surveyor with the ‘Board of Works’ (now The Office of Public Works) who was based in Mullingar until 1917…
Meanwhile…
Thirty three years later
John Williams In 1940.
Still dapper, in fairness.
An interesting suggestion from German educational design studio Kurzgesagt. To wit:
Getting rare materials from the ground into your phone is ugly. The mining industry is responsible for air and water pollution and the destruction of entire landscapes. But what if we could replace the mining industry on Earth with a clean process that can’t harm anyone?
Previously: Is There Anybody Out There?
Examples of media and social media monitoring carried out by the Department of Justice
In recent days.
The Movement of Asylum Seekers, along with Ken Foxe and Sian Cowman, obtained a tranche of documents totalling 494 pages from the Department of Justice detailing how the department has been monitoring media articles, Twitter exchanges about these articles, and criticism posted on Twitter about direct provision.
MASI has said it has learned that the Department of Justice directed its Transparency Unit to conduct the monitoring after MASI refused to delete a tweet about the death of an asylum seeker at the Central Hotel in Dublin on April 15 last.
The documents show that, on April 16, the Deputy Secretary General at the Department of Justice Oonagh Buckley wrote to MASI members Lucky Khambule and Bulelani Mfaco saying that the department couldn’t understand why MASI tweeted about this death at the hotel “in such an insensitive manner”.
Ms Buckley said that the person who died had family living in Ireland and the gardai were on the way to tell the family about the death at the time of the tweets. She said another department official had asked MASI to remove the tweets on April 15 but that MASI had refused.
Ms Buckley also included a copy of the International Protection Accommodation Service’s Critical Incident Policy (which was established last November).
She also wrote: “Indeed our request was met with another tweet to the effect that the Department was engaging in a culture of secrecy. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Ms Buckley also informed MASI that the letter she was writing to them would be copied to all NGOs “involved in the briefing sessions to date”.
Many may consider MASI’s claim that the department works in secrecy utterly plausible, given it’s unclear how many people have died by suicide in Direct Provision since it began in 1999, how deaths in direct provision are recorded, and especially given the aftermath of the death of Sylva Tukula.
In August 2018, asylum seeker Sylva Tukula, who was living in the Direct Provision system in Galway city, died of natural causes. It later emerged that she had been buried in May 2019 without the knowledge of her friends or fellow residents at the centre where she had lived – even though they were assured they would be notified once arrangements for her burial would be made.
Ms Tukula, who identified as a transwoman, died in the men’s-only Great Western House Direct Provision centre in Galway. At the time of her death, it had been reported that she had requested to be moved out of the all-male centre where she reportedly had a single room.
On April 18, MASI wrote back to the department and highlighted the lack of transparency surrounding deaths of people living in direct provision, saying:
‘The UN’s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, informed by submissions from Irish civil society, recently called on Ireland to, amongst other things, “Ensure transparency regarding deaths in direct provision centres and collect and publish data on such deaths.” The IPAS Critical Incident Policy does not address this.’
The dossier, dated from April 23, 2020 and runs until June, begins with the noting of an Irish Times article which quotes Dr Eamonn Faller, an infectious disease specialist registrar at Cork University Hospital, describing direct provision centres as “powder kegs for Covid-19”.
The article includes calls from the Irish Refugee Council and Sanctuary Runners to have vulnerable people living in direct provision moved out of cramped centres to protect them from contracting Covid-19.
The dossier then goes on to include criticisms of direct provision both related, and unrelated, to Covid-19, until the end of June.
The collection of material includes media articles, tweets about these articles and, separately, tweets about direct provision. It predominantly focuses on tweets from the Movement of Asylum Seekers in Ireland (MASI) but also includes tweets from celebrities, prominent media figures, politicians, lawyers, journalists, news outlets, civil liberty campaigners, charity and NGO workers, and what the department calls “online activists”.
It mainly involves screenshots of their tweets and links to their individual Twitter pages but also, in many instances, makes a note of the number or ‘likes’ or ‘retweets’ a tweet received. It also notes comments made under media articles.
The full dossier of 15 PDFs can be read here
Last year, solicitor Simon McGarr revealed how the Department of Employment and Social Protection monitored his media appearances and tweets concerning the Public Services Card.
Meanwhile, yesterday, in a story about the dossier by Ellen Coyne in the Sunday Independent, Ms Coyne reported:
The Department of Justice said it started a new policy of monitoring social media during Covid-19 to improve its communications strategy.
The department said it has also started monitoring tweets about An Garda Síochána, prisons, family law, domestic violence and family courts. It said monitoring social media allowed it to “correct any inaccuracies raised, investigate complaints and respond accordingly”.
Anyone?