Ah.

Here.

An interesting video essay by The Pop Culture Detective Agency exploring how men are routinely sexually demeaned (largely by other men) in movies and TV for the lolz.  To wit:

It’s hard to overstate just how common jokes about men being sexually assaulted are in entertainment media. Most popular comedic actors engage in this type of humour. Jokes are typically designed to demean, humiliate, control, or emasculate a male character for being the victim, or potential victim, of sexual violence.

Any excuse.

Jimmy’s Cousin – Astor & 8th

It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. Happily, Jimmy’s Cousin – the alter ego of Ireland-born, American-based (since 1990) Ian Dodson – swings to beat the big band.

This is the second single from his jazz/pop debut album Waxwings and the video finds JC going for a walk across the rooftops of New York, New York.

A classy love letter to Manhattan with a suitably panoramic promo? Swell.

Nick says: Another Fairytale of New York.



This afternoon.

Kildare Street, Dublin 2.

A peaceful ice cream ‘eat-out’ by young activists ahead of a HB Fundays Party in aid of Down Syndrome Ireland in Leinster House this afternoon.

The charity is calling for “vital investment in early years supports to promote language development for toddlers and young children with Down Syndrome”.

And several more tubs, if at all possible.

HB Fundays (Down Syndrome Ireland)

Sam Boal/Rollingnews

Former Dun Laoghaire orphanage The Bird’s Nest is now a ‘luxury co-living residence’

In more recent years, the former York Road [Dun Laoghaire, County Dublin] institution became embroiled in controversy over its involvement in clinical trials for vaccines carried out on babies and children in orphanages in the 1960s and 1970s.

It was one of several institutions including the Bessboro Home, St Patrick’s Home, Navan Road, Dublin, and the Cottage Home, also in Dún Laoghaire, where in the 1960s, clinical trials compared a 3-in-1 vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis and separate polio immunisation to a 4-in-1 vaccine for the illnesses. The studies in the 1970s looked at two different types of 3-in-1 vaccines.

Good times.

Former orphanage reinvented as co-living space – called The Orphanage (Irish Times)

Previously: Medical Trials and Children of A Lesser God

Jabs For The Boys

Rollingnews

Behold M83 (no, not the French electronica project): a beautiful spiral galaxy, 12 million lights years away on the southeastern tip of the constellation of Hydra (no, not the Marvel Universe terrorist organisation). In fact, Messier 83 –  its full title – has many names. To wit:

Prominent spiral arms traced by dark dust lanes and blue star clusters lend this galaxy its popular name, The Southern Pinwheel. But reddish star forming regions that dot the sweeping arms highlighted in this sparkling colour composite also suggest another nickname, The Thousand-Ruby Galaxy. About 40,000 light-years across, M83 is a member of a group of galaxies that includes active galaxy Centaurus A. In fact, the core of M83 itself is bright at x-ray energies, showing a high concentration of neutron stars and black holes left from an intense burst of star formation. This sharp composite colour image also features spiky foreground Milky Way stars and distant background galaxies. The image data was taken from the Subaru Telescope, the European Southern Observatory’s Wide Field Imager camera, and the Hubble Legacy Archive.

(Image: Subaru Telescope (NAOJ), Hubble Space Telescope, European Southern Observatory, Robert Gendler)

apod

From top: Illegal dump close to people’s homes in Moatview Estate, Priorswood, north Dublin: aeriel view 2002-2019

In today’s Dublin Inquirer.

Journalists Sean Finnan and Lois Kapila are reporting that residents of Moatview Estate in Priorswood, north Dublin, have health concerns due to an illegal dump close to their homes.

The dump is on Dublin City Council-owned land and the Dublin Inquirer has previously reported that residents have been complaining about the dump for years.

They report:

Like others who live around the Moatview Court estate in Priorswood in north Dublin, Jervis is deeply worried that the sprawling – and illegal – dump, just the other side of a green on council land, is making him and his neighbours sick.

They’re worried that pollutants may have seeped into the ground under the growing mounds of household and construction waste – there are dirty nappies, empty bottles, keg-like empty industrial containers, bricks, tyres, machine parts, and even, they fear, asbestos.

Only some of the waste is visible. It pokes through the undergrowth along the path that runs from Moatview Court to Cara Park. Just north of that are mounds high as single-storey homes, with shrubs atop the older piles.

Last February, there were smouldering ashes alongside the path. Residents are worried, too, that fumes from the sporadic fires at the dump have spread toxins through the air, into their homes.

In April, an analysis of cancer incidence in the wider area by the National Cancer Registry of Ireland (NCRI) flagged high rates of lung cancer.

Rates were 70 percent higher than expected, if incidence rates were expected to be the same as Dublin as a whole, it said. They were 110 percent higher than expected, if incidence rates were expected to be the same as Ireland as a whole.

But figuring out if the area’s high cancer rates have been caused by the landfill is complex, say health researchers.

READ IN FULL: Priorswood Residents Worry That Giant Illegal Dump Is Making Them Sick (Sean Finnan and Lois Kapila, Dublin Inquirer)

Related: For Years, an Illegal Dump Has Been Growing in a North Dublin Neighbourhood (Sean Finnan and Lois Kapila, Dublin Inquirer, February 27, 2019)

Picture: Lois Kapila

Operation Sophia graphic from the EU; Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan; Tánaiste Simon Coveney; aftermath of airstrike at Tajoura migrant detention centre in Libya; a message Irish journalist Sally Hayden received from a source within the centre

It’s being reported that at least 40 people have been killed following an airstrike on the Tajoura migrant detention centre, east of Tripoli in Libya.

Dublin journalist Sally Hayden – who has been sharing mobile phone conversations with migrants detained in Libyan detention centres and reporting on the conditions of the centres for more than a year – received a text from a person within the camp (above) just after it happened.

She has tweeted that her sources are telling her that the death toll is much higher and that between 140 and 160 people have been killed, however aid agencies are saying this isn’t the case and that the figure is around 60 to 65.

Ms Hayden has also tweeted that a person from Sudan who is detained at the centre told her: “The European Union and the UNHCR must bear responsibility for this massacre.”

In recent weeks, Independent TD Maureen O’Sullivan raised with the Tánaiste Simon Coveney the conditions of a separate migrant detention centre – the Qasr bin Ghashir detention camp – in Libya.

She also asked for his views on the treatment of migrants who are being intercepted by the Libyan Coastguard, while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea, and being brought back to Libya where they are incarcerated.

Since 2015, the EU, including Ireland, has been training and providing equipment to the Libyan coastguard via EUNAVFOR MED Operation Sophia (see graphic above)

Mr Coveney told Ms O’Sullivan that he continues to be “deeply troubled” by the human rights abuses against refugees and migrants in Libya.

But he said:

“It is not EU policy to send people back to Libya, but rather to disrupt the business model of smugglers or traffickers, so as to prevent further loss of life in the Mediterranean.”

Ms O’Sullivan reminded Mr Coveney that the reality is that people who are rescued in the Mediterranean are being returned to these centres.

She added:

“It is immoral, unethical and downright cruel to consign those so-called “rescued” from the Mediterranean to a worse fate by sending them to these centres. There are tens of millions of euro going into support the coastguard in Libya for the refugees to go back to those detention centres.”

During his response, Mr Coveney asserted:

“First, it is not EU policy to send refugees and migrants who have been rescued in the Mediterranean back to Libya. We do not regard that as safe.

“There was an understanding with the Libyan coastguard before the recent violence broke out in Tripoli but since then the functioning of Libya as a state, and the ability of it to protect migrants in camps, has been fundamentally undermined.”

Ms O’Sullivan responded:

“I draw the Tánaiste’s attention to the fact that in the first week in June, there was a submission to the International Criminal Court relating to the current situation calling for the EU and member states to be prosecuted for the deaths of thousands of refugees and migrants who drowned in the Mediterranean while trying to flee Libya.

“It is difficult to reconcile what the Tánaiste is saying with the reality that millions of euro went into the so-called rescue training of the coastguards.

“That training left much to be desired because they were taking people from the sea and bringing them to these detention centres. In 2018, 2,500 drowned at sea.

“Perhaps that was the better fate rather than ending up in one of these detention centres which is a living death. It is against international law that one would return refugees to a centre that is in the middle of a war but that is what is continuing to happen in Libya.”

Mr Coveney replied:

“I have stated in both responses that it is not EU policy to return migrants and refugees who are rescued in the Mediterranean to Libya now and I ask the Deputy to stop stating that it is.”

Transcript via Kildarestreet.com

Airstrike Kills Dozens of Migrants at Detention Center in Tripoli (Declan Walsh, New York Times)

Previously: ‘Our Naval Service Is Part Of It’ 

Pic from Tajoura via Malachy Browne

Westport, County Mayo.

Helen O’Dwyer writes:

Irish lighting company Solus demonstrated that they are light years ahead as they piloted the first ever retail drone delivery of light bulbs to a retail store.

Mark Kavanagh, Marketing Director of the Kavanagh Group joined David Reynolds, Sales and Marketing Director of Solus and Former Miss World Rosanna Davison to receive the delivery of Solus light bulbs to SuperValu in Westport…

…Solus piloted the drone delivery experiment in controlled conditions…The assignment contained 30 candle bulbs and arrived in perfect condition and ahead of schedule proving that even something as delicate as a ligh tbulb can be delivered by drone and perfectly intact.

Fight!

Solus

Broadsheet.ie