Behold: the Avengers Tower-esque Aston Martin Residences in Miami – a 66 storey glass and steel tower unveiled in 2017 featuring seven ultra sleek penthouses on the 56th floor with sweeping views of Biscayne Bay, the Miami River and the city’s skyline.

There are also 38 oceanfront condos on the 15th floor and a $50 million triplex that comes with its own Aston Martin Vulcan.

Owners will have access to a four-level facility that includes a fitness centre, virtual golf room, art gallery, two cinemas, full-service spa, and infinity pool, along with a private marina.

Completion in 2022 with prices starting at €4.65 million.

uncrate

Grolsch on sale in Tesco has gone up in price but lost an Alcohol Volume Percentage point

This afternoon.

Are supermarkets selling watered-down beer?

Sea writes:

‘The best example currently is Grolsch, owned by the Ahasi Group. When last available in Ireland it was 5% and roughly €1/1.25 a can.

It’s now reintroduced, at €2 per can and 4%.

So, less beer, bigger profit, lower tax liability…. Shrinkflation in the extreme.

Both Grolsch/Ashai and Tesco (though many supermarkets practise this) have refused to answer my queries, via twitter both in private and public messages.

Other brands have been doing it for years but the recent re-introduction of Grolsch serve as a timely example.

Carlsberg is frequently sold at 3.8%

Heineken is 5% everywhere else in the world.

Sierra Nevada is sold often at varying strengths.

Frankly, the list goes on and on.

If a pub behaved this way, they would lose their license. Why should a retailer be any different?

I hope I’m not alone here. I’m very passionate about beer, and believe others would be too if the Diagio and Ashai groups couldn’t manipulate the market and effectively bully out competition against their own swill.

They have other methods – Don’t get me started on keeping much better beers out of pubs, free stock, construction of beer gardens and so on.

With minimum pricing on the horizon, I believe the consumer is at risk of even further dilution and price gouging under the cover of regulation.’

Anyone?

Pic: Tesco


Oh.

RTÉ One’s ‘Questions and Answers’ with John Bowman, 2000.

Young Fine Gael audience plant Leo Varadkar and then Minister for Health Micheál Martin. When medical ethics was a ‘thing’.

Sideways FIGHT!





Saturday.

O’Connell Street, Dublin 1.

A Pro-Life protest outside the GPO, one of 55 local ‘Rallies for Life’ that took place on Saturday urging the public and TDs to ‘Rethink Abortion’.

Government figures published last week showed 13,243 abortions were carried out since the Eighth Amendment was abolished; 6,577 in 2020, of which 6,455 were carried out in pregnancies of less than 12 weeks.

Sam Boal/RollingNews

Aerial portraits by Kevin Krautgartner of the Wadden Sea to the southeast of the North Sea – the world’s largest unbroken system of intertidal sand, mud flats and wetlands. To wit:

A vast area along the coastlines of the three countries: The Netherlands, Germany and Denmark. Declared as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2009, it has a high biological diversity and is an important area for both breeding and migrating birds. During low tide the shallow water which is left on the sand forms incredible unique structures which can look completely different each day.

behance

This morning.

Good Morning Britain on ITV.

Richard Madeley goes ‘there'( @4.55) with clinical psychologist Susan Michie, director of The Centre for Behaviour Change and, perhaps uniquely, a member of both the UK government’s SAGE advisory panel on Covid and the Communist Party of Great Britain, seeking the overthrow of the UK government.

And you thought you were busy.

A message for Pope Francis in Dublin City Centre during the Pontiff’s visit to Ireland in August 2018

Dear, Oh Dear, Roman Catholic Church

Unrelenting cherisher of my baptismal cert.
You site historical reasons
but I know it’s more than that for you
maybe because I’m young,
historically you’ve liked that too

Unfortunately I have to go,
though it brings a tear to Gods eye
I am retracting my membership
from this book club gone awry

I have googled how to leave and conceded,
it’s way too long to read.
So I came across a site I understand
‘How to be excommunicated for dummies’
(and millennials, the two go hand in hand)

I don’t really want to physically attack the Pope
but if it has to be done
I can rally some antifa communists,
when you need help to decentralise
and redistribute a patriarchal power
– they’re the one

I could reject the authority of the Pope
or celebrate the eucharist for show
confer sacraments to myself,
or give schism or apostasy a go

I could interpret a foreign confession
and tell somebody else
if I’d ever properly learned another language
(yeah, this one may not be of help)

I suppose I could have an abortion,
if I wasn’t a lesbian
even Jesus Christ himself
couldn’t bring me that close to men

I could violate the confessional seal
but my vegan friends would not be impressed.
Heresy I can definitely do,
‘It’s a mortal sin to be underdressed’.

I’m sad as I write this,
I enabled you so long
to hurt already vulnerable people
and then tell them they are wrong

If God exists, he’s gonna be pissed,
especially at you big P
there are things that you’ll have to change
but it will not be with me.

beam

beam is a 26 year old woman from Galway, a new poet and a recent MA graduate. beam is working on her first collection after being published on Spilling Hot Cocoa Over Martin Amis. Recent work includes: ‘surviving the pandemic and several disappointing sourdough loaves’. You can find more of her poetry @personalbeam on instagram.

RollingNews

Labour candidate Ivana Bacik

This morning.

Ahead of Thursday’s by-election in Dublin Bay South…

…Via Independent.ie:

Fine Gael has angrily complained to RTÉ after the Labour Party’s Ivana Bacik appeared on a prime time TV show just three days out from the by-election in Dublin Bay South.

Ms Bacik is in a battle with Fine Gael for the seat and the Senator featured prominently on a programme called ‘National Treasures’.

RTÉ has strict rules about fair coverage of candidates during campaigns.

The incident is reminiscent of a row between RTÉ and Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael during a by-election won by current foreign affairs minister Simon Coveney.

Fine Gael complains to RTÉ after Ivana Bacik’s TV appearance three days before Dublin Bay South by-election (Independent.ie)

Meanwhile…

Fine Gael Councillor and election candidate, James Geoghegan canvassing in Ranelagh, Dublin 6

This morning.

Via Una Mullally in the Irish Times:

He comes from an intensely privileged background, with two Supreme Court judges as parents, and two more as grandparents. He looks the part, he’s got the clichéd south Dublin accent (something I sympathise with, having one myself), and he has run a superficial campaign based on the brand of bland nothingness his constituency predecessor, Eoghan Murphy, espoused to cruise into a housing ministry, and we all know how that went.

But condemning Geoghegan based on his beginnings is unfair. It’s not his fault he had a remarkable head-start in life. Privilege isn’t some kind of original sin. But what is relevant is how you use that privilege. Geoghegan worked for Fine Gael’s John Bruton in Washington DC, and then got a job with a lobbying firm run by another Bruton adviser, Kevin Gilna. It’s a small world . Now I’m not saying working for a lobbying firm that represents for Big Tobacco is among one of the worst things one can do with one’s privilege, but it is up there.

Back in Ireland, Geoghegan drifted from Fine Gael and backed Renua, a right-wing, anti-abortion entity that looked for a millisecond as though it might make an impact, given how disproportionate its founder Lucinda Creighton’s profile in the political media was. Renua flopped, closing off that career path.

Fine Gael is asking people to vote for Geoghegan because he is in Fine Gael. But if we extrapolate “merit” from meritocracy, and compare Geoghegan’s record to those he’s leading in the polls – Ivana Bacik, Lynn Boylan, Claire Byrne, and Sarah Durcan – he’s not at the races. There is no comparison.

Fight!

Fine Gael’s By-Election Candidate? You Couldn’t Make Him Up (Una Mullally, Irish Times)

RollingNews

Meanwhile…

Oh.

Pareidolia – it’s a wonderful thing, especially on this scale. To wit:

Famous Martian rock mesas known by names like the Face on Mars appear quite natural when seen more clearly on better images. Is reality boring? Nobody knows why some clouds make rain. Nobody knows if life ever developed on Mars. Nobody knows why the laundry on the bedroom chair smells like root beer. Scientific exploration can not only resolve mysteries, but uncover new knowledge, greater mysteries, and yet deeper questions. As humanity explores our universe, perhaps fun — through discovery — is just beginning.

The one on the bottom right there?

That’s your ma, that is.

(Image: NASA, Viking 1 Orbiter)

apod

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