I think it’s difficult for us in North America to appreciate how contrary, rebellious, and frankly prophetic Sinéad O’Connor was in an Irish context. I lived there briefly in 1985, and so saw a bit of the place and time she was from.

It was a bit of a culture shock. I was 19 and not in school. I got a work permit and flew over to Dublin. I only spoke English at the time so it was kind of a toss up between London and Dublin. I didn’t think there’d be much of a difference it was all “Western Europe” as far as I was concerned — Denmark, France, Ireland, … all pretty similar right? Hahahaha.

Unlike today, Ireland in 1985 was a poor country. Deprivation had forced generations of people to emigrate to seek a better life. There were 4 million people in the Republic, but in 1845 there had been 8 million. The only country in Europe whose population declined over that period. 1995 was the first time in 300 years Ireland did not have negative net migration.

And it was pious. Sinéad called it “a theocracy”. There were no state schools. All education was in the hands of religious schools — overwhelmingly Catholic. Two years before, in 1983, the Republic had put a ban on abortion into their constitution. Condoms were illegal when I got there. In 1980 Bob Geldof had summed up his home town as “police and priests”.

It seemed a bit more patriarchal than the US in the Reagan years. But I didn’t know the half of it. It wasn’t until years later that I learned about the Magdalene Laundries where “troubled” girls were imprisoned in workhouses operated by orders of nuns, the Mother and Baby homes where women who were pregnant out of wedlock were kept out of sight to have their babies in secret, who were then taken from them and sold to American Catholic couples — and underneath it all the decades-long, quietly suppressed crime of the clergy sexually abusing boys and girls.

This stuff was not talked about in 1980s Ireland. But Sinéad did. She would not shut up. She would not stay in her place. She made original, passionate music. But if you think she caused an uproar in the US when she tore up a photo of the Pope on SNL in 1992 … well, in Ireland it was more of what she already was known for.

It was only later, in the late 1990 and 2000s that the scandals broke, and everyone could see that the crazy woman who would not shut up was right. She had been right all along.

The 2022 biographical film Nothing Compares is good. If you want to get the flavor of what she means to people in Ireland, go scroll through the expressions of grief pouring out on mastodon.ie

The woman was a giant.

#Sinead #SineadOConnor

Piénsenlo bien antes de comprar propiedades nuevas en Punta Cana, República Dominicana. Los inspectores se están vendiendo, nadie está siguiendo códigos de construcción y está familia pago el precio…

https://dominicantoday.com/amp/news?id=193884&title=a-man-and-his-child-in-critical-condition-after-explosion-in-punta-cana-apartment

#Dominicana #puntacana

This week, I went over to Bluesky and asked people who'd left Mastodon why they left, and lots of people told me. I grabbed the replies and crunched them and wrote up a summary. I think it's really interesting and often kind of wrenching.

https://erinkissane.com/mastodon-is-easy-and-fun-except-when-it-isnt

#meta

Over on tiktok user @nomadicpancakes has observed a group of #bees that have learned to turn on the sensor on a water bottle filling station by walking over the target.

This is just the kind of thing bees are made to learn, they love targets and need to follow them when dealing with flowers all the time.

The interesting thing is that the bee who hits the target produces water for her sisters, herself less so. But these #eusocial girls seem to have that worked out!

https://www.tiktok.com/@nomadicpancakes/video/7255331484444314926

This story is outrageous.

Tesla falsified vehicle range estimates which made owners think their cars were broken when they didn’t experience anything close to that range.

Tesla then canceled their service appointments because they knew there was nothing wrong their cars. They had just been lied to.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/07/tesla-exaggerated-ev-range-so-much-that-drivers-thought-cars-were-broken/

I have a horrible feeling that a lot of people look at forest fires, floods, record heatwaves, etc., and think, "This is how it's going to be from now on."

It's not. We're still pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, where it's accumulating.

The future is going to be much, much worse. Unless we take drastic action now.