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Conor

@conorforde.bsky.social
967 followers 378 following 882 posts

Progressive 💜 ReUrbanist 🏘 Humanist. Renter. Idea Smuggler. Science's biggest problem is politics. Mullingar bai 🇨🇮 "If I'm not joking; I'm not taking this seriously"

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Reposted by Conor
A hot dog hollers @birdrespecter.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 12/10/2026
It's a poor show. But doesn't every party essentially stack their advisor teams with party loyals? Its like the Seanad but jobs for the active party members who don't run. The actual brains of operations are usually department employees, these folks are more "how not to piss off the members" advice.
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Reposted by Conor
Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 09/10/2026
New working paper: the Norwegian wealth tax was a huge success. The "exodus" of wealthy people never happened (less than 100 individuals left). Tax revenue increased by 71.5%. No changes in business activity or investment. www.nber.org/papers/w35854
Taxing Entrepreneurial Wealth: Evidence from
Norway, 2021-2025
Marius A. K. Ring
WORKING PAPER 35854|
DOl 10.3386/w35854
ISSUE DATE October 2026
Whether imposing higher taxes on business owners adversely affects business activity by constraining investment and inducing capitalist flight is a central question in the ongoing debate on how to tax the ultra wealthy. To shed new light, I exploit a series of related Norwegian reforms during 2021-2024 that increased dividend tax rates, removed migration-related capital gains tax loopholes, and nearly doubled the effective marginal tax rate on business wealth. These reforms spurred international debate and, allegedly, an "exodus" of Norwegian billionaires (Financial Times,
2023). While I document clear effects on migration, these responses are concentrated among the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution and mostly confined to 2022 and 2023. My results indicate that at most 100 individuals left due to the reforms. I find no evidence of significant outmigration or reduced inflows of startup founders or inventors. I estimate that absent any outmigration, wealth tax revenues would have increased by 75% from 2021 to 2024. Reform-driven outmigration lowers the revenue gain to 71.5%. My findings further show that outmigrating owners' firms remain economically active and do not reduce investment. In a broader set of analyses, I examine whether business outcomes are affected, regardless of whether owners outmigrate, since firms may reduce investment both due to liquidity constraints or distortions to owners' savings decisions. I compare firms owned by Norwegian individuals subject to the wealth tax with firms owned by foreigners and other tax-exempt entities. By merging historical ownership data from Orbis with the Norwegian shareholder register, I perform these analyses on both Norwegian and foreign-domiciled firms.
Across settings, I find no evidence that Norwegian-owned firms pay out more dividends or invest less after the reforms,…
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Reposted by Conor
Daryl 𝘊𝘰𝘨𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘢𝘯 𝘗𝘩𝘶𝘪𝘮𝘤í𝘯 🎃 Feehely @darylfeehely.com · 06/10/2026
And yet Jennifer Carroll-McNeill just said on #rtept that the State can only afford to give a shingles vaccines to immunocompromised over 85s. #IrishPol
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Chubby cuddlebot Lemma! @lemmaeof.gay · 07/10/2026
the 1979 IBM training document stays true as usual
A sheet of paper with all-caps words reading "A COMPUTER CAN NEVER BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE / THEREFORE A COMPUTER MUST NEVER MAKE A MANAGEMENT DECISION"
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Elizabeth Anne, PhD @lacksauthority.bsky.social · 05/10/2026
never the wrong time for this classic
Screenshot of a tweet by @RobbtKraft reading “scientist: "does everyone here know what Watson and Crick discovered?" 
me from back of room: "Rosalind Franklin's notes"”
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
The did a raise of 100M in 2025, and their burn rate is about 20M a year, so likely Series C raise between now and 2030
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John Burn-Murdoch @jburnmurdoch.ft.com · 04/10/2026
In particular, where one big reason rents are rising is a housing shortage, rent controls do nothing to address that and may worsen it. Here’s my full article on the right and wrong lessons to learn from Spain’s housing crisis www.ft.com/content/437c...
ft.com
The right and wrong lessons to learn from Spain’s housing crisis
Evictions and spiralling rents are the symptom, not the underlying disease
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Patrick Meighan @patsweetpat.bsky.social · 04/10/2026
My former mayor once told me: “people hate all the problems in this town. The only thing they hate more are the solutions to those problems.”
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 03/10/2026
What's going on with nothing in Kilkenny?
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Reposted by Conor
Ariel Edwards-Levy @aedwardslevy.bsky.social · 30/09/2024
the october surprise is october being tomorrow
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Agreed, both above Bojack. And Attack on Titan, Bluey or A:TLA.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 26/09/2026
Fair comment, it's more I'm grasping at straws for what known reps actually represent that wing anymore. Most FF reps that got shut out are already gone mostly independent or elsewhere in some form up to now.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Also the complete lack of any animated media. Seems like it's Bojack Horseman and that's the height of it.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
What complicates the math is that FF itself internally is fractured, the minority want to be more Republican, the majority of it wants to lean the FG direction, but the discontent in the O'Cuiv view of FF who would have an Aontu bias. They're the minority, but the more likely to flip.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
The growth in II is a reaction to today's government, SFs struggles are a fight to keep everyone on side despite the forseen fallout of the possible next government.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
To a degree, but they're a bit more FFG coded. In my mind the II/Aontu divide is essentially still along civil war politics lines. They're both anti-establishment oppositions, but reactions to the perceived failures of the parties, rather than PD style gap in the market logic.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
There are both more votes available on the "preserve/improve" and is the alignment of their potential coalition partners, is an easy predictor of which voters is going to abandon SF the second they ever actually get in government. The implication of that math is that Aontu support *will* increase.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Like that day Ireland legalized drug possession where the Irish language version took precedent. But this time, some new electric scooter law when AI translated into Irish automatically got prompt injected and instead it signs all state owned roads over to ownership to some crypto billionaire.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Multiple countries with public representatives who, blindly vote along party lines, are going to vote in bills, laws and acts containing AI generated wording those representatives (and maybe even their policy researchers) never read, aren't we?
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
If an oil company accidentally causes an oil leak, they get regulatory fines/legal proceedings. Accidental corporate AI hacks should be the same. Just saying you didn't know what your own property was doing is not an excuse, it's corporate negligence. www.smh.com.au/politics/fed...
smh.com.au
OpenAI ‘climbed the fence’: taskforce scrambles after long delays flagging Medicare hack
No penalty has been imposed on US artificial intelligence corporation OpenAI after one of its AI agents infiltrated Medicare in June, as the government scrambles to learn if any laws have been broken.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
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O @omagus.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Like @joshjohnsoncomedy.bsky.social said, Mamdani just pushed the button.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I did assume that. Meanwhile there are solar farms underway at Barryscourt, Ballinrea, and Inniscarra, all in your driving distance there abouts. So multiple groups are following the logic of building beside and connecting to the higher voltage power lines.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
> 608 residential units Not at all that whole area > On the 29th of March 2018, An Bord Pleanála issued a Grant of Permission They doing anything about, I dunno, building that anytime soon?
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Mostly because I don't have a good example of British biodiversity possibilities with that. For all the woes of what Ireland has paved over, the Brits have even Ireland beat in that department.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
And in that same radius, just zoomed out to the other side of that main road, with the same exact same power connections to that very industrial estate but half the cost. Half the money going to companies for the same outcome.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
My point was that the sooner the gas supply is removed from the energy mix, the sooner the electric heating costs come down, reducing that hypothermia. The corps are for profit, but they'll also shank more extractive businesses for their own competitive benefit where the market enables it.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Fine. I'll cop to that in a effort to get things fitting in the format and stay on topic.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Disagree, fine. But I was trying to find a common ground, somewhere, and ya just weren't having it. So not going to continue. Score points? Nobody cares about my little debates, come on. The other person, na, I just don't have time or respect for the ad hominem. Yell into the void for all I care.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
He is, but no, you're not.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
So happy we agree so www.ecoticias.com/en/two-minne...
ecoticias.com
Two Minnesota solar farms turned the ground beneath their panels into habitat, and native bee abundance rose more than 20-fold
Minnesota solar farms planted with native flowers saw native bees rise 20-fold, with bees also pollinating nearby soybean fields.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Everyone is struggling with that upfront capital investment. Even the businesses trying to do it at scale with the way interest rates are. Reducing the upfront costs is the path to getting the electricity prices down, and getting off gas, by maximizing where the money gets invested.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
You are not alone, deeply unfortunately. Many, most, people also can't afford the up front capital cost. Because the retrofitting, the planning, labour, the price of land, the bullshit, is now 98% of the cost, not the panels.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
The agricultural land in these greenfield sites already paved over nature. The only difference is tarmac vs grass monocultures.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
You also specifically said you want solar but can't afford it. What do you think is the root cause for that is when 20 450 watt panels are on Alibaba for €100? It's the rest of the build.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Of course you're not. You're hostage to what you can afford. Buy go on, imagine away and build it yourself so. I give you gracious permission. Ignore the engineering assessments saying that its double the cost per watt. You have FEELINGS. That's what really matters.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Which is the reason France did it at the end of the day with their strong farming lobby.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
My "I could see them do it in limited places" isn't a personal lobby, it's a "I can see FF capitulating to go ahead and do it because on the farming lobby and rural vote, not because it solves the energy problem better".
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Honestly, that's my concession response. If you want the blunter answer; Ripping out existing infrastructure, building and filling back in will always be more expensive than building fresh on greenfield sites. Every time. The "so what" is the opportunity cost of spending more money to achieve less.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
I can imagine it, in specific cases like say in industrial estates, but not at a scale that powers the country, electrifies transport and heating still to come online, and nullifies the need for solar farms in fields in general.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Lots of small daisy chained residential cables vs one large power source cable are different infrastructure. Unless the carpark is for the Croak Park or a Hospital, a Spar car park has no need for 50MW of power coming into them to power some light bulbs and such cable capacity was never built.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Someone needs to be liable for accidents. And if the driver is no longer the licensed driver, either the manufacturer or the insurance company is the one that's legally on the hook for a death. Which, ha, you've *met* corporations right?
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Sinn Fein saw it worked for SD with the three day wait bill earlier in the year. Even doing things a day earlier gets you the credit.
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 22/09/2026
Routing around existing pipes, digging up tarmac for hooking high voltage electricity lines to a transformer station, local traffic interruptions & 300 planning permission appeals from the higher population density directly affected requiring extra meetings, paperwork. I can think of a few.
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Dermot Casey @dermotcasey.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The €1bn spent on fossil fuel sinces April would have put 8kw battery & solar on 100,000 homes buying them energy freedom for 20+ years. The €1bn+ that will be spent over the next few months would bring that to 250,000 homes. What we lack is will and vision
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Conor @conorforde.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
www.koreajoongangdaily.com/business/kor...
koreajoongangdaily.com
Korea raises data breach fines to 10% of revenue
Companies behind major negligent data leaks can now face fines of up to 10 percent of annual revenue under revised privacy rules.
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Holly Anderson 🍇 @hollyanderson.bsky.social · 19/09/2026
I know I say all the time that people who talk like this aren't so much stupid as they think YOU'RE stupid but Kirk thinking anybody will buy him saying "I don't know anything about Ted Cruz's political views" is an UNPRECEDENTED stress test of this theory
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Gavan Reilly @gavreilly.com · 18/09/2026
The people voted almost 50 years ago to widen the Seanad electorate - and only 13 years ago to save it from extinction. But now that the electorate HAS been widened, only 9% of potential voters have signed up. That says many things - including that the upper house is out of favour again.
jrnl.ie
A million people can now vote in Seanad elections, but they're not signing up
The biggest reform to Seanad elections in a generation has opened the university panels to graduates from more than 80 institutions. So far, it’s not gone to plan when it comes to the numbers.
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