iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Bringing sunscreen to the playground on October 3rd, seems fine.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Love these guys so much (1967, by local architect Frank Murphy)

Two 1960s/1970s rectangular office buildings, one with navy cladding and one with ochre. Both are reflected in the river on a clear day.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

<"take that Sam Altman" I whisper, standing outside the fertility clinic with my rosary beads>

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

Everybody loves Catholic humanism, the fun theological doctrine that hates AI! <Five minutes later> We regret to inform you etc etc. www.forbes.com/sites/asia-a...

forbes.com

Pope Leo XIV Warns Silicon Valley Against Controlling Humanity Through AI And Algorithms

Pope Leo XIV Escalates AI Warnings—Says Tech Giants Cannot Control Algorithms And Data

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

I think the entire public sector slowly grinding to a halt because the minster for public expenditure wants to burnish his hard man credentials for an upcoming leadership bid should be more of a scandal/news story tbh #speirgorm

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Congratulations Geoff!!! Looks wonderful.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

(obviously I will be deleting this around 2pm when they start waking up)

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

"we need to kill people nicer" really is US bluesky in a nutshell

A post that says "man I have complicated feelings about capital punishment generally but if we are going to do it we have to do it a lot better than this, just mechanically"

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Like, conservatively (because we also "deliver" Y1 sociology to students in programmes outside the main arts degree. To be fair, they also drop from four subjects to two after first year, so the numbers go down a lot)

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

And to be fair - and not to be holier than thou - ofc lots of people in Ireland read it too (I assume they take shit like this out of the Irish edition, but who knows!).

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

It is, alas, the top selling (non-free) newspaper in the UK. So unfortunately lots of people read it.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Once again reflecting on how much our national discourse is constituted by hyper-vigilant attempts to be generous & nuanced about the history of British imperialism and British papers are just like, "lol, subhumans"

A daily mail headline: Forget The Craic. Modern Ireland is sanctimonious, angry - and addicted to grievance and playing the historical victim: DAVID PATRIKARAKOS

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

(Maybe they know a guy on X called "Leo Varadkar" who has a lot of solid takes and could really do something in politics IMHO)

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

Big fan of this "labour party" I keep seeing on the timeline. Pity there's no think tank or something to connect them to policymakers.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

right and when class sizes are, like, 10 students in a class

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

also LOL at "let's give every student a one hour oral exam" - mate, we have 600 students in first year sociology, this may not be a scaleable soution.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

What am I missing here? He's letting them use AI for their essays, but then giving each student a 45-minute (!) oral exam, presumably to ensure that they have actually done the work themselves. So, they... can't actually use AI in any meaningful way then?? www.nytimes.com/2026/09/29/o...

nytimes.com

Opinion | I’m a College Professor. Writing Isn’t as Important as We Think. (Gift Article)

If I do not treat writing as essential for achieving thought, it is not clear why I should force my students to.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

(Like, more seriously, I do think it's important not to only take mourning as a depoliticised register of bereavement etc, but also to think critically about what specific instances, forms, rhetorics of public mourning *do*)

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Hah, that's literally what I'm teaching!!

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I would generally never comment on someone's bereavement, but a grief-laden fantasia of "the union" as fulfillment of the absent patriarch's reproductive dream is both bizarre and telling IMO.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

we actually changed it to "replay" locally for this reaosn (!) but panopto just stuck with me

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I dunno, I get lively attendance in the room and *zip* on the recordings. Maybe a good lesson there!

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

oh, absolutely my experience. the ones listening are so rarely the ones who really should be listening -_-

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

*although* it is vaguely worth it just for that look on students' faces the first time you tell them that - unsolicited! - the software tells you, by name, the exact minute each of them switched off at.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I'll tell you a thing you should never do and it's look at your panopto stats

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

I only realised now, while prepping notes for students, that Kurt Danziger died last month. Danziger was not only one of the most influential historians of psychology but also an anti-Apartheid activist and, before that, a child refugee from Nazism. A great loss. humanities.uct.ac.za/department-p...

humanities.uct.ac.za

Obituary: Kurt Danziger (1926-2026)

The Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town mourns the passing of Professor Kurt Danziger, who died on August 11, 2026 at the age of 100.

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Reposted by Des Fitzgerald

Niamh NicGhabhann Coleman @niamhroisin.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Disgraceful to hear the dignified people of Garvaghy Road described as a ‘mob’ - they are standing up for themselves as a community and I am sure would prefer to be getting on with their lives.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

"Ireland shouldn't be making a fuss about genocide" says a member of a legislature that literally genocided Ireland 👍

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

This is niche, but as an ex-product of the Westmeath/Offaly border, I think you could write a *pretty good* esoteric history of Ireland since 1950, focusing only on happenings at The Well hotel and bar, Moate, Co. Westmeath. bsky.app/profile/iris...

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

(You hear about music that's popular in the US now and it's like getting a tantalising glimpse of what's setting the clubs alight in some satellite soviet republic in the early 1980s).

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

I would genuinely rather die than ever find out what "choosin texas" refers to.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Andy Burnham's Labour yet to find a fascist march it couldn't enthusiastically get behind tbf.

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Reposted by Des Fitzgerald

Susan Lanigan @susanlanigan.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

The problem with John Self’s post is that he reviews fiction for the Irish Times and that can have a real effect on an author’s career. So when he equates the Garvaghy Road protestors against unionist supremacy with anti-immigrant fash, that’s a real problem for authors writing about these topics.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Genuinely must be exhausting being the dcu nepo baby, having to constantly rummage around in Ireland's emptiest head, painstakingly assembling individual syllables into a loose, moron-friendly simulacrum of comprehension/analysis.

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

"obviously a challenging situation today" this gobshite is so out of his depth jfc

PM Andy Burnham appeals for 'calm on all sides'
The prime minister has just been speaking on the BBC about the parade, calling for calm to prevail.

“I know it’s a tense situation. We do appeal for calm on all sides,” he told Laura Kuenssberg on her politics show.

“There have been big gains made in Northern Ireland, and we don’t want to see things go backwards.

“So, obviously, a challenging situation today, but it’s very important that we work to bring calm.”

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Des Fitzgerald @desfitzgerald.bsky.social · 26/09/2026

Oh no, that's not true. All of Dublin loves U2, Dublin's best band.

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