iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 24/09/2026

Amazingly I’ve stumbled upon a ghost bus scam whereby if you just walk up the road to the next stop (1449) just after Conyngham Road Garage, you get an empty bus to yourself. So, Stop 7078 gets packed and cancelled buses whereas Stop 1449 has a regular 80 bus service (with lots of free seats).

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 24/09/2026

Going to juvenile training by public transport at rush hour - bus stop beside Heuston Station, atojnf down the road from the new Montpelier development and opposite the site of the proposed tallest residential development in the country. When’s the next 80 due?? 👀 @ray-cunningham.bsky.social

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 23/09/2026

looks amazing - thank you!! Led me to discover his "That's enough about ethnography!" article: www.haujournal.org/index.php/ha...

Explaining what we mean

“Ethnographic” has become the most overused term in the discipline of anthropology. It is hard to say exactly when the term broke loose from its moorings, or what the reasons were for its subsequent proliferation. These reasons are undoubtedly complex and could be the subject for a separate historical study. my concern in this article, however, is prospective, not retrospective. For I believe that this overuse is doing great harm to anthropology, that it is holding it back while other fields of study are surging forward, and that it is actually preventing our discipline from having the kind of impact in the world that it deserves and that the world so desperately needs. And because the cause is desperate, I shall not refrain from polemic. The tenor of what follows is partisan, and deliberately so. I am sick and tired of equivocation, of scholarly obscurantism, and of the conceit that turns the project of anthropology into the study of its own ways of working. A discipline confined to the theatre of its own operations has nowhere to go. In its spiraling descent into irrelevance, it has no-one and nothing to blame other than itself.

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 22/09/2026

this is what broadstone plaza and constitution hill was supposed to look like, according to the 2012 ggda masterplan (i guess if you squint really, really hard .... 🤔 maybe??)

detail from ggda masterplan - broadstone gate phase 3 https://ggda.ie/media/jtqbktzc/081030_masterprint_executivesummary_part4e_small.pdf

detail from ggda masterplan - broadstone gate phase 2 https://ggda.ie/media/jtqbktzc/081030_masterprint_executivesummary_part4e_small.pdf

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 09/09/2026

Our 2009 transport policy "Smarter Travel”: “Commuters will only begin to consider a shift from car to bus transport when the advantages of the bus are greater than those of the car”.

"Smarter Travel: A Sustainable Transport Future”, a 2009 policy setting out Ireland’s transport priorities for the period 2009 to 2020 which says: “Commuters will only begin to consider a shift from car to bus transport when the advantages of the bus are greater than those of the car”.

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 08/09/2026

once again, a versatile metaphor for our times ... works for both "public service delivery outcomes from increased dependency on external service providers" AND "the false promise of labour-saving technology"

Non-functioning retractable bollards at TUD campus in Grangegorman - plastic cones sit on top of them (which require marshalling by an attendant) - maintenance by external automatic bollard company, I have seen them working once in about five years, punctuated by years of non-operation on other side

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 08/09/2026

This morning (September 8th) in Arnott’s 🎄

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 05/09/2026

the real benefit of using public transport to go to juvenile games is the quality of baked goods available on the return journey (usually Parnell Street bakery, today Sugarloaf on Dorset St.)

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 04/09/2026

just for a bit of light relief via local trivia, worth noting that O'Devaney Gardens was named for Concobhar Ó Duibheannaigh, the Bishop of Down and Connor, who "was hanged, drawn and quartered on Oxmantown Green in Elizabethan times."

"The Danish influence in the district is illustrated by such street names as Oxmantown Road, Sigurd Road, etc., etc

Adjacent to the school is the spacious Phoenix Park where Gabriel's hurlers train and practice. Associated with the area is the martyred
Bishop O'Devaney of Down and Connor, who with his companion Father O'Doherty, was hanged, drawn and quartered on Oxmantown Green in
Elizabethan times."

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 04/09/2026

However, in 2026, the O route remains unfunded, leaving the residents reliant on a 30mins off-peak bus service. Instead of the “residential sustainability” promised, car dependency has been embedded from the start. Even as the first residents moved in, it was obviously going to be a shit show...

Car dependency in Montpellier - cars parked on the footpath

Car dependency in Montpellier - cars parked on the footpath #2

Car dependency in Montpellier - uncontrolled parking

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 04/09/2026

I’ve had very little sleep this week and am possibly entering some sort of manic fixation with the 11 bus route but the Montpelier development on the former O’Devaney Gardens site is just a fantastic illustration of the particular nature of our national dysfunction: ’Designed for People, Not Cars’.

Designed for People, Not Cars Sustainability at Montpelier is not limited to energy efficiency — it is about creating a way of life. The development has been thoughtfully designed to prioritise people over cars, with optimised land use that focuses on walkability, accessibility, and liveability. Located less than 3km from O'Connell Street and immediately adjacent to key national transport links, Montpelier enables residents to travel efficiently without the need for private car ownership (with
some resident and on street parking provided).

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 02/09/2026

sitting groups of people at tables in a large room and asking them to write random thoughts on post-its is not a good use of anyone's time or money

Victoria & David Beckham meme:

Victoria: It was a really useful collaborative exercise that surfaced some genuinely new ideas on how we might tackle this issue

David: Be Honest

Victoria: We got sidetracked so somebody wrote some stuff on the post-its at the end when the moderators said we only had one minute left

David: Thank You.

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 02/09/2026

Just discovered possibly my favourite critique of a very particular phenomenon by @lisamcnally.bsky.social 🫡 "...there is a special place in hell for those who try to reduce ... complexity ... to what can be scribbled down on flip charts and sticky notes"

Lisa McNally [@Lisa_McNally1]. (2017, July 9). It all going a bit like… [Tweet]. Twitter.

https://twitter.com/Lisa_McNally1/status/884098516242620416

https://andifugard.info/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/logic-model.jpg

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 01/09/2026

I love seeing this categorization phenomenon and I hope one day that someone will write a paper on it (including me as co-author) "...He's a good player, of course, but that also reflects a low standard: he's nowhere near the level of the best we've seen, your Keanes, Vieiras, Petits, Lampards ..."

"I actually think O'Hara, who doesn't think Bruno is all that, has a point. He's a good player, of course, but that also reflects a low standard: he's nowhere near the level of the best we've seen, your Keanes, Vieiras, Petits, Lampards, Gerrards, Essiens, Scoleseseses, De Bruynes and so on".

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 29/08/2026

ignoring the stuff about Brehon Ireland, i actually agree with his broader point about the presumed desirability or inevitability of professionalism in GAA and the unintended consequences, including bloat and inequality, it involves (he calls it "a runaway train") and the tension with amateurism

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 29/08/2026

GAA reforms proposed by Dublin football managers (Tired) Kevin Heffernan: "abolish the committee, give the manager complete control" (Wired) Jim Gavin: "introduce a two-point arc to encourage attacking play" (Inspired) Pat Gilroy: "we must return to the Túatha"

"Unless we're absolute idiots, Dublin should win everything. If Dublin gets itself properly organised, which it will, that will happen," he said. "I laugh when people go on about the tradition of the counties.
Who put the counties there? The British. We didn't have counties before that, we had túatha. The túatha was more or less like a GAA club. Why are we so wedded to the county system - a British system?

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 28/08/2026

This may be where The Soundkeeper from The Phantom Tollbooth has retired to… “No Ball Games No Loud Noise No Wheeled Play”

The Phantom Tollboot... "But some noises are good sounds,
aren't they?" he insisted. "That may be true," she replied stubbornly, "but if they won't make the
sounds that I like, they won't make any." "But—" he started to say, and it got no further than that.

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 28/08/2026

Not really respecting a “shared space“ when you put up a sign telling children: “No Ball Games No Loud Noise No Wheeled Play” (what’s left for children’s play?)

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 26/08/2026

anyway, here's a picture by @frankie49.bsky.social of the late Willie Dunne -aged 86 - cycling leisurely down Conyngham Road in 2019 ... (having grown up in Dublin when this was a perfectly safe thing to do)

a picture by @frankie49.bsky.social of the late Willie Dunne - at 86 - cycling down Conyngham Road in 2019... Willie represented Ireland in the marathon at the 1960 Olympics in Rome

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/08/2026

New adventures in micromobility on Infirmary Road … what is it???

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/08/2026

A city centre bus route with a 30min + wait if I miss the next one! (i have a very regular chain where i am reliant on both the 80 and the 11 😔)

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 21/08/2026

Delighted that Tourism Ireland have recognised #holdinghashtags as a uniquely Irish phenomenon and incorporated it into their current #IrelandGoesBeyond campaign

Tourism Ireland people holding an #irelandgoesbeyond sign

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 19/08/2026

Alternative Mount Rushmore in Macroom shop window

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 12/08/2026

phone through eclipse glasses

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 11/08/2026

*chortle* "Are qualitative methods scientific?...Some critics echo...Lord Kelvin, who declared that only learning expressed in numbers counted as Science with a capital S. Kelvin also dismissed heavier-than-air flying machines, wireless communication and X-rays as impossible, useless or fraudulent".

Are qualitative methods scientific? It depends what you mean by "scientific." Some critics echo the 19th century
physicist, Lord Kelvin, who declared that only learning expressed in numbers counted as Science with a capital S. Kelvin also dismissed heavier-than-air flying machines, wireless communication and X-rays as impossible, useless or fraudulent. Qualitative methods are more like work in chemistry or some life sciences, where case
studies cumulate and are tested in critical experiments to explore the limits of generalizability. This may not lead to certainty, but it shifts the odds of being correct. If we are trying to understand the nature of order as it is, it is always possible to imagine ways of doing things differently. As British cycling discovered, the accumulation of
marginal gains can have a dramatic effect on outcomes.

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 11/08/2026

On the charge of sociology’s softness… “ Unlike some other social sciences, however, sociologists think it essential to question how numbers are being produced … All quantitative data begin with a qualitative decision that an event is an example of *this* rather than *that*”.

In Merton's day, sociology was charged with becoming excessively quantitative at the expense of the
interpretive understanding favoured by the humanities. Today, this has flipped, with the charge that qualitative methods have been adopted because sociologists find math too difficult and can more easily manipulate them
to produce desired results. Unlike some other social sciences, however, sociologists think it essential to question how numbers are being produced. We can compare pandemic mortality rates in different countries, but unless we know how those rates are generated by the decisions of those defining the cause of death, registering it and coding it, the exercise is meaningless. All quantitative
data begin with a qualitative decision that an event is an example of this rather than that.

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 09/08/2026

An Introduction to Cocanha: Drawing from the Occitan Tradition... klofmag.com/2021/12/an-i...

As mentioned in my show notes, Cocanha are an Occitan duo (ft. Lila Fraysse & Caroline Dufau - although there have been other members including Maud Herrera - who features on their latest release - and Lolita Delmonteil-Ayral) who perform polyphonic songs accompanied by stringed tambourines, feet and hands. They sing in Occitan, a beautifully poetic endangered language spoken by about 1.5 million people across Europe. It's spoken in areas of Southern France, Monaco, Italy's Occitan Valleys, and Catalonia's Val d'Aran (these regions are sometimes referred to as Occitania).

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 09/08/2026

An unexpected crossover... Last week’s visit of the Beano to Dublin, including Dennis the Menace in the Botanics (@n-auchterlounie.bsky.social) and the Bash Street Kids on Grafton Street, made yesterday’s Martyn Turner in the Irish Times!

Dennis the Menace in the Botanic Gardens in the Beano

The Bash Street Kids on Grafton Street in the Beano

The Beano in Martyn Turner // The Irish Times

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 03/08/2026

the unnecessary-cardboard-sign-for-state-agency-photo-shoots industry is AI-proof

Man holding sign that says AI Office of Ireland

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 01/08/2026

A detailed Reddit discussion on: The Pragmatics of Temporal Expressions in Professional Requests in the Irish Workplace “When an Irish colleague says a task is "not urgent at all," how do you know whether they secretly mean it needs doing today anyway?” www.reddit.com/r/AskIreland...

When an Irish colleague says a task is "not urgent at all," how do you know whether they secretly mean it needs doing today anyway?
Work
I am used to fairly direct workplace communication, so I keep misreading the softer Irish version.
On Monday, a colleague gave me a document and said to check it "whenever you get a chance." On Thursday, he casually asked whether I had forgotten about it. Another person regularly says
"no panic," then checks back two hours later because they actually need the answer before lunch.
Nobody is being rude, and I am definately learning that tone matters more than the words. just have not figured out the scale yet.
Is there a reliable difference between "no rush,"
"when you can," and "whenever you get a chance"? What phrase genuinely means it can wait until next week?

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 31/07/2026

The All-Ireland Poc Fada competition takes place on Monday in its spiritual home on the Cooley Mountains, where women and men of all ages will hit a sliotar up and down the mountain to recreate the legend of Cú Chulainn. Great @rtebrainstorm.bsky.social explainer of the origins and history below 👇

silhouette of a hurler striking a sliotar https://www.dublingaa.ie/news/2025-dublin-poc-fada-finals

original map of the Poc Fada course https://www.rte.ie/images/0020b2bd-1440.jpg

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 18/07/2026

activities that go together: children playing - ”no ball games”- and 💩 - ”no dog fouling” (collected under the category of “things that aren’t allowed / we don’t want to see”)

two signs on a wall - one says “no ball games” and one says “no dog fouling”

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 16/07/2026

From Viviana Zelizer’s Pricing the priceless child (1985) “Children cannot obtain space and can lose rights to what they have when others demand more, so children suffer…the new 20thC rules for urban outdoor space, designed by adults for their convenience, constricted the public life of children.”

Recent studies of human spatial behavior note the relative powerlessness of children in the distribution of indoor house- hold space. As Mark Baldassare explains, dominant members of a family "can obtain the space they need for their activities ... by taking it from subordinate members... Children cannot obtain space and can lose rights to what they have when others demand more, and so children suffer."91 Similarly, the new twentieth-century rules for urban outdoor space, designed by adults for their convenience, constricted the public life of children. As one fourteen-year-old boy observed perceptively in 1921, "... a child doesn't make traffic rules, drive cars, etc. The child's main object is to keep out of the way of moving vehicles ."

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 10/07/2026

"My only crime was flying a plane full of cocaine into the Midlands"

Simpson quote - "My only crime was driving a truck full of explosives in from Canada"

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 09/07/2026

"If all you can say is, Well, maybe they could guess the hypothesis, then you basically are saying all psychological research is useless."

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 09/07/2026

struck by the below framing of 'public value' in the recent DPER 'Design for Public Value' guidelines ... realistically, is there a way in which these design principles could ever produce expanded public services?? (Or will they simply be used as a general warrant for trimming services?)

Public value
Value for money and public value point in the same direction:
- Did we spend wisely?
- Did it make a difference?
These guidelines help answer both. Government Design Principle eight commits the public service to delivering value in all its forms. Some of this is measurable - reduced friction, improved compliance, fewer errors, ess rework, time saved for staff and for the people using services. Some of this is harder to measure but no less real. A member of staff who feels their work has purpose. A policy that works because the people it affects were involved in shaping it. A process that makes sense because it was built around how people actually live, not how the organisation is
structured. When people are involved in the decisions that affect them, services improve and
trust builds. These guidelines are a practical means of making that happen. Value for money asks whether resources were used efficiently. Public value asks whether what| was delivered actually made a difference. |

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 06/07/2026

the chaotic coherence of the cúl camp aesthetic is a design classic

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 01/07/2026

The mental image I get whenever I see the phrase "AI ready" ("Quiet, you awful man!")

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 30/06/2026

AI Compass - bambamramfan.github.io/ai-compass/ I’m…

You Are The Luddite (affectionate)

It doesn't work the way they claim, it's making everything worse, and you'd like your internet back, please. You can explain in precise technical detail why it's a stochastic parrot, and you will, whether or not anyone asked. You're funnier about this than people give you
credit for.

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 29/06/2026

it is stuff like this that makes me so squeamish about the current enthusiasm for designing services for “public value” when “value” is quite obviously extremely narrowly defined or otherwise wholly conflated with economic efficiency

Dublin City Council says that as a result of Phase 1 of the ban on bin bags, savings have been made in resources, "as well as collection and disposal costs for waste management services".

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 29/06/2026

one of the biggest political challenges of the day is stemming the outsourcing of public services to external service providers in the name of “efficiency” or “public value”. Below is the result of this approach to public service “reform” taken to its ultimate - and logical -conclusion…

One pound in every £11 of UK government spending on contractors went to private equity-controlled companies last year, research shows, including key services such as transport, waste management and
healthcare. Politicians and economists have raised concerns over the "financial fragility and sharp cost cutting" created by private equity-backed firms, which often have high levels of debt, and the "conflicting interests" in running public services for
maximum profit.

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 26/06/2026

Road closures for engineering/traffic works act as “prefigurative infrastructure” for walking and cycling, effectively trialing alternative road designs. Below, roadworks have inadvertently created a modal filter, eliminating a local rat run and an unsafe pedestrian crossing in the process.

Road works have eliminated a rat-run and fixed an incredibly unsafe junction for pedestrians, making passage between sections of the linear park at Royal Canal Bank much safer. Despite the engineering works, the reduction in road traffic means it's been quieter too.

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Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/06/2026

Very cool final year project by @tudublin.bsky.social civil engineering students supported by @tudublinsustain.bsky.social - detailed design proposals for a sustainable redevelopment of the St Brendan's clubhouse in Longmeadows, incorporating climate change adaptation strategies (link in alt text)

https://www.tudublin.ie/explore/about-the-university/sustainability/about/news-and-events/news-archive/integrated-design-of-a-gaelic-football-facility--.php

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