iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 02/10/2026

Returning to the first post, the main reason I continue to advocate for the legislative solution (apart from the fact that it's universally recognised as the best, most flexible, solution) is that it provides official recognition to children's rights to play safely on the streets where they live.

010

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 02/10/2026

Instead, for reasons, we will continue to ignore a legislative solution to temporary road closures for the purposes which: •⁠ ⁠Is already provided for in Section 75 of the Roads Act; •⁠ ⁠Is the same solution implemented through the UK; •⁠ ⁠Has already been trialled in Dublin without any issue.

101

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 02/10/2026

The same approach is also described in detail in the Council’s own 2022-2027 Play Strategy. A further irony is that the best version of it - the Westminster model - was actually developed by a Dublin 7 native, Eugene Minogue. active.westminster.gov.uk/activestreets/

active.westminster.gov.uk

Active Streets - ActiveWestminster

Our ActiveStreets programme is designed to open up residential streets across Westminster for play, creating space for physical activity right on your doorstep and increasing the number of people who ...

101

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 02/10/2026

Ironically, this approach was already recommended by DCC’s own Traffic and Transport SPC way back in 2013, again in 2015 and successfully prototyped by the Council itself in 2022, and also demonstrated successfully on 25 Play Streets for National Car Free Day in 2025.

100

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 02/10/2026

Despite the availability of well-founded working templates for a progressive - one-off to permanent - local authority “Play Streets” model, no one, including D7 Play Streets, has been able to convince Councillors or DCC's traffic department to support the same approach.

100

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 02/10/2026

there was lots of praise during mobility week for invited speakers who emphasised the importance of child-centred public realm and mobility policy - but there's no practical support here for it. No movement since 2013 on putting a process in place that allow communities to open streets for play...

100

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 02/10/2026

honestly, I give up: councillors will get behind a speculative process to allow people to close public roads so they can dig up the footpaths to install private car chargers but no support for similar (proven) mechanisms to allow children's street play for two hours priorities...

152

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 28/09/2026

hallo #emca people - looking for ethnomethodological scholars who work on programming, pair programming, or AI-assisted coding? @5tuartreeves.bsky.social or @saulalbert.bsky.social ?

241

Reposted by Emmet Ó Briain

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/09/2026

further weight for the “slow” transport research agenda where you do research by actually physically engaging with and mundanely experiencing the services and infrastructure you’re evaluating (am available for hire)

031

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/09/2026

sorry, last observation on this - just remembered that this same scenario happened last Saturday morning... 80 cancelled at 9:25am approx for people at Heuston stop, but due on schedule at 9:27 at next bus stop (bus was waiting there when I walked up) so nothing to do with "four buses at once", etc!

000

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/09/2026

people want to get out of the city at rush hour - "going special", in my experience, means bringing an empty bus back on schedule for suburban stops outside the city centre (where there is no one getting on and no one on the bus to drop off)

100

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/09/2026

but turn that abstract argument into the practical reality of waiting at rush hour for a bus that is - at its most frequent - once every 15 minutes ... "going special" means the people waiting at the busy city centre stop are bypassed and the later stops (more likely drop-off stops) are serviced

100

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/09/2026

031

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/09/2026

that's happened too (a few times on the 11 - the other bus I rely on when making the "public transport to juvenile activities" trip) - see below!

010

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/09/2026

not in this instance! I think it actually drove past the stop up the road - but it was empty "entering service" and they changed drivers at the garage

100

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/09/2026

either way, seems like going "special" to get back on schedule prioritises the administrative/ managerial/contractual commitment not the bus user's experience!

110

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/09/2026

I've seen that, but this one started its journey from the Conyngham Road stop (pulled in as "entering service" - changed drivers) and shows up on schedule while the bus stop 100m back (at a massive transport/housing node) has its service cancelled

110

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/09/2026

@samtranum.bsky.social see above - is this a known variant of the 'ghost bus'?

110

Emmet Ó Briain @emmet.quiddity.ie · 25/09/2026

yes, but possibly rationally irrational (allows them to report bus on time/schedule at higher % of bus stops on a particular journey)

000

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

The 80 shows as cancelled at Stop 7078 (and never shows up) but if you then walk up to the next stop (1449) at Conyngham Road garage, it then shows as due at that stop as per original schedule and an “Entering Service” bus pulls up and becomes an 80! I also experienced this on Saturday morning!!

321

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).

240

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

130

Reposted by Emmet Ó Briain

Benjamin P Taylor @antlerboy.com · 21/09/2026

Making our way - Tim Ingold This is a special House of Complexity conversation. 29th September Free and online, register here: stream.syscoi.com/2026/09/21/m...

stream.syscoi.com

Making our way – Tim Ingold

This is a special House of Complexity conversation.29th SeptemberFree and online, register here:

011

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.

010

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

140

Reposted by Emmet Ó Briain

InterAct Research Group @interactemca.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Join us for an online data session on Friday 9 October with Shan Shan Li, @robinjsmith.bsky.social and @greiffenhagen.bsky.social on negotiating rights to mobility. #EMCA Register here: forms.cloud.microsoft/r/rYVyNa9dJ4

086

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

As a nation, our favourite policy interventions are: "encouraging" "reminding" "asking" These can be applied flexibly to policies such as climate change, road safety, transport, etc. All considerably more popular than legislation, regulation or enforcement.

031

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

"The aim of Smarter Travel is to get us all to think about how and why we make travel choices for all the trips we make. The aim of Smarter Travel is to get us all to think about how and why we make travel choices for all the trips we make".

110

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”.

172

Reposted by Emmet Ó Briain

Sally Watson @salawatson.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

“The rules around car traffic are hard to modify, and any requests usually go all the way up to municipal authorities”, he added. “And politicians are really scared to touch anything with cars, because they fear it will cost them in votes.”

182

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

reupping @tante.cc’s ‘dissolving the social’ for relevance - “We are already working in conditions that make building the foundations of solidarity harder …As usual ‘AI’ is just gasoline on the fire”. tante.cc/2026/04/01/d...

tante.cc

Dissolving the social

“AI” exists to disenfranchise labor. That’s what it’s for. Regardless of how good these stochastic systems are or the flaws they have just being able to point at the non-unionized robot whenever the e...

083

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

e.g. juvenile camogie allows clubs at specific age groups to field a single combined team when both lack numbers - which means the girls can continue to play

000

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

terrible indictment of the juvenile system in soccer, which leaves kids in Darndale without games because the Dublin District Schoolboys/Girls' League refuses to admit clubs with less than five underage teams - other sports actively support clubs in this situation...

120

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

news of Janette Sadik-Khan on @thewaroncars.bsky.social reminded me of her talk in Dublin a couple of years ago...

000

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

e.g. when I tell people about the idea of allowing communities close residential roads to traffic temporarily for the purposes of street play they say "that's a great idea! why hasn't it been tried before?" and I say: "in 2013, The Transport and Traffic SPC of Dublin City Council recommended..."

020

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

dan ariely has his Centre for Advanced Hindsight and I still don't have my 'Institute for policy domains where the most effective solutions are known and agreed and every bit of additional research just provides more evidences for ideas that we basically already know work yet remain unimplemented'??

1160

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

this is very true in many cases but there's a separate phenomenon where very obvious - and correct - political solutions in various domains remain unimplemented so it's great when people suggest them after 5 seconds' thought because you get to say 'yes! that's exactly what should be done' ...

1433

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

@killianobrien.bsky.social fyi this post on doing numbers is doing numbers

130

Reposted by Emmet Ó Briain

Quantian @quantian.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Dancing very very VERY close to saying “OpenAI stole our almost-complete proof of Navier-Stokes from internal access to our ChatGPT sessions because they were desperate to scoop Anthropic” which is absolutely 100% a believable thing OpenAI would do right now cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/st...

381556449

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

my personal issue with the little public green space available to us in our area is that it's covered in dog shit but i haven't found a lobby for that yet

021

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

there's an unfortunate bent to some conservation and regeneration attitudes in the inner city which, unintentionally I'm presuming, come across as classist and anti-children - we should want more vitality in our cities and that starts with breathing life into the few public leisure spaces available

120

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

it's apparently controversial to believe that, given the very, very, very few public grass spaces in the north inner city, the available opportunities for children to play sport in such spaces should be protected.

141

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

032

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

...which will mean shittier and more fragmented experiences of public services in areas where dependency on external service providers is highest

100

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

Very relevant to central / local govt reform and privatisation too. It only works while you have something to sell off. As capacity dwindles, the state's (mostly unrecognised or ignored) ability to subsidise/support the bits it's sold off to external providers will also likely diminish...

100

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

Looks like more evidence that public sector "reform" which increases dependency on external service providers is likely to increase costs and reduce efficiency in the long term (all the while hollowing out internal expertise/capacity...)

210

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

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

021