iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Good morning. Looks like Autumn’s finally kicking in. Drogheda looks well in the mist.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Somehow I never posted my August reading, which got bogged down after the profundities of the Pope’s encyclical on living in an AI world, such that it’s only now I’m finishing other books off. The Richter book on cultural continuity in Ireland’s first historical millennium, fwiw, is fascinating.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 27/09/2026

Well, it’s a dark day. Having hitherto had not even one book in our 7,000-strong collection written by somebody whose name begins with Q (though we have one edited by a Quinn, and a sketchbook by the supposed Quitely), I’ve bought our first authentic Q text. So far it seems good.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

That was a fun trip to Manchester and Liverpool, where I revisited old haunts, some having changed immensely, others having stayed refreshingly familiar, visited what I hope will be regular spot in the years and decades to come, and spent glorious time in the company of so many wonderful people.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

Always - always - tempting to be back on the Way of St James. Especially when we’ve brand new Camino waymarker here in Drogheda.

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Dr Dean Burnett @drdeanburnett.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Having full rights to The Muppets and not just doing The Muppet Show again is like having control over every premiership football team and arguing over whether you should make them play snooker or all compete in some elaborate version of Ready Steady Cook.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

It hasn’t been a bad week, all things considered, with charms of the week including a first encounter with a new neighbour, a delicious Sicilian dinner we missed out on in Sicily, meaningful new paintings up on the wall, and two collections of seventeenth-century Irish poetry got for a song.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Picked this up today. It’s impressive to see how clear-eyed Ireland was back in 1970 in its considerations of what joining the EEC would have meant. It’s striking how people nowadays act as though various developments since then were not on the cards from day one.

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Stan Carey @stancarey.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

"He was perhaps less a political radical than a bohemian individualist, resentful of authority and restive with institutional restraints." Terry Eagleton on the politics of James Joyce: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4... #SpéirGhorm

lrb.co.uk

Terry Eagleton · Starveling Rabblement: Joyce’s Politics

Joyce stands out among the great modernist writers for his belief in tolerance, equality, democracy, progress and the...

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Good stuff today, but disappointing news too. My desktop sidekicks are of course advising that I should just plod on, and I will. In a bit.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

It was excellent. And my description of it in advance proved more apt that I had expected.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Folks, I’m about to watch a film about Sisyphus suing his boulder. It looks great. I hope others come to see it.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

My old blog is a neglected attic nowadays, but still, it seems as good a place as any share my thoughts on Nolan’s Odyssey, why I love how bland his Greek armour is, the wisdom of Xenia, and the lessons we should have learned from Andromeda and Memnon: thethirstygargoyle.blogspot.com/2026/08/an-o...

thethirstygargoyle.blogspot.com

An Odyssey: Reflections on an Adaptation

'It was outstanding,' wrote one of my classicist friends in a WhatsApp group after seeing Christopher Nolan's film of The Odyssey a couple...

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 15/08/2026

I think it’s been four years since I’ve last written anything for publication, life having taken a few turns over recent years, so it’s nice to be able to share my @plough.bsky.social debut: www.plough.com/articles/are...

plough.com

Are Moving Statues Spiritual Junk Food? | Plough

What drove thousands of Irish Catholics to visit a shrine in hopes of seeing a statue move?

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Inferior eclipse yesterday. I’d been hoping for a full-on seagull-shadow-on-sun effect, as depicted on Dublin’s streets.

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Robber Fly @robber-fly.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

“Abelard Snazz believes that the solution is always more robots, even when robot solutionism is obviously the root cause of the problem. So too for the Economist, arguing that the solution to the problems caused by AI is more AI, with a healthy dollop of rights-pruning on the side.”

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Just six books in July, which continued the holiday fiction trend with a great introduction to Deighton followed by the peerless Jackson. The Iliad essays were timely and superb, Dirda on Doyle was fun, Cicero on friendship was excellent, and the Bangor book was odd but definitely worthwhile.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 02/08/2026

Was tempted earlier by the idea that I could see The Odyssey a third time, this time on the Superduperimaxscreen when visiting London, but it seems every showing is sold out to the end of time. In fairness, it’s very good, and improves with the rewatching.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

This is a superb statement by UEFA, and a model for those who think that not everything should have a price, that ownership of things we love and care about should be available to anyone with sufficiently deep pockets: www.uefa.com/news-media/n...

uefa.com

Statement on behalf of UEFA and its 55 national associations

UEFA and its national associations will not participate in FIFA competitions.

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eolaí the artist @eolai.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

A trial of a limited print shop. 25 of my paintings available as prints for first time in almost a year. If in Ireland or UK you'd probably want to restrict yourself to Art Prints, Canvas Prints or Posters to avoid customs hassle. (No issue if in North America) fineartamerica.com/profiles/4-l....

fineartamerica.com

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Nine books for June, including some regular fiction for a change. The Véliz book could be the most important book you’d read this year, while I can see why Daniel-Rops is regarded as a classic and the Maritain is something for anybody thinking of rebuilding a broken and corrupted world.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 10/07/2026

Looking forward to going to see Nolan’s take on The Odyssey next week, though it’s awful when people depict characters from poems set in Mycenaean times in Archaic Greek outfits and armour. (Or when they don’t go for the “Helen spent the war in Egypt, with a mere phantom in Troy” option.)

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

I’ll take “Things Dubliners would never say” for two hundred, please.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

“Semiquincentennial” is an odd term, suggesting not a 250th anniversary but a halfway point on a journey to a 500th. There’s confidence there, anyway.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Syracuse proved an impressively theatrical place to visit. Can definitely recommend.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

It’s striking that even now the phrase being used is “previously purchased Studio Canal content”. Not “previously purchased licenses to view Studio Canal content”. If the words “purchase” and “own” mean anything they surely exclude this kind of shenanigans, and I’m not sure how it’s legal.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

It’s a bit tiring watching @ryanairofficial.bsky.social assigning passengers unsuitable for the emergency seats to them and having to do a dance to accommodate their passengers properly and safely, with their cabin baggage stranded. The app should enable passengers to opt out of those seats.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 06/06/2026

Just seven books in a less book-rich May than I’d hoped, though it was fun catching up with Saga which I’d been neglecting, and the other books were all worthwhile, with the one on the Cáin Adomnáin - which should be much better known - being particularly good.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

There are very good reasons why the Vatican is saying that the big tech companies “exercise de facto power over the conditions of everyday life” and that it would be appropriate for States and transnational bodies to regulate and police them for the good of all.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

It’s misleading for +Barron to say, for instance, that the Pope’s new encyclical places the moral legitimacy of private property and the free market alongside the universal destination of goods when it explicitly says they are subordinate to it and to the principle of solidarity.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 26/05/2026

Some familiar spots on the flight this morning: the Menai Strait flying over Anglesey; Llandudno and Conwy; Brighton with the wonderful charred skeleton of West Pier just about visible; and finally Paris, where I’m currently waiting for my train. Meetings are on the cards.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

I’m finding this book deeply frustrating. It’s readable, and I’m learning a fair bit, but it makes bizarre claims about the natures of friendship in the past and even on its own terms it has vast gaps that undermine the landscape it’s trying to map.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

Headline-writers at @irishtimes.com, the winner getting one-and-a-half times the points of the runner-up is not “pipping them at the post”. I mean, be fair.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 16/05/2026

Honestly, I don’t see what the Pope has against manuscripts. We have some cracking ones in Dublin. Printed books are clearly for rank modernists.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 12/05/2026

I’m doing well on the auld culinary multitasking nowadays. Lunches are proving especially productive on the reading front.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 09/05/2026

It’s weird to read responses to this, seeing how many people have trouble distinguishing between a nation and a state. I wonder if this is because in the US the word “state” can mean a bit of a sovereign country, whereas elsewhere it means a sovereign country, with such including “nation-states”.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Five books for April, with finishing the depressingly timely Hannah Arendt and the often timeless Chesterton collection taking most of the month. The Batman book contained some fabulously spooky detective stories, while Boyer was fun and Bratten Weiss was seriously thought-provoking.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Fun way to start my day - just a few weeks after the best royalty payment I’ve had in about a decade, I’ve finally used my author discount for the first time since I wrote my Cannae book half my life ago: www.amazon.co.uk/Cannae-Exper... Not a bad payoff for a master’s thesis!

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 02/05/2026

As first days of summer go, that was a nice one. I enjoyed the company as I worked…

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

Over some light lunchtime reading, I’m struck by how Augustine thought war’s objective horrors less important than participants’ spiritual state, and how it’s odd anybody would think an attack called “Operation Epic Fury” - “Massive Tantrum” being too on the nose - might in any sense be a just war.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

Not a bad evening, that: a glorious sunset over the Boyne, and the finale for what I’d be pretty confident in describing as by some way the best adaptation of “The Count of Monte Cristo” I’ve ever seen.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 25/04/2026

@naomiohreally.bsky.social Very much liked your piece on Vance et al and the Pope. I’ve strongly of the view that there’s an obvious term for when a certain vice president tells the Pope to stay in his lane and takes it upon himself to lecture him on what Catholic teaching actually is.

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Julie D @jfount.bsky.social · 23/04/2026

I really don't have time for this. Driving in Ireland is very different to driving in America. Why having a US driver's license (which could represent any of 50 different regulatory regimes) should entitle you to some kind of fast track I don't know.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

Some exciting post today - the latest @plough.bsky.social and from @beehivebooks.bsky.social a really beautiful edition of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Wonder Book’ illustrated by the marvellous Das Pastoras.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 15/04/2026

Folks, I think the word we want here is “Vansplaining”.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 11/04/2026

I regret to inform you that it’s not looking good for the Cat in the Hat.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 08/04/2026

March was, I’m afraid, a pretty sparse month for reading - just two books completed, and me a chunk of the way through a third. Still: these were both worth the reading, with the Clark one being a fascinating study in stakeholder management in the context of NATO’s first sustained campaign.

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

“The Spartans were destroyed, and for victory in spirit they laid down their lives. It would be wicked to say that they suffered defeat, when not one of them deigned to seek escape.” Isocrates isn’t a forgotten author, but he could do with more attention: cmuntz.hosted.uark.edu/texts/isocra...

cmuntz.hosted.uark.edu

Translated by George Norlin for the Loeb Classical Library, 1930, and now in the public domain

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

“Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous,” Primo Levi reminded us, highlighting the real threat: “More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions…”

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Greg Daly @gregdaly.bsky.social · 05/04/2026

“Mad, you say!? Mad!? Could a mad person do this?” “Indeed sire, God himself isn’t up to your standards.” 524 BC? 2026 AD? Who can say?

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