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Liam Hogan

@liamhogan.bsky.social
19K followers 4.2K following 514 posts

Librarian & Historian. Twitter migrant. Researching Slavery - Memory - Power. Blog > medium.com/@Limerick1914 hcommons > hcommons.org/members/liamhogan

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Reposted by Liam Hogan
IIML @modernletters.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
‘When the government replaces a New Zealand public servant with AI, what really happens is this: money that used to be paid to someone living in Wellington, Lower Hutt or Palmerston North gets paid instead to a tech giant in California or Seattle’ newsroom.co.nz/2026/05/21/b...
newsroom.co.nz
Before we let AI run the public service, we need to know the full impact
New Zealand is badly under-prepared for mass deployment of AI in the public sector - and the latest Budget measures are being made without safeguards, writes Professor Alexandra Andhov
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Reposted by Liam Hogan
Iron Spike @ironspike.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
We all literally, LITERALLY just watched NASA fly four absolute all-stars the farthest any human has ever been from Earth and back flawlessly, and yet we're still continuously forced to pretend Musk's bullshit catastrophe factory is the future of human space exploration
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Dr Keith 🎃 Wilson @keithwilson.eu · 21/05/2026
“We’re told that if we don’t use #AI then we’ll get left behind, but what if we’d like to leave the AI boosters behind instead? It’s time to give a voice to those who don’t view AI as an inevitability but a liability.” #GenAI #TechEthics #RejectAI
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Annalee Newitz @annaleen.bsky.social · 20/05/2026
Meanwhile, publishers are blocking the Internet Archive, a digital library, from archiving their journalism due to fears of "AI scraping." That's right -- the same papers selling their work to AI companies are blocking a nonprofit archive due to "fears of AI." (2/3) www.niemanlab.org/2026/05/more...
niemanlab.org
More than 340 local news outlets are limiting the Internet Archive’s access to their journalism
McClatchy, Advance Local, Tribune Publishing and other major newspaper chains are restricting the nonprofit's archiving bots.
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Surprised Eel Historian, PhD @greenleejw.bsky.social · 18/05/2026
I don’t know what to tell you, man. I’m a medieval historian, and, in my field, if you don’t check your sources (and your sources’ sources) you are just asking to be taken for a ride by some bored 19th C. aristocratic English antiquarian with a penchant for inventing history.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
bsky.app/profile/jeff...
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Reposted by Liam Hogan
Chaucer Doth Tweet @levostregc.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Tech Bros are lyke "oh man do not go to college it ys too manye bookes - instead, just use generaciounal wealthe to create a startup that doth helpe companyes charge more for watir on hot dayes"
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Irina Dumitrescu @irinadumitrescu.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Resharing this essay I wrote for @creativecritical.bsky.social. When I wrote it, I thought it was a reflection on the past. I now see it was a guide to my future. creativecritical.net/why-im-no-lo...
creativecritical.net
Why I'm No Longer a Proper Academic - Creative-Critical
By Irina Dumitrescu. A talk given at the Creative Critical launch event at UCL's Institute for Advanced Studies in September 2022.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
Thread bsky.app/profile/jord...
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Reposted by Liam Hogan
Philip Boucher-Hayes @philipb-h.bsky.social · 04/05/2026
The Taoiseach wants consideration of nuclear. I made a programme that did that. Long story short: an Irish nuclear power plant wouldn’t generate any electricity until 2066 at the very earliest. Link at end of thread.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Learning is a difficult and slow process. There are no shortcuts. And it is this process (reading, thinking, engaging) that makes analysis itself possible - to suggest that the heavy lifting can be outsourced in this way fundamentally misunderstands, and indeed undermines, the purpose of education.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
An argument I keep hearing re: promoting AI use in third level institutions, is that it will free up students to work solely on analysis/higher order thinking rather than having to do the reading. Thus displacing the process of *learning* with a fleeting and illusory ‘efficiency’.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 03/05/2026
Populous
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Reposted by Liam Hogan
Darren Dahly @statsepi.bsky.social · 21/02/2026
"I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould
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Neil Mackay @neilmackay.bsky.social · 29/04/2026
I’m fucking horrified that folk 100s of years from now are going to refer to this period as the Trumpian Age or some shit and I’m gonna be lumped in with all the dumb extremist dicks. Solidarity with dead people from the 19th century who thought empire was for arseholes and now get called Victorians
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
To put this into context, at the time of abolition, slave owners based in Ireland are underrepresented and accounted for about 4% of all absentee landlords claiming slave compensation. Wales had less than 2%, Scotland accounted for approx. 20%, and England 75% (see work by Nicholas Draper).
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Or look at Newtown House located in Abbeyknockmoy, Co. Galway. This property was developed by brothers, John and James Kelly, who had two plantations in Jamaica and claimed over £6000 in compensation for their 316 enslaved people in 1835.
Photo of Newtown House and courtyard showing the extent of the property.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
The development of Westport House in Co. Mayo, for example, is directly linked to the Browne family’s ownership of lucrative slave plantations in Jamaica. So profitable that Lord Sligo voted against a slave trade restriction bill in 1806 and the abolition of the slave trade in 1807.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Meanwhile merchants and landlords in Ireland made fortunes during the Georgian period trading provisions (beef, butter, &c.) with all the European slavocracies in the Caribbean and then selling the produce of racial slavery to the Irish market (e.g. sugar, rum, tobacco).
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 26/04/2026
Most of the Irish who settled in Jamaica went there willingly from the late-17th to early 19th century. As free labourers, servants, merchants and planters. Jamaica was in fact one of the most lucrative colonies for Irish planters in the Anglo-Caribbean.
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Science Magazine @science.org · 25/04/2026
U.S. President Donald Trump has fired all 24 members of the National Science Board, the body that oversees the National Science Foundation. scim.ag/4cxQWhl
scim.ag
Trump fires NSF's oversight board
Dismissal of the National Science Board is widely seen as latest move to erase NSF’s independence
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Jamaica (1686): “Every man killing a [rebellious] negro to have £20, or, if a servant, his freedom…every man taking a negro to have £40; any party killing a negro to divide £20 round."
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Henry Cromwell did propose a scheme in 1655 to send a thousand Irish "girls and youths" to Jamaica to shore up the settlement there, but there is no indication it was ever fulfilled. The evidence points towards Barbados being the main destination, w/ some arriving in other colonies (e.g. Bermuda).
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
It is oft repeated that Jamaica (most recently re: the Thomas Gould 'accent' story) was a direct destination for many of the estimated thousands of Irish forcibly shipped to the West Indies by the Cromwellian regime, but in actuality we have little historical evidence of this.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
The townland of 'Dalysgrove' in Galway is where Peter's great grandfather Dermot Daly had been transplanted by the Cromwellian regime in the 1650s.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Peter Daly of Galway immigrated to Jamaica in the 1780s and named one of his plantations in Jamaica 'Dalysgrove' after his home in Galway. By the 1820s he owned 120 slaves. In 1834 he claimed compensation for 113 slaves and was awarded £2,318.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Commissioners [inspecting] her plantations in America (1715): "...the inhabitants of Jamaica employ their white servants as overseers."
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Jamaica (1681): “All servants coming or transported to Jamaica to serve for four years; every person carrying or transporting servants to receive thirty acres of land for each servant landed.” “Servants to be entitled to thirty acres at the end of their term."
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Roche, Ryan, Sheridan, Sullivan, Tierney, Tyrrell and Walsh.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Hennessy, Hoare, Hynes, Kearney, Kelly, Kennedy, Kenyon, Kirby, Lalor, Larkin, Lynch, Madden, Magee, Maguire, Mahon, Mahoney, Mahony, McCarthy, McDermott, McDonnell, McGrath, McInerney, McKenna, McNaughton, Murphy, Nolan, Nugent, O’Brien, O’Connor, O’Hagan, O’Leary, O’Neill, Phelan, Prendergast,
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
Cuming, Cummings, Cummins, Curran, Dalton, Daly, Delaney, Devaney, Devoy, Dillon, Doran, Downes, Doyle, Duggan, Dunn, Dunphy, Egan, Farrell, Fennell, Fenton, Fergus, Finn, Fitzgerald, Fitzhenry, Fogarty, Foley, Garvey, Gaynor, Geary, Geoghegan, Gildea, Gill, Gilmore, Grace, Guerin, Hackett, Hayes
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 25/04/2026
When slavery was abolished in Jamaica in 1834, the following Irish surnames were present in the long list of compensated slave-owners: Barry, Bourke, Boyle, Brady, Brennan, Broderick, Buckley, Burke, Byrne, Carey, Carroll, Codd, Coleman, Collins, Conway, Corbett, Costello, Cowan, Creighton, Crowley
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Topher Florence @topherflorence.bsky.social · 23/04/2026
social media was a wonderful brain toilet for every random half thought you didn't want to bother real people with before they decided to move all of society and infrastructure and government inside of the toilet
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Petter Törnberg @pettertornberg.com · 23/04/2026
Social media is no longer social. Most of it is passive viewing of videos and pictures from people we've never met. But we're still studying social media like it's 2010. We've entered the post-social media era — and research needs to catch up. osf.io/preprints/so... preprint w/ Richard Rogers
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Arife Kose @arifekose.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
This is true for varoius forms of the beast that we're facing today: regardless of its different forms, what these new reactionary, authoritarian political movements and figures aim at is to replace the existing form of politics with a new one. This is a kind of action beyond formal persuasion.
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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
"logic of Musk’s empire is total. X shapes the discourse. Grok automates it. Grokipedia rewrites the historical record. Starlink can deliver it all, everywhere, to everyone. Each layer reinforces the others. It’s not about winning arguments in the public sphere. It’s about building a replacement."
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The Verge @theverge.com · 21/04/2026
"In the place of problem-solving technology, companies have jumped on successive bandwagons like NFTs, the metaverse, and LLMs. What these all have in common is that they are not built to really solve a market problem. They are built to make VCs and companies rich." Read more: buff.ly/Yu2AUFy
Verge headline: Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want
by Elizabeth Lopatto

Illustration of a brain melting in the sun
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Reposted by Liam Hogan
Patrick Freyne @patrickfreyne.bsky.social · 18/04/2026
I wrote about why we should keep reading and writing www.irishtimes.com/life-style/p...
irishtimes.com
Patrick Freyne: Here’s why AI is making us dumber and more lonely
Writing forces people to resolve internal contradictions and confront their own bullshit. It’s why it’s hard. It’s why it’s beautiful
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lastpositivist.bsky.social @lastpositivist.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
It's harder to measure but I feel like RFK Jnr shutting down funding for MRNA research is actually up there with DOGE cuts and this latest Iranian war as a contender for Most Evil Things Trump II has done. Accounted properly, this regime is really wracking up 20th-century-dictator kill counts imo.
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The New York Times @nytimes.com · 18/04/2026
In the months leading up to the midterm elections, hundreds of accounts have emerged on social media featuring A.I.-generated pro-Trump influencers posting at a rapid pace. Several accounts have already amassed thousands followers. Some of the posts have more than half a million views.
nyti.ms
Hundreds of Fake Pro-Trump Avatars Emerge on Social Media
The artificial-intelligence-generated fake influencers have surged on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube in an apparent bid to hook conservative voters.
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The Journal Investigates @investigates.thejournal.ie · 17/04/2026
NEW: A cross-border investigation led by @investigate-europe.eu has revealed how industry lobbying is shaping data centre regulation in the EU. jrnl.ie/7013368
jrnl.ie
How Big Tech wrote secrecy into EU law to hide data centres’ environmental toll
A cross-border investigation has revealed how industry lobbying is shaping data centre regulation.
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Liam Hogan @liamhogan.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
Watching some opposition parties in Ireland once again point blank refuse to condemn the malicious blockading of critical state infrastructure last week. The same far-right elements mentioned in this thread were all in support. I have no love for this govt, but this is beyond reckless.
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Russell England @russellengland.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
France is switching from Microsoft to Linux "We must become less reliant on American tools and regain control of our digital destiny. We can no longer accept that our data, our infrastructure, our strategic decisions depend on solutions whose rules, pricing, evolution, and risks we do not control."
numerique.gouv.fr
numerique.gouv.fr
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Peter Geoghegan @petergeoghegan.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
As Hungary votes, would recommend this piece about how Viktor Orban has used public money to bankroll an international ultraconservative network - including Roger Scruton cafes and €10k a month for failed Reform candidate Matt Goodwin democracyforsale.substack.com/p/orbans-brits
democracyforsale.substack.com
What happens to Britain's radical right if Orbán loses?
Inside the money, power and patronage connecting Hungary and the British right
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Jan Rosenow @janrosenow.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
Without energy efficiency, the EU would need — and pay — 31% more for energy today. Since 2000, efficiency has removed 265 Mtoe of demand from the market entirely. The best protection against a price shock is not finding cheaper oil and gas. It's needing less of it.
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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 12/04/2026
i think people have forgotten that vance is quite possibly the least experienced person to *ever* serve as vice president of the united states
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Paul Price @swimsure.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
“The reality is that we don’t have any food security in Ireland because the vast majority of what we consume is imported and the vast majority of what we produce is exported” – Emma Howard, economist, Technological University Dublin. Another excellent article by @codohertynews.bsky.social
irishtimes.com
Fuel protests reveal flawed relationship between farms, fertilisers and food
Farmers have warned of food shortages but Ireland imports most of what it eats
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Louth For Ever 🦋 @louthforever.bsky.social · 11/04/2026
I’ve managed to string together my thoughts through the rage this week, please read & share 💭✍🏼 #Spéirghorm #IrishPolitics #Fascism 🔗 tinyurl.com/wak45j7d
Article Link: The Blockade Is the Message, How a fuel price spike became a fascist audition
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Hannah Daly @hannahdaly.ie · 10/04/2026
The only way to durably protect hauliers - and the economy - against fossil fuel shocks is to support them to electrify trucks. Sales of electric trucks in China outsold diesel trucks last December. So far this year, only one electric HVG was newly registered in Ireland. #fuelprotests #speirgorm
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