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Richard Irvine

@robotforaday.bsky.social
1.2K followers 376 following 504 posts

Anthropologist and on-call firefighter. Rousay, Orkney / St Andrews, Fife. Author of _An Anthropology of Deep Time_ (Cambridge UP, 2020) and _The Vow of Stability_ (Scottish UP, 2025). Counter-revolutionary.

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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 06/10/2026
Children are a gift from the Lord, a blessing, the fruit of the womb. Indeed, the sons of youth are like arrows in the hand of a warrior. Blessed is the warrior who has filled his quiver with these arrows! He will have no cause for shame, when he disputes with his foes in the gateways.
Screenshot of preview of a video from BBC News with the caption "I found out I had cancer when son kicked my testicles"
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 24/09/2026
"Saline giant, moving" Very excited to receive the published copy of my pamphlet on Potassium today - part of the Errant Elements chapbook project edited by Marina Peterson and Gretchen Bakke
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 23/09/2026
Today is the feastday of St Eunan (St Adomnán of Iona) and a day to repost this poem by Eoin McNamee
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Everything about my life and career ultimately comes back to this one game. We still play it as a family every Christmas.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
¡Feliz Gibraltar National Day a todos! National Day commemorates the 1967 referendum in which Gibraltar voted to remain British. This national day is the first celebration since the UK-EU agreement that opened the Gibraltar frontier. A day for Gibraltarians to celebrate their self-determination.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 20/08/2026
Been out in Mongolia, speaking about the poet Natsagdorj, but mostly circling ovoos in the Tolbor valley of Khutag Undur sum, Bulgan aimag
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
"Fire answered fire from the hill-tops, till all Orkney was a dapple of flame and shadow in the midsummer midnight. It was the great Johnsmas fire... At the fire on the hilltop the young men and women danced among the flames till morning" George Mackay Brown Fire in Egilsay at the Solstice Festival
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 24/05/2026
Some happy fieldwork memories from the Cambridgeshire chalk hills... At Pentecost we would go to Whaddon where dancers would sing the Whitsun Song while carrying their "royal branch of oak" through the street and into the church. And then on to the golf club for a beer/cider festival.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 25/01/2026
DCI Burnside, legendary character in long running ITV show "The Bill" stands outside Sun Hill police station ready to join the "British FBI"
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 31/10/2025
Neepie lantern. Happy Halloween.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
A key theme of today's ritual is to recall the generations who fought for Gibraltar's existence, and to communicate that sense of belonging for future generations. Here are two flags flown at the National Day rally that give a sense of the lively development of Gibraltarian national identity today.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 10/09/2025
Happy Gibraltar National Day! Today commemorates the sovereignty referendum of 1967, when the people of Gibraltar voted to reject Franco and retain their British sovereignty. Wonderful to be back on fieldwork here.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
The "Papa" in Papa Stronsay attests to the long presence of monks on the island (from the old norse "papar"; fathers/priests). The remains of an Norse-era chapel (C11th) can be found here, but beneath are signs of an earlier chapel from Pictish times. The current monks purchased the island in 1999.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 17/07/2025
Recently stayed at the monastery of the Sons of the Most Holy Redeemer, Papa Stronsay. The brothers work in the Redemptorist tradition of St Alphonsus Liguori- but their life at the face of the sea & architecture of separate cells also revives the spirit of St Columba's Hiberno-Scottish monasticism.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
Fire to mark the night of the Summer Solstice, Egilsay, Orkney.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 20/05/2025
"this continuity is not simply the comfort of familiarity; it is an unsettling of the ordinary and the everyday... Stability is a work of perseverance open to the unknown." My new book, The Vow of Stability, now published open access with @scotunipress.bsky.social books.sup.ac.uk/sup/catalog/...
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Annual celebration of Norwegian Constitution Day, Kirkwall, Orkney.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 08/05/2025
For this reason I like Edwin Kelly's experimental composite reading of the manuscripts, "And After This I Saw", which presents Julian's texts as a site of spiritual struggle, a series of crossings out, stop-starts, trying to find the right word when there isn't one.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
When I first visited the site in 2017, the statue had not yet been assembled (see the photos below). Now the 54m structure has taken shape, but it is still a place suspended in time; stuck somewhere between the knowledge of future renewal and the corruption of our present days.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 22/04/2025
Great Maitreya Statue (Их Майдар хөшөө) near Zuunmod, Tuv aimag. A stalled construction project initiated by former president Battulga. Haunting sounds of crows within the structure. This statue of the future Buddha was to be at the heart of a planned "Maidar ecocity", population 300,000.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Heavenly Mother Mary (Тэнгэрлэг Эх Мариа) at the Catholic Cathedral in Ulaanbaatar. The statue's story is quite remarkable, having been discovered by a Buddhist woman in a landfill in Darhan and taken to the place of honour in her ger.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
I quite like the design of these posters appearing on lampposts too
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 01/04/2025
Continuing anti-uranium mining protests in Sukhbaatar Square outside the State Palace. "Stop digging Uranium" "Dissolve the incompetent parliament" Small numbers, but persistent, turning up day after day. Good atmosphere - exchanging snuff bottles, music on loudspeaker, even a bit of dancing.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 25/03/2025
Each Thursday for the next 3 weeks I'll giving a series of lectures at the National University of Mongolia on Anthropological Theory and the Challenge of Nomadic Civilization. All welcome if you happen to be in Ulaanbaatar.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 10/03/2025
Dashchoilin Monastery, Ulaanbaatar. On the morning of Tsagaan sar, the prayer desks were moved from one of the ger-shaped temples to the new Maidar (Maitreya) enclosure for the great blessing gatherings of the new year. This is their first Tsagaan sar beneath this huge statue of the future Buddha.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Migjid Janraisig, Bodhisattva of Compassion, at Gandan monastery, Ulaanbaatar. The original statue was taken to Russia and destroyed in the 1937 religious purges. Re-created in 1996. It's 25m tall, hard to convey how much it towers over you.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 21/02/2025
Looking forward to this workshop at UCL next Tuesday on Participation and the Anthropology of Christianity! I'm convening it with Timothy Carroll at UCL & it's planned as an informal conversation, but if you are in London that day & keen to attend let me know and there should be space in the room.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 11/01/2025
For the first time since COVID, I get to see the Whittlesea Straw Bear dance through the streets "What stronger incentive could they have to exert themselves than the belief that the higher they leaped into the air the higher would sprout the corn-stalks?" Frazer, The Golden Bough
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 21/12/2024
The low sunlight enters Taversoe Tuick, Rousay, on the Winter Solstice. "At the time of the year's deepest darkness, a finger of light touches the chamber of death; there is a hint of a promise of resurrection." George Mackay Brown
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 01/12/2024
Family advent wreath. Not the right colours liturgically, but these candles are what they had at Shearer's. Painful preponderance of gorse this year.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 19/11/2024
Solidarity especially with the farmers gathering at Orkney mart today. While tax reform is needed, there is little doubt that the recent UK budget will disproportionately harm family farms and it reeks of a "managed retreat" from the agricultural sector. Food security matters.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
I live in Rousay, one of the Orkney islands, with my family (all of whom are social-media averse and mock my use of it, which is fair enough). I spend a lot of time on the shore and in the hills. I joined the Scottish Fire & Rescue Service when I came to Orkney and that's a big part of my life now.
Two ferries (the MV Shapinsay and the MV Eynhallow) at the pier in Rousay, Orkney
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 12/11/2024
Delighted to see a fair few people following me the past couple of days. But I realise that most of these are block-follows through the starter packs. Welcome! So I thought I'd say a little about myself so people can decide whether or not they want to keep following me...
Author of post standing on a beach in Rousay, Orkney, looking down at pebbles and seaweed
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 26/10/2024
Last night 1000s took to the street in La Linea, marching to the frontier with Gibraltar to call for a resolution to the ongoing Brexit negotiations. Huge numbers of workers cross from Spain into Gibraltar daily & there's a sense of uncertainty & abandonment in the face of a potential "no deal".
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 03/10/2024
Statement by Chagossian Voices on twitter confirms that Chagossians were not consulted and only learned via the media what the two states had agreed to do with their land - shameful!
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 16/09/2024
Our Lady of Sorrows carried out onto the beach at Catalan Bay, Gibraltar, for the annual blessing of the sea.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 10/09/2024
National Day flag displays at Picton House and Ross House, housing blocks completed in 1950 and built for the significantly belated repatriation of Gibraltar's civilian population, who had been evacuated during World War 2
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 10/09/2024
Gibraltar National Day, commemorating the 1967 referendum in which Gibraltar voted to remain under British sovereignty, and asserting the continued right to self-determination.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 16/04/2024
With that Magnus crossed himself and stooped to receive the blow, and took a single stroke on the middle of his head and so his soul passed away to Heaven. - from the longer Magnus' Saga St Magnus, keeper of the laws and lover of peace, pray for us
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 19/03/2024
Abandoned bird's nest (possibly goldfinch?) with strands of blue polypropylene twine woven in
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 16/11/2023
Glad to hear Eleng Luluan’s great bottle vase 'Ngialibalibade-to the Lost Myth' will remain at Princes Dock for another 5 yrs. Here are my photos from the Liverpool Biennial. Repurposing discarded fishing nets, it sits between the dock and the river, a reflection on the waste and wastage of the sea.
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Richard Irvine @robotforaday.bsky.social · 16/10/2023
Starting the process of migrating over to here, adding people I know etc. Here's a photo of some partially silvered Old Red Sandstone on the West Shore of Stromness in the meantime (part of the Ocean of Time project from a few years back) showing the Devonian ripples of Lake Orcadie
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