Ciarán Mc Mahon

@cjamcmahon.bsky.social

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Don't let it end like this. Tell them I wrote something important

https://cjamcmahon.substack.com

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

This isn’t a secret but it also hasn’t gotten much attention: Bluesky outsources moderation to an AI-first third party content moderation company that has little to no interaction with civil society.

Beckett's Endgame (dir. Garry Hynes) just opened in Galway and is spectacular

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

This was just 10 days ago. www.rollingstone.com/politics/pol...

Stop telling us the political rhetoric is becoming too violent if you’re too cowardly to mention who, exactly, is making it so.

Trump-Endorsed Candidate for Governor: ‘Some Folks Need Killing’www.rollingstone.com North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson declared "some people need killing" during a Sunday sermon.

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

The person at the Trump rally whom I keep thinking about is not Trump, not the shooter, but the attendee who arrived thinking he had a front-row seat to history, maybe also thinking he was at the safest place around, and wound up one of the 40,000-plus Americans dead from gun violence every year.

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

I'm quoted in the Irish Mail on Sunday about the Tuam Babies - wondering why first cousins have been excluded from the eligible relationships for DNA matching. #IrishGenealogy #Genealogy #DNA

all the pundits were like 'oh Macron's gamble hasn't worked' for the last week

This indeed is grim, and worth your time

Well this is grim

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

Well this is grim

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

can we put some other ppl as the face of online privacy instead of snowden and assange

File this alongside Obama's promise to close Guantanamo and O'Gorman's promise to end direct provision

The Telegraph reports that Keir Starmer, on his first day as Prime Minister, is scrapping the "Rwanda scheme,' the Tory plan to deport all asylum seekers & undocumented immigrants to Rwanda wherever they are from. (This was a Starmer platform promise.) www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/202...

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

I need to write the whole piece about this, but the thing to understand is that the NYT is now just Facebook. The platform dictates narrative to normies, is totally gamed by the right, and is still so ubiquitous as to be unavoidable even by those who see how broken it is. It's just Facebook.

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

Google’s emissions are up 48% in 5 years. Microsoft’s are up 30% since 2020. Those soaring figures are being driven by mass investments in data centers to power AI tools. Generative AI is a climate disaster and data center expansion must be stopped.

Generative AI is a climate disasterdisconnect.blog Tech companies are abandoning emissions pledges to chase AI market share

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

Over 160 calls for submissions of poetry, fiction, flash, nonfiction, art, photography & more - competitions, literary journals, residencies, bursaries etc - open or with deadlines in July 2024. Best of luck & pls share! www.thisiswordbox.com/wordbox-blog...

Writing and Poetry Competitions and Submissions in July 2024 — WORDBOXwww.thisiswordbox.com Over 160 calls for literary competitions and submissions including poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, art, photography, and more - contests, literary journals, residencies, bursaries etc - open o...

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

In a march, a "stinger" is the repeated last note that emphasizes the song is done. In academic prose, every good paragraph ends with a sentence that acts like a "stinger" -- it clearly and concisely drives the main point home.

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

tech company: look, ad sales firms want your childrens data really really bad so we arent waiting. who do you think you are anyway

I'd actually take the Kendrick Lamar approach: identify your opponent's greatest weakness and repeat ad nauseam

It was a Gish gallop, a term coined by my former boss Eugenie Scott for a creationist tactic in debates. And in prepping Bill Nye to debate creationist Ken Ham, we came up with a counterstrategy: do your own Gish gallop back. Force Trump into the same corner.

seeing this kids' game in a French bookshop really makes me wonder. are they really going to make a bad choice?

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

make no mistake. the primary objective of these AI companies is not to benefit society, advance science or human flourishing (as they keep telling us) but to consolidate power where it already is concentrated and control, monitor and surveil each & every move we make www.theverge.com/2024/6/13/24...

Former head of NSA joins OpenAI boardwww.theverge.com Another new board member.

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

NEWS: After sustained attacks from House Republicans, the Stanford Internet Observatory is being dismantled. A huge blow to academic freedom and our ability to understand platforms and influence operations www.platformer.news/stanford-int...

'Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are battling it out to become the largest party' - I love how RTÉ makes *counting votes* sound like Robot Wars

good tidings and many blessings!

This opinion, which is extremely common in publishing, has a ton of middle class privilege baked into it. Very few people can actually afford to spend a huge amount of time on something that won't make any money and we shouldn't be blind to that reality

temperature hit 16c here and I feel like I've gone to heaven. A whole day with no rain, I'd forgotten what this felt like, it's been so long

Bluesky is nice and all, but don't kid yourself that it doesn't have the same dynamics as any other social media platform

I hate how uncritically the Irish media reported this Pact

New Pact on Migration & Asylum ushers in deadly new era of survllnc,expanding digital infrstr for EU border regime based on criminalisation & punishment of migrants & racialised ppl" https://www.accessnow.org/press-release/joint-statement-eu-migration-pact-a-dangerous-regime-of-migrant-surveillance/

Joint statement - The EU Migration Pact: a dangerous regime of migrant surveillance - Access Nowwww.accessnow.org Civil society is calling for an end to the expansion of EURODAC, the EU database for the registration of asxylum-seekers. EURODAC is being transformed into an expansive, violent surveillance tool that will treat people seeking protection as crime suspects.

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

Tech companies continue to use dystopian sci-fi as how-to manuals.

Microsoft starts testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menu - The Verge www.theverge.com/2024/4/12/24... #windows #microsoft

Microsoft starts testing ads in the Windows 11 Start menuwww.theverge.com The first ads in the Windows 11 Start menu will look familiar.

v onbrand for neoliberal Ireland that the national broadcaster's first big doc on why wondering why we are so terrible on climate change turns to a neuroscientist. just absolutely bang on. just chefs kiss perfect #RisingTides

Gone With The Wind That Shakes The Barley

The Sixth Sense & Sensibility

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

I looked it up and this is apparently true: Warren Beatty produces a couple of schlocky, low-budget short form films every handful of years so he can keep the rights to Dick Tracy as a Fuck You to the studios who fucked his beloved project from the get-go

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Ciarán Mc Mahon

This roommate eating beans