Barry G 🇮🇪

optimist.

[John Crotty @itsjohncrotty]

The lies told about Ireland - no particular order:

Ireland has seen a staggering amount of online interest and interference over the last 5 years, to the point it now has the worlds highest external malicious bot traffic - 71%, versus 35% in the U.S for example

Here are some of the regular falsehoods:

'A famine (scarcity of food) caused 1 million+ deaths in Ireland 1845-1851':

Over 4000 ships carried food from Ireland in 1847 alone, the famines worst year (Black ‘47).
Over 3 million livestock were exported 1846-1850.
6 million quarters of grain left 1845-1847 (about 1 million tonnes)
While avoiding all deaths was unlikely, access and entitlement to food, rather than its scarcity, was a primary factor.

'Ireland was pro-Nazi in WW2'':

Ireland was exclusively and extensively pro-Allied in WW2.
It violated neutrality in the Allies favour completely, across dozens of ways, any of which would have led to war with Germany if they became known.
9% of the Irish population voluntarily joined the UK war effort. Zero went to Germany.
The Irish state is the only neutral to exclusively aid the Allies and openly criticise Nazi actions.
Ireland had lowest far right uptake in Europe.
Britain's MI5 said at wars end ‘Ireland was of more use neutral’

'Before the Anglo-Norman arrival, Ireland was not unified or coherent':

Irish identity and island wide culture formed from about 500BC.
No later they 500AD they called themselves Irish, differentiated foreigners and shared an island wide society and identity that worked as one on laws, language, religion, culture, origin myths & legends.
They even met up to compete in national inter-kingdom sports days. Many tribes, but one people.

'Before the Anglo-Norman arrival, Gaelic Ireland was uncivilised':

Ireland had the most advanced law system in Europe, a restorative learned profession with divorce, animal welfare laws & rare execution.
All-Island assemblies created laws like 'The law of the Innocents', 697AD, that gave protection to women and children in times of war.
Irish monasteries were a shining light amid Europe's dark ages, returning & advancing literacy & learning.
A complex all-island society placed immense importance on culture.
Claims of cannibalism & backwards barbarity were fabricated or exaggerated by Anglo-Normans propagandist, Gerald of Wales, to justify colonisation.

'Ireland has an inflated history of antisemitism / racism':

Ireland has had the lowest levels of antisemitism in Europe since the first Jewish arrivals in the 11th century.
Zero expulsions. No pogroms. No exclusion from government/societal roles.
Irelands most important politician, Daniel O’Connell, fought for Jewish rights in the 1800’s.
Ireland enshrined Jewish right of practise in its 1937 Constitution, a unique action in an antiemetic age.
Claims Ireland exclusively excluded Jews in WW2 are false - all refugee entries were minimised. Jews made up 20% of those left in, likely the largest cohort of a small number.
Ireland has no history of large scale, organised racially motivated groups or state segregation
(of course racism and antisemitism existed in Ireland as everywhere)

'The IRA & its tactics represent all Irish':

The Irish Republican Army fought a popular campaign for Irish independence 1919 - 1921, achieving partial independence for the country.
Since then, the groups popularity waned as violent tactics were at odds with a desire for political advancement of Republican ideals.
By World War Two, the group had just 2k members from a population of 3 million and were deeply unpopular with the Irish public for their tactics.
Many Irish remained / remain Republicans, and desirous of a reunited Ireland, but not via violent means.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Your brain has a circuit that doesn't know you live in a city. Its only job is to monitor whether birds are still singing. Right now, in this room, it is on.

The circuit predates primates. Mammals have been using ambient soundscape continuity as a predator-detection system for roughly 200 million years. Birds stop singing when something larger moves through their territory. For most of mammalian history, a forest full of song meant no large predator was nearby, and the cessation of sound was the warning. Your nervous system never updated this software.

The Max Planck Institute tested the inverse in 2022 with 295 participants. Six minutes of birdsong dropped anxiety with a medium effect size. Six minutes of traffic noise raised depression with the same. The effect worked on subjects who lived in dense urban environments and had no regular contact with nature. The brain still ran the check.

Birdsong sits in the 1,000 to 8,000 Hz range. Your brainstem reads continuous patterns in that band as a signal that nothing dangerous is currently moving through the environment. EEG data shows birdsong at 45 to 50 decibels boosts alpha wave activity by 14.1% relative to silence. Alpha is the brainwave signature of relaxed alertness. Push the same birdsong above 60 decibels and the response flips. Stress markers rise 29%. The circuit only trusts the signal at the volume of quiet conversation, which is exactly the volume birds sing at from a typical distance.

Three things happen simultaneously when the brain registers ambient safety. The amygdala downregulates. The parasympathetic nervous system takes over from the sympathetic. Heart rate variability rises, cortisol drops. The posterior cingulate cortex, which sits at the center of the rumination circuit, quiets down. King's College London tracked this through a smartphone study with over 1,200 participants and found the mood lift lasted hours after the sound stopped. People diagnosed with depression got the same response as healthy controls.

Most of what gets labeled mental fatigue is hypervigilance running in the background. Birdsong tells the circuit it can stand down, and the brain reallocates the freed compute everywhere else.

A quiet park feels different from a quiet office because the parks have sentinels.

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@JoyceCarolOates Better name would be “Beigesky”. Total snore. Twitter has its faults but at least there’s actual debate and difference of views here.

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@DaraghCassidy The suburbs still have lots of nice coherent parts, city centre not so much

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@naturebeauty760 Naples is a grade A dump, filthy and incredibly dangerous. Lisbon hands down. No contest.

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@MattWallace888 lol. Thats actually pretty funny.

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@EwanMacKenna lol. I had exactly the same reaction. Total indifference. So fatigued by everything to do with American politics.

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@AaronBastani It’s sad people just accept it’s normal to be surrounded by thousands of cars flying past you all day, endless stream of metal, noise, and pollution. I often wonder what are the psychological consequences of living in such an unnatural environment. Can’t be good for the soul.

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@JoyceCarolOates What an asshole

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@RobLooseCannon Disgusting. Encapsulates everything you need to know about the absolute worst of official Ireland. No reverence for archeological heritage, wasteful, zero accountability, some apparent perverse wish to erect ugly buildings everywhere.

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

Can’t believe that Stephen’s green development was approved. There’s a LOT of derelict and/or worse sites around Dublin, why not do something with those? And that tower on the old screen cinema/hawkins house site is unforgivable. Bland and completely ruins the skyline from multiple vantages, another ugly white elephant, as if we don’t already have enough.

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

Toulouse is my favoirite city. Much nicer and less touristy than Paris. And some beautiful towns nearly, Montauban, Albi etc. Countrysode around Strasbourg was a revelation, amazing walks everywhere through vineyards and ancient small Alsatian villages, visited in October when it was still sunny and warm, but less busy than high season.

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@Berlinnaeus @IrishTimes Two out of how many? Literally every other article is likely of the opposite political persuasion. Are you only happy when your views have a literal 100% monopoly on newspaper opinion?

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@francesafetytra May or fiat half of October. Weather tends to still be nice and not *quite* so crowded (Paris is always crowded so it’s a question of degree!)

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@fitzfromdublin Competent fascism? An even worse clown show?

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@filmdiary00 Paris is more beautiful, London is much more fun, bigger, more diversity between the different neighbourhoods, and generally there’s more on offer. So London for me.

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

In France pretty much everything still shuts on Sundays, or maybe opens for a few hours in the morning. I believe by law, but I don’t know if passed for religious reasons, or just to preserve a shared day of rest for cultural / social reasons. Either way, the rush to discard cultural heritage and traditions for some vague aspiration to be modern and progressive is superficial and silly.

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

Joe Biden financed, armed, diplomatically shielded and militarily protected Israel's genocide in Gaza -- one of the worst crimes of the 21st Century -- but yes, by all means, let's celebrate his renowned and inspirational empathy.

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@135thdegree Beautiful picture

[Barry G 🇮🇪 @BarryG81]

@AnnTravers6 @RachelMoiselle If she gets so upset by people being mean to her on twitter she should stop using it. It’s not that complicated. Nobody forces her to post endlessly every day.