MargaretK

from West Cork, mum of 4 💖 hockey player & volunteer with Weston HC Lucan.

[bean @righteousbean]

I had this dream that one day I’d see them play together ❤️‍🩹

[Niecy O'Keeffe @NiecyOKeeffe]

I can’t listen to this because I’m not able without becoming a blubbing mess but for those of you who might need it. Have this. It’s medicine for the soul from the mouth of an Irish icon. x

[Pea Shooter @RBSN_ZHLR]

In Memoriam:

Glen #Hansard (56) stirbt bei Motorradunfall.

Hier eine der schönsten irischen Balladen,
Fields Of Athenry,

im Duett mit Paddy Reilly

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Sweden is reintroducing printed books and handwriting into its classrooms. Once celebrated as a leader in digital education, the country is now directing significant resources toward traditional textbooks while limiting the use of tablets and screens, particularly for young students.

Swedish authorities attribute this policy shift to mounting evidence that excessive screen time may have harmed reading proficiency and basic skill development. The government has also announced plans to ban digital learning tools for children under six years old.

Scientific research on handwriting provides insight into the rationale. When children write by hand, they engage multiple brain areas responsible for motor control, visual processing, memory, focus, and language. Unlike typing, this process demands precise coordination of fine movements alongside letter recognition and word formation. Studies indicate that such multisensory engagement enhances letter knowledge, spelling, reading acquisition, and memory retention.

Printed books may similarly promote stronger comprehension. Research shows that people often retain information more effectively from physical pages than from digital displays. The tangible nature of paper offers spatial references that aid memory organization. In contrast, screen based reading, especially when interrupted by notifications or hyperlinks, can fragment attention and reduce deep focus.

This approach does not reject technology entirely. Computers and tablets continue to serve important roles in research, group projects, accessibility features, and interactive exercises. Education specialists emphasize the need for thoughtful integration, applying digital resources where they prove most effective while safeguarding core practices such as handwriting, printed materials, and direct teacher instruction.

Sweden's policy change mirrors growing international discussions about optimal screen time in schools. As educators worldwide evaluate the benefits and drawbacks of digital tools, many are reconsidering when traditional methods may better support fundamental learning.

[Balls.ie @ballsdotie]

This RTÉ montage to close out the hurling season was absolutely top drawer 🔥

[John Murphy @fhsperformance]

A new study by @robmulcahy3 and @kearney_phil examined player development pathways in Gaelic Games, tracking 1,841 male players across hurling and football.

The aim was simple: what pathways are most common among players who eventually reach senior intercounty level?

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas

[Stella O'Malley @stellaomalley3]

My letter to the Irish Times yesterday… I can’t imagine why they didn’t publish it!

A chara,
The Irish Times seems increasingly determined to avoid a story even when it is sitting directly in front of them.

Genevieve Carberry’s piece, “Irish sisters in Miami: Weight-loss drugs have changed our plastic surgery business” (May 11th), presents Dr Sidhbh Gallagher as a glamorous Miami cosmetic surgeon enjoying a successful expatriate lifestyle. It is startling that Carberry omitted the fact that Dr Gallagher has become a highly controversial figure associated primarily with the medical transition of minors in the United States. 

Here we have a doctor who built an international following on TikTok speaking about “yeeting the teets” of teenage girls - surgically removing the healthy breasts of deeply distressed adolescents - yet the article instead gushes about Pilates, paramotoring, dogs in strollers, and the “easy life” in Miami Beach.

Dr Gallagher became internationally controversial after being reported to the US Federal Trade Commission over allegations that her social media content aggressively marketed irreversible surgeries to minors.
The journalistic instinct to frame the medical transition of minors as progressive now looks badly dated. European health authorities are pulling back. Systematic evidence reviews continue to expose how weak the underlying evidence base is. Detransitioners are now speaking publicly in growing numbers.

I founded Genspect in 2021 to support families and detransitioners affected by trans medicalisation. We have helped over 5000 parents and over 600 detransitioners internationally. Yet much of the Irish media still covers this field with the breathless eagerness of a teenager newly admitted into the cool kids’ club.

I suspect that if a surgeon had built a public persona around removing healthy organs from any other vulnerable patient group, journalists might display rather more curiosity about this ongoing medical scandal.

Is mise, le meas,

Dr Stella O’Malley
Director, Genspect

[Your Golf Travel @yourgolftravel]

This tee box at Old Head Links 😳☘️

📍18th Hole (back tees)

[Sinéad O’Sullivan @SineadOS1]

The protests in Ireland are not about just fuel! They are about the distance between Ireland on this graph and every other modern and developed economy. Ireland is second wealthiest but gets waaaaay less than any other country for that wealth. By a golden mile.

That visual gap in this graph? That’s what people are protesting. It’s a lack of infrastructure and the everyday enshittification of services, the economy, and the additional difficulty of trying to live, relative to peers in any other country. It also highlights why people don’t get uniformly listened to! - because there is no government architecture to engage meaningfully across this huge gap.

That gap is a three hour drive to work in traffic, a 14 month wait for an MRI, buses that don’t arrive, trains that don’t exist, schools that have no places for your kids, houses that are unaffordable, pubs that close before midnight, €12 sandwiches, expensive fuel.

People feel this gap, even if they can’t explain it precisely. And that builds into resentment, and ultimately protest. Fuel just happened to be the next thing that could be pointed to, today.

[Big Brain Business @BigBrainBizness]

Mary Barra, Chairman and CEO of General Motors, on the single most underrated trait that separates high performers from everyone else:

It's not intelligence, experience, or even talent.

She is direct about it:

"In my experience, in school and career, at work and at play, there are lots of talented people out there. But talent alone isn't enough. You need something more."

That "something more" is what most people overlook entirely.

"One thing that distinguishes those who really make a difference in life, those who really contribute, is passion and hard work. Remember, hard work beats talent, if talent doesn't work hard."

But @mtbarra takes it further than just working hard. Because working hard quietly, passively, and waiting for your turn doesn't move the needle either.

Most people operate on the edges. They show up, do the work they're assigned, and wait to be noticed.

Barra says that mindset is exactly what holds people back:

"Don't be content to work around the edges of your profession. Don't wait to be invited to important meetings or asked to work on crucial assignments. Instead, do what it takes to ensure that you're in the middle of your business."

The underrated trait is proactive hard work, not just hard work alone.

"Speak up, volunteer, show your enthusiasm, knock on doors."

And the compounding effect of that behaviour is significant at every level of an organisation:

"As an employee, your enthusiasm will make your job more interesting and get you noticed. As a manager, your passion will inspire others to join your team and work as hard as you to accomplish great things."

The people who consistently rise are the ones who stopped waiting for permission and started showing up like the work already mattered to them, because it always did.

[The Masters @TheMasters]

Rory McIlroy wins his second Green Jacket. #themasters

[The Masters @TheMasters]

Watch every one of McIlroy's 65 strokes that helped create the largest 36-hole lead in Tournament history. #themasters

[MargaretK @MargaretAIne]

Genius 🎉

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

Rory McIlroy just did this on the 17th hole at the Masters. Genius. What a shot. ⛳️

[IrishRestaurantAward @restawards]

The Dublin Shortlist is Here!

We’re thrilled to reveal the Dublin Shortlist for the Irish Restaurant Awards 2026

Check out the full shortlist via the link below:

https://t.co/46PkGRHjCG

[Kevin Middleton @coach_kevin_m]

https://t.co/cyOiw2eOom

[Thomas Niblock @thomasniblock]

“100%”

Double All-Ireland Tipperary winning manager Liam Sheedy believes it’s much more difficult now for young people growing up. It led to this answer…

🎙️The GAA Social
🎧Listen here: https://t.co/Cg31EMTT6x
📺Watch here: https://t.co/bYGFigPlK6

[MargaretK @MargaretAIne]

A great read for anyone involved with youth sport

[Steve Magness @stevemagness]

Norway is once again dominating the winter Olympics.

And this is their youth sports program:

Participation trophies for all kids.
No keeping score until 13.
No national travel competitions in youth sports.
No posting youth results online.
Motto: “Joy of Sport for All.”

They let kids be kids. And it works.

But…it’s the winter Olympics,right? Recently, they have had tremendous success in summer sports.

Karsten Warholm demolished the 400 meter hurdles world record. Kristian Blummenfelt broke the Ironman triathlon record and won Olympic gold. His training partner, Gustav Ivan, won the 2022 Ironman World Championship. Casper Ruud reached world number two in tennis. Viktor Hovland is a top ten golfer in the world. Erling Haaland set the record for the most goals in a season in the Premier League. Beach volleyball champs, a surge of elite runners. By any metric, Norway’s elite athletes are achieving on a global stage. Yet, if we turn to their youth sports, their programs are the opposite of the US.

Norway doesn’t allow for official scorekeeping until the age of thirteen. They dissuade early national travel teams in favor of local leagues. You can’t even post the results of youth games online without being fined. And almost sacrilegious in certain American circles, Norway doesn’t allow trophies unless everyone gets one.

As Tore Ovrebo, Norway’s director of elite sport, told USA Today writer Dan Wolken, “We think the biggest motivation for the kids to do sports is that they do it with their friends and they have fun while they’re doing it and we want to keep that feeling throughout their whole career.” Their youth sporting model can be summed up with their chosen slogan, “Joy of Sport for All.”

But not keeping score, giving out trophies, not being “win at all costs”...that’s anti-American! How can they be competitive?

Research backs their approach up.

1. The fire has to come from within

If you look at ​research​ on prodigies who eventually become standout adult performers, a deep intrinsic drive is paramount. Researchers found that intrinsically motivated football players were 3.5x more likely to make it to the next level, and athletes in general 2x more likely.

The problem is that early success often pulls young people away from this inner drive. Kids start playing soccer (or violin or chess—this isn’t just about sports) because it is exciting and fun. As they improve, they gain accolades and praise from their parents, coaches, and teachers. They start winning trophies or seeing their names in online commentary. Without even realizing it, their intrinsic drive gets replaced by external validation and a need to please and impress others.

The quickest way to kill that internal motivation? Hype achievements and be a crazy controlling parent or coach.

The best way to create and maintain intrinsic motivation is to let kids dabble, explore, and find something with which their interests and talents align. Then, let them enjoy it without an undue emphasis on success. Praise effort, character, and teamwork, not results. This is easy to talk about but hard to do. Find ways to reward and incentivize the values you want to instill. That means not taking the easy road and talking about who set a new mile best or scored the most points, but instead highlighting who hustled during the fourth quarter, rallied after it seemed like the match was over, or displayed exemplary sportsmanship.

2. Go Broad over Specialization

Even if the entire point of youth sports was to create future champions (which it’s not), we’d still adopt something similar to the Norwegian model. An ​analysis​ of over 6,000 athletes explored what separates athletes who reached world class and those who came up short.

Those who reached world-class had during their youth:
-More multi-sport than specialized practice
-Started their primary sport later
-Accumulated less overall formal practice
-Initially progressed slower than national class peers

Those who performed well when young, but didn’t progress:
-Started their primary sport earlier
-Specialized, engaging in more practice in one sport
-Made quicker initial progress

Norway doesn’t have 300 plus million people and an NCAA system to funnel talent. They have to develop theirs. And they realize the best way to do that is keep as many people in the system as possible.

Why? Because you can’t predict talent development very well! Just go look at the age group record books. It’s easy to fool yourself into thinking early performance equals talent and potential. The kid running a 6-minute mile at 10 looks way better than the one running 6:45. But if the faster one is at track practice 5 days a week and the slower one rolls out of gym class in jeans and runs it off “fitness” from just playing, well I’m betting on the slower one!

When we assess performance early on, we’re not measuring talent, we’re looking at training age and opportunity. And we’re crowning winners based on who started grinding first.

America gets away with the insane achievement model because we can burn out 9 kids to get 1 survivor. Norway can’t afford to do that. They take the longer, more sustainable model.

Rethinking Youth Sports:

The whole point of youth sports should be for kids to learn, develop, have fun, and want to come back and play again next season! The best chance of developing a D1 scholarship athlete is essentially to do the exact opposite of what our current youth sports fiasco promotes. Even the poster child for early specialization, Tiger Woods, ​acknowledged​ it’s not a good thing for parents to push their kids too hard: “Don’t force your kids into sports,” he says. “I never was. To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It’s the child’s desire to play that matters, not the parent’s desire to have the child play. Keep it fun.”

While youth sports in America aren’t going to adopt the Norwegian model anytime soon, we can rebalance the equation. As I outlined in my book, it’s not getting rid of competitiveness, it’s rebalancing the equation to make sure that crazy mom, dad, or coach don’t extinguish the fire that makes great competitors (and sport fun!).

In research on performance orientation and grades in school, a teaching environment that supported and emphasized mastery[PA1] , where students focused on the process of learning and comprehension instead of a comparison to others, was also linked to better grades. But it wasn’t the direct relationship that an outcome orientation had. Instead, in one study on college students, a mastery approach was linked to challenge-seeking, which in turn predicted end-of-the-year grades. In another study, mastery goals predicted higher levels of interest and enjoyment. Mastery works on our approach system without activating avoidance. It frees us up to take on a challenge and pursue our interests without getting bogged down by the pressure or judgment that often comes with an obsession with outcomes. The same findings hold true when looking at sport or the workplace. In a large meta-analysis that analyzed the impact of goal setting in sports, process-orientated goals had a large effect on performance. Outcome goals had little to no effect.

These two paths represent a fast versus slow road to success. Both a mastery or outcome focus can lead to better performance, but the latter is akin to taking a shortcut. Obsession over outcomes is the most direct path to improvement, but it comes with some downsides that shift us toward avoidance. The slow path takes a longer, indirect route. It helps improve our performance not by focusing on the results themselves but by supporting the foundation that ultimately leads to better performance. It stokes the fire of enjoyment and interest to sustain our curiosity and work ethic over the long haul. It pushes us toward challenge-seeking so that when we inevitably hit a roadblock, we’ll take it on instead of trying to protect our ego. Both approaches work. One is more sustainable, providing success with less angst. Society has thrown us so far out of balance that we can’t even see the slow route right in front of us.

We can either instill a love of sport in our youth, or we can turn sport into a burden where kids are exhausted, stressed, and scared. We’ve seen this go both ways, and the results couldn’t be more different. One leads to happy, healthy, and better young athletes. The other leads to burnout, family tension, mental health challenges, and quitting. As parents, volunteers, coaches, and community members, let’s all do what we can to minimize the latter and champion the former.

-Steve

[Matt Wallace @MattWallace888]

James Van Der Beek’s final message to the world is one of the most powerful things I have ever heard. Stop whatever you are doing and listen to this! 🥺