Damian O Brien

Proud father and husband, Teacher of English and Manchester United fan. Will mostly discuss education, football, fantasy football, baseball and some politics.

[Ciara Quill ☘️🇮🇪🇫🇷🇩🇪🇪🇺 💚💛 @ciaraquill]

As was the case with the Junior Cycle French paper, the dumbing down in yesterday’s Junior Cycle Common Level German paper is shocking.
Junior Cycle CL German paper is easier than past Junior Cert Ordinary Level German papers. Depressing to see how low the bar now is. #edchatie

[Damian O Brien @dobs_brien]

@deirdrenugent4 Sorry for your loss Deirdre. Your dad was a gentleman.

[Irish Unity 🇮🇪🇵🇸 @IrishUnity]

most days I’m convinced this is the greatest moment in irish tv

[Miguel Delaney @MiguelDelaney]

In 2023, Indonesia were stripped of the under-20 World Cup for refusing to allow the Israeli team entry.

Fifa's justification then was the vague "due to the current circumstances".

Quite a contrast to the hardline "FIFA is not involved in host immigration processes" now.

[Football365 @F365]

This is visceral and angry from @JohnnyTheNic about the World Cup, Donald Trump and the giddiness practically destroyed...

https://t.co/gCTeaVhfdD

[SCC English @sccenglish]

https://t.co/uNMMiexC8Z

[Nima Tavallaey Roodsari @NimaTavRood]

So far at the 2026 FIFA Epstein Cup before a ball kicked:
- Senegal & Uzbekistan squads treated like criminals upon arrival given full cavity searches;
- Africa’s best referee sent back to Somalia despite having a diplomatic passport;
- Iraq team photographer sent back despite valid visa;
- AIPS (international sport journalist association) calling on FIFA to sort out unacceptable visa issues of African & Iranian journalists;
- 90% of Moroccan fans with tickets denied entry
- 14 members of Iran backroom staff denied visas

Not a word from Gianni ”today I feel black/gay/disabled etc” Infantino.

[Canary @TheCanaryUK]

Moroccan fans are left devastated after heavy US visa refusals block their 2026 World Cup plans, costing them thousands
https://t.co/bUs95tiBxO

[DataFut @DataFutebol]

Parabéns aos envolvidos: Os Estados Unidos NEGOU o visto do árbitro Omar Artan, da Somália 🇸🇴 e ele foi DEPORTADO.

O árbitro chegou a contar com o apoio da embaixada, que deu um PASSAPORTE DIPLOMÁTICO, porém, mesmo assim, as autoridades americanas negaram a entrada para a Copa do Mundo.

E a gente não está falando de qualquer árbitro: Ele apitou a final da Liga dos Campeões da África e foi eleito o melhor árbitro do continente africano no ano passado.

Via @Romain_Molina

[Irish Times Opinion @IrishTimesOpEd]

Una Mullally: Over 870,000 jobs created by data centres? Don’t make me laugh https://t.co/RnY5tt8gVe

[Damian O Brien @dobs_brien]

@EBL2017 Outside of palmer (bang out of form) and joao Pedro their attacking unit is anaemic.

[Adam Crafton @AdamCrafton_]

So much about these visa admissions difficulties for the World Cup was foretold & obvious. It’s a story about US govt policy. But also a story of FIFA hubris, mainly Infantino, who dismissed entirely legitimate media reporting on the matter repeatedly. (This from August 2025)

[SCC English @sccenglish]

A response to today's Higher Level English Paper 2 (Literature) in the Leaving Certificate.

https://t.co/9K40hc0JqN

[martinmcmahon @williamhboney1]

I suppose the @Independent_ie will be leading the charge to have teachers paid as the important role models they are?

[Irish Times Opinion @IrishTimesOpEd]

Teachers are frustrated by some of the dafter aspects of reformed senior cycle exams https://t.co/2qI2R8aX2J

[Damian O Brien @dobs_brien]

@OCSmusic Any chance of adding a few dates in Ireland???

[Jim Stewartson, Decelerationist 🇨🇦🇺🇦🇺🇸 @jimstewartson]

This is the most manipulated market in history. There are trillions of dollars on the line with three absurd IPOs on deck. They cannot afford the crash to happen before that. Between the government, private equity & the broligarchs, they are determined to get there.

[Mick Caul @caulmick]

DATA centres have added around €360 to household electricity bills by driving prices higher, a new report is warning. - ✍️Helen Bruce

The report, commissioned by Friends of the Earth Ireland and Beyond Fossil Fuels claims that data centres have drained €715million from the Irish economy, and could take a further €1.6billion from households over the course of the next decade.

#datacentres #CostofLivingCrisis #Electricity #HowIrelandWorks

[Oleksandr Veremeyenko @alex_verem]

Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it.

Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying.

Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence."

Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter.

They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created.

One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility."

Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies.

That's the metered intelligence business model.

And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water.

[Damian O Brien @dobs_brien]

@ciaraquill I thought the people's Republic of Cork had their own national anthem?? 🤔😜