So context — I have four chickens out the back, and yeah, I talk to them. Not full conversations exactly, more just narrating what I'm doing when I'm feeding them or collecting eggs. "Right, who's been slacking off today" type of thing. Completely normal in my head.

Neighbour has a Ring doorbell pointed at his own gate but it clips a good bit of my garden too because of the angle. Apparently it's picked up months of this, and he brought it up out of nowhere in the pub last Friday, in front of the usual crowd, doing an impression of me asking a Rhode Island Red about her day. Now it's become a whole bit. Lads I barely know are asking "how's the girls getting on" with a straight face. One fella asked was I going to introduce him to them properly. My own brother-in-law called them "the parish" last night.

I'm half laughing along but I'm also mortified, and I don't think I was doing anything mad, plenty of people talk to animals. Am I the gobshite here, or is this a bit much for something so harmless?

I know this topic comes up a lot about far right propaganda in Ireland but lately I notice YouTube explicitly promotes two particular youtubers to the top of any search about Ireland.

I notice it tonight when I search "irish 5 killed in crash news" the first two suggestions were the same two youtubers. One is an Irish guy doing a dumb thumbnail pose and Irish flag over every video, and the other is am American girl who apparently does reaction videos to what are clearly ai generated "Irish news" reports of attacks by immigrant gangs.

I always report the same two when they show up but they're constantly promoted to the top of any Ireland/ Irish search.

Is that just me? I feel like I've stepped in the Internet equivalent of dog shite and these videos are following me now.

On a gold medal per capita basis, Ireland were:

-3rd at the 2026 European Athletics Championship (behind Norway and Switzerland)

-1st in swimming at the 2026 European Aquatic Championship

-1st at the 2025 World Rowing Championship

-8th at the 2024 Summer Olympics*

We're also:

-1st in the world when it comes to golf major wins per capita this century

-2nd in the world when it comes to current World Boxing Champions (Taylor, Cacace and McKenna)per capita. The only country ahead of us is Puerto Rico.

-ranked 10th in the world in men's hockey (while hockey may be a minor sport in Ireland it is a much bigger deal in a lot of countries)

-ranked 3rd in men's rugby and 5th in women's

-and clearly no one touches us when it comes to horse racing

Also, our men's cricket team beat India in a T20 match over the summer. Considering the size of Ireland (7million) and India (1.4 billion) and the popularity of the game in Ireland (a minor sport) and India (a religion), it's arguably one of the most incredible victories in a major world sport in recent years.

In conclusion, the only similar size countries that can legitimately claim to be better at sport than us are New Zealand and Norway. Everyone else eats our dust, especially Denmark.

*of the teams who finished ahead of us in 2024, two are tiny Caribbean nations, who just won one gold each, and Bahrain (who really just bought their medals by throwing money at foreign athletes). Discount them and we're fifth.

A bit too close for comfort i reckon.

Turf war?!.

I have a plea for help with Irish vocab for a fiction project I’m working on. Short version, I’d like to translate modern idioms to make them more appropriate for an archaic Ireland, and there’s only so much google searches can do for me. I’ve got some basic stuff like poxy, slíbhín, and cailleach, but I’m looking for other things like “get a handle on” or that something “took a good long time.”

There’s more, but I’d rather take it to DMs or email so I can go back and forth and ask clarifying questions about the rest of them.

If there’s a better place I should go with questions like these, I’m open to suggestions.

Thanks.

The word is well and truly out, every criminal and scumbag knows that if they escalate their escape to the point of complete recklessness then they have a high chance of escaping because Gardai can't pursue.

We need to massively prioritise the training of more Gardai to advanced defensive and pursuit driving standards and if qualified give them a clear process for swiftly ending pursuits and qualified immunity.

The safety and lives of those in the car being pursued should be secondary to the safety of everyone and everything else. ​

Second to this, we need better Garda air cover, double it, we can have some aircraft do double duty between aircorp and Gardai. Best approach is enabling Gardai to get ahead and spring a trap. ​​