"Conspiracies, however disparate, share a common goal; providing false explanations for complex phenomena and, more often than not, ascribing blame to a convenient outgroup rather than to their actual causes."

The Cork hurling championship has moved on to the knockout phase. The format’s cutthroat nature and the competitiveness of the different grades means we are moving on without a host of teams considered title contenders only a few short weeks ago.

"The ‘Up The RA’ bit makes me cringe, mainly because it’s a tuneless football chant stuck in the middle of a song — a big shout, in every sense — which, to my ears, sounds awful."

"With the news that Australia’s ruling Labour party passed a motion supporting a United Ireland, it strikes me that their government is being more direct than our own, which is odd since the prospect of reunification has never seemed more likely..."

"Like a benevolent God allowing His people their callow pursuits, I stride through social media, feeling every bit the moral colossus, refusing to be drawn on music I don’t care for, food that’s not to my taste, or films I actively despise."

"68% of all people between 25 and 29 living with their parents is not just suboptimal on a human level – it signals something deeply, deeply wrong with the way our society is ordered."

"There are fewer moneymaking ads and more weirdly compelling taunts about how to do everyday things. I speak, naturally, of “you’ve been doing this wrong your entire life”."

Club action is moving to the centre lanes in the GAA and yet the shadow of inter-county continues to loom large. The work of an inter-county manager doesn’t have a pause button, not even when national fare has been packed up until next January.

Unless we commit to asking serious questions of those who want us to stop asking serious questions, we’ll do none of the things necessary to make sure future generations ever draw breath

"The collapse of adult contemporary cinema was already being lamented for a decade before covid lockdowns arrived and, it would seem, cemented the final death of a certain type of cinema-going experience."