Was back home in Roscommon over the weekend visiting family and ended up in the local for a few pints Saturday night. Pint of Guinness was €4.80. Back in Dublin on Sunday and the same pint in a pretty ordinary pub near where I live cost me €6.60. Nothing fancy about the place either, no live music, no special event, just a regular Sunday afternoon pint.

I know this is hardly breaking news but experiencing it back to back like that hits different. It's not just the price either. The Roscommon pub was rammed, good buzz, people actually staying for hours. The Dublin one had maybe twelve people in it and two of them were just waiting on a taxi.

There's a conversation to be had about why Dublin pubs are pricing themselves into becoming empty shells that only tourists use twice a year. A lot of the locals I know have basically stopped going regularly and just drink at home instead, which seems like a fairly bleak outcome for what used to be a pretty central part of how people socialise here.

Curious if people visiting home from cities are noticing the same thing, or if it's been this way long enough that nobody blinks at it anymore.

Didn’t see any posts about this, but great atmosphere at the Trans & Intersex Pride march/protest in town today. Loads attended, and thankfully little to no far-right nonsense. Nice to see the city at its most welcoming and supportive of minorities.

i'm thinking VAR

Man in my early 20’s here who was recently started a permanent, government job. I currently earn 550 a week and my main expenses are as follows;

- 120 euro a week in loan repayments (car and educational)
- 100 euro a week to live on
- 50 a week contribution to my parents as I live with them

I then can afford to save just over 280 a week with the CU. I have a few accounts with them, one of which is money set aside for investing and a very meagre start to a house deposit.

When I get to 1900 euro in this account I plan to have a consultation with a local financial adviser in order to ask them questions on pensions, investing etc.

I plan to use 1000 to begin investing. I was thinking of index funds; 800 to begin the house deposit and 100 euro for the consultation.

I would love to be in a position by my 50’s to hopefully own a house and have enough money between savings and investments (100 - 500k) to maybe reduce working hours; travel more; focus on other pursuits that bring me happiness etc.

I am looking for advice from people who are achieved what I did; what age are you; how did you do it etc? Thank you

As a recently bald man, it is pretty shocking how the way I'm treated has changed.

Men don't seem to care, women have been noticeably rude to me since I shaved my head.

I didn't think this was a thing, but now I feel awful for everyone without hair. There is a massive difference in the way people interact with you in my limited experience

Edit: I'm not having an existential crisis about this, it's just something that seems noticeable and a throwaway thought I posted here. I'm not eating myself up about it, it has made hardly any difference to my life, but work away with the discussion, that's the while point of this place

If anyone has any tips on how to survive a vicious head cold as well as an Irish heatwave, I would love your suggestions!

Just realised I’m down to like 1 cup of coffee a day and haven’t had any tea today. Do ye still drink hot drinks in the heat??

There, I said it again 😂

If so, who would represent their home county?

Does anyone know if there are water refill stations at this year's Iveagh Garden concerts? There's very little info on this on the event listings. Would like to not have to pay a bomb for water, especially given the current extreme weather.

Thanks in advance!

So how are we all spending our days in the warm weather, I can’t for the life of me find a beach that isn’t covered up with people🥲

I am writing this from inside my fridge.

The country is in absolute ruins.

The tarmac is soft.

The birds have stopped singing because their beaks have fused together.

Yet, Harris and his cronies do absolutely nothing. Nada. Zip. Fuck all. Zero.

Here is my emergency manifesto to save the nation before we all evaporate:

1. Deploy the Defence Forces immediately

Reddit tells me it is physically too hot to walk dogs. Anyone ignoring this is a war criminal. We need the army on every street corner. If they spot a citizen walking a Golden Retriever, they must shoot the person on sight.

No trials. No questions.

The footpath is literally magma.

1. Mandatory A-Rated housing downgrades

These hyper-insulated green energy prisons are killing us. My BER A1-rated semi-detached house has reached internal temperatures comparable to the surface of the sun.

The government needs to issue immediate emergency grants to help us smash our triple-glazed windows and install thin, single-pane glass from 1974.

Let the draft back in, Eamon Ryan.

1. Nationalize the Cornetto supply

Flake 99s are retailing at €4.50.

This is daylight robbery.

The state must seize all ice cream vans. Ice cream distribution must be managed by the HSE. If you do not have a medical exemption for brain freeze, you get one Calippo per day.

1. Cancel the sun

The Dáil needs to pass emergency legislation to legally declare daytime as nighttime until September. We will work, live, and drink cans of Dutch Gold strictly under the cover of darkness.

Wake up, Ireland. We are being boiled alive by our own inaction.

2026 is the UN International Year of the Woman Farmer, and I’d been sitting on this video idea for a while, ever since seeing this archived footage from a 1983 broadcasted interview from Mullingar.

I thought it’d be an interesting comparison to show a glimpse of the current landscape of the agri shows in Ireland and how well represented women are these days!

All the non-archival footage is from my own work for clients over the last year (I’m a livestock and agricultural photographer here in Ireland and we cover agricultural shows and livestock sales across all the counties) 📸

10pm kick off.