Since I’ve been making posts about American/ British entitlement towards Ireland, I thought I’d talk about this video here.
I am a student at this college. It’s a big tourist attraction for many reasons, but the main one being that the book of Kells is kept here. I am also from Kells itself, but Dublin having the book and not Kells is a whole other issue.
So this protest that’s been happening over the the past few weeks is in response to the college once again raising rents for student accommodation to astronomical rates. That being when rent in Dublin (and Ireland as a whole) is already unliveable. You’d find cheaper rent off student accommodation, but it’s hardly easy to find places like this. As well as this, the majority of the student accommodation isn’t even on campus to begin with. Most are about a 45 minute luas journey away. So what the fuck are you paying for?
This protest is necessary. It’s been a long time coming. Time and time again they prioritise tourists over us. Buildings are old and falling apart, equipment isn’t functional, accessibility is god awful. I know this because I am disabled and use a rollator, but I can’t even use it on campus most days because there’s simply no ramps/ elevators in some buildings.
In one of my lectures last week we were in one of the old buildings. We had a lot of content to cover, but of course the projector wasn’t working. The professor spent fourty minutes trying to get the computer/ projector to work, but to no avail. So we have a whole lecture to catch up on! All of this while I was looking out the window at this atrocity:
A new building for tourists! Yay!
They’ve been building new school buildings for years, but of course instead of finishing them, they’ll spend their time and money on the tourists. I’m not even having an exam in one of my modules because they told the professor that there simply isn’t enough room to host our class for the exam. And it would be “too expensive” to book a venue… it’s only a class of about thirty. He had written a whole exam and we were under the impression we’d have one, but now it’s just continuous assessment I guess!
So you have to understand why we’re not exactly jumping for joy for the tourists. There are hundreds on campus everyday, just generally being annoying and entitled. And yes DISCLAIMER; not all tourists, not all Americans/ British people, blah, blah. But from my experience, you do encounter some obnoxious people everyday.
So that’s why they blocked entrance to the book of Kells. That’s why it’s disgusting for the tourists to be arguing with them and demanding entrance. For once we just want our college to prioritise us! So yeah we will revoke your entitlement, because we are the ones who study here, we are the ones who have to LIVE here.
The most terrifying part of having memory issues is when you can feel something from 5 seconds ago be thrown out the window and there’s an empty hole where it once was. You remember that you forgot something.
recently saw someone’s “advice for your 30s” which included something like “never get on the floor without having an escape plan for getting back up” and um. if you are otherwise able bodied and having trouble getting up from the floor in your 30s. you are very unhealthy. yes, even, if not especially, for that age.
I’ll add that if you are having trouble getting up from the floor at any age, you should definitely practice and repeat it as a form of exercise. Yes I am serious, it is one of the exercises I used to do in dance class. Those muscles are important and you definitely don’t want them to go away —- especially if you fall down!!! Most people don’t realize they’ve lost the ability to get up from the floor until years later when they have fallen and are trying to get back up and can’t. That’s such a scary situation to be in. If you’ve been chalking up the decline of your physical form to chronic pain related to aging, stop to think about the possibility of it being your body’s way of telling you that the bigger stronger muscles are constantly compensating for the smaller weakening ones. And then do something about it. Don’t let yourself wither.
I got to a point where I lived with chronic pain for so long, I forgot what it was like to have a body that responded to me. I just kind of gave up and thought, my body’s gonna do whatever weird shit it’s gonna do, I just live here.
As it turns out! Muscles still respond to being used! And even if I’m not doing a fraction of the amount of exercise my doctor considered the required minimum, I have spent the last year or two conscientiously thinking about trying to get up from the floor or a seat without using my arms. And wouldn’t you know it, it’s easier now than it used to be!
i feel like i’m losing my mind why has the AI debate pivoted away from material/labor concerns back to debates about Real vs Fake Art. cannot express just how little i care about relitigating Art and high art and low art and skilled vs unskilled art. what i care about is the treatment and compensation of workers, the power corporations are exerting over intellectual property and creators, the continued extraction of resources, and the omnipresent glut of spam and disinformation with few regulations and resources that filter out the SEO AI generated nonsense
watching a tiktok and someone just described the black/blue gold/yellow dress meme as “one of the first things to ever go viral”
ok the irony and misinformation in the tags is making me insane. leprosy? caused by bacteria! and not actually that contagious! tuberculosis? bacterial! bubonic plague? also bacterial!! if you want an early viral infection smallpox is right there! polio! hell, even influenza! bacteria ≠ viruses!
