It’s impossible to understand the Garvaghy Road standoff — in fact it makes no sense at all — without knowing how much blood has been spilled on and over it.

The very same people: 1. Trying to force the parade down a street where residents are vehemently opposed 2. Have spent months challenging the addition of Irish language to street signs in unionist neighborhoods, arguing endlessly about the wishes of residents.

I’m in touch with people on the road right now and they are definitely not moving!

I also found the police assessment just … outstandingly bizarre!

FBI on my feeds: $100k reward for a woman who protested apartheid at Port Authority in **1981**. Comments: "All that for an old lady, but those Epstein clients still on the go" "If the FBI can't find her, what makes you think I can" "The guy who turned in luigi didn't get paid"

It needs a history and politics lecture for people (not already steeped in the place) to understand why this is bad but -- it's bad! The legal battle has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion and now the moment of impact is here.

"Get onto the road. Sit down. Link arms. Make them force you off the road. When they get you off the road, get back on again." Having come of age in the shadow of/studied 1990s Drumcree, it's ominously mind-blowing to see these scenes repeated on the Garvaghy Road.

My unpopular view is that Trump speaks for the people here, it is indeed confusing, and also hardly our most egregious geographical ignorance given that less than 1% of the world’s population live in the UK, as it’s called

I remain a defiant user of the em dash

I had so many conflicting reactions to so many different aspects of this piece that I don’t know how to begin to break them into tweets, but fundamentally I read every word with intense interest, which is the measure of a great essay. nytimes.com/2026/09/20/magaz…

... statement. Disingenuous, because I've heard so many normal Americans express the same thought and I bet you have, too. This idea is very much among us. And I see that, even after a quarter century, we still can't discuss it, not the whole thing. Instead we binge on outrage.

Then finally coming back to a stifling cultural climate demanding support for GWB and the war. My friend said, but to be fair, that was crazy. We recalled how even the Dixie Chicks got canceled. Crazy times! But then I see the jingoistic, disingenuous reaction to this...

"As far as the number of deaths, yes, we've caused tremendous terror all around the world." I was just taking about the alienating, strange bifurcation 9/11 was for me. I was in France & didn't return to the US for months, instead went to Afghanistan & saw villages bombed etc

Presumably trained with the help of all your data, which DOGE (illegally) looted from the various agencies. Neat.

Back when FOTC first came out, this song made me and my friends laugh until we cried, we’d play it over and over (“Affirmative. I poked one, it was dead.”) but now it’s just the news. m.youtube.com/watch?v=B1BdQc…

After white knuckling through the last few years as a US voter, "they're sanctioning Israeli settlers because it's what the grassroots want" doesn't sound like much of a criticism to me.