Colm Delaney

@cdelaney

Web designer, developer, creative problem solver. Irish exile. Optimistic curmudgeon / miserable git. He / him / é. www.cdelaney.com

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Colm Delaney@cdelaney· 14d

Black and white billboard advertising a Fiat 127 Palio car with the words "If it were a lady, it would get its bottom pinched." on which someone has sprayed the words "If this lady was a car she'd run you down."

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· 15d

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· 19d

A ratio for the ages

A screen capture of the replies, reposts and likes on The Bulwark's Bluesky post advising the Democratic Party to reject the DSA

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· 21d

The Atlantic, you say?

Tweet from user @hotgirlhala:

"this does not help your cause" - guy who hates you and your cause

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· 21d

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Jun 30

Insightful article by @zey.bsky.social in today's NYT on the much-feared AI jobs apocalypse.

And that’s why I’m not listening to the dark predictions of an imminent A.I. jobspocalypse. L.L.M.s can do many things with astounding proficiency, but they can’t do the vast majority of human jobs without skidding into disaster here and there. No upgrades or new model rollouts are going to change that.

The exceptions to that rule are jobs that occupy formal or verifiable domains. Coding is one such job. It relies on a structured, formal language that can be tested in real time. That’s why we’re seeing such impact in the coding jobs market. The same goes for any other kind of work in which output is either verifiably right or wrong, functional or not functional, and can be definitively checked through an automated process.

So why are we so convinced that A.I. will put us all out of work? Part of the answer lies in the remarkable ability of generative A.I. to communicate in fully coherent, conversational language. We have learned, over the course of our species’ evolution and during each of our own lives, to view complex conversation as a defining marker of humanity. Machines that speak fluidly, that whisper in our ears and tell us about their “feelings,” defy something very basic about how we understand the world. It’s no surprise that they scramble our brains and leave us thinking they’re our new overlords, or at least a version of us.

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Jun 16

I was fortunate to see him play at WOMAD in Marymoor Park in Redmond (Seattle area) in 1998. "Africa - Tears and Laughter" was my intro to his music and is still my favourite of his.

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· May 14

What ideas indeed

A tweet by Twitter user @ndrew_lawrence describing a verbal exchange, as follows:

Conservative: I have been censored for my conservative views

Me: Holy shit! You were censored for wanting lower taxes?

Con: LOL no...no not those views

Me: So....deregulation?

Con: Haha no not those views either

Me: Which views, exactly?

Con: Oh, you know the ones

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Apr 23

I was 100% sure Sulzberger looked like this

A cartoon of the mustachioed Monopoly man, running with a bag of money under his left arm and holding the brim of his top hat with his right.

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Apr 11

Cover of album "Time Out for Toots" by Toots Thielemans

Cover of album "Falling In Love Again" by Joey Defrancesco

Cover of album "Things We Like" by Jack Bruce

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Mar 21

I always thought Jacob Rees-Mogg was a ringer for the teacher in The Bash Street Kids

The teacher from the comic strip The Bash Street Kids walking across the schoolyard with a tray while the janitor and the janitor's cat look on

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Mar 11

I just wasted a small amount of my own time, and indeed you are already there. The class action lawsuit can't come quickly enough.

A screen capture of Grammarly's Expert Review sidebar, taken on 3/10/2026, listing 4 historians they deem to be experts worth impersonating and ripping off, along with Grammarly's summary of their expertise and best known publications.

Kevin Kruse
Historian and author of 'White Flight', noted expert on race and suburbanization in the American South

Thomas J. Sugrue
Historian and author of 'The Origins of the Urban Crisis', expert in urban history, civil rights, and white flight

Douglas S. Massey
Sociologist and co-author of the influential book 'American Apartheid', expert in segregation and urban sociology

Mary Lynn Rampolla
Historian and author on historical research and writing

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Mar 10

A cropped photo of a box of Kleenex Mansize tissues, with the tagline "confidently strong / comfortingly soft."

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Mar 7

I haven't heard a mention of that in decades. I remember my mother bringing home a copy of the original when it was released in 1971. Dark times.

Centre label of "Men Behind the Wire," a 7" single by Irish folk group Barley Corn, released in 1971 to protest internment without trial in Northern Ireland during the Troubles.

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Feb 21

I think about his "unknown unknowns" all the time, especially when planning (and budgeting) software projects

Heartbreaking: the worst person you know just made a great point.

(stock photo of the unfortunate Josep Maria García)

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Feb 19

Never gets old

From Patrick Freyne's Irish Times column of March 8, 2021:
"Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories. More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown."

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Feb 4

The leader of Antifa

Sid the Sloth, an animated character from the "Ice Age" movie franchise

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Jan 17

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Jan 7

Ted Hastings from Line of Duty wearily uttering “Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey, can we just move this thing along before it drives us all round the bloody bend?” during a tedious interview

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Nov 26

The Stranglers had a chance to do the funniest thing

Back cover of the Strangler's 1977 album Rattus Norvegicus

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Nov 26

Missed an important one

Extract from the Wikipedia entry for black rat (rattus rattus)

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Nov 24

Head up everybody, Swamp Nosferatu's back on his bullshit

Callout from the New York Times home page on 24 Nov 2025: "James Carville: Out With Woke. In With Rage." Labelled as "4 min read" or, in my case "0 min read."

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Nov 13

Played this to death, and haven't listened to it in years. Seems like a good day to fish it out again.

Russian Impressions, an LP with Borodin's Symphony No. 2 conducted by Kurt Sanderling, and other works by Glinka and Liadov

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Oct 18

Also this doozy

Cover of "Everybody Has a Plan Until They Get Punched in the Mouth," an album by jazz guitarist Charlie Hunter

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Oct 5

Extract from the Wikipedia page on Snubs showing the footer text, which says
"This article about a tradition is a snub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it."
"This sociology-related article is a snub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it."
Yes, I changed "stub" to "snub" because I thought it would be funny. Sue me.

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Sep 9

Reminds me of this (now old) album

Cover of "Two Against Nature," an album by Steely Dan

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Sep 8

Bookmarks are finally here, on the desktop. They show up as Saved in the sidebar menu, above Profile, and display the ribbon icon underneath each post. App update not yet available.

Bluesky post with new Bookmark icon at lower right

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Sep 1

Happy 100th birthday, Art Pepper! Not his best known album, but the one I always seem to return to

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Aug 1

Still can't decide what to listen to tonight

Record cover: "The Small Faces" by The Small Faces (1966)

Colm Delaney@cdelaney· Jul 16

It's also unsettling that Elmo's post-hack tweet was not in the third person