Marc de Faoite

@marcdefaoite

Herbivorous open-water-swimming snowflake bookworm, b. 323.05 ppm. Irish in France. Writer/editor/translator. Work in in Honest Ulsterman, Minor Lit, Irish Times, Courrier International, Cormorant, Incubator, Eastlit, Jaggery, Mekong Review, Esquire ...

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Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· 28d

Another furnace day. This is two things: hot weather, but also weather way beyond the range of what is normal. So next time someone mentions 1.5 or 2 degrees of warming, bear in mind that this is what it looks like. Imagine what 4 degrees of warming might produce as extremes, then vote accordingly.

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· 28d

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· 29d

"If you begin by denying social and ecological systems, then you end in denying the reality of facts, which are after all part of a network of systematic relationships between language, physical reality, and the record, regulated by the rules of evidence, truth, grammar, word meaning, and so forth. You deny the relationship between cause and effect, evidence and conclusion, or rather you imagine both as products on the free market, which one can produce and consume according to one’s preferences. You deregulate meaning." - Rebecca Solnit

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jul 12

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jul 11

Ten years later ...

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jul 4

HOW TO HELP RACISTS

A thought experiment, in which you suppose a person can find a cure for cancer, or solve nuclear fusion, or whatever. This person definitely has the ability, and in the right circumstances they would infallibly provide the key to unlocking whatever.
BUT this person is caught in a system that won't give them the chance to solve these problems because of some random attribute of birth - say a longer than average little toe.
Who is missing out because of this systemic prejudice against people with unusually long little toes? Is it just that person, or every person with longer than average little toes? Or is it everyone who could have benefitted from a cure for cancer, or a safe, cheap, near inexhaustible supply of energy?
Yes, systemic racism, casteism, otherism ... disproportionately affects its targets, which, make no mistake, is exactly what it is meant to do, but ultimately, we all lose out by deliberately hampering people from realizing their full potential.
Being anti-racist is good for everyone - even racists.

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jul 3

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jul 2

My oblique (five-star) review of Dooneen by Keith Ridgway, which I am pre-emptively choosing as my novel of the year. No goodreads? The alt text will give you the jist www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

Something has happened in the past. It usually does. Or did. Sometimes we can point to it, or follow the breadcrumbs of cause and effect that led from this to that. Sometimes the facts are unknown, or hidden, and we have to accept things at face value. We hang up our hang-ups and suspend our disbelief, alongside our dangling participles and man bits.

A man enters a park in one city and emerges from a park in another city. The first city is London, the second Dublin, the man’s erstwhile home. The man is Port, passed to the left, clockwise, chronological for want of other logic. His trousers are fouled, or at least dirty. The trousers are replaced, twice. The first replacement splits. The second holds. We follow Port around Dublin’s car-free streets. Some great change has happened. Motor vehicles have been replaced by clicking conveyor belts. We suspend our disbelief. Bike couriers and carters have survived the vehicular cull.
More durable is capital’s hold over the capital, landlords and government working hand in hand, one hand washing the other, both hands often those of the same body. The people are revolting. Much is known but unspoken. There are meetings, rallies, protests, things Port half-understands. He sympathises and goes along, getting deeper, eventually plunging underground, unsure of his destination or his new comrades’ goals. Why he is there at all, is a question he and the reader are both left pondering.

Is this the future? Some alternate present? At times it could be the past. The author carefully avoids the city centre territory of the streets of Moore and Henry. There is no mention of the GPO, yet the reader would be unsurprised at the mention of Sackville Street. This is familiar territory for any Dubliner. This is familiar history for anyone Irish, every story in our collective history hinging on the sigh-inducing denouement, "there was a traitor in their midst".

We know nothing of the traitor, or traitors. We know everything of them. The brave…

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jul 2

1973-ish

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 30

jackrabbitrocks.substack.com/p/was-agent-...

Where invasive species typically succeed because negative feedback is absent, humans succeed because we make it absent. We do not wait for the predators to be missing; we kill them. We do not wait for the climate to be suitable; we modify it. We do not wait for resources to be abundant; we extract them, distill them, exhaust them.

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 28

Alarmists, they said. Anti-establishment commie greens. Des espèces de petite-nature écolos qui nous font chier avec leurs histoires et leurs interdits. Yes, perhaps. But the we-fucking-told-you-so has a very bitter taste. On aurait bien voulu ne pas avoir raison.

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 28

Ditch your car, electrify what you can, and vote for someone who cares more about humanity than a cushy-for-life pension.

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 27

(not actually a traveller, an immigrant) www.irishtimes.com/ireland/2026...

Marc de Faoite, a writer from Co Meath who now lives in Évian-les-Bains, a lakeside town on the foot of the Alps in eastern France, on the Swiss border, says some local buses were cancelled at the hottest time of the day this week “forcing people like myself, who rely on public transport, to change or cancel their plans. While inconvenient, I understand the logic behind their decision”.
The 58-year-old called Malaysia home for years and his time living along the equator has prepared him well for the second severe heatwave the Continent has seen this year. “I don’t enjoy tropical temperatures, but I am used to dealing with them.” During high temperatures in France, he says “I have quickly slipped back into a mode where I don’t go outdoors after 10.30am, unless absolutely necessary.”

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 27

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 26

Memory from another heatwave - actually just "normal" Malaysian temperatures (KL = Kuala Lumpur)

Last week in KL I walked into Seven-Eleven to buy a bottle of water. The air-con was broken and the place was like a sauna. As I reached the bottled water section I noticed that the workers had cleared out one of the glass front fridges and were taking turns sitting inside it.

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 24

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 23

People talk about renewables being intermittent, but the Golfech nuclear power station, in the southwest of France, is offline right now because the temperature of the Garonne river is too high. www.liberation.fr/environnemen...

La centrale nucléaire de Golfech, dans le Sud-Ouest, a été mise à l’arrêt peu avant minuit lundi soir en raison de «contraintes environnementales» liées à la canicule, a annoncé une porte-parole de la centrale d’EDF. Cette centrale, située entre Toulouse et Agen dans le Tarn-et-Garonne, comprend deux réacteurs à eau pressurisée de 1,3 GW. Le premier réacteur étant déjà inactif pour maintenance depuis le mois de mai, la centrale est de facto arrêtée. Le deuxième réacteur a été arrêté à 23 h 45 lundi par anticipation d’une montée des températures des eaux de la Garonne mardi à 28 °C.

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 23

Taiwan Travelogue by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King, goes straight into my top 5 favourite reads this year. I'll admit I didn't feel that way when I started it, but it crept up on me.

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 22

Arghhhh.

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 22

It's hot, as hot as it ever gets here, but what's more alarming is that it is double digits hotter than average for this time of year. And elsewhere in France it is even hotter.

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 21

words to live by

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 21

Old but gold #speirgorm

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 20

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 19

The French education minister just announced that, to protect children from the heat, parents don't need to send their kids to school on Monday or Tuesday, if they don't want to. www.lemonde.fr/planete/live...

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 18

I am (almost finished) reading Enshittification by @doctorow.pluralistic.net In the solutions section of the book he talks about one click migration from one soc med platform to another. W (the letter before X?) the new EU social network, allegedly offers this one click migration. wsocial.news

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 17

Marc de Faoite@marcdefaoite· Jun 15