Thomil's Random Ramblings

When I came to Ireland all the way back in 2012, one of the first organisations of the state I really had any noteworthy interest in was the Irish meteorological service named , rather creatively, Met Éireann. My first impression was, to put it mildly, underwhelming. The website looked old-fashioned even by the standards of 2012, the app was equally unremarkable. Communications-wise, a closed-up clam would have been more talkative than the Met Éireann of the time, who seemingly didn’t exist outside of the realm of either the RTÉ studio or their own HQ. Both their Facebook and Twitter accounts hadn’t seen any major activity for months by the time I started following them back in 2013. It almost seemed as if the organisation was run by your stereotypical technophobic German bureaucrat, despite being an Irish body. In this way, the meteorological service did not differ majorly from their counterparts in Bus Éireann, Irish Rail, or any other Irish state body back in 2012. Their reputation...

One of the most lasting memories I have of my early childhood is flipping through my parents’ collection of strange, yellow-framed magazines that they kept in the living room. I couldn’t read at the time, and even if I had been able to read, I wouldn’t have understood a word since they were printed in English, but I was completely enthralled by the images and the maps printed in those magazines. I would later learn that the magazine in question was National Geographic, and I’ve been fascinated by it ever since, although I was only an irregular buyer. Still, I see why the magazine has such a stellar reputation. The articles are more often than not thought-provoking and interesting, and the presentation is top-notch. The images are often simply spectacular, as are the illustrations and maps.  However, it was not until around 2016 that I really took an interest in the magazine. It had always been one of the more expensive magazines you could buy, both back in Germany and here in Ir...