The Gist: Art meets Paint, Brexit Update, Black Friday

Trenchant criticism of defaced installation
Somebody didn't like the 18 foot sculpture of a WW1 soldier installed at the enterance of St Stephen's Green. They sprayed red paint over its bottom half.
Though this isn't the most constructive form of social criticism, it is certainly the most direct- neither destroying the piece, nor allowing it to stand unchallenged.
We've just finished four years of WW1 centenary commemorations. The War was a global event, but a European abyss. And over those four years, covering the run up and then aftermath of Britain's brexit paroxysm, we've seen subtle shifts in tone from our neighbour- from remembrance, to commemoration, to the beginnings of a suggestion of heroism being celebrated.

Ireland's WW1 experience was fraught. The Irish people fed to the slaughter machine were othered even as they were in the trenches. WW1 was an insanity that destroyed life, empires, social norms, security, health. There was bravery by soldiers, but in the face of meaninglessness, the only available heroism was in spite of the War, not in pursuit of it.

They did not, as one pat politician comment had it today, make a sacrifice.
They were the sacrifice.

Brexit
FUBAR.

Black Friday- still not happening
Shops all over the country bought ads to announce they would be cutting prices on some lines tomorrow, turning the whole nation into one of those 1970s promotions where Next would put a 50p sofa in a window to provoke queues.
People, vaguely aware that goods are available for sale on other days, were faced with an onslaught of inbox mono-messaging not seen since the height of the Great Privacy Policy Updating of GDPR.