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Mark O&x27ConnellThe Irish Times |
Like many people who watched the now-infamous recording, shared by the Westmeath Examiner, of Ryanair chief executive Michael O’Leary disparaging...
There are not, as far as I’m aware, any silver linings to the election of Donald Trump to a second term as US president. In the few moments of...
The other day, I listened to a short and very interesting podcast. Its hosts, a chipper American male/female duo whose names I didn’t catch,...
There’s an idea known as the simulation hypothesis, popular in recent years among Silicon Valley types, which proposes that what we think of as...
As a writer with an interest in observing the lurid symptoms of terminal-stage capitalism, I feel strangely grateful for the omnipresence of Elon Musk...
Toward the end of a visit to Barcelona last week, I found myself with some free time before my flight home, and so I decided to visit Casa Batlló,...
For almost a year now, as Israel’s campaign of mass slaughter and destruction in Palestine has continued, I have had almost daily cause to think of...
The most recent apparent assassination attempt on Donald Trump raises a series of absurd questions. How many more assassination attempts on Trump...
Whenever I pass through the Smart Thinking section of a bookshop, I invariably think of the Italian writer and publisher Roberto Calasso. Calasso, who...
I was never much of an Oasis fan. I was 15 by the time their debut album Definitely Maybe came out, and was by then well on my way to becoming the...
The other day, I came across a video on social media of a scene that had recently played out on the banks of Dublin’s Grand Canal, at Mount Street...
In the later years of his life, the American designer and inventor Buckminster Fuller often told a story about a painful period in his early 30s. It...
You’ve seen the clip. You’ve seen it unfolding in real-time: Donald Trump’s transition from a shocked realisation that he is being shot at, and...
There are certain locations in Dublin that, whenever I encounter them, make me question the nature of the relationship between the people who live in...
Consider the present spectacle of American electoral politics. The current president, at 81 the oldest person ever to serve in the role; his...
In recent weeks, writers and publishing people in the UK have been embroiled in a long and gruelling controversy over the sponsorship of literary...
“Let me tell you a story about a hole,” says the American writer Sam Anderson at the start of his new six-episode podcast series Animal. The first...
Until about five years ago, whenever I interviewed someone for a writing project, I would be faced with the gruelling prospect of having to transcribe...
Until about five years ago, whenever I interviewed someone for a writing project, I would be faced with the gruelling prospect of having to transcribe...
Last week, a video circulated online of Suella Braverman, the UK’s twice-sacked former home secretary, walking around an encampment of protesters at...
Earlier this week, Apple released a short social media video for its new iPad Pro. The video, which is called “Crush”, begins with a series of...
If I had to choose a favourite tech guy, it would probably be Bryan Johnson. Johnson was, until fairly recently, best known as a venture capitalist...
There is a question in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov that has haunted me ever since I first read it in my 20s. The question is put by Ivan...
Early last year, I had a conversation with a friend about a spell of intractable insomnia I was going through at the time – a condition that has...
Among the technological faithful of Silicon Valley, there is an ongoing debate about the risks inherent in the development of artificial intelligence....