I'm hugely grateful for this deeply considered and beautifully written review of LONDON FALLING from a writer I admire, @mrkocnnll.bsky.social. @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...
London’s Brutal Underground | Mark O’Connell
In Patrick Radden Keefe’s London Falling, an ordinary boy’s deadly obsession with the ultrarich reveals deeper corruption at the heart of modern London.
nybooks.com
By far the funniest part of this insane post is that even the maniacs who believe this stuff are so media-pilled they refer to it as a 'leaked photo'. As if God, CEO of Heaven Studios, had included it in a press kit for awards season, but embargoed it til January 27th.
We'll be doing a live Arena show at @dublinbookfest.bsky.social celebrating 100 issues of @thedublinreview.bsky.social. We'll have editor Brendan Barrington, contributors Sara Baume, @patrickfreyne.bsky.social, Doireann Ní Ghríofa, and @mrkocnnll.bsky.social. Do come, it's going to be special...
The Dublin Review at 100 - Dublin Book Festival
The Dublin Review, Ireland’s quarterly magazine of essays, memoir, reportage and fiction, is celebrating its 100th issue. Join us for a special live broadcast of RTÉ Arena on Radio 1 in conversation w...
dublinbookfestival.com
[me, a journalist who spends all day every day on a social media app where the discovery algorithm is personally controlled by its owner, captain birdseye] you know, a lot of people are talking about fish fingers, we should probably cover that
“It is often said that many nonfiction books should really have been magazine articles; this one feels like a LinkedIn post mercilessly stretched to nearly three hundred pages.” —Mark O’Connell on Palantir’s founder’s first book
The War App | Mark O’Connell
Last year, according to a recent report in The New York Times, Alexander Karp received a total of $6.8 billion for his services as CEO of the data
buff.ly
Discovering computer as an adult makes you go crazy. Discovering computer as a baby makes you go crazy. In all of human history, there will only ever be one generation to discover computer at the correct age: 13
Better Things Are Possible@internethippo.bsky.social · 2y agoThe problem with every post-Millennial generation is they got to go straight to high speed internet. Of course you'll get computer madness that way. Make them start with those old screeching modems and work their way up
Yeah man, keep being patronising snobs, that’ll get liberalism back on the road
Terrible book, terrible guy, great magazine
The New York Review of Books@nybooks.com · 11mo agoMark O’Connell on the flaccid philosophy of Palantir’s CEO
Yes, in the same way your thermostat suffers from the pain of burning
The Guardian@theguardian.com · 11mo agoCan AIs suffer? Big tech and users grapple with one of most unsettling questions of our times
Instagram ads have gotten exponentially worse recently, right? Just an endlessly encroaching tide of slop and cheap scams
The NYT talked to @jenniferwalshe.bsky.social and me about MARS, which opens tonight at Galway Arts Festival
An Opera Takes A.I., Pronatalism and Hustle Culture to Space
nytimes.com
Oo remembers lying awake after dinner at Combray for maman to give you a goodnight kiss?
Don’t tell me about a thing being “downstream of” another thing. I don’t want to hear it, and I won’t listen to it!
This is an X screenshot I can get behind. No more J.K. Rowling screengrabs, just Bryan Johnson being delusional about how well his age reversal project is going
Patrick Collison here, illustrating a mindset that is, in many ways, a simple misunderstanding of life itself
Drew Harwell@drewharwell.com · last yr.Really a sad way to go through life www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/b...
For those of you who were simply too lazy to read my essay about MrBeast and the attention economy yourselves, here's me reading it for you www.theguardian.com/news/audio/2...
‘The Mozart of the attention economy’: why MrBeast is the world’s biggest YouTube star – podcast
He’s spent 24 hours immersed in slime, two days buried alive – and showered vast amounts of cash on lucky participants. But are MrBeast’s videos simply very savvy clickbait – or acts of avant garde ge...
theguardian.com
Seems a little drastic, he could just shut them down in the normal way
The Irish Times@irishtimes.com · last yr.‘Nuclear option’ to close nursing homes must be used, says Taoiseach
(sliding out from under The Gyre on a mechanic's creeper, covered in grease) okay, bad news
This is on Thursday, and my last gig until after the Summer. @urchinette.bsky.social @mrkocnnll.bsky.social and @prasifcat.bsky.social Tickets went in a couple of days but as there are frequently cancellations, @booksupstairs.bsky.social keep a wait list: booksupstairs.ie/all-events/w...
‘Postliberalism’ is mainly books with titles like ‘The Fate of Civilisation and the Death of God at the End of the West’ by men with backgrounds as investment analysts
I worked in a hotel during a golf tournament when I was 18, and brought room service to Tiger Woods, who was sitting on a couch in his underwear watching himself play golf on tv
Blunderbolt@bolt451.bsky.social · last yr.Right folks. Feeling rather down at the moment so bringing back an oldie Please Quote this with your most minor celebrity interaction
This essay is the best description of Mr Beast I have ever read: His oeuvre is “a Hobbesian gameshow of all against all,” and he “may not be the genius we need, or the genius we want, but he may be the genius we deserve.” via @mrkocnnll.bsky.social www.theguardian.com/news/2025/ju...
‘The Mozart of the attention economy’: why MrBeast is the world’s biggest YouTube star | Mark O’Connell
The long read: He’s spent 24 hours immersed in slime, two days buried alive – and showered vast amounts of cash on lucky participants. But are MrBeast’s videos simply very savvy clickbait – or acts of...
theguardian.com
every year there is a new pr blitz about a hardcore band whose gimmick is Not Being a Hardcore Band
This is basically like Christmas morning for me, the guy who goes around posting "and this surprises you how?" under people's political tweets
Sweet Christmas, this is a good piece on somebody that I don't really enjoy. These fragments from @mrkocnnll.bsky.social really speak to the primacy of MrBeast and how he may be the perfect emblem of Where We Are Now. www.theguardian.com/news/2025/ju...
‘The Mozart of the attention economy’: why MrBeast is the world’s biggest YouTube star | Mark O’Connell
The long read: He’s spent 24 hours immersed in slime, two days buried alive – and showered vast amounts of cash on lucky participants. But are MrBeast’s videos simply very savvy clickbait – or acts of...
theguardian.com
A problem with The Mountainhead is that it’s kind of a stretch to believe billionaire tech founders coming out with the kind of viciously witty lines Jesse Armstrong writes, in a way that it somehow wasn’t with the Murdoch-style old media bastards in Succession
One of the great editors. Not only did David countenance 5,500 words of MrBeast exegesis, he suggested the idea and made the piece the best version of itself it could have been. He also let me be just a shade more pretentious than he was comfortable with, for which I'm also grateful
@davidedgarwolf.bsky.social · last yr.“To watch his videos is to feel your prefrontal cortex practically vibrate, like a fulfilment hub under the extreme pressure of market demand.”
