Brendan O’Connor

If “AI” is a fundamentally a labor saving technology, what use does Wikipedia—which runs on the freely-given labor of its editors—have for it?

Ange Postecoglou’s triumphant sacking holds the key to modern football | Jonathan Liew The Australian’s fluctuating fortunes at Spurs expose how much the game has become an act of persuasion

Very sad to see that Jonathan Liew is still suffering from Ange Derangement Syndrome. Hope he recovers soon. www.theguardian.com/football/blo...

USMNT is greying Poch like he’s the president

At the ICE raid and subsequent community resistance in Paramount, California this morning, this skater kid ate dozens of munitions from Border Patrol agents, walked away slowly and flipped them off.

Intelligencer GIVE A GIFT The thing about memories of the first Trump administration, though, is that they were generally formed in the aftermath of frequent blows to the head. For four years, the president tweeted his way from scandal to scandal, churning through not just staff but he-can't-possibly-do-that stories, the material realities of his term largely divorced from the weekly personnel crises and investigative reports that dominated the media coverage. For news-addicted liberals in particular, the effect was teasing and anticlimactic: Comeuppance and payback and karma were always trailing just behind; the tension of Trump's hypocrisy and contradictions was always about to break the whole thing apart; and justice, in the form of an actual system of laws or a vague, invisible contraption lashed together with morals and norms, was about to snap into force and make things right. The closest thing to genuine catharsis that the sizable portion of the public horrified by late-first-term Trump experienced was the election of Joe Biden. Trump had been vanquished, and the system had worked. Then, of course, he came back. With Musk's help, he won.

This led, for some, to a resigned view of a president who, at the beginning of his second term, felt at once more powerful, more ridiculous, more dangerous, and less likely to be thwarted by lawsuits, reporting, protest, or self-sabotage. This time around, from the view of these news-addicted liberals, it was Musk who would eventually suffer the consequences of all that scandal. For firing thousands of government workers and slashing lifesaving aid, he would pay with his valuable reputation; Tesla stock would crash and stay crashed; surely, after saluting like a Nazi, he would lose control of his companies or maybe end up deported or in jail. None of these theories is fully unfounded, but they can, at times, resemble wishful thinking. They also feel familiar, albeit with a grim adjustment: Last time, much of Trump's opposition pinned its hopes on systems and processes and assumed they would unite with the latent power of civil society to deal with the existential threat of Donald J. Trump; this time, the main theory of Musk's downfall isn't an imagined confluence of various forces Right and Good - it comes down to Trump's deciding that Musk is annoying.

TRUMP VS MUSK will be a disappointment. Deep down we know this! nymag.com/intelligence...

Beyond All Boundaries | Brendan O’Connor The Enhanced Games, Aron D’Souza’s new multisport competition, embrace doping “to safely transition mankind to a new super-humanity.”

Your Saturday morning read: my Baffler essay on the reactionary futurism of the Enhanced Games thebaffler.com/after-the-fa...

Why Tottenham sacked Ange Postecoglou, the manager who ended their 17-year trophy drought The inside story behind Levy's decision to sack Postecoglou, after a historically bad domestic season but also Europa League glory

Very good post mortem

RIP Ange you did the impossible. Forever a Tottenham legend.

Crise en Abyme | Colin Vanderburg Anyone who has ever emerged from a multiday academic conference will recognize this truth: as the sun sets on the jetsam of crumpled programs and the custodians vacuum the carpet, you set out for the ...

"The darkest prospect for literary studies is not its wholesale dissolution, but its residual subsidy as a loss leader for a few elite schools that can afford it." www.nplusonemag.com/issue-50/rev...

FG senator didn’t declare more than €16k in farming income He sits on the Seanad agriculture panel.

A Fine Gael senator on the Seanad agriculture panel didn’t declare more than €16,000 in farming income while serving as a county councillor last year.

Paraic Brady was elected to the Seanad on the agricultural panel in February 2025.

www.ontheditch.com/fine-gael-se...

Jesus Christ man

Beyond All Boundaries | Brendan O’Connor The Enhanced Games, Aron D’Souza’s new multisport competition, embrace doping “to safely transition mankind to a new super-humanity.”

in this essay: the ideology of amateurism and the development of modern organized sports; the history of PED use and their regulation; transhumanism and Silicon Valley's obsession with death; athletic labor and the body thebaffler.com/after-the-fa...

What World Does Bitcoin Want To Build For Itself? | Defector LAS VEGAS — “We often talk about baseball games as a metric for where we are, and we’re literally in the first inning,” one of the Winklevoss twins gloats. “And this game’s going to overtime.” It’s th...

Incredible blog here. This is a gift link: defector.com/what-world-d...

I know it's old hat by now but I would be curious to read a genealogy of this idea that a particular state has a "right" to exist. is it specific to Israel? to settler-colonial states? where/when does it come from and how has it spread?

that's what happened to Gramsci...

one thing about a historical/hegemonic bloc is that it is cemented by more than personal affinities!

What World Does Bitcoin Want To Build For Itself? | Defector LAS VEGAS — “We often talk about baseball games as a metric for where we are, and we’re literally in the first inning,” one of the Winklevoss twins gloats. “And this game’s going to overtime.” It’s th...

"Bathroom attendants offer two flavors of Zyn for the discerning gentleman."

Beyond All Boundaries | Brendan O’Connor The Enhanced Games, Aron D’Souza’s new multisport competition, embrace doping “to safely transition mankind to a new super-humanity.”

in this essay: the ideology of amateurism and the development of modern organized sports; the history of PED use and their regulation; transhumanism and Silicon Valley's obsession with death; athletic labor and the body thebaffler.com/after-the-fa...

Beyond All Boundaries | Brendan O’Connor The Enhanced Games, Aron D’Souza’s new multisport competition, embrace doping “to safely transition mankind to a new super-humanity.”

Last week, the Thiel-backed Enhanced Games announced that it had secured a venue in Las Vegas for 2026. Today, I have a long piece on the ideological currents running through the venture, and what I think it reveals to us about Silicon Valley’s vision for humanity. thebaffler.com/after-the-fa...

Omg haha I get it sorry 🤪

Is that true lol

I mean, maybe the players are just Ange cultists, can’t see the forest for the trees, etc… but at this point I’m not sure I trust Levy’s grasp of the big picture any more than theirs

People will say that players almost always say nice things about their managers but this really does seem different

Four days in a row

one common denominator in all the situations described here is the French police

Nationalist Is Elected Poland’s President, in a Setback for the Centrist Government

remember when a couple elections went their way immediately after Trump was inaugurated and American libs convinced themselves that a global repudiation of right-wing politics was imminent www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/w...

Graph looks like a fish

Levy to decide on Postecoglou future amid fears of Spurs dressing room backlash A decision needs to be made over whether the Europa League-winning Tottenham head coach is going to get backed or sacked this summer

There are risks in both keeping Ange and sacking him. The only guarantee is that getting rid of the guy who promised and delivered a trophy would destroy the squad’s morale and unity www.football.london/tottenham-ho...

Ugh, fine

And who knows what kinds of connections they’ve all made while in prison 🥲