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5 days ago | 
thebaffler.com | Brendan O’Connor |Abe Beame
In the summer of 2023, Aron D’Souza scandalized the sporting public with the announcement of the Enhanced Games. The pitch was simple: let athletes use performance-enhancing drugs openly, honestly, and safely so they can push the limits of human achievement for the entertainment of sports fans everywhere and for the good of sports science. It would be the Olympics—on steroids.
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Jan 11, 2025 | 
independent.ie | Brendan O’Connor
Brendan O’Connor: Why Ireland won’t escape the Age of the AssholeMark Zuckerberg announced changes to Facebook's fact-checking procedures. Photo: GettyJust to say at the outset, I am dispensing with fact-checking. I’m with Zuckerberg. Fact-checking is censorship. How can we even be sure of these so-called facts anyway. It’s not as if there’s some kind of set of actual “facts” that are actually true.
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Dec 7, 2024 | 
independent.ie | Brendan O’Connor
Briefly, it felt like the political system was all about us. They couldn’t get enough of us around the country, shaking our hands and listening to us — well, mostly listening. And then they got what they wanted and they moved on and it’s not about us anymore. They’ve turned their backs on us now and are all having conversations we can barely follow. There are two parallel strands of conversations. First, there is the one happening publicly and openly on the airwaves.
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Nov 23, 2024 | 
independent.ie | Brendan O’Connor
Brendan O’Connor: Unfortunately for Simon Harris, there was only going to be one winner in this exchangeA screengrab from the RTÉ footage of Simon Harris meeting Charlotte Fallon in Kanturk“Please let it be over” is a common feeling now — and that’s just among the politicians. So we light on random things.
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Oct 2, 2024 | 
orlandomagazine.com | Brendan O’Connor
Since I’ve been on this planet, I’ve seen some things, and not all of them are explainable. Mostly because I wasn’t really paying attention when they happened, or I’d taken something from a shaman and was just told to buckle up and hold on. It could have been a shaman, though I’m guessing it was more likely a frat bro in a headdress. That being said, there is a big part of me that just doesn’t believe in the paranormal.
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Sep 14, 2024 | 
independent.ie | Brendan O’Connor
As a people, we Irish generally tend to have two registers — either everything is great or everything is terrible. And either the whole world loves the Irish and thinks we’re great craic or everyone is talking about how awful we are and we are a rogue-state tax haven in bed with big tech and big pharma, stealing everyone else’s taxes. So it was a confusing week.
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Sep 3, 2024 | 
orlandomagazine.com | Brendan O’Connor
I had heard of Fort Myers, but I don’t think I really understood what it was all about. Just another waterfront playground for the rich that I’d never see, I assumed. I’d been to Naples and streaked on a few golf courses before, how different could it be? Completely different, y’all. I was extended an invitation by Visit Fort Myers to come and see firsthand what made them so special, and I have to say, at the end of the trip, I had drunk the Fort Myers Kool-Aid.
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Aug 17, 2024 | 
independent.ie | Brendan O’Connor
There used to be a thing called Silly Season. Depending on the year, it could last all of August or even more. It stemmed from a general exhaustion with everybody talking about everything all the time and an ennui with the need to have opinions on the things that mattered. It was probably invented originally by the politico-media elite, who used August to try to get to know their families again.
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Aug 10, 2024 | 
independent.ie | Brendan O’Connor
Brendan O’Connor: Olympics have given us stories of effortless cool to rescue disenchanted boysPaul O'Donovan and Fintan McCarthy got lift home from Games. Photo: SportsfileWe live in an age of manufactured cool. Cool is carefully curated and designed and pushed at us by various arms of capitalism. Which is, to my generation, the very opposite of cool. For us, anything that looked like it was trying to be cool, automatically wasn’t cool. It was “try-hard”.
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Aug 3, 2024 | 
orlandomagazine.com | Brendan O’Connor
Foodie Fill-upsThe five-course Harry’s Sip & Savor took place at Harry’s Poolside Bar and Grill, located right on the edge of the pool deck at Rosen Centre, so you can squint and pretend you’re on the beach when you’re really just 30 minutes away from downtown Orlando. The dinner featured the refreshing craft beers of Hidden Springs Ale Works, out of Tampa, who like to make beers that wink at nostalgia and childhood memories.
