Con O'Donovan

Technology & Business Nerd.

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@OwenCallan Will it fit in the deposit return machine?

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@adrianweckler The tech is truly astonishing. But Lord if I never see another LinkedIn post entitled "Here's how I use these 53 AI tools to organise my to-do list" it will be too soon.

(Yes, I use AI. It's great.)

[Dr Iain Overton @iainoverton]

Brilliant summary from @TheEconomist

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@oliviasolon I want one

[Pulp Librarian @PulpLibrarian]

I regret to inform you that Ask Jeeves is dead. The site closed yesterday. Web 1.0 lost another founder.

Ask Jeeves: 3 June 1996 - 1 May 2026. Send no memes.

[Helen McEntee TD @HMcEntee]

Great to see today’s decision to allow Enterprise Ireland and IDA Ireland support companies in defence & dual-use sectors.

An important step to remove barriers and help Irish businesses compete in growing EU opportunities.

[Shit User Story @ShitUserStory]

As a…
– meeting attendee
I want…
– AI meeting notes
so that…
– I have AI meeting notes

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@OwenCallan Hoping to peel away a few independent? That might be an understandable political aim of a vote.

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@eastblocvisuals @ColdWarPod I was 6, watching in Ireland. I remember this ceremony because I went outside for the afternoon watching for balloons. Obs 6 year old me had a pretty vague notion of where the Olympics were actually being held.

[CS Blenner 🇺🇦🇵🇸🇱🇧🇬🇱🇪🇺 @CSBlenner]

All those who facilitated and boosted thus bigoted creep need to take a long, hard look in the mirror.

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@Rainmaker1973 @SeeryKearney Yes. But it was only 2 digits.

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@dublincomments @realBobbyHealy @adrianweckler Or maybe it would just be creepy and wrong for my neighbour to record videos of me and my kids coming and going from my front door?

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@oliviasolon Making it onto Pankaj's list will be the new Salt Bae reservation

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@oliviasolon I'm sure some supply chain genius will take up the "made to order" challenge.

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@colmoregan I think my Great Aunt had some in an old biscuit tin along with the spare gramophone needles.

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@adrianweckler Ah No. We did have the old "we'll provide a car" which as it turns out is quite a nuanced clause.

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@adrianweckler On the flip side: loads of strangers offered assistance to us (we were at the baby stage). Take a bow people if Cahir

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

@adrianweckler My ice car died years ago half way between Cork and Dublin. Insurance company towed it away to a local garage but really on the weekend there's not much else gonna happen. Had to ring family to pick us up.

[Con O'Donovan @ODonovanCon]

Well done @Unilever for trying but not for me. Got any product pairings for a history documentary 😃

[Evan A. Feigenbaum @EvanFeigenbaum]

I've read six things this morning on how countries are "rushing to China" in the face of Trump's pressure - or else that Beijing is taking advantage of discontent with Washington to peel off "jaded U.S. allies." This frame is how we get headlines like "Carney is leaning into China" or "Europeans are rushing to Beijing."

But this confuses bipolarity with optionality - and a pivot from one point to another with what should be more accurately characterized as "creating leverage." Self-interested countries create optionality; they don't just lean from one to the other by switching alignments, especially when the switcheroo would be from a longstanding ally to a non-friend. Simply put, there is a huge difference between BIPOLARITY ("lean toward the United States, or else lean toward China") and OPTIONALITY.

We Americans tend to think in terms of bipolarity, refracting everyone and everything through the prism of U.S.-China competition, which means we increasingly jam third parties into this template and view them as pivoting from one to the other and back and forth.

But a "pivot" from one to the other isn't really the right metaphor. If you're not the U.S. or China, the way to relieve pressure is to create multiplayer optionality - a lot of countries are doing this now, reacting to U.S. pressure not by "choosing China" but by forging self-interested, issue-specific coalitions, including with each other, to create a few more options.

This didn't start with Trump. There's a reason, for example, that the CPTPP trade pact in Asia ended up not with China filling the vacuum of U.S. withdrawal but with 11 parties completing the agreement with NEITHER the United States NOR China as party. Especially in Asia, we are getting fragmentation rather than bipolarity in a lot of areas, which means the future won't be defined by the Sinocentrism that Washington fears or by the American containment that Beijing seeks to forestall. Instead, what may prevail will be shifting coalitions and a discombobulated patchwork of rules, norms, and standards.

That's harder to make sense of than bipolarity but it's the logical result of the effort to foster more optionality by countries facing pressure from Washington, Beijing, or both.

I think it's better to understand Carney and some European outreach to China in THAT context, rather than just as "reacting to Trump" (although Trump's pressure is adding fuel and creating opportunities for Beijing that might not exist otherwise). So I'd hold off congratulating China on its "victory" since the real winners in a world of optionality rather than bipolarity are countries that support themselves by fostering a balance of power more favorable to THEM but not necessarily to Washington or Beijing. Some countries, like Vietnam for example, have proven quite adept at this.

I've been writing on this in other contexts for years - for example, here: https://t.co/zNPNQag1XW