Tonight, while most of the planet sleeps or pretends to, a small but disproportionately loud slice of humanity will gather around glowing rectangles to watch American college football. From Lagos to Lahore, expatriate alumni bars will swell with the nostalgic aroma of overpriced wings and the quiet desperation of mid-level executives clinging to alma-mater identity…
In Naples, the line for confession now snakes past a hologram of a 15-year-old in sneakers, while in Manila his pixelated face beams from LED billboards above traffic that hasn’t moved since the last papal conclave. Carlo Acutis—nerd, gamer, and freshly minted “millennial saint”—has achieved the kind of omnipresence that Silicon Valley can only envy…
Mariners vs. Braves: A 7,000-Mile Proxy War for the Soul of Late-Stage Baseball Somewhere between the Space Needle and the Chattahoochee, two ball clubs—one named after 19th-century sailors, the other after Confederate infantry—are locked in a contest that feels less like sport and more like a blue-screen error in globalization’s operating system. The Seattle Mariners…
From the bustling newsrooms of São Paulo to the fluorescent-lit offices of Seoul, one name has flickered across screens with the faint buzz of a dying neon sign: Kendra Licari. At first glance, she is merely a 42-year-old former basketball coach from Michigan who, in 2022, pleaded guilty to cyberstalking her own daughter and the…
The Phillies and Marlins, two clubs whose combined payroll wouldn’t cover Mbappé’s weekly dry-cleaning bill, squared off again last night in South Philadelphia. From an international vantage point—say, a cramped sports bar in Naples where the espresso is stronger than the Wi-Fi—this NL East tilt carries all the geopolitical weight of a UN resolution on…
YouTube TV: The Planet’s Couch Potato Imperialism (Dave’s Locker International Desk, 14 June 2024) From the smog-choked high-rises of Jakarta to the one-bar villages of rural Moldova, humanity has finally agreed on something: the best way to see the world is to sit perfectly still and let Google beam it into your retinas. YouTube TV—Alphabet’s…
JAMES MADISON 34, LOUISVILLE 33: A MICRO-DRAMA THAT COULD HAVE BEEN AVOIDED IF EVERYONE JUST DRANK MORE ESPRESSO By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, Dave’s Locker Global Desk Doha airport, 03:47 local. The duty-free TVs are tuned not to Gaza, nor to the G7, but to a college football scoreboard flashing “FINAL—JAMES MADISON 34,…
Détente at 95 mph: How a Blue Jay–Yankee Grudge Match Quietly Runs the Planet By Elias Moreau, International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker TORONTO—Every August, diplomats in Geneva pretend to argue about carbon credits while the real negotiations unfold 550 kilometers northwest under retractable roofing. In Section 235 of the Rogers Centre, a man in a Che…
Dodgers vs. Orioles: When Two Coastal Elites Remind the World That Baseball Still Exists by Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk LOS ANGELES—Last night, under the same smog-filtered moon that once watched the Soviet Union collapse, the Los Angeles Dodgers politely thrashed the Baltimore Orioles 7-3. From a purely terrestrial standpoint it was an ordinary interleague matchup….
When the Earth slips between the Sun and the Moon this week, casting its ruddy shadow across our nearest celestial companion, billions of humans will stop arguing about tariffs, interest rates, and which billionaire most recently insulted which head of state. Instead, they will tilt their heads skyward like synchronized meerkats and murmur variations of…
Mets vs Reds: A Global Tragedy in Nine Innings By Paolo “Pallino” Rossi, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Singapore bureau, 04:17 a.m. local time The first pitch in Cincinnati is scheduled for 7:10 p.m. ET, which is convenient for Manhattan traders still digesting lunch and mercifully late for Jakarta office drones already asleep. One ballgame, two…
Spring Valley Fire: A Local Blaze with Global Arsonists By “Scorched” Santiago Vega, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker The first wisps of smoke rose above Spring Valley, Nevada, last Tuesday at 14:37 local time—just late enough in the day for European traders to notice the haze on their Bloomberg terminals and wonder if their algorithmic portfolios…
