NATO, Russian Drones, and the Beautiful Irony of Flying Death Machines They say the future arrived on silent propellers—quiet enough to be polite, lethal enough to be final. From the Baltic Sea to the Sea of Okhotsk, the sky is now a crowded cocktail party where NATO recon drones and Russian loitering munitions mingle like…
Manila, Singapore, Reykjavík—three cities that have never met Britt Lower, yet each has already drafted her for their own geopolitical fantasies. In the Philippines she is the face of imported prestige, proof that American streaming services still bother to remember the archipelago exists. In Singapore she is an efficiency benchmark for local talent agencies: “Could…
**Swansea’s Soggy Rebellion: When the Sea Knocks on Wales’ Door (Again)** By the time the River Tawe had finished redecorating Swansea city centre—rust-coloured water lapping against kebab-shop menus and half-submerged bus shelters—local councillors were already promising “world-class flood resilience” to anyone who still owned a pair of dry shoes. Translation: another round of PowerPoint presentations…
Hannah Einbinder Is the Canary in Netflix’s Global Coal Mine By Our Foreign Desk, Somewhere between the 405 and the International Date Line In the grand, tragicomic opera of 21st-century streaming, Hannah Einbinder has become an unlikely soprano—belting out punch lines sharp enough to draw blood across five continents and counting. The 29-year-old stand-up and…
Cinema, the art form that once asked us to sit in the dark and pretend the world made sense, is now the planet’s most reliable export of delusion. From Lagos to Lapland, humans still queue—online or in the rain—to watch other humans pretend the rent is paid and the planet isn’t on fire. Call it…
Rebel Ridge: The Tiny Appalachian Town That Just Declared War on the World (and the World Barely Noticed) By the time satellite imagery confirmed the smoke curling above Rebel Ridge, Kentucky, the international community had already moved on from the latest IEA oil report and was busy arguing over whether a TikTok ban constituted a…
**The Accidental Diplomat: How Chris Collinsworth Became America’s Most Unlikely Cultural Export** In the grand theater of American exceptionalism, where we export democracy, fast food, and inexplicable reality TV shows with equal enthusiasm, one man has somehow managed to become our most perplexing cultural ambassador without anyone quite noticing. Chris Collinsworth—the former Cincinnati Bengals wide…
Guardians of the Galaxy: How a Talking Raccoon Became the UN’s Most Reliable Diplomat By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker BRUSSELS—Somewhere between the collapse of the Doha trade talks and the fifteenth emergency session on Syrian grain shortages, the assembled foreign ministers of the G-77 discovered they had a new favorite metaphor for multilateral cooperation: a tree,…
VIKINGS VS FALCONS: A TIRED SCRIPT IN A WORLD THAT’S ALREADY ON FIRE By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent (currently self-medicating with fermented yak butter in Reykjavík) Somewhere between the first drone strike of the morning and the last cryptocurrency crash of the night, roughly 66,000 Americans—plus a few bewildered tourists who thought “NFL” was a…
The first time I saw Stephen Graham’s face, it was trying to punch Daniel Craig through a pub window in Layer Cake, and I remember thinking: that’s either a very brave actor or a very convincing Liverpudlian. As it turns out, he’s both—a compact, 5-foot-5 ball of Scouse volatility who has quietly become the United…
**The Curious Case of Gabby Williams: When Basketball Becomes a Global Passport** In the grand theater of international sports, where athletes routinely transcend their original purpose of throwing balls through hoops or hitting them over nets, Gabby Williams has become an unlikely metaphor for our increasingly borderless world. The 27-year-old basketball phenom—who can best be…
iOS 26: The Global Countdown to an Imaginary Upgrade By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk In the fluorescent corridors of tech conferences from Seoul to São Paulo, the same question now echoes like a ritual chant: “When does iOS 26 come out?” It is, of course, a phantom release—Apple’s roadmap currently stalls at the far less…
