ULA’s Latest Launch: A Firework Display for a Planet Already on Fire By [REDACTED], Senior Space Correspondent, somewhere between the Kármán line and the breakfast buffet CAPE CANAVERAL—Another Tuesday, another column of white-hot money clawing its way past Florida’s thinning ozone layer. United Launch Alliance—those Boeing-Lockheed love-children who bill taxpayers the way boutique hotels bill…
Starbucks to Shutter “Underperforming” Cafés—World Holds Breath, Somehow Keeps Spinning By our correspondent in the land where the Frappuccino is still considered coffee Seattle’s green mermaid, that twin-tailed siren who has spent three decades persuading humanity that a four-dollar paper cup is the ticket to urban sophistication, announced yesterday it will close 150 North American…
Jack Ciattarelli: A Garden-Variety Governor Who Never Was, Viewed from the Cheap Seats of the World By Our Correspondent Somewhere Over the Atlantic PARIS—Somewhere between the espresso bar at Charles de Gaulle and the duty-free shop selling cigarettes named after emotions, one might pause to ask: why, in a year when the Arctic caught fire…
If you want a single ticker to explain late-stage capitalism’s planetary conquest, look no further than SBUX—Starbucks, the green mermaid that has caffeinated the globe until even the glaciers are considering an espresso shot. From the moment the Nasdaq bell rings in New York, the stock pirouettes through time zones like a jittery insomniac, dragging…
When Katie Couric sat down with Sarah Palin in 2008, the moment ricocheted from Anchorage to Abu Dhabi faster than a sub-prime mortgage collapse. To Americans it was a “gotcha” interview; to the rest of the planet it was an omen—proof that the empire’s next-in-line couldn’t name a newspaper she read. Couric, ever the polite…
Primavera Sound Barcelona 2026: The Last Carnival Before the Ice Caps Melt Barcelona—Spain’s most charmingly self-aware city—will once again host the planet’s most influential open-air panic room when Primavera Sound returns 28 May–7 June 2026. In its 25th edition, the festival has transcended mere music to become a floating referendum on late-capitalist escapism: 350,000 pilgrims…
The Curious Imperial Export of Declan Donnelly: How a Geordie Host Became a Soft-Power Asset in the Global End-Times Variety Show By Our Correspondent, still jet-lagged in the duty-free purgatory of Terminal 3 To the rest of the planet—where Netflix menus groan under K-dramas, Turkish telenovelas, and Nigerian courtroom comedies—the name Declan Donnelly lands like…
Shutdown: The World’s Favorite New Pastime By Our Correspondent, presently not shut down (give it time) PARIS—Another week, another capital city flicking the off-switch like a toddler who’s discovered the light button. From Washington’s debt-ceiling death spiral to Berlin’s overnight techno-curfew, “shutdown” has become the global lingua franca, a polite euphemism for “we’ve stopped pretending…
Beetlejuice West End: When the Netherworld’s Most Toxic Expat Finally Gets a London Lease The first thing you notice, queuing outside the refurbished Theatre Royal Drury Lane, is how orderly the British are about welcoming a demon. No pitchforks, no torches—just a laminated QR code and a £6 bottle of lukewarm Prosecco. It’s the same…
Baltic Airspace, 09:47 local. A Russian Su-27 barrels in at 500 knots like a drunk uncle who’s heard there’s an open bar, canopy glinting with all the subtlety of a Bond villain’s cufflinks. NATO’s Quick Reaction Alert detachment—today flown by a laconic Dane who once sold vacuum cleaners for a living—rolls, locks, and politely invites…
Larry Wilcox, the Man Who Rode a Motorcycle into the Cold War: A Global Post-Mortem on CHiPs and Geopolitical Kitsch If you squint at the 1970s hard enough, they look like a half-remembered fever dream sponsored by cheap gasoline and cheaper morals. Somewhere in that haze sat Officer Jon Baker—California tan, mirrored sunglasses reflecting both…
Richmond, Virginia—In a world where nations wage proxy wars over semiconductor supremacy and central bankers treat inflation like a moody house-cat, the Commonwealth of Virginia has decided that the most pressing geopolitical lever available to it is… a tax rebate. Yes, dear global citizen, while the Arctic melts faster than a popsicle in Dubai and…
