Molly Smith and the Great Global Rebranding of Absolutely Nothing By Our Correspondent, still jet-lagged in Terminal 3 Dateline: Somewhere between Reykjavik and regret Somewhere in the churning stomach of international capitalism, Molly Smith has become the latest placebo we swallow when the world’s indigestion flares. Who is Molly Smith? Pick a continent and you’ll…
Maryland’s Little Gamble: How a Mid-Atlantic Scratch-Off Became a Mirror for the Planet’s Desperate Daydreams By Diego “House Always Wins” Morales, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker BALTIMORE—On the surface, the Maryland Lottery looks like any other state-run numbers racket: garishly colored tickets, an app that pings like a needy ex, and billboards promising that someone, somewhere,…
Victoria: A Name That Conquered the World and Still Won’t Pick Up the Check By Our Jaded Foreign Correspondent Somewhere between Duty-Free and Disillusionment There are, at last count, roughly 1.3 million Victorias on LinkedIn alone—enough to fill a medium-sized authoritarian parade and still have a queue outside the bar. From the diamond mines of…
Achieve: A Global Tour of the Impossible Dream, Now 30 % Off By Our Correspondent, Somewhere between Terminal 3 and Existential Dread “Achieve,” the travel brochure promises, is a quaint village reachable by anyone with grit, Wi-Fi, and a premium LinkedIn subscription. In reality it’s more of a floating island—today moored off the coast of…
The Curious Case of Diana Vickers: How a British Pop Runner-Up Became the Accidental Barometer of Global Chaos By Eduardo Valdez, International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between the fall of Kabul and the rise of AI-generated boy bands, Diana Vickers—yes, the barefoot X-Factor finalist with the voice like a haunted teacup—slipped back into the planetary…
Brewery Lane, Newtownards: A Tiny Street with a Hangover the Size of the World Dave’s Locker, International Desk – Somewhere between the sixth pint of Guinness and the seventh lecture on supply-chain resilience, it struck me that Brewery Lane in Newtownards, County Down, is less a street than a geopolitical metaphor in brick form. The…
Alan Brazil: When a Breakfast Show Becomes a Geopolitical Barometer By Our Man in the Departures Lounge, Dave’s Locker International Desk The name “Alan Brazil” sounds like a low-budget airline you’d regret booking at 3 a.m., yet it belongs to a man who has somehow turned fried eggs, betting odds, and the pre-caffeine grumbles of…
Scratch marks the spot—whether on a lottery ticket in Lagos, a DJ’s vinyl in Berlin, or the arm of a refugee who just realized the camp’s Wi-Fi password is “Password123.” The word itself is a global chameleon: noun, verb, existential sigh. Peel back one layer and you find the entire planet trying to itch an…
Phil Collins, the balding British everyman whose drumsticks once thundered across stadiums like low-yield artillery, has become an unlikely barometer of planetary decline. While the man himself now shuffles on titanium hips through a quiet life in Switzerland—tax-efficiently close to his Geneva vault—his back-catalogue has metastasised into a global lingua franca of resignation. From Manila…
Vladivostok, Russia’s red-headed stepchild on the Sea of Japan, has spent most of its life being politely ignored by Moscow until someone remembers the Pacific Fleet rusting at anchor and decides to throw a party. This week the city hosts the Eastern Economic Forum, a jamboree where oligarchs, nervous diplomats, and the occasional North Korean…
Community, Circa 2024: A Field Report from the Glorious Ruins of Togetherness By L. M. Valdez, Foreign Correspondent, presently somewhere between a WeWork in Singapore and a refugee tent in Gaziantep — The word “community” once conjured images of kindly grandmothers swapping soup recipes over white picket fences. Today, the same word is more likely…
PARIS—While the rest of the planet argued about whether World War III would begin with a submarine ping or a TikTok trend, Lizzo—flute in one hand, disco ball in the other—managed to become a one-woman diplomatic incident on three separate continents last week. If you missed it, congratulations: you were probably busy watching glaciers file…
