The Tennessee Lottery: A Very American Miracle, Exported and Deconstructed By Our Man in Somewhere With Better Odds NASHVILLE—Somewhere between the neon crucifix of a Broadway honky-tonk and the beeping heartbreak of a gas-station scratcher, the Tennessee Lottery is quietly staging its own version of Manifest Destiny. From the outside, it looks like yet another…
Mile-High Mirage: How a Rocky Mountain Scratch Card Became a Global Parable By the time the Colorado Lottery’s latest Powerball billboard flickered to life above Denver International—a smiling elk promising life-changing jackpots to anyone who can read English and ignore basic statistics—three continents were already taking notes. From Singapore’s Marina Bay to Lagos’s Balogun Market,…
Drew Gilbert and the Global Theater of Minor-League Outrage By Diego “Don’t-Call-Me-Diego” Marquez, International Sports Misanthrope On the surface, Drew Gilbert is simply a 5’9″ outfielder with a swing prettier than most Instagram filters and a temper shorter than a TikTok attention span. Yet from the vantage point of a press box that smells faintly…
Power, like cheap tequila, is most potent just before it makes you sick. From the marble corridors of Brussels to the fluorescent-lit war rooms of Beijing, the world’s sharpest minds are busy proving that axiom daily, usually while someone else foots the bar tab. Consider the United Nations Security Council on any given Tuesday: five…
The World’s Most Democratic Tax on Hope By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Between the 7-Eleven and the Edge of Reason It was 8:03 p.m. in Madrid when Carlos, a civil servant who hasn’t seen a raise since fax machines were chic, forked over his last two euros for “El Gordo” Christmas tickets. Twelve time zones away,…
Rosie O’Donnell, the Human Rorschach Test No One Asked For By our correspondent in the cheap seats of the global amphitheater PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine and the Hudson, the name “Rosie O’Donnell” has become a kind of international litmus paper, turning one color for Americans who still think Twitter is a town square, another for…
South America: A Continent That Forgot to Read the Global Memo Dave’s Locker International Desk – Friday, 07:14 UTC RIO DE JANEIRO—While the rest of the planet was busy optimizing supply chains, South America appears to have been stuck in the longest cigarette break in recorded history. Somewhere between the Andes and the Atlantic, an…
Jessica Sanchez, the Filipino-Mexican-American vocal firecracker who once turned American Idol’s stage into an emergency-room triage for eardrums, has resurfaced—this time not as a contestant, but as a geopolitical Rorschach test. From Manila’s karaoke bars to Mexico City’s plaza loudspeakers to the algorithmic void of global streaming, Sanchez is less a singer now and more…
Craig Mazin and the Global Glow-Up of Nuclear Anxiety By Dave’s Locker, International Desk It takes a peculiar talent to make the world voluntarily re-ignite its nightmares about glowing rain and two-headed livestock, yet Craig Mazin has managed it twice—first with a fungus that turns gamers into clickers, and then, more alarmingly, with a reactor…
Sinner: The World’s Favorite Scapegoat, Now Available in Multiple Languages By Dave’s International Affairs Correspondent Who Has Personally Sinned on Three Continents Before Breakfast PARIS—If you believe the marketing, the term “sinner” has never been more cosmopolitan. Once the exclusive property of medieval flagellants and small-town preachers armed with megaphones and cholesterol, the label is…
Silksong: The Phantom Game That Has the Whole World Waiting—And Why That Says Everything About Us Dave’s Locker | International Desk | 06.11.2024 Somewhere between the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the next scheduled heat-death of Twitter, humanity has found a new shared obsession: a 2-D bug princess who may or may…
Osaka – Population: 19 million, Sarcasm: Infinite By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk (still jet-lagged since 2019) If Tokyo is the world’s impeccably ironed suit, Osaka is the same suit after it’s slept in a capsule hotel, eaten three sticks of kushikatsu, and decided to pick a fight with the global order. Long dismissed abroad as…
