Sydney Harbour, that postcard-perfect collision of opera-house curves and Bondi bronzed optimism, spent Tuesday morning playing host to an older, toothier kind of performer. A 51-year-old British expat—let’s call him Nigel for the sake of narrative convenience—took an unscheduled swim with what authorities clinically label “a large shark” and what locals with fewer syllables call…
Mega Millions Winning Numbers: The Global Lottery Where Everyone Loses Except One Guy in Ohio By the time the white balls tumbled out of the gravity chamber in Atlanta, the planet had already placed its bets. In Manila, a call-center agent on his smoke break refreshed the app six times, convinced that 07-15-24-41-43 + 22…
GLOBAL SMACKDOWN REPORT: The Planet’s Weekly Recap of Who Got Owned, Who Got Lucky, and Who Still Owes Us Rent By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk ZURICH—If you squint hard enough, every news cycle looks like an over-booked wrestling card: the same tired gimmicks, the same surprise run-ins, and a commentary team pretending the outcome wasn’t…
The EuroMillions lottery—Europe’s weekly exercise in collective delusion—draws punters from nine countries who hand over small change in exchange for the statistically negligible possibility that their lives will suddenly resemble a private-jet commercial. Every Tuesday and Friday night the continent pauses, breath baited, to discover which accidental plutocrat will be granted the GDP of a…
**LAS VEGAS WEATHER: WHERE THE WORLD COMES TO MELT** *By our correspondent who has filed stories from actual deserts that were more hospitable* Las Vegas—that glittering monument to human optimism in Nevada’s Mojave Desert—has been experiencing weather that makes one wonder if the city finally negotiated an exclusive deal with the sun. While temperatures flirt…
The Kiss of Debt – How a Tiny Hematophage Became the World’s Most Understated Debt Collector By the time you finish your morning flat-white in Brooklyn, a silent collection agency has already crawled out of a crack in a mud-brick wall in Cochabamba and bitten a sleeping child just above the lip. The agent’s calling…
Marvel Tokon Beta: When the World’s Favorite Superhero Franchise Decides to Issue Its Own Currency (and Nobody Tells the IMF) By the time most of you woke up this morning, some kid in Lagos had already flipped a pixelated Captain America shield NFT for enough Marvel Tokon Beta (MTB) to buy three weeks of actual…
Dallas, Texas—never the shy type—has spent the last few weeks auditioning for the Four Horsemen. One moment it’s 28 °C and the cicadas are gossiping like hedge-fund analysts at a rooftop bar; the next, marble-sized hail is auditioning for the lead role in “The Day After Tomorrow: Suburban Edition.” International observers, once content to treat…
Dallas, Texas— The forecast here is so cartoonishly extreme that it feels like the city is auditioning for a spot in the United Nations Climate Hall of Infamy. One day the mercury tickles 110°F (43°C), the next a derecho rewinds the thermostat to 68°F and flips every patio umbrella into low-orbit lawn art. From a…
Sky vs Fever: The Planet’s Newest Past-Time, Sponsored by Everyone’s Panic By Our Man in the Departures Lounge The match-up began quietly enough—one of those slow-motion grudge fights that only epidemiologists and airline CEOs bother to track. On one side: the literal sky, 510 million square kilometres of once-pristine nothing now hosting 45,000 commercial flights…
Haití and Honduras: A Tale of Two Hemispheres United by the Art of Being Forgotten By the International Desk, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between the breakfast tables of Geneva and the barstools of Brooklyn, the names Haiti and Honduras are politely excused from conversation like relatives who drank too much at last year’s wedding. Yet, on…
Twins vs Royals: The Eternal Cage Match Between Genetics and Genealogy By Our Correspondent in the Republic of Slightly Unhinged Democracies If you’ve spent any time on social media this week, you’ve seen the memes: a pair of identical toddlers in matching rompers squaring off against a pair of middle-aged heirs in identical navy suits,…
