From the Files of the Global Cultural Attaché: A Dispatch on Belcalis Marlenis Almánzar, A.K.A. Cardi B It is 2:07 a.m. in Dubai, the hour when the Burj Khalifa’s LED façade usually cycles through stock-market quotes and tourist selfies. Tonight, however, it flashes hot-pink lyrics in Comic Sans: “Okurrr.” Somewhere in Lagos, a danfo bus…
Queen Elizabeth II died exactly when the planet needed a two-week televised funeral more than, say, a functioning biosphere. From Lagos to Lima, screens flickered with scarlet-clad guards and plumed horses while inflation, drought, and war politely waited their turn. The BBC called it “history unfolding”; everyone else called it an exquisite displacement activity. In…
Atlanta’s Humidity Is Now an International Export—Whether You Ordered It or Not By the Bureau of Global Damp Affairs, Dave’s Locker Somewhere over the North Atlantic, a British Airways captain just announced “unseasonable mugginess” at cruising altitude. The culprit? A globetrotting blob of Atlanta air—equal parts kudzu perfume, brake-dust cologne, and whatever aerosolized regret evaporated…
The Champs-Élysées, Paris’s 1.9-kilometre runway of limestone and delusion, has always been less a street than a global stage—equal parts catwalk, battlefield, and cash register. On any given day you can watch a Japanese honeymooner pose with a baguette she’ll never eat, a Gulf-state prince queue for a €12 macaron, and a Parisian waiter perfect…
**When the World’s Largest Economy Forgets to Pay the Electric Bill** *By Our Correspondent Who’s Seen This Movie Before* America, that shining city upon a hill, occasionally likes to switch off its own lights just to remind everyone it’s still the main character. While the rest of the planet scrambles to keep the fluorescent bulbs…
Together for Palestine: A Global Chorus That Can’t Quite Hit the Same Note By Dave’s Locker International Desk The hashtag du jour, “Together for Palestine,” now pings across 195 sovereign Wi-Fi networks with the urgency of a pop-up ad for eternal salvation. It has trended in Lagos, trended in Lima, trended in Luxembourg—proof that nothing…
Snow Day or Slow Day? How a Two-Hour Delay in Ohio Echoes from Oslo to Ouagadougou By the time the robo-call hits American parents at 5:14 a.m.—“Due to inclement weather, all district schools will operate on a two-hour delay”—half the planet has already been up, down, and sideways. In Helsinki, the sun has been up…
Baltimore Weather: A Micro-Climate of Global Dysfunction By the time the Chesapeake’s “atmospheric river” reaches Baltimore, it has already auditioned for monsoon season in Manila, interned as an ice storm in Kyiv, and moonlighted as Saharan dust in Lisbon. The city’s weather, therefore, is not merely local precipitation but the final, jet-lagged employee in a…
**The Great British Bail-Out: When Your Floating Holiday Becomes a Maritime Tragedy** In a twist that would make even the most optimistic cruise director reach for the emergency rum supply, P&O Cruises has once again demonstrated that the only thing more reliable than British weather is British corporate crisis management. The recent cancellations affecting Ventura…
The Wild-Card Opera: How Six Extra Baseball Teams Explain 2024’s Global Mood Swing By our man in the cheap seats, somewhere between the 7th-inning stretch and the apocalypse. From the vantage point of a jet-lagged correspondent nursing a €9 stadium beer in Toronto, the American League and National League wild-card races look less like sport…
Chris Briney and the Global Ripple of a Quiet American Heartbreak By Our Correspondent in Exile, Somewhere Over the Mid-Atlantic The United States, that perpetually surprised adolescent superpower, lost another citizen last week. Chris Briney—age 45, father of two, possessor of an all-American surname that sounds suspiciously like a discount supermarket chain—was shot dead in…
PARIS — The Avenue des Champs-Élysées is closed again, this time for the Olympic marathon, next week for a climate protest, the week after for a film shoot in which it is blown to CGI smithereens. If you stand long enough on the world’s most self-conscious boulevard, you can watch the planet rehearse its own…
