Pick 3: A Global Lottery in Miniature Where Hope Is Sold by the Thimbleful By Matteo “Numbers Never Lie” Bianchi, Dave’s Locker International Desk SINGAPORE—Somewhere between the 24-hour currency desks and the hawker stalls that never sleep, a tiny rectangle of paper changes hands for the price of a kopi-o. Three digits, one Singapore dollar,…
From the Deck of a Slowly Sinking Cruise Ship Somewhere Between the Gulf of Mexico and the Mariana Trench by Our Correspondent-at-Large, still waiting for the Wi-Fi to load The phrase “Sam Houston vs Hawaii” sounds like the kind of fever dream you’d get after eating too much poke washed down with lukewarm Lone Star…
From the glassy towers of Seoul’s Gangnam district to the favelas of Rio, the name “Young Thug” has become a sort of Rosetta Stone for the universal language of legal theatre. In October 2023, Atlanta’s Fulton County courthouse—already famous for hosting the 2020 election-interference circus—rolled out a sequel: the YSL RICO trial. Abroad, the case…
Across the planet, “ranger” is less a job description than a Rorschach test. Say it in Nairobi and you picture a Kenya Wildlife Service officer politely asking an irate elephant to please not flatten the minister’s convoy. Whisper it in Warsaw and it conjures a camouflaged forest ghost monitoring Belarusian drones for the EU’s nervous…
Huskers: How a Corn-Fed College Nickname Took Over the Planet By the time the sun sets over the Shanghai skyline, a 19-year-old in a knock-off scarlet hoodie is live-tweeting Nebraska’s spring practice in Mandarin. Meanwhile, in Lagos, a betting syndicate is crunching play-action tendencies from grainy YouTube clips of the 1995 “Scoring Explosion” squad. Somewhere…
The Perilous Privilege of Feeling the World Crack Beneath Your Feet By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent (currently standing in yesterday’s kitchen, now a geological pop-up exhibit) When the floor began to samba at 3:17 a.m., my first coherent thought was not “Will the building hold?” but “Great, now I’ll be on every group chat from…
The ground shook this morning—again—somewhere between Tashkent and Tehran, and within minutes the entire planet began its familiar pantomime of panic, solidarity, and opportunistic brand tweets. A 6.8 magnitude quake rattled the steppe at 04:17 UTC, the sort of hour when seismologists are already awake (they never really sleep) and the rest of us pretend…
MIAMI – Somewhere between the pastel façades of South Beach and the pastel promises of the latest climate summit, the city has begun to resemble a very expensive aquarium that forgot to pay its gravity bill. Tropical Storm Debby’s soggy dress rehearsal last month was merely the overture; now Hurricane Idalia is taking the main…
ITV’s “Win Win” and the Global Glitter of Manufactured Hope By “Lucky” Lachlan Grimble, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between the collapse of the Turkish lira and the re-election of a man who sells $60 Bibles in the United States, ITV quietly rolled out “Win Win,” a game show that promises contestants a lifetime salary…
What Time Is the Powerball Drawing? A Global Synchronization of Irrational Hope By Our Correspondent in the Cheap Seats Every Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. Eastern—exactly when decent people in most latitudes are either asleep, drunk, or both—a set of numbered balls is sucked through a Lucite tube in Tallahassee and the planet briefly…
Immigration Appeals Court: Where Hope Goes to Get a Number and Wait in Line Forever By the Global Affairs Correspondent who has watched passports change hands more often than a €500 note in a Bulgarian nightclub. Walk into any immigration appeals court on the planet and you’ll find the same décor: fluorescent lighting that flatters…
SEOUL—Somewhere between the DMZ and an overpriced craft-coffee bar in Gangnam, the United States and South Korea are still trying to convince the rest of the planet that their 70-year entanglement is merely “strategic,” not “codependent with nuclear accessories.” The alliance, born in the ashes of 1950 and held together ever since by a mixture…
