The Accidental Geopolitics of a Thursday Night in Blacksburg By R. M. Delgado, International Affairs Desk Somewhere between the Blue Ridge and the broad Atlantic, two modest land-grant universities will collide Thursday night in what the American sports-industrial complex bills, with endearing provincial grandiosity, as “Virginia Tech vs. NC State.” The rest of the planet,…
Atlas-Necaxa: When a Mexican Soccer Match Becomes a Geopolitical Mood Ring By Our Correspondent, who has watched enough football to know the offside rule is less a regulation than a philosophical debate Guadalajara, Mexico – Somewhere between the agave fields and the chip factories, the city’s Atlas football club recently hosted Necaxa in a Liga…
The Bagman Who Carries the Weight of the West By our correspondent in Dubai, where the sand traps are air-conditioned and optimism is tax-free Tommy Fleetwood’s caddie—currently Ian Finnis, affectionately nicknamed “Fino”—has spent the last fortnight schlepping a 40-pound leather suitcase across four continents, three time zones, and two climate crises. From the manicured lawns…
Liberty vs. Old Dominion: A Cage Match Sponsored by Everyone Else By our man in the cheap seats, watching empires negotiate the fine print PARIS—If you squint at the headlines long enough, “liberty” and “old dominion” start to look like the same tired couple in a long-running sitcom: one swears this season they’ll finally break…
Defensa y Justicia 1 – Boca Juniors 2: A Modest Argentine Quarrel That Explains the Planet BUENOS AIRES – Somewhere in the southern sprawl of this city, a modest cement bowl called Estadio Norberto “Tito” Tomaghello hosted a Tuesday-night Copa Argentina fixture that, to the untrained eye, looked like just another domestic cup tie. Defensa…
Bryson DeChambeau and the Ryder Cup: How One Man’s Protein Shakes Terrify an Entire Continent By Dave’s Locker International Desk Rome, Italy – While most of the planet obsesses over AI doomsday scenarios, climate tipping points, and the slow-motion implosion of the global supply chain, the Old World has found a more immediate existential threat:…
Francesco Molinari: The Last Quiet Man in a World That Forgot How to Whisper Rome, May 2024 – While the planet debates whether to nuke TikTok or let it nuke our attention spans first, a 41-year-old Italian with the charisma of a well-ironed accountant is quietly proving that excellence can still occur without a personal…
In a dimly lit hotel bar in Bucharest—where the barman pours whiskey like it’s a controlled substance and the Wi-Fi still thinks the Cold War is pending—Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska-era demo “Deliver Me from Nowhere” has become an unlikely satellite anthem for the planet’s dislocated souls. The track, never meant for daylight, leaked last week from…
The Global Parable of Two Golfers, or How Justin Rose and Bryson DeChambeau Became a Geopolitical Rorschach Test By our man in the 19th-hole press tent, still nursing yesterday’s painkillers and tomorrow’s regrets PARIS — Somewhere between the Seine and the artificial intelligence expo that’s currently turning the City of Light into the City of…
Fluff Bothwell: The Global Ripple of a Scottish Sock Puppet’s Existential Crisis By Our Correspondent, presently in a bar in São Paulo pretending to check football scores Glasgow—The name “Fluff Bothwell” sounds like a failed indie band or an artisanal gin, but it is, in fact, a moth-eaten sock puppet currently trending on six continents….
Flyers: The Paper Ambassadors of a World That Can’t Stop Selling You Something By A Correspondent Who Has Been Handed Too Many in Too Many Languages PARIS—The Seine was running high, the pigeons were unionizing, and yet there they were: fresh-faced students in identical green T-shirts distributing glossy rectangles promising “1€ coffee if you bring…
Madonna: One Name, Six Continents, and a Planet-Size Ego in Lip Gloss By the time you finish this sentence, Madonna Ciccone will have reinvented herself again—possibly as a Portuguese fado singer, NFT guru, or UN goodwill ambassador for ageless provocation. The rest of us still struggle to update our Zoom backgrounds; she updates entire civilizations….
