Jeff Bezos, the man who turned a modest Seattle garage into a global empire so vast it makes the East India Company look like a weekend lemonade stand, is still very much the gravitational center of Planet Capitalism—even after stepping down as CEO of Amazon. From the vantage point of a world that can’t decide…
Geneva, Switzerland — While diplomats at the Palais des Nations were busy drafting strongly-worded press releases about climate, trade, and whatever crisis will trend next week, a far more consequential summit was taking place three tram stops away. Inside a pop-up showroom that smelled faintly of espresso and existential dread, Garmin unveiled the Fenix 8…
TinyTan and the Global Shrinking of Attention Spans By Our Correspondent, Still Recovering from a 7-Second Reel of Existential Dread SEOUL—Somewhere between the DMZ and the nearest duty-free Bulgogi stand, seven pastel figurines the height of a credit card have become the most efficient diplomats South Korea never hired. TinyTan—BTS reimagined as chibi mercenaries—now storm…
Florida’s Surgeon General, Joseph Ladapo, has quietly become America’s most efficient exporter of confusion—an impressive feat in a country that already ships reality TV, deep-fried butter, and unsolicited military advice to every corner of the planet. While Washington haggles over debt ceilings and Beijing perfects the art of the passive-aggressive communiqué, Ladapo has cornered the…
From the Ruins of the American Empire, a Six-Stringed Consolation Prize Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk | 12 June 2025 Paris—It is 2 a.m. on the Rive Gauche and the bistros have finally run out of rosé. Somewhere between a tab of questionable MDMA and a heated debate on whether NATO still exists, a busker breaks…
Jeff Driskel and the Curious Case of the Disposable Quarterback By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, somewhere over the North Atlantic If the American experiment in late-stage capitalism had a mascot, it might well be Jeff Driskel—an itinerant quarterback whose career arc resembles a Ryanair flight plan: cheap, indirect, and perpetually delayed. The 31-year-old…
De Minaur: The Last Australian Standing in Tennis’s Endless Game of Thrones By Dave’s Locker International Desk SYDNEY—If you squint through the smog of a Pacific bushfire haze, you can almost see the ghost of Pat Cash still arguing with umpires at the net. Australia, the nation that once weaponised tennis whites and exported surly…
Marvel’s Angela: How a Forgotten Spawn Sidekick Quietly Conquered the Global Imagination By A. S. de Winter, International Cultural Correspondent Somewhere between a NATO summit and the latest crypto scandal, the planet’s collective id decided that what it really needed was a six-foot-tall, platinum-haired Valkyrie-lawyer who can audit your taxes and then split you in…
The Ballad of Streameast: How One More Ghost Ship Sank in the Endless Ocean of Piracy By Dave’s Foreign Desk, somewhere between a cheap hotel minibar and whatever counts as “international waters” these days PARIS—If you listen carefully at 3 a.m. along the Seine, you can almost hear the collective sigh of a million insomniac…
Marvel Rivals: When Super-Powers Collide in the Shadow of Real-World Chaos By Our Man in the Multiverse In the grand tradition of pitting gods against each other for our mild amusement, Marvel Entertainment has once again invited the planet to watch its costumed demigods punch each other through digital skyscrapers. Marvel Rivals—the freshly announced 6-v-6…
The Vuelta a España, the Tour’s moody younger sibling who still wears black nail polish at 35, kicked off last weekend under a sun so brutal even the asphalt looked apologetic. While the planet elsewhere debated which apocalypse to schedule next—climate, debt, or the next crypto-currency—2,000 kilometres of Iberian tarmac offered an alternate reality where…
Nate Bargatze and the Soft Power of the American Mumble: How One Tennessee Everyman Quietly Became the Planet’s Preferred Sedative By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk PARIS—On any given Thursday, while ministers in Brussels argue over grain tariffs and Beijing’s censors sharpen their knives for the next celebrity, a 44-year-old man from Old Hickory, Tennessee, is…
