The Beautiful Game’s Ugly Cousin: Why the Whole World Is Now a Fantasy Premier League Colony By Our Man in the Ether Somewhere between the collapse of the post-war order and the rise of oat-milk lattes, the Premier League stopped being a mere English pastime and became the planet’s largest secular religion. The liturgy is…
Sam Heughan: Scotland’s Accidental Soft-Power Kilt Missile and the World’s Thirst for Tartan-Wrapped Reassurance By Our Man in the Highlands, Nursing a Hangover and a Passport Full of Airport Stamps There are moments when the global order feels like a Jenga tower assembled by drunk toddlers: one wobble in Washington, one sneeze in Beijing, and…
Berlin Marathon 2025: 42 Kilometres of Global Neurosis Laced with Electrolytes By Our Man in Schöneberg, still limping from 2019 The planet’s most efficient guilt trip returns to Berlin on 28 September 2025, when 50 000 anxious over-achievers will jog in formation past the Reichstag like a well-sponsored refugee column. For one Sunday, the city’s…
The Transglobal Ballet of Blood, Asphalt, and Billable Hours A dispatch from the frontlines of human-versus-hood ornament jurisprudence By the time you finish this sentence, three more pedestrians will have been introduced—rather abruptly—to the business end of a motor vehicle somewhere on planet Earth. The introduction is rarely cordial, often involves a siren soundtrack, and,…
Manchester Airport: A Provincial Gate to the Apocalypse, with Pretzels By our correspondent, still queuing at security for the third time today MANCHESTER, United Kingdom — There is a special place in the modern inferno reserved for airports that insist on behaving like minor city-states. Manchester Airport—airport code MAN, as if the runways themselves were…
Fantasy Football: The Global League Where Nobody Runs, Everyone Profits, and the Planet Still Burns By the time the London Stock Exchange opens, 3.2 million Indians have already swapped out a Kansas City tight end for a Baltimore kicker whose name they can’t pronounce. In São Paulo, a logistics manager toggles between spreadsheets and his…
Sometime around 2 a.m. in Auckland, while most of the planet was doom-scrolling economic forecasts and wondering which hemisphere would catch fire next, the Women’s Rugby World Cup final kicked off like a polite riot in Eden Park. England versus New Zealand—two nations that once colonised each other’s accents—settled the matter with 80 minutes of…
**The Friendly Neighborhood Death Merchant: Collins Aerospace and the Global Symphony of Perpetual Motion** Somewhere above the Atlantic, a Collins Aerospace-built avionics system is guiding a cargo plane full of Belgian chocolates to New York while simultaneously helping a military drone track suspicious activity in the Sahel. It’s a touching tableau of globalization—the same company…
Brie Larson and the Peculiar Global Sport of Watching Actors Become Ideological Footballs By Our Correspondent in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere over the Pacific It began, as most twenty-first-century international incidents do, with a tweet. Brie Larson—Oscar-winner, Marvel franchise linchpin, part-time YouTube vlogger—once suggested that film criticism could stand a wider range of voices. Within…
From the Autobahn to the Amazon: The Rise of the Car Accident Attorney as a Global Export By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the mangled chrome of a São Paulo rush-hour pile-up and the polite exchange of insurance papers on a snowy Kyoto bridge, a new kind of diplomat has emerged: the car accident…
Liverpool vs Everton: A Timeline of Friendly Hatred in the Age of Geopolitical Chaos By our man in the departure lounge, still waiting for a flight that left in 2018 1892 – Birth of the Rivalry While Europe was busy redrawing maps with crayons dipped in blood, two church teams in a damp English port…
BIRMINGHAM, England – Somewhere between afternoon tea and evening pints, another round of gunfire reminded the United Kingdom that even its second city can play at being Chicago-on-Avon. Four people were shot in the Bordesley Green district on Tuesday, two of them critically, in what West Midlands Police are calling “a targeted incident” – which,…
