STEVE BUSCEMI: THE ONLY THING HOLDING THE PLANET TOGETHER by our man in the field, still wearing yesterday’s cynicism Dateline: Somewhere over the Atlantic, where the in-flight Wi-Fi is patchy and the world below is on fire in at least four time zones. A curious thing happened at last week’s G-7 “emergency cultural summit” (a…
Mark Hamill, the Man Who Weaponized Nostalgia and Accidentally Became the Internet’s Guilt-Free Dad By Our Correspondent in Low-Earth Orbit Look up at the right moment—somewhere between the malfunctioning Chinese booster and Elon’s latest swarm of broadband pigeons—and you’ll see him: the lone Jedi emoji, orbiting the planet like a sarcastic satellite. Mark Hamill, age…
Severe Thunderstorm Warning: The Planet’s Mood Ring Flashes Amber Again By Dave’s Locker International Desk PARIS—Somewhere in the bureaucratic hush of the World Meteorological Organization, a color-coded map the size of Monaco just turned a queasy shade of puce. That, dear reader, is the international signal for “severe thunderstorm warning,” a phrase now so routinely…
Lotto Texas: A Lone-Star Fever Dream in an Age of Global Discontent By Our Senior Correspondent, Somewhere between Houston and Helsinki AUSTIN—Every Wednesday and Saturday night, while most of the planet is doom-scrolling through war-crime footage or calculating how many euros are left before civilization’s next rolling blackout, the good people of Texas gather around…
Dust Storm Warning: A Global Brown-Out By the time the meteorologists in Beijing, Baghdad, and Bakersfield finish their morning Zoom, the sky has already turned the color of an overcooked latte. A dust-storm warning is now less a regional inconvenience and more an international group chat nobody asked to join. From the Sahel to suburban…
Houston, We Have a Brand Problem: Astros vs Yankees as Global Morality Play by Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent (still jet-lagged from a nonstop via Reykjavik) When the Houston Astros and New York Yankees renew their blood feud this week, most of the planet will be busy keeping the lights on, the bombs off, or the…
Mega Millions: How a $1.6 Billion Mirage Seduces the Planet By Our Man in the Cheap Seats At 11 p.m. Eastern last night, a single American lottery draw produced more overnight billionaires than most African stock exchanges manage in a decade. The Mega Millions jackpot—$1.6 billion and change—had swollen to the kind of figure normally…
Wisconsin Lottery: Where Dairyland Dreams Meet the Global Delusion of Getting Rich Without Actually Doing Anything By Our Man in Geneva, Still Recovering from the Last Davos After-Party MADISON—From the air, Wisconsin looks like a polite green doily laid over North America’s midriff, all silos, supper clubs, and the occasional cow wondering why the grass…
The Tennessee Lottery: A Very American Miracle, Exported and Deconstructed By Our Man in Somewhere With Better Odds NASHVILLE—Somewhere between the neon crucifix of a Broadway honky-tonk and the beeping heartbreak of a gas-station scratcher, the Tennessee Lottery is quietly staging its own version of Manifest Destiny. From the outside, it looks like yet another…
Powerball en Vivo Hoy: The World Holds Its Breath for a Billion-Dollar Fever Dream By Dave’s Locker Correspondent, somewhere between a bar in Lisbon and a rooftop in Manila Tonight, at precisely 22:59 Eastern Standard Time, the multicolored balls of destiny will tumble inside a plastic drum in Tallahassee, Florida—population 200,000, humidity 400%. Somewhere between…
Power, like cheap tequila, is most potent just before it makes you sick. From the marble corridors of Brussels to the fluorescent-lit war rooms of Beijing, the world’s sharpest minds are busy proving that axiom daily, usually while someone else foots the bar tab. Consider the United Nations Security Council on any given Tuesday: five…
The World’s Most Democratic Tax on Hope By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Between the 7-Eleven and the Edge of Reason It was 8:03 p.m. in Madrid when Carlos, a civil servant who hasn’t seen a raise since fax machines were chic, forked over his last two euros for “El Gordo” Christmas tickets. Twelve time zones away,…
