They say the sun never sets on the British Empire; these days it merely glints off a thousand smartphone screens across four continents as grown men in Jakarta traffic jams, Lagos cybercafés, and Munich beer halls all hit refresh on ProFootballTalk. A modest blog started in 2001 by a former lawyer with a dial-up modem…
London – In the grand theatre of global capitalism, where every index wobble is marketed as a Shakespearean tragedy, BT Group plc’s share price is currently auditioning for the role of “tragicomic lead.” For the uninitiated, BT is the United Kingdom’s answer to the question “What if Ma Bell never died but instead put on…
Tesla Share Price: A Global Mood Ring on Four Wheels by Arthur Grimble, International Business Correspondent, somewhere between a departure lounge and existential dread The opening bell in New York is, for most of humanity, just another abstract clang in the cacophony of late capitalism. Yet last Tuesday it sounded like a starter pistol for…
Howie Kurtz and the Global Gospel of Self-Reference By our jaded foreign correspondent who’s watched press corps on five continents eat their own tails If you zoom out far enough—say, from a café terrace in Lisbon or a newsroom in Lagos—Howard Kurtz looks less like an American media critic and more like a recurring weather…
**The Global Spark: How a Four-Letter Word Keeps Humanity’s Lights On (Barely)** In the grand theater of human civilization, where we’re all just extras pretending we know the plot, “spark” remains our most versatile prop. From the first caveman who discovered fire could both cook mammoth and terrify his mother-in-law to the latest tech bro…
PARIS—While most of humanity was busy arguing over which streaming service best numbs the pain of existence, a quiet consortium of physicists, hedge-fund magicians, and geopolitical chess players spent the spring chasing a ticker symbol that sounds like a forgotten Scandinavian cereal: OKLO. The company, which promises to mass-produce “mini” nuclear reactors small enough to…
The Curious Odyssey of Constance Marten: Aristocracy, Infanticide, and the Global Tabloid Hunger Games By C. L. “Luca” Moreau, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker PARIS—As the Seine swells with spring rain and French pension-reform protests compete for column inches, the Anglophone press has devoted roughly the same acreage to Constance Marten that it once reserved for…
TSLA: The World’s Favorite Casino Chip on Four Wheels By our correspondent in a city whose air quality Tesla claims to fix—while its owners mine crypto in the parking lot. If you want to understand the 21st-century psyche, skip the UN communiqués and look at TSLA after hours. One man tweets a poop emoji and…
Deauville, Normandy – While most of the planet was busy Googling “heat dome” and “interest rate zombie,” an improbably well-tailored Conservative back-bencher named Danny Kruger spent last week reassuring a roomful of French senators that, yes, the Anglo-Saxon world can still produce a moral philosopher who doesn’t look like he’s just escaped a hedge fund….
George Soros: The Last Cosmopolitan Villain Standing By “Dave’s Foreign Desk,” somewhere between Budapest and a hedge fund If you drew a Venn diagram containing every populist firebrand from Brasília to Belgrade, the only common overlap bigger than “blame the IMF” is “blame George Soros.” The 93-year-old philanthropist has achieved the rare distinction of being…
Kate McKinnon, the elastic-faced chameleon whose impression of Hillary Clinton once made an entire planet wince in collective recognition, is quietly becoming the United States’ most successful cultural export since fast food and crippling student debt. While American late-night hosts still shout at their own electorate, McKinnon’s sketches ricochet through WhatsApp groups from Lagos to…
MEMPHIS—While the rest of the planet argues about the correct temperature at which to serve beer, Memphis has decided to test-drive every setting on the cosmic thermostat—often before lunch. One moment the city is a convection oven that would make a Sicilian summer blush; the next, it’s auditioning for a minor role in the Book…
