Barkov: the name now ricochets around chat rooms, boardrooms, and dimly lit war rooms from Helsinki to Ho Chi Minh City with the same urgency once reserved for terms like “sub-prime” or “Brexit.” At first glance it sounds like a mid-tier vodka brand or a minor character in a Dostoevsky subplot, but Barkov—part meme, part…
Ford Stock: The Blue Oval’s Global Mood Ring Turns Optimistically Glum By Dave’s Locker International Desk Detroit may still print the certificates, but Ford Motor Company’s share price these days is written in a dozen currencies, parsed in time zones from Tokyo to São Paulo, and interpreted by analysts who haven’t seen daylight since the…
Pinecrest Glades Academy: A Snowy Microcosm of the Planet’s Slow-Motion Breakdown By “Global” Gus McAllister, Senior Correspondent, somewhere between Reykjavík and regret Somewhere on the frostbitten southern lip of the American continent—latitude 25.7° N, longitude 80.3° W, if you’re the sort who still trusts coordinates—sits Pinecrest Glades Academy, a K-12 charter that looks, on first…
XANDER SCHAUFFELE: THE LAST QUIET AMERICAN ON A PLANET THAT CAN’T STOP SCREAMING By the time Xander Schauffele tapped in for par to win the PGA Championship at Valhalla, the world had already moved on to the next outrage cycle. Somewhere between a cease-fire collapsing in Gaza, a TikTok ban that nobody asked for, and…
From the banks of the Tagus to the neon canyons of Tokyo, the second Monday in October has become an annual Rorschach test: some see parades, others see plunder. While U.S. federal employees enjoy a paid holiday to commemorate a Genoese sailor who never set foot on what would later be branded “America,” the rest…
Capgemini: The Quiet Colossus Outsourcing the Apocalypse—One Spreadsheet at a Time PARIS—While the rest of us were doom-scrolling through 2023’s greatest hits—wildfires, coups, AI-generated pop songs—Capgemini celebrated its 56th birthday by quietly adding another 30,000 humans to its payroll. That’s roughly the population of Liechtenstein, give or take a tax haven. Not bad for a…
The Curious Case of Bob MacIntyre, or How a Scotsman Quietly Bent the Universe By the time the final putt dropped on the 72nd hole of the Scottish Open, Bob MacIntyre had not so much won a golf tournament as issued a low-key memo to planet Earth: gravity, money, and geopolitical anxiety remain optional accessories…
The Ballad of Justin Rose, or How a Very Polite Englishman Accidentally Became a Geopolitical Weather Vane By Our Man in the Fairway, Still Nursing a Hangover from Geneva In the grand casino where nations hedge their soft-power bets—Olympic villages, World Cup stadiums, the occasional F1 paddock—golf was long dismissed as the pastel-colored safe space…
The Ryder Cup: A Weekend Where Continental Egos Are Stroked, Then Deflated, All for a Tiny Gold Trophy By Our Man in Marco Simone, Nursing an Espresso and Existential Dread MARCO SIMONE GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB, ITALY — If you squinted past the emerald fairways and corporate skyboxes this weekend, you could almost see the…
OSLO, NORWAY – Somewhere above the Arctic Circle, a 25-year-old Norwegian is single-handedly proving that the apocalypse can wait at least until Sunday. Viktor Hovland, who looks like he just walked out of a J.Crew catalog that moonlights as a death-metal album cover, has become the unlikely diplomat of an anxious planet. While governments bicker…
Europe’s Ryder Cup Team: Twelve Angry Men in Pringle Knitwear By L. M. Harrow, International Correspondent (Dave’s Locker – Geneva Bureau) The Ryder Cup is golf’s answer to trench warfare—only the trenches are perfectly manicured and the combatants apologize after every volley. Every two years, the European squad assembles like the world’s most passive-aggressive NATO…
Just Picture It: A Planet-Wide Thought Experiment in the Age of Collapse By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Foreign Bureau GENEVA—Close your eyes for a moment—unless you’re reading this while driving a Tesla on autopilot on the outskirts of Shenzhen, in which case, please keep them open. Now, just picture it: every human being alive simultaneously trying…
