Steelers Game: When America’s Rust-Belt Opera Travels the World By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, somewhere between passport control and a stale pretzel PITTSBURGH—Somewhere beneath the perpetual November drizzle, 65,812 spectators are rehearsing the same primal chant, a vowel sound last uttered by Homo erectus just before discovering fire. The Steelers are hosting the…
**The Numbers That Launch a Thousand Visa Applications** The cricket score, that innocent-looking sequence of digits flashed across stadium screens from Mumbai to Manchester, has evolved into something far more consequential than a mere accounting of runs and wickets. In our gloriously interconnected world of 24-hour news cycles and instant gratification, these humble numbers now…
Steelers: The Global Supply Chain’s Rust-Belt Avengers By Diego “Rust Never Sleeps” Morales, International Desk, Dave’s Locker PARIS—On a rain-slick boulevard outside the Chinese embassy, a delegation of French steelworkers is politely waving baguettes at a line of stone-faced diplomats. Their placards read “Acier = Avenir,” which roughly translates to “Steel = Future” and, more…
Lewis Hamilton, the man who turned left better than anyone else on Earth for the past seventeen years, has announced his departure from Mercedes to join Ferrari in 2025—a move that has sent shockwaves through the Formula One universe and given every armchair pundit from Abu Dhabi to Albuquerque something to pretend they understand. The…
NFL Plus: The Empire Streams Back By Dave’s Locker Global Correspondent PARIS—Imagine, if you will, a planet where 330 million Americans huddle around glowing rectangles every Sunday, convinced that the fate of a leather spheroid is the axis on which civilization spins. Now picture the National Football League—an outfit so patriotic it could make a…
Kyler Murray: The 5’10” American Quarterback Teaching the World to Think Smaller From the vantage point of a rain-soaked Zurich café—where the barista just charged me six euros for what is essentially bean water and existential dread—Kyler Murray feels like a geopolitical Rorschach test. To the United States he is either franchise savior or overpaid…
The Atlanta Falcons: A Tragicomic Case Study in Globalized Masochism By Our Correspondent, filing from an over-air-conditioned airport lounge in Doha where the only thing colder than the AC is the NFL playoff memory bank If you mention the Atlanta Falcons to a sommelier in Bordeaux, he’ll swirl his glass, sigh theatrically, and mutter something…
LIVE FROM THE ISLE OF MILD PANIC – Tour of Britain Rolls Out Like a Brexit Negotiation: Slow, Rain-Soaked, and Nobody Quite Sure Where It Ends *By Our Man in the Peloton, Who Has Survived Worse Traffic in Jakarta* Every September, the Tour of Britain limps onto the world stage the way a soggy scone…
Paramount Plus and the Great Streaming Crusade: A Elegy for National Sovereignty, One Binge at a Time PARIS—Somewhere between the croissants and the existential dread, the French have discovered that Star Trek now beams directly into their living rooms in 4K HDR, courtesy of an American conglomerate that also owns Paw Patrol. Paramount Plus, the…
Formula One cars may be engineered in wind tunnels, but the BBC’s F1 coverage is engineered in the court of global public opinion—an arena that makes the Monaco tunnel look like a Sunday drive. When the Beeb wrestles with broadcasting rights, the tremor ricochets from Silverstone to Singapore like a carbon-fiber shrapnel blast, reminding us…
The NFL Does Dallas (and Munich, and São Paulo): A Dispatch from the Empire’s Favorite Circus All eyes are on America today—though, let’s be honest, most of those eyes are behind paywalls, VPNs, or the tinted windows of Beijing sports bars that haven’t paid for a license since 2019. While the United States celebrates Thanksgiving…
The Accidental Prophet: How George Raveling’s Clipboard Changed the World’s Rules of Engagement By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk PARIS — In the pantheon of men who accidentally rewrote global etiquette, George Raveling, 87-year-old American basketball lifer, occupies a curious throne: part Gandalf, part gym teacher, part unwitting geopolitical consultant. It began with a clipboard and…
