Jason Bateman: The World’s Most Reliable Export Since Filter Coffee By our man in the departure lounge, still clutching a boarding pass to nowhere If nations are brands, Jason Bateman is the Switzerland of screen talent: neutral, efficient, and implausibly tidy. While other Hollywood exports arrive with fireworks, sanctions, or at least a meme-ready scandal,…
Aldi Shopper Avoids Dishwasher Tablets There but Buys Them at Sainsbury’s Instead: The Geopolitics of Suds and Self-Deception By the time you read this, somewhere in the post-industrial sprawl of northern England, a man named Gary—forty-something, fleece-clad, haunted by the memory of interest rates he once understood—has once again completed the weekly sacrament: Aldi for…
Hollow Knight: Silksong Reviews – Or, How the World Unites in the Sweet Agony of Waiting By Dave’s International Correspondent-at-Large (and Part-Time Masochist) The planet’s diplomats may be failing on climate, trade, and whatever a “rules-based order” is supposed to mean this week, but give humanity a 2-D Metroidvania sequel and suddenly we achieve a…
Ashley Graham: The Planet-Sized Supermodel Who Refuses to Shrink (and Why That Terrifies Every Government from Oslo to Ouagadougou) When Ashley Graham sashays down a runway in Milan, the seismic ripples are measurable on every Richter scale from Reykjavík to Riyadh. The 36-year-old Nebraska export—equal parts collagen, charisma, and calculated rebellion—has done something no multinational…
The World According to Taylor Momsen, or How a Child Star Became the Planet’s Favorite Post-Apocalyptic Soundtrack Provider By the time the pandemic’s second year rolled around, most of us had exhausted our supply of sourdough, serotonin, and hope. Enter Taylor Momsen—once Cindy Lou Who, now eyeliner-laden banshee—howling over distorted guitars as if auditioning to…
The planet is ending, but first let us sort “NYT Connections Hints September 8” into tidy color-coded rows. Somewhere between melting permafrost and algorithmic doom-scrolling, a few million of us woke up this morning to the same digital Rosetta Stone: the New York Times’ daily word-grid, whispered across time zones by caffeine-powered group chats from…
Alicia Vikander and the Swedish Invasion: How a Small Nation Conquered Hollywood Without Firing a Shot While the world’s superpowers squander trillions on aircraft carriers and drone strikes, Sweden has quietly achieved global domination through a far more insidious weapon: devastatingly attractive actors who make everyone else feel inadequate about their bone structure. Alicia Vikander,…
A Zombie-Proof British Export: How Andrew Lincoln Became the Post-Apocalyptic Everyman the World Never Asked For By the time the credits rolled on the final episode of The Walking Dead’s flagship series, Andrew Lincoln had spent more time pretending to dodge flesh-eating Georgians than most Georgian politicians spend dodging actual accountability. In the grand bazaar…
**The Global Village Idiot: How Joe Rogan Became the World’s Most Influential American Export (Sorry, Democracy)** In an era where American soft power traditionally meant Hollywood blockbusters, jazz music, or the occasional aircraft carrier, humanity has collectively decided that our most significant cultural export is… a former Fear Factor host who looks like he could…
Lucy Connolly and the Global Ripple of a Very British Temper Tantrum By Our Correspondent, still jet-lagged in Duty-Free Limbo Word Count: 610 The name Lucy Connolly had, until recently, the international recognition of a village fête raffle ticket—utterly meaningless once you crossed the M25. Yet within 48 hours it trended from Lagos to Lima,…
The Ballad of the Global Supertramp: How One Man’s Train-Hopping Became the World’s Favorite Escape Fantasy PARIS—In a century when passports are biometric, borders are militarized, and your phone rats out your location every 3.7 seconds, the word “supertramp” has staged an unlikely comeback. Originally the surname of one Richard Davies—better known to his probation…
The 2025 MTV Video Music Awards—aka the VMAs, or “Diplomatic Immunity for Sequins”—were held Tuesday night in Newark, New Jersey, a city chosen, rumor has it, because the airport has a direct flight to every nation currently under U.S. sanctions. One might expect a glorified high-school talent show to have limited geopolitical relevance, yet the…
