Rauw Alejandro: The Last Caribbean Export That Isn’t a Tax Haven By the time you read this, the young man born Raúl Alejandro Ocasio Ruiz in San Juan has already racked up another million streams, another fashion-week cameo, another TikTok challenge that will eventually be cited by behavioral economists as proof that attention spans now…
CAPE, CAMERA, ACTION: HOW HBO MAX’S SUPERMAN STREAMING DEAL TURNED THE PLANET INTO ONE BIG GOTHAM By the time the sun rose over Reykjavík last Tuesday, half of Iceland had already binged the first three episodes of HBO Max’s new Superman series. By sunset in Seoul, South Korean subway ads for the show were promising…
Alison Hammond: Britain’s Human Diplomatic Weapon Quietly Conquering the Planet By Dave’s Locker International Desk When the history of the early-21st century is written, historians will probably dwell on pandemics, populism, and the slow-motion car crash we politely call “the climate.” Yet somewhere between the footnotes on supply-chain collapses and the chapter titled “Everyone Was…
Tomas Lindberg, the Swedish death-metal vocalist whose shriek once frightened livestock from Malmö to Milwaukee, is reportedly no longer among the quick. News of his demise ricocheted through the global underground faster than a blast-beat at 280 bpm, prompting sincere eulogies, suspicious memes, and at least three hastily printed T-shirts already for sale in Jakarta….
Royal Caribbean’s Floating Gladiator School: How a Deck-Chair Brawl Became a Global Diplomatic Incident By the time the TikTok clip hit 40 million views, the Allure of the Seas had already steamed back to Florida with a dented pool bar, three concussed honeymooners, and what one Italian passenger described—between puffs of an unrepentant cigar—as “a…
The Fall of the Try-Guys’ Golden Boy: Ned Fulmer’s Infidelity Scandal as Global Metaphor By the time the news reached a jet-lagged crowd at a rooftop bar in Singapore, the bartender—an economics PhD moonlighting for fun—was already using Ned Fulmer’s implosion as shorthand for the West’s broader credibility crisis. “One minute you’re the wholesome ‘wife…
Stacey Solomon and the Global Collapse of Meaning By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Over the North Atlantic Somewhere between the fifteenth recycled clip of Stacey Solomon turning an empty jam jar into a tasteful bathroom organiser and a breaking-news ticker announcing fresh atrocities on three continents, the world quietly agreed that this was the cultural equilibrium…
Across five continents, the royal defection that began with a poorly lit Instagram post has swollen into a trans-hemispheric soap opera equal parts Shakespeare and reality-TV. From the tea plantations of Assam—where locals snort at the notion of “financial independence” while earning two dollars a day—to the boardrooms of Silicon Valley, where Meghan’s former Suits…
Tomas Lindberg Dies: The World Mourns a Man Nobody Knew They Needed ZURICH—The death notice came via an encrypted Signal message at 03:47 GMT, sandwiched between a crypto-scam and a video of a cat playing the xylophone. By breakfast, Tomas Lindberg—until yesterday a name as globally anonymous as your neighborhood barista—was trending above nuclear brinkmanship…
Costco’s New Shopping Hours: A Global Power Play in the Aisle of Civilization By Our Jaded Foreign Correspondent, somewhere between the rotisserie chickens and the abyss SEATTLE—In a move that has sent shockwaves through suburban cul-de-sacs from Tacoma to Tbilisi, Costco Wholesale has tweaked its opening schedule by a staggering thirty minutes. Effective immediately, doors…
From Kiev to Kyoto, district attorneys are rarely the stuff of diplomatic cables. Yet in the spring of 2024, Fulton County’s Fani Willis has become the unlikely protagonist in a morality play that is being binge-watched from Brussels to Bangkok. While her name still sounds to European ears like a cheerful budget airline, the reverberations…
Riley Green’s Tour: How a Red-Dirt Bard from Alabama Accidentally Became a Global Soft-Power Asset By Dave’s Locker, Foreign Bureau There are moments—rare, fleeting, and usually soundtracked by steel guitar—when the American South leaks into the wider world, and the wider world, baffled, decides it likes the taste. Enter Riley Green, the former University of…
