Olivia Rodrigo and the Global Export of Heartbreak Diplomacy By Dave’s Locker International Desk PARIS—While the United Nations Security Council was busy vetoing itself into irrelevance last week, a 20-year-old from Temecula, California, quietly achieved what seasoned envoys have failed to do for decades: unite the planet in shared, slightly masochistic misery. Olivia Rodrigo’s sophomore…
Anna Haugh, the Dublin-born chef currently plating polished Irish nostalgia on London’s glossy Myrtle Avenue, has become the latest proof that national identity is now just another garnish—artfully tweezed, Instagram-filtered, and priced by the ounce. From São Paulo to Seoul, menus are littered with “modern Irish” the way diplomatic communiqués are littered with the word…
The follicular fate of nations: why JJ Watt’s hair matters more than your portfolio By our correspondent, still jet-lagged in three time zones Geneva – While the World Bank convenes panels on sovereign-debt haircuts, an arguably more consequential haircut is trending from Houston to Helsinki: the ever-evolving thatch atop NFL expatriate JJ Watt. Yes, dear…
Scorpio, the Moon is in your second house of money, whispering that your crypto wallet is about as stable as the Turkish lira on a particularly creative Monday. Roughly 2.1 billion people woke up this morning to find their preferred astrologer had already posted a pastel infographic promising “transformation,” “unexpected encounters,” or—if you live in…
Lego Star Trek: When the Final Frontier Gets Bricked and the World Holds Its Breath Geneva—In a dimly lit side hall of the Palais des Nations, delegates from 193 countries have spent the week arguing over sanctions, carbon credits, and the precise shade of diplomatic taupe that should color next year’s briefing folders. Yet every…
The Global Village’s New National Pastime: Watching Pixels Pretend to Play Cricket By our correspondent, still recovering from the 2014 Brazil semifinal and everything since ZURICH—While the World Health Organization argues over whether “gaming disorder” should be spelled with a hyphen, 3.2 billion workers have quietly agreed on a more pressing diagnostic question: how to…
The World According to Martin Short: How One Canadian Dwarfed the Globe PARIS—In the grand tradition of small men making outsized noise, Martin Short has managed to become the planet’s unofficial court jester without ever holding elected office or firing a single drone. While diplomats in Geneva trade sternly worded communiqués about carbon emissions and…
Laura Whitmore and the Global Cottage Industry of Micro-Celebrity By Our Man in the Departures Lounge, somewhere above the Irish Sea Somewhere in the algorithmic ether between Dublin and Dubai, Laura Whitmore has become a case study in how fame now travels lighter than hand luggage and lands heavier than sanctions. To most passport-holding adults,…
Bill Pulte and the Gospel of Twitter Altruism: How One American Heir Became the Global Patron Saint of 280-Character Generosity By Matteo “Max” Marconi, International Desk, Dave’s Locker It usually takes a papal conclave, a Nobel committee, or at least a moderately corrupt FIFA vote to anoint a new global philanthropist. Yet in 2024 the…
Kristi Noem and the Global Talent for Shooting Yourself in the Foot—Twice By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent (currently self-quarantining in a Reykjavik dive bar) If you want to understand how a South Dakota governor ricochets across international headlines, picture a pebble dropped into a stock pond in the Black Hills. The ripples reach Berlin think…
Banksy, the world’s most famous vandal-entrepreneur, has spent three decades spray-painting the obvious onto other people’s walls and watching the global elite bid for the privilege of scrubbing it off again. From Gaza to Glastonbury, the anonymous Bristolian has turned moral clichés into blue-chip assets, proving that nothing travels faster than a platitude with a…
Howard Stern, the self-proclaimed “King of All Media,” has spent four decades proving that shamelessness is the only renewable resource never subject to sanctions. From a converted Long Island basement to a SiriusXM satellite orbiting somewhere above the equator, his signal ricochets across continents like a cosmic fart in a crowded elevator—impossible to ignore and,…
