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,…
Connections Hint September 8: The Day the World Shared One Small Cheat Code By Dave’s Locker International Desk If you ask a diplomat in Brussels, a bond trader in Singapore, and a barista in Bogotá what they did at 00:01 UTC on 8 September, odds are all three will confess—after a conspiratorial glance over both…
Only Murders, Universal Mayhem Dispatch from the Bureau of Obvious Calamities, International Desk Dateline: Everywhere – The phrase “only murders” began life as the punch-line to a very American joke: a true-crime podcast so niche that homicide is the sole acceptable plot device. Cute, until the rest of the planet realized the gag had grown…
Maureen Lipman and the Global Theatre of Outrage From the West End to the West Bank, one woman’s cancelled yoghurt ad somehow mirrors the end of civilisation By the time Dame Maureen Lipman’s face was digitally scraped from a British yoghurt commercial last week, the story had already been meme-ified in three languages, weaponised by…
Roxanne Perez and the Global Gladiator Economy by L. Marín, Senior Correspondent, Somewhere Over the Mid-Atlantic If you squint hard enough from the window of a red-eye leaving JFK, you can almost see the entire planet orbiting around a 23-year-old in neon kneepads. Roxanne Perez—born Carla Gonzalez in the Rio Grande Valley, now billed from…
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…
