TV Guide, International Edition: The Remote-Controlled Decline of Civilization By the time you read this, 6.2 billion people—give or take the population of Luxembourg—will be clutching a remote control like it’s the One Ring. The humble TV guide, once a stapled pamphlet that doubled as a coaster and emergency fly-swatter, has metastasized into a global…
Somewhere between the Geneva motor show and a Lagos traffic jam, the Apple Watch completed its quiet conquest of the human wrist. Ten years ago it was a curiosity for Californian yoga instructors; today it is the de-facto visa stamp of the global middle class—more recognizable than most passports and twice as judgmental when you…
AirPods Pro 3: The World’s Newest Passport to Oblivion By Miles Blackstone, International Affairs Desk, Dave’s Locker GENEVA—In the shadow of the Jet d’Eau, where diplomats still argue about carbon ceilings they’ll never meet, Apple quietly slipped another sliver of white plastic into humanity’s collective ear canal. The AirPods Pro 3, unveiled yesterday in a…
Valencia’s Newest Import Isn’t a Siesta—It’s Eder Smic, and the Whole World Just Woke Up By Dave’s Locker International Desk If you’ve spent the past decade assuming Valencia’s chief exports were paella, slow-motion fallas, and the occasional disgruntled footballer, congratulations—you’ve missed the quiet arrival of Eder Smic, the 27-year-old Kosovar-Albanian technologist who landed at Manises…
Bad moods have gone global, and the planet is now exporting irritability in 4K resolution. From the fluorescent-lit call centers of Manila where operators practice smiling at 3 a.m. to the fog-shrouded cafés of Copenhagen where everyone is still somehow content, humanity has discovered that sulking scales. Moody is no longer a temperament; it is…
PARKER ROMO AND THE BORDERLESS FARCE OF MODERN STARDOM Dave’s Locker – International Affairs Desk DATELINE: Somewhere over the Atlantic, Wi-Fi sputtering like a Balkan taxi, 3 a.m. GMT There are, by conservative United Nations estimates, roughly eight billion people currently vying for oxygen on this planet. Roughly 7,999,999,993 of them have never heard of…
**The Global Pursuit of “Pubs Near Me”: Humanity’s Noble Quest for Oblivion** In the grand tapestry of human civilization, few searches unite us quite like “pubs near me.” From the frostbitten streets of Reykjavik to the sweltering alleys of Bangkok, this digital cry for help transcends language barriers, economic systems, and the increasingly thin veneer…
Connelly Early, for the handful of readers who haven’t already doom-scrolled past his name, is the sort of mid-tier American bureaucrat whose sudden elevation to global talking-point tells you everything about how thin the membrane between order and chaos has become. Until last Thursday he was an assistant under-secretary for something so forgettably titled that…
Burger King Japan’s announcement that it will serve a ¥2,000 (US $15) “Wagyu King” burger landed in my inbox while I was watching grainy footage of Sudanese refugees queueing for sorghum. The juxtaposition was almost too perfect: one civilization reduced to boiled grain, another racing to stuff the planet’s most pampered cow between two sesame-seed…
2026 Lexus IS: A Luxury Sedan for the End Times (or at Least the Next Recession) By Our Correspondent Somewhere between the Duty-Free and the Apocalypse Let us begin with a universal truth: every nation believes its traffic is the worst. From Jakarta’s scooter tsunamis to Los Angeles’ parking-lot freeways, drivers worldwide cling to the…
Nigeria vs South Africa: A Fever-Pitch Rivalry That Outshines Your Netflix Queue The world’s attention has once again pivoted to the patch of Earth that cartographers once labelled “sub-Saharan” but marketing teams now call “Africa’s Growth Belt.” This week, Lagos and Johannesburg are locked in the sort of contest that makes Eurovision look like a…
DOHA, Qatar – Somewhere between the perfume fog of Duty Free and the existential dread of Gate C-23, Hamad International Airport has quietly become the planet’s most polite choke-point. Every minute, 750 souls—fresh from Bangkok, Boston, or Bamako—shuffle through this $16-billion marble lung, clutching boarding passes like indulgences sold by a particularly efficient pope. They…
