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…
The Curious Case of Dan Brown: How One Man’s Airport-Bookstore Alchemy Became a Global Sacrament By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, Tuesday, 03:17 GMT PARIS—If the Louvre ever installs a self-guided “Da Vinci Code” audio tour narrated by a smug Tom Hanks, you will know that civilization has finally completed its descent into gift-shop…
St. Elmo’s Fire: The World’s Oldest Blue-Light Special, Now Playing on Every Continent By Dave’s Locker International Desk Dateline: Somewhere between the Strait of Malacca and your doom-scrolling thumb. If you thought St. Elmo’s Fire was just an ’80s Brat Pack film about beautiful people weeping into their trust funds, congratulations—you have already grasped the…
Word Games as World Order: How a Quiet September 9 Grid Became the Planet’s Most Democratic Power Struggle By Tomas “Tommy” Verdier, Senior International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker VIENNA—At 3 a.m. local time, while diplomats at the UN snored over draft resolutions on carbon credits, 3.4 million civilians from Reykjavík to Rabat were locked in a…
Eric Stonestreet: Kansas Beats Kandahar in the Global Sitcom Arms Race Bylines from Berlin, Bishkek, and Burbank all agree on one thing: if the 21st-century’s most effective soft-power weapon is a well-timed pratfall, then the United States has quietly upgraded its arsenal to DEFCON Dad-Joke. Enter Eric Stonestreet—Midwestern export, Emmy-winner, and living proof that geopolitical…
# The Curious Case of Andy Byron: How One Man’s Digital Midlife Crisis Became a Global Mirror If you haven’t heard of Andy Byron yet, congratulations on maintaining your sanity in our hyperconnected asylum. For the rest of us doom-scrollers, Andy has become the latest specimen in humanity’s ongoing experiment of turning ordinary people into…
