Rolling Ray, the 5-foot-tall, 300-pound viral hurricane who answers to both “Mr. Raymond” and “the wheelchair-bound chaos goblin,” has been unleashed upon a planet already wheezing from 2024’s buffet of existential hors d’oeuvres. From Lagos to Lisbon, screens flicker with the same clip: Ray, sequined durag gleaming like a disco ball that’s seen things, flipping…
Jamie Lee Curtis and the Global Supply Chain of Screams By Our Bureau Chief, Still Jet-Lagged in an Airport Lounge Near You Somewhere at 39,000 feet between Singapore and Reykjavík, a cargo manifest quietly lists “Curtis, J. L.—1 unit, cultural icon.” That bureaucratic understatement is how the world now ships its nightmares: neatly shrink-wrapped, Dolby-certified,…
Elsbeth, the Legal Tourist: How One Prosecutor Became the World’s Favorite Foreign Correspondent By the time CBS shipped Elsbeth Tascioni—Chicago’s most flamboyantly unhinged defense lawyer—to New York under the guise of “monitoring police reform,” half the planet had already turned her into a meme. In Lagos, WhatsApp stickers show her tilting her head like a…
Astros: The New Cosmic Cartel Running the World While You’re Busy Scrolling By Dave’s Foreign Desk, from an undisclosed bar with a view of three different time zones You’d be forgiven for assuming that “Astros” refers to that baseball team whose 2017 World Series trophy is now used primarily as a paperweight for MLB’s apology…
Severance, Global Edition: The World’s Favorite New Exit Strategy By Dave’s Foreign Desk, still wearing yesterday’s cynicism The word “severance” once belonged to HR paperwork and polite euphemisms like “rightsizing.” Now, courtesy of an Apple TV+ show about surgically splitting workers’ memories, it has become a planetary Rorschach test—everyone sees the same inkblot, but each…
Miley Cyrus: The Last American Export Still Clearing Customs By the time you read this, Miley Cyrus has already twerked, tongue-lolled, and power-balladed her way through another cultural checkpoint. Somewhere between Berlin’s Berghain and Bangkok’s rooftop infinity pools, the former Disney Channel tax write-off has become the global West’s most reliable soft-power delivery system—one glitter…
High Potential, Season 2: A Bureaucratic Fairy Tale for Our Disenchanted Planet Dave’s Locker – International Desk (with the windows bolted shut) The algorithmic oracle known as Disney+ has decreed that “High Potential”—a show whose very title sounds like an HR euphemism for “over-promoted intern”—will return for a second season. Cue the synchronized sighs of…
Selena Gomez and the Global Supply Chain of Tears By Our Jaded Correspondent Who Has Spent Too Much Time in Airport Lounges There is, apparently, no corner of the planet where a 31-year-old Texan can quietly release a Spanish-language single without causing seismic tremors across three continents. When Selena Gomez dropped “Baila Conmigo” back in…
Margot Robbie Storms the Moors: A Global Reckoning with Heathcliff, Hotties, and the End of Civilization As We Know It By L. D. Smythe, International Correspondent-at-Large PARIS—Somewhere between the third croissant and the fourth existential crisis this morning, the world woke up to the rumor that Margot Robbie is circling a new adaptation of *Wuthering…
Silksong: The Phantom Game That Has the Whole World Waiting—And Why That Says Everything About Us Dave’s Locker | International Desk | 06.11.2024 Somewhere between the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge and the next scheduled heat-death of Twitter, humanity has found a new shared obsession: a 2-D bug princess who may or may…
The Global Ballad of ESPN Fantasy: How Imaginary Sports Became the Last Universal Currency By the time the sun rose over Reykjavik last Sunday, 3.4 million people—spread from Lagos to Lapland—had already checked their ESPN Fantasy lineups. They did so before breakfast, before brushing teeth, before remembering whether their actual national football teams were still…
Lush Stores Gaza: When Bubble Bars Meet Border Barriers By Dave’s Far-Flung Correspondent, filing from somewhere with better Wi-Fi than Gaza The first thing you notice is the incongruity: a Lush store—yes, the British purveyor of bath bombs that smell like a fruit salad having an existential crisis—reportedly wants to open in Gaza City. Not…
