The Curious Case of Ian Roberts Ice: How a Rugby League Hard-Man Became the Canary in the Global Freezer Sydney, Australia — Somewhere between a concussion and a climate-change conference, former rugby league enforcer Ian Roberts skated onto a rink and promptly broke the internet. Footage of the 58-year-old—once billed as the “Scariest Man in…
San José Earthquakes: When the Ground Shakes, the World Shrugs By our correspondent in the land of perpetual Wi-Fi and intermittent tectonics Silicon Valley, that shimmering altar to the gods of disruption, has a dirty little secret: it sits atop one of the planet’s most industrious seismic conveyor belts. The San José Earthquake—note the singular,…
Los Angeles, City of Perpetual Sun, Issues Flash-Flood Warning—Rest of World Reaches for Popcorn By Our Man in Transit, Somewhere Above the Pacific LOS ANGELES—Somewhere between the Dolby Theatre and an overturned Tesla Cybertruck, the Los Angeles River—that concrete sarcophagus where cinematic car chases go to die—has remembered it was once an actual river. The…
Clay Holmes and the Age of the Disposable Superstar Dave’s Locker – International Desk In the grand, grim casino of global sport, where fortunes flip faster than a TikTok trend in Ulaanbaatar, Clay Holmes has become the latest chip pushed across the felt. One moment the New York Yankees’ bullpen looked like a Monet in…
Rugby League Scores: A Global Scoreboard of Controlled Mayhem and Diplomatic Collateral Damage By Our Correspondent, Nursing a Sore Neck from Watching Too Much Replay Footage If you’ve ever wondered why the planet feels slightly off-kilter every Monday in (northern) autumn, it’s because 13 men per side have spent 80 minutes assaulting one another’s ligaments…
Utah versus West Virginia: two rectangular blotches on a Mercator map whose combined population would barely crowd a Shanghai metro line, yet whose rivalry has become a geopolitical Rorschach test for anyone still pretending the world is simple. From the rooftop bars of Lagos to the back-alley tea houses of Tashkent, seasoned observers now parse…
Offaly’s Gift to the Apocalypse: Shane Lowry as Global Moral Compass By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker International Desk While half the planet was busy arguing about whether democracy is still fashionable and the other half was Googling “how to survive a heat dome with only a USB fan,” a 36-year-old Irishman with the gait of a…
South Africa vs Argentina: When the World’s Problem Children Trade Playgrounds By our jaundiced correspondent in the cheap seats of the global amphitheatre If geopolitics were a high-school reunion, South Africa and Argentina would be the two former head prefects now chain-smoking behind the bike shed, swapping stories about how the headmaster still owes them…
Atlético vs Real: A Century-Long Civil War in Minature, Sponsored by Your Favorite Multinational By Lucas “Weathered Passport” Moreau, filing from a tapas bar that still thinks Franco is on the throne. Madrid, 1903 – The first recorded skirmish takes place in a field that would eventually be paved over by IKEA. Atlético, still called…
The Eternal Recurrence of Sky-Blue Sisyphus: A Global Timeline of Manchester City vs Burnley, 2010-2024 by Our Correspondent in Exile, somewhere between Doha and a dodgy VPN I. 2010–2012: The Pre-Cambrian Era In the ancient days before sovereign wealth funds monetised the concept of nostalgia, Burnley still believed they could beat City on merit. A…
Leeds United vs AFC Bournemouth: A Timeline for People Who Think the World Is Ending but Still Check the Scores By D. M. Locker, International Sports Desk Somewhere between the collapse of Arctic sea ice and the announcement that your favorite streaming service now costs the same as a monthly bus pass, Leeds United and…
Strasbourg FC: The Alsatian Canary in Football’s Global Coal Mine By Dave’s Locker European Correspondent (currently hiding from the Yellow Vests in a half-timbered bar) The world is busy rehearsing its next apocalypse—trade wars, AI uprisings, the return of fascism as a lifestyle brand—yet somewhere between the Rhine and the Vosges, a modest French club…
