Swindon, that modest buckle on England’s M4 belt, will once again attempt to convince the planet it matters on 21 September 2025 when 7,000 pairs of overpriced trainers slap its tarmac in the Swindon Half Marathon. From an orbital perch, the spectacle looks less like sport and more like a controlled stress test for late…
Yu Menglong and the Global Art of Vanishing While Standing Still If you’ve never heard of Yu Menglong, congratulations—you may be the last person on Earth whose social-media feed hasn’t been ambushed by his face. Across four continents, the Chinese actor-singer-model-“walking skincare commercial” has become the poster child for a peculiar 21st-century phenomenon: the export…
Hilary Duff and the Geopolitics of Girlhood: How a Teen Star Became a Global Soft-Power Asset By the time the second Gulf War entered its third season—with better ratings but worse dialogue—Hilary Duff was already exporting an alternative narrative to 150 countries via the Disney Channel’s international feed. While coalition forces struggled to win hearts…
Call of Duty: The Planet’s Loudest Forever-War, Now Available in 4K The yearly autumnal ritual is upon us again: leaves turn amber, clocks fall back, and another Call of Duty title parachutes onto hard drives from Lagos to Lahore, Seoul to São Paulo. Activision’s franchise—part video game, part geopolitical mood ring—has quietly become one of…
Sheffield 10K: When a Yorkshire Jog Becomes a Geopolitical Mood Ring By Our Man in the North, Still Wearing Last Year’s Medal Like a War Ribbon Sheffield—city of stainless steel, Arctic-grade sarcasm, and a hill so steep it could double as a Swiss banking angle—recently hosted its annual 10-kilometre road race. On paper, the Sheffield…
From the relative safety of a café in Warsaw that still remembers when pixels were rationed, I bring you the geopolitical tremor nobody asked for: Minecraft’s “Mounts of Mayhem” update has galloped onto 180 million screens, dragging behind it more baggage than a UN peacekeeping convoy. Mojang insists the patch is merely about rideable ravagers,…
Alejandro Davidovich Fokina and the Glorious, Pointless Pageantry of Modern Tennis By Dave’s Locker International Desk If you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when a 6-foot Andalusian with cheekbones sharp enough to slice prosciutto tries to play tennis the way a jazz saxophonist approaches a solo—equal parts inspiration, perspiration, and mild self-immolation—then welcome to…
EURO DISNEYLAND, OR HOW THE AMERICAN DREAM LEARNED TO SAY “BONJOUR” WHILE STILL SPEAKING DOLLAR Marne-la-Vallée, France — In the year 1992, when the Iron Curtain was still fluttering in the breeze and “globalization” just sounded like a fancy French verb, Mickey Mouse parachuted into Europe with a pair of white gloves and a corporate…
Labour Party Conference 2025: When Britannia Tries to Rule Its Own Waves Again By Davinia “Dave” Lockhart, International Correspondent, somewhere over the North Sea Liverpool, 28 September 2025 – The Beatles once asked to be shown the way to get back to the USSR; this week Labour delegates merely wanted directions to the nearest functioning…
KABUL—Somewhere between a Russian conscript learning his mother sold his PlayStation for vodka money and a Silicon Valley heir discovering his parents just installed a trust-fund tracking app, the planet pauses for National Sons Day. The hashtag #NationalSonsDay is presently trending in 37 languages, proving that the human race can still find common ground in…
A Console for the End Times: How the Nintendo Switch Became the Planet’s Shared Tamagotchi By Our Man in the Departures Lounge You can tell a lot about a civilization by what its commuters clutch on the 07:23 to anywhere. In Tokyo it’s a slim pastel rectangle; in São Paulo it’s wedged between empanada crumbs…
Geneva, Switzerland – In the hushed, carpeted corridors of the Palais des Nations, delegates from 193 countries spent yesterday pretending that “connections hint today” is merely the New York Times’ latest word-association puzzle. They sipped lukewarm coffee, nodded at one another’s lapel pins, and agreed—diplomatically—that it’s all harmless fun. Meanwhile, the rest of the planet…
