White Sox vs. Yankees: A Glorious Proxy War for Everything Wrong with the Planet By Diego Branco-Chen, Senior Correspondent Tokyo—On the surface, it’s just another Tuesday night in Major League Baseball: the Chicago White Sox, a franchise whose last championship predates the fall of the Berlin Wall, versus the New York Yankees, the team your…
Tampa Bay’s Strip-Mall Spartans versus Baltimore’s Post-Industrial Songbirds: A Dispatch from the Edge of the Empire By the time first pitch is thrown at whatever the Rays are calling their ballpark this fiscal quarter, the Earth has already spun through three currency crises, two surprise elections, and one quietly abandoned climate target. Yet 30,000 Floridians…
Pirates vs Reds: A Global Bloodletting in Technicolor From the vantage point of a hotel bar in Singapore—where the air-conditioning hums like a guilty conscience and the barman pours watered-down Manhattans with the solemnity of a UN peacekeeper—it becomes clear that the eternal struggle between Pirates and Reds is less a baseball rivalry and more…
Marlins vs Phillies: A Global Tragedy in Nine Innings Dave’s Locker, International Desk – 23 June 2024 The Miami Marlins and the Philadelphia Phillies are playing a baseball game tonight, and, naturally, the entire planet is pretending to care. From the fluorescent living rooms of Manila to the back-alley bars of Montevideo, humans who have…
Tigers vs Guardians: A Global Cage Match Between the Wild and the Wired By L. Marlowe, Senior Correspondent, Somewhere with Spotty Wi-Fi and Occasional Feline Casualties The phrase “Tigers vs Guardians” sounds like the next Marvel-versus-DC cinematic migraine, but the fight is real, planetary, and—per tradition—rigged against the tigers. From the Sundarbans mangroves to the…
Tel-Aviv—Wednesday, 11:47 p.m. local time, which is 3:47 p.m. in New York, 8:47 p.m. in London, and always exactly “now” on Twitter. The floodlights of Bloomfield Stadium are bathing the Mediterranean in that particular shade of LED orange that makes every player look like an overcooked prawn. The crowd—equal parts hummus-scented hipsters, chain-smoking grandmothers, and…
Emma Thompson, the Oscar-winning auntie you’d trust to babysit the planet, is currently orbiting the globe again—this time not in a flying umbrella but on a carbon-conscious press tour that feels suspiciously like penance for the entire British Empire. From Mumbai multiplexes to Munich talk shows, she is promoting “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”…
Tony Earls: The Everyman Who Became a Global Morality Play By the time Tony Earls’ name ping-ponged across the world’s news tickers—Tokyo at dawn, Lagos at lunch, São Paulo at midnight—it had already been chewed up by every algorithm that feeds on human misery. To most of the planet he is simply “the guy who…
Killian Hayes and the Existential Comedy of Global Hype By our man in Geneva, nursing an espresso and a grudge against optimism GENEVA—On the surface, the name Killian Hayes is merely an entry in the NBA’s ever-expanding ledger of “promising Europeans who may or may not pan out.” Yet from the vantage point of a…
THE SAVANT: A GLOBAL PHENOMENON THAT REMINDS US WE’RE ALL BASICALLY USELESS Bylines from the Bureau of People Who Still Pretend to Be Impressed Geneva, Switzerland – While the rest of us were busy doom-scrolling through war crimes and avocado shortages, the Savant slipped quietly onto the world stage like a magician who forgot to…
Claudia Cardinale, 85, is still being wheeled out on red carpets like a priceless Roman statue that refuses to crumble. Cannes, Venice, Marrakech—wherever the champagne is overpriced and the egos are under-oxygenated, a camera-ready cardinal in designer silk appears, smiling the same Sphinx-like smile she patented in 1963. The world has changed four or five…
Sevilla—city of orange trees, flamenco, and the gentle whir of air-conditioning units trying to out-hum the existential dread of 2024—has lately become the world’s most improbable barometer. While diplomats in Brussels argue over comma placement and Silicon Valley titans promise to upload your soul to a spreadsheet, Sevilla is quietly demonstrating what happens when a…
