Chengdu Open: A Tennis Tournament, a Power Cable, and the World’s Slow-Motion Nervous Breakdown By Dave’s Far-East Correspondent, Nursing a Hangzhou Hangover The Chengdu Open—an ATP 250 event played 1,600 kilometres from the nearest ocean and zero kilometres from the next Sichuan hotpot—kicked off this week in a city best known for pandas who refuse…
Every September, while the planet quietly negotiates yet another cease-fire, another climate threshold, and another crypto bankruptcy, the State Fair of Texas throws open its gates and invites humanity to postpone the apocalypse for twenty-four fried-food-stuffed days. From Oslo to Lagos, analysts tracking inflation, grain futures, and the global obesity index watch the spectacle the…
**When Elephants Collide, the Grass Gets a Scorecard** *Colombo—If the world needed another reminder that sport is the last acceptable theater of nationalism, the Sri Lanka–Pakistan clash at R. Premadasa Stadium dutifully obliged, complete with a scorecard longer than most UN resolutions and roughly as binding.* The final numbers—Sri Lanka 252 for 8, Pakistan 254…
**When Elephants Clash Over Crumbs: Sri Lanka vs Pakistan and the Theater of Global Indifference** The Indian Ocean has seen better days. While the rest of the world obsesses over whether billionaires should pay taxes or if AI will steal our jobs, two nations are locked in a geopolitical tango that would be almost endearing…
A Ticket to the Old Firm: How a Sliver of Green-and-White Cardstock Became the Hottest Geopolitical Currency You’ve Never Heard Of By the time the WhatsApp pings land in Jakarta, Bogotá, and a particularly disgruntled Toronto pub owner’s group chat, the digital queue for Celtic tickets has already been bleeding servers for six hours. Somewhere…
Cairo’s Friday-night fixture between Haras El Hodoud and Al Ahly is, on paper, a modest Egyptian Premier League tilt. In practice, it is the geopolitical equivalent of a bar fight between a lighthouse keeper and a multinational shipping conglomerate. One side guards the harbor; the other owns the sea lanes, the docks, and—while we’re at…
TSMC: The Tiny Island That Holds the World Hostage By the time you finish reading this sentence, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSM) will have printed another 300 smartphone processors—each one capable of running TikTok, Instagram, or the nuclear launch codes of any moderately funded superpower. Investors politely call TSM a “bellwether”; the rest of us…
Rudi Johnson and the Quiet Collapse of the American Dream, as Observed from a Safe Distance ZURICH—Somewhere between the Alps and the next overpriced fondue, it’s easy to forget that in Cincinnati there is a man named Rudi Johnson who once carried a football 1,300 times in a single NFL season, then vanished into the…
A Global Parade of Regret: How the World’s Products Are Sneaking Back Home By the Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk, still wondering who keeps the receipt for planet Earth. RECALLS – the polite euphemism for “we shipped you a liability, please pretend you never opened it.” From Brussels to Bogotá, recalls are the 21st-century apology note…
Rudi Johnson and the Curious Case of the Universal Backup Plan By Our Man in Transit Lounges Everywhere PARIS—Somewhere between the croissant crumbs at CDG and the lukewarm espresso in Istanbul, I found myself staring at a headline that could only belong to our magnificently deranged century: “Rudi Johnson signs with the Montreal Alouettes.” It…
Dateline: Somewhere between the 24-hour news cycle and the twilight of broadcast relevance— It’s tempting to think of NBC’s Morgan Radford as an American curiosity, a polished polyglot who pops up on your screen between ads for cholesterol medication and luxury watches. But step back—say, to a smoky café in Beirut or a Seoul subway…
BETR Stock: Because Nothing Says Global Recovery Like Betting on Americans Eating More Cheeseburgers in the Drive-Thru By the time the opening bell rang in New York, traders in Singapore were already on their second kaya toast and third espresso, eyes flicking between the Nikkei futures and a tiny, newly-listed ticker: BETR. The company, Better…
