**The Global Implications of a Mother’s Tears: How Aidan Hutchinson’s Mom Became Everyone’s Mom** In a world where nuclear powers play chicken in the Taiwan Strait and inflation makes bread a luxury item, humanity has collectively decided that the most important thing happening this week is a blonde woman in a luxury box wearing sunglasses…
US News College Rankings: The Annual Olympics of Institutional Narcissism by “Roving Correspondent” (currently filing from a Wi-Fi-enabled yurt in Ulaanbaatar) Every September, like clockwork, American academia straps on its spandex of self-regard and sprints onto the world stage to see who can flex the hardest. The US News & World Report college rankings have…
The Lions’ Offensive Coordinator: A Diplomatic Post in the Theater of American Absurdity by our correspondent in the cheap seats, somewhere over the Atlantic In the grand opera of geopolitical carnage—where grain deals collapse, submarine cables are mysteriously snipped, and central banks play three-card monte with interest rates—the Detroit Lions’ search for a new offensive…
John Morton, Dead Since 1500, Still Manages to Keep Europe in a Headlock LONDON—While the rest of us struggle to survive the 2020s—crypto winters, climate tantrums, and the occasional attempted coup—one English clergyman who’s been mouldering in his grave for five centuries continues to dictate fiscal policy from beyond the veil. Meet John Morton, late…
**The Mammoth in the Room: Utah’s Prehistoric Gift to Modern Absurdity** In the grand theater of human folly, where we obsess over cryptocurrency while the planet burns and argue about pronouns as glaciers melt, Utah has delivered us a magnificent reminder of our collective insignificance: a perfectly preserved Columbian mammoth, frozen in time like a…
In the grand geopolitical chessboard of 2024—where drones buzz over the Black Sea, BRICS nations eye the dollar like a wounded gazelle, and the Arctic melts faster than a politician’s promise—one might assume the Detroit Lions’ freshly minted defensive coordinator is about as globally consequential as yesterday’s TikTok trend. One would, of course, be gloriously…
In the grand, often farcical opera of American football, even the most diligent foreign correspondent risks missing the aria when it’s sung by a second-year cornerback out of Georgia. Yet Brian Branch—yes, that Brian Branch, the one whose name sounds like an underperforming hedge fund—has quietly become a geopolitical footnote. How? By reminding the planet…
The Curious Case of the Ravens Kicker, or How One Right Foot Might Tilt the Planet By the time you read this, Justin Tucker—the Baltimore Ravens’ resident leg-slinger and accidental geopolitical actor—has probably already broken another record, shattered another set of eardrums in M&T Bank Stadium, and, in some small but measurable way, nudged the…
The Chlorinated Oracle: How Michael Phelps Became the World’s Wettest Exports Policy By the time Michael Phelps hung up his goggles for good, the planet had quietly agreed on one metric of global power: the number of gold medals a nation could attach to a single human sternum. Eight in Beijing, four more in London,…
Copenhagen Airport Drones: When the Vikings’ Descendants Discover That Airspace Is Just Another Playground By the time Danish police finally admitted the obvious—“Yes, those blinking dots over Runway 22R are not extraterrestrials but consumer-grade quadcopters”—the world had already moved on to the next outrage. Still, the 54-hour closure of Scandinavia’s busiest hub felt like a…
**Capeside Revisited: A Dawson’s Creek Reunion in the Age of Global Collapse** While the world teeters on various brinks—nuclear proliferation, climate catastrophe, democratic backsliding, take your pick—Hollywood has gifted us the television equivalent of a security blanket: the Dawson’s Creek reunion. Because nothing says “we’ve got this under control” like watching thirty-something actors pretend to…
Eli Manning Walks Off the World Stage, Leaving the Rest of Us to Blitz Ourselves By Our Correspondent in the Cheap Seats NEW YORK—While the planet busied itself with minor pastimes—ballistic missile tests in Pyongyang, runaway inflation in Ankara, and the slow-motion TikTok lobotomy of global adolescence—an unassuming man in a cable-knit sweater announced he…
