The Slovenian Export No Customs Form Could Ever Contain Luka Dončić is what happens when a small Alpine country, previously famous for ski jumps and being the birthplace of Melania Trump, decides to weaponize irony. At twenty-five, the man has already turned the Dallas Mavericks into a Balkan outpost and the NBA’s marketing department into…
The world woke up this week to discover that the United States—largest debtor, loudest debtor, and self-appointed hall monitor of the global playground—has decided to re-decorate reality by executive fiat. Again. Donald J. Trump, now auditioning for the role of “comeback kid with a Sharpie,” signed a flurry of orders destined to ricochet through foreign…
Lafayette Football: The Tiny, Militantly American Sport That Somehow Still Matters to the Rest of Us Bylines from Parisian cafés, Lagos traffic jams, and the sort of Tokyo izakaya that smells like soy sauce and regret. The words “Lafayette football” conjure, to most citizens of Earth, a baffled shrug followed by the inevitable follow-up: “Is…
Athletics vs Pirates: A Global Tale of Overpriced Sneakers and Torrented Blockbusters By Our Cynical Correspondent, Somewhere Between a Streaming Queue and a Finish Line On the surface, “Athletics vs Pirates” sounds like a late-night ESPN filler or a children’s book about sportsmanship on the high seas. But zoom out—way out, until you can see…
The NFL’s Quiet Empire: How a 100-Yard Strip of Astroturf Conquered the Planet By Diego “The Referee” Marconi, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker On the surface, last Sunday’s Super Bowl was a quintessentially American carnival: pop stars descending from the rafters like glitter-dipped angels, 30-second commercials that cost more than the GDP of Tonga, and a…
From the glass-walled war room of a Zurich data-center to a tin-roofed cyber-café in Lagos, the planet’s collective banking neurosis found its newest poster child this week: M&T Bank’s online platform. For roughly thirty-six hours, customers from Buffalo to Boca Raton discovered that their checking balances had all the reliability of a Kremlin press release….
Rome once pitted lions against Christians; the Aztecs let jaguars snack on POWs; today we settle the primal score between striped predator and feathered warrior on a baseball diamond in Cobb County, Georgia. Welcome to Braves vs. Tigers, the latest episode in humanity’s endless quest to rebrand carnage as family entertainment while keeping concession margins…
Kevin Zavala and the Quiet Collapse of the Global Middle Class By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk (still waiting for our expense-account croissants to clear customs) Dateline: Everywhere and Nowhere—If you haven’t heard of Kevin Zavala yet, congratulations. Your algorithm has mercifully spared you another microscopic shard of the human mosaic now ricocheting around the planet’s…
Travis Scott: The Global Pied Piper of Retail Therapy By: Our Man in the Duty-Free Lounge Astroworld isn’t just a theme park Travis bulldozed back to life in his own image—it’s now the operating system for a planet that can’t decide if it wants to rage or just return the sneakers. From Lagos to Ljubljana,…
Rashida Tlaib: The Congresswoman Who Keeps Ruining Everyone’s Photo-Ops By Dave’s Locker International Desk In the grand diplomatic circus where heads of state sip tea and lie to one another’s faces, U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib has the unenviable talent of reminding the ringmasters that the tent is on fire. From Detroit to Davos, her mere…
Gary Oldman’s Slow Horses: A Delightfully Dysfunctional Mirror for a World That Forgot How to Gallop By Eduardo “Eddy” Valdez, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker There’s a moment in the third season of “Slow Horses” when Jackson Lamb—Gary Oldman’s flatulent, trench-coated monument to institutional neglect—lights a cigarette inside a supposedly secure MI5 safe house and growls,…
WrestlePalooza: When the World’s Problems Enter the Ring in Spandex PARIS—While the planet busied itself with minor inconveniences like climate tipping points and the slow-motion disintegration of the rules-based order, 65,000 pilgrims descended on a purpose-built arena in Riyadh for WWE WrestlePalooza. There, under 2,000 LED panels and the watchful eye of a sovereign wealth…
