Stranded on Honeymoon Island: A Global Farce in Paradise By J. M. Calder, International Correspondent, somewhere between cynicism and sunscreen KOH RONG SANLOEM, Cambodia—Somewhere between the 7-Eleven in Sihanoukville and the speedboat that never came back, 47 newlyweds from 19 countries discovered that “till death do us part” can be interpreted rather literally. The island—marketed…
Steffi Graf: How a West German Baseline Automaton Shrank the Globe and Reminded Dictatorships That Tennis Still Matters By the time the Berlin Wall cracked in 1989, Steffi Graf had already built a smaller, more portable wall—one made of topspin and Teutonic precision—around every baseline from Melbourne’s baked concrete to Roland-Garros’ powdered brick. The planet…
From the glass-and-steel towers of Singapore to the corrugated-iron kiosks of Lagos, the name “Austin Ekeler” is being murmured with the same reverence usually reserved for cryptocurrency frauds and TikTok prophets. The 5-foot-10 American running back—who looks less like a gridiron gladiator and more like the barista who judges your oat-milk order—has improbably become a…
Jarrett Maki and the Quiet Art of Global Self-Reinvention By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between Reykjavik and Riyadh, a man named Jarrett Maki has become the world’s most polite ghost. Not the chain-rattling, moaning variety—more the kind who politely signs NDAs before haunting your boardroom. If that sounds like faint praise, congratulations: you’ve grasped…
Adobe Stock Price Jumps, Proving Once Again That Creativity Is the World’s Most Tradeable Delusion By Dave’s Locker International Affairs Desk San José, California – In the pantheon of global absurdities—just between climate summits that serve shrimp cocktails flown in from three continents and crypto conferences that burn through a small nation’s worth of electricity—Adobe’s…
Boston University: America’s Ivy-Draped Theme Park for the World’s Meritocratic Overachievers By our correspondent in the international departure lounge, nursing a flat prosecco. From the Charles River, Boston University looks like a postcard that slipped between cultures: red-brick Georgian façades wearing the white noise of jet engines from Logan, while the rest of the planet…
Trabzonspor: How a Provincial Turkish Football Club Became the World’s Most Honest Barometer of Chaos By the time the final whistle blew last May and Trabzonspor’s burgundy-and-blue confetti drifted into the Black Sea like the ashes of a forgotten empire, the global audience had already moved on. The algorithmic eye had pivoted to the next…
RH Stock: A Global Game of Musical Chairs Where the Tune Keeps Changing By Dave’s International Bureau of Schadenfreude If you squint hard enough from the rooftop bar of any five-star hotel in Dubai, you can almost see the gravitational pull that RH—once the quaintly named Restoration Hardware—now exerts on the planet’s moneyed classes. The…
Reece Shearsmith and the Global Spread of Beautifully Unhinged Britishness by our London desk, via a Wi-Fi signal that still smells faintly of Brexit There’s a moment in every nation’s cultural timeline when the rest of the planet looks over, blinks twice, and mutters, “Wait, that’s what you people do for fun?” For the United…
Umass Boston: The Cinder-Block Campus That Became Global Schadenfreude’s Favorite Punchline By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent-at-Large, still jet-lagged from a layover in Doha Arrive at JFK, take the Silver Line, and twenty-three minutes after you’ve watched Bostonians argue about the correct pronunciation of “Harvard,” you’ll reach a concrete peninsula that looks like the Soviet Union hired…
Adobe’s Earnings Whisper Louder Than Any Diplomatic Cable From the glass towers of San José to the concrete bunkers of Bishkek, the same PDF opens: ADBE 0.3% up, 1.8% down, then—because the CFO coughed slightly less optimistically than last quarter—a 7% swan dive before Tokyo’s ramen shops even flip their noren signs. Around the planet,…
The Curious Case of Alex Polizzi: How a Hotelier Became Global Capitalism’s Favorite Therapist From the marble lobbies of Dubai to the mildewed corridors of a Blackpool B&B, one name is murmured like a late-night prayer: Alex Polizzi. The British-Italian heiress-turned-television-troubleshooter has quietly become the international bourgeoisie’s answer to confession. While the world teeters between…
