Facebook’s $725 Million Global Apology Coupon: One Click to Settle All Regrets By Our Correspondent, currently hiding the location data on his phone The press release hit inboxes at 3:14 a.m. GMT—because nothing says “we take privacy seriously” like a midnight confession. Meta, corporate parent of Facebook, Instagram, and humanity’s collective diary, has agreed to…
From the banks of the Ganges to the docks of Rotterdam, humanity is currently transfixed by a burning question: which overpaid men in tight polyester will be granted the privilege of playing one extra October baseball game before their ligaments explode like cheap fireworks. Yes, the MLB Wild Card standings—those gloriously American hieroglyphics of W-L…
Lord Mandelson Sacked: The Prince of Darkness Exits Stage Left—Again By Dave’s Locker International Desk London, 10 a.m. local time. The sky, in a fit of cosmic irony, is the precise shade of wet slate normally reserved for BBC political montages. Peter Mandelson—trade commissioner, spin-doctor emeritus, and the only man who can make a smile…
Solana: The Blockchain That Promised to Cure Everything Except Human Greed By Our Correspondent Who Has Watched Empires Burn Faster Than a Stablecoin Peg ZURICH—While the rest of us were busy panic-buying toilet paper and existential dread in 2020, a small band of San Diego coders quietly christened a new blockchain they claimed could process…
Clint Eastwood, the Man Who Shot the 20th Century and Winked at the 21st by Dave’s International Desk PARIS—Try explaining Clint Eastwood to a teenager who thinks “spaghetti western” is a TikTok pasta recipe. You’ll find yourself sounding like a Cold-War relic, extolling a lanky American who once lectured an empty chair at a political…
NFL Week 2: Because the World Needed Another Way to Gamble on American Exceptionalism By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Atlantic If you squint through the jet-lag haze at the departure board in Dubai International, you’ll notice something curious: gate C23 lists a flight to Cincinnati, B7 to Baltimore, and the…
CPI Report: The Planet’s Monthly Reminder That Nothing Is Getting Cheaper—Except Maybe Hope By Our Man in the Departures Lounge Geneva—The Bureau of Labor Statistics dropped its latest Consumer Price Index this week, and—surprise, surprise—prices are still doing their best impression of a trust-fund kid on gap year: relentlessly upward, no matter how many “budgeting…
**The Last Emperor of Method Acting: Daniel Day-Lewis and the Global Theater of Disappearing Acts** *International Desk* — While the world burns through its 15-second attention span, somewhere in rural Ireland, a man who has won more Oscars than most nations have produced films is probably still in character as a retired cobbler. Daniel Day-Lewis,…
**The Empire State Rebellion: How a Political Nobody Became the World’s Most Unlikely David** In the grand theater of American politics, where dynasties crumble slower than week-old bagels and redemption arcs are as predictable as a Swiss train schedule, something delightfully absurd is unfolding in New York. While the global community grapples with climate catastrophes,…
**The Suella Show: Britain’s Export of Performative Cruelty Goes Global** If politics is show business for ugly people, then Suella Braverman has proven herself the Daniel Day-Lewis of manufactured outrage—a method actor so committed to the role of “culture war provocateur” that one suspects she remains in character while brushing her teeth. Her recent political…
The Atlantic: Where Water, War, and Wi-Fi Collide For centuries the Atlantic was the world’s original superhighway, a liquid autobahn for conquistadors, rum-runners, and cruise-ship retirees who dress formally for dinner and casually for colonialism. Today the ocean that once ferried smallpox and Shakespeare continues to ferry data, debt, and disinformation—only now the ships have…
Celebrities Who Betray Their Countries: A Glamorous Tour Through Treason There’s a special kind of schadenfreude that blooms only when the gilded fall from grace—especially when grace is replaced by handcuffs and a one-way ticket to a foreign embassy. From Moscow’s golden bubble of exiled influencers to the fluorescent glow of Tokyo interrogation rooms, the…
