Howard Stern, the self-proclaimed “King of All Media,” has spent four decades proving that shamelessness is the only renewable resource never subject to sanctions. From a converted Long Island basement to a SiriusXM satellite orbiting somewhere above the equator, his signal ricochets across continents like a cosmic fart in a crowded elevator—impossible to ignore and,…
Connections Hint September 8: The Day the World Shared One Small Cheat Code By Dave’s Locker International Desk If you ask a diplomat in Brussels, a bond trader in Singapore, and a barista in Bogotá what they did at 00:01 UTC on 8 September, odds are all three will confess—after a conspiratorial glance over both…
Only Murders, Universal Mayhem Dispatch from the Bureau of Obvious Calamities, International Desk Dateline: Everywhere – The phrase “only murders” began life as the punch-line to a very American joke: a true-crime podcast so niche that homicide is the sole acceptable plot device. Cute, until the rest of the planet realized the gag had grown…
The Cincinnati Reds, a franchise that began life as the Red Stockings when Otto von Bismarck was still young and optimistic, played a baseball game last night. This apparently parochial event in the American Midwest was streamed from Great American Ball Park to 183 countries—one more than currently recognizes Taiwan—proving once again that late capitalism…
The Straits Times: Singapore’s Little Red Dot That Reads Like a Cold Shower to the World’s Hot Mess By the time you finish your first espresso in Paris, The Straits Times has already delivered four breaking-news alerts, two ministerial Facebook posts, and a stern op-ed on the perils of chewing gum. For a newspaper headquartered…
**The Accidental Tourist: Paul Nowak and the Global Search for Meaning in a Meaningless World** In the grand theater of international affairs, where nuclear powers play chicken over shipping lanes and billionaires rocket themselves into space for sport, the curious case of Paul Nowak emerges as a peculiar footnote to our collective existential crisis. While…
KATHMANDU—While the rest of the planet obsesses over which billionaire will colonize Mars first, a modest Himalayan republic the size of Arkansas keeps quietly demonstrating how to survive the twenty-first century without losing its soul—or its sense of irony. Nepal, population 30 million and falling off the map every time Google’s servers hiccup, has become…
The Curious Case of Sunday Trading Laws: When God, GDP, and Grocery Lists Collide By Our Correspondent, Still Recovering from a Black-Market Avocado Bought on the Sabbath Somewhere between the pearly gates and the self-checkout aisle, humanity continues its millennia-old debate: should the seventh day be reserved for rest, retail, or restocking the fridge with…
Philadelphia’s Weather Forecast: A Micro-Tragedy With Global Ticket Sales by R. S. Vane, International Desk Philadelphia woke up this morning to a sky the color of last week’s coffee grounds and a forecast that could generously be called “schizophrenic.” By noon the temperature had already performed three costume changes, hailstones auditioned for a Broadway revival…
The Bigger Tantrum: How Israel Became Everyone’s Favorite Emotional Support Conflict If the planet were a badly lit bar at 3 a.m., Israel would be the patron standing on a stool, waving a half-empty flag and explaining—loudly—why everyone else is ruining the evening. The rest of us, nursing watered-down geopolitics and existential dread, keep ordering…
Weather Near Me, Apocalypse Near Us By R. Salter, Senior Meteorological Misanthrope, Dave’s Locker It’s a breezy 19 °C on my balcony in Lisbon—perfect for watching the Tagus glitter like a cheap disco ball while the rest of the planet melts, freezes, or combusts, depending on postal code. The phrase “weather near me” used to…
Maureen Lipman and the Global Theatre of Outrage From the West End to the West Bank, one woman’s cancelled yoghurt ad somehow mirrors the end of civilisation By the time Dame Maureen Lipman’s face was digitally scraped from a British yoghurt commercial last week, the story had already been meme-ified in three languages, weaponised by…
