Norman, Oklahoma—population 128,000, longitude 35.22° N, latitude 97.44° W—doesn’t usually appear on the radar of the average Berlin stockbroker, Lagos software contractor, or Singaporean port-logistics clerk. Yet every autumn, when the Sooner Schooner rolls onto Owen Field and 80,000 crimson-clad pilgrims howl at a sky the color of dried blood, the University of Oklahoma football…
CARLOS ALCARAZ: THE 20-YEAR-OLD WHO MADE THE WORLD REMEMBER TENNIS STILL EXISTS By our International Desk—where the coffee’s bitter and the optimism is imported duty-free Madrid, Riyadh, Melbourne, New York—pick your time zone and you’ll still find Carlos Alcaraz’s backhand ricocheting off every screen like a geopolitical ping-pong ball. In an era when the planet’s…
Ljubljana, May 2024 – Slovenia, population two million and change (roughly the head-count of a midsize Shanghai apartment block), is once again being invited to punch well above its Alpine weight. The opponent this week is Sweden, whose population is larger than the entire Western Balkans combined, whose arms exports keep half the world’s warlords…
Saints vs Warriors: A Global Scorecard of Moral Glory and Collateral Damage Byline: Dave’s Locker, International Affairs Desk Across continents, the phrase “saints vs warriors” no longer belongs to stained-glass windows or dusty history books. It’s trending on Manila TikTok, trending in Kyiv basements, trending wherever the Wi-Fi still works. From the Vatican’s corridors to…
Aurora Borealis Forecast: When the Sky Starts Trolling the Northern Hemisphere By Dave’s Locker Global Affairs Desk If you’ve spent the last decade doom-scrolling through melting ice caps, collapsing supply chains, and whatever fresh horror has popped up on your phone this morning, the universe has decided to throw us a cosmic lollipop: an unusually…
RABAT-NAMEY CORRIDOR — Somewhere between the mint tea in Casablanca and the dust storms in Niamey, two sovereign states have decided to treat the planet to a very North-African edition of “Why Can’t We Be Friends?” On paper, the spat between Morocco and Niger looks like a standard diplomatic lovers’ quarrel: the Moroccan ambassador was…
Apple TV: The Tiny Black Box That Conquered the World’s Living Rooms—Or at Least Tried To By the time you finish reading this sentence, Apple will have sold another three Apple TV units somewhere between Reykjavík and Riyadh. That’s the official corporate line, anyway; the real figure is probably closer to one unit and two…
John Bishop: A Name So Ordinary It Might Just Save the World By Our World-Weary Correspondent, Somewhere Between Duty-Free and Despair There are, according to the latest census of human paranoia, approximately 43,000 John Bishops alive at this moment. If you stacked them all horizontally they would reach from Liverpool to Lisbon—assuming none of them…
Faroe Islands vs Croatia: When the Atlantic Mists Meet Balkan Fire—A Study in Global Asymmetry The North Atlantic, home to more sheep than humans and weather patterns that make London look positively Mediterranean, has coughed up its perennial David: the Faroe Islands. Meanwhile, somewhere along the Dalmatian coast, Croatia has been polishing its Goliath credentials—World…
In the pantheon of contemporary tragedies that flicker across our screens before being swallowed by the algorithmic void, the Megan Boswell case stands as a particularly grim postcard from Appalachia—one that somehow manages to be both uniquely American and universally human in its grotesque particulars. While the name might not ring bells in Dubai or…
BMW’s iX3 Neue Klasse: A Bavarian Electromobile in a World Still on Fire By Dave’s Locker International Desk Munich, Shanghai, Timbuktu—wherever you are, the planet is overheating and your neighbor just bought another SUV. Into this planetary sitcom BMW has lobbed its latest punchline: the iX3 Neue Klasse, a battery-powered crossover whose very name is…
Alcaraz vs Djokovic: The Gladiator Match in Which the Colosseum Is Everywhere By Dave’s Locker Global Sports Bureau (with a flask in the press box) PARIS – On a late-spring afternoon when the Seine smelled only faintly of industrial despair and the Eiffel Tower’s lights blinked like a malfunctioning slot machine, two men in white…
