SEOUL, South Korea — Somewhere between the world’s fastest internet and its slowest population collapse, South Korea has become the planet’s most efficient paradox. A country that can deliver your kimchi-flavored fried chicken before the credit-card receipt finishes printing is simultaneously running out of customers to eat it. Welcome to the showroom of late-capitalism, where…
Akron vs Nebraska: The Entire Planet Holds Its Breath (or Pretends To) Somewhere between the soy fields of Nebraska and the tire factories of Akron, two college football teams—whose combined endowments could bankroll a small Pacific island—are preparing to collide this Saturday. From Jakarta to Johannesburg, the world’s seven billion non-American residents are, of course,…
Boston College and Michigan State—two universities whose names conjure images of crisp autumn Saturdays, over-caffeinated freshmen, and the faint smell of burning tuition money—met again on the gridiron last weekend. From a distance, it looked like just another collegiate turf war: helmets clacking, alumni wallets snapping open, marching bands playing fight songs that sound suspiciously…
ITV’s “Win Win” and the Global Glitter of Manufactured Hope By “Lucky” Lachlan Grimble, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between the collapse of the Turkish lira and the re-election of a man who sells $60 Bibles in the United States, ITV quietly rolled out “Win Win,” a game show that promises contestants a lifetime salary…
The World Watches as Two Southern American Colleges Duke It Out—And Pretends to Care Geneva, Switzerland – While the United Nations Security Council was busy debating the finer points of who gets to veto whom this week, an arguably more urgent geopolitical flashpoint erupted in the American Deep South: Louisiana-Monroe versus Alabama. Yes, the Warhawks…
The North Carolina A&T Aggies versus the UCF Knights is, on paper, a football game so geographically modest that a European could sneeze and miss it. Yet this September collision in Orlando—part of UCF’s annual “Let’s Try to Look P5 While Still in the AAC” showcase—offers a perfect micro-dose of the global malaise we all…
Caracas, Tuesday, 03:17 a.m. local time—while most of the hemisphere was arguing on social media about whether a pop star’s costume change constituted a diplomatic incident, a pair of Venezuelan Sukhoi Su-30MK2 fighters punched through the night sky above the Caribbean. Their afterburners carved orange scars across the darkness, a reminder that in certain corners…
Cal Football, or How a Struggling Pac-12 Side Became a Metaphor for Late-Stage Empire By “Special Correspondent in Mild Exile,” Berkeley-adjacent BERKELEY—While COP28 delegates argued over commas in Dubai and the European Central Bank quietly asked Italy for its next fiscal miracle, 50,000 souls filed into Memorial Stadium last Saturday to watch California Golden Bears…
What Time Is the Powerball Drawing? A Global Synchronization of Irrational Hope By Our Correspondent in the Cheap Seats Every Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. Eastern—exactly when decent people in most latitudes are either asleep, drunk, or both—a set of numbered balls is sucked through a Lucite tube in Tallahassee and the planet briefly…
West Point cadets, Kansas wheat farmers, and a global audience of insomniacs tuning in at 3 a.m. from Singapore to São Paulo—welcome to the latest episode of “America’s Collegiate Gladiator Hour,” where a football game between Army and Kansas State is sold as a clash of civilizations rather than what it really is: two groups…
UNC vs Charlotte: A Microscopic Proxy War in a World Already Burning By Our Correspondent in the All-Too-Cozy End Times Raleigh—If aliens ever bothered to tune in to earthling “sports,” they’d probably mistake last night’s North Carolina vs UNC-Charlotte tussle for a particularly well-choreographed food riot. Two bands of unpaid laborers—sorry, “student-athletes”—chasing an inflated sphere…
The Palmetto Putsch: How One Tiny U.S. College Rivalry Quietly Explains the End of the World As We Know It By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Global Desk Columbia, South Carolina—population 136,632, humidity 200 percent, general bewilderment immeasurable—was briefly mistaken for a geopolitical flashpoint last Saturday when South Carolina State and the University of South Carolina met…
