**The Cartography of American Exceptionalism: How Week 2 NFL Coverage Maps Explain Everything Wrong with Global Media** While the world grapples with climate refugees, supply chain collapses, and the occasional flirtation with nuclear annihilation, America’s most pressing cartographic concern remains which swath of Indiana gets to watch the Cowboys implode against the Jets. The NFL’s…
The Geological Rise of a Very Human “Josh Rock” Global Dispatch – Dave’s Locker LONDON—Somewhere between the grinding tectonic plates of geopolitics and the sedimentary layers of internet celebrity, a new formation has emerged: “Josh Rock.” At first glance the name sounds like the half-hearted alias of a Bond villain’s henchman, or perhaps the title…
If you squint hard enough at the Mets schedule, you can almost see the contours of the modern world: a 162-game atlas where jet-lagged millionaires chase a white leather sphere across time zones like confused diplomats, while the rest of us wonder how we’re going to pay the rent. The 2024 slate drops the Amazin’s…
Russian Drones: Skyborne Ambassadors of a World That Forgot How to Sleep By the time the first Iranian-designed Shahed-136 tumbled onto a Kyiv kindergarten, the planet had already given up pretending that unmanned aircraft are merely “tools.” From the Sea of Okhotsk to the Sonoran Desert, Russian drones have become the twenty-first century’s most reliable…
The Oche World Order How a pub game from Leicestershire became the planet’s last honest theatre of war By the time the final dart thunked into double-top in the Sheikh Zayed Stadium, Abu Dhabi, the 64 men still conscious in the Irish bar next door cheered like hostages who’d just heard ransom negotiations succeeded. It…
NFL Week 2: A Global Audit of the American Gladiator Circus by Matteo “The Passport” De Luca, International Affairs Desk KIGALI—While the Central Bank of Rwanda debates whether to de-dollarize before or after lunch, 73 million Americans are busy screaming at a flat-screen because a man in Cincinnati failed to throw an inflated bladder in…
**The Global Thirst for Victory: How a Modest Brewers Score Became the World’s Favorite Distraction** While diplomats bickered in Geneva and central bankers wrung their hands over inflation graphs this week, a far more consequential drama unfolded in Milwaukee. The Brewers scored—repeatedly, dramatically, and with the sort of statistical flourish that makes grown men weep…
THE QUIET MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD A GOAL: CONOR CHAPLIN AND THE GLOBAL PONZI SCHEME OF HOPE Dateline: Somewhere between the Suffolk fens and the fever dreams of Premier League scouts—where the air smells faintly of wet grass, stale lager, and the desperation of 27 million YouTube highlight reels. Conor Chaplin, age 27, currently…
Hatton: The One-Word Riddle Currently Ruining Every Foreign Correspondent’s Sleep Cycle By Our Man in a State of Perpetual Jet Lag Every so often the planet coughs up a proper noun that seems to have been devised by a committee of prankish linguists and bored algorithm engineers. “Hatton” is the latest entry in that noble…
**Gridiron Prophecies: How NFL Picks Became the World’s Favorite Guessing Game** While the rest of the planet grapples with climate summits, currency fluctuations, and the occasional coup d’état, a peculiar American ritual has infected the global consciousness like a particularly virulent strain of cultural influenza. NFL picks—those weekly predictions about helmeted gladiators chasing an oblong…
Jacob Murphy and the Quiet Art of Being a Global Nobody By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the North Sea There is a moment, somewhere around the 78th minute of a Thursday-night Europa Conference League tie, when Jacob Murphy collects the ball on the touchline and 32,000 Geordies exhale as one. In…
James Beattie: The Scottish Philosopher Who Accidentally Invented Global Burnout Culture By Our Correspondent in a Café That Still Charges for Wi-Fi (Edinburgh, GMT+1) It is 4:07 p.m. local time, and the Edinburgh drizzle is performing its usual impression of a world-weary accountant: constant, grey, and impossible to fire. Inside the café, a barista misspells…
