Canelo Álvarez and the Global Price Tag of a Perfect Left Hook By Diego “Debt-to-GDP” Morales, Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between a cartel checkpoint and a Dubai brunch, Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez has banked roughly $200 million. That figure—current as of this morning’s peso wobble—doesn’t include the ghost streams, crypto side bets, or the tequila…
Sagapolutele: The Last Name That’s Too Long for Twitter and Too Heavy for Globalization By Dave’s Locker International Desk (with a stiff drink still in hand) The Pacific, that quaint blue puddle where super-powers now play Battleship for real estate, has coughed up another linguistic speed bump: Sagapolutele. Try typing it on a smartphone while…
**Live from New York, It’s the Decline of Empire: SNL Season 51 as Global Barometer** While bombs fall on Gaza, glaciers calve into warming seas, and BRICS nations quietly sketch alternate financial architecture, the planet’s most durable satirical variety show shuffles into its 51st season like a late-night diner that forgot to flip the “open”…
PARIS—On a rain-slick Tuesday in the 19th arrondissement, a bougnat bar is showing grainy League Pass highlights of Patrick Beverley sliding his forehead into Russell Westbrook’s nostrils like a border guard confiscating contraband perfume. The patrons—Senegalese street vendors, off-duty Bulgarian mechanics, and one retired philosophy lecturer who swears he once taught Derrida how to box…
The Mask That Went Global: How a 5’6″ Luchador from Tijuana Became the World’s Smallest Soft-Power Superpower By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of TikTok, humanity decided its cultural ambassadors would no longer be violinists or Nobel laureates but a man in a sequined balaclava…
NATO’s Existential Midlife Crisis, Starring Donald Trump and Your Peace of Mind By Dave’s Locker International Desk PARIS—If NATO were a person, it would be that fifty-something divorcee who just woke up to find half the household budget missing and an ex texting “I never loved you anyway.” The ex, in this case, is Donald…
The planet is now so comprehensively insured that, should a meteor obliterate the Eastern Seaboard tomorrow, actuaries in Zurich would yawn, adjust their spreadsheets, and schedule a Zoom call before the dust cloud reached Europe. In 2024, insurance is less a safety net than the world’s largest, most neurotic casino—one where every house always wins,…
Nationwide Building Society: The Last Great British Mutual Standing, or Just the Slowest to Fall? LONDON—From a safe distance—say, a rooftop bar in Singapore, a co-working bunker in Berlin, or a tax-efficient villa in Dubai—Nationwide Building Society can look almost quaint. A 175-year-old British institution that still calls itself a “mutual,” as if the word…
Logan Paul: The Export America Keeps Pretending It Didn’t Ship PARIS – Somewhere between a McDonald’s on the Champs-Élysées and a Zara on Istiklal Avenue, it dawned on me that Logan Paul is less a YouTuber than a cultural analogue of the plastic straw: cheap, globally ubiquitous, and—once you’ve seen it jammed up a sea…
In the grand bazaar of global celebrity, where fame is traded like Bitcoin on a Tuesday afternoon, Earvin “Magic” Johnson remains the rarest of coins: one that hasn’t devalued, re-minted, or vanished into a forgotten wallet. From Lagos to Lisbon, Beijing to Bogotá, the man who once spun no-look passes in Forum purple now spins…
WNBA Playoffs 2025: When a Mid-Court Trap Becomes Geopolitical Theater By Our Correspondent, writing from a hotel bar that still thinks “mocktail” is a hate crime FIBA’s headquarters in Mies, Switzerland, is a concrete slab that looks like it was designed during a particularly bitter divorce. Inside, executives have spent the summer watching the 2025…
Nick Kurtz, the American catcher who this week signed a reported $4 million deal with the Oakland Athletics, is not yet famous enough to be recognized in the world’s better hotel lobbies. Give it a nanosecond. In an age when a bored Finnish teenager can tank a multinational bank with a meme, the ripple effects…
