Maja Chwalińska and the Quiet Art of Polish Resilience By Our Warsaw-to-World Correspondent WARSAW—On a continent where the nightly news toggles between inflation charts and whatever fresh geopolitical panic the algorithm has queued up, 23-year-old Maja Chwalińska is doing something almost indecently old-fashioned: she’s winning tennis matches without declaring war on anyone. Ranked somewhere south…
**The Global Hunger Games: How Radiohead Tickets Became the World’s Most Elusive Currency** In a world where democracy teeters on the brink and climate change promises beachfront property in Kansas, humanity has found its true barometer of civilization’s collapse: the inability to purchase Radiohead tickets. From São Paulo to Singapore, the same digital tragedy unfolds…
Facebook Finally Pays Up: A $725 Million Receipt for the Global Panopticon By Our Correspondent Somewhere Slightly East of Disillusionment If you listen closely across the world’s time zones, you can almost hear the synchronized sigh of relief emanating from Menlo Park—part exhale, part suppressed giggle—as Meta agrees to cut a $725 million cheque to…
Michael Palin: The Diplomat We Forgot We Needed by Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent-at-Large In an age when most global “statesmen” can’t get through a press conference without threatening to glass someone on Twitter, it is instructive to remember that one of Britain’s most effective cultural ambassadors remains the man who once attempted to purchase a…
Garth Brooks and the Global Soft-Power Hat Trick By the Foreign Correspondent Who Once Saw a Kyrgyz Wedding DJ Spin “Friends in Low Places” at 3 a.m., Straight-Faced In the grand, teetering circus of American cultural imperialism, Garth Brooks is the unassuming juggler who managed to turn a ten-gallon Stetson into planetary headgear. From the…
Diego Lopes and the Quiet Collapse of Geography by Our Man in Everywhere Somewhere above the Sea of Japan, Diego Lopes is probably snoring—mouth open, noise-canceling headphones askew, drool pooling on a $4 neck pillow that will outlive us all. To the flight-tracking apps, he’s just another purple blip slicing through the jet stream. To…
The Blue Ticket of Empire: How a Slip of Paper from SW6 Became a Global Passport to Modern Anxiety From the glass towers of Singapore to the back-alley cyber-cafés of Lagos, the same browser tab is open: Chelsea tickets. Not for the game, mind you—half the planet is three time zones away—but for the idea….
Heath Ledger Died, and the Whole Planet Started Acting Perth, Australia—population two million, give or take a quarrelling quokka—still hasn’t forgiven the rest of us for what happened on 22 January 2008. That morning, a local surfer-turned-global-phenom was found face-down in a SoHo loft, and within minutes the tragedy was being live-tweeted from seventeen time…
Marvel Rivals Season 4: The Planet-Wide Pacifier That Keeps Us From Inhaling Each Other By Our Correspondent, currently hiding in a neutral airport lounge Geneva—While the UN Security Council spent the week arguing over whose turn it is to veto sunlight, 42 million humans in 194 countries did something far more constructive: they logged on…
iPhone 17 Pro Max: The Planet’s Latest $1,499 Pacifier By: C. Sandoval, Senior Cynic-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk Geneva, Switzerland – While the UN Security Council met to debate which hemisphere gets to drown first, Apple quietly scheduled next September’s “Glowtime” event where the iPhone 17 Pro Max will descend from the marketing heavens like…
**The Global Mortgage Rate Hunger Games: How Central Bankers Decide Who Sleeps Under a Roof** While you were doom-scrolling through real estate listings you’ll never afford, central bankers from Frankfurt to Tokyo were playing their favorite party game: “Let’s See How High We Can Crank Rates Before the Middle Class Implodes.” The results, dear reader,…
The New York Times Wordle: A Tiny Green Grid Holding the World Together By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Between Despair and Delight PARIS—At 00:01 GMT, the Earth’s rotation briefly stutters. Somewhere in Lagos a nurse on night shift, a commodities trader in Singapore, and a Ukrainian artillery spotter near Bakhmut all thumb the same five empty…
