StubHub, the digital coliseum where tickets bleed from one continent to another faster than a diplomat’s expense account, has quietly become the world’s most efficient black-market bazaar that pays taxes. In São Paulo, a dentist scalps K-pop passes to Seoul teens. In Lagos, a hustler flips Champions League seats to London bankers who missed the…
Synopsys (SNPS) is not, alas, a Greek tragedy about synthetic preservatives; it’s the Nasdaq ticker for the EDA overlord whose software quietly decides whether your next smartphone will overheat in Dubai, imitate a hand-grenade in Detroit, or merely bankrupt you in Berlin. While the rest of us were doom-scrolling through 2023’s buffet of wars, wildfires,…
PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine and the existential dread that keeps Europe awake at night, Marion Cotillard keeps winning. Not just Oscars and Césars and every other golden doorstop the film industry hands out to reassure itself it still matters, but the larger, messier lottery of relevance. While other actors age into cameos on streaming shows…
Joanne Froggatt and the Global Cottage-Industry of Whispered Trauma By Our Man in a Perpetually Delayed Departure Lounge There is a moment—usually somewhere over the Caspian Sea, when the in-flight map insists you’re still in Europe but the vodka tastes undeniably post-Soviet—when you realise that Joanne Froggatt has become the unofficial patron saint of repressed…
The Last Super Over Before the Apocalypse: India vs UAE and the Global Theatre of Micro-Battles By Our Man at the End of the World (Bar, Dubai Duty-Free) Dubai, 5:47 p.m. local time. The sun is a cheap gold coin glinting off the Burj Khalifa’s windows, and 1.3 billion Indians plus everyone else with Wi-Fi…
Ticketmaster: The World’s Most Expensive Middleman, Now with Extra Bureaucracy PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine and the Champs-Élysées, a French fan of Taylor Swift is Googling “how to sell kidney on black market” just to afford resale seats for the Eras Tour. Meanwhile, in Lagos, a Nigerian Swiftie is discovering that Ticketmaster’s “dynamic pricing” has priced…
**The Last Man Standing in Spandex: James Gunn’s Global Gambit to Save Superheroes from Themselves** Somewhere between the ruins of Warner Bros.’ cinematic universe and Marvel’s increasingly desperate multiverse mechanics, James Gunn has emerged as the unlikely custodian of our collective spandex obsession—a role that, in 2024, carries the geopolitical weight of a small nuclear…
Matteo Bocelli and the Empire of the Second-Generation Croon By Our Man in the Eternal Lounge, Nursing a Negroni and Existential Dread Florence, late afternoon—sunlight drips off the Arno like melted gelato, and Matteo Bocelli is trying very hard not to look like he’s auditioning for his own surname. At 28, the younger Bocelli has…
Ticketmaster’s Grande Collapse: How One Pop Star’s Tour Queue Became a Geopolitical Flashpoint By Matteo “Machiavelli” Marchetti, Senior Correspondent for Dave’s Locker LONDON—Across three continents this week, millions of citizens found themselves doing the exact same thing at the exact same moment: staring at a spinning wheel on an app that promised them a chance…
Twin Towers: A Global Obsession With Going Up in Smoke By Our Jaded Foreign Correspondent, currently chain-smoking on a balcony in Kuala Lumpur KUALA LUMPUR—Type “twin towers” into any search engine and you’ll get two things: a solemn parade of 9/11 retrospectives and glossy vacation selfies from the Petronas Towers. Humanity’s emotional bandwidth, it seems,…
**The Inflation Report: A Global Comedy of Errors Where Everyone’s Wallet Gets Lighter and No One’s Laughing** By the time the latest inflation report hit the wires, central bankers from Frankfurt to Fiji were already practicing their best “this is fine” smiles. The numbers, as expected, were hot—hotter than a Bangkok sidewalk in April, and…
When the Gods Pause Gavel-Wrestling: Sushila Karki and the Brief Miracle of Accountability in Kathmandu By Our Correspondent, still recovering from altitude-induced optimism KATHMANDU—If you blinked in April 2016 you missed it: a 63-year-old grandmother with the expression of a disappointed librarian stared down the entire political pantheon of Nepal and, for roughly 48 hours,…
