The World According to Taylor Momsen, or How a Child Star Became the Planet’s Favorite Post-Apocalyptic Soundtrack Provider By the time the pandemic’s second year rolled around, most of us had exhausted our supply of sourdough, serotonin, and hope. Enter Taylor Momsen—once Cindy Lou Who, now eyeliner-laden banshee—howling over distorted guitars as if auditioning to…
The planet is ending, but first let us sort “NYT Connections Hints September 8” into tidy color-coded rows. Somewhere between melting permafrost and algorithmic doom-scrolling, a few million of us woke up this morning to the same digital Rosetta Stone: the New York Times’ daily word-grid, whispered across time zones by caffeine-powered group chats from…
PARIS – In the gilded corridor of the Palais des Congrès, where the WTA rankings are ceremonially updated each Monday like a corporate earnings call with better jawlines, a small army of statisticians, publicists, and caffeinated interns feed the algorithm that decides who, precisely, is the best at whacking a fuzzy yellow sphere until someone…
TALLAHASSEE, Wednesday—Across the globe, diplomats in Geneva fret over carbon thresholds, container ships idle in the Red Sea dodging drones, and the yen wobbles like a freshman kicker after three espresso shots. Yet for one humid Saturday in the Florida panhandle, the planet’s attention pivots to a patch of grass where young men in garnet…
Alicia Vikander and the Swedish Invasion: How a Small Nation Conquered Hollywood Without Firing a Shot While the world’s superpowers squander trillions on aircraft carriers and drone strikes, Sweden has quietly achieved global domination through a far more insidious weapon: devastatingly attractive actors who make everyone else feel inadequate about their bone structure. Alicia Vikander,…
A Zombie-Proof British Export: How Andrew Lincoln Became the Post-Apocalyptic Everyman the World Never Asked For By the time the credits rolled on the final episode of The Walking Dead’s flagship series, Andrew Lincoln had spent more time pretending to dodge flesh-eating Georgians than most Georgian politicians spend dodging actual accountability. In the grand bazaar…
Richard Tice is what happens when a property-developer-turned-politician discovers that Brexit is not, in fact, a temporary mood swing by the British electorate but a durable export commodity. From the glass towers of London’s Canary Wharf to the fluorescent glare of European Parliament committee rooms in Strasbourg, Tice has become the living embodiment of a…
**BIBIMBAP AND HANDCUFFS: HOW A GEORGIA IMMIGRATION RAID BECAME KOREA’S LATEST EXPORT** *The global economy works in mysterious ways—Samsung builds your phone, Hyundai builds your car, and apparently, the Korean government builds your immigration enforcement policies.* In a delightful twist of globalization that absolutely nobody asked for, South Korean immigration officials recently descended upon the…
Paddy Pimblett and the Global Gladiator Economy By Dave’s Locker International Desk Liverpool’s own Paddy “The Baddy” Pimblett, a man whose hairline looks like it’s been negotiating Brexit since 2016, walked into the Octagon last Saturday night and did what the World Bank, the IMF, and three successive U.S. administrations have failed to do: he…
**The Global Village Idiot: How Joe Rogan Became the World’s Most Influential American Export (Sorry, Democracy)** In an era where American soft power traditionally meant Hollywood blockbusters, jazz music, or the occasional aircraft carrier, humanity has collectively decided that our most significant cultural export is… a former Fear Factor host who looks like he could…
Lucy Connolly and the Global Ripple of a Very British Temper Tantrum By Our Correspondent, still jet-lagged in Duty-Free Limbo Word Count: 610 The name Lucy Connolly had, until recently, the international recognition of a village fête raffle ticket—utterly meaningless once you crossed the M25. Yet within 48 hours it trended from Lagos to Lima,…
Walker Cup Results: When America’s Golfing Teenagers Become Collateral Damage in the Global Soft-Power Arms Race By “Lucky” Luciano Verde, International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker St Andrews, Scotland – The scoreboard reads USA 14½, GB&I 11½, which is the polite, tartan-wrapped way of saying the United States has once again weaponized orthodontics and college meal plans…
