World Athletics Schedule 2024: A Global Itinerary of Sweat, Flags, and the Quiet Horror of Personal Bests Dave’s Locker, International Desk – 12 June 2024 If you unfold the 2024 World Athletics calendar and hold it up to the light, it looks uncannily like a boarding pass for humanity’s more delusional ambitions. The season begins,…
BAKU, Azerbaijan – While delegates at last week’s COP-adjacent energy forum were busy congratulating themselves on “transition roadmaps,” the sky over the Absheron Peninsula delivered a masterclass in atmospheric sarcasm: 38 °C in late September, a humidity index that could pickle a cucumber, and a wind that locals call the Khazri—essentially a hair-dryer aimed at…
The bulldog and the panther have always made for an odd couple—one wheezing like a broken accordion, the other padding past in liquid silence. Yet in every corner of the planet, from Singaporean boardrooms to São Paulo favelas, their symbolic cage-match is being restaged nightly by humans who prefer metaphors to maulings. Bulldogs, with their…
HOUSTON—While the planet’s traditional power centers bicker over whose missiles are bigger and whose central bank can print money faster, a soft-spoken 18-year-old from the same city that gave us Travis Scott is quietly colonizing the world’s earbuds without asking anyone’s permission. Meet d4vd, the Texan teenager who proves you no longer need a passport,…
Alejandro Fernández, the man who once sold out Madrid’s Las Ventas bullring faster than Spain can burn through another prime minister, has quietly become the planet’s most efficient exporter of heartbreak wrapped in a mariachi trumpet. While the rest of us debate tariffs and TikTok bans, Fernández has been staging a one-man NAFTA reboot, moving…
VIENNA—While half the planet was busy arguing whether a Ukrainian missile or a Russian drone had better odds of reaching Warsaw before Christmas, the other half spent its Saturday night obsessing over a 78-year-old sketch show filmed in a former Manhattan art-deco telephone exchange. The occasion: the announcement of the next Saturday Night Live host,…
BAKU, Azerbaijan — The F1 circus roared into the Caspian last weekend, and—quelle surprise—everyone left with their pockets lighter and their livers heavier. The Baku City Circuit is what happens when a petro-state decides that Monaco is too subtle and Monaco’s residents too hard to arrest. Over three days, the world’s most expensive bumper-cars threaded…
Arc’teryx: The Bird That Conquered the Apocalypse (and Your Rent Budget) ZURICH—Somewhere between a climate summit in Davos and a street-style shoot in Seoul, the Arc’teryx bird logo has become the unofficial flag of our slow-motion apocalypse. What began as a tiny climbing-hardware shop in North Vancouver—named after Archaeopteryx, the first lizard that dared to…
The Newbury Show and the Last Barn Dance of Empire By Our Man in a Wax Jacket, somewhere between Duty Free and the Sheep Ring NEWBURY, England – Every September, when the jet stream coughs a cold front across the Home Counties, the Newbury & District Agricultural Show re-asserts itself like a stubborn cow pat…
Kawasaki: The Brand That Quietly Powers Your Midlife Crisis and the Global Order By Dave’s International Affairs Desk (currently nursing an espresso in a Tokyo capsule hotel that smells faintly of regret and octopus ink) To much of the planet, “Kawasaki” is either the satisfying thrum of a Ninja ZX-10R splitting lanes on the Autobahn,…
The Ironman Cometh: Wales’ Annual Ritual of Masochism Goes Global TENBY, Wales—While the rest of the planet debates whether civilization will end via algorithmic overlord or climate tantrum, 2,200 otherwise sensible humans paid for the privilege of swimming 3.8 km in a slate-gray sea, cycling 180 km through sheep-dotted hills, and running 42.2 km past…
Navratri 2025: Nine Nights of Global Nausea, Neon, and Negotiable Piety By Our Correspondent in the Departures Lounge, Mumbai T2 The ninth day of Navratri 2025 has just wrapped—at least in the parts of the planet where the Wi-Fi is still on. Elsewhere, from the neon-blasted garba grounds of Gandhinagar to the LED-lit living rooms…
