Austin vs Real Salt Lake: When Two Clubs Try to Matter in a World That Barely Notices By the time Q2 Stadium’s floodlights flickered on last Saturday, the global attention economy was already busy elsewhere. COP28 delegates were arguing about whether to set the thermostat at 1.5 or 2 degrees of civilizational suicide, the Houthis…
DAKORIEN MOORE: THE AMERICAN TEENAGER WHO BECAME A GLOBAL CONVERSATION PIECE ABOUT VIOLENCE, VIRALITY, AND THE BANALITY OF EVERYTHING By the time Dakorien Moore’s name was being autocorrected in three alphabets and mispronounced by a French news anchor live on air, the 17-year-old from Baton Rouge had already achieved the only true international currency left:…
Scheffler at the Ryder Cup: America’s Reluctant Atlas, Europe’s Favorite Punching Bag By the time Scottie Scheffler stepped onto the first tee at Marco Simone last September, the world had already spent two years treating him like a walking algorithm: plug in fairways, receive birdies. Inflation? Solved. War? Calmed. Simply project Scottie’s Strokes-Gained chart onto…
The world’s newsrooms barely had time to update their “Mass Shooting in America” templates before the Utah story elbowed its way onto the wire: a 15-year-old at a junior high in the town of Bountiful allegedly turned a handgun on himself in full view of classmates, then, in the sort of plot twist that would…
The Ryder Cup: A Weekend Where Continental Egos Are Stroked, Then Deflated, All for a Tiny Gold Trophy By Our Man in Marco Simone, Nursing an Espresso and Existential Dread MARCO SIMONE GOLF & COUNTRY CLUB, ITALY — If you squinted past the emerald fairways and corporate skyboxes this weekend, you could almost see the…
**The Houston Astros: America’s Cheating Champions and the Global Theater of Sports Morality** In the grand carnival of American excess, where everything is bigger—including the scandals—the Houston Astros stand as a monument to that peculiar Western tradition of winning at any cost, then acting surprised when caught. From the dusty streets of Mumbai to the…
Keegan Bradley and the Last Gasp of American Exceptionalism on a Scottish Fairway By Our Man in the Bunker St Andrews, Scotland – In the cradle of golf, where sheep once grazed and now Chinese conglomerates graze on real-estate brochures, Keegan Bradley did something mildly shocking: he won the Scottish Open. Cue polite applause from…
Dallas, Texas – a city that once traded in oil and cattle futures – woke up this morning to the familiar American lullaby of helicopters, flashing lights, and the obligatory cable-news countdown clock. By the time European editors were pouring their second espresso, #DallasShooting was already trending somewhere between a K-pop comeback and a cat…
**Anthony Volpe: The Shortstop Who Proves America Still Exports Dreams Instead of Democracy** *From our international desk, where we watch American exceptionalism strike out in real time* The global village received another shipment of American mythology this week, packaged in pinstripes and delivered via a 22-year-old from Manhattan who apparently decided that $3.7 million wasn’t…
Tony Earls: The Everyman Who Became a Global Morality Play By the time Tony Earls’ name ping-ponged across the world’s news tickers—Tokyo at dawn, Lagos at lunch, São Paulo at midnight—it had already been chewed up by every algorithm that feeds on human misery. To most of the planet he is simply “the guy who…
In the grand, often farcical opera of American football, even the most diligent foreign correspondent risks missing the aria when it’s sung by a second-year cornerback out of Georgia. Yet Brian Branch—yes, that Brian Branch, the one whose name sounds like an underperforming hedge fund—has quietly become a geopolitical footnote. How? By reminding the planet…
Baltimore—In a world where wars are live-tweeted and central bankers apologize for inflation in emoji form, the Baltimore Ravens have decided the most rational response is to throw $100 million at a man whose job is to collide with other large men until one of them stops moving. Roquan Smith, linebacker and newly minted centi-millionaire,…
