# **Going Beyond the Surface: Why “Surface” is the New Deep** In the vast ocean of internet trends, some waves crash and burn, while others ripple through the digital world, leaving a lasting impact. Enter “surface,” the latest buzzword that’s got everyone from Gen Z to Boomers scratching their heads and scrolling harder. But what’s…
The Empire Strikes Back—With Ball-by-Ball Commentary By the Bureau Chief for Existential Sportsball, somewhere over the Indian Ocean Somewhere between the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of TikTok, a quiet data-colony called ESPNcricinfo slipped its leash and began running the cricket world by remote control. Once a modest scorecard service born in…
The Scroll: Humanity’s Eternal Down-Thumb by Hugo Valdez, International Desk, somewhere between Caracas and a buffering Wi-Fi signal PARIS—At 2:47 a.m. local time, while the Eiffel Tower’s lights obediently powered down to save electricity the French government swears it still has, a junior policy adviser named Céline discovered she had just scrolled the equivalent of…
In a world where quarterbacks are traded like cryptocurrency and highlight reels outrank passports for global relevance, the sudden rise of Kaidon Salter is less a sports story than a geopolitical parable with shoulder pads. From the limestone bowels of Cookeville, Tennessee—population: roughly the same as a mid-sized refugee camp—to the glowing rectangles of every…
Global Affairs Desk, Dave’s Locker – Somewhere between a Berlin co-working loft and a Jakarta food-court Wi-Fi hotspot If the Cold War was fought with missiles and manifestos, the TikTok War is being fought with lip-syncs and lo-fi filter presets. From the marble lobbies of Brussels to the humid back rooms of Manila’s influencer incubators,…
Atlas—Santos: A Tale of Two Cities, One Stadium, and the Global Gladiator Complex By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the smog of Torreón and the salt-breeze of Santos, two Mexican football clubs met last night in a fixture that, on paper, was merely the latest chapter in Liga MX’s interminable telenovela. Yet the Atlas–Santos…
Express News: The Global Habit of Devouring Yesterday Five Minutes Ago By Santiago “Blink-And-You-Missed-It” Vásquez, International Desk, Dave’s Locker ZURICH—Somewhere between the third push-alert and the fourth espresso, it occurred to me that “Express News” has become the planetary equivalent of a chain-smoking parrot: loud, repetitive, and absolutely convinced the apocalypse is scheduled for 3:17…
Tyler Johnson and the Curious Alchemy of Global Attention By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk It’s 3 a.m. in Dubai, which means the trading screens have just gone quiet and the city’s army of sleep-deprived analysts are scrolling Instagram to see what exactly Tyler Johnson did this time. By 4 a.m. in London, the FT’s early-bird…
AppLovin: The Algorithmic Pied Piper of Planet Earth By Dave’s Locker Global Affairs Desk Somewhere between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of TikTok dances, humanity quietly agreed to surrender its attention spans to a handful of Californian engineers with a gift for turning micro-transactions into macro-misery. Enter AppLovin, the San Francisco–based…
