The word “barca” has always traveled better than its boats. In the Mediterranean it’s a humble fishing skiff; in Bucharest it’s a derelict tram line; in global finance it’s the leveraged buy-out formerly known as FC Barcelona; and in the collective imagination it is whatever vessel we need to escape today’s headlines. From the Bosporus…
Toluca to Puebla: The 120-Kilometer Fault Line Where Mexico Explains the Planet to Itself By Our Man in the Middle of Somewhere Every country keeps a stretch of asphalt that functions as its emotional ECG strip. The United States has I-95, France has the périphérique, and Mexico, bless its melodramatic heart, has the 95D from…
North Dakota vs. Montana: A Prairie Cold War the World Pretends Not to Notice By “Marcel Dufresne,” Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker PARIS—While the rest of the planet obsesses over which septuagenarian will control the nuclear football, a quieter, far more existential struggle has broken out on the high plains of the United States: North Dakota…
BANGLADESH VS SRI LANKA: TWO SMALL COUNTRIES, ONE BIG GLOBAL METAPHOR Dave’s Locker | International Desk | 28 May 2024 When Bangladesh and Sri Lanka lock horns—be it in a cricket stadium, a Geneva debt-restructuring ballroom, or an increasingly salty Bay of Bengal—the world rarely interrupts its doom-scrolling to notice. Yet the tussle between these…
Tsunami: The Planet’s Loudest Résumé Update By the time you read this, the Indian Ocean plate has already filed another complaint with HR, and the Pacific Ring of Fire is forwarding its resignation letter to whoever still answers geology’s Slack channel. A tsunami—once a boutique disaster relegated to Japanese wood-block prints and the occasional biblical…
The Maldives, that necklace of coral atolls tossed across the Indian Ocean like a billionaire’s broken bracelet, has always punched above its weight in the apocalypse sweepstakes. While other nations merely flirt with existential doom, the Maldives brings a dowry of 1,192 islands, an average elevation you could clear with a decent jump shot, and…
**The Earth Shrugs: A Planet-Wide Round-Up of Geo-News for the Perpetually Jet-Lagged** By the time your breakfast coffee cools, some volcano you can’t pronounce has canceled 4,000 flights, a micro-plastic the size of Malta has been discovered in a penguin’s pancreas, and a previously unheard-of island has been hastily added to Google Maps after a…
**Last Orders for Civilization: How a Giant Pub in East London Became the UN of Beer** LONDON—While the rest of the planet stockpiles iodine tablets and rehearses nuclear evacuation drills, 50,000 optimists from 46 countries have spent the past five days queueing inside a former industrial warehouse to argue about hop varieties. Welcome to the…
Bali’s Latest Wet Look: How a Flooded Paradise Became the Planet’s Cautionary TikTok By our correspondent, still drying her passport in the hotel hair-dryer DENPASAR—When the Gods finally decided to rinse the island of incense, Bintang singlets, and crypto-burnout expats, they apparently chose the deluxe cycle. Over three sodden February days, Bali collected a month’s…
Corinthians vs. Athletico-PR: A Tale of Two Cities and the Planet’s Slow Collapse By Our Man in São Paulo, nursing his third caipirinha since dawn Somewhere between the 37th parallel south and the International Space Station’s nightly pass, Corinthians and Athletico-PR will meet tonight in the sort of football match that makes the rest of…
Tuvalu is the geopolitical equivalent of a canary in a coal mine, except the canary is nine coral atolls, the coal mine is the Pacific Ocean, and the miners are too busy arguing over the thermostat to notice the bird has already started packing its bags. On most world maps the country is cropped out…
**Boston’s Weather: A Global Parable of Snow, Hubris, and the End of the World as We Know It** *By our correspondent who once wore flip-flops in February and has the frostbite to prove it* BOSTON—While the rest of the planet debates whether 2023 was merely the hottest year on record or the opening act for…
