Illinois: The Prairie State as Global Metaphor, or How a Flat Rectangle Explains the 21st Century From the vantage point of a café in Istanbul where the lira is having another existential crisis, Illinois looks less like a Midwestern patch of corn and more like a darkly comic case study in late-capitalist resilience. Once the…
Minnesota: The Frozen Petri Dish Where the World Quietly Rehearses Its Next Act By the time your Boeing 787 bumps across the Mississippi, the cabin crew has already apologised to passengers from Lagos, La Paz and Lahore for a “little snow on the tarmac.” Little snow, in Minnesotan, means the airport is still visible. The…
Mumbai: A City-Sized Metaphor for the Planet’s Nervous Breakdown By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent-at-Large, still jet-lagged from the last red-eye Mumbai, formerly Bombay, currently “Beta Test for the Apocalypse,” doesn’t so much welcome visitors as it frisks them for loose change and existential dread. Step off the plane at Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International—Terminal 2, where the…
Osaka – Population: 19 million, Sarcasm: Infinite By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk (still jet-lagged since 2019) If Tokyo is the world’s impeccably ironed suit, Osaka is the same suit after it’s slept in a capsule hotel, eaten three sticks of kushikatsu, and decided to pick a fight with the global order. Long dismissed abroad as…
