Costa Rica: The Tiny Nation Making the Rest of Us Look Like Absolute Slobs San José, Costa Rica—If countries were houseguests, Costa Rica is the annoyingly well-mannered vegan cousin who shows up with a solar-powered blender, thanks you for the Wi-Fi, and then quietly composts your fridge before you’ve even found the corkscrew. While the…
DEFRA: The Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs, or, as the rest of the planet calls it, “the world’s most polite ecological apocalypse manager.” While most nations still pretend climate change is a future problem, the United Kingdom has gamely elevated it to a cabinet-level spectator sport, complete with white papers, select committees, and…
Steelers: The Global Supply Chain’s Rust-Belt Avengers By Diego “Rust Never Sleeps” Morales, International Desk, Dave’s Locker PARIS—On a rain-slick boulevard outside the Chinese embassy, a delegation of French steelworkers is politely waving baguettes at a line of stone-faced diplomats. Their placards read “Acier = Avenir,” which roughly translates to “Steel = Future” and, more…
“Mo State” and the Quiet Art of Running Out of Everything From the vantage point of a cramped café in Lisbon—where the Wi-Fi password is still “Brexit2020,” presumably because nobody has had the emotional bandwidth to change it—the phrase “mo state” has begun popping up on stock-ticker chyrons, Indian WhatsApp uncle groups, and, most ominously,…
