In a world where billionaires race to space for sport and algorithms decide who gets a mortgage, Joaquin Phoenix has improbably become the closest thing we have to a global conscience—an ambassador of anguish in a tuxedo. From refugee camps in Greece to red carpets in Cannes, the man once famous for pretending to be…
Innings Festival 2026: The United States Invents a Five-Day Vacation from Reality, and the Rest of the World Watches with Envy and Mild Disgust Tempe, Arizona—While half the planet toggles between wildfire alerts and flood warnings, the United States has once again solved the global crisis of general malaise by flying in thirty-five rock bands,…
Wales vs Canada: Two Tiny Countries Pretending to Matter on the World Stage By the time you finish this sentence, the Canadian prime minister will have apologized for something and the Welsh rugby squad will have broken into a three-part harmony about coal. That, in microcosm, is the difference between a nation that weaponizes politeness…
San Francisco Weather: The Fog That Ate Global Capitalism By Our Man on the Brink, filing from a city that still thinks irony is a weather pattern. Let us begin with the only forecast that matters: Karl the Fog—that amorphous, sentient blanket of damp self-importance—has been granted diplomatic status by at least three EU member…
Tomorrow’s Weather: A Global Forecast of Mild Panic and Strategic Umbrella Deployment By Our Correspondent Who Has Already Lost Three Brollies to the Gods of Irony SEOUL—Across the planet, the phrase “내일 날씨” (“naeil nalssi” – tomorrow’s weather) is being whispered, Googled, or barked at smart speakers in 167 languages. It sounds benign, like asking…
Garnet Fire: The Global Inferno Nobody Ordered but Everyone’s Paying For By Our Man in Geneva, nursing his third espresso and a mild sense of existential dread GENEVA—At first glance, “garnet fire” sounds like the name of a boutique hot sauce marketed to people who own more than one bidet: artisanal, slightly menacing, and destined…
Tour de 4: How a Four-Letter Acronym Rode a Bicycle Around the World and Conquered Absolutely Nothing By Dave’s Locker’s Globetrotting Correspondent, still shaking sand out of his passport PARIS—The Tour de France is old news. This summer, the world’s attention has pivoted to the “Tour de 4,” a rolling circus of four cyclists, four…
For most of the planet, “Florida” is no longer a geographic coordinate so much as a cautionary mood board. From Lagos to Lisbon, the word has achieved the rare feat of becoming both proper noun and punch-line, a shorthand for the moment when weather, politics, and human ambition combine like badly-mixed cocktails on an empty…
Cal Poly vs Utah: A Collegiate Gladiator Match Observed by a Warming Planet By Dave’s Locker International Affairs Desk When the Cal Poly Mustangs and the Utah Utes trot onto the same patch of turf this weekend, the clash will be broadcast on a half-dozen satellites and streamed to bunkers, boardrooms, and basement bars from…
ATLANTA — Somewhere between the peach-scented humidity and the sudden, theatrical thunder that makes European tourists think the rapture has arrived, Atlanta’s weather has quietly become a geopolitical barometer no one asked for but everyone now consults. If you want to know how the planet is feeling on any given Tuesday, skip the IPCC report…
Sky vs Fever: The Planet’s Newest Past-Time, Sponsored by Everyone’s Panic By Our Man in the Departures Lounge The match-up began quietly enough—one of those slow-motion grudge fights that only epidemiologists and airline CEOs bother to track. On one side: the literal sky, 510 million square kilometres of once-pristine nothing now hosting 45,000 commercial flights…
Felpham: The Village That Accidentally Became a Global Metaphor by “Sir” Reginald Blight, Senior Coastal Stringer-at-Large Drive ninety minutes south-west from London, past the duty-free cathedrals of Gatwick and the Brexit car parks of Crawley, and you will eventually spill onto a pebble beach where gulls scream like unpaid interns and the air smells faintly…
