Download Festival 2026: The Planet’s Loudest Apocalypse Rehearsal Byline: From a muddy field somewhere in the East Midlands and, regrettably, everywhere else. If the Doomsday Clock ever strikes midnight, the planet will probably be too busy queuing for £14 pints to notice. That, at least, is the working hypothesis behind Download Festival 2026, the annual…
Storm in a Teacup, with Global Froth by Our Man in the Departure Lounge The British Isles are once again under official “don’t panic, but do panic” orders as the Met Office issues a fresh flurry of colour-coded weather warnings—amber for wind, yellow for rain, and, in a festive twist, a sort of mauve for…
Miami Weather: The Planet’s Steam Room Where the Rich Come to Pretend It’s Still 1999 by Our Special Correspondent, currently hiding in an over-air-conditioned hotel lobby that smells faintly of piña colada and existential dread. There are cities where the weather is a footnote, and then there is Miami, where the weather writes editorials in…
Atlanta’s Humidity Is Now an International Export—Whether You Ordered It or Not By the Bureau of Global Damp Affairs, Dave’s Locker Somewhere over the North Atlantic, a British Airways captain just announced “unseasonable mugginess” at cruising altitude. The culprit? A globetrotting blob of Atlanta air—equal parts kudzu perfume, brake-dust cologne, and whatever aerosolized regret evaporated…
LOS ANGELES—Seen from 35,000 feet, the city unfurls like a radioactive circuit board that someone spilled glitter on: a vast, humming grid of lights, smog, and the occasional brushfire giving the whole thing a festive orange halo. To the rest of the planet, Los Angeles is less a municipality than a planetary mood ring—when it…
The M6: a 230-mile asphalt scar running from Rugby to Gretna, now elevated—if that word can be used for something that averages 34 mph—to a global symbol of humanity’s talent for turning simple forward motion into existential purgatory. While diplomats in Geneva argue over carbon budgets and container ships queue politely outside Los Angeles, the…
Coachella 2026: The Last Festival Before the Water Wars By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, filed from a rapidly dehydrating Los Angeles On the surface, Coachella 2026 looked the same as ever—grass that isn’t grass, wristbands that double as NFT passports, and a corporate lineup so synergistic it could run for office. But this year the polo…
Storm Amy: A Mild Tempest in the Global Teacup By Our Correspondent Who Has Covered Actual Hurricanes and Still Pays Rent in Euros COPENHAGEN—Somewhere between the Baltic’s sullen drizzle and the North Sea’s theatrical sighs, Storm Amy made landfall last night. The Danish Meteorological Institute dutifully hoisted a yellow warning, which in Scandinavian color-coding roughly…
Swansea, that stoic Welsh port city once famed for copper and Dylan Thomas’s hangovers, is presently auditioning for the role of Atlantis. Storms straight off the Atlantic have hurled the sea at its doorstep, turning terraced streets into Venetian canals minus the gondolas and romantic lighting. Locals now kayak to the off-licence while council officials…
Nottingham Weather: The Midlands’ Gift to Global Climate Anxiety By Dave’s Locker International Desk – Special Correspondent for Damp Affairs LONDON—When the rest of the planet is busy roasting, drowning, or being blown off the map, Nottingham has quietly perfected a third option: persistent, bone-level drizzle that feels like a cold civil servant’s revenge on…
Dying Light: The Beast – A Post-Apocalyptic Mirror Held Up to a Planet Already Half-Dead by Dave’s International Affairs Correspondent, still waiting for the vaccine against bad decisions Somewhere between the radioactive puddle that was once Chernobyl and the smog-choked skyline of Lahore, Techland announced “Dying Light: The Beast,” a standalone expansion so grim it…
Aloha, collateral damage: why the University of Hawai‘i football program has become the world’s most ironic geopolitical metaphor By the time the University of Hawai‘i Rainbow Warriors kicked off their 2024 season, the South China Sea had already seen three near-collision incidents between rival coast guards, the Red Sea was a floating insurance write-off, and…
