McDonald’s Near Me: A Dispatch from the United Caliphate of the Golden Arches By Our Man in Anywhere, Earth Type “McDonald’s near me” from a rooftop in Cairo, a rain-soaked tram in Glasgow, or the back of a tuk-tuk weaving through Jakarta’s diesel dusk and the same cartographic genie appears—pin-dropping a promise of identical salt,…
Somewhere between the Geneva motor show and a Lagos traffic jam, the Apple Watch completed its quiet conquest of the human wrist. Ten years ago it was a curiosity for Californian yoga instructors; today it is the de-facto visa stamp of the global middle class—more recognizable than most passports and twice as judgmental when you…
**The Wagyu Whopper: How Burger King Turned Japan’s Sacred Cow into Global Fast Food Fodder** TOKYO—In the land where cattle once lived better than most humans, the news landed like a sake bomb in a hostess bar: Burger King Japan has unveiled the “Wagyu Whopper,” a ¥1,980 (US$13) slab of allegedly premium beef wedged between…
The Burger: A Global Love Affair Held Together by Cheese and Existential Dread By the time you finish reading this sentence, humanity will have consumed roughly 2,500 hamburgers—enough to pave a greasy, slightly tragic path from Reykjavík to Jakarta. The burger, once a humble minced-beef puck served to German sailors in nineteenth-century New York, has…
The Curious Case of Sunday Trading Laws: When God, GDP, and Grocery Lists Collide By Our Correspondent, Still Recovering from a Black-Market Avocado Bought on the Sabbath Somewhere between the pearly gates and the self-checkout aisle, humanity continues its millennia-old debate: should the seventh day be reserved for rest, retail, or restocking the fridge with…
**The Global Monarchy: How Disney Princesses Became the World’s Most Successful Soft Power Export** While the United Nations struggles to achieve consensus on climate change, Disney has managed to get 195 countries to agree on one thing: the commercial viability of a tiara. From the bustling markets of Mumbai to the quiet villages of rural…
iPhone 17: The Global Ritual of Queuing for Tomorrow While Today Burns By the time you finish reading this sentence, at least three tech blogs will have published “exclusive” renders of the iPhone 17, complete with a hitherto-unimaginable shade of midnight-eclipse-mauve and a camera bump that could double as a helipad for very small drones….
Nike’s New Slogan: A Single Syllable for Seven Billion Egos By the time the memo leaked from Nike’s glass-and-privacy-glass campus in Beaverton, half of Jakarta had already screen-grabbed it. “Win.” That’s it—four letters, no exclamation mark, no swoosh-shaped heart emoji. Just the imperative form of the verb that keeps stock markets, border skirmishes, and your…
Bethenny Frankel and the Geopolitics of a Skinny-Girl Empire By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk PARIS—Somewhere between the Seine’s gently bobbing wine barges and the neon glare of a nearby McDonald’s, a French sommelier is quietly weeping into his gamay. The cause? A former Real Housewife of New York has managed to export “low-calorie margarita in…
The Lego Death Star: A 4,016-Piece Monument to Our Global Death Drive By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, somewhere between aisle 7 and existential dread GENEVA—While diplomats inside the Palais des Nations bicker over wording in Article 3(b) of yet another non-binding resolution, the real arms race is happening in toy stores from Berlin to Bangkok. Lego’s…
The NFL schedule release used to be a quaint domestic ritual: a few million Americans arguing on sports-talk radio about whether the Patriots had been given too many prime-time slots. Now, thanks to the league’s tireless evangelism—and the unquenchable global appetite for anything loud enough to drown out the news—the 18-week fixture list is parsed…
Where to Buy Powerball Tickets: A Globe-Trotting Guide to the World’s Most Expensive Daydream By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, Still Jet-Lagged and Morally Ambiguous NEW YORK – If you’ve glanced at the headlines lately, you’ll know the Powerball jackpot has swollen to a sum that would make a small nation blush—roughly the GDP of Iceland, minus…
