Hailey Bieber as Global Weather Vane: How One Rhode-Slinging Influencer Became a Barometer for Late-Stage Capitalism ZURICH—On a rainy Wednesday, finance ministers from the G-20 huddled in a vaulted conference room debating how to keep supply chains from imploding. Half a world away, Hailey Bieber posted a 12-second clip of herself glazing a strawberry “glazed…
Amazon Prime: Same-Day Folly in an Age of Collapse By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Bureau of Post-Imperial Logistics PARIS—Somewhere in the 18th arrondissement, a courier on a subsidised e-bike is zig-zagging between cigarette smoke and existential dread to deliver a single tube of Japanese toothpaste to a graphic designer who forgot to floss. She will unwrap…
Paul Newman, the man who once smirked at us from a thousand movie posters, has been dead for sixteen years, yet his face still sells salad dressing on every continent where supermarkets have refrigeration. From Lagos to Ljubljana, shoppers reach for the same genial grin in a jar, proving that global capitalism can turn even…
Publishers Clearing House Files for Bankruptcy, Proving Even the House Can Lose the Sweepstakes By Our Correspondent in a Café That Still Accepts Physical Mail NEW YORK—The envelope that once promised “You may already be a winner!” has finally delivered its punch line: Publishers Clearing House (PCH) filed for Chapter 11 protection in Delaware this…
Krispy Kreme’s Autumnal Glaze: How a Deep-Fried Circle Became a Geopolitical Rorschach Test By Dave’s Locker International Desk From the neon-lit sprawl of Tokyo’s Shibuya Crossing to the increasingly ironic food-courts of Dubai’s climate-controlled malls, the Krispy Kreme “Fall Fair Doughnuts” have landed like a sugar-coated drone strike on the global waistline. Six limited-edition rings—pumpkin-spice,…
Hims & Hers Health, ticker HIMS, is having the sort of month most CEOs would sell a kidney for—though in this case the company would probably ship you a discreet packet of finasteride, a branded band-aid, and a pep-talk push notification for good measure. Shares have quadrupled since October, a rally so vertical that even…
Ozempic Goes Global: A Tale of Needles, Net-Exports, and Narcissism By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker COPENHAGEN – Somewhere between the fjords of Norway and the food-courts of Dubai, a Danish pharmaceutical company discovered that the fastest route to world domination is through the human waistline. Novo Nordisk’s Ozempic—originally a humble diabetes drug—has become the planet’s most…
Breakfast: The World’s Most Important Meal and Most Elaborate Act of Self-Deception By Dave’s Locker International Desk From the frostbitten fjords of Norway to the smog-choked megacities of China, humanity greets the dawn with a ritual so universal it feels divinely ordained: pretending that a slice of toast and a thimble of caffeine can compensate…
**The Great British Clear-Out: How Sainsbury’s Argos Sale Became a Global Metaphor for Our Declining Civilization** *From our international desk, where we watch the world burn one clearance rack at a time* LONDON—While the BBC breathlessly covers cabinet reshuffles and the Guardian agonizes over Brexit’s latest plot twist, Britain’s retail bellwether has delivered what might…
The Global Hustle of Renting a Set of Wheels By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, currently hiding the fuel receipt from accounting In the beginning there was the wheel, and it was good. Then someone invented the surcharge, and the wheel required collision coverage, a credit-card imprint, and a 45-minute queue at Antalya Airport. Welcome, weary traveler,…
**The Breezy Bowl Revolution: How Humanity’s Latest Bathroom Innovation Became a Geopolitical Powder Keg** In the grand theater of human progress, where we’ve split atoms, sequenced genomes, and convinced ourselves that cryptocurrency is a good idea, we now arrive at our crowning achievement: the Breezy Bowl. This $399 “intelligent air-drying toilet seat” promises to liberate…
Global Kraft-Up: When the World’s Favourite Emergency Meal Tries to Kill Us All Geneva—While diplomats at the Palais des Nations argue over carbon ceilings and the precise shade of beige that constitutes a war crime, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued a worldwide recall of certain boxed macaroni and cheese products after discovering…
