Community, Circa 2024: A Field Report from the Glorious Ruins of Togetherness By L. M. Valdez, Foreign Correspondent, presently somewhere between a WeWork in Singapore and a refugee tent in Gaziantep — The word “community” once conjured images of kindly grandmothers swapping soup recipes over white picket fences. Today, the same word is more likely…
London’s Tube Strikes Go Global: A Tale of Rust, Rage, and the Universal Art of Not Getting to Work By the time the first picket sign hit the pavement outside King’s Cross, the ripple was already lapping at distant shores. Commuters from São Paulo to Singapore glanced up from their phones to discover that London—once…
The Blackout That United—and Divided—Us All By A. M. Vance, International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker SÃO PAULO—At 09:17 GMT last Tuesday, the PlayStation Network coughed, sputtered, and finally flat-lined. Across 72 countries, 117 million registered accounts watched their digital worlds evaporate into a single, smug error code: WS-116520-5. In a heartbeat, Fortnite warriors in Jakarta found…
Yvette Cooper and the Empire of Small-Print Doom By our Special Correspondent in Existential Limbo LONDON, Tuesday – Somewhere between the soggy Pret sandwich and the next Brexit anniversary, Yvette Cooper has quietly become the West’s most efficient exporter of bureaucratic dread. While other politicians chase headlines the way toddlers chase soap bubbles, the Chair…
Birmingham, England—where the weather has always been a reliable punchline—recently delivered a masterclass in meteorological passive-aggression. A bruised-purple sky dumped golf-ball hail on the Bullring, flash-flooded the A38, and then sauntered off like a drunk who’s just keyed your car. Locals responded with the traditional stiff-upper-lip shrug: “Could be worse; could be Leeds.” Yet, from…
Rolling Ray, the 5-foot-tall, 300-pound viral hurricane who answers to both “Mr. Raymond” and “the wheelchair-bound chaos goblin,” has been unleashed upon a planet already wheezing from 2024’s buffet of existential hors d’oeuvres. From Lagos to Lisbon, screens flicker with the same clip: Ray, sequined durag gleaming like a disco ball that’s seen things, flipping…
Bristol Weather: How a Drizzly Tuesday in the West Country Quietly Rules the World By the time the first commuter in Taipei checks the 7-day forecast on her phone, the algorithm has already chewed through 2.3 million data points from a small corrugated shed on the roof of Bristol’s Lloyds Amphitheatre. What the app politely…
STEVE BUSCEMI: THE ONLY THING HOLDING THE PLANET TOGETHER by our man in the field, still wearing yesterday’s cynicism Dateline: Somewhere over the Atlantic, where the in-flight Wi-Fi is patchy and the world below is on fire in at least four time zones. A curious thing happened at last week’s G-7 “emergency cultural summit” (a…
Mile-High Mirage: How a Rocky Mountain Scratch Card Became a Global Parable By the time the Colorado Lottery’s latest Powerball billboard flickered to life above Denver International—a smiling elk promising life-changing jackpots to anyone who can read English and ignore basic statistics—three continents were already taking notes. From Singapore’s Marina Bay to Lagos’s Balogun Market,…
Powerball en Vivo Hoy: The World Holds Its Breath for a Billion-Dollar Fever Dream By Dave’s Locker Correspondent, somewhere between a bar in Lisbon and a rooftop in Manila Tonight, at precisely 22:59 Eastern Standard Time, the multicolored balls of destiny will tumble inside a plastic drum in Tallahassee, Florida—population 200,000, humidity 400%. Somewhere between…
Power, like cheap tequila, is most potent just before it makes you sick. From the marble corridors of Brussels to the fluorescent-lit war rooms of Beijing, the world’s sharpest minds are busy proving that axiom daily, usually while someone else foots the bar tab. Consider the United Nations Security Council on any given Tuesday: five…
The Powerball Drawing: A Global Lottery Where Everyone Loses, Yet Still Buys Tickets By the time the white balls tumbled out of the acrylic drum in Tallahassee last night, Tokyo’s morning commuters were already checking the results on their phones between sardine-can train stops and Lagos’s night-shift nurses were placing proxy bets on WhatsApp before…
