Russell Wilson Retires, World Pretends to Care By L. Marlowe, Chief Correspondent, Dave’s Locker DENVER—Somewhere above the 39th parallel, a man who owns more Super Bowl rings than most countries have functioning airlines has decided to stop throwing an inflated leather object for money. The news ricocheted from Denver’s thin air to the thin patience…
Novi, Michigan—population 66,000, median income “comfortably suburban,” and, as of 3:47 a.m. Tuesday, proud owner of a brand-new 40-foot geyser where Main Street used to be. The water-main rupture sent a plume high enough to register on regional Doppler, soaked two Starbucks, and briefly convinced the local Nextdoor network that North Korea had finally overreached….
Law & Order: SVU—Exporting Moral Panic in 21 Languages (Dave’s Locker, World Desk) The opening “dun-dun” has become the sonic passport stamp of late-night insomnia from Lagos to Lisbon, a two-note warning that the worst of human depravity is about to be monetised for your viewing pleasure. While the original Law & Order franchise sold…
THE SKY IS FALLING, BUT FIRST, A WORD FROM OUR SPONSORS Russian military aircraft have always been a bit like that friend who shows up uninvited to the party, drinks all the vodka, and then insists the carpet was already on fire. From the Sea of Okhotsk to the edge of Portuguese airspace, the roar…
Barcelona vs. The Rest of the Known Universe (And the Universe Is Winning on Penalties) Somewhere between the Mediterranean’s sun-kissed narcissism and the Pyrenees’ bored shrug at borders, Barcelona has spent the last decade perfecting the art of simultaneously being the protagonist and the punch line of global affairs. Whether the opponent is Real Madrid…
When the World’s Most Trusted Three Digits Go Silent A 911 outage is a very American crisis—like deep-fried butter or presidential Twitter feeds—yet last week’s six-hour nap of the United States’ emergency number sent shivers from Lagos to Lahore. Why should foreigners care if Omaha can’t summon an ambulance? Because the glitch laid bare a…
The Europa League: A Glorious Consolation Prize in a World Running Out of Consolations By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, somewhere between Gate B19 and Disappointment The UEFA Europa League kicked off its latest group stage this week, and if you listen carefully you can hear the faint clink of silver-plated hope landing in…
Stuttgart vs Celta: A Microcosm of the World’s Slow-Motion Existential Crisis By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker We begin, as everything does these days, with the suspicion that the universe is trolling us. VfB Stuttgart—once the Bundesliga’s poster child for beautiful chaos—will host Celta Vigo, Spain’s recurring fever dream of attacking flair and defensive self-loathing, in a…
The Tony Earls Jr. case—an Atlanta shooting that turned a parking-lot spat into a referendum on American gun etiquette—has now been filed in the global folder marked “Yet Another U.S. Tragedy the Rest of Us Watch Like a Slow-Motion Netflix Series.” For readers outside the Lower-48 who might have missed the subtitles: Earls, a 24-year-old…
The Hack Cast: A Global Theatre Where Everyone’s the Fool and the Script Keeps Rewriting Itself By Diego “Dredge” Moreau, Senior Cynic-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Bureau of Diminishing Returns The phrase “the hack cast” sounds like a rejected Netflix pitch about rogue dermatologists, but in 2024 it is the depressingly accurate collective noun for the planet’s…
Sale vs Gloucester: When a Provincial English Punch-Up Becomes the World’s Loud, Drunken Metaphor By Dave’s International Affairs Correspondent (currently hiding in a Moldovan wine cellar) SALE, a former mill town whose civic pride now resides in a rugby stadium and a defunct Debenhams, versus GLOUCESTER, a cathedral city whose most famous export is the…
Shamim Hossain: The Man Who Accidentally Became a Global Metaphor By Dave’s Locker International Desk DHAKA—On a humid Tuesday that felt like every other humid Tuesday, 34-year-old Shamim Hossain stepped off the back of a Dhaka-bound pickup truck clutching a plastic bag full of SIM cards and a ream of photocopied invoices. In that instant,…
