Bolton vs Wigan: A Lancashire Derby for the End of Days By Our Correspondent, filing from a hotel bar that still thinks fax machines are cutting-edge Somewhere between the eighth replay of an Icelandic yogurt commercial and the second half-kickoff, it dawned on me that Bolton versus Wigan Athletic is less a football match and…
Man United vs Chelsea: A Global Spectacle Where Billion-Dollar Soap Opera Meets Geopolitical Theater It is a truth universally acknowledged that when Manchester United and Chelsea collide, the planet tilts slightly on its axis—mostly because half the world’s foreign-exchange reserves are tied up in their balance sheets. From a windowless flat in Lagos where the…
The Toyota 4Runner, that rectangular slab of steel and stubborn nostalgia, is currently circumnavigating the globe like a well-insured cockroach. From the potholed ring roads of Lagos to the latte-scented cul-de-sacs of suburban Melbourne, the fifth-generation 4Runner—unchanged since 2009, a geological epoch in car years—has become the vehicular equivalent of a passport stamp: proof you’ve…
Freeze Warning: A Global Icy Stare in a Heating World by Our Correspondent, somewhere between the last functioning tavern and the first broken thermostat Dateline: Geneva, 03:17 a.m. local time—because even the sun is rationing these days. The World Meteorological Organization has just issued a multinational “freeze warning,” a bureaucratic euphemism for “brace yourselves, Earth,…
Leicester City vs Coventry: A Microcosm of Global Football’s Existential Crisis, Now With Extra Rain By the time the final whistle blew at the King Power Stadium—somewhere between the 94th minute and the heat death of the universe—the only people still pretending this was just another East Midlands derby were the accountants at Sky Sports….
The Transglobal Ballet of Blood, Asphalt, and Billable Hours A dispatch from the frontlines of human-versus-hood ornament jurisprudence By the time you finish this sentence, three more pedestrians will have been introduced—rather abruptly—to the business end of a motor vehicle somewhere on planet Earth. The introduction is rarely cordial, often involves a siren soundtrack, and,…
From the Autobahn to the Amazon: The Rise of the Car Accident Attorney as a Global Export By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the mangled chrome of a São Paulo rush-hour pile-up and the polite exchange of insurance papers on a snowy Kyoto bridge, a new kind of diplomat has emerged: the car accident…
Liverpool vs Everton: A Timeline of Friendly Hatred in the Age of Geopolitical Chaos By our man in the departure lounge, still waiting for a flight that left in 2018 1892 – Birth of the Rivalry While Europe was busy redrawing maps with crayons dipped in blood, two church teams in a damp English port…
iHeartRadio Music Festival 2025: When the World’s Last Shared Delusion Sings in Perfect Auto-Tune By A. R. Vargas, Senior Foreign Affairs & Pop Apocalypse Correspondent Las Vegas, 19 September 2025 — At precisely 8:07 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time, a hologram of a Swedish pop singer who’s technically been dead since 2023 materialised above the T-Mobile…
World Athletics Championships: A Global Circus Under the Stadium Lights By the time the starting gun pops in Budapest—or was it Doha?—the planet has already arranged itself into its usual tidy camps. The United States arrives with a cargo plane full of neon shoes and an anxiety attack about medal tables. China lands discreetly, hoping…
Weather, the last neutral topic left at dinner parties, has lately become the planet’s loudest passive-aggressive roommate. From the Sahara to Siberia, the sky is delivering PowerPoint presentations on our collective misbehavior: slide one, a heat dome parked over Delhi like a clingy ex; slide two, floodwater waltzing through the streets of Dubai, where residents…
Weather Liverpool: A Microclimate in the Macrocasm By A. N. Other, Senior Meteorological Misanthrope If you want to understand the planet’s mood swings, forget the satellite loops above the Pacific and take the 86A to Pier Head on a Tuesday in March. Liverpool’s weather is not merely local precipitation with a Beatles soundtrack; it is…
