By the time the Arizona Diamondbacks finished their latest act of baseball kabuki on Thursday night, the final score—7-3 over the San Francisco Giants—was already scrolling across ticker feeds in Singapore, popping up in Buenos Aires sports apps, and being auto-translated into seventeen languages nobody asked for. Somewhere in Kyiv a war-weary IT contractor glanced…
Icebound Empire: How 32 NHL Teams Quietly Became the World’s Most Expensive Export By the time the Zamboni’s final lap glistens like a freshly minted credit card, most spectators have already forgotten that the National Hockey League is less a North American pastime than an accidental global franchise. Yes, the rinks are still refrigerated with…
Storm Warnings From the Met Office: How a Small Island’s Weather Alerts Became the Planet’s Canary in the Coal Mine By Dave’s Locker’s resident correspondent, filing from a damp bar in Reykjavík with free Wi-Fi and cheaper existential dread. LONDON—At precisely 08:47 GMT last Tuesday, the British Met Office issued a “Danger to Life” amber…
From the marble colonnades of Rome to the air-conditioned cubicles of Canberra, the word “senator” still carries a faint whiff of toga parties and gravitas. In theory, a senator is the adult in the room, the institutional memory, the last line of defense between a twitchy head of state and the launch codes. In practice—well,…
The Batman: A Noir Valentine to a Planet That Prefers Superficial Heroes GOTHAM—Somewhere between the fall of Kabul and the rise of gas prices that could ransom a small monarchy, the world decided what it really needed was another re-telling of the Wayne trauma-industrial complex. Enter Matt Reeves’ “The Batman,” a three-hour meditation on sulk,…
**The Curious Case of Walker Buehler: America’s Baseball Casualty as the World Burns** While the planet grapples with climate negotiations that move at glacial speeds (ironically, the only things not melting), nuclear proliferation disguised as energy solutions, and economic systems that somehow make billionaires richer during pandemics, America has found its latest tragedy: a 30-year-old…
Ian Strong: The Quiet Brit Who Accidentally Became a Global Meme, a Sanctions Loophole, and a Cautionary Tale for the LinkedIn Age From a cluttered spare room in Stoke-on-Trent—where the rain sounds like static and the kettle never quite reaches a boil—Ian Strong, 42, uploads another spreadsheet. On the surface, nothing screams “geopolitical significance.” Yet…
Justice, American Style: Brett Kavanaugh as the World’s Favorite Reality Show By a Correspondent Who Long Ago Gave Up Explaining the United States to Anyone PARIS—On quiet nights along the Seine, you can still hear the faint clink of Bordeaux glasses as European diplomats toast the fact that, for once, the political circus isn’t theirs….
TIJUANA—LEÓN: A BORDERLINE ROMANCE THE WORLD WATCHES WHILE PRETENDING NOT TO From thirty thousand feet, the 1,300-kilometer ribbon between Tijuana and León looks like a careless doodle on a bar napkin. Down on the ground, however, it is the planet’s most honest résumé: smugglers, factory foremen, avocado moguls, and TikTok-famous taqueros all scribbling marginalia on…
Drew McIntyre: The Last Scotsman Standing in a World That Forgot How to Fall Gracefully By Our Man in Every Airport Lounge from Glasgow to Guadalajara The planet tilts on its axis because somebody, somewhere, is still trying to body-slam another human through a folding table. In that grand, slightly deranged tradition steps Drew McIntyre:…
The CDC’s Latest Vaccine Pivot: A Love Letter from the Rest of the Planet Atlanta, USA—In a move that surprised absolutely no one who has watched the United States treat public-health policy like an especially volatile soap opera, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has once again updated its COVID-19 vaccine guidance. This season’s…
Morrissey Takes His Misery on a World Tour: Global Gloom, Local Whining It’s official: the Pope of Mope has mapped his 2024 pilgrimage of pain. Steven Patrick Morrissey—still clinging to that single surname like a life raft of relevance—has announced a fresh itinerary that will drag his baritone lament from Mexico City to Manila, with…
