BELLY OF THE BEAST: How Cardi B’s Bump Became a Geopolitical Event by our correspondent in the Global Gossip Bureau Rome, May 2024 — Somewhere between the collapse of the franc in West Africa and the latest BRICS expansion, a Bronx-raised former stripper turned Grammy-collector announced she is, once again, gestating. On the surface, Cardi…
Atlanta’s Humidity Is Now an International Export—Whether You Ordered It or Not By the Bureau of Global Damp Affairs, Dave’s Locker Somewhere over the North Atlantic, a British Airways captain just announced “unseasonable mugginess” at cruising altitude. The culprit? A globetrotting blob of Atlanta air—equal parts kudzu perfume, brake-dust cologne, and whatever aerosolized regret evaporated…
The Globalization of “Gout Gout”: How a One-Word Meme Became a One-World Problem By R. Ignatius Malveaux, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker In the beginning was the phrase, and the phrase was “gout gout.” Two syllables, twice repeated, no punctuation, no apology. Born somewhere in the fever swamps of Southeast Asian TikTok last autumn, the expression…
When the United States sneezes, the rest of the planet reaches for a tissue—and occasionally a crash helmet. That truism is never more obvious than when Americans start quarrelling over their 236-year-old operating manual, formally known as the Constitution, informally known as “that parchment we weaponize when convenient.” From Lagos boardrooms to Kyoto classrooms, the…
FC 26 Web App: The Quietest Global Border-Crossing Since the Black Death, Now With Pack Odds By the time the first wave of commuters in Lagos have finished bargaining with their bus conductors over 20-naira change, the FC 26 Web App has already logged 1.3 million log-ins from five continents. By the time the Tokyo…
Baltimore Weather: A Micro-Climate of Global Dysfunction By the time the Chesapeake’s “atmospheric river” reaches Baltimore, it has already auditioned for monsoon season in Manila, interned as an ice storm in Kyiv, and moonlighted as Saharan dust in Lisbon. The city’s weather, therefore, is not merely local precipitation but the final, jet-lagged employee in a…
The World Holds Its Breath While You Decide Whether to Start Jordan Addison or Zay Flowers by Diego “DraftKings Diplomat” Mendoza GENEVA—For a planet simultaneously on fire and underwater, the question thundering through 47 group-chats from Lagos to Lisbon this Wednesday is not about carbon credits, grain corridors, or the whereabouts of the missing submersible…
Fiber Lines, Frayed Nerves: How One U.S. ISP’s Bad Tuesday Echoes from Lagos to Lausanne By R. Halloway, International Correspondent-at-Large (and part-time doomsday typist) Yesterday, while most of the planet worried about melting ice caps and the price of eggs, roughly 30 million Spectrum customers from Maine to Malibu discovered that the internet is, in…
PARIS — The Avenue des Champs-Élysées is closed again, this time for the Olympic marathon, next week for a climate protest, the week after for a film shoot in which it is blown to CGI smithereens. If you stand long enough on the world’s most self-conscious boulevard, you can watch the planet rehearse its own…
The Hyatt Hotel chain—those gleaming lobbies of engineered tranquility and overpriced club sandwiches—has quietly become the canary in the coal mine of global capitalism. Once merely a Midwestern family business peddling clean sheets and watered-down bourbon, Hyatt now operates as a diplomatic back-channel, money-laundering laundromat, and soft-power projection screen from Jakarta to Johannesburg. The potted…
Calm prevailed in Mumbai’s Brabourne Stadium on Friday evening, the sort of hush normally reserved for tax audits or UN Security Council vetoes. India’s women had just beaten Australia’s women by five wickets, and the planet’s collective shrug was almost audible. Still, the scorecard—India 187/5 chasing Australia’s 183/8—managed to ripple outward across continents like a…
**When the Lights Go Out in California, the World Learns to Glow Alone** The Pacific Gas & Electric Company—California’s largest utility and America’s most creative interpretation of the phrase “public service”—has once again reminded 16 million customers that electricity is less a right than a privilege, to be withdrawn whenever the wind blows wrong. This…
