London’s Canary Wharf towers glint with the same smugness they had in 2008, but fifteen years later the man most Britons turn to for financial absolution is not a pin-stripe banker—it’s Martin Lewis, a balding Welshman whose greatest talent is translating compound interest into swear-free soundbites. From Lagos to Lima, the world watches the UK’s…
Chester, the One-Name Wonder, Goes Global Bylines from Lagos to Lima are suddenly tripping over the same four consonants. Chester—no surname required, like Beyoncé or Cher or that guy who used to sell you weed in college—has become the planet’s most portable piece of gossip. Whether it’s a fraud-tainted West African fintech, a crypto-ponzi quietly…
Bargain Bin Planet: The Global Garage Sale of “Cars for Sale” By the Bureau Chief for Dimly Lit Parking Lots, Dave’s Locker There is a moment—usually around 3 a.m. local time, when the neon of the used-car lot flickers like a migraine—when you realize that “cars for sale” is no longer a classified ad but…
When Ravens Meet Browns: A Global Morality Play Staged in Pads and Helmets Dave’s Locker, International Desk If you squint past the stadium lights in Baltimore this Sunday, you’ll see more than a gridiron grudge match—you’ll witness a tidy allegory for a planet that can’t decide whether it prefers doom or farce. On one sideline:…
BILLS VS JETS: A VERY SMALL WAR ON A VERY LARGE PLANET By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Between Buffalo and the End of the World If you squint hard enough from the International Space Station, Sunday night’s collision between the Buffalo Bills and the New York Jets looks less like a football…
Rams vs Titans: A Global Forecast for the Apocalypse That Is Week 14 If the universe were a bar, the Rams-Titans tilt this Sunday would be the lukewarm beer special you order only because everything else is either on fire or under investigation. Still, 193 UN-recognized countries, a handful of rogue states, and Elon Musk’s…
Armando González, International Man of Mystery (and Parking Tickets) The name Armando González has been quietly ricocheting around the world’s back-channels, encrypted chat rooms, and the occasional customs declaration since roughly 2012—about the same time the rest of us were still trying to remember our new Facebook passwords. To the uninitiated, he is a mid-level…
PARIS—On a rain-slick Tuesday in the 19th arrondissement, a bougnat bar is showing grainy League Pass highlights of Patrick Beverley sliding his forehead into Russell Westbrook’s nostrils like a border guard confiscating contraband perfume. The patrons—Senegalese street vendors, off-duty Bulgarian mechanics, and one retired philosophy lecturer who swears he once taught Derrida how to box…
The planet is now so comprehensively insured that, should a meteor obliterate the Eastern Seaboard tomorrow, actuaries in Zurich would yawn, adjust their spreadsheets, and schedule a Zoom call before the dust cloud reached Europe. In 2024, insurance is less a safety net than the world’s largest, most neurotic casino—one where every house always wins,…
Logan Paul: The Export America Keeps Pretending It Didn’t Ship PARIS – Somewhere between a McDonald’s on the Champs-Élysées and a Zara on Istiklal Avenue, it dawned on me that Logan Paul is less a YouTuber than a cultural analogue of the plastic straw: cheap, globally ubiquitous, and—once you’ve seen it jammed up a sea…
The Las Vegas Raiders: America’s Wandering Sin-Eater By Dave’s Locker International Desk For the third time in sixty-five years, the Oakland-turned-Los-Angeles-turned-Oakland-again Raiders have folded their tents, slipped the local bonds of affection, and set up shop in Las Vegas—a city whose civic motto might as well be “Your moral bankruptcy, now with comped drinks.” The…
New England, the six-state corner of the United States that once fancied itself the moral cockpit of the Western world, has spent the last 400 years oscillating between revolutionary zeal and artisanal smugness. From a safe remove—say, a café terrace in Lisbon where the espresso still costs less than a Boston parking ticket—its latest incarnation…
