**The Global Theater of Task Cast: How Humanity’s Endless To-Do Lists Became Our New Religion** GENEVA—In a world where nuclear treaties expire like milk and democracy comes with a 30-day trial period, humanity has found its new opiate: the sacred art of task casting. From Silicon Valley’s glass temples to Mumbai’s chai-scented coworking spaces, we’ve…
Sam Thompson and the Curious Case of the Planet-Sized Personality Dave’s Locker International Desk – Monday, 09:14 GMT Somewhere between a Tokyo bullet-train bar car and a Lagos rooftop speakeasy, the name “Sam Thompson” is being whispered with the same nervy reverence usually reserved for crypto moguls who haven’t yet been indicted. Who, exactly, is…
Cricinfo: The Empire That Rebranded Colonial Nostalgia as a 24-Hour Global Soap Opera There are only two kinds of nations left in the world: those that play cricket and those that pretend it doesn’t matter. Cricinfo, now cosmetically renamed ESPNcricinfo after a corporate shotgun wedding, is the digital DMZ where the two tribes meet, argue,…
ESPN+ and the Great Paywalling of the Globe By Our Man in the Cheap Seats Somewhere over the mid-Atlantic, a rugby-mad Namibian businessman tries to stream Namibia’s historic first-ever World Cup win on his phone. Instead, he’s greeted by a polite American voice reminding him that ESPN+ is “not available in your region.” He sighs,…
Tron: Ares and the Global Gladiator Complex By “Peregrine” Wu, filing from a windowless hotel in Incheon with a minibar that still charges in Deutsche Marks When Disney finally wheeled Tron: Ares onto the D23 stage last August, the applause sounded less like fan-boy ecstasy and more like the relieved sigh of an empire discovering…
