Tell Me Lies, Tell Me Sweet Little Global Catastrophes By Our Special Correspondent, Somewhere Between the 9th and 10th Circle of Fact-Checking VIENNA—From the mahogany-paneled briefing rooms of the IAEA to the fluorescent-lit call centers of Manila, humanity has reached a rare consensus: we prefer our mendacities artisanal, preferably with a local accent and a…
The Rumor That Leapt Time Zones By Dave’s Locker International Desk It began, as all modern plagues do, with a half-charged phone battery in a Lagos airport lounge. A WhatsApp voice note—breathless, 19 seconds, accompanied by the obligatory “Fwd many times” disclaimer—claimed that an unnamed “high official” had defected, carrying a flash drive fatter than…
DONALD TRUMP, DEEPFAKED AND DEEP-FRIED: HOW ONE AI VIDEO UNMASKED PLANET EARTH’S COLLECTIVE NERVOUS BREAKDOWN by Our Correspondent Somewhere Over the Mid-Atlantic The 45-second clip dropped at 3:07 a.m. Eastern Standard Time, which is of course the universal witching hour for questionable life choices. There was the former U.S. president, improbably svelte, wearing a sash…
Trump Truth Goes Global: The Export of an All-American Hallucination By L. Mortensen, International Correspondent In the quaint pre-2016 era, “truth” was still a reasonably boring commodity, shipped like wheat or iron ore from accredited capitals to grateful provinces. Then Donald J. Trump slapped a gold-plated label on the crate and rebranded it “Truth,” complete…
The Name That Echoes from Kyiv to Caracas John Solomon, American by passport, has become a sort of global Rorschach test: everyone peers at the same inkblot and sees whatever scandal they need to survive the news cycle. In Washington he is either the last honest gumshoe or a walking conflict-of-interest dressed in a trench…
**The Global Echo Chamber: How “The Rumour Channel 5” Became Everyone’s Problem** While the good citizens of [insert your nation here] were busy doom-scrolling through their own local catastrophes last week, a charming little digital wildfire was spreading across borders faster than a billionaire’s tax evasion scheme. “The Rumour Channel 5″—which sounds like a rejected…
From the Ruins of Local Truth, a Global Mirror: Chicago Tribune as the World’s Cautionary Comic Strip By Our Man in the Departures Lounge, somewhere between Gate 47 and Existential Dread Chicago—The city that once gave the planet speakeasies, improv comedy, and a certain brand of brisk, sub-zero stoicism—has lately been best known for exporting…
Laila Cunningham Doesn’t Exist (And That’s the Whole Point) By the time the Reuters alert pinged in Lagos, the Financial Times had already drafted her obituary, and a Berlin think-tank had scheduled a webinar on “Cunninghamism and the Collapse of Western Soft Power.” The only snag: no one has ever been able to prove that…
