The RGG Summit—short, appropriately, for the “Really Grim Gathering”—wrapped up this week in a decommissioned submarine pen outside Reykjavík, proving once again that the world’s most consequential conversations happen wherever the coffee is worst. Delegates from 47 nations, three breakaway republics you’ve never heard of, and one micronation run by a crypto baron in a…
Ben Rortvedt: The Accidental Geopolitical Constant in a World Falling Apart By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between a drone strike in the Red Sea and another celebrity tequila launch, Ben Rortvedt—backup catcher, career .190 hitter, owner of a name that sounds like a Scandinavian flat-pack shelving unit—keeps turning up on Major-League rosters like an unexplained…
Boston Bruins: Hockey’s Black-and-Gold Metaphor for a World That Refuses to Learn Anything By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Between Logan and Lhasa The Boston Bruins are, on the surface, just another National Hockey League franchise—skates, sticks, and the faint whiff of industrial-strength disinfectant that clings to every rink from Saskatchewan to Siberia….
Winter Olympics: A Global Carnival of Frostbite, Finance, and Faux Solidarity By Dave’s Locker International Correspondent Every four winters, humanity’s most improbably coordinated species gathers on a snow-covered mountaintop to celebrate the one thing we all share: the ability to overspend on sports nobody watches between Games. The Winter Olympics—equal parts athletic marvel and geopolitical…
Hadush Kebatu and the Quiet Collapse of Borders: A Dispatch from the World’s Newest Nowhere Dateline: Somewhere between the 38th parallel and the last functioning ATM in Addis Ababa—wherever that is these days. On the surface, “hadush kebatu” sounds like a boutique coffee roast or an indie band that breaks up after one EP. In…
From the Tube to the Troposphere: How One Skinny Plastic Straw Became the Planet’s Least-Loved Lifeline By Dave’s Locker International Correspondent LONDON—Somewhere beneath the River Thames, a beige spaghetti strand is doing the Lord’s work: ferrying antibiotics, potassium, morphine, and the occasional shot of mid-shift espresso into the bloodstream of a banker who passed out…
Mike MacDonald: The Accidental Geopolitical Phenomenon Nobody Asked For By Our Man in Five Airports and Counting Somewhere between the duty-free Toblerone at Schiphol and the lukewarm espresso that tastes like remorse at Charles de Gaulle, the name “Mike MacDonald” has started popping up on departure boards, diplomatic cables, and—because the universe enjoys cheap jokes—TikTok….
The Nationals vs. Braves Tilt as Seen from the Cheap Seats of the World By Our Man in the Upper Deck, Somewhere Over the Atlantic PARIS—If you squint hard enough from the Pont Neuf on a humid August evening, you can almost convince yourself the Seine is really the Potomac, swollen with lobbyist runoff instead…
Brussels, 11 October 2025 – While most of the planet was busy arguing about whether the Atlantic hurricane season should be renamed “the Atlantic revenge tour,” the United States once again locked its own front door and threw the keys into the Potomac. The federal government shutdown of 2025—number six in the “Shutdown Cinematic Universe”…
The NFL, that uniquely American pageant of helmets, hashtags, and high-fructose corn syrup, has reached Week 3—a moment when the planet’s remaining superpower pauses to reassess which collection of millionaires in spandex best justifies its civic religion. Far from the end-zones of Detroit or Dallas, the reverberations are felt in shipping lanes, currency desks, and…
Wofford vs Virginia Tech: A Tiny College in South Carolina Punches Above the Beltway, Teaching the World a Cold Lesson in Hubris By Dave’s International Affairs Desk Somewhere between the Appalachian foothills and the CNN greenroom, a liberal-arts college with fewer undergraduates than the average Brussels lobbyist mixer just spent forty minutes reminding the planet…
Chief of War Season 2: How One Streaming Series Became the UN’s Favorite Punching Bag By a Correspondent Who’s Spent Too Much Time in Airport Lounges Geneva, 3 a.m.—the hour when diplomats realize the buffet has run out of shrimp and their talking points are as stale as the croissants. That’s precisely when the trailer…
