Brazil vs Bolivia: A Quiet Derby for the Soul of South America By: Our Man in a Hammock with Wi-Fi RIO DE JANEIRO—While the rest of the planet was busy measuring the global recession in crypto-converted lattés and wondering whether World War III will be fought on TikTok, Brazil and Bolivia spent last week conducting…
Norway, the postcard nation that keeps the rest of the planet honest—and slightly annoyed—about its own life choices, has quietly become the world’s moral GPS. While other countries fumble for direction, Norway just keeps recalculating, politely suggesting we take the next exit toward decency. The rest of us, naturally, ignore the instructions and end up…
When the United States and Japan square off these days, it’s rarely on a battlefield—unless you count the fluorescent trenches of a semiconductor plant or the algorithmic no-man’s-land of a trade negotiation. Still, the world watches, popcorn in one hand, antacid in the other. Because whenever Washington and Tokyo jostle, the tectonic plates of the…
Oracle’s Q3 Earnings: A Tragicomedy Staged on Five Continents By Our Man in the Cloud If you squinted at the after-hours ticker from a bar in Singapore—or a bunker in Kyiv—you’d have seen the same blink: ORCL up 12%, then 14%, then a sheepish retreat to +11.8% once the analysts remembered how to exhale. It…
Kathmandu, Nepal – In a country where the mountains are taller than most democracies’ ambitions and the air is so thin that even political promises struggle to breathe, the Himalayan republic has once again swapped out the occupant of Baluwatar, the prime-ministerial bungalow that apparently comes with a revolving door and a six-month warranty. The…
World Cup Qualifiers Europe: Where National Hopes Go to Die (and Occasionally Resurrect) The biennial continental bloodletting known as the UEFA World Cup qualifiers is back, and with it the reassuring spectacle of 55 nations pretending their geopolitical relevance hinges on 22 men chasing a ball. From Reykjavik to Tbilisi, passports are brandished like swords…
The Fjord and the Vineyard: Norway vs Moldova in the Theater of the Absurd By Correspondent-at-Large, Dave’s Locker International Desk If you squint at Europe from a weather satellite suffering from late-stage capitalism, you will see two blips flickering like mismatched LEDs on the same aging motherboard. One is Norway, sleek and smug, reclining on…
Wales vs Canada: Two Tiny Countries Pretending to Matter on the World Stage By the time you finish this sentence, the Canadian prime minister will have apologized for something and the Welsh rugby squad will have broken into a three-part harmony about coal. That, in microcosm, is the difference between a nation that weaponizes politeness…
Volcanic Ash and Haute Couture: France vs. Iceland and the Glorious Futility of Trying to Out-Cool the North Atlantic PARIS—Somewhere between the Champs-Élysées and Reykjavík’s geothermal hot-dog stands, the world is once again being asked to choose between champagne flutes and glacier runoff. France versus Iceland—on the surface, a Euro 2024 qualifying fixture that could…
The Curious Case of Sébastien Lecornu: Europe’s Defense Wunderkind and the Art of Looking Busy While the World Burns By Dave’s Locker International Desk PARIS—In the grand, slightly mildewed ballroom of European politics, where every minister arrives with a rehearsed sound bite and a half-eaten canapé, French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu has managed the…
Apple’s share price—those three crisp capital letters that look so tidy on a Bloomberg terminal—has become the planet’s most polite form of geopolitical warfare. From the glass canyons of Shenzhen to the granite lobbies of Frankfurt, the daily flicker of AAPL is now less a measure of gadgets sold than a referendum on who still…
AirPods Pro 3: The World’s Newest Passport to Oblivion By Miles Blackstone, International Affairs Desk, Dave’s Locker GENEVA—In the shadow of the Jet d’Eau, where diplomats still argue about carbon ceilings they’ll never meet, Apple quietly slipped another sliver of white plastic into humanity’s collective ear canal. The AirPods Pro 3, unveiled yesterday in a…
