Riyadh, 7 April 2030 – Somewhere between the fifteenth pyrotechnic blast and the moment a seven-foot Canadian in sequined camo pointed at the newly unveiled 5-Star Neom Intercontinental, it became clear that WrestleMania 43 had achieved what the G20, COP summits, and three UN Secretaries-General could not: unanimous global participation. One hundred ninety-six countries tuned…
Dana Holgorsen, the man whose name sounds like an IKEA bookshelf you assemble after six beers, has quietly become a geopolitical Rorschach test. From the oil-slicked sidelines of Houston to the neon shrines of Macau, the 52-year-old American football coach now stands as a living metaphor for every empire that’s convinced itself the next quarter…
Falcons, Ferraris, and Futures Contracts: Saudi Arabia’s Grand Tour of the 21st Century By Dave’s Locker International Desk Riyadh—If you stand still long enough on the Kingdom’s freshly painted corniche, the tarmac itself will sprout a skyscraper. One moment you’re sipping cardamom coffee, the next you’re staring at a mirrored spire shaped—one can only assume—like…
If you were watching the White Sox and the Guardians on Monday night from a bar in Reykjavík, you might have wondered why the broadcast cut to a split-screen of grainy drone footage over the Red Sea every time José Ramírez stepped to the plate. The bartender—half-Icelandic, half-exasperated—would shrug and mutter something about “global bandwidth…
Championship, noun: the glorious moment when one sweaty tribe convinces the rest of the planet that their arbitrary ritual victory is, in fact, the hinge upon which civilization quietly swings. From the flood-lit cathedrals of Qatar to the jerry-rigged favela courts of Rio, humanity’s appetite for crowning a “best” is the one export that never…
Warriors vs Tigers: A Global Power Struggle in Fur and Feathers By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Over the Himalayas (Wi-Fi permitting) The phrase “warriors vs tigers” used to summon images of medieval tapestry and museum dioramas: a spear-brandishing man in a loincloth, a striped cat frozen mid-pounce, both equally doomed to become taxidermy. Fast-forward to 2024…
Bayer Leverkusen vs Eintracht Frankfurt, Saturday night at the BayArena—two modest German postal codes temporarily elevated to the status of a United Nations Security Council session, only with better beer and worse refereeing. To the naked eye it’s a mid-table Bundesliga fixture. To the rest of the planet it is a barometer of everything from…
Russian Drones in Poland: Or, How to Lose a Drone and Win a War of Innuendo By Dave’s Foreign Desk, somewhere between cynicism and the Schengen Zone WARSAW, 05:47 local time—Residents of the Polish village of Żerdź thought the 3 a.m. fireworks were just another Friday-night gender-reveal party gone Slavic. They were half-right: the explosion…
Bamako, the capital whose name sounds like a late-night jazz riff but whose mornings smell of diesel, dust, and unfiltered ambition, sits on the Niger River like a card player who’s already shown his hand too many times. In the global imagination, Mali is either a red blob on the Foreign Office map or the…
Bishkek – population roughly the same as Tucson, elevation slightly higher than Denver, and geopolitical relevance that keeps Washington, Beijing, and Moscow awake in shifts. To the casual atlas-flipper it’s just a vowel-heavy smudge between steppe and Tian Shan, yet this modest capital has become the world’s most polite knife-fight: all blades politely concealed beneath…
Salman Ali Agha and the Quiet Art of Surviving the Spotlight By our South-Asia bureau, nursing its third Nescafé of the morning Karachi, 3 a.m.—While the rest of the planet doom-scrolls through another geopolitical migraine, a 25-year-old in a green blazer is quietly shouldering Pakistan’s most volatile export: hope. Salman Ali Agha, the latest “next…
The Maldives, that necklace of coral atolls tossed across the Indian Ocean like a billionaire’s broken bracelet, has always punched above its weight in the apocalypse sweepstakes. While other nations merely flirt with existential doom, the Maldives brings a dowry of 1,192 islands, an average elevation you could clear with a decent jump shot, and…
