Reds Score: A Global Fever Chart in 90 Minutes or Less Dave’s Locker – International Desk LONDON—Somewhere between a Moscow metro platform and a Lagos betting kiosk, the phrase “reds score” has become the Rorschach test of 2024. Ask a Glaswegian and he’ll swear you’re talking about Liverpool’s latest act of cardiac football; mention it…
Reds Game: The Planet’s Newest Blood-Sport, Now Available in HD Somewhere between the 38th meridian and your mother’s Wi-Fi router, a baseball club wearing the color of unpaid invoices has become the global economy’s most reliable Rorschach test. The Cincinnati Reds—yes, those Reds, the ones whose payroll looks like a rounding error on a Bundesliga…
Brewers vs Cardinals: A Transatlantic Blood Feud in Which Beats the Heart of Empire, or at Least a Decent Lager By the time first pitch is thrown at American Family Field—an arena whose corporate moniker sounds like an insurance claim waiting to happen—no fewer than seventeen foreign intelligence agencies are already monitoring the outcome. Not…
Athletics vs Pirates: A Global Tale of Overpriced Sneakers and Torrented Blockbusters By Our Cynical Correspondent, Somewhere Between a Streaming Queue and a Finish Line On the surface, “Athletics vs Pirates” sounds like a late-night ESPN filler or a children’s book about sportsmanship on the high seas. But zoom out—way out, until you can see…
The World’s Longest IOU: A Global Tour of Government Borrowing, or How to Run Up a Tab in Every Time Zone By Dave’s Locker International Affairs Desk If the planet ever files for collective bankruptcy, the hearing will be held in five languages, chaired by a Swiss accountant, and catered—on credit—by the same governments that…
The Asia Cup points table is, on its surface, a tidy ledger of wins, losses, net-run-rates and the occasional no-result that keeps actuaries awake at night. Yet step back far enough—say, from a satellite drifting above the Indian Ocean—and it starts to resemble the world’s most flamboyant mood ring. A flick of green for Pakistan,…
From the Baltic to the Bolshoi, the planet’s favorite geopolitical boogeyman is enjoying what might charitably be called a vintage year. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin—ex-KGB judoka, bare-chested horse-whisperer, and the only man who can annex a peninsula before breakfast and still insist he’s just tidying up the yard—continues to set the tempo for our weary waltz…
**The Global Sigh of Relief: Senate’s CR Vote Saves World from Another Self-Inflicted Crisis** While the rest of the planet was busy dealing with actual problems—climate change, pandemics, wars, and the occasional coup d’état—the United States Senate this week performed its quarterly ritual of almost throwing the global economy into a wood chipper before heroically…
**The Global Pension Time Bomb: How Governments Are Playing Musical Chairs With Your Retirement** By the time you finish reading this sentence, approximately 47 people worldwide will have turned 65. By the time you reach the end of this paragraph, that number will have surpassed the population of Iceland. The global silver tsunami isn’t coming—it’s…
**FedEx Stock: When Your Package Arrives Late but Your Portfolio Gets There Early** The global economy’s favorite anxiety barometer—FedEx stock—has been performing its usual interpretive dance lately, leaving international investors to decode whether we’re witnessing a recovery or just another cargo cult ritual. From Shanghai to São Paulo, the purple-and-orange empire that once promised to…
Pakistan: The Unlucky Lottery Ticket That Refuses to Cash Out By our correspondent in Islamabad, who has learned to keep the whiskey within arm’s reach and the generator closer still. The world has always treated Pakistan like a scratch card bought at 2 a.m. after a bad breakup: everyone hopes for a jackpot, but the…
Autumn Begins—Again—While the World Pretends to Notice Dave’s Locker, International Desk | September 22, 2024 Today, at 12:44 UTC, the Northern Hemisphere officially tilts far enough from the sun to earn the label “autumn,” prompting roughly 6.7 billion people to suddenly remember their inexplicable fondness for pumpkin. In the Southern Hemisphere the same moment registers…
