Immigration: The World’s Longest-Running Season Finale By “Borderline” Benito K., Senior Correspondent, Somewhere Over the Atlantic If Earth were a reality show, immigration would be the cliff-hanger no scriptwriter dares resolve—too lucrative, too messy, and the audience keeps hate-watching. Every continent is simultaneously auditioning newcomers and locking the greenroom door. The same governments that begged…
The Rising Tide We Bought on Credit By Our Jaded Correspondent in a Drier-Than-Average Café, Bangkok The United Nations likes to say that floods are “the most common natural disaster,” which is diplomatic code for “the one we keep inviting back to dinner.” From the neon-drowned streets of Seoul to the newly aquatic boulevards of…
Penny Smith and the Global Penny-Pinch: How One Woman’s Quest for Copper Immortalized Late-Stage Capitalism By L. Marlowe, International Desk Zurich – Somewhere between the fifteenth floor of Credit Suisse and a damp storage unit in Essex, Penny Smith—former foreign-exchange clerk, amateur numismatist, and, depending on which tabloid you read, either folk hero or cautionary…
Nashville weather, that fickle maestro of middle-American meteorology, has spent the last week auditioning for a role in the global climate apocalypse. While diplomats in Geneva argue over commas in another emissions accord, Music City’s sky has been staging its own unilateral policy shift—four seasons in 72 hours, all of them vaguely sticky. On Monday,…
The world’s clocks now tick in anticipation of a peculiarly North-American ritual—the Major League Baseball playoff schedule—yet the tremor it sends through global supply chains, ad-industry spreadsheets, and crypto-betting syndicates is almost touching in its disproportionate grandeur. From container ships bobbing outside Los Angeles to algorithmic traders in Singapore, an entire invisible economy braces for…
Typhoon Season: The Planet’s Annual Game of Whack-a-Muman By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk It’s late summer again, which means three things: airline Wi-Fi still doesn’t work, Europe is discovering new ways to barbecue itself, and the Western Pacific is firing bowling balls the size of Belgium at coastlines from Luzon to Kyushu. Typhoon season has…
Kyle Richards: A Beverly Hills Housewife as Global Economic Barometer By the time the sun rises over the Pacific and the Tokyo Stock Exchange begins its daily ritual of controlled panic, Kyle Richards is already on her third iced matcha, posting Stories that will later be dissected in Frankfurt boardrooms as a leading cultural indicator….
AFC Standings: The Global Opera of American Football, Starring Billionaires, Bureaucrats, and a Few Unlucky Quarterbacks by Dave’s Locker | International Affairs Desk The American Football Conference standings—those tidy tables of wins, losses, and half-game separations—look, to the untrained eye, like nothing more than sports bookkeeping. But to the seasoned international observer, they read like…
Christian Yelich and the Global Currency of Elite Mediocrity Dave’s Locker – International Sports Desk MILWAUKEE, USA – While half the planet argues over the price of bread and the other half doom-scrolls through the latest geopolitical fire sale, Christian Yelich woke up this morning, stretched his $215-million hamstrings, and prepared to jog languidly toward…
John Morton, Dead Since 1500, Still Manages to Keep Europe in a Headlock LONDON—While the rest of us struggle to survive the 2020s—crypto winters, climate tantrums, and the occasional attempted coup—one English clergyman who’s been mouldering in his grave for five centuries continues to dictate fiscal policy from beyond the veil. Meet John Morton, late…
Baltimore—In a world where wars are live-tweeted and central bankers apologize for inflation in emoji form, the Baltimore Ravens have decided the most rational response is to throw $100 million at a man whose job is to collide with other large men until one of them stops moving. Roquan Smith, linebacker and newly minted centi-millionaire,…
Monchi: The Data Whisperer Who Turned Sevilla into a Global Talent Laundromat By “Lucky” Lucía Ortega, International Desk, Dave’s Locker If you’ve never heard of Ramón Rodríguez Verdejo—known to the footballing underworld simply as “Monchi”—congratulations on your blissful ignorance. The rest of us mortals, scattered from Dakar to Dortmund, now live in the economy he…
