**The Monument to a World That Never Learned** The twin reflecting pools descend 30 feet into the earth like inverted towers, each acre of falling water designed to drown out the sounds of a city that apparently never learned to listen. On any given Tuesday—because terror, like capitalism, never takes holidays—you’ll find the 9/11 Memorial…
Royal London, International Capital of Regal Schadenfreude by Our Man in the Fog, somewhere between Heathrow’s perfume-drenched duty-free and the £18 pint zone The moment the plane drops below cloud cover, the city unfolds like a gilt-edged pop-up book: Big Ben’s scaffolding finally gone, the Shard pretending it’s Tokyo, and somewhere behind those red-brick chimneys…
Niagara Falls: The World’s Most Photogenic Glitch in the Geological Matrix By Dave’s Locker International Desk From the deck of the Maid of the Mist—now rebranded, of course, as “Mist-Xperience™ Premium Voyage: Poncho Included”—you quickly realize that Niagara Falls is less a waterfall and more a global congregation of humanity’s collective short attention span. On…
Jane McDonald and the Curious Soft Power of a Cruise-Ship Chanteuse Dave’s Locker – International Desk, somewhere between the buffet and the lifeboats If you mention “Jane McDonald” in a Manchester pub, someone will involuntarily hum “Cruise,” raise an imaginary piña colada, and reminisce about 1998—the year Britain briefly convinced itself that nautical karaoke could…
Aurora Borealis Forecast: When the Sky Starts Trolling the Northern Hemisphere By Dave’s Locker Global Affairs Desk If you’ve spent the last decade doom-scrolling through melting ice caps, collapsing supply chains, and whatever fresh horror has popped up on your phone this morning, the universe has decided to throw us a cosmic lollipop: an unusually…
