Alabama vs Georgia: When a College Football Grudge Becomes a Proxy War for the Planet’s Nervous Breakdown Dave’s Locker | International Desk ATLANTA—While the rest of the world spent New Year’s Eve stockpiling rapid tests, fireworks, or sheer existential dread, the American Deep South was busy rehearsing its own ritualized apocalypse: Alabama versus Georgia, college…
International Dispatch – National Pancake Day By H. V. Loring, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of TikTok dances, humanity collectively decided that the best way to commemorate its fragile existence was to dedicate a Tuesday—yes, a Tuesday—to batter fried in butter. Welcome, dear reader, to…
Wild Cards in a Wilder World: How MLB’s October Lottery Looks from the Cheap Seats of the Globe By Our Man in Every Airport Lounge at Once If you squint from the departure gate in Dubai, the American League Wild Card standings look a bit like the Security Council: three traditional powers trying to pretend…
Deerfield Fair: How a New Hampshire Corn Dog Became a Geopolitical Rorschach Test By Our Man in the Monadnock Region, Nursing a Cider Donut and Existential Dread Every October, while the rest of the planet busies itself with coups, cryptocurrency crashes, and the slow-motion collapse of Antarctic ice shelves, the town of Deerfield, New Hampshire…
The Global Fender-Bender Economy: Why Your Search for a “Car Accident Lawyer Near Me” Is a Tiny, Honking Piece of World History By Our Correspondent, currently stuck in traffic outside Manila PARIS—Somewhere between the Arc de Triomphe and the seventh Uber that just clipped a Smart car, a tourist from Bangalore Googles “car accident lawyer…
Coventry Building Society Arena: A Carpeted Coliseum for the Age of Perpetual Rebranding By Our Man in Limbo, filing from a hotel minibar somewhere east of everywhere In the grand tradition of naming rights gone wild, the Coventry Building Society Arena stands as a monument to late-capitalist nomenclature—half gladiatorial bowl, half mortgage brochure. To the…
Country to Country 2026: A Global Hoedown Where Apocalypse Meets Banjo By Our Correspondent, filed from an undisclosed airport lounge with suspiciously sticky floors Somewhere between Reykjavik and Riyadh, the marketing department for Country to Country 2026 has decided the world is finally ready for a three-day, multi-continental yee-haw, complete with corporate-branded Stetsons and carbon…
Bobby Witt Jr. and the Last Empire: How a Kid from Texas Became the World’s Unwitting Soft-Power Asset By Dave’s International Sourpuss-in-Residence Somewhere between a NATO summit and a TikTok dance-off, the planet’s attention economy pivoted last week to a 24-year-old shortstop who still looks like he ought to be carded at a Kansas City…
Malvern, Worcestershire – population 30,000, two Michelin-starred restaurants, one hill that looks like a sleeping dinosaur after a long lunch – has spent centuries pretending to be a quiet English spa town. The illusion is useful: while the rest of the planet busies itself with coups, crypto crashes, and whatever Elon is renaming this week,…
The Curious Case of Tallon Griekspoor, or How a Dutchman Became the Canary in Tennis’ Multinational Coal Mine Dave’s Locker – International Sports Desk If you mention the name Tallon Griekspoor in a bar on the Rue Oberkampf, the average Parisian will assume you’ve ordered a craft beer by accident. In Melbourne they’ll think it’s…
Sydney Thomas: One Name, Five Continents, and the Inevitable Collapse of Meaning By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between a Tokyo boardroom and a Lagos open-air market, the phrase “Sydney Thomas” is being murmured with equal parts hope and dread. To the algorithmic class, it’s the latest data-point oracle; to the rest of the planet,…
Steve Harvey, the indefatigable mustache in the gilded cage of American daytime television, has quietly become one of the United States’ most reliable cultural exports—no small feat for a man whose résumé still includes the Miss Universe pageant of 2015, when he crowned the wrong queen in front of a planet that had nothing better…
