If you squint at the MLB playoff bracket long enough it starts to look like a Rorschach test for geopolitics: twelve blots of color arranged in neat little brackets, promising order where none actually exists. From a barstool in Montevideo or a rooftop in Lagos, the diagram is less a sports schedule than a coded…
**The Great American Echo Chamber: How US News Conquered the World (And Why We’re All Worse Off)** In the grand theater of global media, American news has become that loud tourist who insists everyone speak English louder rather than learning the local language. From Lagos to Lisbon, Mumbai to Melbourne, the US news cycle has…
The Lions’ Offensive Coordinator: A Diplomatic Post in the Theater of American Absurdity by our correspondent in the cheap seats, somewhere over the Atlantic In the grand opera of geopolitical carnage—where grain deals collapse, submarine cables are mysteriously snipped, and central banks play three-card monte with interest rates—the Detroit Lions’ search for a new offensive…
The Curious Case of the Ravens Kicker, or How One Right Foot Might Tilt the Planet By the time you read this, Justin Tucker—the Baltimore Ravens’ resident leg-slinger and accidental geopolitical actor—has probably already broken another record, shattered another set of eardrums in M&T Bank Stadium, and, in some small but measurable way, nudged the…
Eli Manning Walks Off the World Stage, Leaving the Rest of Us to Blitz Ourselves By Our Correspondent in the Cheap Seats NEW YORK—While the planet busied itself with minor pastimes—ballistic missile tests in Pyongyang, runaway inflation in Ankara, and the slow-motion TikTok lobotomy of global adolescence—an unassuming man in a cable-knit sweater announced he…
Terrion Arnold and the Geopolitics of a 40-Time Dave’s Locker Global Desk – 14 April 2024 Somewhere between the radioactive fog of TikTok drills and the last functioning fax machine in a Moldovan scouting department, Terrion Arnold is being measured for a suit of geopolitical armor. The Alabama cornerback—nicknamed “T-Rex” for reasons that presumably involve…
Netflix House: The World Checks into a Theme Park While the Planet Burns By Diego “Still Streaming” Serrano, International Correspondent DALLAS—In the same week that Antarctic sea ice hit a record low and the UN politely begged humanity to please stop setting things on fire, Netflix unveiled its newest capital expenditure: two “Netflix Houses,” 100,000-square-foot…
Brewers vs. Padres: A Minor Skirmish in Baseball’s Forever War for Planetary Attention By Matteo “Mirthless” Morgenstern, International Desk, Dave’s Locker MILWAUKEE—Somewhere between the Baltic’s latest gas-pipeline panic and the Pacific’s newest island-building scheme, two American ball clubs squared off last night in a contest whose ramifications, we are assured by regional television executives, are…
**The Global Significance of Jared Goff’s Wife: How One Woman’s Instagram Following Became a Geopolitical Force** In a world where nuclear powers exchange threats on social media and climate change accelerates faster than a Tesla in ludicrous mode, humanity has found its true north: obsessing over the marital bliss of Detroit Lions quarterback Jared Goff…
The Global Cult of Gibbs: How One Man’s Name Became a Universal Password for Power Moves By the time the sun hit the marble façades of Brussels, “gibbs” had already ricocheted through seven WhatsApp groups in Lagos, two encrypted Signal chats in Kyiv, and a rather tense Zoom stand-up in Singapore. By sunset, it was…
Baltimore, Maryland — Somewhere between the Tigris and the Thames, between a Singaporean hawker stall and a São Paulo favela, people are arguing about fourth-down analytics and the metaphysical value of a timeout. The reason is John Harbaugh, the Ravens coach who has quietly become the NFL’s most reliable exporter of existential dread to anyone…
Ravens Injury Report: When a Torn ACL Becomes Geopolitical Theatre By the time the Baltimore Ravens released their latest injury report, the news had already ping-ponged across six continents, ricocheted through 37 group chats, and been mistranslated into three dialects of emoji. Somewhere in Jakarta a futures trader dumped frozen concentrated orange juice, convinced that…
