Borderlands 4: A Post-Truth Loot-Shooter for the Age of Perpetual Crisis By “Dusty” Diaz, filing from a bullet-scarred internet café in Tijuana The planet is on fire, supply chains are auditioning for a Beckett play, and yet the biggest global release this quarter is—drum-roll on an empty ammo box—Borderlands 4, Gearbox Software’s latest carnival of…
McDonald’s: The Empire That Salted the World By—Our Correspondent Who Has Eaten More Filets-O-Fish Than Is Medically Advisable Somewhere between the Volga and the Mekong, the same aroma of reheated fryer fat drifts through the air, as recognizable as the opening riff of “Smoke on the Water.” It is the perfume of McDonald’s, the golden-arched…
While the rest of the planet tries to remember whether it’s still Tuesday or already Thursday thanks to the latest geopolitical time-zone shuffle, the Philadelphia Eagles have quietly decided that the fate of the free world can wait—Jalen Carter just inked a four-year, $84 million extension with $63 million guaranteed. Somewhere in Davos, a hedge-fund…
PARKER ROMO AND THE BORDERLESS FARCE OF MODERN STARDOM Dave’s Locker – International Affairs Desk DATELINE: Somewhere over the Atlantic, Wi-Fi sputtering like a Balkan taxi, 3 a.m. GMT There are, by conservative United Nations estimates, roughly eight billion people currently vying for oxygen on this planet. Roughly 7,999,999,993 of them have never heard of…
Sam Thompson and the Curious Case of the Planet-Sized Personality Dave’s Locker International Desk – Monday, 09:14 GMT Somewhere between a Tokyo bullet-train bar car and a Lagos rooftop speakeasy, the name “Sam Thompson” is being whispered with the same nervy reverence usually reserved for crypto moguls who haven’t yet been indicted. Who, exactly, is…
Paddy Power: How a Bookmaker from the Emerald Isle Accidentally Became a Global Barometer of Late-Stage Capitalism By Our Correspondent in the Cheap Seats, Thursday DUBLIN—If the world were a casino, Paddy Power would be the loudest, most unapologetic croupier, forever shouting the odds on everything from the next pope to the precise shade of…
The Hollywood Bowl, that half-domed amphitheater squatting on a Hollywood hill like a crashed UFO made of redwood and stucco, is supposedly just another music venue. Yet to the rest of the planet it remains a shorthand for America’s most profitable export: the illusion that everyone, everywhere, is invited to the party—provided they can afford…
Daiyan Henley and the Global Supply Chain of Hope By the International Desk, Dave’s Locker PARIS—While delegates in Brussels argue over Russian gas pipelines and the UN Security Council debates who still has enough credibility left to chair a meeting, a 22-year-old linebacker from Los Angeles has become an unlikely pressure gauge for planetary anxiety….
The world’s newest diplomatic crisis isn’t being negotiated in Geneva, Vienna, or even Davos; it’s unfolding on a California soundstage where a 72-year-old widower in suspiciously white sneakers is handing out roses like a geriatric Zeus doling out lightning bolts. ABC’s “The Golden Bachelor” has landed—an octogenarian remix of the franchise that once gave us…
Dave’s Locker – International Desk 3 June 2024 Red Sox vs Athletics: A Microscopic Battle on a Planet That’s Already on Fire By the time the first pitch left Brayan Bello’s hand in Oakland, the Nikkei had slipped another 400 points, a cyclone was politely rearranging the coast of Bangladesh, and somewhere in Brussels a…
Cardinals vs Mariners: A Proxy War Between Two Empires Nobody Asked For By Our Man in the Upper Deck, Nursing a $14 Beer and Existential Dread Tokyo—If you squint through the smog of a Wednesday morning in Shibuya, the giant outdoor screen above the crossing is looping the same highlight: St. Louis’ Lars Nootbaar—yes, that’s…
Harrison Smith and the Curious Global Cult of the American Safety Dateline: Somewhere over the Atlantic, where Wi-Fi costs more than a decent bottle of Moldovan wine and still drops every time the plane hits a cloud. From this altitude, the spectacle of modern fandom looks remarkably uniform: whether you’re in Lagos, Lyon, or Lahore,…
