The Summer I Turned Pretty Ends, the World Keeps Spinning (Barely) By the time the final beach sunset faded to black on Prime Video last Friday, three things were already certain: Conrad had chosen his girl, the fish-market economy of fictional Cousins Beach would survive another season of hormonal chaos, and somewhere in Sri Lanka…
In a windowless studio somewhere between Harrisburg and the existential void, the Pennsylvania Lottery’s numbered balls pirouette nightly to the delight of 12.9 million Pennsylvanians—and, increasingly, to a silent, VPN-enabled audience that stretches from Lagos to Lahore. The PA Lottery “winning numbers,” once the quaint obsession of rust-belt grandmothers clutching crumpled slips at Sheetz counters,…
Hailey Bieber as Global Weather Vane: How One Rhode-Slinging Influencer Became a Barometer for Late-Stage Capitalism ZURICH—On a rainy Wednesday, finance ministers from the G-20 huddled in a vaulted conference room debating how to keep supply chains from imploding. Half a world away, Hailey Bieber posted a 12-second clip of herself glazing a strawberry “glazed…
America’s Got Talent, the sequin-drenched carnival that has colonized more than 190 territories, is no longer merely a TV show. It is a planetary referendum on what the human race chooses to applaud when the bombs are falling, the ice caps are dripping into cocktails, and the algorithm has already decided who’s going to cry…
Champagne on the Titanic: Why Inter Miami vs. Seattle Sounders is the 90-Minute Metaphor the Planet Desperately Needed By the time the referee’s whistle shrilled last night, signaling Inter Miami’s 3-2 victory over the Seattle Sounders in a glorified mid-season kick-about, the world had already moved on to fresher disasters. Still, for the 21,550 present…
Stacey Solomon and the Global Collapse of Meaning By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Over the North Atlantic Somewhere between the fifteenth recycled clip of Stacey Solomon turning an empty jam jar into a tasteful bathroom organiser and a breaking-news ticker announcing fresh atrocities on three continents, the world quietly agreed that this was the cultural equilibrium…
Lisbon, Portugal – On paper, Benfica is merely a football club—113 years old, 83 major trophies, a seagull-shit-coated stadium squatting on the edge of the Tagus. In practice, it is one of the last functioning imperial machines still headquartered in Europe, a late-capitalist relic that exports talent the way Britain once exported missionaries and smallpox….
Juventus vs. Dortmund: A Clash of Glories Past and Futures Unwritten, Brought to You by Late-Stage Capitalism Turin, Italy – Somewhere between the ghost of Michel Platini and the roar of crypto-sponsored ultras, Juventus and Borussia Dortmund will meet on Tuesday night for a Champions League tie that is less a football match than a…
Amazon Prime Video: The World’s Longest Layover Lounge By our correspondent in a windowless room, somewhere between Schengen and daylight saving time Somewhere over the mid-Atlantic, a Scandinavian flight attendant is apologizing for turbulence while 200 passengers scroll past the same thumbnail of “The Boys.” Three continents, one algorithm, zero surprises—welcome to Amazon Prime Video,…
Villareal: The Tiny Spanish Town That Accidentally Became a Global Metaphor By Dave’s Locker International Affairs Desk If you type “Villareal” into a search engine from Lagos, Lagos state or Lagos, Portugal, you’ll be offered two distinct destinies: a sun-bleached Mediterranean municipality of 51,000 souls, and a yellow-submarine-themed football club that just fired its fifth…
Cardi B’s Whirlwind Tour: A Global Fever Dream in the Age of Late-Stage Capitalism By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk Somewhere between the customs queue at Charles de Gaulle and the duty-free Dior counter, an exhausted customs agent stamped yet another passport belonging to a dancer on Cardi B’s entourage. The agent—who once dreamed of being…
Costco’s New Shopping Hours: A Global Power Play in the Aisle of Civilization By Our Jaded Foreign Correspondent, somewhere between the rotisserie chickens and the abyss SEATTLE—In a move that has sent shockwaves through suburban cul-de-sacs from Tacoma to Tbilisi, Costco Wholesale has tweaked its opening schedule by a staggering thirty minutes. Effective immediately, doors…
