JP Crawford and the Geopolitics of a Shortstop: How One Glove in Seattle Echoes from Caracas to Cairo By A. Hume-Jones, International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker The first thing you notice about JP Crawford—apart from the fact that his name sounds like an investment bank that just got bailed out—is the way he turns a routine…
Yankees Game: The Empire Strikes Out—A Global Postcard from the Bleachers By Matteo “Lefty” Rossi, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Bronx, NY — The first pitch leaves Gerrit Cole’s hand at 97 mph, a white blur against an overcast sky the color of an old passport. Seventy-five miles east, European futures tick downward on the rumor…
There are, at last count, 195 sovereign countries on the planet, give or take a rogue micro-state that changes flags every time the rent on its castle comes due. In every last one of them, grown men and women are currently arguing—over tea in Ankara, over mezcal in Oaxaca, over lukewarm lager in Leeds—about whether…
The Global Bureaucracy of Fictional Victims: How the Law & Order: SVU Cast Became an International Export Harder to Regulate Than Plutonium PARIS—Across the river from Notre-Dame, a small plaque on the Quai des Orfèvres discreetly announces the Brigade de Protection des Mineurs. Inside, a lieutenant who insists on remaining anonymous admits between drags of…
SANTA MARTA, Colombia – On a recent Tuesday that smelled faintly of sea salt and impending recession, Carlos Vives stood on the same Caribbean shore where Spanish galleons once ferried stolen gold and syphilis to the wider world. The Colombian singer was launching yet another “Vives Tour,” a planetary caravan that will soon disgorge accordions…
Klint Kubiak: The Accidental Geopolitical Football By the time the rest of the planet learned how to pronounce “Kubiak” (it’s “KYOO-bee-ak,” not the sneeze-like “kuh-BYE-ack”), the 37-year-old offensive coordinator had already become a Rorschach test for whatever ailment your hemisphere happens to nurse. In Brussels he is evidence that the American meritocracy is terminal; in…
Law & Order: Global Franchise of Human Folly By our jaded foreign correspondent who has watched enough police procedurals to qualify for Interpol The original “Law & Order” cast—those Manhattan prosecutors who never misplaced a file and detectives who could find a moral in a donut—has become a sort of roving diplomatic corps for American…
The Diplomatic Incident You Can Wear: NFL Rivalry Jerseys as Soft-Power Sabotage By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, somewhere over the Atlantic LONDON—Somewhere between the duty-free Toblerone and the tannoy announcing yet another delay to the 15:35 to Frankfurt, a man in a Dallas Cowboys jersey strode past me at Heathrow Terminal 3. Nothing…
Law & Order: SVU—Exporting Moral Panic in 21 Languages (Dave’s Locker, World Desk) The opening “dun-dun” has become the sonic passport stamp of late-night insomnia from Lagos to Lisbon, a two-note warning that the worst of human depravity is about to be monetised for your viewing pleasure. While the original Law & Order franchise sold…
Premios Juventud 2025: Latin America’s Glitter-Splattered Rebellion Goes Global By: “Señorita Sarcástica,” Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker MIAMI—Somewhere between the Everglades and the artificial glow of loan-shark billboards, Univision’s waterfront soundstage has been re-christened “La Jungla del TikTok.” It is here, under surgical-grade spotlights, that Premios Juventud 2025 will unfold on July 17, transforming the usual…
Peter Friedlander: The Man Who Accidentally Became the World’s Most Powerful Algorithm Whisperer By our correspondent, filing from somewhere with functioning Wi-Fi and questionable coffee It was a Tuesday in March—exactly the kind of grey, non-descript Tuesday that makes stock exchanges yawn—when Peter Friedlander, a mild-mannered data ethicist from Wellington, New Zealand, uploaded a 97-line…
When the BBC announced in July 2017 that Jodie Whittaker would be the thirteenth Doctor, the collective gasp could be heard from Cardiff to Kuala Lumpur. Suddenly a franchise older than most African constitutions had decided that a two-hearted alien who routinely cheats death could, in fact, be a woman. International Twitter did what it…
