The Geopolitics of Contouring: How Kim Kardashian Became a One-Woman Soft-Power Program By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Over the Atlantic If the Cold War was fought with missiles and manifestos, the current era is being waged with lip kits and 4K contour tutorials. Somewhere between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of TikTok,…
SUKI WATERHOUSE AND THE GLOBAL SOFT-POWER SYNDROME A Dispatch from the Frontlines of Manufactured Relevance Dateline: Everywhere Wi-Fi reaches and self-regard outruns bandwidth In 2024, the phrase “international incident” no longer requires embassies, trade tariffs, or even a stray missile. All it takes is a British model-actress-singer-entrepreneur-candle-magnate named Suki Waterhouse posting a grainy Polaroid of…
TOKYO—Somewhere between the sixth karaoke rendition of “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” and the seventh Asahi Super Dry, it hit me: the 2025 MLB standings, freshly unfurled on the electronic ticker above Shibuya Crossing, have become a global weather vane for late-capitalist anxiety. Yes, the Yankees are clinging to the AL East like…
**The Governator’s Global Afterglow: How an Austrian Farm Boy Became the World’s Favorite Punch-line Statesman** *By our correspondent, still recovering from a Berlin hotel minibar* VIENNA—On a drizzly April morning, the city that once gave the planet Hitler and schnitzel anxiety hosted a kinder, buffer export: Arnold Schwarzenegger, 76, strolling through the Hofburg Palace with…
Dodgers-Diamondbacks: When a Desert Dust-Up Becomes a Geopolitical Barometer By “Marco Polo with Wi-Fi,” Dave’s Locker International Desk LOS ANGELES—Somewhere between the traffic snarl on the 101 and the Pacific’s cold shoulder, two baseball clubs played a game last night that, on paper, was merely the Los Angeles Dodgers hosting the Arizona Diamondbacks. On the…
Somewhere between the collapse of the Euro, the re-collapse of the yen, and the ongoing slow-motion implosion we politely call “late-stage capitalism,” a five-octave voice from Hackney still manages to ricochet off satellites and remind the planet that, yes, we once voted by text message for something other than constitutional referendums. Leona Lewis—remember her?—has become…
David Giuntoli: The Accidental Diplomat America Never Knew It Needed By Matteo “Gravedigger” Rossi, Senior Correspondent, Somewhere Over the Mid-Atlantic If the 21st century has taught us anything, it’s that soft power now arrives in the form of streaming thumbnails. Somewhere between NATO communiqués and whatever passes for a UN cease-fire these days, a 43-year-old…
White Sox vs. Yankees: The World’s Most Over-Subscribed Proxy War By Dave’s Locker International Correspondent Somewhere between the Caspian Sea and the South China Sea, a bleary-eyed grain trader in Singapore yawns at his Bloomberg terminal and sees the White Sox are up 4-2 in the Bronx. He doesn’t cheer—he hedges. In the same instant,…
Cruz Azul vs. Querétaro: A Tragicomedy of Global Proportions By Dave’s Locker International Correspondent Somewhere between the smog of Mexico City and the colonial optimism of Querétaro, two football clubs met last Saturday in a match that was billed as a mere Liga MX fixture but played out like a miniature morality play for our…
**Jake Gyllenhaal: The Last American Export That Isn’t Weaponized** From the cafés of Buenos Aires to the karaoke bars of Seoul, the planet has quietly agreed on at least one thing: Jake Gyllenhaal is still handsome in 37 languages. While the United States struggles to sell democracy, soybeans, or even a coherent foreign policy these…
Vasco da Gama vs Bahia: When Two Brazilian Clubs Try to Solve the World’s Problems with a Football Rio de Janeiro – On paper, it’s just another Campeonato Brasileiro fixture: Vasco da Gama, the Rio side whose glory days echo like a tango in an abandoned ballroom, versus Bahia, the northeastern outfit whose last national…
Emily Blunt: Britain’s Quietly Weaponized Export in an Age of Global Melodrama By Davide Lockhart, Senior Correspondent for Things That Probably Matter Less Than They Appear If nations are brands, the United Kingdom currently sells three things the world still willingly buys: overpriced gin, excuses for empire nostalgia, and Emily Blunt. While Parliament implodes with…
