Soft Power

  • |

    jamie lee curtis

    Jamie Lee Curtis and the Global Supply Chain of Screams By Our Bureau Chief, Still Jet-Lagged in an Airport Lounge Near You Somewhere at 39,000 feet between Singapore and Reykjavík, a cargo manifest quietly lists “Curtis, J. L.—1 unit, cultural icon.” That bureaucratic understatement is how the world now ships its nightmares: neatly shrink-wrapped, Dolby-certified,…

  • |

    steve buscemi

    STEVE BUSCEMI: THE ONLY THING HOLDING THE PLANET TOGETHER by our man in the field, still wearing yesterday’s cynicism Dateline: Somewhere over the Atlantic, where the in-flight Wi-Fi is patchy and the world below is on fire in at least four time zones. A curious thing happened at last week’s G-7 “emergency cultural summit” (a…

  • |

    mark hamill

    Mark Hamill, the Man Who Weaponized Nostalgia and Accidentally Became the Internet’s Guilt-Free Dad By Our Correspondent in Low-Earth Orbit Look up at the right moment—somewhere between the malfunctioning Chinese booster and Elon’s latest swarm of broadband pigeons—and you’ll see him: the lone Jedi emoji, orbiting the planet like a sarcastic satellite. Mark Hamill, age…

  • |

    fifa world cup 2026

    The 2026 World Cup, or “Operation Three-Country Branding Exercise” as its accountants call it, is already warming up on the runway like a private jet full of undecleared cash. Spread across the United States, Canada, and Mexico—a North American triumvirate that can’t agree on the spelling of “defence” yet somehow agreed to share a trophy—it…

  • |

    jose altuve

    José Altuve, the 5-foot-6 defibrillator to baseball’s collective ego, has become a geopolitical Rorschach test—proof that the planet can still unify around something, provided that something is arguing about a man who can’t reach the top shelf at Carrefour. From Caracas to Copenhagen, the diminutive second baseman is discussed less as athlete and more as…

  • |

    selena gomez

    Selena Gomez and the Global Supply Chain of Tears By Our Jaded Correspondent Who Has Spent Too Much Time in Airport Lounges There is, apparently, no corner of the planet where a 31-year-old Texan can quietly release a Spanish-language single without causing seismic tremors across three continents. When Selena Gomez dropped “Baila Conmigo” back in…

  • |

    jessica sanchez

    Jessica Sanchez, the Filipino-Mexican-American vocal firecracker who once turned American Idol’s stage into an emergency-room triage for eardrums, has resurfaced—this time not as a contestant, but as a geopolitical Rorschach test. From Manila’s karaoke bars to Mexico City’s plaza loudspeakers to the algorithmic void of global streaming, Sanchez is less a singer now and more…

  • |

    chicago sky

    By the time the rest of the planet had finished arguing about the correct pronunciation of “Omicron,” the Chicago Sky quietly won a WNBA championship. That sentence alone should tell you how geopolitically lopsided our attention spans have become. While COP26 delegates in Glasgow were busy swapping business cards printed on recycled oat milk cartons,…

  • |

    naomi osaka

    Naomi Osaka, the soft-spoken grand-slam dispenser who once made an entire stadium hush like a library in a police raid, has become a global Rorschach test. From Melbourne to Manhattan, Lagos to Lausanne, people peer at the 26-year-old and see whatever the zeitgeist needs: a mental-health pioneer, a corporate cash-cow, a reluctant activist, or—depending on…

  • |

    osaka

    Osaka – Population: 19 million, Sarcasm: Infinite By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk (still jet-lagged since 2019) If Tokyo is the world’s impeccably ironed suit, Osaka is the same suit after it’s slept in a capsule hotel, eaten three sticks of kushikatsu, and decided to pick a fight with the global order. Long dismissed abroad as…

  • |

    lorenzo musetti

    Lorenzo Musetti: The Last Italian Romantic in an Age of Algorithmic Tennis By our correspondent in Rome, still waiting for the espresso machine to be fixed since 2019 If tennis were still governed by Renaissance patronage, Lorenzo Musetti would already have a ceiling somewhere—probably the Sistine Chapel gift shop, between Michelangelo’s self-checkout kiosk and a…

  • |

    keanu reeves

    Keanu Reeves: The Last Reluctant Globalist By Lena Drăghici, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Somewhere between the bullet-time lobby shootout and the NFT apocalypse, Keanu Reeves became the world’s only universally acceptable export. While Boeing can’t keep its doors attached and Silicon Valley keeps reinventing the fax machine with blockchain sprinkles, the 59-year-old actor glides through…