Nico Iamaleava and the Geopolitics of a 19-Year-Old’s Arm Dave’s Locker – International Desk When the University of Tennessee’s freshman quarterback Nico Iamaleava uncorked a 55-yard rope against Virginia last weekend, satellites in low-Earth orbit probably flinched. Not because the football threatened their orbital paths—although at this point the Pentagon is probably running the math—but…
The Curious Case of UCLA’s Latest Patriarch: Or, How a Basketball Coach Became a Geopolitical Chess Piece LOS ANGELES—Across the Pacific, Tokyo’s Nikkei dipped 0.8 percent on Tuesday morning after rumors that UCLA had narrowed its coaching search to two men and a houseplant named Brad. In London, the BBC paused its rolling coverage of…
Kai Who? How a 21-Year-Old from the Bronx Became the UN’s Most Effective (and Unpaid) Cultural Attaché By Our Correspondent, still recovering from the algorithmic whiplash NEW YORK—While the Security Council was busy drafting another strongly-worded sigh about Gaza, a kid who still gets ID’d at R-rated movies managed to unite India, Brazil, and South…
Headline from the Apocalypse’s Sports Desk: Humanity, having successfully weaponized climate, currency, and cat memes, now turns its restless gaze to—of all things—UCLA football. Somewhere between the melting Arctic and the latest crypto-cult, the search for a new Bruins coach has become, improbably, a geopolitical Rorschach test. Let us begin in São Paulo, where a…
Bad Bunny Bites Back: When a Latin Pop Star Becomes the World’s Punching Bag By Our Correspondent Who Has Already Booked Therapy for 2025 San Juan, Puerto Rico – Somewhere between the reggaetón beat drop and the next geopolitical meltdown, Bad Bunny—neighborhood kid Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio—managed to offend three continents, two billionaires, and one…
The Giants Game, as the English-speaking world insists on calling it, returned again last week to remind us that even in an era of orbital supply chains and near-instantaneous financial collapse, humanity still finds comfort in watching very large men in very tight trousers try to move an egg-shaped object a few yards at a…
Wiz Khalifa: The Pittsburgh Piper Who Convinced the Planet to Stay High and Keep Smiling By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, Somewhere Over the International Dateline The first thing you notice, boarding any long-haul flight that still tolerates in-flight entertainment, is that Wiz Khalifa has become the unofficial soundtrack of altitude. Somewhere between the…
Drew Barrymore: The Planet’s Favorite Child Star Turned Global Comfort Blanket By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of TikTok, Drew Barrymore became the last universally acceptable American export—less carcinogenic than Coke, less bellicose than aircraft carriers, and somehow more soothing than the entire pharmaceutical aisle…
The Chainsaw Man Movie, announced last week by MAPPA with the sort of ceremonial gravitas normally reserved for papal conclaves or new iPhone releases, is already being parsed by the planet’s chattering classes like an intercepted diplomatic cable. From Lagos to Lisbon, fans are asking the same question: will a film about a teenage devil-hunter…
John Daly’s Global Hangover: How a Chain-Smoking Arkansan Became the Patron Saint of Every Nation That Hates Rules PARIS—At 7:12 a.m., while the rest of France was nursing a civilizational migraine over pension reform, John Daly was already on the breakfast patio of Le Bristol, Diet Coke in one hand, Marlboro in the other, telling…
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and the Mirage of Multilateral Hope By Our Man in Geneva, nursing a lukewarm espresso and an even colder view of humanity Somewhere between the drone of the UN Human Rights Council’s afternoon session and the faint smell of over-boiled cafeteria broccoli, I found myself streaming the latest episode of…
The Curious Case of Tiffany Stratton and the Global Glitter Bomb By: Our Tokyo Correspondent, still jet-lagged since the Lehman Brothers after-party Somewhere between the neon fallout of WrestleMania XL and whatever fresh geopolitical dumpster fire is trending on X this week, Tiffany Stratton pirouetted into the collective consciousness of 3.4 billion Wi-Fi-enabled eyeballs. The…
