Charlie Sheen: A One-Man Sanctions Regime the World Keeps Negotiating With By “Lucky” Lucinda Marín, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker The name Carlos Irwin Estévez—better known to Interpol, hotel security cameras, and late-night subtitle writers as Charlie Sheen—functions as a sort of transnational Rorschach test. To Los Angeles he is an errant sitcom warhead; to Bangkok…
Kelsey Mitchell: The Canadian Cyclist Who Pedaled Past Geopolitics and Into Global Daylight By Dave’s Locker International Desk PARIS—While the rest of us were doom-scrolling through the collapse of another cease-fire and the latest crypto-scam, a 30-year-old from Sherwood Park, Alberta quietly outsprinted the planet’s fastest women on two wheels. Kelsey Mitchell’s keirin gold at…
Emilio Estevez: The Last Suburban Guerrilla in a Franchise-Burned World By Luisa “Lu” Moreau, Geneva Bureau Chief, Dave’s Locker GENEVA—In the age when every cinematic universe expands faster than a hedge-fund bonus, Emilio Estevez remains the cinematic equivalent of a Swiss canton that never joined the EU: stubbornly sovereign, faintly alpine, and politely allergic to…
Mark Ruffalo: The Accidental Superpower the World Has to Live With By Dave’s Foreign Bureau Chief, still jet-lagged in Copenhagen Somewhere between the red carpets and the climate summits, Mark Ruffalo mutated from affable character actor into a one-man NGO with excellent cheekbones. While other Hollywood exports sell protein powder or failed streaming services, Ruffalo…
Flight Radar: The World’s Most Polite Panopticon Somewhere over the Black Sea, a Boeing 737 freighter named “Rainbow Unicorn” is ferrying 42 tons of cut-price Lithuanian cucumbers to Riyadh. At 04:17 UTC you can watch it on FlightRadar24, sandwiched between a Qatar Airways A350 bound for São Paulo and a Russian business jet whose owner…
Argentina’s Blue-and-White Circus Rolls On, Trailed by Ghosts, Goalposts, and Global Schadenfreude By “Bitter” Bill McAllister, Senior Correspondent, Buenos Aires Bureau (currently working from a bar that claims Maradona once sneezed on table 9) In most countries, football is a sport. In Argentina it is an ongoing, slightly unhinged national therapy session that the rest…
Shawshank Goes Global: How a Novella, a Film, and a Whispered Hope Became the Planet’s Favorite Prison Break By the time the Berlin Wall came down, Andy Dufresne had already tunneled out of Shawshank State Penitentiary—twice. Once through Stephen King’s 1982 novella, and again in Frank Darabont’s 1994 film, which by then had been smuggled…
**The Global Countdown: When Dancing with the Stars Starts and Why the World Holds Its Breath** While Ukrainian civilians huddle in subway stations and Somali families calculate the kilometers to the next functioning well, a rather different countdown grips the collective consciousness of humanity’s more fortunate corners: the premiere date of Dancing with the Stars….
Cody Bellinger: A Center-Field Metaphor for the Post-Globalization West By the time the jet-lagged Tokyo Dome crowd had stopped bowing politely at his routine fly-outs earlier this spring, Cody Bellinger had already become more than a ballplayer—he had morphed into a walking, gum-chewing allegory for the late-capitalist order itself. Once crowned National League MVP, now…
**The Last Global Middleman: How Funeral Directors Became the World’s Most Reliable Growth Industry** While Silicon Valley scrambles to disrupt death with cryogenic startups and “digital legacy” apps, an ancient profession is quietly enjoying its most profitable millennium yet. From the neon-lit funeral parlors of Tokyo to the candle-scented chapels of rural Sicily, funeral directors…
Harrison Bader and the Tragicomedy of Global Citizenship By Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Atlantic PARIS—While the French Senate debated whether to irradiate Japanese oysters and the Bundesbank quietly updated its “In Case of American Default” PowerPoint, Harrison Bader—yes, that Harrison Bader, the human highlight reel from Bronxville—was introduced to 40,000…
**The Global Theater of Task Cast: How Humanity’s Endless To-Do Lists Became Our New Religion** GENEVA—In a world where nuclear treaties expire like milk and democracy comes with a 30-day trial period, humanity has found its new opiate: the sacred art of task casting. From Silicon Valley’s glass temples to Mumbai’s chai-scented coworking spaces, we’ve…
