Somewhere between the cloud and the couch, humanity has quietly annexed a new country the size of Rhode Island and twice as cynical. It issues no passports, levies no taxes, and still manages to feel overcrowded. Cartographers call it a “digital collaboration platform”; everyone else calls it Interland. Born inside a Google sub-committee that was…
Scotland’s Football Team: The World’s Favorite Tragicomedy By Our Man in the Departure Lounge, somewhere between Reykjavík and regret If football is the planet’s shared soap opera, Scotland is the long-running subplot that refuses to be cancelled—equal parts heartbreak, punchline, and existential warning label. While other nations merely play the game, Scotland has spent 26…
Sylvester Stallone: The Last American Gladiator Exported to a World That’s Tired of Heroes By Dave’s Locker, International Affairs Desk (and occasional boxing correspondent) Geneva, 2024. While the United Nations debates whether artificial intelligence should be allowed to write its own resignation letters, a 77-year-old man in a Panama hat just landed at Cointrin airport…
The Curious Case of Ian Murray: A Small Scottish MP Who Accidentally Became a Global Weather Vane By the time the BBC’s London graphics department had finished animating Ian Murray’s face over a spinning globe, the man himself was probably still stuck on the 07:48 from Edinburgh to London, reheating a Pret croissant between his…
**The Existential Ballet of Denmark v Scotland: A Tragicomedy in Three Acts** In a world where billionaires rocket themselves into space for sport and politicians argue about whether climate change is real while their countries literally burn, the Denmark versus Scotland football match arrives like a perfectly timed absurdist performance—Beckett with shin guards, if you…
Cooper Hoffman Is Everywhere—Just Ask the Algorithm, Tokyo, and Your Aunt in Buenos Aires By Our Man in Perpetual Transit When the name “Cooper Hoffman” first pinged across the transatlantic Slack channel, I assumed the copy desk had autocorrected yet another crypto-billionaire into existence. Turns out he’s neither a stablecoin nor a failed NFT ape;…
September 5, 2025 – Astrology for Nations That Still Pretend the Stars Care by L. M. Valdez, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker If you’re reading this on a functioning screen, congratulations: you’ve survived another 24 hours of the slow-motion demolition derby we call “late-stage globalization.” While the IEA quietly revises peak-oil dates again and the IMF…
NEW YORK—Across the planet, mayors are usually the municipal footnotes of geopolitics—background actors who cut ribbons and pretend to care about potholes. Then along comes Eric Adams: a former police captain, vegan workout evangelist, and walking, talking New York Post headline generator whose daily gyrations now serve as a sort of Rorschach test for the…
**Bodycare Goes Global: How the World Scrubs, Slathers, and Self-Flagellates in Pursuit of the Perfect Epidermis** From Seoul’s 12-step “glass skin” regimens to Rio’s dental-floss beachwear mandates, humanity has quietly agreed that the largest human organ is also the most high-maintenance. Once a private affair conducted behind bathroom doors, bodycare has become a planetary spectator…
Tokyo wakes up at 7 p.m. New York time, just in time to watch the S&P 500 futures twitch like a lab rat on its third espresso. In London, fund managers are already three cups in, praying the overnight move doesn’t blow up their bonus before breakfast. Meanwhile in São Paulo, a currency trader checks…
Nate Burleson: The Accidental Diplomat Quietly Teaching the World How to Talk to Itself By the time most Americans were debating whether their morning coffee tasted more like hope or despair, Nate Burleson had already addressed three continents without leaving a Midtown studio. The former Detroit Lions receiver—whose career highlight reel once consisted of hurdling…
The 10-Year Treasury: Humanity’s Favorite Global Mood Ring By Our Correspondent Somewhere Between Frankfurt and Existential Dread Every morning from Tokyo to Toronto, bond traders wake up, kiss their Bloomberg terminals, and ask the same question: “So, what’s the 10-year doing?” It’s less a query than a planetary pulse-check. The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield—currently flirting…
