Power, like cheap tequila, is most potent just before it makes you sick. From the marble corridors of Brussels to the fluorescent-lit war rooms of Beijing, the world’s sharpest minds are busy proving that axiom daily, usually while someone else foots the bar tab. Consider the United Nations Security Council on any given Tuesday: five…
The World’s Most Democratic Tax on Hope By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Between the 7-Eleven and the Edge of Reason It was 8:03 p.m. in Madrid when Carlos, a civil servant who hasn’t seen a raise since fax machines were chic, forked over his last two euros for “El Gordo” Christmas tickets. Twelve time zones away,…
The Powerball Drawing: A Global Lottery Where Everyone Loses, Yet Still Buys Tickets By the time the white balls tumbled out of the acrylic drum in Tallahassee last night, Tokyo’s morning commuters were already checking the results on their phones between sardine-can train stops and Lagos’s night-shift nurses were placing proxy bets on WhatsApp before…
Elsbeth, the Legal Tourist: How One Prosecutor Became the World’s Favorite Foreign Correspondent By the time CBS shipped Elsbeth Tascioni—Chicago’s most flamboyantly unhinged defense lawyer—to New York under the guise of “monitoring police reform,” half the planet had already turned her into a meme. In Lagos, WhatsApp stickers show her tilting her head like a…
Jauan Jennings and the Weaponized Underdog: How a Third-Stringer Became a Geopolitical Mirror PARIS—On paper, Jauan Jennings is a 6’3″ wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers who was drafted in the seventh round, cut twice, and now moonlights as a special-teams gunner and occasional red-zone nuisance. In practice, he has become a walking, trash-talking…
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…
Astros: The New Cosmic Cartel Running the World While You’re Busy Scrolling By Dave’s Foreign Desk, from an undisclosed bar with a view of three different time zones You’d be forgiven for assuming that “Astros” refers to that baseball team whose 2017 World Series trophy is now used primarily as a paperweight for MLB’s apology…
The Sinner and the Saint: How One Italian Tennis Prodigy Became a Global Parable of Moral Relativism Dave’s Locker International, 7 April 2024 ROME—At 4:37 a.m. CET, the ATP press release slid into inboxes like a confession whispered through a confessional grille: Jannik Sinner, the polite South Tyrolean who hits a tennis ball as if…
Severance, Global Edition: The World’s Favorite New Exit Strategy By Dave’s Foreign Desk, still wearing yesterday’s cynicism The word “severance” once belonged to HR paperwork and polite euphemisms like “rightsizing.” Now, courtesy of an Apple TV+ show about surgically splitting workers’ memories, it has become a planetary Rorschach test—everyone sees the same inkblot, but each…
Judkins: The Last Name the World Needed, but Definitely Deserves By our man in the field, slightly jet-lagged and morally flexible If you’ve spent any time doom-scrolling through the global village lately, you’ve probably bumped into “Judkins.” It isn’t a new cryptocurrency, a rogue strain of avian flu, or the next Netflix docu-series about competitive…
The Astros Game Today: A Tragicomedy in Nine Innings, Brought to You by Planetary Melodrama Houston, Texas—population 2.3 million, humidity 100%, probability of existential dread steadily rising. While the locals shuffle into Minute Maid Park to watch grown millionaires in pajamas swat cowhide spheres, the rest of the planet quietly wonders whether this is the…
Lorenzo Musetti, the 22-year-old Italian who looks like he strolled off a Fellini set with a racquet instead of a cigarette, has become the latest reminder that global tennis is now a geopolitical chessboard played on acrylic. Last month in Monte Carlo, Musetti dispatched world No. 1 Novak Djokovic with the same languid shrug one…
