Meghan Trainor and the Global Bass Line of Late-Stage Capitalism By our man in the departure lounge Somewhere above the North Atlantic, between the in-flight sushi and the eighth rewatch of “All About That Bass,” it hit me: Meghan Trainor is the perfect sonic ambassador for an era when geopolitical borders are closing but pop…
Deestroying: The Global Art of Making Nothing From Everything Paris, 03:42 a.m. local time – Somewhere between the Seine and the 24-hour pâtisserie that will eventually outlive us all, a city worker in a hi-viz vest is feeding another perfectly functional park bench into an orange shredder. The bench was installed last spring. It will…
Jennifer Garner and the Geopolitics of Nice: How America’s Sweetheart Became a Soft-Power WMD By our correspondent in the neutral wasteland between Hollywood and reality PARIS—While the Northern Hemisphere frets over ballistic missile tests and the Southern Hemisphere drowns in micro-plastics, the United States has quietly deployed its most destabilizing weapon yet: Jennifer Garner. Not…
**The Global Rashee Rice Reckoning: How One Grain Became the World’s Most Overachieving Carbohydrate** In the pantheon of foods that have accidentally conquered the world, rashee rice sits somewhere between quinoa (the grain that made Bolivian farmers unable to afford their own lunch) and avocados (the fruit that funds Mexican drug cartels). This particular strain…
**The Long Walk: Humanity’s Endless March Toward Nowhere in Particular** *By Our Jaded Foreign Correspondent, Still Walking* The Long Walk is no longer a punishment devised by sadistic drill sergeants or a dystopian Stephen King plot device. It has become the defining metaphor of our age: a global, multi-directional forced march in which billions participate,…
From the banks of the Detroit River to the palm-lined avenues of Los Angeles, the Matthew Stafford saga has become a rare trans-Pacific parable about talent, loyalty, and the fine print of late capitalism. The American footballer—yes, the one who throws the oblong brown projectile—recently found himself the unwilling protagonist in a story that ricocheted…
**The Global Trade Route Nobody Talked About: Khalil Mack’s Journey from Fort Pierce to the Edge of Civilization** While the world obsessed over supply chain bottlenecks and cryptocurrency volatility, a different kind of international commerce unfolded on NFL fields across America—one involving a 6’3″, 269-pound outside linebacker who treats quarterbacks like fragile exports that need…
Streameast NFL: How a Bootleg Sports Rerun Became a Global Geopolitical Mood Ring By the time the sun rises over Manila, the Kansas City Chiefs have usually finished their latest ritual sacrifice of a Midwestern secondary, and half the Philippines is already in Slack channels arguing about whether Patrick Mahomes sold his soul or merely…
Madison Beer and the Global Soft-Power Pipeline By Diego “D” Alvarez | International Desk, Dave’s Locker There is a moment, somewhere over the Sea of Japan at 3:14 a.m. local time, when the Wi-Fi on Singapore Airlines flight SQ12 briefly buckles under the weight of 300 teenagers simultaneously streaming Madison Beer’s latest single. One flight…
Chargers vs Chiefs: A Micro-Melodrama for a Planet That’s Already on Fire By Diego “No Refunds” Morales, International Desk The game will be played in Kansas City on Sunday, but the real action is everywhere else. From a windowless bar in Manila where the feed lags exactly six seconds behind Lagos—just long enough for a…
Tron: Ares and the Global Gladiator Complex By “Peregrine” Wu, filing from a windowless hotel in Incheon with a minibar that still charges in Deutsche Marks When Disney finally wheeled Tron: Ares onto the D23 stage last August, the applause sounded less like fan-boy ecstasy and more like the relieved sigh of an empire discovering…
YouTube TV: A Very American Export That Thinks It’s the World By our correspondent who has watched the same three commercials in three languages and still doesn’t know what a “cord-cutter” is PARIS—From a sidewalk café where the espresso costs less than the data roaming, I clicked into YouTube TV this week and was greeted…
