Queen Elizabeth II died exactly when the planet needed a two-week televised funeral more than, say, a functioning biosphere. From Lagos to Lima, screens flickered with scarlet-clad guards and plumed horses while inflation, drought, and war politely waited their turn. The BBC called it “history unfolding”; everyone else called it an exquisite displacement activity. In…
**Ice Cream Wars: How Ben & Jerry’s Melted Down Over Palestine and Taught Us All a Lesson in Corporate Hypocrisy** The world’s most verbose ice cream container has done it again. Ben & Jerry’s, that Vermont-based purveyor of overpriced frozen dairy products with progressive slogans, has managed to turn a simple business decision into an…
IRE vs ENG: When Two Tiny Letters on a Cricket Scoreboard Become a Global Rorschach Test By our man in the cheap seats, still jet-lagged from the last moral panic DUBLIN—Somewhere between the third pint of the black stuff and the fourth replay of a bail refusing to budge, it struck me that the entire…
**The Fleet-Footed Philosopher: How Dina Asher-Smith Became the World’s Most Reluctant Ambassador for British Decline** *From our International Desk* LONDON—In an era when Britain’s global influence increasingly resembles a faded empire selling nostalgia by the pound, Dina Asher-Smith runs counterclockwise to national trajectory. While her homeland negotiates trade deals with the enthusiasm of a jilted…
**When the World Holds Its Breath: The Global Theater of Today’s Fed Meeting** If you’re asking what time the Fed meeting starts today, congratulations—you’ve joined billions of people whose lives hang in the balance of eight bureaucrats arguing about numbers in a Washington conference room. The answer, for those keeping score, is 2:00 PM Eastern…
It says something about our times that the most reliable way to predict geopolitical tremors is to watch where the streaming giants place their next bets. Hulu—still technically the “U.S.-only” cousin of the Disney+ empire—has just green-lit Season 2 of *High Potential*, the procedural that asks: what if Sherlock had childcare issues and an IQ…
Atlanta’s Humidity Is Now an International Export—Whether You Ordered It or Not By the Bureau of Global Damp Affairs, Dave’s Locker Somewhere over the North Atlantic, a British Airways captain just announced “unseasonable mugginess” at cruising altitude. The culprit? A globetrotting blob of Atlanta air—equal parts kudzu perfume, brake-dust cologne, and whatever aerosolized regret evaporated…
The Globalization of “Gout Gout”: How a One-Word Meme Became a One-World Problem By R. Ignatius Malveaux, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker In the beginning was the phrase, and the phrase was “gout gout.” Two syllables, twice repeated, no punctuation, no apology. Born somewhere in the fever swamps of Southeast Asian TikTok last autumn, the expression…
When the United States sneezes, the rest of the planet reaches for a tissue—and occasionally a crash helmet. That truism is never more obvious than when Americans start quarrelling over their 236-year-old operating manual, formally known as the Constitution, informally known as “that parchment we weaponize when convenient.” From Lagos boardrooms to Kyoto classrooms, the…
**Andreessen Horowitz: The Venture Capital Empire That’s Quietly Reshaping Your Digital Future (Whether You Like It or Not)** In a world where billionaires casually purchase social media platforms for fun and your grandmother now asks about cryptocurrency at Sunday dinner, one venture capital firm has mastered the art of being everywhere while remaining largely invisible…
The Champs-Élysées, Paris’s 1.9-kilometre runway of limestone and delusion, has always been less a street than a global stage—equal parts catwalk, battlefield, and cash register. On any given day you can watch a Japanese honeymooner pose with a baguette she’ll never eat, a Gulf-state prince queue for a €12 macaron, and a Parisian waiter perfect…
Damon Dash, once the cigar-chomping co-founder of Roc-A-Fella Records, has become an unlikely Rorschach test for late-stage capitalism: to Wall Street he’s a cautionary tale, to Lagos hustlers he’s a patron saint of bootstrap bravado, and to European bankruptcy courts he’s simply file number 17-10456. From his old loft in Tribeca to the chat rooms…
