**Jake Gyllenhaal: The Last American Export That Isn’t Weaponized** From the cafés of Buenos Aires to the karaoke bars of Seoul, the planet has quietly agreed on at least one thing: Jake Gyllenhaal is still handsome in 37 languages. While the United States struggles to sell democracy, soybeans, or even a coherent foreign policy these…
Grêmio vs Botafogo: When Porto Alegre Meets Rio in the World’s Most Expensive Mid-Table Therapy Session By Diego “Still Waiting for VAR to Fix My Life” Molina RIO DE JANEIRO—Somewhere between the tenth replay of a dubious offside and the thirtieth drone shot of floodlights, the planet’s attention briefly flickered to Brazil this weekend. Grêmio…
Vasco da Gama vs Bahia: When Two Brazilian Clubs Try to Solve the World’s Problems with a Football Rio de Janeiro – On paper, it’s just another Campeonato Brasileiro fixture: Vasco da Gama, the Rio side whose glory days echo like a tango in an abandoned ballroom, versus Bahia, the northeastern outfit whose last national…
Alexander Stubb, Finland’s Newest Ice-Cold Statesman, or How to Rebrand a Nation While the World Burns By Our Correspondent in a Café That Still Pretends Espresso Can Fix Everything HELSINKI — Somewhere between the reindeer salami and the 24-hour daylight, Alexander Stubb was sworn in this month as Finland’s 13th president. Officially, the ceremony was…
Finland: A Frozen Fable of Nordic Exceptionalism and the World’s Quiet Envy By Dave’s Locker Global Affairs Desk HELSINKI—On the map, Finland looks like Europe’s afterthought, a modest sliver wedged between the bear-hug of Russia and the polite fist-bump of Sweden. Yet this nation of 5.6 million has spent the past decade serving the rest…
Emily Blunt: Britain’s Quietly Weaponized Export in an Age of Global Melodrama By Davide Lockhart, Senior Correspondent for Things That Probably Matter Less Than They Appear If nations are brands, the United Kingdom currently sells three things the world still willingly buys: overpriced gin, excuses for empire nostalgia, and Emily Blunt. While Parliament implodes with…
Ric Grenell, the man who once served as Donald Trump’s acting Director of National Intelligence for the length of a European vacation, has lately been auditioning for a far grander role: self-appointed viceroy of the entire planet. From Tirana to Tegucigalpa, foreign ministries now keep a “Grenell folder” next to the one marked “Act of…
If the geopolitical weather map is to be believed, the planet is currently an overheated mess of melting glaciers, rising sea walls, and TikTok dances. Yet somewhere in the middle of that planetary panic attack, Amanda Shires—singer-songwriter, fiddle assassin, occasional superhero cape tailor—keeps showing up with a four-string weapon, a sardonic grin, and songs sharp…
Battlefield 6: The World’s Most Expensive Geopolitical Mood Ring By Dave’s Locker International Desk It’s 3:14 a.m. in Reykjavík when the servers finally breathe, and somewhere in Lagos a teenager wearing noise-canceling headphones learns the Swedish word for “cover me.” That’s the moment you realize Battlefield 6 isn’t really a videogame—it’s the planet’s least supervised…
Wolverine Game: How a Grumpy Canadian Became the World’s Favorite Therapy Mascot The first trailer dropped at 3 a.m. in Helsinki, 9 p.m. in São Paulo, and during somebody’s lunch break in Ulaanbaatar—because in 2024, simultaneous planetary insomnia is the closest thing we have to a shared religion. Within minutes, #WolverineGame was trending from Lagos…
Somewhere between the turquoise shallows of Cancún and the fluorescent purgatory of duty-free, a 72-year-old Mexican engineer named Fernando Chico Pardo keeps cashing in on humanity’s inability to sit still. While the rest of us queue for overpriced sunscreen that promises to ward off both UV rays and existential dread, Chico Pardo’s holding companies quietly…
The planet woke up last Tuesday to the news that the Illuminati—sorry, Eidos-Montréal—has decided humanity is finally mature enough for another round of Deus Ex. “Deus Ex Remastered” is coming, a phrase that now circulates through Group DMs from Lagos to Lisbon like a highly contagious meme or a new variant of something we’d all…
