From Warsaw to Las Vegas via Abu Dhabi: Mateusz Gamrot and the Curious Case of the Polish Export That Punches Back By the time most countries are content to sell the world cars, vodka, or at worst a surveillance app, Poland has quietly cornered a niche market in lightweight human projectiles. Enter Mateusz Gamrot—31 years…
The Nasdaq—an acronym that once sounded like a sneeze but now evokes the same Pavlovian salivation in boardrooms from São Paulo to Singapore—has become the de facto mood ring of late-stage capitalism. When its composite index sneezes, central bankers in Frankfurt reach for the tissues, and TikTok day-traders in Lagos mutter prayers to whatever algorithmic…
Shilo Sanders and the Global Theater of Second-Gen Stardom by Our Man in the Cheap Seats, Somewhere Over the Mid-Atlantic When Shilo Sanders sauntered onto the field last season wearing the sort of diamond-studded grill normally reserved for Dubai mall openings, the moment was live-streamed from Boulder to Bangalore, dissected in Seoul sports bars, and…
The Fenway Flea Market vs. The Rogers Centre Souk An International Dispatch on Red Sox vs. Blue Jays, or How Baseball Became a Metaphor for Late-Stage Everything By the time the first pitch left Brayan Bello’s hand in Toronto on Tuesday night, traders in Singapore were already pricing aluminum futures off the over/under on Vladimir…
Dancing With the Stars Time: A Global Pas de Deux Between Apocalypse and Distraction By Dave’s Locker International Desk Somewhere between the melting Arctic and the latest cryptocurrency collapse, humanity has decided that 8 p.m. on a Monday is the perfect hour to watch moderately famous people attempt a paso doble. Welcome, dear planet, to…
White Sox vs. Yankees: A Glorious Proxy War for Everything Wrong with the Planet By Diego Branco-Chen, Senior Correspondent Tokyo—On the surface, it’s just another Tuesday night in Major League Baseball: the Chicago White Sox, a franchise whose last championship predates the fall of the Berlin Wall, versus the New York Yankees, the team your…
Tampa Bay’s Strip-Mall Spartans versus Baltimore’s Post-Industrial Songbirds: A Dispatch from the Edge of the Empire By the time first pitch is thrown at whatever the Rays are calling their ballpark this fiscal quarter, the Earth has already spun through three currency crises, two surprise elections, and one quietly abandoned climate target. Yet 30,000 Floridians…
Pirates vs Reds: A Global Bloodletting in Technicolor From the vantage point of a hotel bar in Singapore—where the air-conditioning hums like a guilty conscience and the barman pours watered-down Manhattans with the solemnity of a UN peacekeeper—it becomes clear that the eternal struggle between Pirates and Reds is less a baseball rivalry and more…
Marlins vs Phillies: A Global Tragedy in Nine Innings Dave’s Locker, International Desk – 23 June 2024 The Miami Marlins and the Philadelphia Phillies are playing a baseball game tonight, and, naturally, the entire planet is pretending to care. From the fluorescent living rooms of Manila to the back-alley bars of Montevideo, humans who have…
Tigers vs Guardians: A Global Cage Match Between the Wild and the Wired By L. Marlowe, Senior Correspondent, Somewhere with Spotty Wi-Fi and Occasional Feline Casualties The phrase “Tigers vs Guardians” sounds like the next Marvel-versus-DC cinematic migraine, but the fight is real, planetary, and—per tradition—rigged against the tigers. From the Sundarbans mangroves to the…
Tel-Aviv—Wednesday, 11:47 p.m. local time, which is 3:47 p.m. in New York, 8:47 p.m. in London, and always exactly “now” on Twitter. The floodlights of Bloomfield Stadium are bathing the Mediterranean in that particular shade of LED orange that makes every player look like an overcooked prawn. The crowd—equal parts hummus-scented hipsters, chain-smoking grandmothers, and…
Emma Thompson, the Oscar-winning auntie you’d trust to babysit the planet, is currently orbiting the globe again—this time not in a flying umbrella but on a carbon-conscious press tour that feels suspiciously like penance for the entire British Empire. From Mumbai multiplexes to Munich talk shows, she is promoting “Good Luck to You, Leo Grande”…
