Intel Stock: The Chip That Fell Off the Geopolitical Table By our correspondent in Taipei, nursing a vending-machine coffee that tastes like melted circuit board Word out of Wall Street—and its various international franchises from Shanghai to the City of London—is that Intel’s share price has become the financial equivalent of a cracked motherboard: technically…
**The Global Puzzle: How Today’s ‘Connections’ Hint Became the World’s Favorite Five-Minute Distraction** While nuclear powers posture and oceans rise at their leisure, humanity has found its latest collective obsession in a simple word puzzle—a charming reminder that when faced with existential dread, we’ll gamify anything that offers the illusion of control. The New York…
**The Global Intelligence Bazaar: Where Everyone’s Buying What You’re Selling** In the grand marketplace of human paranoia, intelligence has become the hottest commodity—right after bottled water and the illusion of privacy. From the shadowy corridors of Langley to the fluorescent-lit basements of Tehran, the world’s spies are working overtime to discover what everyone already knows:…
**From Motown to Moscow: How a Humble Baseball Schedule Explains the Collapse of Western Civilization** The Detroit Tigers released their 2024 schedule this week, a document that international observers have greeted with the same enthusiasm typically reserved for quarterly IMF reports on emerging market debt crises. Which, coincidentally, is exactly how one should view America’s…
LONDON—Somewhere between a Brexit-themed fever dream and the last functional espresso machine in the West End, the musical “Waitress” has rolled out its pastry-laden national tour of the United Kingdom. Yes, that Waitress: the one where a battered woman named Jenna escapes an abusive marriage by baking cathartic pies with names like “My Husband’s a…
Wycombe Wanderers and the Beautiful Art of Glorious Failure By Dave’s International Desk of Diminishing Returns High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire – population 125,000, elevation 100 meters above sea level, elevation of expectations approximately three pints above sea level on a Tuesday. To the uninitiated, Wycombe Wanderers FC is a modest English club currently marooned in League…
Gleb Savchenko, the Human Metaphor We Never Ordered By Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk Somewhere between the Danube and the Dolby Theatre, Gleb Savchenko has spent two decades proving that a six-pack can double as a diplomatic passport. The Russian-born, U.S-naturalised ballroom dancer has cha-cha-cha’d from Moscow’s parquet floors to the fluorescent purgatory of Dancing with…
Black Rabbit: Netflix’s New Gamble and the Global Art of Selling Nostalgia with a Side of Existential Dread PARIS—If you spotted bleary-eyed commuters on the Métro this week, staring at their phones as though the screen held the secret to a painless death, odds are they were binge-watching Black Rabbit. Netflix’s eight-part limited series—equal parts…
The World Watches, Mildly Terrified, as “Your Party” Expands Beyond Borders By Special Correspondent, Dave’s Locker PARIS—Somewhere between the seventh espresso and the eighth apology for the espresso machine being broken again, the news broke: “Your Party” has gone global. Not the rinky-dink house gathering you promised the neighbors would wrap up by 10 p.m.,…
The phrase “woman in mind” sounds like the opening line of a noir voice-over: She had legs that went clear to next Tuesday and a geopolitical agenda that could sink a small island nation. In reality, it’s less Bogart and more Davos-by-Zoom. From Reykjavík to Riyadh, the phrase now circulates in policy papers, TEDx after-parties,…
**The World’s Favorite Spectator Sport: Watching America Argue With Itself About Free Speech** *By Our Correspondent Who’s Watched This Rodeo From 42 Different Countries* GENEVA — While Americans feverishly debate whether their First Amendment rights extend to shouting racial slurs on social media or refusing to bake cakes for weddings that offend their delicate sensibilities,…
Chequers: The Buckinghamshire Bungalow Where Empires Go to Die Quietly By the time any international correspondent has filed copy from Chequers, the 16th-century manor house in the Chilterns looks less like a weekend retreat and more like a hospice ward for British political ambition. The wood-panelled drawing rooms, the manicured lawns, the air thick with…
