Ego Nwodim and the Global Comedy Supply Chain: How One Nigerian-American Woman Became a Rare Export the World Still Buys By the time the satellite feed reaches Lagos, the laughter has already been compressed, monetised and tax-optimised in Delaware. Somewhere in that digital crate sits Ego Nwodim—SNL’s current longest-tenured featured player, biochemistry degree politely gathering…
Marc-André Fleury and the Great Geopolitical Face-Off By our man in the crease, watching the world slide five-hole MONTREAL—While diplomats in Geneva trade barbs over whose turn it is to nearly start World War III, a 38-year-old goalie from Sorel-Tracy, Quebec, has quietly become the most reliable border guard on the planet. Marc-André Fleury’s latest…
London, Once Again, Shows the World How to Lose Gracefully By Our Man in Terminal 5, nursing a £7.50 flat white and residual jet-lag LONDON—This foggy island capital has always been a reliable barometer for global mood swings, and the latest needle twitch is characteristically British: equal parts polite panic and theatrical indifference. In the…
Fatal Frame 2: A Global Séance in Pixels, or How Japan Taught the World to Fear Its Own Camera Roll By Our Bureau Chief of Supernatural Trade Relations, currently hiding in a Kyoto capsule hotel that still smells of 2003. Kyoto, Japan – While the rest of the planet was busy inventing selfie sticks and…
A micro-cap company from Plano, Texas, just reminded the planet that the twenty-first-century gold rush isn’t in the Yukon—it’s in whatever widget happens to rhyme with “artificial intelligence” this week. Rezolve AI (ticker: RGTI, formerly the less glamorous “Armada Acquisition Corp.”) has become the latest contestant in the global sweepstakes where venture capitalists, pension funds,…
The Planet’s Newest Theater of War Is a Pixelated One A dispatch from the frontlines of Helldivers 2, where democracy is delivered 120 fps at a time By our man in the cheap seats, watching the world burn on a 4K monitor GENEVA—While the Security Council bickers over commas, a different multilateral coalition has spent…
Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle Anime – How a Kyoto Basement Became a Global Geopolitical Flashpoint By the time you finish this sentence, another government will have issued a travel advisory about Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle. Not because the movie is dangerous—although the decapitation count is brisk enough to make the Hague reach for a notepad—but…
Donkey Kong Bananza DLC: The Barrel Heard ’Round the World By our man at the console, Berlin bureau, with a Wi-Fi connection slightly better than Crimea’s Somewhere between the Russian Central Bank’s 21 % emergency rate hike and the news that Bangladeshi garment workers are now paid in mobile-game vouchers, Nintendo quietly dropped the Donkey…
Washington County: Where the World’s Problems Go to Rehearse By Dave’s Foreign Desk Somewhere on the ragged edge of Appalachia, Washington County—Maryland, Pennsylvania, Oregon, take your pick—has quietly perfected the art of being nobody’s headline and everybody’s dress-rehearsal stage. Call it geopolitical karaoke: before the planet tries a crisis for real, it drops by a…
Mega Raichu and the Global Arms Race of Make-Believe By Our Correspondent, somewhere between the ninth circle of fandom and the tenth circle of late-stage capitalism GENEVA—Delegates at this week’s WTO summit barely noticed when the delegate from Fiji slipped out of the plenary hall to queue for a “Mega Raichu” hologram card, one of…
A Dispatch from the Republic of Pokopia By Our Correspondent, filing from the departure lounge of a bankrupt airport where the Wi-Fi is sponsored by a cryptocurrency that just rug-pulled. Word reached the outside world, as it always does, via a grainy TikTok livestream and a hastily deleted LinkedIn post: Pokopia has declared itself. Not…
**Pokémon Pokopia: How a Fictional Utopia Became the Mirror We Deserve** In the grand theater of global absurdities, where reality often outpaces satire, we now find ourselves contemplating Pokémon Pokopia—a place that exists only in the fevered dreams of franchise executives and the hopeful hearts of fans who still believe escapism can be pure. Launched…
