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…
“Pakistan vs Oman” sounds, at first glance, like the geopolitical equivalent of two middle-managers bickering over the thermostat. Yet the phrase has been ricocheting across cricket forums, foreign-policy Slack channels, and—because nothing escapes late-stage capitalism—crypto-discord servers promising “risk-free arbitrage” on the match outcome. Which is to say, the confrontation du jour is ostensibly a cricket…
Fire Emblem: The Geopolitical Classroom Nobody Asked For By Our Correspondent Who Has Watched Too Many UN Security Council Re-runs Geneva—While diplomats in this city exhaust themselves arguing over comma placement in sanctions resolutions, a quieter form of international conflict mediation unfolds on 3-inch OLED screens from Manila to Montevideo. Nintendo’s Fire Emblem—once a Japan-only…
Borderlands 4 Reviews: The Planet is Burning but at Least We Have Loot Boxes By Dave’s Locker International Affairs Desk The embargo finally lifted at 00:01 GMT, which—given the state of global synchronization these days—meant that a bleary-eyed reviewer in Lagos, another in Mumbai, and a third somewhere in the radioactive fog formerly known as…
**Stellar Guidance for a Burning World: Your Daily Horoscope for September 12, 2025** *By Our Correspondent, Somewhere Between Reason and the Kármán Line* — **Aries (March 21–April 19)** Today, your ruling planet Mars squares off with Neptune, which is astrology-speak for “you’ll charge into a diplomatic minefield wearing clown shoes.” Expect to accidentally escalate tensions…
China’s Photovoltaic Juggernaut: When the World’s Factory Builds the World’s Future By the time your phone finishes loading this article, China will have bolted another acre of solar panels onto something. A desert, a fish pond, a coal-mine-turned-lagoon—pick a surface, any surface. The People’s Republic now produces roughly 80 % of every photovoltaic cell on…
From the Bullet Train to the Bounty Hunter: *Metroid Prime 4* and the World’s Longest, Quietest Crisis Tokyo, Japan – Early yesterday Nintendo released a 56-second teaser for *Metroid Prime 4: Beyond* that detonated across the planet with the polite force of a Swiss avalanche. Within minutes, #SamusAran trended in 38 languages. Seoul’s KTX bullet-train…
**Pak vs Oma: The Geopolitical Cage Match Nobody Ordered** In the grand theater of international relations, where nuclear powers play chess with human civilization and small nations desperately try not to become pawns, we occasionally witness a spectacle so absurd it makes one question whether the simulation is finally glitching. Enter the latest diplomatic thriller:…
