MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE — While the United Nations was busy congratulating itself on yet another non-binding climate accord, and while the world’s defense contractors toasted record quarterly earnings, a 12-year-old in the American South was quietly building a thermonuclear reactor in what used to be his parents’ bonus room. Jackson Oswalt’s homemade fusion device—an artful tangle…
Nintendo: The Last Empire Built on Joy (and 8-Bit Stockholm Syndrome) By Dave’s Locker International Desk Kyoto, Japan – While the rest of the planet rehearses its own fiery reboot via climate summits, trade wars, and algorithmic coups, a 135-year-old playing-card company quietly sells $15 billion worth of escapism every year. Nintendo, that stubbornly cheerful…
Rockstar Whispers, Planet Stops: The Global Freak-Out Over a Video-Game Launch Date By “Jet-Lagged” Javier Morales, Senior Correspondent, Dave’s Locker Foreign Desk Somewhere between a drought-stricken olive grove in Andalusia and a flooded subway entrance in Jakarta, the earth’s collective attention span pivoted last week to one burning question: “When does GTA 6 actually drop?”…
iPhone 17: Because the Planet Wasn’t Dystopian Enough Already By Our Correspondent in a Bunker Somewhere Neutral-ish GENEVA—Apple’s marketing department, fresh from convincing half the Northern Hemisphere that “courage” means removing headphone jacks, has now confirmed the iPhone 17 will launch this autumn in a palette of colors named after endangered species. (Arctic Fox White…
Yahoo Fantasy: The Last Empire Still Flying a 1990s Flag By Our Man in the Cloud Somewhere between the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of TikTok micro-celebrities, Yahoo Fantasy Sports carved out a digital fiefdom where grown humans trade imaginary athletes like tulip bulbs in 1637. From Singapore to São Paulo, 8.9…
Downdetector: the world’s most reliable panic barometer by our roaming correspondent, still waiting for the Wi-Fi to load in the departure lounge Every civilization eventually builds a shrine to its own fragility. The Romans had aqueducts, the Victorians had rail timetables, and we—citizens of the glowing rectangle—have Downdetector. Visit the site at 03:12 local time…
Stephen Ehikian, a name that sounds like it should belong to a Bond villain’s accountant, has quietly become the most interesting man in Silicon Valley—and, by extension, the world. While you were doom-scrolling about melting ice caps and the latest celebrity divorce, Ehikian has been stitching together the global digital nervous system with the nonchalance…
Figma’s Quarterly Miracle: How a Free Design Tool Convinced the Planet to Pay Rent for Pixels By Dave Correspondent-at-Large, wired on lukewarm coffee in a hotel whose Wi-Fi is sponsored by regret San Francisco, Wednesday, 2 a.m. local—The earnings call began with the obligatory “record-breaking” superlative, continued through a PowerPoint deck that looked suspiciously like…
007 First Light: When the Sun Never Sets on British Nostalgia By Correspondent at Large, Dave’s Locker Global Desk The codename “007 First Light” sounds like the title of an overpriced artisanal gin, but it is in fact the freshly unclassified designation for the United Kingdom’s next-generation signals-intelligence satellite constellation, launched last week from a…
Geneva, Switzerland — While diplomats at the Palais des Nations were busy drafting strongly-worded press releases about climate, trade, and whatever crisis will trend next week, a far more consequential summit was taking place three tram stops away. Inside a pop-up showroom that smelled faintly of espresso and existential dread, Garmin unveiled the Fenix 8…
The Ballad of Streameast: How One More Ghost Ship Sank in the Endless Ocean of Piracy By Dave’s Foreign Desk, somewhere between a cheap hotel minibar and whatever counts as “international waters” these days PARIS—If you listen carefully at 3 a.m. along the Seine, you can almost hear the collective sigh of a million insomniac…
Seoul, South Korea – At 3:14 a.m. local time, when most of this megacity’s 9.7 million residents were asleep, a 14-year-old coder in Gangnam discovered that a Roblox experience titled “Steal a Brainrot” had been quietly translated into Korean, Arabic, Spanish and Tagalog. Within four hours, the game’s concurrent player count leapt from 12,000 to…
