Tokyo, Wednesday, 3:14 a.m.—while the rest of the planet either sleeps fitfully or doom-scrolls itself into a deeper existential debt, an emergency press conference is underway inside MAPPA’s gleaming headquarters. The topic: an as-yet-untitled Jujutsu Kaisen spin-off that promises, in the words of producer Makoto Kimura, “to explore the morally gray corridors of jujutsu society…
Stacey Williams and the Algorithmic Afterlife By Our Correspondent, Somewhere over the Mid-Atlantic In the grand bazaar of global notoriety, where reputations are bartered for clicks and redemption arcs are sold by the pound, one name has lately been passed from Lagos group chats to Berlin newsrooms with the hushed urgency usually reserved for currency…
Strands Hints: The World’s Newest Guilty Pleasure in a Guilt-Free Wrapper By Dave’s International Affairs Correspondent, nursing a lukewarm espresso in Terminal 3 Somewhere between the collapse of a second regional bank and the third coup rumor of the week, the planet discovered it could still be distracted by a daily puzzle that looks like…
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…
The Curious Case of Paul Doyle: A Parable for Our Interconnected Age By Dave’s Locker Foreign Correspondent Dateline: Somewhere between Heathrow’s Terminal 5 and a half-functional Zoom call Paul Doyle, if the name rings any bells at all, is the mild-mannered Irish civil servant who accidentally set off a trans-continental domino cascade last Tuesday. One…
Molly Smith and the Great Global Rebranding of Absolutely Nothing By Our Correspondent, still jet-lagged in Terminal 3 Dateline: Somewhere between Reykjavik and regret Somewhere in the churning stomach of international capitalism, Molly Smith has become the latest placebo we swallow when the world’s indigestion flares. Who is Molly Smith? Pick a continent and you’ll…
September 3, 2024 Dispatches from the Puzzle Desk By A. Corvo, Senior Correspondent-at-Large PARIS—While half the planet was busy arguing whether the latest BRICS summit would finally topple the dollar (spoiler: it won’t, the greenback is like a cockroach with a Black Card), the rest of humanity did what it always does when existential dread…
Borderlands 4 and the Great Global Countdown: How a Loot-Shooter Became a Geopolitical Barometer By the time you finish reading this paragraph, at least three more Reddit threads will have declared, with unshakable certainty, that Borderlands 4 will launch on 14 September 2025. By dinner, that date will be debunked, re-credited to a “leaked Nvidia…
Jimmy Floyd Is Already Everywhere By the time you finish this sentence, the man, the meme, and the metaphysical migraine known as “Jimmy Floyd” will have colonized another time zone. If the name sounds like a budget airline pilot who moonlights in reggaetón, congratulations—you’ve grasped the global absurdity better than most foreign ministries. Because while…
Gege Akutami’s Next Manga: The Planet Holds Its Breath While Shōnen Jump’s C-suite Holds Its Wallet By Dave’s Locker International Desk When Shūeisha confirmed last night that Gege Akutami’s follow-up to *Jujutsu Kaisen* will debut “after a short break,” global markets reacted with the kind of cool rationality usually reserved for crypto booms or North…
The Blackout That United—and Divided—Us All By A. M. Vance, International Correspondent, Dave’s Locker SÃO PAULO—At 09:17 GMT last Tuesday, the PlayStation Network coughed, sputtered, and finally flat-lined. Across 72 countries, 117 million registered accounts watched their digital worlds evaporate into a single, smug error code: WS-116520-5. In a heartbeat, Fortnite warriors in Jakarta found…
Rhode: The Lipstick Empire the World Never Knew It Needed By Dave’s Foreign Correspondent, still jet-lagged in Terminal 3 Somewhere between the collapse of the Turkish lira and the quiet implosion of another crypto exchange, the planet has paused to obsess over Rhode—an American cosmetics line whose name sounds like a mispronounced Greek island but…
