Global Pop Culture

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    gege akutami new manga

    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…

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    the weeknd

    The Weeknd Goes Global: How One Torontonian Made the Entire Planet Feel Like 3 A.M. on a Tuesday By the time you read this, Abel Tesfaye—known to customs officials and streaming algorithms alike as “The Weeknd”—has already soundtracked another rotation of Earth. His synth-soaked tales of after-hours heartbreak have become the unofficial dial tone for…

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    selena gomez

    Selena Gomez and the Global Supply Chain of Tears By Our Jaded Correspondent Who Has Spent Too Much Time in Airport Lounges There is, apparently, no corner of the planet where a 31-year-old Texan can quietly release a Spanish-language single without causing seismic tremors across three continents. When Selena Gomez dropped “Baila Conmigo” back in…

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    jenna ortega

    Jenna Ortega and the Global Afterlife of Wednesday Addams By a Correspondent Who Once Interviewed a Somali Pirate About Streaming Royalties Somewhere between the first TikTok dance craze and the fourteenth UN Security Council briefing on cultural imperialism, Jenna Ortega became the inadvertent face of planetary adolescence. The 20-year-old actress—born in California to Mexican-Puerto Rican…

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    dwayne johnson the smashing machine

    Dwayne “The Smashing Machine” Johnson: When a Hollywood Titan Picks Up a Hammer, the World Listens By the time the first grainy TikTok clip surfaced—Dwayne Johnson, all 260 pounds of him, demolishing a cinder-block wall with a single, oddly elegant swing—global markets had already priced in the tremor. Tokyo’s Nikkei dipped 0.4% on “construction-volatility fears.”…

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    hailee steinfeld

    PARIS — In a world where geopolitical alliances crumble faster than a croissant in July, one American export has managed to retain diplomatic immunity: Hailee Steinfeld’s face. The 27-year-old singer-actress-emoji-enthusiast has quietly become the soft-power equivalent of an aircraft carrier, bobbing along the 24-hour news cycle projecting cultural hegemony without ever firing a shot—unless you…