Headlines

Trauma porn: buying and selling someone else’s scam center hell

In January 2026, the Chinese studio Jade Flame released a first-person interactive game on Steam called “Blood Money: Lethal Eden.” For US$8.99, you get to walk through the story of a trafficking victim trapped inside a scam compound in Southeast Asia. By May 2026, the game had

Asia

USDA confirms second screwworm fly found in Texas

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) confirmed a second case of a flesh-eating screwworm parasite in Texas on Friday, as it races to contain and eradicate the outbreak before it severely impacts the cattle population. A New World screwworm was detected in a one-month-old

How Nature Imagined the Figment of You

It is there like a constant whisper, like a ceaseless gust of thought rustling through the canopy of the collective mind: the haunting sense that ours is a particularly difficult time to be alive, that reality today is particularly hard to bear. Such sentiments are errors of

An autopsy of American empire

While Washington’s war with Iran drags on, month after month, without any end in sight, the world is witnessing the very real limits of US global power. As President Donald Trump lurches repeatedly from threats of devastation to promises of peace, it’s becoming increasingly

Asia

Taiwan racing to arm itself as US reliability wanes

With the US increasingly distracted by the Iran war and China becoming more assertive, Taiwan is reshaping its defenses for a more uncertain era. This month, Reuters reported that Taiwan is executing a major strategic defense shift by dramatically expanding its anti-ship

Asia