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Late last week, the Esports World Cup – a known vehicle for Saudi government sportswashing – announced that popular location guessing game GeoGuessr will be participating in its upcoming Esports World Cup Festival tournament program, putting the game’s community in an uncomfortable position not unlike the pretzel fighting game players found themselves contorted into a couple months ago. Difference is, GeoGuessr might constitute one of the most geopolitically aware gaming communities on the planet as a result of what it’s, you know, about. Outcry was immediate, and now GeoGuessr map makers have taken their protest to the next level.

Today a conglomerate of map makers published a statement on the game’s official subreddit announcing a full-on blackout of many popular maps.

"We, the creators of a considerable share of GeoGuessr’s most popular maps, have decided to make our maps unplayable in protest of GeoGuessr AB’s decision to host a World Championship wildcard tourney at the Esports World Cup (EWC) in Riyadh,” reads the note, attributed to the GeoGuessr mapping community. “The GeoGuessr community is diverse and includes many members of groups that would be harshly persecuted were they to live in Saudi Arabia. In solidarity with those currently residing in Saudi Arabia while being subject to oppression, as well as members of the community who would feel and be unsafe attending the tournament in Riyadh, we have decided to black out our maps by replacing all their previous locations with random garbage locations, rendering them unplayable.”

The map makers went on to say that the blackout will continue until GeoGuessr’s developers take action: “Specifically, we demand that GeoGuessr cancels its wildcard event in Saudi Arabia and commits to not hosting any events there as long as it continues its oppressive regime.”

Photographing the Milky Way is a journey through time, space, and imagination.

While we can only see a small part of the Milky Way with our own eyes, photography allows us to uncover its hidden beauty—showing details, colors, and patterns in the night sky that usually go unnoticed. But beyond the camera and technique, it’s the photographer’s creativity, patience, and sense of wonder that truly bring these images to life.

Now in its 8th edition, our Milky Way Photographer of the Year brings together 25 of the most stunning night sky images captured around the world—and beyond. This year’s collection features a unique Milky Way image taken from space aboard the International Space Station, alongside captivating views from rarely photographed locations such as Chad, Northern Argentina, Socotra Island, Namibia, Australia, New Zealand, and more.

You’ll also see the Milky Way paired with celestial events like a comet, a meteor shower, and a lunar eclipse, showing just how dynamic and magical our night sky can be.

Get ready for an interstellar journey through deserts, mountains, islands, and skies unlike any you’ve seen before—always with the Milky Way as your guide.

There are currently 43.7 million refugees worldwide. These are people who have been forced to flee their home countries due to severe threats to their lives, human rights and basic needs. Yet, having fled in search of safety, they have not always found it. Instead, the vast majority live in squalid and dangerous camps or face destitution in urban areas in regions neighbouring their own states in the Global South. In these conditions, refugees continue to face severe human rights violations. A small minority undertake perilous journeys to find adequate safety in the Global North. Thousands lose their lives on the way, every year.

How should states in the Global North respond to this situation? This question polarises debate. Some philosophers, like Peter Singer, argue that states must admit refugees until the point of societal collapse; others argue that states are not necessarily obligated to admit a single refugee. Some politicians advocate for expansive resettlement, others seek to prevent refugees from seeking asylum at the border, or even deport them. Some citizens march the streets proclaiming ‘refugees welcome here’, others attempt to burn down a hotel with refugees inside. Some states have welcomed more than a million refugees, others build concrete walls and barbed wire fences.

In the face of such volatile disagreement, there is an urgent need for an understanding and agreement on what an ethical response to refugees would be.

To reach agreement on obligations to such refugees, these obligations must themselves be based on widely shared core moral commitments (that is, basic commitments fundamental to common morality, as well as endorsed by all plausible normative ethical theories and the Abrahamic religions, to which the majority of the world adheres). The first commitment is the moral prohibition on harming or violating the rights of innocent people without substantial justification. For example, it is widely accepted that it would be wrong to physically abuse and then imprison an innocent person without trial for no adequate reason. This commitment grounds our negative moral obligations: obligations to not perform acts that would harm or violate the rights of innocent people. Such negative obligations are widely agreed to be particularly strong.

The second commitment is the principle (sometimes called the humanitarian or Samaritan principle) that if an innocent person is in desperate need of help and you can easily help them at little cost to yourself, it would be wrong to refuse to help and let them needlessly suffer. To take Singer’s famous example, if you saw a small child drowning in a shallow pond, and you could save them simply by pulling them to safety, it would be wrong to do nothing, stand by and let them drown. This commitment grounds our positive moral obligations: obligations to perform acts that would help or otherwise benefit others. These positive obligations are also widely accepted.

So what are the obligations specifically owed to refugees? To answer this question, it is essential to focus our attention on the situation and experiences of refugees themselves. This will reveal morally significant features that ought to be recognised and taken into account, thereby helping us understand our obligations towards them. Once understood, these obligations will form the components of what an ethical response towards refugees would be.

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” says Blanche DuBois, the tragic heroine of Tennessee Williams’ classic American play A Streetcar Named Desire.

Like other resonant phrases, people often forget the context. Blanche says this to two psychiatric nurses as she is about to be forcibly removed to what those days was called a ‘lunatic asylum’.

Words can take on a life of their own.

It is entirely plausible that Donald Trump, when he constantly compares US asylum seekers to serial killer Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, is confusing these two uses of the word ‘asylum’.

It could also be plausible that Keir Starmer’s advisors did not think through the various ramifications of what they meant when they coined the catchphrase “island of strangers” to warn of the dangers of unchecked immigration.

This is not the first time that a prime ministerial speechwriter has culled more brickbats than bouquets. Neither Margaret Thatcher, when she said “there is no such thing as society”, nor Theresa May, when she spoke of “citizens of nowhere”, probably realised how much these ideas would define their premierships.

But there may be reasons other than migration why people feel estranged in the UK today.

The video game industry has made the jump to $80, first with Nintendo and Mario Kart World, then with Microsoft and its price hike announcement that will kick in this holiday season. Could Borderlands 4 follow suit?

Publisher 2K Games and parent company Take-Two have so-far remained vague on whether they will go to $80, and Randy Pitchford has insisted the decision is out of his control. But, responding to one concerned fan on social media, Pitchford set the cat among the pigeons by saying that if you’re a “real fan, you’ll find a way to make it happen.”

Here's the exchange:

"Randy, this game better not be 80 dollars. Don't take that risk, a lot of gamers aren't gonna pay 80 dollars and feed this notion of constant increase of the price tag. You are the CEO, you have some say with the price when it comes to your publisher."

And here's Randy Pitchford's response:

"A) Not my call. B) If you're a real fan, you'll find a way to make it happen. My local game store had Starflight for Sega Genesis for $80 in 1991 when I was just out of high school working minimum wage at an ice cream parlor in Pismo Beach and I found a way to make it happen."

As you’d expect, Pitchford’s comment has sparked a vociferous response.

For Palestinians living in the West Bank, stepping onto the roads of the territory occupied by Israel is a daily journey of resilience.

With movement shackled by a complex web of Israeli checkpoints and barriers, homegrown mapping solutions have become their lifelines. These digital networks help Palestinians reach work, schools, and hospitals as blockades have continued to increase since the latest Israel-Gaza war started in October 2023.

Apps such as Doroob Navigator and Azmeh, which crowdsource traffic data and information about road closures, guide them through the numerous obstacles they face in their commutes. The situation has worsened dramatically in recent months. Simple trips that once took 45 minutes now stretch beyond three hours, with some routes completely sealed, commuters say.

Before the war, the UN counted about 565 obstacles across the West Bank. Today, the app Azmeh, Arabic for traffic jams, tracks more than 800 checkpoints and barriers based on updates from its 60,000-plus users, one of the developers of the app told Rest of World on condition of anonymity, fearing Israeli reprisal. In October and November of 2023, 8,000 Palestinians installed the Azmeh app every single day, the person said.

There are 12 recognized Indigenous groups encompassing around 51,700 people across Putumayo, including the larger groups of Awá, Camëntsä, Inga, Kichwa and Siona. Among these communities, there are an estimated 350 Indigenous guards, each unique in their customs and centering mandates on protecting their communities, cultures and the lands under their stewardship.

Traditionally unarmed, they legitimize Indigenous authority on their own territories, Yaiguaje explained. All generations and genders participate. Elders pass on ancestral knowledge, language and a sense of social responsibility to youth for their future roles as community leaders amid the industrialization of the Amazon and the pressures of individualistic and consumerist lifestyles.

“We are armed with spirituality, valor and courage,” Yaiguaje said. “We demonstrate respect to our community and our territory.”

Collective responsibilities vary. Territorial patrols take charge of mapping and monitoring environmental data, identifying medicinal plants and tracking animal welfare. Across different reservations, Indigenous guards may coordinate emergency response from pandemic logistics, to mutual aid after floods or landslides.

They are a mediator and buffer for conflict. Members of the guard may accompany community leaders and land defenders in public events or on errands to provide a sense of security amid the persistent threats to their lives. According to internal norms, they may act as an alternative to colonial carceral systems like police or private security to enact justice and reintegrate offenders, including former combatants from Indigenous communities.

Land is more meaningful than just a quantity of acres, Yaiguaje explained, and the Indigenous guard cultivates a spiritual sense of control over homelands that are fragmented across reservations. This sense of wellbeing is critical not only to sustaining the Siona’s cultural and spiritual integrity, but for maintaining morale in a fight against seemingly insurmountable opponents.

“Much of Putumayo has already been licensed for exploration or exploitation,” María del Rosario Arango Zambrano, Colombian human rights lawyer working with the Forest Peoples Programme explained. Companies that have entrenched in the Amazon basin have included Colombia’s Ecopetrol, China’s Emerald Energy, Amerisur and its Chilean successor GeoPark, and Canada’s Gran Tierra.

The fossil fuel economy is in a tenuous place as Colombia is intent on transitioning toward renewable energy. In 2023, Colombian President Gustavo Petro banned new oil and gas exploration in the country. Later that year, Colombia endorsed the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty. Colombia has also pushed forward on enforcing a domestic fracking ban despite longstanding opposition from the oil lobby.

Recently, I accidentally overdrew my checking account. That hadn’t happened to me in years—the last time was in 2008, when I was running a small business with no safety net in the middle of a financial crisis. Back then, an overdrawn account meant eating canned soup and borrowing cash from friends only slightly better off than me. This time, I didn’t need to worry—I was able to move money from a different account. And yet all the old feelings—heart palpitations, the seizure of reason in my brain—came right back again.

I have one of those wearable devices that monitors my heart rate, sleep quality, activity level, and calories burned. Mine is called an Oura ring, and at the end of the day, it told me what I already knew: I had been “unusually stressed.” When this happens, the device asks you to log the source of your stress. I scrolled through the wide array of options—diarrhea, difficulty concentrating, erectile dysfunction, emergency contraceptives. I could not find “financial issues,” or anything remotely related to money, listed.

According to a poll from the American Psychiatric Association, financial issues are the No. 1 cause of anxiety for Americans: 58 percent say they are very or somewhat anxious about money. How, I wondered, was it possible that this had not occurred to a single engineer at Oura?

For all of the racial, gender, and sexual reckonings that America has undergone over the past decade, we have yet to confront the persistent blindness and stigma around class. When people struggle to understand the backlash against elite universities, or the Democrats’ loss of working-class voters, or the fact that more and more Americans are turning away from mainstream media, this is why.

At DICE and GDC this year I heard talk of a trend in game development that sent a chill down my spine: "deprofessionalization." As A16z marketing partner Ryan K. Rigney defines it, deprofessionalization is a phenomenon driven by the overperformance of older titles (particularly free-to-play live service games), large studios struggling to drive sales, and the outsized success of some solo developers and small teams.

These three forces, he argues, will combine to "drive career professionals from the traditional, professionalized side of the games industry."

"Some of these people will decide to go indie," he continues. "Others will leave gaming altogether. And in between there’s a vast spectrum of irregular working arrangements available."

Deprofessionalization is built on the back of devaluing labor

Rigney offered some extra nuance on his "deprofessionalization" theory in an email exchange we had before PAX. He predicted that marketing roles at studios would be "the first" on the chopping block, followed by "roles that seem replaceable to management (even if they're not)."

"The winners will be the creative renegades. I'm talking about the people making work that would have never gotten greenlit at one of these bigger publishers in the first place. Some of these creatives will start their own studio, or dabble in side projects...This is the only creative industry on the planet where one person can make $100 million making something by themselves."

That held up in my survey of the games boothing at PAX. The developers of Mycopunk and Cat Secretary had some of the larger teams on the floor of about 5-6 people. Indie publisher Playism was showing off a number of excellent-looking games like Mind Diver and Break Arts III. Executive producer Shunji Mizutani told me the average team size the company is looking to back is around 1-3 developers (though he said it's not a hard and fast rule).

[...]his key example of a post-deprofessionalization game developer is veteran developer Aaron Rutledge, a former lead designer on League of Legends, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4, and Apex Legends. After leaving Respawn Entertainment in 2024 he founded a consultancy firm Area Denial, acting as a "gun for hire" for studios.

Rutledge deserves his success, and the life of a traveling creative called on by other studios sounds romantic. But as a foundation for game development, it's a framework that celebrates the few over the many. It narrows which roles are considered "essential" for making great games (often designers or programmers) and treats other positions as somehow less essential. You could see someone like Wehle hiring someone like Rutledge to bring some of that triple-A experience to a small game.

But that feels like the polar ends of who can benefit in the deprofessionalized world—developers with the stability to swing big for big-shot ideas, and programmers or designers with deep career experience that can be called in like a group of noble mercenaries. People in between will be left out.

The Southern accent, which has many variations, is fading in some areas of the South as people migrate to the region from other parts of the U.S. and around the world. A series of research papers published in December documented the diminishment of the regional accent among Black residents of the Atlanta area, white working-class people in the New Orleans area and people who grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina.

More than 5.8 million people have moved into the U.S. South so far in the 2020s, more than four times the combined total of the nation’s three other regions. Linguists don’t believe mass media has played a significant role in the language change, which tends to start in urban areas and radiate out to more rural places.

The classical white Southern accent in the Atlanta area and other parts of the urban South peaked with baby boomers born between 1946 and 1964 and then dropped off with Gen Xers born between 1965 and 1980 and subsequent generations, in large part because of the tremendous in-migration of people in the second half of the 20th century.

It has been replaced among the youngest speakers in the 21st century with a dialect that was first noticed in California in the late 1980s, according to recent research from linguists at the University of Georgia, Georgia Tech and Brigham Young University. That dialect, which also was detected in Canada, has become a pan-regional accent as it has spread to other parts of the U.S., including Boston, New York and Michigan, contributing to the diminishment of their regional accents.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, the trigger point in the decline of the Southern accent was the opening in 1959 of the Research Triangle Park, a sprawling complex of research and technology firms that attracted tens of thousands of highly educated workers from outside the South. White residents born after 1979, a generation after the Research Triangle’s establishment, typically don’t talk with a Southern accent, linguist Sean Lundergan wrote in a paper published in December.

Often, outsiders wrongly associate a Southern accent with a lack of education, and some younger people may be trying to distance themselves from that stereotype.

It feels to me like the closer we get to the Nintendo Switch 2's June launch and the, apparently, $80 games associated with it, the more people are fighting with themselves over what is and isn't worth it. But at least Sony veteran and previous head of PlayStation Indies Shuhei Yoshida is free from inner turmoil – he thinks relatively expensive, high quality video games are unequivocally necessary.

"I don't believe that every game has to be priced the same," Yoshida continues. "Each game has different value it provides, or the size of budget. I totally believe it's up to the publisher – or developers self-publishing – decision to price their product to the value that they believe they are bringing in.

Yoshida continues to say that, "In terms of actual price of $70 or $80, for really great games, I think it will still be a steal in terms of the amount of entertainment that the top games, top quality games bring to people compared to other form of entertainment."

"As long as people choose carefully how they spend their money," he continues, "I don't think they should be complaining."