‘They’re nervous about playing the game’

‘World of Warcraft is changing. I’m nervous about what that means.’

Louie Villalobos at USA Today

World of Warcraft’s new expansion means “just about every aspect of the game is changing or being tweaked,” says Louie Villalobos. If “you don’t play the game, it’s hard to describe just how massive and consequential these changes are going to be.” The new expansion “could set the game up for success for the next several years under a new foundation of systems and features. Or it could all collapse if the players reject it.”

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‘An old-fashioned cure for fading trust in government’

Clive Crook at Bloomberg

The “fact of diminished trust is hardly a revelation, least of all in countries such as the U.S., where anti-establishment populists have turned politics upside down,” says Clive Crook. Good “macroeconomic management — not the same as ‘big government’ or ‘small government’ — promotes trust,” and the “main test of sound macroeconomic policy is low unemployment.” But “there’s another more unsettling implication: Declining trust will be self-reinforcing if, as seems likely, it makes sound macroeconomic policy more difficult.”

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‘How the Global South got caught in the West’s prison pipeline’

Baz Dreisinger and Alexus McNally at Time

Immigration facilities “reveal how a global vision of mass incarceration is spreading, one cellblock at a time,” say Baz Dreisinger and Alexus McNally. These “facilities illustrate a growing obsession with prison construction.” This “expansion is at least partly financed — even after the Trump administration’s major cuts to the U.S. foreign aid budget — by the U.S. and the European Union,” and “each of these facilities divert resources away from more effective and humane approaches.”

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‘The Gaza genocide has not ended. It has only changed its form.’

Hassan Abo Qamar at The Nation

After “two years of genocide” in Gaza, the “American president’s deal has not fully ended the suffering, though it has paused some of it,” says Hassan Abo Qamar. But “Israel still controls crossings, convoy movements, and the pace at which aid enters,” and this “suffocating blockade makes a lasting recovery impossible.” The “ceasefire did not bring relief but revealed the cruelty of leaving people to face their fate alone.” Many “now feel that this suffering is their destiny.”

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