By 2050, 68% of the global population is projected to live in urban centers, up from 55% today.

The world’s largest megacity, when measured by the combination of satellite imagery and census data, is Guangzhou, China.

Strikingly, the population has boomed by nearly 20-fold in just 50 years driven by China’s rapid economic rise.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Dorothy Neufeld, shows the growth of the world’s megacities, based on data from the European Commission via Our World in Data.

The Rise of the World’s Megacities (1975-2025P)

Below, we show the rise of the top five largest cities worldwide—using satellite imagery and census data—not administrative borders:

Since 1975, the population of Guangzhou has expanded by 40.9 million. It has the equivalent population of the entire country of Canada.

During the 1990s, the city’s population growth accelerated, driven by trade and industrial activity. Located on the Pearl River Delta, north of Hong Kong, it stands as a key port and transportation hub.

Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital and the economic hub of Southeast Asia’s largest economy, has undergone massive expansion. Its population has surged by 29 million over the past five decades, reaching 38.1 million today.

Meanwhile, New Delhi, India has grown 398%, supported by rising incomes and urban migration. By 2030, the city is expected to gain nearly two million more residents, spanning a population of 33.3 million.

To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Authored by J.Ricardo Martins via journal-neo.su,

Europe’s long-standing security framework is undergoing profound strain, increasingly overshadowed by economic instruments that shape geopolitical influence.

This analysis examines how geoeconomic logics are reshaping Europe’s strategic posture and challenging the foundations of its traditional security order.

The Unraveling: How Europe Lost Control of Its Own Security Architecture

The photograph of Steve Witkoff with Vladimir Putin in Moscow is not merely another episode in the long chronicle of American informal diplomacy. It is a symbol of something far more consequential: the definitive erosion of the Euro-Atlantic security architecture that has anchored Europe since 1945. Europe now finds itself a spectator to a negotiation that directly concerns its future but in which it has no meaningful voice.

For decades, European leaders assumed that their security environment was guaranteed through three pillars: American military supremacy, NATO cohesion, and a Russia that could be simultaneously contained and marginalised. The war in Ukraine temporarily sustained this illusion. The European Union interpreted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as validation of the post-1991 Atlantic order, proof that Europe needed more NATO, more American leadership, more defence spending, and more ideological alignment with Washington.

Europe’s tragedy is not that it is being excluded from the negotiations shaping its own future, but that it does not yet fully grasp the depth of its exclusion

But as the conflict entered its later stages, and as new political dynamics emerged in Washington, a deeper reality became visible: Europe’s vision of security was not aligned with America’s long-term strategic trajectory.

Washington seeks to contain China; Europe seeks to contain Russia. Washington looked to the Indo-Pacific; Europe clung to its Eastern frontier. Washington viewed Russia as a potential co-player in global resource extraction, Arctic development, and strategic balancing; Europe continued to frame Russia as a permanent existential enemy.

The result is a form of strategic misalignment, with Europe still operating inside an architecture that Washington no longer fully believes in.

The American Pivot, the European Panic

Donald Trump’s return to the international stage accelerated this divergence dramatically. Trump’s strategic re-imagination of Russia, as an asset rather than an adversary placed Europe in a state of near-panic. His willingness to undermine NATO commitments, his explicit distrust of European leaders, and his understanding of geopolitics as business diplomacy all contribute to Europe’s strategic anxiety.

Trump’s humiliation of Europe is deliberate. By sending Witkoff, an adviser with no diplomatic obligations, to Moscow repeatedly while ignoring Kyiv, Trump signals that the centre of gravity has moved. The peace process will not be mediated through Brussels, Berlin, or Paris; it will be mediated through a Washington–Moscow axis, bypassing European institutions entirely.

Europe’s refusal to speak with Moscow is interpreted in the Kremlin not as principled resistance but as strategic self-sabotage. And Washington, sensing opportunity, is willing to exploit this fracture.

As many analysts warned—both sympathetic and critical—Europe is discovering too late that its security cannot be maintained through moral rhetoric, sanctions, or rearmament without industrial foundations. Europe wants to contain Russia, but it no longer has the political, military, or economic tools to do so.

The Dealmakers: How Trump, Putin, and Business Networks Are Writing Europe Out of Its Own Future

Shadow Diplomacy as the New Geopolitics

Witkoff’s shuttle diplomacy represents a structural shift: diplomacy is no longer the domain of foreign ministries but of political families, corporate intermediaries, and resource-based alliances. This is why Kushner’s presence in Moscow matters profoundly. The December talks were not simply high-level negotiations; they were the emergence of a new system of geopolitical conduct, in which trust between individual power networks outweighs institutional protocols.

The Trump–Putin paradigm is built on three principles: (i) commercial logic over ideological confrontation; (ii) resource extraction as the foundation of geopolitical stability; and (iii) bilateral trust over multilateral institutions.

This is profoundly humiliating for Europe, which traditionally sought legitimacy via multilateralism. For Washington and Moscow, however, Europe’s exclusion is not an oversight but a feature. The old European security architecture depended on Europe’s centrality. The new one does not.

The Economic Heart of the New Architecture

The emerging Washington–Moscow understanding is grounded in four economic pillars:

– Arctic and Northern Sea Route Resource Extraction: Joint participation in Arctic minerals, hydrocarbons, and rare earths is central. The US is far behind Russia in icebreaker capacity and Arctic infrastructure, and cooperation is a pragmatic solution.

– Energy Corridors and Post-War Reconstruction: American investors eye Russian energy as an undervalued frontier market. Simultaneously, reconstruction of Ukraine (potentially funded by frozen Russian assets) creates massive opportunities for US construction and energy firms.

– Reintegrating Russian hydrocarbons into global markets: This is a long-term American objective, both to stabilise global energy prices and to manage China’s growing leverage over Russia.

– Replacing NATO’s military logic with economic interdependence: This is the core of Trump’s thinking: build a Washington–Moscow axis rooted in profitability, thereby reducing the incentive for armed confrontation.

Why Europeans Are Desperate

Because Europe has tied its industrial base to sanctions, decarbonisation, and American military dependency, it is now structurally weaker than both Washington and Moscow in the emerging configuration.

Europe is discovering three painful truths:

– It cannot defend itself without the US. NATO’s European pillars lack ammunition, industrial capacity, and high-end military technology.

– Sanctions have weakened Europe more than Russia. Energy-intensive industries in Germany, Austria, and Italy are relocating to the US. Deindustrialisation is underway in Europe.

– The peace negotiations will not include Europe as a co-author. Europe will receive the final document, but not be invited to shape it.

This is why European strategists are furious: the security architecture that defined the continent is being rewritten over their heads.

After Ukraine: What the New European Security Order Might Look Like

Will NATO survive as Europe’s central pillar?

NATO will not disappear. It remains too deeply institutionalised, too symbolically powerful for Europeans, and too useful for Washington’s basing structures and arms exports. But it will be downgraded, transformed from the core of the European security order into a secondary framework, increasingly dependent on: US political will, a fragmented European defence sector, reduced American enthusiasm for European commitments, and a US–Russia modus vivendi that Europe does not control.

Under a Trump presidency, NATO has become a transactional umbrella, not a strategic alliance. Its credibility will depend entirely on the personal relationship between Trump and Putin—and Europe hates this because it strips the continent of agency.

The Impact of the War and the Coming Peace on Europe’s Architectural Future

The conflict in Ukraine revealed Europe’s structural vulnerabilities: lack of ammunition, lack of production capacity, overreliance on sanctions, and strategic incoherence. The peace will reveal something even more uncomfortable: Europe cannot enforce the consequences of the settlement on its own.

If the US and Russia craft the final settlement, Europe must either accept it or refuse and confront the consequences alone. Neither Paris nor Berlin is prepared for the latter scenario.

Ukraine, tragically, will be the ultimate pressure point. Its sovereignty will be negotiated by outsiders. Europe knows this but cannot alter it.

Can Europe Hold the Architecture Without the US?

The honest answer is no, not in the short or medium term. Europe lacks nuclear deterrence autonomy, military-industrial depth, cohesive political will, strategic consensus, energy security, technological parity with the US, and the capacity to contain Russia without American leadership.

The idea of European strategic autonomy remains aspirational rhetoric. The EU has military instruments, but not a military. It has ambitions, but not the industrial base to sustain them.

The Asian Century and the Decline of Europe

The more Washington and Moscow converge economically, the more Europe’s global relevance declines. The Russia–China axis strengthens, India emerges as a balancing pole, and the BRICS expand their economic and political weight. Europe becomes a peninsula of a Eurasian supercontinent that it does not control, increasingly marginal to global power centres.

Whether Asia can provide stability depends on the trust networks forming between Beijing, Moscow, New Delhi, Riyadh, and Tehran. Europe is not part of those networks.

Conclusion: A Continent in Suspension

Europe’s tragedy is not that it is being excluded from the negotiations shaping its own future, but that it does not yet fully grasp the depth of its exclusion.

The Moscow meetings are not a negotiation between equals; it is a negotiation between systems of power. Trump and Putin understand one another because they speak the language of transactional geopolitics. Europe speaks the language of norms, laws, and bureaucratic procedures—in a world that is no longer governed by them.

A new European security architecture is being drafted, and it is not being drafted in Brussels. It is being drafted in Washington and Moscow.

Europe must confront a stark question: Can a continent that has lost strategic agency recover it before the next geopolitical cycle closes?

Via The Cradle

The Chinese Foreign Ministry released a statement on Monday condemning Israel’s recognition of the separatist Republic of Somaliland, after Taiwan became the first state to welcome Tel Aviv’s move. 

China opposes the Israeli recognition of Somaliland as an “independent sovereign state” and the decision to “establish diplomatic relations” with it, said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian. “No country should encourage or support other countries’ internal separatist forces for its own selfish interests,” he added, while urging the country of Somalia to halt “separatist activities and collusion with external forces.”

The spokesman made the comments during a news briefing. “China firmly supports Somalia’s sovereignty, unity, and territorial integrity, and opposes any moves that undermine Somali territorial integrity,” he went on to say.

A day earlier, Taiwan became the first state to welcome Israel’s recognition of Somaliland. The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Israel, Taiwan, and Somaliland are “like-minded democratic partners sharing the values of democracy, freedom, and rule of law.“

Last week, Israel became the first state to formally recognize Somaliland, which broke away from Somalia in 1991 but had never been recognized by any UN member state. Somali officials slammed the move. 

The Israeli government has been aiming for Somaliland to serve as a potential destination for Palestinians that Tel Aviv aims to forcibly displace from Gaza, according to multiple reports over the past year. 

Somali Prime Minister Hamza Barre said that Israel was “searching for a foothold in the Horn of Africa” and called on it to recognize and accept a Palestinian state instead. 

Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud referred to the move as a “naked invasion” and said it poses a “threat to regional stability.”

The Arab League, Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), African Union, and Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) also strongly rejected the Israeli recognition of Somaliland. Iran’s Foreign Ministry called the move “malicious.”

China’s rejection of the recognition coincided with a report by Hebrew newspaper Maariv, which claimed that after recognizing Somaliland, Israel is now considering recognizing the UAE-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) in Yemen, hoping for strategic cooperation on the Red Sea coast against Ansarallah.

The secessionist STC has recently swept across large swathes of central and southern Yemen with the hopes of creating an independent state. According to recent reports, Israel and Taiwan have also been enhancing their relationship.

Taiwanese Foreign Minister Francois Wu recently made a secret visit to Israel, sources told Reuters on 11 December. In October this year, Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te said that Israel serves as a model for the island to strengthen its defenses.

Weeks earlier, Taipei City unveiled the T-Dome system – inspired by Tel Aviv’s Iron Dome missile defense system. Taiwan and Israel do not have formal diplomatic relations. Pressure from China, which views Taiwan as one of its provinces, has left Taipei with very few diplomatic ties to other states.

A large U.S. cohort study has found that individuals consuming the highest levels of ultra-processed foods face a significantly greater risk of developing lung cancer, even after adjusting for smoking and other factors.

Research published in the journal Thorax analyzed data from more than 101,000 participants in the Prostate, Lung, Colorectal and Ovarian Cancer Screening Trial. Over an average follow-up period of 12 years, researchers identified 1,706 incident cases of lung cancer, including 1,473 cases of non-small cell lung cancer—the slower-growing form—and 233 cases of the more aggressive small cell variant.

Participants in the top quartile of ultra-processed food consumption, adjusted for energy intake, showed a 41% higher risk of lung cancer compared with those in the lowest quartile (hazard ratio 1.41). The associations held for both non-small cell (37% higher risk) and small cell (44% higher risk) subtypes.

Ultra-processed foods typically include items formulated with multiple industrial processes and additives, such as preservatives, emulsifiers and artificial flavors. Examples in the study ranged from ice cream, packaged sauces and confectionery to soft drinks, ready-made burgers, pizza and processed meats. On average, the energy-adjusted ultra-processed food consumption was 2.8 servings per day, with lunch meat contributing 11.1% to total UPF intake, diet or caffeinated soft drinks 7.3%, and decaffeinated soft drinks 6.6%, the study found. UPFs are described as nutritionally poor, with high energy density, low fibre, fewer micronutrients, and excessive sugars, sodium, fats and additives.

Examples: 

Sugar-sweetened beverages
Processed meats
Packaged snack cakes & pastries
Instant noodles & boxed meals
Frozen prepared pizzas & entrées
Sugary breakfast cereals
Flavored/sweetened dairy products
Reconstituted meat products
Packaged refined breads & buns
Processed cheese products

The findings build on prior evidence linking ultra-processed foods to a range of adverse health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes and reduced life expectancy. In the U.S. and Britain, such foods comprise more than half of daily caloric intake for many individuals.

“You can’t say from this study that UPFs cause cancer as it’s observational, so we’re looking at associations, not direct effects. But it does strengthen the case for looking more closely at the food environment many people are living in, where UPFs are cheap, convenient, and heavily marketed, making them a go-to for many,” Rob Hobson, author of Unprocess Your Family Life, told The Independent.

“That might mean cooking more from scratch where possible, adding in more whole foods like vegetables, beans and grains, or just becoming more aware of how often UPFs show up in your day,” Hobson added. “It’s not about being perfect, it’s about balance and understanding how your food choices could be supporting or undermining your long-term health.”

Authored by Makai Allbert via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A minute is always a minute, except when it isn’t.

This idea was put to the test in a 2023 Harvard study. Researchers induced minor bruising on participants’ forearms and then had them sit in rooms where the clocks ran at normal speed, half-speed, or double-speed.

Illustration by The Epoch Times/Shutterstock

Crucially, the actual elapsed time was identical across all conditions—28 minutes—but the clocks ticked at different rates.

The results surprised the researchers. Wounds healed faster when people thought more time had passed, and slower when they thought less time had passed. “Personally, I didn’t think it would work,” lead author Peter Aungle told The Epoch Times. “And then it did work!”

A century ago, Albert Einstein demonstrated that time is relative—not fixed. He explained the idea with a simple, humorous example: “Put your hand on a hot stove for a minute, and it seems like an hour. Sit with a pretty girl for an hour, and it seems like a minute. That’s relativity.”

Now, psychologists and neuroscientists are finding that our sense of time is not only inherently subjective but also highly malleable.

We can’t stop the clock, but by understanding how we perceive time, we can make minutes feel longer, heal faster, and even expand our memories.

How the Mind Affects Reality

The Harvard healing experiment is a pivotal piece of evidence that mind and body are not only connected, but may be one and the same. “We weren’t really manipulating time itself. We were manipulating expectations,” Aungle said.

“If they [people] think more time has passed, they expect more healing—and those expectations can shape the body.”

Illustration by The Epoch Times.

Most people think of mind-body effects only in terms of emotion, he added. Yet, “psychology is embedded in everything the body does. I would argue the mind influences every physiological outcome to some degree.”

Expectations are not the only time bender. While believing time has sped up aids healing, high-arousal negative emotions, such as fear, significantly dilate our perception of time, making it feel slower.

In one study, participants watched frightening clips from “The Shining” or “Scream.” Afterward, a blue circle was presented in the center of the computer screen. Participants perceived that the circle lasted longer after watching frightening movies than after watching neutral or sad films.

Sylvie Droit-Volet, the lead researcher of the study, told The Epoch Times that subjective expansion is likely because “fear accelerates the internal clock, making time seem to pass more quickly and prompting action”—the fight or flight response.

Because the internal clock is ticking faster, measuring more units of time per second, the external world appears to move in slow motion. The time dilation allows the brain to process information with higher resolution during life-threatening situations.

Slowing Time

We can also make time feel longer in positive ways, such as by seeking out moments of awe.

A 2012 study published in Psychological Science found that feeling awe, whether from a story or a memory, makes time feel more abundant.

Awe acts as a reset button for the brain. It brings people intensely into the present moment. According to the “extended-now theory,” focusing on the present moment elongates time perception because we are not mentally rushing toward the future. By filling the present with vastness, awe offsets the feeling that time is slipping away, making life feel more satisfying.

The study also found that people who felt awe were less impatient, more willing to help others, and preferred experiences over material products.

We can also slow our perception of time through the practice of savoring.

“Savoring is putting a highlighter pen on our experiences,” psychologist Tamar Chansky told The Epoch Times. Savoring does not require extra duration, but rather a shift in attention.

For the time-starved, Chansky suggested taking “two more bites” of an experience—whether tasting coffee or looking out a window—to engage the brain’s awareness. This simple act creates “invisible, little expanders” within our finite days. It is a way of feeding the spirit without requiring a restructuring of one’s schedule, she said.

“We could rush through a whole day so easily … and we might feel somewhat or even very productive at the end of the day, but we might not feel good. So finding these little pockets … helps us to feel that expansion within.”

Chansky’s insight aligns with research findings that training attention, such as through meditation, can change how we perceive time.

Experienced meditators feel time passes more slowly during meditation and in their daily lives than people who do not meditate.

Being in nature also slows our experience of time.

In one study, participants overestimated the duration of a walk by nearly two minutes when it took place in nature, whereas their estimates were accurate for urban walks. Nature exposure increases mindfulness and reduces stress, states that are theoretically linked to a slowing of the internal clock. If you need to “buy” yourself a little time, you can find it in the wild. “Time grows on trees,” the study concluded.

Memories and Time

Why do childhood summers feel endless while adult years appear to fly by? The answer lies in how our brains process novelty. Our brains measure time based on how many new memories are created.

When we encounter unexpected stimuli, our brains process more information, leading to a subjective expansion of that duration. In experiments where a low-probability stimulus—called an oddball—appears in a stream of repetitive standard stimuli, the oddball, or novelty, is consistently judged to last longer.

Illustration by The Epoch Times.

“The more unique, meaningful, or changing experiences we have, the longer the stretch of time feels in memory,” Marc Wittmann, a research fellow at the Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology and Mental Health in Germany, said. On the other hand, routine compresses time in memory by halting the recording of details it already knows. When neurons fire repeatedly in response to the same stimulus, their response diminishes; they become efficient but record less data.

Therefore, to stretch your subjective life, introduce variation.

“A fulfilled and varied life is a long life,” Wittmann told The Epoch Times. This effect is not about simply filling a schedule with busyness—it is about “deep emotional resonance with the world.” A hundred days of routine collapse into a single memory unit in the brain; a week of travel or new experiences remains distinct and expansive.

Wittmann’s recent research adds a nuance: cognitive capacity also plays a role. As we age, the perception that the last decade flew by is partly due to cognitive decline, which affects our ability to encode complex memories. However, this effect is moderate. People who stay mentally and physically fit and continue to seek novel, emotionally rewarding experiences can subjectively expand their sense of time, regardless of age.

Read the rest here…

Since 2020, blockbuster game launches have arrived across every major platform and in a variety of genres, from cozy life sims to sprawling open-world adventure RPGs.

This visualization, via Visual Capitalist’s Niccolo Conte, ranks the best-selling video games from 2020 to 2025 based on global unit sales using data from Video Game Sales Wiki (Fandom).

Animal Crossing Dominates as the 2020s’ Best-Selling Game

At 48.2 million units, Animal Crossing: New Horizons stands alone at the top of the ranking.

The game released on March 20, 2020, right as much of the world began to lock down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, the latest addition to the Animal Crossing series made for the perfect time-sink amidst a period of global uncertainty and inactivity.

The table below shows the full ranking of the top 20 best-selling games from 2020 to 2025:

In second place is Hogwarts Legacy with 34.0 million, making the gap between #1 and #2 a sizable 14.2 million units. Hogwarts Legacy had the advantage of being tied to one of the world’s best-known franchises, Harry Potter, and delivered the open-world wizardry experience many fans had been waiting years for.

After that, the leaderboard tightens dramatically: four different games sit at exactly 30.0 million units (Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, and Call of Duty: Vanguard).

Nintendo Games Continue to Lead Sales

Several of the best-sellers are instantly recognizable Nintendo franchises. With six games in the top 20 best-sellers since 2020, Nintendo continues to be a development and publishing powerhouse in the world of gaming.

The six Nintendo titles together reached 144.7 million in sales, with no other singular publisher or developer coming close.

The company’s continued refinement of well-established franchises like Pokemon, Super Mario Bros., and The Legend of Zelda has proven fruitful, with the company still able to produce hits across genres.

With the Nintendo Switch 2 console selling well since its June 2025 launch, Nintendo’s dominance doesn’t seem like it’s fading anytime soon.

To learn more about the global video game industry, check out this graphic that breaks down video game revenue by country on Voronoi.