Japan Made Secret Deals With the NSA That Expanded Global Surveillance. I could not have guessed how this article was going to end. It starts off as a perfectly reasonable if boring story and by the end of it I was groaning in pain.

Mali’s Desert Climate Is the Doom of Armored Vehicles. Everyone seems to have forgotten this place but it is one of many places that the western powers are setting on to try to keep the world from blowing up.

Phoenix Point is now crowdfunding: we spoke to Julian Gollop about standing out in a post-XCOM world. I am skeptical, but it looks more interesting then I would have thought.