Lawrence Lease
Bio
Alaska born and bred, Washington DC is my home. I'm also a freelance writer. Love politics and history.
Stories (252)
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Dark Theories That Completely Change How You See Home Alone
For a lot of people, the holidays don’t officially start until Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York are on the TV. It’s comfort viewing at its purest—warm lights, John Williams’ score, and a mischievous kid outsmarting two burglars with paint cans and micro machines. You laugh, you quote it, you accept it as festive nonsense.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in Geeks
New Evidence Reveals the Yogurt Shop Killer After 30 Years
I still remember the first time I heard about the yogurt shop murders. Even decades later, the details cling to you in a way that feels almost invasive. Four teenage girls. No witnesses. No clear motive. A quiet Austin neighborhood suddenly transformed into the site of one of the most disturbing crimes in the city’s history.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in Criminal
Incredible John Cena Matches To Binge Watch Before He Retires From WWE
John Cena is done. Retired. Finished. Hung up the boots. And depending on when you’re reading this, he’s either about to be gone for good or already is. But here’s the thing that matters most: John Cena is one of the very few wrestlers who actually means it when he says he’s done.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in Geeks
John Cena Isn’t Going Out on His Own Terms—He’s Going Out on Wrestling’s Terms
There’s a phrase people love to use when legends step away: going out on your own terms. John Cena doesn’t buy it. In his words, it’s BS. Not because he’s bitter, or afraid, or clinging to relevance—but because if it were truly up to him, he’d do this forever. Wrestling, for Cena, was never something to escape. It was something to give back to until there was nothing left to give.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in Geeks
Ba'athism Once Dominated the Middle East... Now It's Gone
On December 8, 2024, Bashar al-Assad fled Damascus for Russia as rebel forces closed in on the Syrian capital. With that flight, a 54-year dynasty collapsed—and with it, the last Ba’athist government on Earth. When ideologies die, they usually leave echoes behind: nostalgia, apologists, half-remembered myths. Soviet communism still has its devotees. Fascism, nearly a century after its defeat, continues to find admirers in parts of the West. Ba’athism, by contrast, leaves almost nothing behind at all. Today, it holds exactly one elected seat anywhere in the world—a single representative in Lebanon’s parliament, who may well be the last Ba’athist ever chosen by voters.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in FYI
The Thailand-Cambodia Conflict is Growing
Today, Southeast Asia is standing on a knife’s edge. Thailand and Cambodia—neighbors with a long, tangled past—are once again trading heavy fire across their disputed border. It’s the second time this year the two have gone at each other’s throats, and the fragile ceasefire brokered with help from Washington has all but collapsed. Civilians are fleeing by the hundreds of thousands, the rhetoric is getting uglier, and neither government seems willing to step back from the edge.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in FYI
The Mystery of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe’s legacy is wrapped in shadows—half myth, half memory, and entirely American. But long before he became the grand architect of Gothic horror, before The Raven perched itself permanently on the nation’s literary shoulder, Poe was a kid born into chaos, raised in instability, and pursued by tragedy as faithfully as his own shadow.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in History
Taiwan May Reverse its Nuclear Phase-Out
May didn’t feel like just another month in Taiwan — it felt like a turning point. For anti-nuclear activists, it was the culmination of a fight they’d waged for decades. On May 17, the island shut down its last operational nuclear reactor, closing the chapter on a technology they associated with radiation threats, authoritarian echoes, and a past they wanted to leave behind.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in History
Revisiting Jeffrey Epstein's "Demise": Here's What We Know Now
Every once in a while, a story comes along that refuses to stay buried. Most scandals eventually fade; the news cycle moves on; people lose interest. But the Jeffrey Epstein saga is not one of those stories. It lingers. It mutates. It resurfaces when you least expect it. And the more I try to step away from it, the more I find myself pulled back in.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in Criminal
Yemen Is About to Break In Two
Yemen has lived through revolutions, foreign interventions, famine, epidemics, and one of the world’s most devastating civil wars. Yet somehow, the country has found itself lurching into crisis once more—only this time, it’s not the Houthis dragging the nation back into chaos. Over the past several days, a powerful southern faction known as the Southern Transitional Council has launched a stunning territorial blitz, sweeping across eastern Yemen, seizing key oil fields, and conquering cities with a speed and efficiency that blindsided nearly everyone watching. The internationally recognized Yemeni government, already fragile after years of war, now teeters on the edge of outright collapse. And in the shadows, the unmistakable fingerprints of the United Arab Emirates are shaping a conflict that is rapidly evolving into a major proxy showdown with Saudi Arabia.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in History
Tokyo’s Bold Taiwan Bet
Friday, the 7th of November, was supposed to be routine business inside the Japanese Diet. Lawmakers expected a day packed with procedural questions, quiet policy disagreements, and the kind of legislative tedium that rarely makes front-page news. Instead, a single exchange detonated into an international incident that now sits at the center of East Asia’s escalating tensions. It began when Katsuya Okada of the Constitutional Democratic Party asked Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi a straightforward question. Her response, however, was anything but straightforward: she declared that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could pose an existential threat to Japan — one that would compel Japanese intervention on Taiwan’s behalf.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in The Swamp
The Drone That Broke Modern Warfare
The global drone revolution isn’t quietly unfolding in laboratories or behind closed military briefings. It’s happening out in the open, across battlefields from Ukraine to Yemen to the Middle East. Nations are racing to build more drones, faster drones, and smarter drones, while criminal networks and insurgent groups turn everyday electronics into lethal tools. In the middle of all this chaos, Iran managed to create a drone so effective — and so disruptive — that it rewired military thinking across the world.
By Lawrence Leaseabout a month ago in FYI
