Defector
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Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Baltimore Ravens
Some people are fans of the Baltimore Ravens. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Baltimore Ravens. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your Team: Baltimore Ravens. Your 2025 record: 8-9, with all that implies.
Three Vaccines Is Less Vaccine Than One Vaccine, According To Donald Trump
On Monday, Donald Trump doubled down on his weird and eugenic obsession with autism by signing an executive order calling to split up the MMR vaccine for children into three separate shots given in three separate appointments. "I wanna find what's going on with autism," Trump said in a press conference held upon signing the executive order, in case his intentions were not totally clear. He then proceeded to estimate the volumes of vaccines with an inscrutable measuring system, referring to "va...
Red Sox Stumble Into Rules Review Hell, Emerge With Inconsequential Run
In the hypothetical situation in which a fan is attending a baseball game in person and has to wait for a video review to be completed, what is the length of time the review can last before she might turn murderous? Five minutes? Ten? The umpires in Monday night's game between the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays put this to the test with a 15-minute review of a baserunning debacle by the Red Sox that ended with the visiting team being awarded a run in the end. But let's start from the ...
Charli XCX Made A Beautiful Monument To Impermanence
SAN FRANCISCO — Charli XCX had a cold. You could only tell after five songs and one costume change, when the backup dancers and full backing band briefly disappeared so she could perform "Track 10," the furthest she reached into her back catalogue. Alone, she sounded a little shredded, and would occasionally let the backing track sing for her. Probably this would sink other would-be headliners, or at least meaningfully affect the performance, but no, whatever mild illness Charli was contending...
American Football Is Still Making Magic
The band American Football released their fourth self-titled LP in May. They are no longer the band they were in the late '90s, when their debut EP and album somehow developed a cult status that has endured to this day. Today, they are a middle-aged band making a much more adult imagining of emo music. LP4 is soft, wistful, jazzy indie-rock music with singer Mike Kinsella's deep and tender vibrato working on an ASMR level as well as a lyrical one. It's one of the best releases of the year, spe...
The Sports Idiot Is Dead, Long Live The Sports Idiot
The 1990s and 2000s were great decades for the sports idiot. Movies like Talladega Nights, Dodgeball, Kingpin , and others belong to this subset of the sports comedy, one that explores the unique problem of being good at sports and bad at everything else. With the help of an older mentor, often but not always played by an older Black man, and a supportive best friend even dumber than him, the sports idiot comes up against more threatening kinds of men—richer, meaner, or both—and triumphs. ...
Cathy Engelbert Is Doing The Job She Was Hired To Do
Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag . You can also read Drew over at SFGATE , and buy Drew’s books while you're at it . Today, we're talking about butter parties, severance packages, finding new hobbies, and more. Before we go any further, I demand you give it up to Albert Burneko for so capably filling my shoes here a week ago. Truly, Bert is the king of kings. Your letters: Tom:
While Wearing An Orange Wig And A Big Red Foam Nose, Fabrizio Romano Insists He’s Not A Clown
If you are a soccer fan of any real commitment, then surely you've seen last week's news that Real Madrid officially landed Ivorian winger (and former Florida high school student!) Yan Diomandé, prying him away from RB Leipzig with the considerable leverage exerted by €125 million. If you followed along with the transfer saga as it unfolded, you may have been surprised by how long the deal took to complete, considering that all credible reports said it has been all but tied up for almost two w...
Melon’s Odyssey On The Black Market For Life-Saving Cat Medicine
For a month this spring, Melon was truly living up to her name. She had always been a round cat but never quite this gourd-like—small neck billowing out to a majestic corpulence. This sudden plump came with an attitude. She had abandoned her sweet old habits: sitting on the toilet seat to watch me shower, running back and forth across my apartment until she panted, and leaping on my back to scope out unreachable shelves. I chalked this up to the fact that Melon, now 4 years old, was growing up...
Transactions, August 10
Defector is proud to announce the addition of a new guy. Timothy Faust has joined us as our Director of Revenue. You might know Tim as a previous Defector contributor and the author of a legendary blog post, but in this role he will be entirely focused on data, revenue projections, and all sorts of…
The Tour de France Femmes Was A Contentious, Hypercompetitive Classic
When Demi Vollering crossed the line in Nice on Sunday, she didn't just win her second Tour de France Femmes title. She provided a worthy finale for the best edition of the race yet. The fifth running of the Tour was spectacular from start to finish. There were interesting winners throughout the race, an amazing general classification battle that came down to the final climb, and fresh, dramatic storylines almost every day. The Tour achieved a higher density of both intriguing stories and g...
Two Scrabble Superstars Explain Their Unbelievable Championship Match
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — In the quarter-century that I’ve been playing and writing about Scrabble—a game in which greatness requires that rare matrix of biological gift, yeoman preparation, preternatural vision, marathon endurance, and blind luck—I’ve never witnessed anything as shocking and painful as the end of the 2026 North American championship here in July. The moment was right up there with any agony-of-defeat ending in any sport: After 3,700 games, thousands of moves, and millions of point...
Kayla McBride Keeps It Ethical
The first text that Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve received after the team drafted Olivia Miles this spring was from a prescient Kayla McBride: “I’m going to be wide open.” The stats are bearing that out to an extent; the veteran sharpshooter is putting up some of the most efficient numbers of her career this year, and the Lynx offense is humming. After Minnesota’s 103–90 win over the Dallas Wings on Sunday, McBride told reporters that sharing a backcourt with Miles has made her feel like “a...
What Does It Take To Make Big City Dreams Work?
When I asked Morgan Jerkins what she might want to talk about on an episode of Try Hard , she came to me with an idea that was less major life-changing-thunderclap moment and more the culmination of a million smaller decisions that stemmed from one big one: moving to New York City as a young grad and choosing to build a life. The twenty-something who moves to the big city to pursue a career in the arts is a well-worn archetype at this point, and one emulated by many of the very bloggers at ...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Atlanta Falcons
Some people are fans of the Atlanta Falcons. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Atlanta Falcons. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Atlanta Falcons. Your 2025 record: 8-9, which is less of a win-loss record than it is a manifestation of the spirit of mediocrity that inhabits this franchise. It's been almost 10 years since 28-3 happened, and the Falcons have gone a combined 65-84 with one play...
The “Ground Zero Mosque” Strategy Makes An Even More Pathetic Return
As we approach the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it has created an opportunity to reflect on what's happened in the quarter-century since that fateful day, but more importantly, it has created an opportunity to get angry at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for being Muslim. In late July, Giovanni Galante, whose wife Grace was killed in the attacks, posted an online petition requesting that the mayor not be allowed to participate in this year's remembrance ceremony. The reasons tha...
The Crossword, Aug. 10: Midpoint
No one's on the fence about solving our Monday crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Faren Roth , and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu . Faren Roth is a PhD student who lives in Lafayette, Ind. as of yesterday with her cat, Mr. Toast. She enjoys playing soccer and softball, was on the [redacted] team in high school, and has recently tricked herself into enjoying running. Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX , run every Monday. If you’re interested in su...
Don Nelson Followed His Bliss And Changed Basketball
The notice from Don Nelson's family announcing his death on Sunday at the age of 86 said he "peacefully went to be with the Lord, surrounded by his loving family.” This immediately convinces us that the deity in question here likes uptempo basketball, beer, blunts, and cards, and who wouldn't want a final judge who leans into those pastimes? Every Nelson obit, including this one, will note that he was the second-winningest coach in NBA history—1,335 wins, not including 75 playoff victories....
What Big Bug “Attacked” An ESPN Reporter At Rams Camp?
ESPN reporter Lindsey Thiry found herself accosted by an alarmingly big bug at Los Angeles Rams camp Thursday. She was preparing for a live report when the flying creature suddenly dive-bombed in. The bug hovered around Thiry for several seconds until the NFL reporter gave it a good and audible thwack with her mic. ESPN broadcaster Molly McGrath later interviewed Thiry about the identity of the bug. "What is that, a wasp? What was that, Lindsey?" McGrath asked. "It was the biggest bug I'...
We Wouldn’t Be Here Without Poop
Julien Kimmig's career began with a surprising abundance of feces. As a PhD student working at a Cambrian site in northern Canada, Kimmig realized that roughly half the fossils in that outcrop were coprolites, or fossilized poops. Kimmig, now the head of the paleontology and evolution division at the Natural History Museum in Karlsruhe, Germany, wondered what explained the deluge of dung. In 2020, Russell Bicknell, an evolutionary biologist and paleobiologist at Flinders University in Adela...
Sophie Cunningham Has Quite A Journey To Get Back To Basketball
After inflaming a culture war and causing her teammates and colleagues to be bombarded with hypothetical questions for weeks due to her transphobic comments published in a national media outlet, Sophie Cunningham wants to stick to sports. "I'm going to let people just do the speaking for themselves, but for me, I want to get back to basketball," she said last Wednesday. If this past week has been her trying to get back to basketball, she might not ever catch up to it. Saturday's Fever-Sky g...
Alligator Alcatraz Isn’t Just An American Fantasy
Alligator Alcatraz was a blueprint. Creating an ICE detention center out of tents, trailers, and cages amid the sawgrass wetlands of the Florida Everglades, and all of the dangerous reptiles that live there, is equally sadistic and laughable—ludicrously cruel, medieval in form and concept, legible more as a taunt than a security measure. Before it closed in June, the conditions of that concentration camp were dismal and inhumane . Disease ran rampant, adequate medical treatment was rarely give...
Staff Chat Starts Now? Staff Chat Starts Now
Hello there. It's a slow summer Friday, so let's try to run out the clock with a staff chat. We'll be down below ready to answer any questions you might have. Update (3:11 p.m. ET): OK, we're wrapping up here! Enjoy the weekend.
The Defector Interns Say Fogo de “Ciao”
Sarah: All summer long, we’ve been saying “Thank god there are two of us,” whether we’re hyping each other up to send jokes in Slack or encouraging each other to ask members of the staff to chat. But this may have been the toughest challenge we faced together. Sohini: You never know where you might…
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Dallas Cowboys
Some people are fans of the Dallas Cowboys. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Dallas Cowboys. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Hit ‘em with the griddy, you little fucker. When else am I gonna get to use this clip to puff my chest? I gotta take my fun where I can get it. Your 2025 record: 7-9-1. You and I can normally count on the Dallas Cowboys to sabotage their own chances during the cou...
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