Defector
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The Crazy Thing About “Woke 1” Was How It Was Exploited
In November 2018, 29-year-old Representative-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined a group of 200 youth activists associated with the Sunrise Movement as they staged a protest at the office of then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. They were there to urge Democratic leadership to act more quickly on issues of climate change. The period between the election and swearing-in is normally when a newly elected legislator would be getting to know their future colleagues and angling for a good commi...
ESPN Reports Steve Ballmer Cleared By NBA’s Kawhi Leonard Investigation, NBA Says Otherwise
According to a report from ESPN , the NBA hasn't found any evidence that Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer arranged to pay Kawhi Leonard in excess of salary-cap rules via the fraudulent green-banking company Aspiration. Just under a year ago, after a series of reports from podcaster Pablo Torre, the NBA hired the prestigious law firm Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to investigate the alleged scheme. Per the ESPN report, lawyers representing Ballmer and the NBA have been negotiating a res...
Eventually You May Have To Believe In The Dang Milwaukee Brewers
It is difficult to wrap the human mind around the fact that, in the grand old year of 2026, the Milwaukee Brewers are really, truly good. Or maybe that is a personal problem, as someone generally disconnected from the ongoings of the NL Central. What happens over there? None of my business! The operating assumption is that the Brewers will scam the division with 90-or-so wins every year, reaping the benefits of the four other flailing, barely trying teams who share the ignominy of playing in t...
Angel Reese’s Game Is Too Weird Not To Appreciate
Social media is a terrible place to learn about anything, but there is perhaps no phrase more ill-suited for the Twitter or YouTube search bar than "Angel Reese." The reasons for this are obvious and not worth getting into here—there are a bunch of racist losers on there who have made Reese a target in their increasingly toxic culture war—but even under better circumstances, Reese's game would be a tough fit for 15-second, vertical video highlights. This is a player whose unique, maddening, an...
I Taught A Scorekeeping Class And Everybody Came
Several times a week, I sit myself down in front of a baseball game either in person or on television, I retrieve my book and my pen, and I keep score. I feel my brain relax, my mind soften, my attention fully focus on one thing in a world where that rarely happens. It is a grandma hobby like knitting or embroidery or sourdough, and I love it. Scoring a game is one of the great mundane joys of my life, and I will not shut up about it. A few seasons ago, I taught my dear friend Dana Murphy t...
The Fight To Save The Remarkable, Upsetting Murals Of Maxo Vanka
Pittsburgh had a hell of a winter storm in January, with more than a foot of snow, and freezing temperatures that created towering walls of ice and annoyed locals whose parking situations wouldn’t return to normal for a month. Some of the city's oldest buildings suffered the most damage, victims of a phenomenon known as ice damming. The warmth from a building rises to the snow banks on the roof, but it's only enough to defrost the bottommost layer, which then flows to the eaves and then re-fre...
The Crossword, Aug. 17: Roster Talks
There's no 'I' in crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Matthew Stock , and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Matthew is a crossword constructor and stay-at-home dad from Dallas. His work can be found at happylittlepuzzles.com . Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX , run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE . The AVCX, an independent puzzles and games outlet, invites you to subscribe, or samp...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Minnesota Vikings
Some people are fans of the Minnesota Vikings. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Minnesota Vikings. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Minnesota Vikings, the winningest team to never win a Super Bowl. What an honor! King of the paupers! The widely respected Bills and Bengals have tried their best, but have failed in their quest to lose more Super Bowls than the mighty Vikings. The Lions and Jagua...
Mr. Manfred Calling For Mr. Walter
[PHONE RINGING] "Mr. Walter's office. Can I help you?" "Yes you can. Is Mark in?"
How Do You Get Over The Greatest Sports Story Of All Time?
The story gods have been good to me in my decades of typing for a living, but never better than with the Mayo football tale , which has consumed all of Ireland and me since the final 45 seconds or so of the historically downtrodden team's July 26 All-Ireland championship win over supposedly unbeatable Kerry. I knew even in the moment that getting to watch Mayo end its 75-year championship drought in person was a privilege. And it's left me ruined for other sporting events for now and maybe for...
A Brief Consideration Of Some Fictional Big Boys
Reacher is back, and in the first few episodes of Season 4, our enormous friend seems to be in fine form. He's smooshing guys in libraries, escaping a CIA black site, and making sure a tiny kitten finds a good home. While Reacher may be our current moment's most beloved answer to the question "What if a guy was really big?" he is by no means the only one. Plenty of authors have explored the possibilities inherent in hugeness. Fantasy writers in particular are enamored of this device. So, if...
In His Debut Game, Joshua Baez Ties Stump Wiedman On Career Homers List
Mama probably never said there’d be days like this . Newest St. Louis Cardinal Joshua Baez hit three homers in his first three plate appearances as a big-leaguer Saturday in Chicago. According to Baseball Almanac , there have been 22,800 other Major Leaguers since the National League’s founding in 1876. None had a debut to match Baez’s. In the top of the first inning against the Cubs, the Cards outfielder hit the first big-league pitch he ever saw 449 feet to center, almost leaving Wrigley ...
The Storm Are The WNBA’s Tank Champions
The WNBA doesn’t have an award for “clutchness” the way the NBA does, so it figures that they also do not have an award for “unclutchness.” Allow us to fill the vacuum: Defector’s inaugural Unclutchy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Choking and Tanking goes to the Seattle Storm. The voting wasn’t close, which is good; if it were, the Storm probably wouldn’t have won. WNBA Stats defines “clutch time” as the final five minutes of a game within a five-point margin. It happens to be the ti...
How And In What Manner Cal Raleigh Put The Ass Back In Big Dumper
Cal Raleigh got off to a slow start to the year, which was to be expected. It is impossible to follow up a 60-homer season with another of the same caliber, and between instigating teammate beef on the global stage and dealing with an early-season oblique strain which eventually landed him on the injured list, the slugging Seattle Mariners catcher has had much to fight through, even if partially self-inflicted. Alas, since he returned from the IL in mid-June, things have not gone much bette...
Make It Nice: Is There Such A Thing As A Good-Looking Dog Crate?
Welcome back to Make It Nice , Defector's best interior design advice column. Today we have fancy track shelving, a moody bedroom makeover, and my favorite: does a non-ugly dog crate exist? Our first “question” comes from recent conversations I had with a few friends who had been admiring photos of Vitsoe “606” shelves online. Both of them were ready to give up their Big Shelf dreams because the Vitsoe would cost them thousands of dollars—one friend was obsessing over a setup that would co...
More Like Edlose Diaz
It is hard to keep track of the number of free-agent signings and trades made by the Dodgers that have allegedly broken baseball. When Tarik Skubal lands in the dugout at the trade deadline and starts the freakout all over again , it's easy to move on from the last set of acquisitions that was raising qualms and inviting guffaws. But let the record show, before it's too late, that Edwin Diaz was at one point one of those baseball-breaking signings. The Dodgers signed Diaz this past offseaso...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Detroit Lions
Some people are fans of the Detroit Lions. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Detroit Lions. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: Detroit Irritable Bowel Syndrome.
Jayden Daniels Won’t Tolerate Some Scrub Wearing The Same Number He Did On His Journey To The ReliaQuest Bowl
Quick, what number did Jayden Daniels wear when he was at LSU? If you had to think about that for even a second, you might want to lock your doors, because it's very possible that someone from Daniels's inner circle is on the way to your house to kick your ass. I issue this warning because over the last few days we have discovered that the No. 5 jersey is extremely important to Daniels, or at least it is to someone who spends time handling his affairs. On Wednesday, ESPN reported that an at...
In This House We Believe A Bunch Of Stuff, With Justin Ellis
In my personal mental masthead for Defector, there are bureaus representing the places where my coworkers live. Philadelphia, you know about. New York, for better and worse, is implied. Minneapolis, where no Defector staffers currently live, is more complicated. But we have Drew, whose Minnesota sports fandom has put him under this heading even though he hasn't lived there in decades, and we also have Justin Ellis, who was shaped by his experience growing up there even though he, too, is a lon...
Russell Westbrook Was Total
It’s hard to imagine now—like imagining an era when man did not know the sun was huge, hot, and bright—but there was a time when we did not yet understand Russell Westbrook as a basketball player. Slow to hit his growth spurt, Westbrook didn’t dunk until his senior year of high school. Coming out of UCLA after his sophomore year, he was hailed as a defensive stud, with unexplored skill offensively; he still mostly played off the ball. Envision, if you can, an adult Russell Westbrook who had al...
Russell Westbrook Was Singular
When the Seattle SuperSonics drafted Russell Westbrook fourth overall in 2008, around six weeks before they officially became the Oklahoma City Thunder, the league had no idea what to do with such an athletic and violent point guard. Westbrook, who announced his retirement this week, leaves behind a very different NBA than the one he joined 18 years ago, but, despite the considerable passage of time, the extent to which the game changed, and the extensive accolades he racked up, he never becam...
James Gandolfini Had A Lot In His Bag
This piece was originally published in The Small Bow on Aug. 7. If you like it, consider subscribing . He was always referring to himself as a “guy like me,” in a baffled sort of way, like how the fuck did a guy like me pull this whole thing off? And part of what James Gandolfini meant was the son of the bricklayer and the lunch lady, this King Konging ex-jock with a neck like a paint can, a guy from New Jersey, where they were not what you might call beautiful but were magnificent. They...
Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Indianapolis Colts
Some people are fans of the Indianapolis Colts. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Indianapolis Colts. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here . Your team: The Mayonnaise City Colts. Your 2025 record: 8-9, but that only hints at the story of the 2025 Colts, who were 8-2 going into their bye and 0-7 after it. I’ve seen SpaceX rockets with better trajectories.
Fenix Flexin Puts Bankrolls On The Table And AI On The Charts
Welcome to Listening Habits , a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently. Music's AI revolution has arrived, somewhat ... maybe. And naturally, it has come for rap first. This isn't the kind of trumped-up thing like what has been foretold in the roughly 100 weirdly written profiles about "AI actress" Tilly Norwood, a thing you've probably already forgotten about if you ever even heard about it in the first place. No, AI has been implemented in music...
Humanists Have Done Nothing Wrong
For many years, I’ve held a pet theory that cultural consumers can be grouped into two broad categories: Primary Source People and Secondary Source People. The former are the book lovers, cinephiles, archive perusers, and history buffs who grew to love their areas of study because of the specific objects that constitute the field: the two women I overheard whispering about how they wanted to fuck Adam Bede, in one of my undergrad classes; the student of mine who disclosed that he loved The Hou...
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