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Defector
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The NFL Opener Had That Wednesday Night Football Feeling
The National Football League is back, in case you haven't already been lectured, hectored, and badgered into aural submission by the various communication venues that have been screeching about it for weeks. This post-modern Christmas, with all the soul-crushing commercialism that implies, has come five days later than last year, because the league decided it needed one more week of buildup before beginning its full 22-week Advent calendar, and that it wanted to see how strange football might ...
What Gets Left Out Of Math’s New Era?
The science fiction author William Gibson's pithy observation that "the future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed" has had different shades of meaning since it was first formulated . In its original context, Gibson meant it as a measure of technological progress: certain people have access to gizmos, gadgets, and virtual-reality dugongs before that blessed day when those innovations trickle down to the rest of us. There has always been an economic valence to this quote: I...
Ben Shelton Took Down Carlos Alcaraz In The Match Of His Life
Who knew Ben Shelton could do all that? Certainly not the Defector writer who was slandering him in the early stages of the match as "John Isner with WiFi." The 23-year-old American revealed levels to his game heretofore unseen, over the course of a U.S. Open quarterfinal that technically began Tuesday night but was mostly played early Wednesday morning. Matched up against defending champion Carlos Alcaraz, Shelton hit the apex of his career at 3:33 a.m., when he wrapped up the deciding set ti...
Do You Hear The People Sing? Singing The Song Of Sequined Teens?
At my university, you had to take an introductory fiction writing workshop before you were eligible to apply for the more advanced workshops. Admission to these big leagues was by no means guaranteed. The first time I got in, I experienced about a week of absolute elation followed by several months of intermittent terror and imposter syndrome. At the time, it all felt very high-stakes, which is perhaps why I was so profoundly distressed when I showed up on the first day and realized that 90 pe...
The Gift Of Forgetting
Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season (except when the season starts on a Wednesday; kiss my ass, Goodell). Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo . You can also read Drew over at SFGATE , and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it . I turn 50 a month from now. Hold your applause. About the only notable thing about hitting 50 is that I will no longer be eligible for a midlife crisis, seeing as how my life will ...
‘Only If You Get Caught’ Returns Next Week
The time has once again come to break the rules: Only If You Get Caught is back for Season 2. If you listened to the first season, welcome back; if you didn’t, you have six days to do so before the show returns on Sept. 15. You can listen to the trailer here. OIYGC is…
Should I Be Worried That My Kid Hasn’t Found A Best Friend?
Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas , where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at [email protected] . This week, Justin answers a question about helping your child find a best friend.
Horrible Toad Very Good At What It Does
It is difficult, and yet important, to practice holding multiple truths at once, such as: No animal is inherently bad, and also the Surinam toad is a toad of nightmares. The diversity of life on Earth should be celebrated, and also the Surinam toad's particular eccentricities are satanic. Every living thing is beautiful because it is alive, and also the body of theSurinam toad is an affront to beauty itself. The Surinam toad, which has the dissonantly cute scientific name Pipa pipa , is an ...
What If We Could Have A Future?
Maybe you have heard of Roko's Basilisk. This is a thought experiment, for lack of a better term, popular among a certain set: hyper-rationalists, futurists, effective altruists. Tech-industry guys. You get the idea. The most exhausting humans who ever lived, that is to say. People who at present happen to command a critical share of the world economy. If you're not familiar with it, Roko's Basilisk, in broad terms, supposes that at some point in the future a sentient and omnipotent artific...
Let’s See If The Colorado Rockies Have Learned How To Play Baseball Yet
This is a September blog about the Colorado Rockies. Do you think it will be a positive one? Let's find out. Coming off a series loss at home to the Cardinals, the Rockies traveled to the Bronx this week for a three-game tilt with the New York Yankees. In the first of these encounters, on Tuesday, they faced off against Cy Young contender Cam Schlittler, who threw seven innings of one-run ball to lower his ERA to 2.01. Not looking good so far. Colorado countered with the rookie Gabriel H...
‘Furious’ Makes You Face It
In her 1980 essay “Compulsory Heterosexuality and the Lesbian Existence,” Adrienne Rich lists over 60 examples of systematized female oppression. To name a few: the power of men to deny women their own sexuality or to force male sexuality upon them via rape, domestic violence, prostitution, chastity belts, incest; to command or exploit their labor via horizontal segregation in the workplace, pimping, and male control of abortion; to confine them physically or control their movement via rape as...
And Now For The Premiere Of ‘All Ball,’ In Which I Am Far Too Nice To The Vile Packers
What’s this we have here? Why, it’s the first-ever episode of Defector’s brand-new NFL podcast, All Ball ! Every week, the team of myself and elite indie blogger Arif Hasan break down every NFL matchup without ANY gambling or fantasy talk. We don’t even cite the Vegas point spreads, even though those lines possess a modicum of analytical value. All Vegas talk is verboten here, in favor of talking pure, hard BALL. https://art19.com/shows/the-distraction/episodes/6606c675-ab0a-4ea3-8ca3-4f94...
Callaway Golf Got Wrecked By YouTube Doofuses Because Everyone’s Out Of Ideas
Try this, maybe: Think of the internet as an ocean vast enough to contain a near-infinite constellation of distinct watery biomes, each populated by creatures that have evolved to suit the one in which they live—a bunch of weird creatures traveling in schools, chasing each other around, eating each other, and, in the most inhospitable depths, eating shit in the inky dark. Even to get your feet wet in this ocean is to know that it is bigger and colder than you could grasp. I don't know how to p...
Hrishikesh Hirway Learned To Live With Being Uncomfortable
What do you do when the gig you do on the side, that off-hours hustle to help pay the bills and keep busy in service of your real work, becomes the thing that attracts acclaim and recognition? Do you lean into the success? Does the side project become your life? Hrishikesh Hirway did not expect he would become a podcast guy, but the show he created and hosts, Song Exploder , took off, winning awards and making the leap to becoming a Netflix series. Then came other podcasts—maybe you know hi...
Should College Football Have An Age Limit?
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 sentence diagrams, proper oven temperature, forbidden urinals, and more. Before we get to the business at hand, a quick reminder that All Ball , the Defector NFL podcast , debuts tomorrow morning. Co-host Arif Hasan and I are bringing you 100 percent football takes, with no added gambl...
There’s Still Tennis At The U.S. Open
FLUSHING, N.Y. — The U.S. Open is a city in miniature. The food is expensive; wealthy people flock to the tallest vantage points while richer experiences on the outskirts are ignored; influencers bother the masses. Read enough about the tournament, or just walk around the grounds for a few days, and you could forget that tennis is played here. At its worst, the Open feels like a 15-day cocktail party where a couple hundred of the world's best tennis players happen to be present. Those players ...
The Angels Are Just Passing Through
Defector has partnered with Baseball Prospectus to bring you a taste of their work. They write good shit that we think you’ll like. If you do like it, we encourage you to check out their site and subscribe . This story was originally published at Baseball Prospectus on Sept. 3. There is a legacy of bare competence behind the Angels’ 65-year run of never losing 100 games that shouldn’t be taken for granted. If this year’s iteration finally uncorks that bottle of swill, it will be a ...
The Light’s Gone Out At Florida State
Pretty much from the moment the Florida State Seminoles decided to retain Mike Norvell as their coach for the 2026 season, the word out of the football program has been pain and misery. They lost three dozen players to either graduation or the transfer portal, they couldn't entice any of the better available quarterbacks, and they have been famously poor at recruiting throughout the Norvell era. Going into the season, the mood was dour, and an unimpressive victory over New Mexico State in Week...
Barcelona Is The Greatest Show On European Soil
Four matches into the La Liga season, Barcelona has looked like one of the greatest attacking teams of all time. What other conclusion can I draw from the club's start? With Sunday's 5-0 whomping of Valencia away at the Mestalla, Barcelona has now played four matches, notched four decisive wins (5-0 vs. Elche, 2-0 vs. Athletic Bilbao, and 5-2 vs. Rayo Vallecano were the others), scored a ludicrous 17 goals, and conceded only two. The Barcelona monster has been gluttonous from the word go, and ...
Aaron Judge Back
Did you forget about the Yankees? I know you did not because you are not allowed to. But New York has had a relatively quiet season by their flamboyant and national-TV-darling standards. A big part of this is that the AL East has looked pretty much the same for a while now: The Rays have maintained a comfortable but not secure division lead; the less said about what's happening down there with the bird teams, the better; and in the middle, the Red Sox have ended child hunger and positioned the...
The Rams Play In Australia In Two Days And They Haven’t Left Yet
Before the NFL season kicks off this weekend, it will kick off Wednesday night with a primetime game between the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. And then on Thursday night it will kick off again, with a game between the San Francisco 49ers and Los Angeles Rams, except that game will actually be happening on Friday morning, on account of it being played in Melbourne, Australia. Probably nobody should ask the Rams what day it is when they arrive for the game, because they won't have m...
Summer May Be Ending, But We’ll Always Have ‘Sterling Point’
“I’m coming to the cottage,” Ilya Rozanov growled, and Canada has never been the same—at least the American film and TV industry’s depiction of it. The final episode of the first season of Heated Rivalry introduced the world to Canada’s cottage country, presenting the regions to the north of major cities where many families own second homes as a soft escape from the friction of urban life. In Heated Rivalry , as well as a slew of other recent shows, Canada’s rural expanses are not only lush, t...
The Crossword, Sept. 7: Big Resemblance
You'll have a grand time solving our Monday crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Katie Hoody , and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Katie lives in North Newton, Kansas, where she is enjoying the puzzle constructing era of her life. She grew up in northern Minnesota and won a middle school speech contest with a monologue describing the thrill of watching the Twins win the 1987 World Series. Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX , run every Monday. If you’...
Heartwarming: Preposterous Doug Eddings Umpshow Unites Cardinals And Rockies In Dislike Of Doug Eddings
The concept of A Cop On The Edge was once a disreputable film genre unto itself. This was not really a good thing in terms of what it indicated about where the culture was on the issue of vigilante violence, among other things. But its passing is also unworthy of much mourning because these movies were bad enough that one of the genre's signature moments was a twitchy and inexplicably be-gloved Sylvester Stallone cutting a slice of pizza with some desk scissors while wearing sunglasses indoors...
Kimi Antonelli Pulled Off A Miracle At Monza
Do you believe that Formula 1 can be romantic? Before immediately answering to the negative, at least consider Kimi Antonelli. He is freshly 20 years old, and just became the first Italian driver to win the Italian Grand Prix since Ludovico Scarfiotti did so in 1966. If your answer is still negative, and fair enough, at least consider that Antonelli achieved his victory by breaking the record for most overtakes during a Grand Prix in F1 history and after starting from P19 on the grid. Consider...
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