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What It’s Like To Watch The World Cup From Gaza
The original version of this article was published in The Nation on July 13. When I first heard the 2026 World Cup was about to begin, I barely paid attention. This was partially because of the timing—most matches this year have aired late at night in Gaza because of the time difference with the United States—but mostly because I couldn't imagine how anyone here would watch the games.
New Monkey! New Monkey! There’s A New Monkey!
Many new species have been announced this week. There are new mites from Saudi Arabia and a new weevil from Japan. There are new midges from China and new spiders from Brazil and China . There is a new dragonfly from Vietnam, a new jewel beetle from Borneo, and a grasshopper from Ecuador. Each of these creatures is no doubt beautiful in their own right. And yet, none of them are monkeys. Seemingly every week science announces new midges, new spiders, new spineless hopping things that hadn't be...
The Groom Saw You From Across The Dance Floor And Likes Your Vibe
As an anxious and judgmental person whose standards for interpersonal etiquette and social niceties might best be described as Austenesque, I can confidently say: Every wedding is rife with social crimes. I’ve seen more than my share of dads make speeches about mawwiage , and I’ve seen a few chill brides set everyone in their vicinity tiptoeing (often rightly so), and I’ve watched whole tables full of relatives seethe about their placement. As far as I’m concerned, weddings encourage self-cari...
Trans Girl Baseball Makes Me A Better Woman
Taking care to avoid the team-picking system of our schoolyard memories, Lilah Maravi divided us into two sides of about 20. It was a pleasant Sunday in June—Father’s Day—and we had gathered at our usual spot for our Pride month game. After a spontaneous game of catch in a Brooklyn park in 2023, Lilah had started this monthly pickup series with a Field of Dreams -esque compulsion to get trans women together to play baseball. That might sound counterintuitive. Many of us were unathletic yout...
Which Version Of The Indiana Fever Is The Real One?
Aliyah Boston's teammate drives so much of the American population insane that it's easy to forget her own talent for getting in other people's heads. Opposing bigs unravel next to her. Jonquel Jones, possibly the nicest and humblest athlete I've ever spoken to, revealed the limits of her patience two years ago when she tussled with Boston in the Indiana Fever's home opener . Expect a technical foul or two whenever Boston and Brittney Griner play. Remember Boston's playoff spat with Brio...
The All-Star Game Was Funereal
We'll start with the most significant play of the 2026 MLB All-Star Game: a hit batsman. In the top of the third, with a man on first and the AL already leading 3-0, Tampa's Junior Caminero got smacked on the hand by a 98-mph pitch from St. Louis's Riley O’Brien. Caminero was replaced by a pinch runner as he left to get X-rays, and immediately the day's earlier news that the owners would try to force players to participate in the 2028 Olympics looked even more ridiculous. While Caminero's exam...
Is It Possible To Teach My Kid How To Manage Risk?
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, Drew talks about danger .
Spain’s Perfect Game Needed A Perfect Goal
Having sat with Spain's 2-0 victory over France in the World Cup semifinal for several hours now, I am left with an overwhelming sense of relief. Not because Spain won or France lost, but because the game's second goal was as beautiful as it was. Whether or not you watched the game, you need to do yourself a favor and watch this goal several more times before the day is done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBOIka9sXlQ
Various Reports Dispute Where Bam Adebayo’s Fist Landed On Tyler Herro’s Face
This past Friday in Vegas, while many players were in town for NBA Summer League action, Miami Heat big man Bam Adebayo got in some kind of fight with his recently departed teammate Tyler Herro. In last month's trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Heat sent Herro to the Milwaukee Bucks, ending his seven-year stint alongside Adebayo. The fight between them took place in the morning, in a practice court at a hotel; later that day but before news broke of the fight, Herro said in an interview tha...
Atlantic Writer: I Will Always Cherish The Day Lindsey Graham Told Me I Looked Like Shit Mere Hours After A Mass Shooting
Lindsey Graham's sudden death has elicited plenty of nauseating remembrances from his colleagues in the Senate, none of whom seemed to be all that ashamed to speak and write warmly about a guy whose life's work was bigotry and warmongering. But no tribute has been as bone-chilling as the one offered up Monday night by Atlantic staff writer Ashley Parker. Here's how Parker decided to remember the man she used to cover while working for The New York Times : Like anyone who’s spent any ti...
I Crave The Ocean
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 dipping pizza crust, worst great athletes, wheelchair envy, and more. Your letters: Charlie:
‘Citizen Vigilante’ Is The Latest Product Of The Culture Of Petulance
In the movie Citizen Vigilante , the latest Uwe Boll provocation that's gaining attention from the far-right side of the internet, Armie Hammer plays Michael Sanders, an American vigilante righting the wrongs of Europe's woke and broken criminal justice system. Why an American has deemed himself worthy of this task, let's not ask that question ... or too many others. When he's not out patrolling the streets, Sanders makes his living as a landlord. One sequence of scenes shows Sanders in one mo...
Why The Explosive Diarrhea Parasite Is Way Worse Than Regular Diarrhea Parasites
Grab a stool, take a seat, and get ready to learn about cyclospora.
‘Famous Men’ And Ambitious Women
Is there a story writers love to tell more than the one about how we became ourselves? Give me all of them: your Künstlerromans, your campus novels, your NYCs, your MFAs. I didn’t go to Iowa, but I’ve read so many recollections of the program that sometimes I think I might have. The pleasures of the genre arise in part from how its entrants play with certain tropes: the struggle to find one’s voice, the anxiety of influence, the labor of constructing an identity, the implicit resolution promis...
How Cycling Solved Sleep
AURILLAC, France — Is the Tour de France the most competitive sleep environment in sports? "Probably, yeah," answered Dr. Jon Greenwell, EF-Education EasyPost's Head Doctor when I asked him. Every athlete needs to recover, though the demands on professional cyclists at the biggest race in the sport are unique. Riders have to be fresh every day for nearly a month, and they spend almost every night at a different hotel. There are only two days off, so they must recover from one day's effort befo...
What Will Happen To My Ambition After Children?
To someone without children, the world of parenthood seems like a walled garden that contains knowledge of the very best and worst experiences of humanity. But will you love it or hate it? Are you still yourself on the other side? Will you regret it? The only way to know for sure is to do it, but you can't know for sure how it'll go until you commit to it. That's a level of ambiguity I find intolerable, and yet there is no other way. I always imagined I would maybe, probably, most likely ha...
The Hornets Aspire To Be An Also-Ran With A Plan
Listening to Jeff Peterson, president of basketball operations for the Charlotte Hornets, talk about the recent LaMelo Ball trade , you get a pretty good idea of what he thinks about last season's team. "There's no doubt in my mind that we had a successful season last year, by a lot of people's standards, and of course LaMelo was a huge part of that," Peterson said, from Las Vegas , upon the formal completion of a deal announced nearly two weeks ago. Eager to sing the praises of the incoming N...
Is There Any Limit To Zack Wheeler’s Spite?
There are four players in MLB with a higher bWAR than Phillies pitcher Zack Wheeler, but nobody can hope to top him in PAR (pettiness above replacement). Last week, after he was left off of the All-Star Game roster, Wheeler struck out 14 batters to tie his career-best performance. To make it very clear where his motivation came from, after the game he called the All-Star selection policies “BS.” Wheeler turned his doubters into his outers at the pitching mound of success, but he’s not done. ...
If Conor McGregor Was A Horse, They’d Have To Shoot Him
Conor McGregor came up lame literally one second into Saturday’s comeback bout with Max Holloway. To open a fight that the UFC claimed drew the biggest live gate in mixed martial arts history, McGregor rushed out of his corner and threw a flying kick with his left leg. The kick fell short of Holloway’s head by at least a foot, and then McGregor had a landing worthy of the " agony of defeat " guy, dropping to the cage floor in a heap without being touched. Then McGregor immediately got up an...
I Believe I Have Located A Ham Truck In France
SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE OF FRANCE — They call it the diagonal of the void: the corridor running southwest to northeast across France where population density is significantly lower than elsewhere in the country. Explanations vary as to why, though after spending three nights in the void, I can confirm it feels empty here. Perhaps the spookiest sight was something I saw on the side of the road as we drove from Perigueux to Bergerac, on the side of a road in a village so quiet it may as well hav...
The Crossword, July 13: Flat Out
You have one last job to do this Monday morning. This week's puzzle was constructed by Madison Shultz, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Madison has too many hobbies. She spends most of her free time skiing, climbing, hiking, and rockhounding, but started constructing crosswords in 2025 as a creative outlet and reason to stay inside more with her two cats. If you like this puzzle, you can find more of her work at her blog Crossword Curiosities. Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with...
Lindsey Graham Dead, World No Worse
Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina died on Saturday, after what reports have called a "brief and sudden illness" following an official visit to Ukraine. He was 71. In 2003, Graham succeeded ancient dread Confederate mummy Strom Thurmond in the Senate, and was an actively malevolent force in American society for all the remaining 23 years of his life, at a scale larger than he'd been an actively malevolent force in American society for the preceding 48. Graham's hatreds and ...
Jannik Sinner Reinstates The Regime
After losing the 2025 Australian Open final, Alexander Zverev was remarkably despondent. The man who defeated him, Jannik Sinner, put both hands on Zverev's shoulders and delivered a pep talk to the sobbing runner-up as the duo awaited the presentation of their trophies. "I think Jannik is better than me at the moment. It's as simple as that," Zverev said in his post-match press conference. "I think I'm serving better than him, but that's it. He does everything else better than me. He moves be...
Telemundo Is The Real Winner Of This Year’s World Cup
It was Sunday night in Los Angeles, and the streets of the city legendary for its traffic sat empty. Even Trader Joe's—the beloved grocery chain known as much for its tiny parking lots as its low prices—had plenty of spaces. For once, as the Clueless joke goes, you really could get anywhere in LA in 20 minutes . The reason? Mexico was playing England. In the World Cup. In the knockout rounds. In the vaunted home of El Tri , Estadio Azteca. Well before I arrived at my local soccer bar, an ho...
You Can’t Do That, Man
The master plan is clear to anyone with eyes. FIFA rigged the World Cup draw so Argentina would become the first team to make the semis without playing a side ranked in the top 15. FIFA has rigged every match in favor of Argentina. FIFA demanded that the VAR take away Egypt's second goal over a much-delayed foul call. In that same match, FIFA instructed the referees to not call a foul by Argentina's Julián Alvarez on Mohamed Salah. FIFA even put an all-Argentine referee crew on the France-Moro...
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