Defector
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This Worm Has No Ifs And Many Butts
In the 1870s, as the research ship HMS Challenger passed through the Philippines during its circumnavigation of the Earth, it dredged up a sponge from the gray sludge 95 fathoms (nearly 600 feet) below the surface. The scientists knew that glass sponges abounded in these waters, their bodies fragile, translucent, and curiously geometric. Sponges of this sort often house other animals, such as monogamous shrimp and various worms. So it was not exactly revelatory that the dredged-up sponge conta...
LeBron James Is Commuting In A Fanatics Helicopter
LeBron James wasn't pretending. He really is taking daily helicopter rides from his home in New York City to the offices of his new employer, the Philadelphia 76ers. Since the start of October, the LeBron James Express (call sign N6FN) has made 18 trips between Northeast Philadelphia Airport and the Manhattan West 30th Street Heliport, plus a dozen or more shorter jaunts to and from Belmar, Teterboro, Wings Field Airport, and Philadelphia International. Because of the availability of realti...
Knicks And Nets Give Me High Fives, With Hell Gate
This week's episode of Nothing But Respect was special on several fronts: Harry and I got to record in person for the first time in roughly a year, and we did so with our good friends at Hell Gate, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd and Max Rivlin-Nadler. Topics discussed include: how Eric Adams needs to go on Curious Mike , James Dolan's loathing of the city of New York and its talismanic basketball team, Max's proposal to save the Nets, and so much more. Harry and I also played basketball together f...
White Sox Touched By God, Or Perhaps Merely Joyful Exuberance
At the start of Game 2 of their ALDS matchup Monday, Chicago White Sox starter-turned-reliever-turned-opener Anthony Kay faced the Cleveland Guardians offense and posed a powerful question. What would be more powerful: a papal blessing or Guardiansball, an offensive strategy best defined by the example phrase of "Steven Kwan infield single"? Well, immediately after the bottom of the first inning, Guardiansball was winning out. Kwan himself led off affairs by hitting a ground ball that trick...
The Atlanta Dream Can Poke And Prod You To Death
The argument against the Atlanta Dream says their transition-heavy style might be incompatible with playoff basketball. But in the three playoff games they’ve played so far, the latest a 92-82 home win over New York to open the second round, Karl Smesko's team has totally set the terms. As they see it, this is playoff basketball: fast, tireless, always connected. Even when the Dream bump into issues running their halfcourt offense, they make the math work for them in other ways. The best...
Phoebe Bridgers Showed Us How To See In The Dark
PHILADELPHIA — When the lights went out, a crisp, adolescent shriek rose from all sides of the arena, anticipating her arrival. But she did not come, not just yet. Instead, a silence fell heavy and unsettled where the shrieking had been, as if making space for the ball at the other end of the arena, descending ever so slowly, blinking blue, pulsing as if it were alive. More than 40,000 eyes fixated on the descending orb. It was round, but not a perfect sphere, with bumps and craters on its sur...
Patience Is Paying Off For Bryce Young
I'm not sure when we fell into the collective delusion that first-round quarterbacks should be capable of leading an NFL team on Day 1. Was it induced by the take economy? Is this sports radio's fault? Did Joe Burrow's early success create this standard? I can understand certain teams like the Browns or Jets believing it necessary to have their top draft pick run the offense right away, because they have little hope otherwise, but what's everyone else's excuse? While you may get Andrew Luck or...
The Case Against Exceptionalism
The first line in a Min Jin Lee novel gives you the whole story. In Free Food For Millionaires , it’s “Competence can be a curse.” In her follow-up, Pachinko , it’s “History has failed us, but no matter.” Both establish the thesis and themes of the novels, and of her larger project of writing about the Korean diasporic experience. The first line of Lee’s latest novel, American Hagwon , does the same: “The rules of engagement have changed already.” The novel, which came out last week nearly...
Atlanta’s Least Heralded Relievers Did The Most
The Atlanta Braves are not the best team in this postseason, but there do seem to be more of them than anyone else. Manager Walt Weiss has appeared blithely unconcerned by the math that demonstrates that the more pitching changes a team makes, the greater the likelihood that some of them will turn to shit. And yet Weiss persists, because these are the tools that have been provided for him. After the attrition of the regular season, he has at his disposal three discernible starting pitchers;...
How Lucy Yu Learned To Ask For Help
Who among us has not floated the idea of starting a bookstore to our friends and partners, as a way out of the nightmare that is 9-to-5 work and LinkedIn hell? In 2021, Lucy Yu actually did it. She had been unhappily working as a chemical engineer and socking away money, and when she had $40,000 saved, she took the plunge and opened Yu & Me Books, the first Asian American woman-owned bookstore in New York City. Yu & Me Books was the fantasy embodied. It was a cozy space in Chinatown, filled...
Jaguars Junction: Week 4
Are you grasping for an explanation of the Jacksonville Jaguars' typically excellent performance? Look no further than the Microsoft Surface. Microsoft Surface tablets are in the hands of all the Jaguars coaches on the sidelines now, and players are allowed to look at them as well. You can even buy a Jacksonville Jaguars skin to customize your own Microsoft Surface at home. With Microsoft Surface, the opposing team can no longer hide behind their helmets. A few clicks or swipes of the vi...
The Crossword, Oct. 5: Overheard In New York
Our Monday crossword? It's good! This week's puzzle was constructed by Drew Schmenner and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu . Drew is a writer and editor for a national education non-profit who grew up in the Indianapolis area. Although he has lived in the Bay Area since 2013, he hasn’t renounced his Indiana Pacers fandom for the Warriors because his adoration for Reggie Miller’s heroics is so strong. Despite his decades of cheering for Indiana against its fiercest rivals, he couldn’t resist this puzz...
The Valkyries Are Fighting Firepower With Frenzy
Before Sunday's semifinal Game 1 in Ballhalla, the Valkyries threw a little ceremony to honor Janelle Salaün for winning Sixth Player of the Year. Salaün's unanimous approval by voters is one indication of her team's tremendous depth; another, stronger one is that the Valkyries overwhelmed the Aces, 71-60, thanks primarily to their bench and even as Salaün missed both of her shots, scored two points, and played six anonymous minutes. What makes the Valkyries special? Simply: There are so ma...
Eagles Fans Demonstrate How To Get Humbled By Opposing Coaches
I want you to imagine you are a Philadelphia Eagles fan. I know it can be difficult to formulate a theory of mind for them, but if it can be done for a bat , it can be done for a Philadelphian. OK, ready? Go. You are a Philadelphia Eagles fan. You suddenly have a constant craving for large sandwiches. Your head is now filled with detailed biographical knowledge of several local meteorologists. Every proper noun in this story is familiar. "Pond Lehocky" means something to you. The shouted ph...
Jackson Chourio Was Nails
Mason Miller wasn't looking like himself by the time Jackson Chourio stepped to the plate in the bottom of the ninth of Game 2 of the NLDS. After making quick work of three Brewers hitters in the bottom of the eighth inning, Miller was trusted to go back out there for the ninth and protect the Padres' 3-2 lead. It was only the third time all season he'd been called on to pitch six outs, and by the time he'd recorded two outs in the ninth he'd also issued three walks. The most unhittable pitche...
They Packed The Trop And Were Treated To A Gem
Bryan Baker, closer for the Tampa Bay Rays, encountered a new problem on the mound Saturday night. He'd been summoned to record the final three outs of Game 1 of the ALDS and to preserve and finish a franchise all-timer of a gem from teammate Drew Rasmussen, who'd pitched eight shutout innings of miraculous one-hit baseball against the New York Yankees' depleted but still fearsome lineup. Baker, working out pitch-sequencing with catcher Liam Hicks, found that he was having trouble making ou...
Ty France And The Padres Thwarted By Good Old Reality
Ty France talks like a guy who is pretty sure he'd socked a game-winning dinger. "I stood there and watched it, and it was going," France said Saturday, of his ninth-inning moonshot. "It was staying fair." The ball did, in fact, stay fair: Soaring down the left-field line, France's fly bonked off a roof cable and dropped, well inside fair territory and directly into the glove of Milwaukee's Jackson Chourio, for San Diego's second out of the ninth inning. France stood in disbelief, peering a...
The Not-So-Great Defector Bake Off Lurches Unsteadily Into Cake Week
Welcome back to The Not-So-Great Defector Bake Off , where Kelsey and Chris attempt to complete the technical challenges from the newest season of The Great British Bake Off in their own home kitchens, with the same time parameters as the professional-grade bakers competing on the show. It's autumn again. The extremely popular and enduring contest show The Great British Bake Off has returned for its 17th season, or series. The format is pretty straightforward: A dozen enthusiastic amateu...
It’s Time To Separate The Real Teams From The Clowns
Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide , where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about. Ray: We're in the middle of bye season now, which means some of your favorites—Texas, UCLA, Duke, Utah and others—are receiving well-deserved weeks off that will allow their fan bases to forget who they hate the most. Well, not forget, really, but maybe forget to mention for at least a few days. No coaches have...
The Too-Small Lynx Will Have To Answer Some Big Questions
As end-of-season Minnesota Lynx press conferences go, this year’s was pretty subdued. There was no “shit was stolen from us,” no missives delivered against Cathy Engelbert . “I don’t have a speech prepared, so everyone can relax,” Napheesa Collier said at the start of her exit interview Thursday afternoon. After an 87-71 loss to the New York Liberty in Game 2 of the first round of the playoffs, the eliminated Lynx are just looking inward. The Liberty, set to the play the Atlanta Dream i...
Jack Smith Did Not Conspire Against Donald Trump While Watching Steph Curry Score 60 Points In An Overtime Loss To The Hawks
The most salient part of the accusation that Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt lodged against former special prosecutor Jack Smith in a Senate hearing on Tuesday is that it was wrong. It was ecstatically and grandiosely wrong, and obviously wrong in ways that even a rudimentary blog-level fact check would have caught. It was wrong in ways that would only be possible at this particular low ebb in American political and broader executive function—based on unverified and unvetted information given only ...
The Wuppertal Schwebebahn Is Real And It Is My Friend
WUPPERTAL, Germany — When my friend in Cologne asked me if I might want to take a day trip, thanks to Cologne's proximity to various other notable cities (Dortmund, Düsseldorf, Bonn, among others), I said that I would like to go to Wuppertal to ride the Schwebebahn. To which they said, "I knew that's what you were going to say." My brand is strong. Before my trip to Germany, I declared this desire to ride the Wuppertal Schwebebahn to many of my close friends, and also several strangers. Som...
Igor Shesterkin Caught His White Whale And Scored A Goalie Goal
The thing about all goalie goals is that they rock. There are roughly 175 feet and six prideful skaters between the promised land and any netminder bold enough to even attempt to reach it. There have been but 21 goalie goals, scored by 18 different goalies, in the entire history of the NHL. The thing about Thursday night's goalie goal, specifically, is that no goalie since Ron Hextall has ever so clearly wanted it more than Igor Shesterkin. He is also exceedingly deserving. He is in that cl...
Mr. Monk And The Unfinished Book
One of Monk's most Monk-like episodes in all of Monk occurs in Season 2, Episode 7: "Mr. Monk and the Sleeping Suspect." Adrian Monk, Tony Shalhoub's impersonation of Eeyore if the donkey had severe OCD, has taken to visiting Brian Babbage, a comatose man and his prime murder suspect, for an unofficial therapy session. Monk's actual therapist is away on vacation, and the private detective desperately needs someone to talk to. "He's a good listener," Monk tells his bewildered assistant, Sharona...
Blitzing Is More Common Because Formations Are Becoming Tighter
I was trying to puzzle out how to plagiarize my new podcast best friend while simultaneously filling in for him for this week’s Jamboroo, and for all my skill in stealing other people’s takes, I couldn’t figure out how to effectively disguise it. So instead, I’ll build off what Drew wrote last week while referencing research someone else did. I was trying to see why teams are blitzing more this year, even setting aside blitz maven Brian Flores (his Vikings defense is currently blitzing at a...
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