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What Makes A Good Critic?
Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. 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 . “Everyone’s a critic” has been a lament my entire life, but the advent of the internet rendered it literally true. Anyone can review anything online, from new albums to tubes of toothpaste. But just because you can review something doesn’t mean you’...
Only One Michigan Senate Candidate Knows Puck
There are two men running for Senate in Michigan, and one of them sucks. See if you can guess which one based on their official statements about the condition of the Detroit Red Wings, solicited by the blog Octopus Thrower . For context, the Red Wings hold the longest active playoff drought in the NHL by three seasons; don't currently employ an official, non-interim GM ; haven't yet agreed to a new deal with young defensive standout Simon Edvinsson ; can't seem to solve the problem of ex-capta...
Francis Fukuyama Is The Last Grandpa
If you’re not following Francis Fukuyama on Instagram , you’re missing out. His posts exemplify a Boomer picaresque aesthetic: the occasional typo in his captions, pictures of electronic parts that he’s fiddling with, a linear algebra textbook, a landscape shot of the Danube, mysterious but alluring architectural highlights of various European cities, and unsmiling selfies while wearing a ballcap. It’s all charming, yet interspersed within the grid are more eyebrow-raising indications: a debat...
Sally Rooney Stands By Her Principles
Sally Rooney, one of the most popular novelists alive, says she will no longer sell her books in the U.K. In 2025, the British government proscribed Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, and in August of that year, Rooney published an op-ed in The Irish Times titled, "I support Palestine Action. If this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it." Now, because the laws have not changed, Rooney and her publisher Faber & Faber announced this week that they will no longer be ...
Spain Reminds The USWNT Where They Stand
CHESTER, Penn. — For decades, the U.S. Women's National Team stood at the top of the mountain, where the air is thinnest. They defended their position with ferocity. They didn't win every major tournament, but they won most of them, and were contenders in all. Their identity on the pitch, more than anything, was being the best. That changed with the 2023 World Cup, when the two-time defending champions flamed out in the round of 16 after barely surviving the group stage. Spain went on to w...
Warhammer 40K Is Cool
In the grim darkness of the far future, 40,000 years from now, an immortal corpse-Emperor sits atop his Golden Throne on Earth, watching over the trillions upon trillions of human beings scattered across the galaxy. For ten thousand years, the Emperor hasn’t spoken or moved from that Golden Throne, and those masses of humans are ruled by the Imperium of Man in the Emperor’s name. Their often short existences are spent within the Imperium’s authoritarian systems that value ignorance over knowle...
How Do I Talk To My Kid About Religion?
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, Albert answers a question about a child who has become Bible curious.
Manchester United Is Eating Itself Alive
In terms of things you simply do not want to see happening at the club you support within the first two months of the season, one of your star players blasting the entire organizational hierarchy has to be pretty high up there. That's exactly what's happening at Manchester United, following a brutal start (one win, three draws, two losses, and 13th place) to what was supposed to be an exemplary Premier League season and a listless and frustrating 2-0 defeat Tuesday to Atlético Madrid in the se...
Punch Bowl Now More Turd Than Punch
How quickly can the owner of a reigning championship team spend down a sudden windfall of goodwill? James Dolan has spent the NBA offseason exploring that hypothetical, and he appears to be a gifted speedrunner. The owner of the New York Knicks began his work before the job was even done this past June, inviting Donald Trump to Game 3 of the NBA Finals . That wound up being the team's only loss in an otherwise torrid 15-game playoff stretch. Then, at the team's victory parade, mere days aft...
Good Baseball Isn’t Necessarily Beautiful
The American League Championship Series is every bit an American League production, which is to say that it is not for the dilettante, or anything close to an easy watch. It is for people who choose to view sports in their leisure time as penance for past misdeeds rather than as a reward for past service. You don't sit back and enjoy it passively; you may not enjoy it at all. Instead you lean in with clenched fists and teeth in full-lock grind, because this is the business that you and they ha...
The Verdict Is In: Bo Nix Stinks
If you watched the Broncos-Chargers game on Sunday, first of all, my apologies. You shouldn’t have had to see that. Second of all, you might have come away from that game saying, “Good Lord, Justin Herbert has gone from being overhyped to being actively shitty!” I can’t blame you for that gut reaction. Herbert’s play has deteriorated to the point where no one would blame that team’s brass for staging a full reset at quarterback. But the bigger story from that game had nothing to do with Herber...
Brian Flores’s Racial Discrimination Lawsuit Reveals Racist Recruiting Memo
A memo prepared for the Las Vegas Raiders by the recruiting firm Korn Ferry was entered as an exhibit in Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores's ongoing racial discrimination lawsuit against the NFL and multiple teams. The memo was unsealed by the court Tuesday, giving the public a rare look at how coaching candidates are evaluated by teams. As it turns out, this particular evaluation was pretty racist. The memo, first reported on by Front Office Sports , contains a list of F...
Tyreek Hill Found Liable For Two Counts Of Battery
A jury found former Kansas City and Miami receiver Tyreek Hill liable Tuesday night for two counts of battery in his civil trial. The same Miami jury found him not liable on another five counts of battery, one count of assault, one count of intentional infliction of emotional distress, and one count of continuing domestic violence. The jury awarded Hill's estranged wife, Lakeeta Vaccaro, $500,000 in compensatory damages, but did not award any punitive damages. The trial came about as par...
I Met The Twee Bird That Ruffled Kelly Clarkson’s Feathers
Before we get to the feud, let's start with the facts. Molly , the wooden crank-operated automaton made by the artist Bliss Kolb, is a beauty. Although Molly is made of basswood, cherry, and teak, with glass eyes and steel screws, its buttery yellow body and dusky brown wings recall the northern yellow warbler , a melodic whistling songbird found across the U.S. and Canada. Molly is a beautiful singer. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNZ4RysiN3A It is also true that Kelly Clarkson is a...
WNBA Capably Solves Logistical Problem
The WNBA was staring down the following issue: After the first two games of the Finals, beginning Saturday at the raucous 18,064-seat building which the Golden State Valkyries have sold out for two straight years, the series would move to Atlanta, where the Dream’s primary arena, Gateway Center, seats just 3,500. The Dream have so far played their three home playoff games at the larger State Farm Arena, the approximately 17,044-seat venue where the Hawks play. (The two teams do not share an...
It’s Normal To Have Watched ‘The Batman’ Roughly Eight Times
Find a new slant!
My Darkest Confession: Stone Temple Pilots Was A Great Band
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 bread heels, beer guts, gastropubs, Digger , and more. PROGRAMMING NOTE: I’m off 'bag duty next week while I finish up a special feature assignment. But don’t worry; we’ll have a guest host ready to entertain your finest inquiries. Just hit up the Funbag email address and they’ll be wa...
What The Steve Ballmer Scandal Says About Sports Media
The NBA season is one week away, and there's one game I can't stop thinking about. On Nov. 2, Kawhi Leonard's Toronto Raptors will travel to Los Angeles to play the Clippers, his former team and the subject of the NBA's harshest-ever punishment over the cap shenanigans they did to sign him back in 2019. The spectacle of Leonard, back in L.A. in a Raptors uniform, will be so weird, and I'm curious to see how the basketball media will cover it. Speaking of basketball media, that's the true su...
Christine Brennan Has Not Fully Lost It, According To Christine Brennan In Two Baffling Phone Calls
This past Friday, Christine Brennan asked to speak with an editor at Defector. The USA Today columnist's request was somewhat expected, since Giri Nathan had written about her in an article published two days earlier, the piece critical of her fixation with measuring the WNBA's success through the singular metric of Caitlin Clark. While writing his article, Giri had reached out to Brennan for comment on what her ideal strategy would be for the league to properly market the Indiana Fever's star...
‘Fallow’ Explores A World Where Big Tech Has Disrupted Pregnancy
The practice of surrogacy can be said to date back to the Bible; in Genesis 16, Abram is promised descendants by God, but his wife Sarah is unable to conceive. Sarah then instructs Abram to lay with her handmaid, who is then able to bear his child and fulfill God’s promise. This story begins at the issue of infertility. Yet the practice today has evolved to address a myriad of motivations: the pro-natalism push, the desire to preserve one’s body, gay couples endeavoring to start a family. The ...
There Is Some Mighty Weird Stuff Going On Up There
The technical term for them is Transient Luminous Events, and it's a good term. Transient, because they last just a few milliseconds. Luminous, because they light up the sky, but also because they invoke the radiant immanence of an Old Testament manifestation. Events, because—well, imagine you saw this. You would agree this was an Event. The most commonly observed TLE is a red sprite, an enormous electrical discharge shooting upward from thunderstorm clouds, usually a blood-red color due to...
The Brewers Are Walking Down Their Wounded Prey
I like to imagine a wised-up contrarian reading Ray Ratto's blog about the Milwaukee Brewers' Game 1 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers, which identifies a formula in the way the Brew Crew are progressing through the National League playoffs. It's not a vague, vibes-based formula that Ratto describes, either: He says Milwaukee's opponent scores first "but cannot make a big inning out of its opportunity"; he says the Brewers "catch up quickly" then nose ahead; he says Milwaukee's starter "goe...
‘Saban’ Has Nothing To Say About Its Subject Or The World He Helped Create
At times it really does feel like time is moving faster than ever, and even things that happened a year ago might as well have happened 10 years ago. But it is important to maintain perspective, and understand that time and history have to play their parts before we can properly recognize moments for what they meant at the time they happened. With that said, it can feel a little strange to begin reevaluating the legacy of Nick Saban, football coach, and the Saban era of Alabama football a mere...
What Kind Of Villain Will Manchester City Be?
The lead-up to Sunday's game between Liverpool and Manchester City could not have felt more strange. Here were the two teams that have defined approximately the last decade of the Premier League, who have been each other's fiercest rivals while setting new standards for excellence on the pitch, meeting in a meaningless game. It was meaningless in a figurative sense, in that the primary reason for anyone tuning in was to see how the Anfield crowd would greet their guests in their first game sin...
The Crossword, Oct. 12: Ripped From The Headlines
You heard it here first: It's time to play our Monday crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Jeremy Venook and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu . 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 .
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