Defector
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What Does It Mean To “Stand Up For Buffalo”?
Now that New York state and Erie County have spent $850 million in taxpayer dollars, the largest public contribution for any NFL facility in history, it's time for the next important step in the process of opening the Buffalo Bills' new stadium: kissing owner Terry Pegula's ass. While Pegula, for once in his life, did not say something incredibly fucking stupid at this week's ribbon-cutting ceremony, every other person in attendance seemed to bend over backward to make sure that no one watchin...
Left In The Dungeon
This post originally appeared on June 24 in the Oakland Review of Books , which is worth a subscription even if you don’t live in Oakland or read books. Carl must slay the naga princess! If he doesn’t, his best friend—the talking cat-wizard Princess Donut—will die instead. But Carl and his team have a plan. They track the princess to the god Khepri’s sanctum in the Vanquisher Club and slay the club’s guards with a MacGyver-demonology contraption. Inside the sanctum, though, Carl is surpr...
Tom Dundon Cares Not One Bit About The Portland Trail Blazers
It takes a special kind of creep to stand out for sleaziness among NBA owners, objectively one of the worst demographics our species has ever established. Tom Dundon has been the official majority owner of the Portland Trail Blazers for less than three months, and already he is a standard-bearer . It's clear he doesn't mind being a villain. Having already downsized the organization with layoffs, pinched on travel accommodations, stiffed his team's two-way players, and cheaped out on playoff T-...
Marina Mabrey Got 53 The Fun Way
"I score in bunches, and then sometimes kinda just level out," Toronto Tempo guard Marina Mabrey said near the end of her press conference, after the Tempo's 125-97 win over the L.A. Sparks on Thursday. It was an accurate description of her own game, which is built on constant movement and a scalding but occasionally evanescent shooting touch. Last night, however, we finally got to see what would happen if Mabrey never reached the "kinda just level out" phase. What if a whole game was just one...
A Final Day At Aqueduct, New York’s Forlorn And Forgotten Racetrack
Late in the morning of June 13, as most New York City sports fans were mapping out their plans for watching Game 5 of the NBA Finals, I was on the A train headed away from the Brooklyn neighborhood I've called home for 17 years. I was on my way to Aqueduct Racetrack, post time 1:10 p.m . At the end of the month, after 132 years of equine action, Aqueduct will no longer run horses. The first race took place on Sept. 27, 1894, on a track operated by the Queens County Jockey Club, in a facili...
Would You Eat This Guy? What If He Were God, Or A Baby?
Imagine you are seated at a table. A guy sits across from you. He is vaguely humanoid, with a long torso and two arms raised in fist-like clubs. His full name is Edible Agent, but we will call him Eddie and use he/him pronouns. There's something about Eddie that makes you feel at ease. Maybe it's his fragrance, which reminds you of apple juice, of childhood. Maybe it's his two black eyes that gaze upon you without judgment. You decide to unburden yourself to him. You tell him that you've been ...
Folkways Of The Contemporary Sex Idiot, With Kelsey McKinney And Alex Sujong Laughlin
Drew is at the beach, the sun is high and hot in the sky, and all the major sports events are either over or in the early going. If there was ever going to be a moment to give the podcast over to a discussion of podcast industry dysfunction, conquering the fear of failure, and the goings-on among the cadre of horned-up half-sociopaths on Love Island USA , this was it. I knew what had to be done, and so I made the call. Or I sent the Slack message, and then I sent a second one, and then sometim...
The Athletics Are An Abomination
SAN FRANCISCO — On Wednesday night, I attended a Major League Baseball game for the first time since the final game the Athletics played in the Oakland Coliseum. I have all but stopped paying attention to the sport, less in active protest than as a casualty of no longer being able to pay like $9 to be inside of a major-league ballpark (OK, fine, "major-league" "ballpark") within 30 minutes, though the existence of the geographically unmoored Athletics is omnidirectionally repulsive. It was an ...
What Do We Think About This Season Of ‘Love Island USA’?
Everyone's favorite summer sport is back in full swing. The country is tuning in. There are tears. There are shrieks of joy. There is a surprising and concerning amount of toe-sucking! Love Island USA , in its eighth season, has now aired three full weeks of episodes. With tonight's episode, the show will be halfway through the mid-season twist known as Casa Amor. Now seems like as good a time as any to check in with our bravest soldiers: the members of the Defector Staff who willingly sacrifi...
What I Learned Watching The Mets Make Six Errors In A 10-5 Loss
FLUSHING, N.Y. — You sit in the upper decks of that baseball park in Queens where you have spent so many nights both dismal and beautiful, and you stare out at the New York City sky. Everyone around you is booing. This is a good moment to wonder what you are doing there. You were raised by a Cardinals fan. You could have been happy, or at least middlingly happy, or at least self-satisfied in the way that Cardinals fans seem to be. You could also have followed your brother, abandoned all se...
LaMelo Ball Is Headed To Minnesota, Hopefully Not In His Car
The Charlotte Hornets have given up on their goofy, gifted, accursed son LaMelo Ball, who was shipped to the Minnesota Timberwolves in a trade Thursday morning. In return for their franchise player and Josh Green, the Hornets received a pittance : forward Naz Reid, a 2033 unprotected first-round pick, three first-round pick swaps of dubious value (2028, 2029, 2030), three second-round picks that begin in 2029, and the relief of shedding Green's bad contract. Hornets fans will be rightfully ...
Vinícius Has Brazil Believing Again
It is impossible for Brazil, the most iconic team in the world's biggest sporting event, to have anything resembling a quiet tournament, but the Seleção managed to float through the first two matches of this World Cup a little under the radar. Part of that is because it takes a lot to stand out in a 48-team tournament, but the other part has to do with meeting lowered expectations and little more. Brazil drew its first match 1-1 against a very good Moroccan side, then beat up on Haiti 3-0 i...
Lions Cornerback Terrion Arnold Arrested On Kidnapping And Robbery Charges
Detroit Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold was arrested late Wednesday in Tampa, Fla., and charged with four counts of kidnapping and four counts of armed robbery. Jail records showed Arnold turned himself in and was booked in Hillsborough County's Orient Road Jail. Arnold's arrest is related to an ongoing criminal case in which six codefendants have been charged with assaulting and robbing three men in an apartment. According to court documents filed by Hillsborough prosecutors, the six codef...
Diabolical Motherhood
On June 25, 1976, three and a half years after Roe v. Wade made abortion legal in the U.S., The Omen hit theaters. Most viewers remember the high-drama deaths—by impalement, decapitation, hanging—or the creepiness of Harvey Spencer Stephens’s young Damien, or Gregory Peck’s commanding gravitas. But I always remember poor Kathy. Katherine Thorn (Lee Remick, making the most of a fairly thin role) is the wife of Robert Thorn, an American diplomat stationed in Rome and later made ambassador to...
What On Earth Is “Match Momentum”?
It is easy to miss the Match Momentum graphic the Fox network stamps onto its World Cup broadcasts. The graph pops up only on rare occasion, wedged into the bottom-left corner, less than a third of the height and width of the screen. Often it appears only so briefly that the commentators never make a point to draw attention to it, or to try to explain what is happening within it. If advanced statistics have historically been created 1) to produce better metrics for match analysis and 2) for ad...
The Monarchists Have Come To Harangue Iran’s World Cup Team
Given the circumstances, Iran has played extraordinary soccer in this year's World Cup, equalizing not once but twice with New Zealand in a 2-2 result, and displaying robust defense in a 0-0 draw with Belgium, as keeper Alireza Beiranvand made a save that should go down as one of the best of the tournament. The Iranian team has accomplished all of this despite being legally barred from staying in the United States to rest after their games; Donald Trump's administration has forced the squad to...
Should I Sell My Ludicrously Valuable World Cup Ticket?
Time for your weekly edition of the Defector Funbag. Got something on your mind? Email the Funbag . Today, we're talking money, U2, lasagna, and more. Hello! I'm happy to be back guest-hosting the Funbag while Drew is off. Let's get to it. Adam:
Summer Is For Baseball, Hot Dogs, And Watching A Bunch Of Horny Teens Get Murdered In The Woods
I spent 11 summers at sleepaway camp, first as a camper and then, once I turned 17, as a counselor. Every year around this time, I get nostalgic for the days that moved along to the soundtrack of 2000s pop and Dean Friedman songs, and the freedom of a world where the greatest authority is some guy in his early 30s named Neil whom everyone ignored. I have found only one solution to assuage my yearning for the blue skies and green hills of the Finger Lakes: watching movies where a bunch of teens...
What If Your Kid Tells Dirty Dirty Lies?
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 kids and lying.
The Chicago Sky Have Nothing To Look Forward To
Technically, the Chicago Sky are not the worst team in the WNBA right now by record; that honor would belong to either of the teams with one fewer win, the Connecticut Sun or the Seattle Storm. But after Monday's WNBA slate, which featured the Sky's 92-63 loss to the Sun, and Seattle's much more competitive 112-110 loss to the Dallas Wings, the distinction feels like one without a difference. What do you call a team that loses to the worst team in the WNBA by 29 points? The Sky have been ba...
Putting The “Buster” In Buster Posey
The San Francisco Giants have permission from Major League Baseball to wear Pride-themed gear. This was explained by commissioner Rob Manfred in a recent letter to Josh Hawley, the Republican senator from Missouri. The Giants and Dodgers have a special exemption: Other teams have only the 12 league-wide special uniform events, but these two teams can print and wear (and, of course, sell) Pride gear. It is the responsibility of the Giants, as a condition of their special exemption, to "speak to...
Eight Years Of Rituals With Rosalía
In 2018, I became convinced that flamenco had South Asian origins. I hadn’t listened to much flamenco, if any at all, until my roommate Jake introduced me to Rosalía. I watched her dance—using her feet to strike the ground, making an instrument of her body, raising her arms in intricate flourishes—and I thought … I’ve seen this before . It looked so Indian to me. Jake and I used to argue about it whenever we watched her music videos, which means we argued about it constantly. Me: “Romani p...
Two Nights Outside ICE’s New Jersey Concentration Camp
NEWARK, N.J. — I went to Delaney Hall, a privately run ICE jail, for the second time on June 12, three weeks after 300-plus detainees initiated a hunger and labor strike. The strikers’ demands include an audience with Governor Mikie Sherrill, the release of vulnerable inmates, better living conditions, the end of pressure tactics to sign self-deportation orders, and progressive release and fair reviews of their immigration cases. It was 95 degrees with 57 percent humidity when I arrived. Th...
NFL Tells Brendan Sorsby He’s Not Their Problem Right Now
For a little while there, it looked like Texas Tech quarterback Brendan Sorsby was going to wriggle out of this jam. After committing the historically career-ending sin of gambling on his own team , he won a preliminary injunction against the NCAA , overturning their ruling that made him ineligible to play college football. When Texas Tech's embarrassing PR campaign wasn't enough to fend off further legal challenges from the NCAA and the Big 12, Sorsby decided to hit the eject button and head ...
Pat Riley Is Going For It, For Better Or For Worse
Miami has been of two minds on the anti-aging serum that is Pat Riley for about a decade now, roughly since LeBron James pissed off back to Cleveland. This is mostly because 1) Riley was getting old, except of course facially, where he's been 45 since he was 20, and 2) because he didn't get another generational player to replace LeBron. The Miami Heat reached two NBA Finals in that intervening decade, as a five-seed and an eight-seed, with Jimmy Butler as their best player, and that is not not...
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