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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...
Trae Young’s Bizarre New Deal Is The Wrong Kind Of Hedge
As if they were trying to win the 2019 NBA Championship seven years too late, the horrible Washington Wizards made two of the most interesting moves at the deadline last year, relieving the Dallas Mavericks of Anthony Davis in exchange for basically one good first-round pick, and taking Trae Young off the Atlanta Hawks' hands for some expiring contracts. Despite Young's considerable flaws , the deal was a fine one for the Wizards, since they didn't surrender any real assets, happily allowing t...
A Sicko’s Guide To The NBA Draft, With David Lee
The first round of the NBA Draft is tonight! Who will go first overall? Will any of the top four teams deviate from consensus? In what order will the huge swarm of point guards go after the fourth pick? On this week's Nothing But Respect , we answer some of these questions, but we also get into larger-order matters of draft philosophy, scouting, and why draft people use such crazy language. Our guest this week was David Lee, the writer and analyst, not the former NBA All-Star. We also discu...
The Golden Boot Race Has Already Gotten Ridiculous
Thanks to the luck of the draw and the blessing of the soccer gods, Monday was the second matchday of this World Cup in which all three of Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, and Erling Haaland took the field in back-to-back-to-back matches. Thanks to sheer superhuman talent on display from the trio, Monday was also the second matchday of this World Cup in which all three of Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappé, and Erling Haaland scored at least two goals each. If the World Cup is a global celebration of ...
Mona Khalil, Who Devoted Her Life To Protecting Turtles, Killed By Israeli Airstrike
For half a century, a house on the coast in southern Lebanon has kept vigil over Al-Mansouri beach and the blue Mediterranean waters beyond. Mona Khalil's grandfather built the house in the 1970s, around seven miles from the border with Israel. A decade later, the Khalil family fled the Lebanese Civil War and left the house behind. Khalil eventually settled in the Netherlands and found work as a porcelain restorer. In 1999, on a visit to her grandparents' old home, Khalil walked along the shor...
Tiny, Innocent Dirt Cam Menaced By Confused Goliaths
If there is a funnier MLB broadcast duo than Jason Benetti and Andy Dirks, I am not familiar with their work. Regardless of how the Tigers are playing, you can guarantee that Benetti will arrive at the booth ready to pepper his play-by-play with clever one-liners, deep-cut references and an extended bit or two. Of all his rotating partners in his couple years calling Detroit baseball, the modest, folksy Dirks has proven the most able and game to follow along with Benetti and—perhaps occasional...
Five Self-Obsessed Danes Make For A Surprisingly Fun And Sexy Summer Read
Waist Deep , the debut novel and international bestseller by Danish writer Linea Maja Ernst, reads like it's inspired equally by television sitcoms and A Midsummer Night's Dream . The premise of Waist Deep fits both genres, with an ensemble cast in a cinematic location: Five old friends from university, plus two partners, plus two children, all reunite at a summer house on a remote lake in Denmark for a week. The one where the gang gets back together! Once everyone is there, hosts Karen an...
Giannis Antetokounmpo Is A Heat
It's over! The Milwaukee Bucks finally did it: Late Monday night, they picked the better of two competing offers and finally agreed to ship out differently gruntled superstar and franchise icon Giannis Antetokounmpo. That deal sent him to the Miami Heat in exchange for a blockbuster haul of players and draft picks. It's been a long and torturous process for Antetokounmpo and the Bucks, who for the most part have enjoyed and profited by one another for 13 years now. Milwaukee, understandably...
Life As An Undocumented Trans Sex Worker In The Age Of ICE
In March, Vivian, an undocumented transgender sex worker from the state of Chiapas, Mexico, was driving from San Diego to her house in Santa Ana when her biggest fear came true: She was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at a traffic checkpoint. "Thank God they let me go," she says. But she fears one day they might not. Last year, her friend Sadis was working at a hotel in Saddle Brook, N.J, when police attempted to detain her. "She jumped into an Uber to try to get away," Vivia...
Serena Williams Is Coming Back As A Wild Card At Wimbledon
After a few months of cheeky silence and misdirection, plus an experiment on the doubles court, Serena Williams is completing her comeback to professional tennis. The 44-year-old has accepted a wild card into the singles main draw at Wimbledon, which begins next week, causing the traditionally stodgy tournament to post heatedly about the occasion. Williams retired from competition after a third-round appearance at the 2022 U.S. Open. Her first-round match at Wimbledon will mark her first pr...
The San Francisco Giants Are Just Doing Whatever
The San Francisco Giants are a stinking cesspool of bad vibes and bad baseball. That is not the newsy part of this post. Sure, the Giants' place in the standings (currently 15 games below .500) and the collection of petulant homophobes on the roster have given the public plenty of reason not to prod this smoldering heap of a franchise with a ten-foot pole. But the Giants seem determined to expose every part of their dysfunction, and will not rest until they have created a public nuisance to...
Lionel Messi Falls To Earth, Ascends Right Back Into The Sky
Fresh off reasserting his extraterrestrial talent by opening his sixth World Cup with a hat trick, Lionel Messi proved on Monday that he is in fact still human. Seven minutes into the match between Argentina and Austria, Lautaro Martínez sprinted through on goal only to be taken down by a pair of Austrian defenders. After a VAR review, the play was correctly called a penalty. Messi took the ball, placed it on the spot, and proceeded to do what he has done many times before: miss. The failed...
Alan Greenspan, Influential Economic Policymaker Whom I Once Terrified At A Party, Is Dead
Alan Greenspan died Monday . The longtime Fed chairman was once hailed as the most powerful man in the world . Greenspan was 100 years old. Back to me: A couple of cool, smart, and nice D.C. friends of mine wrote a book that came out in the summer of 2009, and other cool, smart, and nice D.C. friends threw them a party. Some of the most powerful people in the city, meaning some of the most powerful people in the world, were invited. They also put me on the guest list. The invite said the pa...
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