Vertical video makes Olivia Miles look good. Horizontal video makes her look better. Her gift shines in context, on the unadorned and unsoundtracked platform that is the next day's full-game replay. What the Minnesota Lynx rookie does best as starting point guard of the WNBA's top team is to understand every option available to her before choosing, inevitably, the right one. She's done well to…
Major League Baseball will never get through a season without a Pride Night controversy. If that becomes the goal, then the only sure option is to eliminate the promotion altogether. That may not be the worst idea: The cowards and vampires who run the league and its teams don't deserve the simple goodwill that comes from saying "gesundheit" to a stranger on a bus, let alone the presumption of…
With 104 games over the next six weeks, and with the United States (along with Canada and Mexico) hosting, the World Cup will be all-encompassing for the near future. Soccer is a very easy sport to get drawn into, especially during a World Cup, but the complexity of the game lives below the surface. Sure, you can enter the tournament with minimal knowledge and still appreciate the appeal of a…
Recently, while picking up a banh mi in my neighborhood, I found myself transfixed by a TV in the restaurant showing what I assumed was a nature documentary. At first the footage soothed: Gentle humpback whales sailing through hazy blue waters and killer whales gliding in packs under glacial ice. But the longer I waited for my banh mi, which was not very long at all, the more unsettling the video…
On Dec. 5, 2025, FIFA President Gianni Infantino presented Donald Trump with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, nominally for Trump's "tireless efforts to bring people together in a spirit of peace." I found myself less interested in the cynicism of placating Trump with the sort of bribe one would bestow upon a recalcitrant 10-year-old—nobody considers FIFA the imprimatur of global peace—and more…
Every spring, as the flowers open and the days warm, Knicks merchandise bursts out of closets in New York City. Hats, T-shirts, and jackets adorn eager New Yorkers across the five boroughs. I wish I were a mature enough person to handle this particular bandwagoning with grace, and I do arrive there eventually. But there's always an initial tingle of irritation at the stolen valor.
Hey,…
Like the universe itself, the United States tax code is ever-expanding, and no one can claim to know its exact size. There are statutes enacted by Congress; implementing regulations issued by the Treasury Department; rules from the Internal Revenue Service explaining how other rules apply to specific circumstances; and a patchwork of court decisions that may or may not supersede everything else,…
The Pittsburgh Steelers, eager to cast off whatever traces of cultural relevance they once had, announced on Wednesday that they were willing to wait for quarterback Aaron Rodgers to help ease them into a quiet, lonely death.
“I’m optimistic we can get a deal wrapped sometime within the next three to 100 days,” said GM Omar Khan. Khan told reporters that he recognizes that the team’s fans have…
_This story is brought to you by_ Ravenous_, a worker-owned food culture publication launching today! Together, they’re putting the bite back into food journalism with incisive reporting like this story you’re about to read, plus all the cultural criticism, silly blogs, and reporting you can eat—all without the influence of big-money investors or generative AI (yuck). If that sounds delicious to…
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 atminordilemmas@defector.com.
This week, Albert offers advice on how to handle one of your kids complaining about the other.
PHILADELPHIA — On the afternoon of April 9, 2026, partisans of the Alberta separatist movement—who rally for the landlocked province’s secession from the broader, united commonwealth of Canada, and the establishment of a self-sufficient petrostate bankrolled by its ample oil, gas and mineral reserves—scored a major endorsement.
“I officially RECOGNIZE the NEW INDEPENDENT NATION of ALBERTA,”…
_Welcome to**** Listening Habits_,_a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently._
The first time I ever noticed that I was being sold to by the shadowy music industry in a way that didn't feel genuine to me was with the arrival of a little superstar known as Avril Lavigne. She was the "anti-Britney." She was crass and rude and punk. She wore a white tank top…
The U.S. Department of Defense will no longer mandate flu vaccination for military service members or civilian personnel, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced Tuesday, in a tweeted video that nothing shy of a credible imminent threat to murder my entire family could make me watch. Vaccination, according to a portion of the video quoted on the department's website, will be issued only to those…
The New York Islanders took a moment during their final game of the season to promote a fundraiser for a former NYPD sergeant who was recently convicted of manslaughter. Yeah, sounds about right.
During Tuesday's 2-1 loss to the Carolina Hurricanes, the Islanders' jumbotron displayed a big QR code directing to a fundraiser put together with the Sergeants Benevolent Association, "in its fight for…
Grief has no expiration date, and there’s no statute of limitations on murder.
Twenty-one years ago this summer, Steve Cornejo was shot in the back and died in the courtyard of an apartment complex in Fairfax, Va. Cornejo was unarmed. Brandon Gotwalt, who shot him in the back, initially told police he wasn't on the scene, then**** claimed self-defense, then admitted to flushing the spent shell…
It was a lovely day above the Moon. The Artemis astronauts did some science, took lots of pictures, didn't die or get replaced by bodysnatchers, and perhaps most importantly, made me bawl a couple of times. One was when Orion came back into communications range after 40 nerve-wracking minutes behind the Moon. Mission specialist Christina Koch, after confirming that she and mission control could…
On March 10, the Bigfoot Society noted an "unprecedented" multi-day mass migration of bigfoots—possibly bigfeet—in the vicinity of Portage County, Ohio. The "unidentified bipedal hominids" were moving southeast in a "coordinated movement." Two bigfoots were spotted around Mantua on March 6 and 7, at least one of them making "auditory grunts." Three more bigfoots were spotted on March 9; a sixth…
A tenant in a Brooklyn building owned by Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo has not had heat in his apartment since Feb. 23, when a blizzard dropped over 19 inches of snow on New York City. Between the months of October through May, when the outside temperature drops below 55 degrees, building owners in the city are required by law to heat apartments to at least 68 degrees during the day,…
In 1991, _Spin_ magazine took the Compton rap collective N.W.A out to eat for a profile at the Russian Tea Room in Manhattan. The white author presents gangsta rap as a cynical enterprise, no different than escapist, violent popcorn blockbusters. “They’re not stupid, even though you may think so by the time you finish this article,” he writes of one of the greatest groups in the history of…
Earlier this month I received an email that, for a moment, made my heart skip. The email came from someone named Elena Ferrante, at "elenaferrante800@gmail.com," and I feel no remorse leaking Elena's email here because, of course, whoever or whatever was emailing me is not the real Elena Ferrante. I realized this a few seconds after I received the email, in part because there is no world in which…
To be a U.S. Olympian is to represent the best that your country has to offer. That sounds extremely lofty when it's written out like that, but I think that's really how it works, ideally, if you're taking in the best possible message from NBC's explicitly patriotic broadcast. Even I can feel it, in my most big-hearted moments, particularly after I've watched the figure skating events: Alysa…
As you may have heard, the twinned industries that produce art and criticism in this country are embattled. On every side, there is steady conglomeration, privatization, and the rapid uptake of labor-annihilating technology. In tandem, there has been a steady mainstreaming of an anti-intellectual attitude that finds criticism, particularly negative reviews, to be pretentious and without lasting…
In the late 1990s, Olympics officials were suddenly eager to exit the business of testing women’s DNA. After three decades of requiring all women athletes to sit for chromosome tests in order to compete, the International Olympic Committee, in a daze, seemed to realize it was on the wrong side of history. The American Medical Association had recently come out against DNA testing in sports, and so…