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Defector
14 Sep 15:57 • Luisa Rollenhagen

The Far Right Had Its Biggest Electoral Win In Germany Since The Nazis. What Now?

Elon Musk loves them. Donald Trump thinks they’re “the best hope for Germany” and that they’ll “MGGA” (Make Germany Great Again). They’re an existential threat for fact-based reasoning, democracy, human rights, and multiculturalism. And they're in position to become the firs...

Defector
14 Sep 15:57 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

The Crossword, Sept. 14: Miscalculation

You can always count on our Monday crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Elijah Acquah, 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. The AVCX, an independent puzzles and games outlet, invites you to subscribe, or sample the goods with a two-month free trial: "With an AVCX subscription, you get access to weekly themed and themeless crosswords, minis, cryptics, and trivia, by email or in your favorite app. We have no corporate overlord, and we publish top-flight stuff only. We also pay our people fairly, always. Check us out."

Defector
14 Sep 15:57 • Chris Thompson

Nicholas Russell’s Debut Novel Gets Weird In The Desert

If you've read Nicholas Russell, here or elsewhere, you've gathered that he is thoughtful, erudite, and extremely curious. In addition to approximately one million reviews and essays here at Defector, he's published more than a dozen interviews, and they've ranged all over: ...

Defector
14 Sep 15:57 • Ray Ratto

Steve Ballmer Is Just Going To Have To Take It

Nothing beats watching a billionaire eat filth in public, unless the chefs and waiters at Maison De Merde are all billionaires too. And so it is that Steve Ballmer's semi-abject capitulation to reality, and to the penalty he was handed in the face of overwhelming e...

Defector
14 Sep 13:54 • Tom Ley

The Protect College Sports Act Finally Has Its Suitably Off-Putting Mascot

College football fans who tuned into ESPN's College GameDay this Saturday were forced to encounter the alarming visage of Texas Senator Ted Cruz. To make matter worse, he monopolized nearly 10 minutes of air time in order to stump for the Protect College Sports Act (PCSA), a...

Defector
13 Sep 17:48 • Ray Ratto

A Whole Lot Changed In One Week For The Rams

How best to react to the latest news on the Los Angeles Rams? Easy. With complete abandon and logical recklessness. That's how the veterans do it. Said latest news, that massive offseason signing Myles Garrett has fouled his knee, failed to will it healthy again, and now wi...

Defector
13 Sep 16:03 • Ray Ratto

There’s Job Security In Putting Out Fires For The West Sacramento Arsonists

West Sacramento Athletics manager Mark Kotsay knew the drill from months of exercising it. Another game was on fire, and he needed someone who could at least let it burn itself out, so he went to Carlos Cortes in the bottom of the eighth inning, the bases loaded with Mariner...

Defector
13 Sep 16:03 • Barry Petchesky

They Don’t Come Much Cooler Than Chris Johnson

It was supposed to be a day to remember Chris Johnson, and it still can be. The NFL's all-time single-season yards leader was scheduled to be honored today by the Tennessee Titans, for whom he starred from 2008–2013, at halftime of their game against the New York Jets, for w...

Defector
13 Sep 14:03 • Ray Ratto

College Football Means Finding Something To Get Mad About

The truest thing about college football is that there is no such thing as being too small, too petty, or too whiny about being too small or petty. We're not being frivolously critical here despite how good doing that makes us feel; blaming people in the industry for acting o...

Defector
11 Sep 17:42 • Israel Daramola

Cheating Is A College Football Feature, Not A Bug

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: With all the braying about the blessed return of football games this past week, all...

Defector
11 Sep 17:18 • Dave McKenna

Famously Undiplomatic Britt McHenry Handed State Department Gig

Britt McHenry, a former Fox host and ESPN reporter best known for a towing yard tirade, says she’s taken a job with the Trump administration. McHenry took to social media on Wednesday to confirm that she’d been hired as a “press advisor” for the U.S. Department of State. He...

Defector
11 Sep 16:09 • Patrick Redford

Honey Deuce McBride, With Giri Nathan

This week on Nothing But Respect, we welcomed back million-time guest Giri Nathan to talk primarily about his experience covering the U.S. Open. How bad is the phone situation? How does the memetic object of the Honey Deuce explain the current predicament? What's been the match of the tournament? We also touched on the biggest NBA news story of the past week, as well as the fallout from the NBA's hammer-style punishment of the Clippers.

You can find Nothing But Respect in Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you use. Follow the show on Instagram, and contact the Broke Jumper Tip Line at (347) 380-6426. Thanks for listening!

Defector
11 Sep 16:09 • Kathryn Xu

Report: Family Of Oneil Cruz Hired Fixer To Cover Up Fatal 2020 Car Crash

On Sept. 10, ProPublica published a story by reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts detailing how Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Oneil Cruz avoided prosecution after a traffic collision in the Dominican Republic in which he rear-ended a motorcycle, killing all three passengers. The ...

Defector
11 Sep 16:09 • Ray Ratto

The 49ers Struck A Blow For Sensible Travel Strategies And Thumped The Rams

The power of a well and oft-told narrative is not to be diminished, but it also should not be feared if countervailing information comes to light. And so it is that the San Francisco 49ers, irradiated scoundrels though they may be and summer vacation wastrels they absol...

Defector
11 Sep 16:09 • Patrick Redford

How NFL Teams Avoid The Great Big Middle

The NFL is built on parity. The middle exudes a tremendous gravitational force, with the schedule, the draft, and the salary cap all conspiring to pull every team toward 9-8 or 8-9 records year after year. While the larger-order churn of the league hews to that pattern, a nu...

Defector
11 Sep 16:09 • Alex Sujong Laughlin

How Do I Avoid Becoming A Doomsday Prepper?

I knew I had gone too far when the question of whether we should buy a gun crossed my mind. This came at the apex of a weeklong anxiety spiral triggered by a feature the New York Times published about the possibility of an 18-month, nationwide blackout. I was uneasy seeing t...

Defector
11 Sep 14:06 • Giri Nathan

How Tennis Channel’s Jim Courier Sees The Sport

The quality of the average tennis broadcast has skyrocketed in recent years. Analysts assume far more curiosity and intelligence on the viewer’s part than I can ever remember, and they're no longer limited to tropes and cliches, recycled set after set. Instead the television...

Defector
11 Sep 14:06 • Brian Feldman

How An Unsubtle 9/11 Tribute Was Added To Sam Raimi’s ‘Spider-Man’

Name an iconic scene from the first Spider-Man movie, the one directed by Sam Raimi that came out in 2002. You’re saying it’s the upside-down kiss? Yeah, that’s fair.

Let me ask my question in a different way: What’s the most iconic line from the first Spider—OK now that I’m saying it out loud, it’s definitely “With great power comes great responsibility.” Which I know is not a creation of the film but it did popularize it and … we’re already getting off-topic.

Let me try this again: Hey, remember the part in the middle of Spider-Man that’s about 9/11?

Defector
10 Sep 16:09 • Giri Nathan

The State Of The U.S. Open Is The State Of Us

It’s being shouted from all corners: The U.S. Open has become an overcrowded, overpriced circus awash in influencers, aspirational influencers, corporate stooges, drunken buffoons, brand activations, inane stunt food, weed smoke, and bettors. It is newly hostile to children,...

Defector
10 Sep 15:48 • Laura Wheatman Hill

Talking To Emily St. John Mandel About Revision, Timeline Corruption, And Living Without A Floor

The first line of Emily St. John Mandel’s new novel Exit Party sets the tone of the whole book. She writes, “In the first spring after the collapse of the United States, the blossoming of the jacaranda trees felt to Ari like grace.” We have been dropped into yet another one ...

Defector
10 Sep 15:48 • Barry Petchesky

Barry Melrose Brought Hockey Home

Go ahead and listen to this. (For the real perverts, use this one; you just know you're about to stay up until 1:00 a.m. for a particularly shitty Sharks–Mighty Ducks game.) What does it evoke? What do you think of? More specifically, who do you think of? You immediately kno...

Defector
10 Sep 15:48 • Ray Ratto

The NFL Opener Had That Wednesday Night Football Feeling

The National Football League is back, in case you haven't already been lectured, hectored, and badgered into aural submission by the various communication venues that have been screeching about it for weeks. This post-modern Christmas, with all the soul-crushing commercialis...

Defector
10 Sep 13:45 • Post-Postdoc

What Gets Left Out Of Math’s New Era?

The science fiction author William Gibson's pithy observation that "the future is already here—it's just not very evenly distributed" has had different shades of meaning since it was first formulated. In its original context, Gibson meant it as a measure of technological pro...

Defector
09 Sep 19:45 • Giri Nathan

Ben Shelton Took Down Carlos Alcaraz In The Match Of His Life

Who knew Ben Shelton could do all that? Certainly not the Defector writer who was slandering him in the early stages of the match as "John Isner with WiFi." The 23-year-old American revealed levels to his game heretofore unseen, over the course of a U.S. Open quarterfinal th...

Defector
09 Sep 19:21 • Jae Towle Vieira

Do You Hear The People Sing? Singing The Song Of Sequined Teens?

At my university, you had to take an introductory fiction writing workshop before you were eligible to apply for the more advanced workshops. Admission to these big leagues was by no means guaranteed. The first time that I got in, I experienced about a week of absolute elati...

Defector
09 Sep 19:12 • Drew Magary

The Gift Of Forgetting

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season (except when the season starts on a Wednesday; kiss my ass, Goodell). Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, ...

Defector
09 Sep 18:48 • Patrick Redford

‘Only If You Get Caught’ Returns Next Week

The time has once again come to break the rules: Only If You Get Caught is back for Season 2. If you listened to the first season, welcome back; if you didn’t, you have six days to do so before the show returns on Sept. 15. You can listen to the trailer here. OIYGC is…

Defector
09 Sep 18:30 • Justin Ellis

Should I Be Worried That My Kid Hasn’t Found A Best Friend?

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 minordilemmas@defector.com.

This week, Justin answers a question about helping your child find a best friend.

Defector
09 Sep 18:09 • Sabrina Imbler

Horrible Toad Very Good At What It Does

It is difficult, and yet important, to practice holding multiple truths at once, such as: No animal is inherently bad, and also the Surinam toad is a toad of nightmares. The diversity of life on Earth should be celebrated, and also the Surinam toad's particular eccentricitie...

Defector
09 Sep 17:27 • Albert Burneko

What If We Could Have A Future?

Maybe you have heard of Roko's Basilisk. This is a thought experiment, for lack of a better term, popular among a certain set: hyper-rationalists, futurists, effective altruists. Tech-industry guys. You get the idea. The most exhausting humans who ever lived, that is to say....