There's probably no reason for the World Cup third-place match to exist. Unlike the Olympics, when a coveted bronze medal is at stake, third place at the World Cup doesn't offer much to teams. By and large, these matches tend to involve mentally checked-out players mainly co...

MULHOUSE, France — Stage 12 of the 2026 Tour de France was supposed to be boring. Maybe it would have been were it not for Quinn Simmons, who did what he does best and made the peloton quake with a thumping attack. The American champion seized the initiative with 35 kilomete...

On Monday, in the city of Biddeford, Maine, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in an SUV rammed the passenger side of a civilian vehicle and, after the vehicle stopped, approached it with their guns drawn. The driver reportedly was 26-year-old Colombian na...

James Dolan keeps pooping on his own parade. 

The Knicks owner should still be basking in the warmth of his beloved NBA team’s first championship in 53 years, like the rest of New York. Instead, he’s suing journalists.

Dolan’s corporation, MSG Entertainment, filed a defamation lawsuit Thursday in New York Supreme Court against Wired magazine, for a story published last week titled "Madison Square Garden Kept a List of Gay Celebrities." The piece went into detail about the owner's fetish for keeping tabs on many of the Garden's famous visitors.

There was a very awkward moment in the July 16 episode of The Executive Show on KNBR in San Francisco. The hosts, Brian Murphy and Markus Boucher, were talking with Giants executive Buster Posey, making his first appearance on the show since May 21. According to SFGate, that...

The burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides is famously good at parenting. In the leaf litter of forests around the United Kingdom, the beetles scurry around in search of the small carcasses of mice and birds. Once the beetles find a suitable corpse, they get to work. First ...

Here's how we got on this. Billy was in soccer chat speculating on how soccer might have turned out differently if Lionel Messi had "accidentally" drowned baby Lamine Yamal in that bathtub. He then posted the poster for 2004's The Butterfly Effect to illustrate the concept of the butterfly effect. Luis piped up to say that The Butterfly Effect may have been the worst movie he's even seen in a theater. Now we're all sharing our worsts.

Giri Nathan

The only movie I've ever walked out of was Kazaam. If I remember correctly, I told my mom I had to go pee and then after that we simply decided not to go back inside. I think even at that age I clocked it as irredeemable. The angriest I've ever been at a movie while sitting in a theater was Rise of Skywalker. I left with plumes of steam coming out of my ears.

Like every previous edition, this World Cup has been great at producing stories. The most uplifting was the one about the shrinking gap between soccer's established powers and the rest of the world, as told by the group-stage success of the African teams, and most memorably ...

It is the policy of Defector that co-owners who are on vacation should, when on vacation, try their best to be on vacation. There are complicating factors to this simple-sounding rule—it is both easy and tempting to pop into Slack during lulls or just out of habit, and that ...

The Milwaukee Bucks are going to have a hilarious roster next season. Tyler Herro! Myles Turner! Kevin Porter Jr.! Caris LeVert! Kyle fuckin' Kuzma! To assemble this Jaywalkers' Row of contributors, while also affording all of the non-corporeal essence of Damian Lillard that...

Yes, posting a bunch of high-quality photos of fans taken right after their team lost a big game is a bit like shooting cod in a barrel, but I think you'll agree that there is something about crestfallen England fans that makes them particularly striking. I mean, just look at the before and after of the poor lad at the top of this post. Is that not the agony of being a sports fan, perfectly distilled into two images?

This is what getting your soul snatched by Lionel Messi after 30 minutes of cowardly defending does to a country.

Baseball is a game of centimeters, and every carefully placed hair on a pitcher’s head is the difference between a Cy Young season and an ERA higher than your jersey number. Take Toronto's Dylan Cease. At the All-Star Game, Cease explained that during spring training he bega...

CHALON-SUR-SAÔNE, France — Roughly 15 minutes after driving past the start line, Harry Talbot decides it's time to pull over next to a field of droopy sunflowers. He scouted the route of Stage 11 of the Tour de France kilometer by kilometer earlier this year on Google Street...

When Steve Yzerman took over as Red Wings general manager in 2019, the state of Michigan embraced him as the man who would return their hockey team to glory, or at least clean up the mess Ken Holland left behind. Some of that was nostalgia for the time he was the Wings' capt...

PEN America president Dinaw Mengestu resigned from his position this past Thursday after the troubled free-expression organization published a report reaffirming its opposition to cultural boycotts. The report, titled "A Silent Moratorium," recounts anecdotes from editors, a...

Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently. The rap song of the summer is undoubtedly Yung Miami's "Spend Dat." Produced by J. White Did It, the gloriously maximalist strip-club banger celebrates ...

Argentina is in the World Cup final for a second straight tournament. Somehow, some way, that is a true statement. After Cape Verde put the fear of god into the reigning champions, after Egypt had a 2-0 lead as late as the 79th minute, after Switzerland equalized and looked ...

The original version of this article was published in The Nation on July 13.

When I first heard the 2026 World Cup was about to begin, I barely paid attention.

This was partially because of the timing—most matches this year have aired late at night in Gaza because of the time difference with the United States—but mostly because I couldn't imagine how anyone here would watch the games.

Many new species have been announced this week. There are new mites from Saudi Arabia and a new weevil from Japan. There are new midges from China and new spiders from Brazil and China. There is a new dragonfly from Vietnam, a new jewel beetle from Borneo, and a grasshopper ...

As an anxious and judgmental person whose standards for interpersonal etiquette and social niceties might best be described as Austenesque, I can confidently say: Every wedding is rife with social crimes. I’ve seen more than my share of dads make speeches about mawwiage, and...

Taking care to avoid the team-picking system of our schoolyard memories, Lilah Maravi divided us into two sides of about 20. It was a pleasant Sunday in June—Father’s Day—and we had gathered at our usual spot for our Pride month game. After a spontaneous game of catch in a B...

Aliyah Boston's teammate drives so much of the American population insane that it's easy to forget her own talent for getting in other people's heads. Opposing bigs unravel next to her. Jonquel Jones, possibly the nicest and humblest athlete I've ever spoken to, revealed th...

We'll start with the most significant play of the 2026 MLB All-Star Game: a hit batsman. In the top of the third, with a man on first and the AL already leading 3-0, Tampa's Junior Caminero got smacked on the hand by a 98-mph pitch from St. Louis's Riley O’Brien. Caminero wa...

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, Drew talks about danger.

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Having sat with Spain's 2-0 victory over France in the World Cup semifinal for several hours now, I am left with an overwhelming sense of relief. Not because Spain won or France lost, but because the game's second goal was as beautiful as it was.

Whether or not you watched the game, you need to do yourself a favor and watch this goal several more times before the day is done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBOIka9sXlQ

This past Friday in Vegas, while many players were in town for NBA Summer League action, Miami Heat big man Bam Adebayo got in some kind of fight with his recently departed teammate Tyler Herro. In last month's trade for Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Heat sent Herro to the Milwaukee Bucks, ending his seven-year stint alongside Adebayo. The fight between them took place in the morning, in a practice court at a hotel; later that day but before news broke of the fight, Herro said in an interview that "it's all love" with his former team.

As with any event described by the NBA media, the details of this story took on many forms and involved many imperfect synonyms. So what exactly happened in last weekend's scuffle? That depends on who you ask.

ESPN's Shams Charania, who broke the story, put it like this:

Lindsey Graham's sudden death has elicited plenty of nauseating remembrances from his colleagues in the Senate, none of whom seemed to be all that ashamed to speak and write warmly about a guy whose life's work was bigotry and warmongering. But no tribute has been as bone-ch...

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 dipping pizza crust, worst great athletes, wheelchair envy, and more.

Your letters:

Charlie:

In the movie Citizen Vigilante, the latest Uwe Boll provocation that's gaining attention from the far-right side of the internet, Armie Hammer plays Michael Sanders, an American vigilante righting the wrongs of Europe's woke-and-broken criminal justice system. Why an America...

Grab a stool, take a seat, and get ready to learn about cyclospora.