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Defector
21 May 18:00 • Lauren Theisen

Mitch Marner Needed To Get Out Of Toronto

I can't claim that it's surprising to see Mitch Marner playing excellent hockey for a Stanley Cup contender, but it does still feel like a novelty. When Marner entered the attacking zone with the Golden Knights up 1-0, cut waaay to his right, and then salvaged the play with ...

Defector
21 May 17:30 • Luis Paez-Pumar

The ‘Survivor 50’ Finale Was A Dark Omen For The Future

After 50 seasons, Survivor is both a cultural touchstone and a lumbering giant exhaustedly searching for its final resting place. The compellingly nasty, scrappy, oftentimes chaotic "social experiment" in 2000 on the island of Borneo has become a machine that turns a month o...

Defector
21 May 16:33 • Justin Ellis

How Do We Decide To Have A Baby If We’re On The Fence?

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 the choice to have or not have kids.

Defector
21 May 15:51 • Israel Daramola

The Passion Of The Drake: A (Mostly) Objective Review Of His Three New Albums

Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently. Have you heard the bad news? Drake has been forsaken; by his rap peers, by his label bosses, and worst of all by the listening public. He has been strun...

Defector
21 May 15:51 • Chris Thompson

You Do Not Have To Hand It To Oklahoma City, And By “It” I Mean The Basketball

The Spurs have a ball-security problem. It was possible to overlook it in Game 1, because of Victor Wembanyama, and because Dylan Harper had a breakthrough performance, and because they won, but it was there: The Spurs turned the ball over 21 times in the victory, and the Th...

Defector
21 May 15:51 • Sean T. Collins

Kill Grogu

“Grogu is dead. Grogu remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is t...

Defector
21 May 13:48 • Barry Petchesky

I’m So Sick Of The Golden Knights

The Colorado Avalanche are not an easy team to root for. They are a deep, übercapable team with few weaknesses. Their star scorer is a weirdo but not in a particularly endearing way. They have their Cup already. In any other year, in any other matchup, I'd be pulling for som...

Defector
20 May 19:45 • David Roth

Tom Brady: The Leather Years

The post-retirement track record for your hyper-competitive, multiple-champion GOAT-class athletes is not necessarily one you'd want for yourself. So often they seem stranded, often surrounded but generally quite alone, peering down from atop a mile-high butte of money and n...

Defector
20 May 17:33 • Lauren Theisen

Daniel Radcliffe Will Talk You Off The Ledge

When I first read that Daniel Radcliffe would be doing Every Brilliant Thing on Broadway, I didn't think it would work. It's not that I was worried about Radcliffe, who besides his film and TV career has established himself as a bona fide stage entertainer. I was worried abo...

Defector
20 May 17:03 • Patrick Redford

Winning Justifies Itself

All season, you could hear the complaints. Arsenal is boring. Arsenal's exclusive source of goals is the corner kick, which they treat as something between an offensive-rebounding exercise and a defensive line trying to get the quarterback. Arsenal is lucky, living free an...

Defector
20 May 17:03 • Sabrina Imbler

What The Fuck Is Happening With This Fish

One of the strangest tales in Icelandic folklore concerns a creature called the Loðsilungur, or the furry trout. The trout, as you might imagine, looks like a fish covered with a white shag of fur, which it allegedly evolved to stay warm in Nordic waters. The people of Icela...

Defector
20 May 17:03 • Defector Staff

And So We Arrive, Starving And Exhausted, At The Defector ‘Survivor 50’ Finale Questionnaire

After 26 days of gameplay and almost three months of real time spent arguing and crashing out online, Survivor 50 has finally arrived at its endgame. From a starting count of 24 iconic (and, well, "iconic") players down to a Final Five, the supersized season has been...well,...

Defector
20 May 15:03 • Alex Sujong Laughlin

Wasia Can Be A Lot. It’s Fine.

When I was 24, a stranger on the internet called me a white man, and it sent me into such a tailspin that I changed my byline. Before then, I was going by “Alex Laughlin,” just my first and last name. I had started writing about race, and I’d made a podcast about multiracial...

Defector
20 May 15:03 • Drew Magary

Wow! America’s Graduating Seniors Really Fucking Hate AI!

As a rule, a college graduation is a miserable affair. If you’re an outgoing senior, you have wait around for hours on end in the sweltering heat, all while hungover and wearing a full-length black gown. If you’re a parent, you have to sit in a folding chair in the middle of...

Defector
20 May 15:03 • Tom Ley

The Knicks Made A Delicious Meal Out Of James Harden

Can you call a team that has advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals "unserious"? I'm honestly not sure, but it's very difficult to find another descriptor for the Cleveland Cavaliers the morning after they blew a 22-point fourth-quarter lead in Game 1 against the Knicks. It's not just that they blew it, but how they blew it.

The Knicks won the game in overtime, 115-104, while playing about 16 total minutes of good basketball. Both teams started terribly, but New York led 23-16 after the first quarter. From that point until the 7:39 mark of the fourth quarter, the Cavs outscored the Knicks 77-48. I can see you doing some quick math in your head, and yes, it's true: that means that for the rest of the game the Cavs got beat 44-11.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zg2MDj-I1vc

Defector
20 May 15:03 • Matt Ribel

Free, Easy, Dead: The Difficult Birth And Predictable Death Of IRS Direct File

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 oth...

Defector
19 May 20:57 • Billy Haisley

Saints Frog-Marched Out Of Playoff Final As Punishment For Spying

After getting caught sending an intern in ill-fitting jeans out to snoop on a Middlesbrough practice session ahead of an EFL Championship playoff match, Southampton has been booted from the promotion playoff final. During the league's independent disciplinary panel's investi...

Defector
19 May 19:12 • Drew Magary

How To Eat A Pop-Tart Correctly

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 cooking violence, living with your own mediocrity, actors as P.I.s, and more.

Your letters:

Mick:

Defector
19 May 17:57 • Patrick Redford

The Written Word Is Having A Rough Week

Late last week, the Commonwealth Foundation announced the five regional winners of its 2026 Short Story Prize. The quintet will move on to a final round of judging ahead of the grand prize announcement on June 30, though we can probably count out Caribbean regional winner Ja...

Defector
19 May 17:06 • Lauren Theisen

Jakub Dobes Is Growing Up

I still can't help but associate Montreal goalie Jakub Dobes with a game I went to in New Jersey in November. It was an OT win for the Devils, and the first loss of the season for a 24-year-old netminder who'd only made 15 starts for the Habs the previous year. He took it hard. Talking to media in the postgame, he seemed devastated in a way that better fit a Game 7 defeat, putting all the blame on himself for a loss he took very personally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BEeGlpv1pRQ&t=196s

"I'm just disappointed in myself. That's pretty much it," he said.

Defector
19 May 17:06 • Luis Paez-Pumar

Dylan Harper Demands Your Attention

It's easy to come out of Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals with only Wemby on the brain. Do you focus on the defensive presence that threw off Oklahoma City's entire roster, save for Alex Caruso? Or the Steph Curryesque three-pointer at the end of overtime? Or the aura...

Defector
19 May 15:06 • Lauren Theisen

How To Dress To Change Your Life

For the first time in six years, I have closets. At the Brooklyn apartment I just moved out of, all available evidence points to them just screwing up the blueprint. My bedroom was twice the height of a normal bedroom, and there's no reason why they shouldn't have extended ...

Defector
19 May 15:06 • Sabrina Imbler

Eurovision Is Running Out Of Time

This weekend, history repeated itself on the unnecessarily pyrotechnic stage of Eurovision as singers from Israel and another country waited to hear which would be crowned the winner of the increasingly contentious song contest. In the end, the Bulgarian banger "Bangaranga" ...

Defector
19 May 15:06 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

Who Can Keep Up With Chennedy Carter?

Short answer: no one yet. Chennedy Carter has been everything the Las Vegas Aces imagined she could be when they signed the 27-year-old guard to a one-year deal this offseason, a signing that marked her return to the WNBA after a 2025 spent playing in China and Mexico. In Ca...

Defector
19 May 15:06 • Chris Thompson

My God, Victor Wembanyama

Late in Monday night's Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, a beleaguered Shai Gilgeous-Alexander dribbled tentatively into the mouth of San Antonio's defensive zone. That zone had been total hell for the two-time reigning MVP. Now, with the Thunder down four points insi...

Defector
19 May 15:06 • Ray Ratto

The Canadiens Must Be Blessed

It is a perfectly reasonable assessment of the Montreal Canadiens that they are recipients of a long and lingering tongue kiss from the gods. It is equally rational to remind Habs fans in their moment of glorious triumph that the gods are treacherously profligate trollops wh...

Defector
18 May 21:21 • Samer Kalaf

Oklahoma Newspaper Deletes Column Comparing Thunder To Israel

The Oklahoma City Thunder are the defending champions, with a talented roster that should set them up for years of success, so it makes sense that they'd have their share of detractors. A team at the top always does. There are other reasons why a neutral observer might not r...

Defector
18 May 20:18 • Dave McKenna

Ronda Rousey And Gina Carano Deliver Shittiest Women’s MMA Fight In History

Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano fought for 17 seconds longer than they should have over the weekend.

Their brief Saturday encounter in a Southern California hexagon, a comeback for both after ridiculously long layoffs yet still promoted by Jake Paul’s MVP outfit as the biggest women’s MMA fight in history, ended as soon as Rousey set Carano up for an arm bar, the ex-judoka’s trademark finishing move from back when she was relevant. Carano, who gave up the cage for acting and right-wing mouthpiecing, tapped quicker than Fred Astaire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rg4OWWAEoCY

Defector
18 May 18:30 • Patrick Redford

Donald Trump Is Stealing Your Money

There are many ways that Donald Trump is currently making your life worse, not to mention generally waging war on the concept of "the future": accelerating the death of the biosphere, doing his best to eliminate the federal government and university as sites of middle-class ...

Defector
18 May 18:06 • Kathryn Xu

Who Will Beat Jannik Sinner?

For tennis fans who do not know how to be normal (i.e. me), rooting for Jannik Sinner is as comforting as it can get. There is an aspirational calmness in Sinner's rituals—not elaborate enough to be Nadal-like, but consistent enough to be a little Nadal-lite—that, though it ...