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10 Feb 17:55 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

Kim Caldwell Is Running Out Of Hard Truths To Deliver

Asked what advice she’d give Tennessee head coach Kim Caldwell after the Lady Vols’ 93-50 loss to South Carolina on Sunday, a diplomatic Dawn Staley demurred: “I probably wouldn’t say it publicly.” That makes one! Caldwell, at her postgame press conference, had a lot to say ...

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10 Feb 17:55 • Drew Magary

The Real Highlight Of The Super Bowl Was Josh McDaniels Eating Shit

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 halls of fame, Chuck Klosterman, taxes, how to lose your virginity at...

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10 Feb 16:15 • Sabrina Imbler

Which Other Olympic Mascots Could Italian Stoats Tina And Milo Slaughter In Cold Blood?

Apologies to all otters, ferrets, badgers, ferret-badgers, weasels, fishers, polecats, wolverines, martens, and grisons, but the mustelid of the moment is the stoat. The mascots of the 2026 Winter Olympics are a pair of sibling stoats named Milo (short for Milano) and Tina (...

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10 Feb 15:33 • Chris Thompson

Pistons Pissed, Hornets Stung, Beef Stew Beefs, Too

Not so long ago, a contest against the Charlotte Hornets was not likely to meaningfully raise the heart rate of anyone on the opposing side. Maybe the sight of LaMelo Ball's unpleasant red tattoos would cause a moment's perturbation, but nothing acute, nothing to flush the f...

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10 Feb 15:33 • Alex Sujong Laughlin

Olympic Photographers: Stop Doing The Lugers Dirty

Imagine the training for the Olympics. All the work, all the anxiety, the parties missed, and the mornings you'd rather have spent in bed. The money spent on training, equipment, travel, all of it. You sacrifice so much because you are single-mindedly focused on becoming the best. You make it to the Olympics, where you represent your country on the international stage, and for one shining moment, all of the sacrifices seem worth it.

Now imagine that this is the photo of that moment that lives on in the collective memory in the form of your top Getty Images search result.

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10 Feb 14:39 • Diana Moskovitz

France’s Viral Ice Dancing Team Has A Dark Backstory

Blink and you might not have caught it. On Monday, Guillaume Cizeron and Laurence Fournier Beaudry took to the rink and staked their claim to the ice dancing gold medal. Dancing to Madonna's "Vogue," complete with Blond Ambition–inspired costumes and voguing arms, ...

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09 Feb 20:57 • Luis Paez-Pumar

The Patriots Offensive Line Got Obliterated

There are many reasons why the Seattle Seahawks comfortably dispatched the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX. The Seahawks offense, led by Super Bowl MVP Kenneth Walker III, was able to do enough against a very game Pats defense to never feel pressured into taking any ma...

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09 Feb 19:36 • Israel Daramola

Bad Bunny Celebrated America

The Super Bowl halftime show is a giant, overstuffed program that is about celebrating its own overstuffedness. It's a maximalist entertainment spectacle set in the middle of the most maximalist entertainment spectacle in sports, where football is stretched out over five hou...

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09 Feb 19:36 • Albert Burneko

The Super Bowl Could Not Compete With Tape-Delayed Olympic Curling

Nobody else in my house likes football, and we are believers in democracy at least as far as concerns the television. And so it was that, Sunday evening, I had the Super Bowl streaming on my li'l laptop screen, and the gigantic TV was showing a tape-delayed CNBC broadcast of...

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09 Feb 19:03 • Dave McKenna

Shitty Washington Post Publisher Loses Job After Skipping Out To The Super Bowl

Will Lewis, the stubbled bumbler brought in by Jeff Bezos to lay waste to the Washington Post, is gone. Lewis announced over the weekend that he was resigning as the newspaper’s CEO and publisher. But, mission accomplished! Not since King George III razed the White House has...

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09 Feb 19:03 • David Roth

It Feels Great, Dude

The history of professional football is long enough and strange enough to include a placekicker or two who had "a normal career." Theoretically. I have found scant evidence of that, but presumably there has been or could be a kicker that performed as a pro more or less in th...

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09 Feb 18:33 • Kelsey McKinney

Artificially Large Skier Penises Should Stay Legal

To ski jump is to momentarily become a god. The track is narrow and slick, and the athletes plummet down the sloped hill at almost 60 mph. They leave the track and take up, up, up into the sky, where they bend themselves forward. Their chests are almost at their skis, which ...

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09 Feb 17:27 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

The Crossword, Feb. 9: Italian Class

Break the ice with our Monday crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Matthew Stock and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Matthew is a freelance puzzle maker and newly minted stay-at-home dad originally from Dallas. His puzzles have been published in the New York Times, USA Today, and the New Yorker, among other venues. When he’s not making puzzles, Matthew enjoys cooking, birdwatching and playing ultimate frisbee.

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.

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09 Feb 17:27 • Lauren Theisen

Devin The Dugong Wins The Internet With The Super Bowl AI Ad Everyone Can’t Stop Talking About

"The future of media is AI!" That's what Devin The Mixed-Reality Dugong has been telling me every single day, ever since he stopped talking about the metaverse. I'm certainly in no position to argue with him. In Devin's role as Chief AI/Metaverse/Surveillance Officer for Def...

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09 Feb 16:33 • Lauren Theisen

What An Unbelievable Fourth Quarter From Drake Maye!

I can't speak for every neutral, but I think for a lot of us, the experience of watching the Super Bowl was sitting around willing Drake Maye to do something for the New England Patriots—not because we wanted the Pats to win, but because the game was extremely boring. By th...

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09 Feb 16:33 • Chris Thompson

Giannis Antetokounmpo Jumps In Bed With Sleazy Prediction Market

Giannis Antetokounmpo has purchased some shares of the prediction market platform Kalshi. Kalshi, which would prefer to be described as a market-based "filter" on the otherwise unreliable flow of human knowledge but is in fact just a way for normies to lose money wagering on...

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09 Feb 16:33 • Tom Ley

Sam Darnold Is A Normal Super Bowl Champion

You could see what the Patriots were up to from the first drive of the game. They blitzed Sam Darnold without hesitation and instructed the defensive backs to undercut routes as much as possible. A wager was being made: If we make this guy as uncomfortable as possible, event...

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09 Feb 06:03 • Ray Ratto

Super Bowl LX Was The Beatdown That Will Leave No Trace

For a half, the Super Bowl's Most Valuable Player was either Jason Myers or Bad Bunny, and you could have gotten equal odds on either one. But bad games rarely stay bad forever, and because the second half more resembled a normal game with exotic things like touchdowns,...

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08 Feb 23:39 • Diana Moskovitz

James Pearce Jr. Arrested, Charged With Aggravated Battery, Stalking

South Florida police arrested Atlanta Falcons edge rusher James Pearce Jr. over the weekend, after a police chase followed by a crash in a residential neighborhood that was captured on cell phone video. Law enforcement charged Pearce, 22, with a slew of possible crimes, acco...

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08 Feb 20:33 • Ray Ratto

The Sacramento Kings Are Dedicated To Dignified Losing

Tucked in the smallest corners of the NBA trade deadline or, as it has come to be known, Giannis Interruptus, there are the Sacramento Kings, quietly making a deadline of their own. And when we say quietly, what we mean is they're not being as brazen in their quest...

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08 Feb 18:42 • Ray Ratto

Luck Finally Failed Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Vonn had dreams, and hers had a definite expiration date. She had one last legitimate crack at an Olympic downhill medal because she is 41 years old, and she had to be perfect because the infrastructure of her knees seemed to have just celebrated their 70th...

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06 Feb 22:51 • Denise McQuade

A Message From Dan McQuade’s Mom

Dan’s mom here. While I hope to thank everyone more formally, for so many of you it won’t be possible; I don’t know how to reach you. So I thought I’d reach you the way my Dan did—through the online written word. To the Defector staff and readers, former Daily Pennsylvanian staff and UPenn community,…

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06 Feb 22:51 • Giri Nathan

Now That Jose Alvarado’s On The Knicks, Let’s Remember Him As A Queens High School Star

Excuse me while I go Dave McKenna mode: I watched Jose Alvarado as a high school star in Queens nearly a decade ago. His team at Christ the King Regional High School took on Bishop Loughlin, another local powerhouse, in the Brooklyn-Queens Catholic High School Athletic Assoc...

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06 Feb 22:09 • Patrick Redford

What Time Does “What Time Does The Super Bowl Start?” Start?

Well well well. Well WELL well! My sources tell me it's a big weekend for the Bay Area, in the sense that luminaries such as Bad Bunny, Tom Brady, and Kalyn Kahler have descended upon San Francisco to be within an hour's drive of the Super Bowl, which will be held in Santa C...

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06 Feb 18:30 • Heather Wei-Xi Chen

The Westminster Dog Show’s Youngest Handlers Don’t Know If They Want To Do This Forever

When Emerson Jaquish’s mother decided 10 years ago to get a saluki, the contract for the dog said that the canine needed to be “shown.” In other words, if they were to buy the dog, they would be contractually obligated to enter it at dog shows. So at the age of 9, Emerson en...

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06 Feb 17:48 • Rafaela Bassili

‘Suburban Fury’ Is Strange, Blinkered, And Very Compelling

On Sept. 22, 1975, 45-year-old Sara Jane Moore fired two bullets at then-President Gerald Ford. They were in San Francisco, outside a hotel. Moore missed her first shot, but seeing an opportunity, took another. She missed that one, too. An ex-Marine named Oliver Sipple, who ...

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06 Feb 16:42 • Sabrina Imbler

This Week In Delicious Scams; Or, I Yam Not What You Think I Yam

If you are anything like I once was, you moved through life feeling pretty sure you were not going to get scammed. You had an eye for the desperation of a fake Craigslist posting. You were attuned to the strange formatting of a phishing email. You had not even written a book...

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06 Feb 15:48 • Israel Daramola

Max B Is New York Rap’s Best Hope

Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music I’ve been fixated on recently.

Max B has been home from jail for a little less than six months now. It's been a pleasure to watch him gallivant around the city, making up for all the lost time.

https://youtu.be/xfn-eba0spM?si=YDgM9GyD5si9vgBd

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06 Feb 14:57 • John Mohr

I Watched The “Lost” Live-Action ‘Dilbert’ Pilot Episode, And It’s Clear Why It Didn’t Get Picked Up

The death of Dilbert creator Scott Adams in January at age 68 was followed by obituaries with a predictably wide range in tone. While some were charitable to the late cartoonist, most were less forgiving. Adams’s long leap into infamy on the back of countless racist, sexist,...

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05 Feb 19:33 • Kathryn Xu

My Life Among The 33 Pomeranians (And A Few Thousand Other Dogs)

NEW YORK — In the days before the Westminster Dog Show, I could not stop saying the phrase, "33 Pomeranians." There’s a pleasing rhythm to the phrase—better spelled out as thirty-three Pomeranians—that lends itself to any multitude of cadences. Excitedly: thirty-three Pomera...