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 nuns, rope, human settlements on Venus, and more.

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There's never been a better ad for St. Paul than Kirill Kaprizov's new contract. I think by this point in negotiations, most hockey observers assumed that the superstar winger would at least take a sip of all that the NHL had to offer and hit free agency at the end of the se...

The Indiana Fever are one game away from the WNBA Finals. They were not supposed to get nearly this far, not with Caitlin Clark, Sophie Cunningham, and several other key players watching from the sidelines and posting ill-advised AI art on Instagram. But the Fever won their ...

When David Lehman, a poet then working as a book critic for Newsweek, proposed the project for The Best American Poetry anthology, he was searching for a national platform. His first anthology project, published by Macmillan in 1987, was a flop. But Lehman had an editorial v...

For one more day, it is still September—a fine month, all told, but not the undisputed king of Baseball Months. And yet, because the MLB playoffs begin today, and because every bit of baseball played from now until the end of the season will be of the superior, luxurious Playoff Baseball variety, it is at least figuratively October. In hopes of preparing readers as the season narrows and tightens toward an ending, we have gathered here to celebrate the things, great and small, that we are most looking forward to in the postseason to come.

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When the Minnesota Lynx’s season ended, their head coach was in a hotel room and their best player left the court on wheels. That’s one explanation for their surprising semifinal loss to the Phoenix Mercury. Game 4 was set up by the chaotic ending of Game 3, in which Alyssa Thomas made a critical steal as she collided with Napheesa Collier, and a furious head coach Cheryl Reeve ran up on the refs, shouting while her staff held her back.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMzcrp8tieA

After Matchday 6, there is only one remaining undefeated team in the Premier League. This was a likely result, as the last two teams without losses played each other (sure, it could've ended in a draw, but for this exercise I'm going to ignore that). Liverpool, winners of ri...

Nobody other than maybe Warren Buffett has brought more prestige and cash to Omaha than Terence “Bud” Crawford of late. Bet the local cops wouldn’t pull their guns on Buffett. 

After midnight on Sunday, Omaha police pulled over Crawford’s vehicle and, with at least one weapon pointed at the champ’s face, ordered him and all occupants out of the car. “I thought we were getting ready to lose our lives,” Crawford’s security chief, Qasim Shabazz Asad, told Omaha station WOWT-TV. According to Asad, who was sitting in the passenger seat when the encounter began, he and Crawford were handcuffed until the cops checked his license and realized who he was. 

If the New York Mets went out like chumps, then it can fairly be said that the Cincinnati Reds went in like chumps. These two outfits, plus maybe the Arizona Diamondbacks, entered into a revolving door and spun around for a while, dizzy and confused, and when the door spit t...

To call One Battle After Another the most ambitious film of director Paul Thomas Anderson's career would be a disservice to his filmography. All of his work is marked by ambition, both in the production and thematic elements. From looking at the porn industry in '70s Los Ang...

You can’t understand this story unless you understand Kelley Square, and you can’t understand Kelley Square until you have had the near-death experience of trying to drive through it. Technically, it is the intersection of state routes 290 and 122 in what is now called the ...

Welcome to Margin of Error, a politics column from Tom Scocca, editor of the Indignity newsletter.

On Saturday, the Baltimore Orioles, with a lineup featuring three players batting under .200 and no one with 20 home runs, lost 6–1 to the New York Yankees, their 86th loss this season. Also on Saturday, Politico reported that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries planned to join their Republican majority counterparts at the White House at the start of the week to try to negotiate an agreement that would prevent a government shutdown. Donald Trump, meanwhile, posted on social media that he would be sending "Troops to war ravaged Portland" and "authorizing Full Force, if necessary," to which Jeffries responded by posting "Here’s a thought. Focus on protecting the healthcare of the American people."

For a retired guy, Tom Brady has a lot of jobs. He has a five-percent ownership stake in the Las Vegas Raiders. He is also Fox’s lead football announcer. Earlier this month, Fox announced that Brady will be making an “epic return from retirement for the greatest flag footbal...

It's time to wrap up the month with a challenging themeless. Keep an eye out for tricky clues and fun wordplay. This week's puzzle was constructed by Amie Walker and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Amie is an Arizona-based crossword constructor and editor living with her three daughters. These days, her drives to school feature a lot of HUNTR/X and Saja Boys. She's excited to be making her Defector debut.

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.

Whatever else we might have learned from Sunday night's Packers-Cowboys game—and trust us, given that it's only Week 4 it isn't as much as you might think—we can say with some confidence which side is having the best season.

That's NBC. And it's not remotely close.

The New York Mets—slowly and surely, improbably and inexorably—crashed out of the playoff race, and now there are no more games left to get back in it. This in itself is not unique. Many teams miss the playoffs. Some miss the playoffs every year! Likewise, there have been pr...

We, two Defector gardeners, are here to update you with our accomplishments and failures. 

Kelsey’s Garden Update

Possibly you have heard of a concept known as the Swiss Cheese Effect. Visualize any system's defenses against failure—a biological immune system, or a healthcare delivery system, or an aircraft control system—as a series of slices of delicious, creamy Emmentaler cheese. Eac...

In the bottom of the ninth inning Sunday night, the hosting Cleveland Guardians controlled their own fate. With a win, they would clinch a playoff berth, something that had seemed all but impossible at the end of August, when they were under .500. The bases were loaded impro...

Defector has partnered with Baseball Prospectus to bring you a taste of their work. They write good shit that we think you’ll like. If you do like it, we encourage you to check out their site and subscribe.

This story was originally published at Baseball Prospectus on Sept. 24.

The concept of sitting around with your pals and naming bygone, marginal athletes has existed for quite some time. Surely Roman citizens back in the day sat at the bacchanal reminiscing about gladiators whose careers were cut brutally short. But Defector's own Tom Ley was th...

People have been quoting The Simpsons to me so often, and for so long, that even if I don’t recognize the quote, I am able to recognize that it's from The Simpsons. When I do recognize the quote, it’s not because I've seen that episode, but that so many people have...

The last few times Defector staffers have gathered to read a book, we've chosen sports novels. Namely, baseball and cycling. Well, we're continuing that trend with the sport of chasing down your wife, Norma, and her lover, Dupree, who have taken off in your car with your credit cards.

That's right, we're doing Charles Portis's 1979 comic masterpiece, The Dog of the South. Bill Hader loves it. So do the Coen brothers. Some people (me) claim it's the funniest novel ever written in English. Other people (Giri) have never read it.

Well, here we are! October is creeping up on the horizon, which means it is almost time for the playoffs. Except it is not quite time yet. The final few days of regular-season baseball (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) still must be played. For many teams, these are irrelevant games. They can pick their noses in left field and nothing will change for them. But big baseball things can still happen this weekend. And for me, a lover of big baseball things, this is good and fun. Here are a few I'm keeping my eye on this weekend!

Is Loser Brain Curable?

Welcome to The Backlog, a series in which we will take a look back at 12 games from 2020 that, in one way or another, had a lasting impact on the video game industry.

How much can I praise a game that I am objectively terrible at playing? That's the conundrum at the heart of this month's Backlog post. I have previously written about my struggles with the Hades franchise, so I won't recap it too thoroughly, but the takeaway is that I have been very bad at Hades since its release on Sept. 17, 2020. In the five years since, I have put in a bunch of hours but have only managed to beat the final boss a couple of times, and I consider my failures with it as one of the biggest of my gaming life, alongside my sheer ineptitude at Hollow Knight (I hope everyone is enjoying Silksong!) and all of the FromSoftware games.

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: Well, Iz, you taught me a thing or two about Ol’ Dabo, and now we have to start worrying...

The existence of a Saudi Arabia comedy festival has been on the periphery of my mind for a few weeks, but there's no more ignoring it. It's finally here. The Riyadh Comedy Festival kicks off on Friday and runs for two weeks, and judging by the lineup, many famous comedians have no qualms about cashing that check and ignoring the human rights abuses.

The names involved are scattered across a range from "not surprising at all" to "wait, really?" There's a contingent of people you knew weren't going to say no: Jeff Ross, Kevin Hart, Chris Tucker, Russell Peters, Sebastian Maniscalco. They might as well rename this shit the Back Taxes Tour. The co-headliner combo of Louis C.K. and Jimmy Carr on Oct. 5 is to be expected. Then you get to names like Bill Burr, Pete Davidson, Aziz Ansari, Mo Amer ... man, they must be getting a lot of money.

If I may take you Inside The Game for a moment: Before he worked up the usual rundown of questions and topics and suchlike, Drew messaged me to see if I wanted to talk about "any of the other shit" on the pod this week, in addition to football. We knew that we were going to h...

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it.

I am on drugs. I wish I could tell you that I’m on interesting drugs, the kind that leave you seeing things that aren’t there, and have withdrawal symptoms that include your whole body turning into one big pustule. But alas, I’m a middle-aged American, which means that my drug habit is one I’ve cultivated for functional purposes. A boring drug habit, but one that I need. I need to take my meds, and I need to take them at specific times and in specific doses. Because without them, I am not myself.

Following his team's loss to the Boston Red Sox on Wednesday, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider engaged in a bit of cope. "It feels like the sky is falling right now, and it’s fucking not," said an animated Schneider. "We’ve got 90 wins, we’re in the playoffs and if t...