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10 Aug 19:06 • Patrick Redford

The Tour de France Femmes Was A Contentious, Hypercompetitive Classic

When Demi Vollering crossed the line in Nice on Sunday, she didn't just win her second Tour de France Femmes title. She provided a worthy finale for the best edition of the race yet. The fifth running of the Tour was spectacular from start to finish. There were interesting ...

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10 Aug 18:24 • Stefan Fatsis

Two Scrabble Superstars Explain Their Unbelievable Championship Match

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — In the quarter-century that I’ve been playing and writing about Scrabble—a game in which greatness requires that rare matrix of biological gift, yeoman preparation, preternatural vision, marathon endurance, and blind luck—I’ve never witnessed anything as...

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10 Aug 17:27 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

Kayla McBride Keeps It Ethical

The first text that Lynx head coach Cheryl Reeve received after the team drafted Olivia Miles this spring was from a prescient Kayla McBride: “I’m going to be wide open.” The stats are bearing that out to an extent; the veteran sharpshooter is putting up ...

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10 Aug 17:27 • Alex Sujong Laughlin

What Does It Take To Make Big City Dreams Work?

When I asked Morgan Jerkins what she might want to talk about on an episode of Try Hard, she came to me with an idea that was less major life-changing-thunderclap-moment and more the culmination of a million smaller decisions that stemmed from one big one: moving to New York...

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10 Aug 17:27 • Tom Ley

Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Atlanta Falcons

Some people are fans of the Atlanta Falcons. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Atlanta Falcons. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: Atlanta Falcons

Your 2025 record: 8-9, which is less of a win-loss record than it is a manifestation of the spirit of mediocrity that inhabits this franchise. It's been almost 10 years since 28-3 happened, and the Falcons have gone a combined 65-84 with zero playoff appearances since. This team's never good enough to care about or bad enough to pity, and therefore it is something much worse: a team that might as well not even exist.

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10 Aug 17:27 • Samer Kalaf

The “Ground Zero Mosque” Strategy Makes An Even More Pathetic Return

As we approach the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it has created an opportunity to reflect on what's happened in the quarter-century since that fateful day, but more importantly, it has created an opportunity to get angry at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for bein...

Defector
10 Aug 15:27 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

The Crossword, Aug. 10: Midpoint

No one's on the fence about solving our Monday crossword. This week's puzzle was constructed by Faren Roth, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Faren Roth is a PhD student who lives in Lafayette, Ind. as of yesterday with her cat, Mr. Toast. She enjoys playing soccer ...

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10 Aug 15:27 • Ray Ratto

Don Nelson Followed His Bliss And Changed Basketball

The notice from Don Nelson's family announcing his death on Sunday at the age of 86 said he "peacefully went to be with the Lord, surrounded by his loving family.” This immediately convinces us that the deity in question here likes uptempo basketball, beer, blunts, and cards...

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09 Aug 19:15 • Sabrina Imbler

What Big Bug “Attacked” An ESPN Reporter At Rams Camp?

ESPN reporter Lindsey Thiry found herself accosted by an alarmingly big bug at Los Angeles Rams camp Thursday. She was preparing for a live report when the flying creature suddenly dive-bombed in. The bug hovered around Thiry for several seconds until the NFL reporter gave it a good and audible thwack with her mic.

ESPN broadcaster Molly McGrath later interviewed Thiry about the identity of the bug. "What is that, a wasp? What was that, Lindsey?" McGrath asked.

"It was the biggest bug I've ever seen," Thiry answered, having recovered from the ordeal.

Defector
09 Aug 18:03 • Sabrina Imbler

We Wouldn’t Be Here Without Poop

Julien Kimmig's career began with a surprising abundance of feces. As a PhD student working at a Cambrian site in northern Canada, Kimmig realized that roughly half the fossils in that outcrop were coprolites, or fossilized poops. Kimmig, now the head of the paleontology and...

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09 Aug 16:00 • Samer Kalaf

Sophie Cunningham Has Quite A Journey To Get Back To Basketball

After inflaming a culture war and causing her teammates and colleagues to be bombarded with hypothetical questions for weeks due to her transphobic comments published in a national media outlet, Sophie Cunningham wants to stick to sports. "I'm going to let people just do the...

Defector
07 Aug 19:42 • Sarah Borus

Alligator Alcatraz Isn’t Just An American Fantasy

Alligator Alcatraz was a blueprint. Creating an ICE detention center out of tents, trailers, and cages amid the sawgrass wetlands of the Florida Everglades, and all of the dangerous reptiles that live there, is equally sadistic and laughable—ludicrously cruel, medieval in fo...

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07 Aug 18:18 • Defector Staff

Staff Chat Starts Now? Staff Chat Starts Now

Hello there. It's a slow summer Friday, so let's try to run out the clock with a staff chat. We'll be down below ready to answer any questions you might have.

Defector
07 Aug 18:18 • Sohini Desai

The Defector Interns Say Fogo de “Ciao”

Sarah: All summer long, we’ve been saying “Thank god there are two of us,” whether we’re hyping each other up to send jokes in Slack or encouraging each other to ask members of the staff to chat. But this may have been the toughest challenge we faced together. Sohini: You never know where you might…

Defector
07 Aug 17:51 • Drew Magary

Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Dallas Cowboys

Some people are fans of the Dallas Cowboys. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Dallas Cowboys. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here.

Your team: Hit ‘em with the griddy, you little fucker. When else am I gonna get to use this clip to puff my chest? I gotta take my fun where I can get it.

Your 2025 record: 7-9-1. You and I can normally count on the Dallas Cowboys to sabotage their own chances during the course of any given season, but in 2025 team owner and latent segregationist Jerry Jones decided to sabotage everything in advance by trading away All-Pro pass rusher Micah Parsons to Green Bay mere days before the season began. May as well cut your brakes before hopping into your car.

Defector
07 Aug 16:36 • Giri Nathan

Let’s Unpack LaMelo Ball’s Sugary Abode

As LaMelo Ball gets settled in with the Minnesota Timberwolves, a clip of what appears to be his Charlotte residence has been circulating, due to the interior design choices therein. When I asked the user who circulated the video where he got it from, he said he found it on ...

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07 Aug 16:09 • Ray Ratto

Mike Krukow, One Of Baseball’s Greatest Hangs, Is Ready To Go

The San Francisco Giants don't get to announce anything fun these days, but it would be too cheap even by the prevailing clearance-sale standards to lump the latest bit of ill news relating to the team in with all the others, so we won't. Mike Krukow, the former Gi...

Defector
07 Aug 16:09 • MH Rowe

CarJitsu Is Precisely As Dumb As It Sounds

I discovered CarJitsu this past April at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, where a bout was broadcast on a wall-mounted television above a display of Doritos. There is, truthfully, not much to explain about this newfangled sport. CarJitsu is an athletic contest...

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07 Aug 16:09 • Tom Ley

Chelsea Gray Punished Caitlin Clark’s Mistakes

It is a funny twist of fate that the Indiana Fever have become such an engine for maddening WNBA storylines that have little or nothing to do with their actual on-court performances, because those performances are crazy-making enough on their own. Are the Fever a great team ...

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07 Aug 14:09 • Sabrina Imbler

Would You Eat This Cretaceous Turducken?

Various journalists have tried and failed to investigate the origins of turducken, that matryoshka-inspired dish of a chicken nested inside a duck nested inside a turkey. One chef in Louisiana claims to have invented the dish but refused to tell the New York Times when or wh...

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06 Aug 22:06 • Maitreyi Anantharaman

The Washington Mystics Don’t Act Their Age

The bulletin board material the Dallas Wings supplied to Cotie McMahon looked more like posterboard material. On Wednesday night, after the Washington Mystics’ 96-92 comeback win over Dallas, the rookie Mystics guard posted a photo of a scouting report the Wings had evi...

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06 Aug 20:39 • David Roth

Mugged By Seagulls, With Rohan Nadkarni

Both Drew and I can sense when we are overdue for having Rohan Nadkarni on the podcast. In the way that an old prospector's knee might start barking before the storm clouds have even appeared on the horizon, we both feel a twinge when it has been too long between detailed de...

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06 Aug 20:39 • David Roth

It’s Jefry Yan Time

Years before he figured it out enough to make his Major League debut on Wednesday night at the age of 29, which in turn was long after his career ended for the first time, you could find coverage of Jefry Yan celebrating otherwise unremarkable strikeouts in wild and demonstr...

Defector
06 Aug 20:09 • Drew Magary

Why Your Team Sucks 2026: Miami Dolphins

Some people are fans of the Miami Dolphins. But many, many more people are NOT fans of the Miami Dolphins. This 2026 Defector NFL team preview is for those in the latter group. Read all the previews so far here. Your team: "To win games, you have to win the game, ...

Defector
06 Aug 17:15 • Kathryn Xu

Oh No: Dodgers In Unrecoverable Tailspin After Sixth Straight Loss

Less than a week after acquiring Tarik Skubal from the Detroit Tigers for the hefty sum of three prospects, the Los Angeles Dodgers are in a tailspin. What seemed at first a pitching upgrade aimed at converting the team's momentum into a cinched playoff spot has, given the p...

Defector
06 Aug 16:45 • Patrick Redford

Defector Also Investigating How Our Super Powerful AI Tool Broke Contain

As many of you know, Defector Research Labs is hard at work creating what we are sure will be the most powerful AI coding tool on the market. The goal of DevinBelly is simple: to allow users to scale their natural language-processing capabilities within a wide range of long ...

Defector
06 Aug 16:45 • Chris Thompson

Paul Skenes Is Stuck Being A Guy While The Pirates Require A Dude

The Pittsburgh Pirates probably are not yet feeling desperate, but desperation can't be very far off. For the first time in recorded history, the organization made smart, aggressive moves at the trade deadline, beefed up their bullpen, and fortified for a push toward the pla...

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06 Aug 16:45 • Grace Byron

Claire Stapleton Helped Write The Myth Of Google, But Now She’s Trying To Tell The Truth

It feels a little perverse to be writing this review in a Google doc. In 2018, over 20,000 Google employees walked out to protest working conditions at the tech juggernaut. Claire Stapleton was one of the protest's primary organizers. She had started at the company as an int...

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06 Aug 16:45 • Lauren Theisen

Miles Mikolas Now Better At Hitting Than Pitching

It's been a bad season for the 37-year-old pitcher Miles Mikolas. He's got an ERA of 5.67, and he's made a habit of starts where a bunch of guys just wallop what he offers. Only two pitchers in MLB have allowed more dingers than he's surrendered, and the signs point to Mikol...

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06 Aug 14:42 • Samer Kalaf

The Mystery Of Google’s Fixation On “The Transwoman In The WNBA”

As anyone who has used Google might already know, when you conduct a search on the site, it will suggest more searches of potential interest under a "People also ask" heading. The makeup of these "people" is not specified on the page, but clearly the point of this feature is...