As the pure elation began to ebb, the feeling that overcame me toward the end of the USMNT's demolition of Paraguay in its World Cup opener last week was disbelief. I found it genuinely confusing. The United States men's soccer team simply does not play with as much overpowe...

I got got by Connections this week. This is a rare occurrence, because I have a big strong brain that can make distinctions that other brains often cannot. So when I lose Connections, I feel great shame. I have disgraced not only my own legacy, but that of my family's as well. I did not live up to my standard playing Connections, and that will haunt me for a good long time, maybe even into lunch today.

So what the fuck are you, The New York Times games app, to tell me this shit?

The most haunting entry in Search Work: A Collective Inquiry into the Job Hunt, a recently published anthology edited by Rachel Meade Smith, is also the most vulnerable: a collection of emails between games journalist and author David Wolinsky and anyone who can possibly hel...

Hopefully you, like us, have the day off today. And hopefully you, like us, have plans to watch lots of World Cup soccer this weekend. While you do that, feel free to chat away in this open thread.

John Early has one of the most expressive faces of any actor working today. You've almost certainly seen it. The 38-year-old comedian, born and raised in Nashville, has had many small breaks into the zeitgeist over the past decade or so. His voice might also be familiar to y...

Money can't buy happiness, and it seems money plus an NBA title doesn't necessarily buy charisma. The New York Knicks held their championship parade and rally in Manhattan on Thursday, and although not everyone could get in to see the actual procession, there were plenty of ...

There's no sense in dancing around it: The sports vibes are pretty damn good at the moment. New Yorkers celebrated a long-awaited championship in the streets with a minimum of property damage and a surfeit of giddiness. The World Cup is already attempting to redeem its shame...

The concept of "1966" is purely theoretical for almost anyone who wasn't alive then, 60 years of human history separating us from that singular point in time. Sure, the point of history as a field is to educate us about what was happening in, say, 1966, but I barely remember what it felt like to live through most of the years I've been around for, let alone those that came so long before. However, there is one subset of people who might soon get a taste of what 1966 was like, and that is fans of England, who have been waiting since then to lift the World Cup trophy a second time.

Folks, it might be coming home.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5df9Pm1iFtQ

When Bryson DeChambeau tees off  at the U.S. Open this afternoon, he will be doing so with the future bearing down on him. The LIV Golf Tour is about to lose its funding from the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which means that DeChambeau, Jon Rahm, and the rest of the fo...

In the era of looksmaxxing, plastic surgery, Botox, and Ozempic, it's impossible to escape the tyranny of good looks. Are beauty standards fascist? Is losing weight about giving in or being healthy? The endless overdetermined debates about the ethics of aesthetics continues ...

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

In between spending the last month listening to every single song with "New York" in its title or chorus, I found time to keep up with the latest big album releases. We're only about halfway through but already this has been a damn good year for music: a good mix of quality releases from stars, stalwarts, and new names entering the ring. The new Olivia Rodrigo might be the best thing to come out recently, but this week I'm more moved to consider Cry Baby, the first independent release from rapper Vince Staples.

https://youtu.be/qdcD99Pd0oo?si=QAbw5WSfvmAQbG8O

Beneath soaring ceilings, in a small darkly painted gallery off the main hall of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, two immense sunflower paintings hang side by side. The paintings are bigger than I expected them to be, big enough that when I watch people pose between them, the...

In late 2020, months after the murder of George Floyd, our colleague Justin Ellis moved back to his hometown of Minneapolis to begin work on a book about black life in the city, where promises of racial harmony have gone unkept to generations of black residents. The city's g...

Portugal began its World Cup with a goal befitting a real contender. In the sixth minute, the Portuguese pinned the Democratic Republic of Congo in their own box, fired a dangerous cross from the right side that skittered across the face of goal before being cleared, recycle...

So that settles it then: Iberia's Team is Andorra. And the Andorrans didn't even know they were an option. This is what happens when Spain can't get past Cape Verde and then, maybe even more shockingly, Portugal gets stymied by the Democratic Republic of Congo. That is to s...

Have you heard the whispers? Jonas Vingegaard just went nuts in Italy, auguring a strong run at a third Tour de France crown and convincing some corners of the peloton that he's got the legs to ride into yellow. Isaac del Toro dominated the Dauphine, giving faint hope to tho...

It's impossible to think about Lionel Messi's sixth and presumably final World Cup without those thoughts immediately acquiring the sepia tint of romanticism. On the cusp of his 39th year, 20 years to the day since his simultaneous introduction and eruption onto the world st...

Yesterday was the most entertaining day of the World Cup when it comes to big names doing big things on the biggest stage. And by that we of course mean Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Thierry Henry openly dismissing Alexi Lalas on Fox's between-games studio set for the high crime of...

Many animals are famous for their extravagant courtship dances. Consider the male Costa's hummingbird, who hovers in front of potential mates with his violet mantle feathers outstretched in the shape of a baby octopus. Or the male greater sage-grouse, who pops his colorful a...

Vertical video makes Olivia Miles look good. Horizontal video makes her look better. Her gift shines in context, on the unadorned and unsoundtracked platform that is the next day's full-game replay. What the Minnesota Lynx rookie does best as starting point guard of the WNBA...

LOS ANGELES — Just off the ninth green at Riviera Country Club, during the first day of this year’s U.S. Women’s Open, a familiar face popped up in the gallery: Owen Wilson.

But as fans milled about this congested space where multiple greens, tee boxes, and the path to the practice range converge, few seemed to notice. “Love your work,” one fan told the star of The Royal Tenenbaums, Zoolander, and the golf-centric series Stick; Wilson graciously thanked the man. But that was about it. Most everyone had their eyes on someone else.

They were there for Nelly Korda.

Nobody told me that becoming a fan of the Chicago White Sox meant that I would have to suffer humiliating losses! Wait. Actually, everybody told me that. But I didn't listen. I arrived at Yankee Stadium for the first game of the White Sox series full of optimism. Even if th...

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, Chris answers a question about how to help your child get good at things.

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Major League Baseball will never get through a season without a Pride Night controversy. If that becomes the goal, then the only sure option is to eliminate the promotion altogether. That may not be the worst idea: The cowards and vampires who run the league and its teams do...

By the standards and practices of the Vegas Golden Knights, John Tortorella had it coming. His first three-game losing streak as the team's head coach was enough for Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon to decide he'd seen enough, and the fact that the three losses in que...

If everyone in the United States weren't living downstream from its consequences, it would be a pretty good tragic flaw that Donald Trump wants more than anything to be seen as a brilliant man who has always been right about everything when he is transparently a butterfinger...

I haven't watched a single game of the World Cup yet. Not because I don't want to, but because the part of my brain reserved for paying attention to sports is still recovering from the NBA Finals. My wish for the New York Knicks to lose just enough to extend the series to a ...

For one night, you could be forgiven if your failing eyes confused Pete Crow-Armstrong for the ghost of Hack Wilson stepping up to the plate at Wrigley Field. Actually, scratch that. Most nights you could be forgiven for confusing Pete Crow-Armstrong with a ghost. Frankly, I’m not quite convinced that he isn’t, especially with some of the defensive gaffes he made earlier this season, where the ball seemed to slip through his fingers as if he was fighting to remain on the plane of the living. But I digress.

Last night, PCA became the 13th player in Cubs history to complete a cycle, hitting a single, a double, a triple, and a homer in one game. But PCA only took four plate appearances to complete the achievement, and he did so in a way no other Cub has done before. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UlEIBrbMgM

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 Graham Platner (ugh), the World Cup, imperfect movies, and more.

PROGRAMMING NOTE: I'm off to the beach next week. But we'll have a guest host manning the post to answer all of your Funbag questions while I'm out, so go ahead and email them here. Who will be our mystery writer? I do not know. Why? I cannot say. How? I do not know how to answer that. Let's move on.

Your letters:

For nearly as long as Canadian homes have had televisions, hockey fans have been able to spend their Saturday nights watching the country's teams on the public broadcast channel CBC. Initially a branding for CBC's radio coverage of the NHL, Hockey Night In Canada debuted on ...