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This is Defector, a new sports blog and media company. We made this place together, we own it together, we run it together. Without access, without favor, without discretion, and without interference.

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Defector

The Defector Crewneck Sweatshirt Is Back In Stock

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Merch v3

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Kelsey McKinney

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Arts And Culture

You Don’t Have To See Everything In The Museum

Matene Toure

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‘Nickel Boys’ Deserves Best Picture

Sarah Brouillette

A collage of covers of books. A Court of Thorns and Roses, Barbarian Lover, Fourth Wing, Ice Planet Barbarians, The Serpent and the Wings of Night, and The Games Gods Play

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Alien Pleasures

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Samer Kalaf

Palestinians walk through the destruction in Gaza.

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Interviews

Pankaj Mishra On Gaza, The Memory Of The Holocaust, And The “Very Dark World” To Come

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Israel Daramola

West & Trump In The White House

How Donald Trump Won Rap Back

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The Scorebug Snuggery: The Phillies Abandon “P00P”

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Lauren Theisen

Warhol's 'Ladies And Gentlemen' portraits in the Warhol Museum gallery

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Lost At The Warhol

NEW YORK, NEW YORK - DECEMBER 28: Cash Cobain and Bay Swag attend Funk Flex Winter Fest on December 28, 2024 in New York City. Cobain is wearing a Yankees cap and sunglasses. He has a beard that's short and hit shis chin. He's in a blue hoodie. Bay Wag is wearing a big gold chain, sunglasses, a baseball hat, a very diamond-encrusted watch, and holding a plastic bottle of water in one hand and a microphone in the other

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Listening Habits

How Do You Make Sex And Party Music For An Era Uninterested In Both?

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Soraya Roberts

Screenshot 2025-02-20 at 11.00.11 AM

‘Black Box Diaries’ Splits A Journalist In Two

Interior of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York City, showing orchestra in foreground and audience in back

Metropolitan Opera

Silence Brings Us Together

<p>Lindsey Adler is a writer based in Brooklyn. She exclusively covered sports for a decade but has other interests, too.</p>


Lindsey Adler

A woman stands in front of the Yoko Ono, »Cut Piece«, 1965, during a press preview at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Duesseldorf, western Germany on September 26, 2024. In cooperation with the Tate Modern, the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen is presenting the influential work of artist and activist Yoko Ono in a comprehensive solo exhibition taking place from September 28, 2024 to March 6, 2025.

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My Weekend With Yoko

<p><a href="http://www.ddavisla.com"><span style="font-weight: 400">David Davis </span></a>is the author of <i>Wheels of Courage: How Paralyzed Veterans From World War II Invented Wheelchair Sports, Fought for Disability Rights, and Inspired a Nation</i> and <i>Waterman: The Life and Times of Duke Kahanamoku</i>. He lives in Los Angeles.</p>
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David Davis

Photo of Gidget running through the Malibu Pier. Fifty years after Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, aka Gidget, learned to surf in Malibu, the surfing world has accepted her as surfing's early pioneers, mascots and avid promoters. April 27, 2006, (Photo by Ken Hively/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Photo of Gidget running through the Malibu Pier. Fifty years after Kathy Kohner Zuckerman, aka Gidg

Gidget The Survivor


<p>Visual Editor. Runs <a href="http://defectorstore.com/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">defectorstore.com</a>. Philadelphia-based, if you couldn’t tell.</p>


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Dan McQuade

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David Roth

Ricky Jay, with his hair balding halfway up his head but black and tall, and a large black beard, in a black suit with a black tie and a dark purple shirt, looking at the camera holding a cut-in-half watermelon with two playing cards into the inside.

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Someone Has To Save The Film And TV That Studios Won’t

<p>Grace Byron is a writer from the Midwest based in Queens whose writing has appeared in The Cut, <em>Vogue</em>, <em>LARB</em>, <em>The Baffler</em>, <em>Bookforum</em>, and elsewhere. Find her @emotrophywife. Her debut novel <em>Herculine</em> is forthcoming from Saga Press.</p>


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Grace Byron

Bill Gates speaks at the Global Solutions Summit

Conclusion Global Solutions Summit

What’s The Point Of Bill Gates?

Two manet paintings with a Pop Art painting crashing over them

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Eagles Win Loan Of Manet Painting In Super Bowl Bet, Which Is What This Thing Was About All Along

<p>Vince Mancini is a culture writer and old school blogger whose work has appeared in GQ, The Ringer, Uproxx, and more. He writes <a href="https://vincemancini.substack.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://vincemancini.substack.com/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1739555630062000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0e3B6TjurbpZyGcyNkVTcQ">The #Content Report</a> on Substack and podcasts about prestige TV on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/c/frotcast" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.patreon.com/c/frotcast&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1739555630062000&amp;usg=AOvVaw0xjEhxjt84GGvFCgoW4S0E">Pod Yourself</a>.</p>


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Vince Mancini

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Capital

‘Pistachio Wars’ Tells The Story Of California’s Terraforming

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There’s Always Room For More Merritt Wever

Kendrick Lamar performs at the Super Bowl

Apple Music Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show

Kendrick Lamar Did The Super Bowl Halftime Show His Way


<p>Investigations Editor. You can contact her at diana@defector.com or dfmoskovitz@protonmail.com. She&#8217;s also on Signal @dmoskovitz.99</p>


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Diana Moskovitz

People stretch and raise their hands during an outside yoga session on Thursday, April 4, 2024 in Long Beach, CA.

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Life Lessons

A Hip Stretch To Help You Stay Sane

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Alan Kluegel

The actor Matthew McConaughey looking slightly deranged while sitting at an outdoor restaurant table, in the dark, under a torrential downpour.

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The Machines

Salesforce Is Using A Hallucination To Sell AI

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Patrick Redford

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Luis Paez-Pumar

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Tom Ley

Kendrick Lamar performs onstage during The Pop Out – Ken &amp; Friends Presented by pgLang and Free Lunch at The Kia Forum on June 19, 2024 in Inglewood, California.

The Pop Out ‚Äì Ken & Friends Presented by pgLang and Free Lunch

Defector Music Club

Defector Music Club Travels Back To M.A.A.D City

Sebastian Stan and Adam Pearson in 'A Different Man'

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‘A Different Man’ Has Sebastian Stan At His Most Alluring

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<div>Jen Golbeck is a writer, scientist, and professor at the University of Maryland. Her Substack, The <a href="http://magareport.news/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=http://magareport.news&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1738242090561000&amp;usg=AOvVaw1v7CItRYSjo8F2e4vcdTQy">MAGAReport</a>, tracks what&#8217;s happening on far-right pro-Trump social media. She splits her time between Washington, D.C. and Key West.</div>
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Jen Golbeck

Thursday, Jan. 23, 2025, in Kharkiv. ( Photo/Jen Golbeck)

What’s Wrong With War Tourism?

<p>Heather Chen is a former Defector intern and the managing editor at the <em>Columbia Daily Spectator</em>. She loves hockey, photography, and the good ol’ state of Michigan.</p>


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Heather Wei-Xi Chen

DETROIT, MI - SEPTEMBER 14: A worker cleans a RAM truck at the 2022 North American International Auto Show on September 14, 2022 in Detroit, Michigan.The NAIAS opens to the public on September 17 and features the latest state of the art electric vehicles, vehicle rides, the world’s first battery-powered Monster Truck, an Air Mobility Experience featuring flight demonstrations of jet suits, hoverboards, and vertical take-off and landing aircraft, a Dinosaur Encounter featuring 80 life-like and life-size dinosaurs, and the world’s largest rubber duck. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

North American International Auto Show Begins In Detroit

The Detroit Auto Show Used To Be The Future

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Chris Thompson

Two tennis guys get horny looking at Zendaya.

Challengers

Defector At The Movies

Is My Most Loathed Enemy A Song From The Score Of ‘Challengers’? Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah-Yeah-Yeah Yeah Yeah-Yeah-Yeah