Footer Legal

Header - Categories

Header Menu

The last good website.

Topics

Subscribe, at any level, to play

Thanks for your interest in Defector Crosswords!

Become a subscriber today to get unlimited access

Thanks for reading!

Plans start at $8/month.

Subscribers enjoy unlimited, ad-free browsing.

Register to continue

Or click here to subscribe for unlimited, ad-free access!

Our gift to you: This year's post is unlocked. Register your email to get even more free articles.

Welcome to the 2025 Hater's Guide!

Just register your email:

This blog is free to read.

Defector

Barry Petchesky

A giant of a moon appears before a giant of a planet undergoing seasonal changes in this natural color view of Titan and Saturn from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. (Photo by: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Science

Saturn Has 274 Moons Now; Jupiter Is Crying Itself To Sleep; It Literally Cannot Believe It

charismatic megafauna (they/them)

Sabrina Imbler

a photo of Sabrina Valenti, formerly a budget analyst for NOAA. Sabrina has brown curly hair and is standing against a floral background.

Interviews

An Interview With A Fired NOAA Budget Analyst

a photo of Kaesee Bourne, a former fish and wildlife biologist at the USFWS, holding a shovel in front of a wetland

An Interview With A Fired USFWS Biologist

Dennis M. Hogan

CHICAGO, ILLINOIS - FEBRUARY 19: People including researchers from Chicago area universities gather on the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) campus to voice concerns about the potential loss of federal funding for medical research on February 19, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois. The researchers are worried about the future of their projects as the Trump administration cuts grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Politics

The NIH Cuts Are Part Of An All-Out War On Higher Education

Becky Ferreira is a science reporter based in Ithaca, N.Y. She writes <a href="https://www.404media.co/author/becky/" target="_blank" rel="noopener" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.404media.co/author/becky/&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1740083778769000&amp;usg=AOvVaw3_mk31dNhas5lklZb38a6k">The Abstract</a>, a weekly science column for 404 Media. Her book First Contact, about the search for alien life, <a href="https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/becky-ferreira/first-contact/9781523527755/">is available now.</a>

Becky Ferreira

Which Pests Shall Inherit The Earth?

Giri Nathan

Life's Rich Pageant

A Stinky Pilgrimage To The Corpse Flower, With Notes Of Rat, Sweat, And Cheese

Man Eating Soft Ice Cream on Cone with Clear Plastic Spoon

Everything I Would Eat With The Spoon Inside My Brain

Staff Writer
Find me on Signal @DefectorChris.19

Chris Thompson

The plasma cannon fires a bolt of plasma.

I Would Think Nothing Of Being Shot In The Chest With This Plasma Cannon

ROBLEDO DE CHAVELA, MADRID, SPAIN - 2020/08/19: A meteor crossing the night sky over the Milky way and a large antenna of the Madrid Deep Space Communications Complex of NASA and JPL, used for for tracking vehicles and spacecraft as well as for radioastronomy research. (Photo by Marcos del Mazo/LightRocket via Getty Images)

What To Know About The Newest Asteroid That Probably Won’t Obliterate You

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

Diana Moskovitz

An aerial view of a street in the Eaton fire. The entire street is burned and decimated. It looks like a bomb went off. A sole person walks down the empty steet.

Journalismism

We Need A New Deal To Save Local Journalism

A fire fighting helicopter drops water as the Palisades fire grows near the Mandeville Canyon neighborhood and Encino, California, on January 11, 2025. The Palisades Fire, the largest of the Los Angeles fires, spread toward previously untouched neighborhoods January 11, forcing new evacuations and dimming hopes that the disaster was coming under control. Across the city, at least 11 people have died as multiple fires have ripped through residential areas since January 7, razing thousands of homes in destruction that US President Joe Biden likened to a "war scene." (Photo by Patrick T. Fallon / AFP) (Photo by PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images)

Climate

The Future Of West Coast Wildfire Is Whiplash

A wide-angle view of the total eclipse of the Moon of November 8, 2022, with the red Moon at right amid the stars of the northern winter sky and Milky Way, plus with bright red Mars at top. Above and left of the Moon is the blue Pleiades star cluster, while below it and to the left is the larger Hyades cluster with reddish Aldebaran in Taurus. The stars of Orion are left of centre, including reddish Betelgeuse, while at far left are the two Dog Stars: Procyon, at top, in Canis Minor, and Sirius, at bottom, in Canis Major. So this is a gathering of many red stars, planets and the rare red Moon. I shot the frames for this scene beginning at 3:50 am MST, 10 minutes before mid-totality during this 1h25m-long total eclipse. . (Photo by: Alan Dyer/VW Pics/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Life Lessons

Look Up!

Germanic warrior taking stimulants imagined by Stanislav(Stanisław) Kontny,

History

Veni, Vidi, Snorti: I Came, I Saw, I Did A Bump

A gif of a green fruit that looks like a cucumber shooting out many small wet seeds.

The Secret Lives Of Squirting Cucumbers

WASHINGTON, DC - May 23: Laura Helmuth of The Washington Post via Getty Images poses for a portrait on Tuesday May 23, 2017 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images)

Do Not Accept An Unscientific American

A black-and-white photo of a partial skeleton at the bottom of a rocky well

This Week In Skeletons

In this aerial view, a person walks through flood waters that inundated a neighborhood after Hurricane Milton came ashore on October 10, 2024, in Punta Gorda, Florida. The storm made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane in the Siesta Key area of Florida, causing damage and flooding throughout Central Florida.

What Can We Learn From Back-To-Back Monster Hurricanes Helene And Milton?

Let’s Go See What’s Swimming Around On Europa

Rachelle Hampton

Northern lights are seen across a night sky; in the foreground, there's a telephone tower

It’s Totally Cool That I Didn’t Get To See The Northern Lights. Seriously! I Promise!!

A drone image shows the dome of Tropicana Field which has been torn open due to Hurricane Milton in St. Petersburg, Florida, on October 10, 2024. At least four people were confirmed killed as a result of two tornadoes triggered by Hurricane Milton on the east coast of the US state of Florida, local authorities said Thursday. (Photo by Bryan R. SMITH / AFP)

Tropicana Field Shredded By Hurricane Milton

BROOKS FALLS, ALASKA - AUGUST 11: A brown bear shakes his fur while fishing for sockeye salmon on August 11, 2023 at Brooks Falls, Alaska within the Katmai National Park and Preserve. The bears feast at the falls between July and September, as millions of salmon swim upstream to spawn. Many of the same bears return to the falls annually, gorging on salmon to fatten up before hibernating for winter. The bears have become something of an internet sensation, as "bearcams" livestream bear activity at and around the falls to viewers worldwide. Commercial salmon fishing in Alaskan waters has often pitted business interests against wildlife conservationists in Alaska, which has more national park and wilderness land than anywhere in the United States. (Photo by John Moore/Getty Images)

Animals

Bear Wins Fat Bear Week By Defeating Bear That Killed Her Cub

Nicholas Russell is a writer from Las Vegas.

Nicholas Russell

26 March 2024, Baden-Württemberg, Rottweil: Cowslips grow in a wooded area near a stream near Rottweil. Photo: Silas Stein/dpa

What Is The Human Composting Industry Trying To Grow?

Albert Burneko

A wide view of the desolate Martian landscape, captured by the Perseverance rover.

Neither Elon Musk Nor Anybody Else Will Ever Colonize Mars

In this illustration, a Boeing CST-100 Starliner spacecraft is shown in low-Earth orbit. NASA is partnering with Boeing and SpaceX to build a new generation of human-rated spacecraft capable of taking astronauts to the International Space Station and expanding research opportunities in orbit. Boeing's upcoming Orbital Flight Test is part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract with the goal of returning human spaceflight launch capabilities to the United States.

No Need To Worry About Eerie, Mysterious “Pulsing” Noise Coming From Janky Boeing Starliner, NASA Insists

The United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket with Boeing's CST-100 Starliner spacecraft launches from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on June 5, 2024. Boeing launched its very first astronauts bound for the International Space Station aboard a Starliner capsule, which joins a select club of spacecraft to carry humans beyond Earth.