Defector

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The last good website.

ÉVIAN-LES-BAINS, France — Exactly 84 minutes after Jonas Vingegaard spiked his right collarbone into a curb and limped into an ambulance and out of the Tour de France, the assembled press watched him gingerly wince his way down the steps of the Visma bus and into a waiting team car. A scrambled pack-job followed. A soigneur could barely hold the pile of backpacks and duffel bags he was carrying off the bus. A team doctor stood by, holding two large red and yellow first-aid kits, adopting the tense posture and alert facial expressions of someone who knows they can't help but desperately wants to. The eventual driver nearly spilled Vingegaard's stuff all over the tarmac of a wholly unremarkable road, in an unremarkable town, at the base of the final climb of Stage 15 of the Tour de France. And then the two-time champion was off to the hospital.
Garrett: When typing on a keyboard, I use Caps Lock-Letter-Caps Lock instead of the shift key to capitalize letters. I started doing this as a kid and was never told to use the "correct" method. Now it's many years later and it works for me, even as someone whose job is pretty much all typing words. However, when I mention this to people, they absolutely lose their minds and act as if my (admittedly!) unorthodox method is beyond the pale. I can't be the only one who types this way. Why does this get such a wild reaction?
Matt: What is the worst advice you received that you actually tried?
My first thought rolling up to the low and liminal three-story office park hotel we’re taking over is, Wow, look at all those dykes. Dykes behind registration desks, verifying COVID rapid test results, directing other dykes with luggage carts spilling over with duffels, hardshell Pelican cases, and sporting goods bags filled with what cannot be sporting goods. Dykes I know and don’t. Boy dykes and girl dykes and men who used to be dykes and dykes who used to be men, innumerable shades of exuberant faggotry, with canes and wheelchairs and mobility aids, some in leather vests dense with pins and patches, some in titleholder sashes, some in sweats and full beats. They embrace in many-way hugs and scream upon seeing each other, like sophomores back from summer. Across the parking lot, a pair of hoss-type white guys in performance basics are practicing golf swings. They’re there for hours, swinging and swinging in a perverse durational scene.
Noe: What country has the coolest colors for their World Cup kits? Not who has the best uniforms, because those change, but who has the best template of colors and patterns to work with? Lots of countries have the generic red/white/blue, but Croatia has the dope checkerboard pattern. Ivory Coast has that neat orange and Netherlands has the construction worker orange. South America has a lot of yellow. I like Argentina, personally.
Taken on its face, it is tough to figure out what was even being celebrated here. But it scans much more intelligibly as a characteristically hapless attempt at transubstantiation from Trump himself, an attempt to create an America that's as small and shabby as one of those ruddy second or third weddings at Mar-a-Lago into which the president sometimes wanders and Makes Some Remarks. It aimed to do this by replacing everything that Trump does not like about America, which begins but very much does not end with actual Americans and the things they like, with a selection from the much smaller category of things that Trump himself likes, which is to say cops, Fox News personalities, Vanilla Ice, and hearing people that work for him talk about what a wonderful job he's doing.
a sign that says "no latex in this elevator"
More and more I am convinced that a huge part of the work of parenting, maybe even the biggest after the basic keeping-the-child-alive stuff, is the story you tell your children about who they are, about what you treasure in them, and whether they believe you. In turn, the biggest part of the work of growing up is discovering who you are and what kind of person you want to be. Maybe your hope is that you can raise your kids to be resilient, or compassionate, or brave, or imaginative, and so you help them to see themselves that way. Not by puffing them up with a lot of bullshit, but by marking the moments when you see in them what you hope they will grow to see in themselves.
From Friday the 13th to watching the trailer for Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma on a loop until it's reached feature length—every era, every iteration, every final girl—I've seen probably every summer camp slasher at this point. I've seen Bruce Springsteen's little sister drown a girl in an outhouse (Sleepaway Camp II: Unhappy Campers). I've seen Sadie Sink get hacked up by an axe and then, in a miraculous testament to the powers of first-aid training, be resurrected through CPR (Fear Street Part Two: 1978). I’ve seen George Costanza as a horny teenager (The Burning), which was perhaps the most horrifying moment of them all.
There was a brief moment while watching the Roots Picnic when I felt that familiar pang of affection for his ability to still do this, and for reminding me of what those old days were like. But Jay-Z isn't the only person who can speak in Wire references: The thing about the old days, they the old days. I don't know if I could bring myself to care enough to visit Yankee Stadium, or entertain the idea that new Jay-Z music could still be good. Nostalgia, for as powerful as it is, can't make it 1996 again. Life just ain't like that anymore. But I'll always appreciate him for teaching me the difference between a 4.0 and a 4.6 Range Rover.
One annoying thing about the WNBA season is that it coincides with precisely the time of year when college football and NFL commentators have their most free time. If Fever games constitute your only exposure to the WNBA, I can see why it might feel like the player who has the ball in her hand more often than anyone else in those games is subject to outsized defensive attention. If slow-motion Twitter clips of Clark being fouled constitute your only exposure to the WNBA, I can really see why it might seem like this stuff happens too often.
a photo of a brown edible robot shaped like a rectangle with arms and two black eyespots
Conservation takes many forms. It can involve political advocacy or laboratory research. The conservation work Khalil did might best be described as labor. Each day during sea turtle nesting season, which spans roughly May through October, Khalil woke before dawn to walk the beach. She placed metal grates above any eggs she found to secure them from hungry foxes, dogs, and crabs until they hatched. She watched for the tracks of adult turtles and moved eggs away from the surf in times of high-tide flooding. She was trained by scientists from the Mediterranean Association to Save the Sea Turtles (MEDASSET), presented her data at conferences, and shared it with conservation groups. She held beach cleanups, did television interviews, and wrote monitoring guidelines for future volunteers. She invited families vacationing in the area to join her on her morning patrols and taught them about the turtles, their habitat, and the threats they face.
I turn around to head toward the backyard entrance. And as soon as I do my turn, who walks in the front door but Alan Greenspan, all by himself. So we're suddenly face to face, maybe five feet apart, in the front hallway. And when our eyes meet, he starts giving me a slow once-over, worthy of a movie scene, checking me out from top to bottom, from my damp-with-sweat mangy hair to my off-the-clearance rack short-sleeve plaid shirt to my khaki cargo shorts to my over-worn sneakers. Then, as soon Greenspan's gaze gets back to eye level, as quick as a guy in his 80s can do a 180, he turns and walks back out the front door, and while leaving the door open, leans to the side and checks the address on the front of the house against the address on the party invite he'd removed from an inner pocket of his designer jacket. His body language and facial expression scream: I CAN'T POSSIBLY BE INVITED TO THE SAME PARTY AS THIS FAT RATTY-ASS SWEATY UNKEMPT MOTHERFUCKER!
Greg: Which do you think is the best target for a heist? Bank? House? Boat? Museum?
the green forbidden smoothie that is the lincoln memorial reflecting pool
That's not to say that these four Giants idiots don't feel something like sincere aggravation at having been instructed to don the symbol of something they hate. But to me it is worth noting that, in the best case, there's nothing of genuine value to be gained from putting avowed, unapologetic bigots in Pride gear. The fiction of unanimity won't stand for long, and in any case the fake visual of it is not so very different from Jerry Jones kneeling alongside his players with his horror-show face twisted into history's shit-eatingest smirk of corporate triumph. And the caps, plus a calligraphy pen, empowered these four bozos to upstage the event with their cheap activism.
Ingrid Nilsen was one of the very first beauty and lifestyle YouTubers, and the work she did in her late teens and early 20s created the blueprint for what the industry has become today. A few of her highlights: She was the first online creator to work with CoverGirl, and she interviewed President Obama. Her coming-out video in 2015 went mega viral, and she invented Vlogmas, which is a daily vlogging challenge still used by thousands of creators every December. She had more than 3 million YouTube subscribers, and in 2020, she quit.
Victor Wembanyama is maybe just kind of a corny guy. I think we are all going to have to get accustomed to that. His taste in reading material could scarcely be more embarrassing shy of, like, pickup-artist instruction manuals. He seems to go out of his way to cultivate a public Man of Sophistication image, which is among other things hilariously at odds with what he's reading. He can be tediously smug when things are going well—the "I'm in your head!" thing from Game 4 will endure like a tattoo on his forehead forever—and the rest of the time has developed an ugly penchant for dirty shit that is unbefitting a world-class athlete and, again, makes for an unflattering contrast with the whole Serene Warrior Monk thing. Two weeks ago the 2026 NBA Finals seemed like they might be his coronation, and oh boy, were they ever not that.
Jay: Would you rather see your favorite local sandwich chain close, or be bought out by private equity and instantly become 60 percent worse? This recently happened to me (Dave's Cosmic Subs, I'll put 'em on blast). What was once an elite sub shop is now a shell of its former self: lower quality ingredients, signature sauce now all runny, a switch from Dirty brand chips (IYKYK) to basic-ass Lay's, no free pickle, etc. I still dabble every so often, and it's fine, but part of me wishes it would've died a noble death instead of taunting me with a shittier version of past glory.
Matthew: I recently got so high I remembered that umps and refs are human beings who are supposed to be, by definition, the best at what they do. After getting tired of online discourse about what the hardest thing in sports is, my question is… what is the hardest thing to do in professional sports from the perspective of the referee/umpire? I believe it’s calling balls and strikes.
Victor Wembanyama is a matchup that demands discipline. Partially because there is simply so much surface area on Wembanyama's arms for a defender to potentially foul, making this the test of a lifetime for Towns. But more to the point: It is difficult to be disciplined when the offensive player upends any expectation of what a man that size can do. Wemby hasn't yet honed all his tricks to perfection, but he already has a disturbing menu of options to select from. Bite on a pump fake and he can fluidly step through into a layup from midrange jumper range, or get up into the defender's body to draw a foul, or attempt some freak shit like throwing the ball off the backboard for a dunk.
Noe: Tell us about your favorite literary characters. I've been reading Don Quixote on and off for the past seven years. It's taking a while because I'm reading it in the original Spanish. Every time I come back to it, I pick up the characters immediately because of how alive and vibrant they are. I guess that makes sense considering the book is a masterpiece, but it's still pretty neat. As a reader and writer yourself, what are some of your favorite characters? Let's remember some literary characters.
My two pairs of glasses are like windblown feathers in my life. Sometimes they are nearby and other times they are not, and that is not up to me either way. I encounter them like a friend you didn't expect to bump into at the grocery store. Hey! It's great to see you! Please stand at this precise distance so that I can look at you without turning green, breaking out in a cold sweat, and falling over.
I was discovering something first like acceptance—"I'll be grateful in the long term that I got the larger size"—and then maybe something like a corollary to that earlier bit of advice: Buy clothes for the parts of your body that you like, not the parts of your body you want to change. My main roster of clothes today—lots of cute dresses, some colder-weather ensembles, a few wild cards—all connect to something I've genuinely grown to like about my physical self, whether it's my legs, my curves, or something ineffable about the way the colors work with my hair and face. This is why I think of being trans, for all its challenges, as ultimately a blessing. It forces you to pursue your favorite possible version of yourself.
There's a number of forces that led us to this moment. I think one major element is the fact that, for at least a half century, really since the end of World War II, American warmaking has lacked a moral center. You can debate the sort of morality of other American conflicts. Certainly the massacre of indigenous people is a foundational violent stain on this country, but in the modern idea of the American soldier, the Cold War creates newly extreme conditions because the people who served in the various skirmishes during that time had no higher ideal to grasp onto. So really they began to embrace cynical ideas around violence. Violence became what military service was about. It was sort of the beginning and the end. Valor was no longer equated with broader goals of democracy and humanity and modernity or whatever, it was really just body counts. And that leads to this pivot to personal values and violence and building up your body and adopting the attitude of the mercenary. It's a kind of divorce from the broader ideals of this country, flawed or thin as they are.
Kevin: Given all of this wallet talk lately, I have a confession to make. For the past six months I’ve been using a koozie as a wallet. Where does this rank on the “CVS receipt to Ziplock bag” scale of sicko behavior?
Andrew: I’m currently at a convention for nerd shit (MagicCon Las Vegas, I know there must be some other members of the Defectorate here because the game attracts lawyers like shit attracts flies), and when taking a dump at the convention center, the song “Danger Zone” came on the radio. I started cracking up in the stall and thought to ask: what’s the funniest song to take a dump in a public restroom to?
Ryan: Is Raising Canes an industry plant? Is it not just plain-ass chicken tenders? How does a guy end up as a shark on Shark Tank from selling chicken fingers? What am I missing?
Nick: My wife and I are expecting our first child soon. I have lived my life thus far without keeping a calendar. If necessary, I’ll write ‘appt. 7/30 8:30 AM’ on a sticky note and leave it on the fridge. This system has worked well for me (sometimes, I miss a party, but if I didn’t remember it, I didn’t really want to go anyways), but my wife, no doubt correctly, warns that this strategy will be no longer tenable once our bundle of joy/screaming potato enters the world. I find making a calendar stressful and tedious (hence my avoidance). Do you have any tips for how I can ensure everything gets done and everyone gets to the place they need to go at about the right time, without resorting to the evils of Google Calendar? Or is that simply my fate?
Peter: What’s the most satisfying food to cook? For me it’s got to be bacon.
I encourage you to try this with your own kids, not passively but actively. Put yourself through it. A thing I value, because I am a fucking lunatic, is the piercing pain of it: How it makes me aware of my own largeness in their lives, and my capacity to blunder into making them feel like shit in a way that will stay with them after I've forgotten it. Or, on the other hand, my particular capacity as their dad to make them feel seen and understood, like they are not alone: in the moment and also enduringly, as a steady fact in their lives. That seems like a reasonable strategic goal.
Jeff: What's one song you wish you could listen to for the first time again?
The gig drew a mostly white, mostly male, mostly middle-aged crowd (myself included). Lots of guys wearing golf polos, woven in a range of moisture-wicking synthetics. One man sported the rare double wallet chain, and more than a few with hair gel spiking up the last wisps of graying hair clinging to the front of their domes, wearing sunglasses wrapped around the back of their heads, in case it suddenly got super sunny at 8:00 p.m., in April, in Philadelphia, indoors. It was like walking through a suburban boat show. All these rich, variegated specimens had paid good money (tickets were about $70) on a Friday night to celebrate what Schneider called, taking the stage in a black fedora and shimmering olive green suit, “the freest country in the world,” i.e. the United States of America.
"I was refereeing J.R. Smith," said McCutchen, one of three officials on the game and now the NBA's senior VP of referee development and training. "I remember thinking, 'You got J.R. Get J.R. Get J.R.'" At the last moment, though, he saw something else in his peripheral vision. "LeBron's coming." You know what happened next.
Ah yes, freedom and your individual best interest, famously what military service is all about. Will Hegseth's military issue heavy packs only to those warfighters who believe carrying 65 pounds on their back is in their best interest? Will it only give high-risk orders to those soldiers who regard death at age 23 as compatible with their personal ambitions? What do you suppose will happen to the next civilian Department of Defense employee who declares loyalty-check polygraph tests inconsistent with their personal beliefs?
My sons (12, 9) have thus far used the internet (under supervision) in such a way that they pick a topic and then become complete sickos about that topic, absorbing as much information as they can find about whatever they're into. Mostly it's been video games thus far: Minecraft, Zelda, Mega Man, Metroid, etc. I myself was a Star Trek/Star Wars sicko as a kid/teenager, but I would have to wait until a movie came out, or a TV show came on, or until I saved up enough money to buy books about them. These guys just get whatever information they want, immediately. It's not fair. We had to work for it. What kind of sicko would you have been in 1988, if you had the sum total of human knowledge in your pocket?
I also thought about the book I was writing, a history of the Lewis and Clark expedition. To me, the animal attack felt so brutal, so irrational, so life-changing. But to Lewis and Clark and their men, it was just a Saturday. I mean this literally: On Saturday, July 26, 1806, a wolf attacked a few of the soldiers. It bit one man "through his hand," in Clark's words, before another soldier shot and killed it. "This animal," Clark wrote in his journal, "was so vicious." But that's all he said. No one else even mentioned the incident.
In the West, we brought on: Tyler Parker to talk Oklahoma City Thunder Eamon Whalen to talk Minnesota Timberwolves Billy Haisley's brother to talk Los Angeles Lakers Isaac Chotiner to talk Houston Rockets Sean Highkin to talk Portland Trail Blazers
Three images of Neil banging out the tunes on April 13, 2006. Neil is a hairless rat.
Jon: What’s your luckiest food bullet dodge? If you had to guess, what's the luckiest you've ever been when eating something "risky"? For example, you ate something (Street taco with undercooked chicken) that statistically would have made you ill like 80% of the time. For me, probably eating chips after cleaning ferret poop and forgetting to wash my hands. I feel like I was asking for absolute gut detonation, but I was fine.