2026-03-02 03:46:31
Israel and the United States launched a joint attack on Iran Saturday morning, bombing several cities in the country. As a result, Iran Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, his death confirmed by state media Sunday. Also included in the casualties were reportedly dozens of children at a girls' school.
Amir-Saeid Iravani, Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, said that more than 100 children were killed at the bombing of the Shajarah Tayyiba school in the city of Minab. The school was located near an Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps naval base. Via the Washington Post, photos and videos showed rescue workers digging through the rubble and backpacks covered in dust and blood. One video showed a man holding up a severed arm. A spokesperson for United States Central Command said it was looking into the reports.
In an article published Saturday, Drop Site spoke to some of the parents of the victims:
2026-03-02 03:06:45
At Defector, we like weird sports eaters. The demands of elite performance encourage monomania, which is expressed by your various sports freaks as often inviolable, occasionally bizarre food restrictions. Even sports commentators and hot-takers get in on it: Skip Bayless famously eats nothing but sauceless chicken and broccoli, ordered in five-day batches; Jim Nantz religiously throws away the final bite of each halftime hot dog he's ordered as an NFL broadcaster; and Don Cherry took a midday boost from salmon-and-mayo sandwiches ritually aged to a consistency once described by Ron MacLean as "more like a pudding." A true grinder will do profoundly gut-busting things in order to survive and thrive at the upper echelons of North American sports.
For pitcher Ryan Lambert, who is presently working his way up the Mets farm system, this means eating like a champion. A champion mongoose. A mongoose who has discovered a nest full of plover eggs—several, in fact. A mongoose who raids half a dozen nests full of eggs every waking day of their life. Per a report from Anthony DiComo of MLB.com, Lambert "came across an internet video" two years ago, and took from it the message that he should consume 30 raw eggs per day.
"Day 1, it was an adjustment for sure. But I’m not a chicken," Lambert told DiComo, presumably by way of heading off any accusations of cannibalism. "I like a little adversity and challenge. It kind of gets me going." Lambert's commitment to dietary excellence means eating a grilled steak and sweet potato dinner "most days." In a ritual that I am sure makes him extremely popular with his colleagues, Lambert will reportedly sometimes wander the clubhouse dining room "to examine his teammates' plates for nutritional value," poking at them for succumbing to temptation. According to DiComo, last year Lambert ordered "a bowl of chicken hearts" while eating with a teammate in a restaurant.
2026-03-02 00:16:56
Lu Dort is often finding new ways to do some bullshit just on the edge of the accepted rules of basketball. The difference this weekend was that the Oklahoma City Thunder wing went too far and got caught for it, even though that didn't stop his team from playing the victim.
In the fourth quarter of Friday's game, Dort stuck out his leg to trip Denver Nuggets center Nikola Jokic after the inbound pass. An official called a foul on the play, but while Dort acted like he was wrongly accused, an incensed Jokic popped up and got in his face. Dort's teammate Jaylin Williams stepped in, and he and a still-fuming Jokic grappled as players and coaches attempted to separate them. Isaiah Joe was there, too.
2026-03-01 23:57:05
Kristaps Porzingis is out indefinitely due to illness, according to Golden State's injury report. What illness? That question is the subject of some controversy.
Porzingis has been broadly unwell since the spring of 2025, when he was with the Boston Celtics and found himself suffering from extreme exhaustion toward the end of the regular season. Boston was bounced in the Eastern Conference semifinals last season, Porzingis was a shell of himself, and over the summer he was diagnosed by doctors with postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, or POTS. A key part of that sentence is "by doctors." According to Fred Katz of The Athletic, who reported on Porzingis's condition this past October, it was doctors who made the diagnosis, and it was doctors who outlined diet and lifestyle practices for managing the condition. His season so far has been rough: With the Atlanta Hawks, Porzingis played just 17 of 53 games, and while his production was respectable, he was limited to a career-low 24 minutes per game.
Warriors head coach Steve Kerr seems to have his own sources for gathering medical information. In an interview with local radio Friday evening, he described his process. "When I heard about the trade, I read about the POTS diagnosis," said Kerr, who probably does not have a medical library and was almost certainly typing shit into an internet browser. For more information, Kerr called Onsi Saleh, the former Warriors vice president who's presently the general manager of the Hawks, the franchise that was at that moment in the process of trading Porzingis to the Warriors. "He's a good friend of mine and I said 'Is this POTS story real?' And he said, 'It’s actually not POTS.' That was some misinformation that was out there. I don’t know if anybody’s asked him about it."
2026-02-28 03:00:00
It is once again time to have a staff chat. We'll be hanging out in the comments, ready to answer whatever questions you have.
Update (3:17 p.m. ET): OK we're wrapping up here! Thanks for joining, everyone.
2026-02-28 02:13:37
Last week, Mark Zuckerberg sat in a Los Angeles courtroom and testified for five hours that he and his company, Meta, are not culpable in claims that they have deliberately made the platform addictive and harmful for young users.
The testimony was part of a bellwether trial in California in which a 20-year-old woman, referred to in the trial as K.G.M., or "Kaley," alleges that Meta and YouTube deliberately designed their platforms to be addictive and that her addiction to Instagram and YouTube specifically contributed to the degradation of her mental health. Meta's lawyers argue that the mental health problems she suffered as an adolescent were caused by separate trauma and abuse. So far, the trial has hinged mainly on the question of whether social-media addiction is possible, from a psychiatric perspective. Meta is arguing that there is a difference between "problematic" and "clinically addictive" usage, and that the company and Zuckerberg are not responsible for negative mental health outcomes produced or exacerbated by extreme use of their platforms.
Meanwhile, YouTube is arguing that it simply isn't a social media platform at all, despite its pushes in recent years into short-form video that looks an awful lot like Instagram and TikTok, as well as photo-based posts.
