2026-02-24 03:36:17
Ryan Garcia spent most of the last few years sabotaging his fight career. He smoked, drank and drugged during training. He went on a bizarre spree of bad behavior, lowlighted by a series of racist posts sent out to his many million social media followers, earning sanctions from boxing industry powerhouses. While creating such a sad stir outside the ring, he became a boring fighter and a loser inside it. He went down without a fight against Rolly Romero in a Times Square fiasco last spring, a bout that was supposed to reintroduce him as a viable world title contender, and before this weekend had notched only one official win in the last four years, discounting his non-decision over Devin Haney thanks to a banned substance found in his post-fight pee-pee test.
Then, on Saturday night, Garcia threw and landed a big right hand.
2026-02-24 01:59:40
One defining feature of the second Trump administration is the bewildering juxtaposition between various job titles and the people who actually fill those positions. "FBI Director" evokes a commanding presence: someone tall, obviously cunning, and more than a little bit evil. I don't think you would visualize a little weirdo who looks like he has only ever entered a room by accident.
Current FBI Director Kash Patel is precisely that kind of little weirdo. He looked just as uncomfortable and out of place as he always does when he showed up in the Team USA locker room Sunday, to holler, drink beers, and enjoy Toby Keith's music with the players who had just won a gold medal by defeating Canada 2-1 in overtime.
2026-02-24 01:23:48
As the number of powerful, wealthy people revealed to have associated with Jeffrey Epstein increases, so too does the coherence of their collective excuse: They only knew Epstein as a genius of math and science, a polymath who could dispense tax advice worth hundreds of millions of dollars, opine on quantum entanglement, and offer wise counsel on how to navigate choppy political and social waters. They were not sending obsequious emails to Epstein in his capacity as a conduit for shady money, world-historic sex criminal or, uh, shadow representative of Israel. They were simply seeking his considerable breadth and depth of knowledge.
Both the content and style of Epstein's emails undermine the claim of his genius. Check out this excerpt from an incredibly weird, rambling email he sent to powerful crisis PR guy Matthew Hiltzik in 2017:
looling into , can the music produced by the brain give us an insight into how it works. . different cultures have different music. german music is stiff. rigid on the beat. afrom americans flecible ie JAZZ.
2026-02-23 23:58:03
It's time to wrap up the month with a challenging themeless. Keep an eye out for tricky clues and fun wordplay. This week's puzzle was constructed by Kelsey Dixon and Alex Boisvert, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Alex is a crossword constructor from California who is so uncomfortable writing anything positive about himself that he wanted to do a goofy bio. Kelsey is a gorgeous and brilliant crossword constructor from Chicago who is not plagued by this affliction.
Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX, run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE.
2026-02-23 22:42:06
So you're wondering one day later if the final Olympic event ended fairly, and we're here to tell you that it did. Sweden beat Switzerland in the women's curling final, and there’s no disputing it.
But for those of you who stream and have mastered the difference between "live" and "not live," the actual final event was the men's hockey final, and you can ask the same question, as many Canadians are doing even as we speak. Was the U.S.'s 2-1 overtime victory the “right” outcome, and of course the answer to that is no. The overtime lasted only 101 seconds, which was an outrage against all living things.
The score, though, was hockey through and through, because the first rule of hockey has always been "my hot goalie beats whatever you've got." The Canadians had the run of play almost throughout the day, but they didn't have Connor Hellebuyck, the U.S. goalie and industrial refrigerator impersonator who kept the faster, craftier and more attack-driven Canadians at stick length for most of the game, though sometimes only at paddle length.
2026-02-23 22:05:32
As Cardte Hicks leapt toward the hoop, the audience at the Albuquerque Civic Auditorium suddenly hushed. These were the final minutes of the Women’s Professional Basketball League’s All-Star Game on Feb. 9, 1981, where an undersized squad from the West was blowing out the favored East team in what would be a 125-92 win. The arena grew rowdier as the quick sharpshooters of the West racked up points, but when Hicks alone flew above the rim, the crowd went silent.
Hicks, a 25-year-old All-Star from the San Francisco Pioneers, was unlike any other player on the court. At 5-foot-9, listed in some places as 5-foot-8, her vertical leap was reported as high as 36 inches. Word of her talent had spread across the WBL, the tale growing taller. “She’s up there so long, she can dial a telephone number,” Pioneers teammate Roberta Williams would tell me decades later. “Say hello, and before the conversation’s over, say goodbye … I never saw a female who had the kind of hang time she had.”
With the clock winding down, this gave West head coach Greg Williams the idea to encourage Hicks to try something she’d never done in a WBL game before: attempt a dunk. “She was such a graceful athlete,” he remembered. “Almost poetry in motion.” The coach had total confidence in her abilities. “You go up there and play the way you wanna play—just shake ‘em!” she recalled him saying. Hicks, known for her impressive vertical and magnetic charisma, was more than ready.
