2026-01-02 03:02:05
When Drew and I recorded this week's episode of The Distraction roughly a week before Christmas, we were aware of the risk we were taking. All kinds of stuff can happen in an ungovernable and deranged culture over the course of two weeks, even during the two weeks of the year in which the least tends to happen. But Drew was getting ready to go on a longish family vacation, and I was getting ready to make my annual pilgrimage to Maine for six freezing days of last-minute shopping and Amato's sandwiches; there were only so many options. And so we placed our bet that nothing in the remaining days of 2025 would change our assessment of this stupid, brutal, mostly awful, but ultimately survivable year.
2026-01-01 22:00:51
Getting stuff stuck in your rectum is so 2025. Doing Looney Tunes–style violence to your groin is the new hotness. Below are some very real, very gnarly penis injuries suffered by Americans.
All descriptions are taken verbatim from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission’s database of emergency room visits:
2025-12-31 22:36:52
We are once again faced with a fake-ass work week, so things will be a little slow around here until Friday. Take this opportunity to amuse yourselves in an open thread!
2025-12-31 22:29:24
Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide, where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about.
The first round of the expanded playoff was, predictably, a bit of a dud. But hey, the second round is here and the games should get better, or at least we hope they will. The potential for blowouts still lurks, and who knows what effect a three-week break from football will have on some of these teams.
2025-12-31 05:58:32
New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs has been charged with one count of felony strangulation or suffocation, and one count of misdemeanor assault and battery, according to Massachusetts court records. The charges were first reported by Boston 25 News. According to a police report, made public Tuesday by a judge and obtained by Boston media, a private chef who had been working for Diggs said he tried to choke her when they got in a fight earlier this month about money the chef believed she was owed.
On Tuesday, Diggs's name appeared on the daily list for Dedham District Court, prompting today's news reports. At the hearing, a lawyer for Diggs, Michael DiStefano, asked a judge to seal the police report, Boston 25 reported, and added that a financial settlement was already in the works. The judge, per Boston 25, said she would make a decision soon and she was true to her word.
2025-12-31 04:48:22
“I think this game is over,” said play-by-play announcer Elise Woodward during Monday night’s Michigan-Oregon women’s basketball game. You’re imagining, maybe, that an electric Syla Swords shooting night gave Michigan a 50-point lead at halftime, leaving Oregon head coach Kelly Graves with no choice but to yank his starters and wave the white flag of over-ness. A likely scenario. But Woodward said these words in a tie game with 5.2 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter. This would seem to be one of the least “over” situations ever. When Woodward said the game was over, she suspected this quarter had literally already ended, and that the game needed to be sent to overtime.
After close to 40 minutes of heinous free-throw shooting and long scoring droughts, Michigan and Oregon were tied at 69. The Ducks had clawed back from a 16-point hole at halftime to tie the game with 1:30 left, and it would stay that way as the teams frantically exchanged misses. The Wolverines defended well enough to force a long and doomed Oregon possession so that Michigan got the ball back with 21 seconds left. After they’d dribbled the clock down to 12 and taken a timeout, Michigan began a long and doomed possession of their own. Swords tried breaking down a defender with 5.2 seconds left, to little success. She was left to heave something up with 5.2 seconds left. Her teammate Te’Yala Delfosse grabbed the offensive rebound with 5.2 seconds left, and got her own putback attempt up with 5.2 seconds left, at which point someone finally realized the clock had stopped at 5.2 seconds.
