2025-07-12 01:17:55
Sometimes you find yourself remembering a book. Such was the case a few weeks ago, when someone dropped this tweet into our DRAB Slack channel. "In 2012 it seemed like every single person in New York City was reading The Art of Fielding," it read. "On Goodreads it has 30,000 more ratings than Infinite Jest, and almost 3x as many readers as 2666. And yet it’s just completely gone. Never discussed. Zero impact."
Well guess what, buddy: We're going to discuss The Art Of Fielding here and now, in the year 2025. It is true that this book was what you might call a "hot release" back in 2012—I personally remember every sports and sports-adjacent blogger at the time reading and talking about it—and it's not inaccurate to point out that it doesn't seem to have left much of a cultural impression. But who actually cares about all of that? What we're here to find out is if this book is any good. I was certainly charmed by it when I read it in 2012—It's a baseball book that's also a campus book that's also kind of about Moby Dick? Wow!—and I am curious to find out if the grizzled, 37-year-old version of me will be able to find things to like about it.
2025-07-12 00:21:00
On Jan. 21, Molly was serving lunch in the prison cafeteria when a fellow trans inmate shared the news with her: A day earlier, Donald Trump had signed an executive order declaring that the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) was prohibited from spending money on any gender-affirming care for inmates. Molly realized that she and the 2,000 or so transgender people currently being held in federal prison faced a dire future: being prohibited from receiving gender-affirming care such as hormones for their gender dysphoria.
A month later, Molly learned that a new BOP memo banned gender-affirming commissary items for trans inmates, such as makeup and women’s underwear, calling these offering "items that align with transgender ideology." The memo also required guards to misgender trans inmates. Soon after, makeup, underwear, bras, and other gender-affirming items were removed from Molly's prison commissary.
2025-07-11 23:29:20
Katie Taylor and Amanda Serrano go at it again at Madison Square Garden tonight. The fight’s being promoted as the biggest in the history of women’s boxing. Who could argue? It’s the first female trilogy matchup of note, in the most famous boxing arena in the world, and the previous two bouts were iconic thrillers.
But as of this week, tickets from greedy Ticketmaster could be had for under $44, greedy fees included. That’s an astonishingly low get-in price for a fistic Garden party of such stature. The cheapest seat at the same building a night later for the "Weird Al" Yankovic show will run you about twice as much.
2025-07-11 22:53:02
Welcome back to Make It Nice, Defector’s best design advice column. This month: A search for an attractive ceiling fan, a layout for a tricky bungalow bedroom, and ideas for making the most out of a multi-use workspace.
Alyssa asks:
2025-07-11 21:50:39
Ben Healy races his bike like a Frenchman, which is to say that his creativity, pain tolerance, and willingness to gamble extend beyond the scope of his abilities. The Irish rider debuted at the 2024 Tour de France determined to win a stage, and while he rode bravely and twice put himself in position to win, all he won was hearts. He's done himself one better this year, running away with a career-defining win on Stage 6 of the Tour. It was a gorgeous ride, one that validates Healy's place as one of the peloton's premier artists on the bike.
After the race's elite greedily scarfed up the first five stages of the race, Stage 6 was the first chance for everyone else to get a crack at winning something. Tadej Pogacar had just put a minute into Jonas Vingegaard in the time trial, and after five hard days of patrolling the front of the race, it seemed clear that neither Visma nor UAE would invest yet again in setting up their team leaders. The stage's terrain was rugged, and there are more important battles to fight down the road.
2025-07-11 21:07:47
If a typically tight, unexciting late-stage tournament match can be redeemed with a great goal, João Pedro was the savior that Tuesday's Club World Cup semifinal between Chelsea and Fluminense needed. Twice the Brazilian injected into the game the kind of inspiration and pinpoint precision that was otherwise in short supply. His first goal was a long-range beauty, an almost golf-like shot where João Pedro patiently settled the ball, lined up his target, scoped out the hazards in between him and it, measured his approach, and ripped a drive into the far-side netting. His second goal was even better, a strike of such force and purity and exactitude of footwork that I'm compelled to include the following video, which appropriately focuses on nothing but the shooting technique itself:
