2026-01-10 04:39:06
This week, Rolling Stone published an article in which writer Marisa Fox interviewed hostages who were held in Gaza after Oct. 7, talking to them about how music helped them. The artists mentioned in the piece include Frank Sinatra, Bill Withers, and Avenged Sevenfold. What caught my attention was one specific paragraph that was illustrative of the low journalistic standard for writing about Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims.
The part in question is about 40-year-old Moran Stella Yanai, who was held hostage in Gaza for 54 days before she was released. As you read the following excerpt, your vision might be clouded by some unexplained yellow filter, and the bootleg adhan used in every Hollywood film set in the Arab World will begin to involuntarily play in your head:
2026-01-10 03:41:21
What is the point of Unrivaled? Or rather, how seriously should it be taken? It’s easy to understand what the players get out of it: Napheesa Collier and Breanna Stewart founded the startup basketball league in 2023 as an offseason option for a few dozen WNBA players, offering them equity and competitive salaries to play 3x3 games on a Miami soundstage. For them it’s a convenient way to get paid, stay in shape, and remain in the U.S. during the winter months, when their earning opportunities have historically been overseas.
As a media member, I still don’t exactly know how to value Unrivaled as the league begins its second season. The 3x3 game differs so much from WNBA basketball that Unrivaled’s utility as a gauge for player development is dubious. Last year, stars who had dismal Unrivaled seasons—Stewart, Aliyah Boston, Satou Sabally—went on to have their typically excellent WNBA seasons. It's certainly an appealing opportunity for media members to go to Miami in the winter: Last February, I watched games at the Unrivaled facility and found myself genuinely taken by the atmosphere and in-person product. But I also felt kind of silly attending press conferences afterward and asking players questions about a game that still did not feel totally “real.” From the practices I observed—practices of wildly varying rigor—I get the sense that some players take Unrivaled more seriously than others. It won’t shock any women’s basketball fans to know that Collier’s team, the Lunar Owls, practiced the hardest.
2026-01-10 03:02:12
The Supercopa de España is a bit of a shambolic mini-tournament in the middle of the Spanish domestic season. Since changing the format in 2020—prior to that date, Spain did the normal thing of pitting the winners of the league and the domestic cup against each other in a one-game preseason final, but now it is a four-team knockout between those two winners and the runners-up in their respective competitions—and moving the three matches to Saudi Arabia, the whole thing has become a glisteningly slimy exemplar of world soccer's insatiable greed (the same greed has threatened to move a La Liga match to the United States mid-season, though thankfully that has not happened ... yet). The tinpot nature of the Supercopa, however, does not rob it of all of its drama, and Thursday's Atlético Madrid vs. Real Madrid semifinal saw plenty of fireworks that had little to do with the match being played, thanks to the former's manager, Diego Simeone, and the latter's mercurial star, Vinícius Júnior.
2026-01-10 02:29:21
People are back out on the streets of Minneapolis again, they are barricading the roads and tending curbside memorials, and they are asking for someone to make sense of a reckless and unnecessary death at the hands of law enforcement.
On Wednesday, Renee Macklin Good was shot and killed by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer while driving her SUV on the city's south side. Good was stopped in the middle of the road as ICE agents approached from all sides. The shooter had his phone out, and agents seemed to be bellowing contradictory instructions while another brazenly attempted to pull her out of a moving vehicle. She slowly backed away, then attempted to drive off before several shots were fired. Good's SUV rolled down the street before colliding with a utility pole; the agent who pulled the trigger was driven away from the scene, and agents that remained reportedly prevented a bystander who identified himself as a physician from attempting to save Good's life. She died less than a mile from the spot where George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020.
2026-01-09 23:22:28
This week, researchers from the Leonardo da Vinci DNA Project announced they have made the kind of breakthrough you might expect from a project with that name: They have potentially identified Leonardo da Vinci's DNA. The announcement ran exclusively in Science on Jan. 6 under the (excellent) headline "The Real da Vinci Code," and the researchers have published a preprint, which has yet to be peer-reviewed, about the newly collected DNA. The news, which has since been written up in a slew of other science publications, is certainly thrilling for anyone who has been hoping to uncover Leonardo da Vinci's DNA, and still pretty exciting to people like me who did not know that this was something we were trying to do in the first place.
This new sample was swabbed (gently) from a drawing called Holy Child, a gauzy, sfumato rendering of pouting baby Jesus in red chalk. Many experts say the drawing is the work of Leonardo, as it has his characteristic left-handed hatching. Others are uncertain, suggesting one of his students could have created the work. According to the preprint, the swab collected a potpourri of DNA: fungal, viral, vegetal, and bacterial, in addition to human. Specifically, the drawing contained traces of the sweet orange tree, which was cultivated in the gardens of the Medici family, a key patron of the artist. This would seem to suggest that the Project is on the right track. But the human DNA could belong to any of the many people fortunate enough to handle or clean Holy Child over the years. The researchers ruled out the art dealer who acquired the drawing decades ago, but this, of course, does in no way prove the DNA is Leonardo's.
2026-01-09 22:38:55
Substandard goaltending is not in itself noteworthy, nor even particularly unique this week. On Tuesday, New Jersey's Jacob Markström allowed nine goals on 24 shots, quite possibly the single worst goaltending performance in the NHL's modern era. On Wednesday, St. Louis's Jordan Binnington allowed seven goals, and was intended to be pulled, but his backup wasn't ready, and was later seen looming. Both incidents were fine examples of the exotic dangers of the scariest job in sports. So if you happened to peek at the scoreboard Thursday night and saw the Ottawa Senators had allowed eight goals in a loss to Colorado, you may have wondered: Sure, that's a lot of goals, but are mere goals really enough to command my limited attention? Did the Sens make it weird in any way? Oh, buddy.
