Defector

It's important to note that the current "Deadspin" is (long story short) not the same group of people. A couple of years ago the Deadspin writers quit en masse and have since founded: https://defector.com/ It's great! Costs a few bucks per month, which is awesome, because that lets them stay editorially independent and not rely on appeasing anybody but themselves.

Deadspin's motto was "Sports news without access, favor or discretion". Unlike traditional media that essentially acts as mouthpieces for the teams that they cover (think of any press conference and the kinds of questions being asked, and the types of response they're designed to elicit), they used their status as outsiders to look at sports with a critical lens, and hold people in power in sports to account. This didn't mean they hated sports though - you could tell from most of their reporting, especially by the OGs(Will Leitch, Drew Magary, Tim Burke etc), that they LOVED sports and wanted the people and teams involved to just be better. They also broke a lot of bonkers stories like the Manti Te'o scandal (highly recommend reading their report on it)[1] that no one in traditional media did a good job of interrograting or digging into. The site still exists, but if you read it now you won't see this kind of reporting. It all changed about two years when they were bought by private equity (G/O I wanna say) who attempted to exercise control over their editorial, resulting in a mass resignation. Many of the old writers started Defector (https://defector.com/), which writes in the same spirit. [1] https://deadspin.com/manti-teos-dead-girlfriend-the-most-heartbreaking…

Defector had a great piece on roughly this point: https://defector.com/how-will-the-golden-age-of-making-it-worse-end?gi…

This ad *really* reminds me of the absurdly tone deaf ads Meta ran during the Super Bowl (great breakdown by David Roth here https://defector.com/facebook-meta-asks-wouldnt-it-be-nice-to-die. To me, the message is clearly "the world we are creating is going to destroy you, you relic, you outmodded worthless luddite. You will be allowed to consume through our content square." but apparently someone with severe west coast tech brain thought these two ads were somehow conveying something positive?

If you enjoy Slow Horses, I highly recommend the book series it’s based on. I’m not sure if Mick Herron wrote the books with Gary Oldman in mind, but it’s the perfect Oldman character nonetheless. The show is quite a faithful adaptation of the books, even down to some lines. Excellent review of Oldman in the 3rd season: https://defector.com/gary-oldman-is-gross-and-loving-it?giftLink=86f73…

https://defector.com/big-boat-stuck-a-story One of my favorites

Reminiscent of what happened at Deadspin a few years ago[1]. The EIC was fired for some weird management BS and the entire staff resigned and eventually started Defector as a worker owned business which has been consistently profitable[2]. Hopefully some of the Escapist folks follow that route. [1] - https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/28/business/media/deadspin-staffers-st… [2] - https://defector.com/three-years-of-defector

A classic. It's Will Durant. Recently discussed on the ever-excellent Defector: https://defector.com/as-a-wise-man-once-said-aristotle-didnt-say-that

Defector wrote a good story about trying to visit the deli last year https://defector.com/a-cnbc-reporter-ruined-my-lunch-plans-a-visit-to-… edit: Apparently I missed the follow-up, in which he did get to try the cheesesteak https://defector.com/despite-stellar-cheesesteaks-hometown-delis-stock…

If people don't like being reminded of the infamous rant by Tigran L. Petrosian, I understand, but for those who don't know the context, I'll provide the background here: https://defector.com/let-me-explain-this-amazingly-petulant-chess-dram…

“Thirdly, early adopters mine or buy large proportions of the total supply at negligible costs while late adopters mine or buy negligible proportions at large costs. It follows that holders immediately have every incentive to get as many people to buy after them. Like stocks? Like stocks, but without the dividends or anything tangible in the real world. Congratulations, you got yourself a pyramid scheme.” — https://www.cynicusrex.com/file/cryptocultscience.html This podcast, after the first half, really goes into depth why all contemporary crypto“currencies” are inherently flawed: https://anchor.fm/when-the-music-stops/episodes/Nano--Digital-Cash-w-P… Another good article: https://defector.com/cryptocurrency-bad-and-weird/.

This article has the best summary I've seen. It has less to do with the academic usage of a slur and more the arrogance and forcing everyone to agree with your POV and telling them how they should feel. It wasn't simply an utterance but their unwillingness to listen to opposing views. As well as some allegations that the n-word had been used much more casually by the same offenders at other times. It makes the academic argument seem disingenuous. https://defector.com/mike-pesca-slate-suspended/

https://web.archive.org/web/20210630043947/https://www.businessinsider… Great commentary here: https://defector.com/great-jones-drama/ "The absolute most generous true description you can apply to Great Jones is that it conducts arbitrage on cheap pastel-colored cookware with flimsy enamel cladding, made by other companies with less robust brands. But the truest thing you can say is that Great Jones, like so many other companies, is a skimming operation: It launders somebody else’s actual manufacture through its own aggressive branding, and takes a cut of the proceeds. The company can have the best quarter of its existence despite having no full-time employees, despite having literally no capacity to do anything other than exist as a legal fiction, because it never actually did anything. Anything! It never did anything."

Much of the coverage of this story has credulously repeated the company's marketing press release without any sort of critical appraisal of the actual significance of the announcement (read: not much) or of the stated goal, which is misguided in the extreme. I found this (older) article about the "de-extinction" project [1] to be much more informative. The same journalist covered the new announcement last week [2] (submitted to hn here: [3]). [1]: https://defector.com/what-kind-of-future-does-de-extinction-promise [2]: https://defector.com/do-not-be-bamboozled-by-the-new-fluffy-mouse [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43302625

Defector did it better (and included the videos): https://defector.com/this-is-the-last-thing-you-see-before-you-die-if-…

While I understand that, it's not trivial to unambiguously classify when something has no property of "value". It's easy to contrive your fartcoin example, but if this were universally true you couldn't use the words "memecoin" and "rugpull" in the same context (because there's no rug to pull when something has no value) and yet that is all I see. Say recently https://www.web3isgoinggreat.com/?id=milei-memecoin-promotion https://www.latintimes.com/crypto-trader-shot-himself-live-x-after-los… https://defector.com/the-hawk-tuah-memecoin-rug-pull-is-the-apotheosis… https://beincrypto.com/kanye-west-barkmeta-meme-coin-controversy/ https://beincrypto.com/libra-meme-coin-linked-to-melania/ https://www.ccn.com/news/crypto/child-streamers-30k-crypto-rug-pull-st…

He won’t put anyone living on Mars. And even if he did, they wouldn’t last that long. https://defector.com/neither-elon-musk-nor-anybody-else-will-ever-colo… https://www.acityonmars.com/

Background: Road and Track magazine sent reporter Kate Wagner (better known for her McMansion Hell blog) to report on a Formula 1 race in Austin. They published her article last Friday, and then immediately pulled it off their site. This is a link to a copy that was archived in during the brief time it was online. An official explanation of why it was taken down is here: https://defector.com/road-track-eic-tries-to-explain-why-he-deleted-an…

I don't think that's correct. Their 2022 annual report shows them as profitable. https://defector.com/defector-annual-report-year-two Maybe took a major downturn in the past year, but I haven't seen any evidence of that

https://defector.com/anchor-brewing-was-san-francisco is another look at the situation.

More info: https://defector.com/defector-annual-report-year-two Interesting that they have a rev share with their development vendor, and rely on that vendor for all engineering and product.

Honestly, it was partly my faith in money that made me comfortable with Twitter as a public company. They (gradually and often reluctantly) learned that if they wanted to be a viable business, they had to provide a reasonably safe place for a lot of people. For purely pecuniary reasons, they also thought they needed to be a good partner to people building things related to Twitter. All that has gone by the wayside, of course. Part of the problem here is that Musk had so much money he could afford to burn tens of billions of dollars on a weird personal fixation. [1] A problem that the market has happily started to correct, [2] but perhaps not soon enough to save Twitter. [1] One possible explanation is here: https://defector.com/i-was-almost-elon-musks-twitter-voice [2] He even set a record! https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/1148634966/elon-musk-guinness-world-rec…

Several groups of people even throughout the story, really. Leitch left in 2008. Daulerio left a few years later, the Craggs, etc. Honestly, I think the Defector's version tells the history in a more complete way than this article since there were several eras: https://defector.com/how-we-got-here/ - a lot of prominent quotes from names in originally linked article that were out of the picture relatively early in terms of the Deadspin/Defector "changing sports journalism" story vs more of just a "controversial posts" story.

Back story: https://defector.com/what-the-hell-is-this-company-the-76ers-just-part… HN discussion of the backstory: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29682102

You can usually at least try to see any wiki information and about us info for a site or resource. Those are both available for Defector which show it is credible, former employees of Deadspin: https://defector.com/about-us/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defector_Media You could say it might be even more credible than other places since it is employee owned. A small trend of modern media sites like https://Clickhole.com which was bought from being The Onion subsidiary, both owned by the same new bad parent company as Deadspin. Except for Clickhole I believe Cards Against Humanity bought the site and then let it be employee owned. Even cooler!