my beloved trans community: do you feel like you transitioned late? (whatever that means to you!) if so, I'd love to hear from you for an essay I'm working on 🙏 🐛 forms.gle/AMd8zWnWvEro...

canonization for the guy who invented nasal rinse

People on real estate shows love to comment on the size of showers by making oblique references to orgies

you wanna read 10k+ words on each contestant of survivor 50???

february so bad it's getting spiritual

A rare day of pride for my nation of wasia

guy who built an app to rate the hotness of teenage girls denies role in destroying self esteem of teenage girls www.cnbc.com/2026/02/18/m...

When I was in fifth grade we moved from Hawaii to Kansas and I experienced winter for the first time, and because I only knew about winter conceptually and from books, I genuinely thought it ended after new years. It was a tough first winter

As a Daughter of a White Man Who Is Really Into Lunar New Year I want you to know I'm not judging

gong hay fat choy!!!!!!! defector.com/white-people...

This was so lovely 🥹

What an awful week

"Journalism is not supposed to struggle at the task of competing with primetime entertainment; its value is inherent, whether or not families and friends prefer watching Netflix at 7:00 p.m. over reading the newspaper." defector.com/the-washingt...

also being edited is GOOD having colleagues is GOOD being part of a context and community makes the work BETTER we can't all just be typing in little boxes alone in the dark forever

bosses keep telling journalists to "do more with less" and it has never, ever worked

wow fuck everything

It's been really lovely reading all the tributes to Dan. Many people have asked if they can contribute to support his wife and son. You can do so here: everloved.com/life-of/dan-...

I've been numb since hearing the news, and I still don't really have words, but I woke up with Dan's name and face at the front of my mind. Everyone's tributes have been beautiful. Hold your people close. defector.com/dan-mcquade-...

Dan McQuade, 1983–2026: defector.com/dan-mcquade-...

Really proud of the work we did on this podcast that has been so many years in the making!!!!

confirming from the trenches of book leave that every published book is a fucking miracle and you should spend your money on good ones!

(PSA it’s not the year of the horse until lunar new year in mid Feb)

finally watched les miserables movie version for the first time yall were so mean to anne hathaway for no reason!!! 2026 is the year of hathassaince

Next up: Alexa, 17, has a moving out fund on their Transanta wishlist and we need just $145 to fund it completely www.instagram.com/p/DSODr0fDhL...

was just thinking about the era of twitter when we would tweet out-of-context quotes from our friends and sometimes we would post something a little too specific and there'd be this scramble to delete it before their boss saw it

twice in the last week i have cured a vague midday malaise with a steaming cup of hot water. miracle cure!

The duality of Defector

The latest episode of OIYGC is about The BACHELOR and whether it's possible to cheat on it! defector.com/is-it-even-p...

I wrote about the dirty, demeaning, absolutely booming business of turning something like a shitty bigoted college essay into a shitty public career as a bigot, and also estimated how old Marine Todd would be today. defector.com/the-conserva...

imagine being 14 and someone tells you that in 20 years, "going to work" would be sitting in a chatroom all day

The last episode of the first season of Try Hard is out today. It's a break in format because my guest didn't actually accomplish his goal, at all. We ended up having a really nice meta conversation about failure and how uncomfortable it is to rely on your people: defector.com/ronald-young...

It was great!! I ran so much faster than I meant to and now I feel destroyed 💀

wrote about this shitbag again defector.com/vaccines-do-...

Tomorrow I'm running my first half marathon in 6 years!! I'm really excited about it!! I wrote this essay about finding my way back to running after I thought my long distance days were over defector.com/falling-back...

die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a jilted lover in an ephron film

"What’s left when the rich people lose interest is the work," an important statement. An industry boom will show you who people really are. (Like Ira Glass, who starts this piece insisting that all podcasts should be listened to at 2x to maximize podcast listening.)

I expected this podcast festival to feel like a funeral, but it was surprisingly optimistic. Once you hit rock bottom, you can only really go up. defector.com/resonate-pod...

An in-depth look at the video team that helped so many people get into the Zohran Mamdani campaign: defector.com/selling-zohran

We lost a diva

i see you're doing something online that you have effortlessly done 100,000 times. would you like to use this ai tool? would you like to use this ai tool? would you like to use this ai tool? would you like to use this ai tool? would you like to use this ai tool? would you like to use this ai tool? w

not to brag but i went through a whole 24 pack of pimple stickers this weekend

i've been spiraling about "what is the point of learning" lately so i wrote a blog about it defector.com/learning-is-...

five years ago i switched to fountain pens because they were "more sustainable" but now instead of losing a $.50 pen every two months now i just lose a $10 pen every two months

EXCITING NEWS: Only If You Get Caught, a new podcast hosted by me and produced by @alexlaughs.bsky.social drops one week from today. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...

a person at Treasury gave Defector a rundown of how this process—which appears to be against the law—was expedited in order to avoid public scrutiny defector.com/treasury-dep...

when they tell you publishing is slow they mean S L O W i've been working on this for five years and we sold it six months ago but now i get to announce to the world! i'm writing a book! never say the word "talent" around me if you don't want a whole ass dissertation!!!!!

Is it too late to get raptured

I went on @morningbrew.extwitter.link's Per My Last Email podcast to talk about something I know a lot about: being a tryhard at work! www.youtube.com/watch?v=FvN0...

I'm really proud to work at a media company that isn't made up of cowards, that can say All of This Is Really Fucking Bad over and over again because it is. defector.com/charlie-kirk...

this is fucking crazy