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It's almost time for the World Cup. Before the tournament, we'll be previewing each of the top 15 teams by FIFA rankings that made the tournament. Why the top 15? Because that's how many we needed to do in order for the USMNT to make the cut. You can read all of our previews here. From a distance, it might be tempting to fit Morocco's recent rocket-ship rise up the global soccer hierarchy into the familiar story of the golden generation. To be fair, when a smaller and/or relatively unheralded country experiences this kind of ascent, it often is indeed thanks to the efforts of an especially fecund generation whose players reach maturity around the same time and take the country places it has never been before. But though Morocco's leap has been quick and massive—after missing the first five World Cups of this millennium, the Atlas Lions qualified in 2018 for the first time in 20 years, then made it to the semifinals four years later, and now enter this one with legitimate hopes of matching and maybe even surpassing that feat—the story here does not in fact mirror that of, say, Belgium. There's no single, solid core of similarly aged players responsible for this rise. And that might be the most important message they could send this summer: that Morocco is not only here, but here for good.

Don’t hide from our Monday crossword! This week's puzzle was constructed by Aidan Deshong, and edited by Hoang-Kim Vu. Aidan Deshong is a college student originally from Los Angeles. His greatest athletic achievement was winning his high school’s lettuce speed-eating contest Defector crosswords, launched in partnership with our friends at AVCX, run every Monday. If you’re interested in submitting a puzzle to us, you can read our guidelines HERE. The AVCX, an independent puzzles and games outlet, invites you to subscribe, or sample the goods with a two-month free trial: "With an AVCX subscription, you get access to weekly themed and themeless crosswords, minis, cryptics, and trivia, by email or in your favorite app. We have no corporate overlord, and we publish top-flight stuff only. We also pay our people fairly, always. Check us out."

I went by the White House a few times in the last couple weeks to check out the UFC cage and other projects in the neighborhood related to Donald Trump's debacle of a sestercentennial celebration, called Freedom 250, and his “Safe and Beautiful Initiative,” a relentless plan that will alter and shittify D.C. physically and otherwise permanently and for no reason more obvious than “Because he can.” Yeah, Trump’s beautifying the Nation's Capital the way Sherman beautified Atlanta. I hadn’t been to the city’s sightseeing epicenter in months before the latest binge of field trips, which were inspired by photos circulating of garish staging for the June 14 MMA event/Trump birthday party towering over the White House grounds. It's so much worse in person. Trump and UFC are claiming 3,000 invitees will pay as much as $1.5 million to be on the South Lawn on Trump’s birthday to see the fights in person. The latest buzz, however, is that non-political celebs would rather rearrange their sock drawers than attend Trump's shindig. The promoter claims another 85,000 fans will show up to the Ellipse, a formerly beautiful green space between the White House and the National Mall, to watch on big screen televisions. (There’s no way in hell that many folks will go to a UFC watch party.)

Although Plato's Symposium is best remembered as a Socratic dialogue, it was also, at its core, a story about a dinner party. In Athens, symposia consisted of a lavish banquet followed by a lot of drinking, during which time the guests would deliver speeches. Like many dinner parties, the Symposium is famously crashed by a drunken guy (Alcibiades) who derails the conversation but is, at least, quite entertaining. Although Plato's symposiasts are rather queer, at least in the Grecian way, none of them are trans. Luckily, poet and Littlepuss Press editor Cat Fitzpatrick offers a very trans symposium in her new book, The Dinner Party, whose title poem concerns a riotous debate about love amongst a gaggle of transsexuals supping on Vichyssoise and vegan cassoulet. After the soup comes out, Camille declares: "I want a partner that I know and like,/With whom I share the deepest truth of me..."/"Oh look,” Adonis crows, 'we do agree!/The only difference is you’re such a dyke." Before long, the night devolves into debauchery, leaving the host to tidy up, take her beloved dog out to pee, and pass out in the wee hours of the morning. Although a rhyming transsexual remake of a Socratic dialogue might seem a surprising combination, The Dinner Party is right at home in Fitzpatrick's body of work. She has a gift for telling contemporary stories in archaic forms. She has described her last novel, The Call-Out—a comedy of manners told in rhyming verse—as Eugene Onegin fan fiction. The delight that courses through her verse is palpable on the page. Titular poem "The Dinner Party," which is written in iambic pentameter, has rhymes that simply make you smile: "cuck" and "fuck," or "soup" and "poop." And yet the dinner guests' debate reaches moments of real ecstasy and grief in their quest to articulate what love means to them. All the book's poems orbit around love in its various forms, including "Baby Book," a heart-wrenching series on trying to make a baby as a queer and trans couple, and "Uxorious Sonnets," love poems about loving your wife so much that even smelling her shit makes you want to weep.

Recently fired 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley sat down with The New York Times over the weekend for a lengthy interview about the end of his tenure at CBS News, which Bari Weiss has been speedily destroying with her incompetence. Pelley had a few things to say that confirmed Weiss, already one of the worst operators in the history of network TV, has no idea what she's doing. After he was fired with cause for daring to speak up to newly installed executive producer Nick Bilton in a staff meeting, Pelley released a statement in which he claimed that he had recently been instructed to "inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story." During his interview with the Times, Pelley revealed that he was referring to Weiss's attempts to meddle with his report on the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by ICE agents in Minneapolis. From the interview: It’s Sunday; we’re going on the air that night. And in the case of stories that are, as we say, crashing, our deadline on Sunday is noon. So, we work on all of these things. We get the piece approved by everyone. And about four hours after our deadline, Bari Weiss sends an email to my boss, Tanya Simon. Two of the things in the email include, can we make the protesters look more violent? Now, I’m paraphrasing. I don’t have the quote, but that’s what was communicated to me. And the other thing, Renee Good’s car. You need to describe her as driving toward the officer.

The skies have never been more blue over the city of New York, the sun never more warm, and the Knicks merch more profound and ubiquitous. The other day my daughter had her first basketball lesson on a court near Battery Park City and I felt a strange sensation in my heart when I noticed the coach was wearing a Tyson Chandler jersey. It was not the last jersey I would see at the park, children young enough to never know the Mike Woodson years or have to convince themselves Emmanuel Mudiay was the answer, gleefully tearing around in jerseys with "Brunson" and "Towns" on the back. I saw a dog in the passenger seat of a luxury car wearing a Knicks shirt. Orange and blue flags are flying from every restaurant, look up and you'll find them swaying from windows and fire escapes. Line-waiting culture finding praxis with bandwagon fandom as people idle in formation, wrapping around the block just to get into the most mid sports bar hours before tip-off. Bodegas and stationary stores are stocking Knicks hats, for when you need that Juul fix and a last minute game-time accessory. With the Knicks up 2-0 over San Antonio in the NBA Finals and the series shifting to New York, the collective spirit of the city has never been higher than right now. Which made it the perfect time for President Trump to tip the situation on its head and send the vibes into a tailspin. The president's plans to attend Game 3 of the finals at Madison Square Garden are already making lives shittier for people before tip-off. On Saturday, the Knicks announced that fans should be prepared for more "TSA-style screening procedures" at the Garden, and that no bags would be allowed. Worse, anyone planning to come to the game should plan to be there two hours ahead of start time. https://twitter.com/nyknicks/status/2063392493228511581?s=20

On Saturday, the Minnesota Lynx continued their early season dominance by beating the Seattle Storm for a seventh straight win. Natasha Howard has been excellent and provided 27 points in the game, but a big part of why this team looks like a monster despite their ostensible superstar being out is the excellent play and cool demeanor of Olivia Miles, who put in 19 points, 6 assists, and 6 rebounds against the Storm. This came just three nights after setting a WNBA rookie record of eight three-pointers in a win over the Golden State Valkyries. Prior to that game, her three-point percentage was the weakest part of her game, but that's the thing about Miles, who is already starting to gain the "Magic" moniker for the way she sees the court. She's making leaps every game—she keeps getting better and playing smarter. She's got a big afro, slightly smaller now than it was before, and those Horace Grant-wraparound goggles. It's a look that should read as dorky, and yet she is the coolest looking person on the court and I am ready to pledge complete fealty to her already. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54wNMOupgJA No amount of stat-listing really captures how much fun it is to watch her on the court. In my colleague Maitreyi Anantharaman's blog about her, she described Mies as the ultimate NCAA tournament player: "Campy, goofy, stylish, a little chaotic." Someone that attacks the rim in unique ways, capable of insane no-look passes, and a maker of decision that seem like they won't work but consistently do. These are the same reasons that made her prospects in the pro league a lot more tenuous and uncertain, despite being thought of as a top-three draft pick. Through a combination of landing on the right team and being given the keys to run the offense for the Lynx, she's found a scenario for translating her college game to the WNBA. She has been the best rookie to watch so far and a big part of why the Lynx look like a juggernaut even while Napheesa Collier is on the bench still recovering from ankle surgery.

Well, the National Hockey League has hopelessly screwed itself now. It has unwittingly but in a very real sense created a Stanley Cup Final so wonderfully bizarre and delightfully absurd that the first game that ends up normal could absolutely result in its Toronto offices burned to the ground and as soon as the Knicks parade ends, burning their New York offices to the ground as well. The NHL would totally deserve that result because you cannot keep ratcheting up the improbability game after game and then, once the suckers are hooked, give the people "normal" hockey. People react poorly to bait-and-switch at tavern-watching level. Put more simply, you cannot give people this or this or most amazingly, this and then just dump a regular old game on them once you've grabbed them. Bait-and-switch will never have had gained such a bad reputation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcsakQhf93U

Sometime around the end of the second quarter was the first time I thought that the San Antonio Spurs could not win Game 2 of the NBA Finals. The Knicks had ended the half up four after being down as much as 12 to the Spurs. Stephon Castle had been taken off the court in the middle of the second quarter after three dumb fouls. The threes had stopped falling and Victor Wembanyama, who tends to dictate the direction any Spurs game goes in. He had been completely timid on offense, barely even touching the ball. And with all that, I commend the Spurs for the way they fought in the second half—at one point they were also down as much as 14 to the Knicks and they clawed their way back to leading by two points. And then with the game tied and less than 30 seconds left, they just absolutely barfed it. https://youtu.be/yqoCezBgPdk?si=rAinXe81TKLOzNxu It's too simplistic to say this series comes down to a team of grownups that have been with each other for a long time versus a bunch of kids who have unreal talent but maybe not enough cohesion or team IQ. But it is evident over two games that the Spurs have not found an answer to the pressure the Knicks put on you for four straight quarters. Wembanyama has shown spurts of brilliance but looks worn out on the court, almost to the point of parody. Like he should be on the front of a box of Sleepytime Tea.

In the seconds after Seth Jarvis scored the winning overtime goal for the Carolina Hurricanes, the Sportsnet broadcast cut to six exuberant men in Jarvis jerseys falling into each other's arms, screaming with joy, and about to cry with happiness. Their smiles were so big. Their enthusiasm was unmatched. Their love for one another is almost as great as their love for No. 24, whose jersey they all wear. These are not normal fans. These are Seth Jarvis's friends. What are their names? I wish I could tell you. I watched hundreds of videos that the boys have posted on their social media (@goodolcanadianboys), but when they said their names—which was very, very rarely—I immediately forgot which one was which. They are not individuals anyway. They are The Jarvy Boys. They are his friends, and they love him so much.