NowLoop

I went to the Great American State Fair figuring it would make me feel lousy about my country. I don't remember being so right about anything.  I'd read all about how entertainers wouldn't take the stage, how states wouldn't staff the booths, and how nobody was showing up because the president had hijacked America's 250th birthday celebration and messed everything up. But with only a few days before this circus leaves town—the fair closes tomorrow—I wanted to see for myself if The Mess on the Mall could live down to its billing. And, sure, I wondered if Trump's Stonehengeian rendering of his proposed Arc de Failure looked as ridiculous in the flesh as online. (Yup and yup.) So I went. Turns out I was prepared for most of the awfulness. But not all the Jesus. So much Jesus. First, a summary of its pros and cons. 

There was always an irony to Happy's name. The elephant's misfortune stamped her a celebrity. In their home in the wild, female Asian elephants roam for hundreds of miles and form lifelong attachments to a group of around seven relatives. In her home in the Bronx Zoo, Happy lived alone in a small exhibit. She had been separated for decades from the zoo's other two Asian elephants, Maxine and Patty, for her own protection. So Happy became famous for her loneliness, deprived of companionship, of family, of physical touch. But Happy was smart, too. She stored treats in her ear. She was the first elephant to pass the mirror self-recognition test, proving her self-awareness when she saw her reflection and poked with her trunk at a white X painted on her forehead. In 2018, the Nonhuman Rights Project, an animal rights nonprofit, sued the Bronx Zoo to move Happy to a sanctuary, arguing that the elephant, in part because of her intelligence, should legally be considered a person. The suit was unsuccessful, and so Happy stayed put in her enclosure until her health deteriorated earlier this year. She was euthanized on May 26 at the age of 55. Patty, now the last elephant at the Bronx Zoo, lived much of her life in Happy's shadow. While clever Happy passed the mirror test, slow Patty did not. Patty has never been the subject of a lawsuit arguing for her personhood. Patty posed a different kind of problem for the zoo. In the summer of 2002, Patty and Maxine fatally attacked Happy's companion of 25 years, Grumpy, forcing the zoo to separate the elephants and making it harder for the public to root for Patty. When Happy died in May, the Wildlife Conservation Society, or WCS, which runs the Bronx Zoo, issued a press release referring to her as "Happy, a Much-Loved Asian Elephant." On July 7, the WCS issued another press release about "Patty, an Asian Elephant." Patty, it seems, is not so loved. Now Patty, 57, has once again become a problem for the Bronx Zoo. Captive and wild elephants have been known to live into their 70s, and Patty has no known physical health issues. With Happy's death, Patty has become the loneliest elephant. As such, the WCS is evaluating what should happen to her next—if she will be sent to a sanctuary to join other elephants in a better simulacrum of wilderness, or if she will live out her years at the only home she has known for half a century, alone.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — If you regret that you never got a chance to see the 1899 Cleveland Spiders, the losingest team in MLB history, can I interest you in a trip to Staten Island? No wait, come back. Just a few steps away from the ferry terminal, a morbidly curious fan can catch the independent Atlantic League's Staten Island FerryHawks, who have suffered through such a hapless year that they're legitimately challenging the Spiders' historic futility. With just over two months left in the season, the FerryHawks are saddled with an 11-57 record. Their pitchers carry a team ERA of 10.03. Their run differential is -389, which means they're losing their average game by 5.7 runs. Their best hitter, Joshua Palacios, is now on his way to the Pirates' Triple-A franchise. Yes, New York, it gets more miserable than the Mets. Staten Island's ballpark didn't always host indy ball. Pre-COVID, this was the home of the Single-A Staten Island Yankees, who came to the borough in a deal that also brought a Mets minor-league squad to Brooklyn's Coney Island. The Yankees lasted through the 2019 season, after which they were cut loose as part of MLB's overall downsizing of the minors. (It didn't help that the big-league Yankees were embarrassed by the club's headline-grabbing promotion in which they renamed themselves the Staten Island Pizza Rats.) The FerryHawks played their first Atlantic League campaign in 2022, and even though they've been a sub-.500 team in every season, their current mark is a steep fall from their typical mediocrity. I got to see the 57th loss live and up close as the FerryHawks fell to the High Point Rockers—as in rocking chairs, since they come from a North Carolina city famous for furniture. It was unlike any game I'd ever been to before, because my $12 ticket was in practice a general admission pass to the entire hollow park. The FerryHawks' home has an advertised capacity of 7,171, but I would be surprised if there were more than 100 people in the seats on Wednesday night (plus one seagull who chose to bring his fish dinner into the outfield). There was only one concession stand open on the concourse, though they did sell surprisingly excellent hot dogs for just $2, owing to the fact that it was Weenie Wednesday. We were able to walk right down into first-row seats directly next to the home dugout, close enough to see the umpires spit and hear snippets of conversations about the players' girlfriends in the foul-territory bullpen. One of the coaches ribbed me about keeping my head up when I was looking at my phone between innings.

The Carolina Hurricanes are worthy NHL champs, plowing through the playoffs with a 16-3 record. It's a victory of commitment to an approach, as head coach Rod Brind'Amour's system finally paid ultimate dividends after seven years of postseason exits. It's a victory for bloggers everywhere, thanks to the employment of GM Eric Tulsky and analyst Tyler Dellow(!). But most important, it's a victory for family. The Dundon family, specifically. No other families. Notoriously cheap owner Tom Dundon is listed first on the Stanley Cup engraving every champion gets. It's his team, he can do what he wants, and at least the NHL is the last holdout in not handing its championship trophy to the owner first. Executives have had their names on the Cup since the Bruins did it in 1929. So it's fine that Tom Dundon is on there now. But whoever's job it was to do the engraving was certainly not done at one Dundon:

OK, now shit is about to get even realer. The FIFA World Cup sponsored by FIFA and presented by FIFA is now down to eight teams. If your favorite team isn’t among the last countries standing, that’s tough shit. You must pick a NEW favorite country, and you must do it right this instant or else suffer the consequences. [I draw my sword] But how can anyone pick just one team from France, Morocco, Belgium, Spain, Norway, England, Argentina, and Switzerland? Fear not, amigo, because this week’s episode of The Distraction is here to help you do just that.

The Chicago Bears are one of the most storied franchises in the NFL. One of just two charter members of the league still playing today (the other being the Cardinals, a somewhat less-storied franchise), the Bears have had a lengthy and stalwart kinship with the City of Big Shoulders. That could change. Bears ownership announced on June 5 that they are focusing their attention on building a new stadium that not only isn’t in Chicago, but it isn’t in Illinois at all. “[T]he Chicago Bears Board of Directors met and voted to advance our stadium development project in Hammond, Indiana, with the exact site to be selected,” Chicago Bears Chairman George H. McCaskey and President and CEO Kevin Warren said in a statement. “We believe a world-class stadium project in Hammond will transform the region, connecting Northwest Indiana to the South Side of Chicago through the Loop and across neighborhoods and suburbs stretching north of the city. It will bring Chicagoland together and deliver new opportunities to its residents and businesses."

Welcome back to Minor Dilemmas, where a member of Defector's Parents Council will answer your questions on surviving family life. Have a question? Email us at minordilemmas@defector.com. This week, Billy dives into the tricky question of screen time.

Spite is a powerful emotion too often cast in an ugly light. To feel slighted or doubted is a natural urge, as is our desire to press our doubters' eyes up against a window to watch as we prove them wrong. We are taught to repress and do away with such unbecoming resentments. But how else can we stunt on the haters? If there's an underdog story you love, there's a good chance that it required a healthy grudge. By conservative estimates, I would say that half of my greatest accomplishments have come to fruition because I was motivated out of spite. It got me into a prestigious university, it dragged me toward my diploma, and it's part of why I have this internship. I say without an ounce of shame that I am spiteful to my core. And I can spot one of my own from a mile away.  In the days after he was left off the All-Star Game roster, Zack Wheeler stayed quiet. He let himself be cast as the doubted underdog and had his agent do the talking. Talk B.B. Abbott did, announcing to The Athletic that he was breaking his silence on All-Star snubs to call the decision to leave his client off the roster "tone deaf." I don't know what sheet music Abbott is reading, but I would hardly call it anything more than a bit pitchy. (The Justin Verlander legacy nomination, however, is the Fergie national anthem.) Regardless, Abbott talked at length about Wheeler's determination and focus in coming back from thoracic outlet decompression surgery. Abbott painted a perfect portrait of a hardworking yet constantly overlooked ace. But I saw the glimmer of spite in the pitcher's eyes. When Wheeler took the mound on Tuesday against the Cincinnati Reds, I knew I was about to witness a masterclass. 

Skylar Diggins, to her credit, isn't one to trade in the classic cryptic fare of her fellow disgruntled athletes. What she writes on social media requires no close reading or careful analysis. There's no Crazy how people switch up on you or TIME WILL TELL with an enigmatic emoji. The Instagram story she posted on Monday was perfectly straightforward: "Now I'm coming off the bench?????? 👍🏽 Cool." https://bsky.app/profile/maggiehendricks.bsky.social/post/3mpyrcswc6c2f Two questions sprang to mind when Diggins signed a two-year, $1.8 million deal with the Chicago Sky this past offseason. How would she coexist with veteran point guard Courtney Vandersloot, who was recovering from an ACL injury but was expected to rejoin the team midseason? (Later, when point guard Natasha Cloud signed with the Sky in free agency, that question expanded.) Also, why was Skylar Diggins, who always speaks up when she feels she's not being treated right, choosing a team famous for not treating players right?

As an online basketball fan, you are encouraged by the discourse to consider the Jaylen Brown trade as a matter of asset valuation. One day the Celtics seemed to consider Brown, the asset, as approximately valuable enough to swap for Giannis Antetokounmpo, plus or minus some draft capital. When they didn't complete the trade, it was possible to believe, just for a few minutes, that Celtics president Brad Stevens maybe even considered Brown too valuable for Milwaukee's proposed terms. Then a couple days later the Celtics traded Brown anyway, to the Sixers, for a player a hell of a lot less impressive than Antetokounmpo, and now it seemed like the Celtics viewed Brown, the asset, as worse than expendable: distressed, somehow, and possibly toxic. Naturally there would come an insider tell-all, full of juicy recriminations, to describe how over the course of just a few days Boston went from loving Brown to determined to simply be rid of him, OBO-style. The whiplash of the trade has hopefully healed enough now to refocus on what the Celtics are doing, not on the market but as a basketball operation. When they won their title in 2024 and seemed poised for a long reign atop the East, it was with Brown and Jayson Tatum as the high-usage core, with a grimly optimized offense, and with a deep bench of complementary role players. They fell short in successive postseasons and were passed in the conference hierarchy by a Knicks team vastly better than expected, to say nothing of a couple of irritatingly young and physically superior Western Conference potential dynasties. Staying the course would've seemed reasonable, but so did a push for Antetokounmpo, a game-breaking specimen still in his athletic prime, whose interior domination could diversify Joe Mazzulla's system, which otherwise is more vulnerable than most to swings in shooting performance. Now the Celtics have Tatum and Paul George, a 36-year-old swingman whose best days are well behind him, who never scores inside the paint, who has been healthy and available for 60 games just once in his last seven seasons, and who at this stage of his career is suited to not much more than a role player's usage within a balanced offense. It's difficult to work out how the Celtics view this as a meaningful improvement of their title odds, which raises the question: Do the Celtics still view themselves as a title contender?