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The following is excerpted from A Fraction of a Point: A Gymnastics Dynasty on the Line, by Nina Mandell. Published by Kent State University Press. Reproduced by permission. The book is available for purchase now.  With the Brecksville-Broadview Heights High School gymnastics team’s state win streak at five years old, Andrea Kinzer stood over her teammate Diana Moock, watching her as she sat on the ground calculating the scores from other teams across the meet. Diana, a numbers whiz with the nickname "the human calculator," was furiously computing the scores of the competition that the team had gathered through their intel sources. Brecksville had an advantage: The order of events was randomly decided and in their draw that year, they went after Magnificat. But there was bad news: After completing her quick math, Diana looked at the team. "We need to upgrade our skills," she said.

World Cup tickets are absurdly expensive and everyone is mad about it. Non-American fans seem to have been priced out of the tournament, judging by the lack of hotel reservations being made in host cities, and even FIFA Peace Prize recipient Donald Trump thinks things have gotten out of hand. "I wouldn’t pay it either, to be honest with you," Trump told the New York Post when alerted to the fact that tickets to the USMNT's opening game are selling for upwards of $1,000. FIFA is to blame for this, as the organization can set face-value ticket prices however it pleases. The top ticket price for this year's final is more than $10,000, whereas a similar ticket for the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar cost $1,600. According to FIFA president Gianni Infantino, these extortionist prices aren't actually the result of FIFA's own choices, but of the nefarious American custom of ticket reselling. Infantino spoke at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, and had this to say for himself:

Gaza is the compass. These words—emblazoned on large banners at the 2025 People's Conference For Palestine in Detroit, and frequently invoked by comrades in the Palestinian Youth Movement at speeches and rallies—contain a truth with which so much of the world has yet to reckon, though it will sweep them along regardless.  In other words, Gaza is the place—and the event—in reference to which we must orient our actions, our thoughts, our lives. It is the most important place in the world right now, because the genocide taking place in all of historic Palestine, with Gaza as its most brutal flashpoint, reveals the foundation of violence and domination on which the architecture of the present world order has been built, as well as the terrible struggle that will be necessary to tear it down.  It is understandable, then, that so many writers have turned their attention to Gaza since 2023. Indeed, this attention is exactly what is required of us. A failure to think about Gaza means a failure to think at all: Any thought which bears no trace of the absolute inhumanity of the present has already taken the side of the murderers. Thinking about Gaza implies a responsibility as well: to treat the subject with the requisite seriousness and attention so that one does not add to the significant trove of poor, cynical writing on the Palestinian people and their struggle; to understand one’s limitations while simultaneously attempting to reach outside them; to assimilate horror, yes, but to think beyond it towards liberation as well.

We need to be adults about this: Hockey is real. The NHL's playoffs are in point of fact going on right now. There is just no sense in hiding from it. While I wouldn't say we were hiding from the reality of our current Hockey Situation in recent weeks, it is true Drew and I have talked much more about baseball, basketball, and even football than we have about our fourth and coldest major sport. It was with remedying that in mind, and also because she is a delightful person to talk to, that we had Defector Hockey Headmistress Lauren Theisen on the podcast to talk hockey this week. After the usual prefatory buffoonery and accent work, we discussed Lauren's recent adventure in New York City real estate and remembered some shitty apartments. This bit was brief, but it is fair to say that it has it all: an uninsulated and worryingly cold bathroom, a secret room high above Lauren's kitchen, sneaky touristic visits to fancy furniture stores, the works. But, cards on the table, it does not contain any hockey.

As most home teams do in Game 2 after dropping a series opener, the San Antonio Spurs evened their series with a vengeance Wednesday night, rolling the Minnesota Timberwolves, 133-95. None of the visitors scored more than 12 points, each of the 14 Minnesota players who saw the floor posted a negative plus-minus, and Anthony Edwards evaluated his team's performance with quotes such as, "My momma used to tell me that a hard head make a soft ass. That's what happened tonight." The Spurs' stars finally showed up, though the author of the game's biggest moments was a rookie. Seven electric games into his NBA playoff career, it's time to talk about Dylan Harper. The box score will say Harper had a decent Game 2, with 11 points on 10 shots, seven boards, five assists, and two steals. The experience of watching him put together that stat line will have the observer thinking heretical thoughts about dynasties, superfluous All-NBA teammates, and the commissioner's office taking regulatory action against the Spurs for getting another ball-handler this capable. Harper is simply good at everything. He knows where to be, itself a somewhat complicated challenge given that he typically plays with at least one other point guard. Harper is less experienced than Stephon Castle and De'Aaron Fox, but he's a better shooter than either, leaving him to attack shifting defenses and move around behind the play while his teammates explode through people and shift around them, respectively. Harper's skillset is not yet as polished as those guys', but it is more well-rounded. You can see it in his confidence around the three-point arc, where he's been popping it with less hesitation with each passing month. You can see it as a help defender, where he finds ways to continually disrupt traffic in passing lanes without overexposing the Spurs' weak side (in fairness, overexposing the Spurs' weak side is basically impossible, given that Victor Wembanyama patrols it). Mostly, you can see it in transition: Give Harper a head of steam, and he'll finish on anyone. His skill as a finisher around the rack jumped off the screen in his NBA debut against the Dallas Mavericks back in October, and he's only improved as an open-court decision maker as the season's progressed.

The legacy of the World Cup is intertwined with human rights abuses and propagandizing on behalf of killers and despots. The 2026 tournament has already sullied itself with things like the handing of a totally real FIFA Peace Prize to Donald Trump, and FIFA president Gianni Infantino's botched attempt to engineer a Palestine-Israel handshake photo op. Even Fox, the tournament's broadcast partner in the United States, has taken it upon itself to further make watching this World Cup an act of moral compromise. In a particularly dastardly move, the network has decided to inflict Jameis Winston on its viewers. https://twitter.com/FOXSports/status/2052154391873151278 Winston is apparently the "Fox Sports FIFA World Cup correspondent" for the tournament this summer. What does that mean? I have no idea, but it does involve giving Winston a microphone and a platform to use that microphone, so it can't be good. Winston's bullshit-as-motivational-speeches gimmick gets a lot of play, and attempts to paper over other horrible shit, but I can't imagine it translating well to a sport that he surely doesn't watch regularly. Then again, Alexi Lalas, who shows up in the announcement video, is employed by Fox already, so it's not like knowledge is a prerequisite.

Welcome to Listening Habits, a column where I share the music and musical topics I’ve been fixated on recently. You might've heard recently that the New York Times came out with a list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters, a hyper-specific conceit that reeks of music writers trying to make their job as easy as possible. There also was a supplemental list of 11 songwriters that just missed the cut, meant to head off some of the ire about who got left off. That is what lists are for, ultimately: red meat for the engagement maw, a thing to react to and argue about which will hopefully drive traffic. Music outlets/sections are legally required to provide these at least once a year as a result. https://youtu.be/opkRF3UZSJw?si=FZ8cu57_9N6ljkxm

For the duration of my childhood, it felt like all of the romantic-comedy heroines were journalists. They worked at newspapers in Kissing Jessica Stein, Sleepless In Seattle, The Holiday, Never Been Kissed and When Harry Met Sally. If they didn't work at newspapers, they worked at glossy magazines like in How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days and 13 Going On 30. In Hitch, she's a gossip columnist, but that counts. Or maybe she could work in publishing like in Bridget Jones's Diary. But they were writers in big cities, and they cared deeply and seriously about their jobs. The real plot of all of these movies, though, was the love line. Who would the protagonist fall in love with? Would it be that man (or woman) whom she hated initially? Usually, it would be. The Devil Wears Prada was different. Those other movies were all about falling in love with a romantic partner. The Devil Wears Prada is a movie about falling in love with work. Andy (Anne Hathaway) is a recent graduate from Northwestern who wants to be a serious journalist, but the only job she can find is one as assistant to the editor-in-chief of Runway. Unlike the other heroines, Andy starts the movie with a boyfriend, Nate, who lived with her but was otherwise pretty unsupportive of her career. He was supposed to function as a kind of moral compass for the film in 2006. The Andy he knew at Northwestern didn't care about Paris Fashion Week, what designer someone wore, or whether her hair was right. The Andy he knew cared about journalism, about reporting, about trying to change the world.

Patriots franchise quarterback Drake Maye told reporters Wednesday that he isn't worried about head coach Mike Vrabel's relationship with former NFL insider Dianna Russini becoming a distraction for the team. He might want to rethink those comments. On Wednesday evening, TMZ reported that Vrabel and Russini booked a private boat trip in June 2021, while Vrabel was still head coach of the Tennessee Titans and while Russini would have been pregnant with her first child. According to TMZ's story, Russini and Vrabel were the only people on board during the two-to-three-hour trip, and were cautious about photos. This boat trip is just the latest piece of evidence indicating that Russini and Vrabel carried on a romantic relationship for many years. The publication of photos of them getting cozy at an adults-only resort in Sedona, Ariz. in 2026 led to more sources digging up photos of them smooching in a bar in 2020 and gambling at a casino in 2024. The irony of the situation is that each of these minor updates about the length and depth of their relationship are only made newsworthy by the fact that Russini and Vrabel lied about their relationship when the story first broke, and have since refused to talk about it at all. Vrabel attempted the frankly silly maneuver of announcing that he'll be going to therapy without saying exactly why, and Russini has been silent since resigning from her job at The Athletic. All that silence leaves behind questions that are being answered piecemeal by TMZ, Page Six, and the like.

Yes, it's early. There, we undercut your complaint before you even had a chance to assemble it. But it's not so early that we can't look at the American League standings and have a laugh at the sheer absurdity therein. Baseball is giving Rob Manfred a moment, in that the four good teams in baseball are the marquee-est of marquee teams: the Yankees, Braves, Dodgers, and Cubs. One on the East, one South, one Midwest, and one West. Couldn't have planned it better, Rob; you can use this to keep you warm when the lockout enters its eighth month. The American League having only one of those four teams if anything undersells how baffling the rest of that league has been. The Yankees are 25-12, with a run differential of +74—both admirable statistics if ultimately of minimal value given that we're still weeks from Memorial Day. The second-best team is Tampa Bay, at 24-12, and they also have the AL's second-best run differential, at an extremely modest +15. And those are all the teams in the American League with an actual winning record. Nearly a quarter of the season has gone by, now, which is enough time to at least make some assumptions. Let's start with this one: The American League stinks.