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"Accept it. Accept it. It’s an uncontrollable. You cannot change it. Get over it. Get on with it." Emma Hayes's words may have aspired to equanimity, but her tone betrayed her. Coming off a 2-1 loss to Brazil in São Paolo—the first of two consecutive friendlies played on the Brazilians' turf—the U.S. Women's National Team coach kept coming back to her refrain: the raucous crowds, their opponent's physicality, the officials' (in)competence, and the late start time for Tuesday's match were things the U.S. couldn't control, so best not to dwell on them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cPuocsk9BI

The screwworms are here, as we predicted they would be. More than half a century after the parasitic pest was declared eradicated, the insects have escaped containment in South America and made it all the way to Texas, where they have not been seen since 1966. There are now five cases of the flesh-eating parasite in the United States, all confirmed in under a week. The first two were in calves in Zavala County, followed soon after by a calf in La Salle County; a goat in Gillespie County; and a dog that lives in Lea County, N.M., but recently traveled through Texas. These five cases are alarming but expected, as Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins tweeted. On this fact, Rollins is correct. But expected is different from inevitable. The screwworm's arrival was expected because over the past few years the insects have been wriggling toward our border with Mexico, somehow surging past the boundary of Panama's Darién Gap. This boundary was enforced by the Sterile Insect Technique, in which hordes of engineered and irradiated sterile males kept the flies at bay. Rollins blamed the screwworm's reappearance on "the open-border policies of the last administration," which is incorrect and obviously racist. There is no evidence that human migration has helped the screwworm's sprawl. If there is blame to assign, it should be directed at the Trump administration, which helped pave the screwworm's path up north. The DOGE cuts in the spring of 2025 terminated USAID funding for a program that monitored and contained the screwworm in Central America and USDA funding that supported screwworm outbreak investigations and responses in 22 countries. After Joe Biden closed southern ports of entry to live cattle from Mexico to box out the screwworm in 2024, Donald Trump reopened those ports in February 2025. (The ports were closed again later that May.) The New World screwworm is a maggot, specifically the larvae of a parasitic blowfly that feeds on warm-blooded animals. But while most maggots feed on dead flesh, the screwworm only feeds on fresh wounds. So while other flies are content with carcasses, dung, and things of that nature, screwworms often seek out broken skin on living animals. But they'll also, horribly, lay their eggs on mucous membranes, including eyes, lips, or even an anus or vagina. Females lay their eggs inside the open flesh, eggs that hatch into larvae that gnaw and burrow into their host's skin.

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, Ray answers a question about best practices in being a grandparent.

Nobody wants to think about officiating, much less talk about it. Joyce Carol Oates knows it. The NBA Finals are no occasion for rational nonpartisanship. The middle ground is out of reach. If I want to say something straightforwardly true about the officiating, like, "Referees are still sorting out how to protect Victor Wembanyama from a kind of mauling that only he faces," unless I surround the statement in 1,000 caveats so that the eventual sum of what I have said is, "Victor Wembanyama should be strapped to the electric chair," my observation is guaranteed to zoom right past the part of the brain of a Knicks fan that assesses the truth value of language. And that Knicks fan is likely to respond with something like, "Ey, you wanna talk about protection, dis freakin' Victor Wembanyama got away with assassinatin' our guy Jalen Brunson, ey, fugget about it." Which, hyperbole aside, is both true and irritatingly orthogonal to my own observation, and tempts us into a tangle of conflicting grievances. Just last night our own Giri Nathan shouted those very words, and then stormed off in a huff, slapping the hood of a taxi and exchanging angry exclamations and rude gestures with the driver. He's out there now, no doubt ranting at strangers on the subway. The assassination in question occurred in the first quarter of Game 3. Brunson screened Wembanyama near the top of the key and then stuck to him, at approximately navel-height, as the Knicks moved the ball to Landry Shamet on the wing. It's not even all that clear that Brunson was restricting Wembanyama's movement, but Wembanyama has been getting hugged and arm-barred and clobbered all playoffs, and the Frenchman responded to this particular crowding of his personal space by wedging a forearm under the back of Brunson's skull and then violently shoving him to the ground. The officiating crew, led by Marc Davis, failed to whistle what was at minimum an obvious common foul.

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. It's quite possible that the best moment of Brazil's 2026 World Cup happened a month before the tournament even started. The day was May 18, the occasion the announcement of World Cup roster. The tension was high, almost all of it weighing on whether or not Neymar, in what would be his first Brazil appearance in two years, would get called up. When manager Carlo Ancelotti did read his name, the country went wild.

As of publication, the New York Knicks maintain a 2-1 edge in the NBA Finals against the San Antonio Spurs. It's been an entertaining, nervous, and extremely high-level series, and this week on Nothing But Respect, Harry and I sought out two returning champions. Devon Walker, comedian and podcaster and generally very funny internet person, is a big Spurs fan; he expressed his loathing for the Oklahoma City Thunder, and discussed his optimism about his team's youngsters. Then, Will Menaker, co-host of the great Chapo Trap House, joined us to complain about Donald Trump and his cadre of evil scumbags fucking up the vibes, and made a case for Knicks fans to remain calm and level-headed. You can find Nothing But Respect in Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you use. Follow the show on Instagram, and contact the Broke Jumper Tip Line at (347) 380-6426. Thanks for listening!

If the AL Central is like an apartment building, then the Chicago White Sox spent the last few years as a shut-in neighbor with some smelly, unidentifiable substance leaking out from under their front door. It was best to stay as far away as possible. But after the first few months of the 2026 season, the windows have been cracked and the rooms aired out. If you come knock on the White Sox's door with an open mind, there's a good chance they'll welcome you in and give you an enjoyable evening in their company. And it won't smell nearly at all. The latest collision of "White Sox" and "happiness" came Tuesday night on the South Side, with the Atlanta Braves in town for the start of a three-game series. The Braves' garish, tasteless 45-21 record dwarfed the Sox's humble, earthy 34-31 mark, and Chicago was missing its thundering rookie slugger Munetaka Murakami to injury, so it wouldn't be fair to expect too much out of this meeting. But after Atlanta got out to an early 4-0 lead, the pitching tightened up and the Sox got the hits they needed to send it into extras. There was a two-run Miguel Vargas dong in the third, then a single/HBP/single combo in the fourth, and finally walk/single/single in the seventh. (This was a retro-themed local broadcast for the Sox, by the way, with old-fashioned graphics and Bob Costas of all people on the play-by-play call.) Atlanta got their run on their top of the 10th, and Raisel Iglesias, who entered this game with a 0.87 ERA, picked up the first two outs in the bottom half. But then Braden Montgomery, a right fielder making his MLB debut at a position where nine different starters have featured for Chicago this season, stepped up to the plate, hoping to add to the RBI hit he'd earned in the fourth. The 23-year-old looked at a 90-mph meatball down the middle, and with the count 0-1, Iglesias tried to sneak that same thing by him again. Big mistake. Montgomery flicked the pitch into the left field corner, and on a warm Midwestern night its flight extended beyond the fence for the game-winning home run. That hit only goes yard in two out of 30 ballparks, but this is the only place that matters.

Recently, while picking up a banh mi in my neighborhood, I found myself transfixed by a TV in the restaurant showing what I assumed was a nature documentary. At first the footage soothed: Gentle humpback whales sailing through hazy blue waters and killer whales gliding in packs under glacial ice. But the longer I waited for my banh mi, which was not very long at all, the more unsettling the video became. When a fleet of eight or so orcas moved in uncanny alignment under ice that looked a little too crystalline, I realized the video was AI, a realization that felt first bleak but then reassuring for my ability to detect such things. I was re-unsettled when the video then cut to footage that looked absolutely real. It was another humpback gliding through murky, sun-drizzled sea, its grizzled jaw scarred and encrusted with barnacles. When I suggested this footage might be real, I got into an argument with my friend, who insisted the entire video was AI. Surely it couldn't be, because this whale looked real to me. The nature of my job means that friends and strangers will often show me videos of animals that stir in them feelings of awe, wonder, surprise, disgust, fear, loathing, or confusion. For years, this was a delight, a banquet of beautiful creatures personally curated for me. My Instagram DMs teemed with blue dragon sea slugs feasting on blue bottle jellyfish and the unreal, telescopic eyes of a strawberry conch. I loved learning about the new animals my friends had chanced upon: the female Boulenger's backpack frog, who carries her eggs on her back until they hatch into froglets, or the Yucatán casque-headed tree frog, whose bony head is large and almost like that of a duck. (Frogs starred in a lot of these videos for reasons that are unknown but pleasing to me, and a testament to the amphibians' universal good vibes.) I even appreciated the honorary creatures, such as the pulsing plasmodium of this slime mold, or this ceramic effigy vessel of a land crab. In the past few years, something shifted. At first the slop was sloppy. The animals had extra tentacles or anime eyes. They glitched as they moved. Sometimes they found themselves in surreal circumstances, such as in a video claiming to depict a giant squid being "cleaned and rescued" off the coast of California. But gradually, almost beyond my notice, the fake animals got more real. Their fur bristled. They scampered more naturally. The video quality got fuzzier, mimicking nature's often imperfect lighting conditions. But I was still able to spot them, or at least I thought I was. I began opening the links my friends sent me with an ambient dread, afraid of having to break the news that they'd been duped by AI, or afraid that I'd be duped, too.

At approximately 11 p.m. on Dec. 13, 2025, I thought I’d lost it all. I found myself at the Williamsburg location of Barcade—a combination bar and vintage arcade—for my J-school’s end-of-semester party. No particular part of me wanted to spend the night in Williamsburg or at an arcade, let alone both at once. But I needed to make more friends at school. Recently, after a professor offered me some advice, she recommended I also consult my “J-school besties.” When I thought to myself, “Girl, that’s you,” I realized I had a problem. Thus, Barcade, along with pleasantries about the upcoming winter break, travel plans, and holiday traditions. When someone asked if I wanted to grab a drink, I offered a friendly “Yes!” and ordered a Sam Adams “Just The Haze” non-alcoholic IPA.  It tasted so good—so IPA-like—that I thought the bartender accidentally served me alcohol, less than a month away from my one-year sober anniversary. Bready fizz pooled at the back of my throat while I considered how upset to feel about 337 days of hard work gone in an instant—at a locale named Barcade, of all places. Does an accidental sip count as a relapse? I turned to the bartender, who saw the look of alarm in my eyes and immediately anticipated my concern. “It’s really good, right? Almost tastes too much like the real thing?”

On Dec. 5, 2025, FIFA President Gianni Infantino presented Donald Trump with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize, nominally for Trump's "tireless efforts to bring people together in a spirit of peace." I found myself less interested in the cynicism of placating Trump with the sort of bribe one would bestow upon a recalcitrant 10-year-old—nobody considers FIFA the imprimatur of global peace—and more interested in the physical award itself. The FIFA statue is a miniature of a hulking bronze sculpture, on display at the UN, entitled Thoughts and Desires. It offers a hackneyed and vacuous statement of connectivity, depicting five bronze hands reaching up to touch a globe. The viewer is supposed to see the statue and think, Wow, people are important on the planet, and be moved. OK. It was made by Azerbaijani artists Salhab Mammadov and Ali Ibadullayev, who occupy presumably cushy propagandizer roles in the repressive, brutal Azerbaijani state under dictator Ilham Aliyev. The bulk of Mammadov and Ibadullayev's work is tied to the glorification of their national project, a mission the FIFA statue is coherent with, if less overtly. This particular duo helping this particular international corruption syndicate–slash–soccer concern with honoring this particular villain tells one part of the story of what is commonly understood as sportswashing; the other part of the story is told by the fact that their sculpture is hideous. What is sportswashing? In general usage, it refers to actions undertaken by malign organizations (usually though not exclusively repressive governments) in an attempt to cleanse their international reputations—blighted by things like genocide, the kidnapping and imprisonment of journalists, or gangster-state rapacity—through the sponsorship of sports. It's like giving a dog their heartworm pill wrapped in peanut butter: The pill is, for example, a willingness to hear both sides of the debate about executing teenagers who criticize the Saudi government, and the peanut butter is Formula 1 racing. Though prominent examples of the practice can be found throughout international sporting history—we're 90 years out from the 1936 Hitler Olympics—the term only came into prominence in the last decade, first in reference to the Azerbaijan state using the 2015 European Games (among other international events) to launder its increasingly concerning reputation.