patrick
LightNews LightNews
banner
redford.bsky.social
patrick
@redford.bsky.social
11K followers 420 following 250 posts
i write for defector
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
redford.bsky.social
patrick @redford.bsky.social · Oct 6
I wrote about Bari Weiss as the grim future of mainstream media under billionaire control: defector.com/bari-weiss-s...
Bari Weiss Signs Huge Deal To Usher CBS News Into Its Vichy Era | Defector
On Monday, newly appointed Paramount CEO David Ellison announced that his company had acquired the Free Press, the smirking blood-and-soil blog founded and run by former New York Times hall monitor Ba...
defector.com
redford.bsky.social
The Sacramento Kings are an abomination: defector.com/the-kings-ar...
The Kings Are An Abomination | Defector
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — During the break between the first and second quarters, the Sacramento Kings interrupted one anti-competitive spectacle with another. Six babies lined up to race, only to hear the...
defector.com
November 10, 2025 at 8:41 PM
Reposted by patrick
remas.bsky.social
Let’s check in with people who threatened to leave Zohran Mamdani’s NYC: defector.com/lets-check-i...
Let's Check In With People Who Threatened To Leave Zohran Mamdani's NYC | Defector
When Zohran Mamdani upset Andrew Cuomo to win the New York City Democratic mayoral primary in June, it led to a lot of histrionics. The usual fear tactics against a young Muslim democratic socialist h...
defector.com
November 6, 2025 at 9:36 PM
Reposted by patrick
defector.com
Today on Twitch, join @girinathan.bsky.social @redford.bsky.social and @remas.bsky.social for another episode of Colossal Ponderings. Let's raise our status to the maximum.

Watch live at 2 p.m. ET: www.twitch.tv/defectormedia
November 5, 2025 at 6:00 PM
redford.bsky.social
Earlier this week, I watched Sam Altman join Steve Kerr for a conversation about "innovation, leadership, and San Francisco," here's what they said (plus some stray thoughts on SF in the third tech boom) defector.com/an-evening-w...
November 5, 2025 at 5:57 PM
Reposted by patrick
seankuhn.bsky.social
NBA media is not built to cover a gambling scandal, but Defector is: defector.com/products
When the FBI arrested Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups, the basketball-watching public turned to sports media to help make sense of the story. What explanations were on offer? Before disclosing its own BetMGM partnership, The Athletic called “all of sports” complicit in the scandal. Bill Simmons dismissed the episode as ”a couple bad apples,” growing pains typical of a growth industry. Zach Lowe had ESPN's betting guy on his podcast; together they concluded that these issues can be tinkered out of existence by limiting prop bets and changing how teams report injuries. Lowe's podcast, like Simmons's, began with a FanDuel ad. The takeover of sports media by gambling companies imposes hard boundaries on the domain of these conversations. Most importantly, these captured discussions always obscure the social and political choices that enable the gambling industry to entrench itself. Allowing people to gamble on their phones and allowing sports gambling companies to spend untold sums on lobbying and advertising are choices. These choices, not some law of nature, are why millions of people have started gambling in recent years. Likewise, other sports media companies have chosen to offer up their audiences as prey to gambling outfits. Defector has chosen something else: We never have and never will take money from gambling companies. Subscribers fund our operations, which allows us to remain independent, critical, and uncompromised. Consider making that choice.
October 28, 2025 at 7:15 PM
redford.bsky.social
The NBA media is not set up to cover a gambling scandal: defector.com/the-nba-medi...
The NBA Media Is Not Built To Cover A Gambling Scandal | Defector
Hours after the FBI arrested Terry Rozier and Chauncey Billups, and published a pair of indictments detailing the former’s alleged involvement in a cooked prop-bet unders scheme and the latter’s alleg...
defector.com
October 27, 2025 at 9:08 PM
Reposted by patrick
weirdalf.bsky.social
Theres a guy who makes videos where he forces Barstool employees to do the NYT mini and so far the two people who’ve done it took 5 and 8 minutes respectively. Insane
October 23, 2025 at 10:23 PM
redford.bsky.social
interesting NBA news today, someone should make a narrative podcast about breaking the rules
October 23, 2025 at 10:09 PM
Reposted by patrick
harrisfootball.com
I listened -- this was great, congrats, patrick! Subbed!
October 21, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Reposted by patrick
tcraggs22.bsky.social
Riding my hobbyhorse into the sunset, via @redford.bsky.social's rad new podcast: Sports conspiracy theories are how fans do structural analysis.
October 21, 2025 at 5:36 PM
redford.bsky.social
tap in
October 21, 2025 at 4:21 PM
redford.bsky.social
Only If You Get Caught S1E1 is about the most infamous basketball conspiracy theory: Did the NBA fix Game 6 of the 2002 Western Conference Finals? Our guest is the great @tcraggs22.bsky.social. Subscribe now, Or Else!!! podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/o...
Only If You Get Caught
History Podcast · Updated Weekly · Only If You Get Caught is about how we can better understand sports and culture by appreciating the ways humans cheat in ways big and small.  Hosted by Patrick Redfo...
podcasts.apple.com
October 21, 2025 at 4:14 PM
redford.bsky.social
this team is going to be so cool, either they get annihilated by a league that has passed them by (90 percent chance) or they succeed in a really stupid way: by the dark magic of Ethical Buckets (10 percent)
shamsbot.bsky.social Shams Charania Tweets @shamsbot.bsky.social · 26d
BREAKING: Nine-time NBA All-Star Russell Westbrook has agreed on a deal to sign with the Sacramento Kings, Jeff Schwartz of Excel Sports Management tells ESPN. The 2017 league MVP enters his 18th NBA season.
October 16, 2025 at 2:39 AM
Reposted by patrick
seankuhn.bsky.social
excellent blogs today at defector. good time to subscribe! defector.com/products
screenshot of a subscription appeal we sent today: Who calls the shots where you get your news? Is it one of the richest men in the world? Is it the dull son of another one of the richest men in the world? Is it shareholders, for whom it's expedient to roll over in the face of nuisance lawsuits by the gangster state? Is it one of the private equity firms grinding media companies to dust to eke out returns? Is it someone who will fire a journalist for accurately describing Charlie Kirk’s beliefs? Is it a severely confused Brit? Is it the “rogue employee” who reprogrammed their company’s chatbot to urgently inform users about the “white genocide happening in South Africa”? Is it yet another corrosive tech platform? Is it a gambling company? Is it a league you, in theory, exist to critically report on? Is it some donkeys using AI to bring Horny Sports Blogging At Scale to a storied publication? Not if you read Defector. The 27 of us who work here own the company together. We have no outside investors, so we have no mandate to maximize shareholder value. We don’t take money from gambling companies. We aren’t out to fatten up and get acquired. Defector is uncompromised, a rarity in modern media. When we report, criticize, and analyze, it’s coming from us, not someone upstairs. We answer only to our subscribers. Become one!
October 15, 2025 at 6:47 PM
redford.bsky.social
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...
Only If You Get Caught
History Podcast · Updated Weekly · Only If You Get Caught is about how we can better understand sports and culture by appreciating the ways humans cheat in ways big and small.  Hosted by Patrick Redfo...
podcasts.apple.com
October 14, 2025 at 7:47 PM
Reposted by patrick
defector.com
No good art comes from greed: defector.com/taylor-swift...
No Good Art Comes From Greed | Defector
The packages arrived square and thin and carefully wrapped on Saturday afternoon. There were three of them, but only one was mine. If I could have rejected my package, sent it back from whence it…
defector.com
October 6, 2025 at 4:19 PM
Reposted by patrick
maitreyiaa.bsky.social
excited to cover these desert Finals for Defector! a dispatch from the most crowded and eagerly awaited WNBA press conference I've ever been to... defector.com/the-hottest-...
The Hottest Ticket In Vegas? Cathy Engelbert's Press Conference | Defector
LAS VEGAS — An Aces game overloads the senses well before the game itself begins. The national anthem features indoor fireworks. Seats rumble from the bass of the speakers. There’s so much to look at,...
defector.com
October 6, 2025 at 7:24 PM
Reposted by patrick
sabs.bsky.social
simply a brilliant blog from @redford.bsky.social on billionaire bootlicker bari weiss taking over cbs news
defector.com/bari-weiss-s...
In the process, Weiss gets to continue two of her lifelong passion projects: trying to get people fired, and mainstreaming previously verboten ideological strands, like how the Nazi salute means something else or how genocidal starvation is actually fine. Even in the most generous reading—where her entire career and indeed life might reflect anything more than the cold calculus of a pure cynic who wants the approval and patronage of the world's richest and vainest reactionaries—Weiss's entire worldview is in the negative. She positions herself as a freewheeling intellectual and iconoclast, taking on the stilted orthodoxies of liberal power, but the irony is that her effectiveness is totally circumscribed by the limits of that orthodoxy. She does not have an original thought in her head, merely a list of supposed excesses and hypocrisies riddling the elite liberal world.
October 6, 2025 at 3:28 PM
redford.bsky.social
I wrote about Bari Weiss as the grim future of mainstream media under billionaire control: defector.com/bari-weiss-s...
Bari Weiss Signs Huge Deal To Usher CBS News Into Its Vichy Era | Defector
On Monday, newly appointed Paramount CEO David Ellison announced that his company had acquired the Free Press, the smirking blood-and-soil blog founded and run by former New York Times hall monitor Ba...
defector.com
October 6, 2025 at 3:58 PM
Reposted by patrick
defector.com
Israel breaks international law so that it can continue to starve Gaza: defector.com/israel-break...
Israel Breaks International Law So That It Can Continue To Starve Gaza | Defector
The Israeli navy intercepted 41 vessels carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza and detained over 450 people on Thursday. The first boats of the Global Sumud Flotilla set sail across the Mediterranean…
defector.com
October 3, 2025 at 3:08 PM
redford.bsky.social
this week's Nothing But Respect, with @maitreyiaa.bsky.social, also functions as an informal state of WNBA Australians. it is out on podcast platforms, there is time to listen four times before the fever-aces game tips off
September 30, 2025 at 10:45 PM
redford.bsky.social
shirt so good i'm becoming a #BallmerBoy bsky.app/profile/lawm...
lawmurraythenu.bsky.social Law Murray 📘 @lawmurraythenu.bsky.social · Sep 30
Tyronn Lue said that these shorts are a JVG production 👁️
September 30, 2025 at 9:31 PM
Reposted by patrick
noturtlesoup17.bsky.social
RIP
redford.bsky.social patrick @redford.bsky.social · May 29
Eric Adams just told the Bitcoin Conference, “You are the Betsy Ross of today”
September 29, 2025 at 3:12 AM
Reposted by patrick
brandyjensen.bsky.social
good @redford.bsky.social on a bad movie
'HIM' Is A Non-Starter | Defector
Roughly halfway through HIM, our protagonist—the promising quarterback Cameron Cade—is instructed by a sinister doctor to spend a few hours recovering in a hyperbaric chamber. The camera shows a press...
defector.com
September 25, 2025 at 2:04 PM
redford.bsky.social
One Battle After Another, banger, yes, though a scene in beautiful Sacramento, CA—America’s farm to fork capitol—supposedly taking place in 2008 or 2009 shows the current Sacramento Kings arena, which did not open until 2016; concerning.
September 25, 2025 at 1:51 PM