The parking lot was packed. That’s the first Strange Thing. A little background. Just about every mall is struggling now, but the Neshaminy Mall in Bensalem, Pennsylvania is more or less comatose. As Defector’s Dan McQuade, a lifelong Pennsylvanian and mall fan, wrote in his fond remembrance of the shopping center, the once bustling complex […]
As usual, 2025 was a year of deep congressional dysfunction in the US. But state legislatures were passing laws that govern everything from AI to social media to the right to repair. Many of these laws, alongside rules passed in past years, take effect in 2026 – either right now or in the coming months. […]
The fight for net neutrality never seems to be truly won or lost. Federal net neutrality rules have been on and off for the past 15 years. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) passed the Open Internet Order under President Barack Obama in 2010, prohibiting ISPs from blocking or throttling lawful internet traffic, the baseline rule […]
In a good and just society, it would have been possible to bury Charlie Kirk without either threatening mass violence toward his enemies or making light of his death with a furry sex meme. But America in 2025 did not remotely resemble a working society, let alone a civil one, and Kirk’s killing came prepackaged […]
2025 was a big year for gaming, and that includes gaming hardware. Nintendo launched its Switch 2 console in June, and since then, numerous Switch 2 titles and noteworthy updates for original Switch games have launched. These include brand-new Nintendo experiences like Mario Kart World and Donkey Kong Bananza, as well as some belated but […]
In early December, Joshua Aaron, the developer behind the ICEBlock app – designed to let people alert others about the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents – filed a federal lawsuit alleging his First Amendment rights were violated. The Department of Justice had urged Apple to remove Aaron’s app from its App Store, […]
With all the drama surrounding Warner Bros. Discovery’s plans to sell itself to another company, it’s not currently clear how much longer HBO Max will continue to exist in its current form. But for the time being, the streamer is chock full of solid series you might want to consider watching if you find yourself […]
In this new era of console… inclusivity? driven by Sony and mostly Microsoft bringing their exclusives to other platforms, it’s getting harder to highlight games that make a singular console shine. Indeed, the top-performing games year after year on both PlayStation and Xbox are multiplatform releases, and often the best games of the year, like […]
I played a lot of games on my Steam Deck this year. It seemed like there was a never-ending list of incredible indie games to try – The Verge wrote about a lot of them! – and many worked brilliantly on Valve’s handheld gaming PC. Some bigger games made a splash on Steam Deck, too, […]
Aside from free shipping, Prime Video is the second-best perk that comes with an Amazon Prime subscription. This year, the streaming service delivered several strong installments to some of its biggest series like Reacher, Fallout, and Invincible – but it also premiered some great new shows and spinoffs to keep things fresh. Here’s a list […]