An unforeseen consequence of the (valid) opinion that things written for children can still contain things resonant and valuable for adults is a new belief that only things which contain no value whatsoever can possibly be appropriate for children.

With an England vs Argentina grudge match I’ll go ahead an confess an actual terrible soccer opinion I held in 2010 or so was that Stephen Gerrard was better than Messi

Noticing Magnus in the stands were cool but it prompted some absolutely terrible chess metaphors from the Fox commentary team.

England defending their goal from the Norwegians about as well as they defended Lindisfarne

ICE is still here and this is the most heartbreaking thing I've seen in a while

I guess maybe the lack of organic interest in soccer is why the “pipeline” is such a fixation for US soccer, but I think it overlooks how many all time great soccer players got good juggling bags full of cloth in their feet in slums. You don’t need to pour in money you need to play the fucking game.

This does need to become Minneapolis-level focus for progressives. Allowing ICE to murder people in unmarked vans then deport the witnesses is a line we have to fight with every protest tool possible.

ICE is stepping up their operations and they’re back to killing people and scrambling to cover it up. The only difference between this and Metro Surge is they’ve gotten a bit sneakier about it. Observers and witnesses do critical work to hold DHS to account and must be protected.

ICE is engaged in a very large escalation nationwide, with the agency claiming to be hitting record arrest numbers amid the return of quotas. This has gotten very little attention from the media because ICE learned lessons from the chaotic disasters of Kristi Noem’s tenure. Keep a watch.

Underappreciated in all of this is these kids all chose to go to one of the “gateway into lucrative but dubious finance job” schools and yet cannot even be bothered to actually learn economics—the one subject that should probably be their chief concern as a future feckless rich person.

On the one hand the US losing to Belgium is not totally shocking, Belgium is a team that has a reasonable shot at winning the whole thing. On the other hand, losing this specific way feels like shit

Unfortunately drinking Belgian beers is now mandatory during the Pausa de hidracion

Would be kind of hilarious if doing a favor for Trump is the thing that breaks Infantino’s iron grip over FIFA

Pausa de lágrimas

For those of you new to soccer, you need to keep the studs of your cleats pointed down or away from the player when you challenge for the ball. Leg locked studs up is an easy red, even if you got the ball first.

That’s Bukayo Soccer, to you

Well, I for one am having a nice Fourth of July with my friends…

The wild thing about Ronaldo is normally the egomaniac players follow the Zlatan path and become more self aware as they age, but instead he insists on getting worse.

If you plead the 21st while being questioned you have the legal right to take a drink

Gio Reyna is here to make this added 10 minutes a “I’m not locked in with you, you’re locked in with me” situation

Germany going out and Congo and Senegal giving some of the big teams a scare gives the tournament a real “anything can happen” vibe before France or Spain probably just wins

England is starting their postdoc era

But if I can’t vicariously make my kid into a star athlete, I’m going to have to stick my head back into the Uncle Rico time traveling device and that hurts real bad.

The real cost of that political quiz is borne by everyone who has had to hear me describe my opinions using the Royal “we” since I now know that Zohran and I are in perfect alignment on them.

Oh man a scheme where you donate money to someone in power in exchange for “protection? I’ve never heard of that kind of very cool and very legal arrangement before.

I always thought I was elite at opinions…

Man, if this guy couldn’t have a long and distinguished federal career, I guess no one can

"The best anyone seems able to make of it is a shifting arrangement of blue and green smears; Rothko considers the Seattle Seahawks." www.liberalcurrents.com/let-us-refle...

Big props to Brad Lander on winning his primary. Dude has done the moral thing many times and put his body on the line against ICE. He even came to Minnesota during the ICE Occupation to see the injustice firsthand. It’s nice to see moral courage rewarded by voters.

Tax-free day trading

It is funny that the English commentator ID’ed today as the 40 year anniversary of Maradona’s Hand of God Goal and not his Goal of the Century even though they occurred in the same match.

"But doctor, I am Liberace"

It wasn’t his Who Hash, he was holding it for his cousin

Miners love it when you have to show ID every time you open Chrome…

Solidarity and thoughts with everyone impacted today. You have millions of folks behind you.

Huh, an explanation for why Jared Polis inexplicably pardoned an election saboteur. No doubt his friends in his new club assured him it would go great.

To be fair, I don’t know that unhinged king of cringe Jonathan Franzen represents most Americans.

In light of the massive gains made by our endowment investments, we regretfully announce we are going to have to lay off even more tenure line faculty and cut any humanities or arts programs we missed last time so that we can be ready to chase the next bag when it comes.

Can I somehow IPO my writing? It’s worth a billion dollars now. We’ll put a book in space. It’s actually not a space books company at all. It’s some other completely groundbreaking thing to be announced later.

Anybody know a journal open to somebody being on their Edward Abbey bullshit? With the Trump admin planning to run some kind of border wall through Big Bend national park I’m considering an essay about canoeing down the Rio Grande and what an egregious act of vandalism it is to build barriers there.

The Vanderbilt report is the academic equivalent of a company paying a consultant thousands of dollars to write up a justification to do the thing the boss had already wanted to do from the start.

To keep the rant going for the lunch break crowd, I also reject the idea that there’s a need to “teach” AI skills at all. The whole point is that it’s easy. Also in what universe would those skills not involve being able to evaluate the output, which requires knowing how to produce it yourself?

It’s already visible with schools that park their kids in front of screens vs ones that do normal instruction, but in the coming years there’s going to be an even more sharp split between kids who actually know how to read and write and kids who were instead “taught” AI.

See, so much AI stuff is just the subconscious of capital: "What if people didn't have to know things?" "What if we could just automate the realization of value, without input from pesky humans/consumers?" etc etc

I’m pretty sure the Knicks only allow large points deficits just to feel something.

Social media had like two seconds in 2009 of being good for democracy and the tech lords immediately clamped down and made sure it could only boost fascism going forward. Smartphones rendered a generation illiterate. But surely pouring resources into the next cool thing they cook up will save us.

Elon egging on migrant’s houses being burned down while his dad has a drink with Tommy Robinson in Moscow hotel bar talking about how Russia is the UK’s ally, at this point I don’t think you can deny that social media has been a net boon both to authoritarian regimes & authoritarians in democracies.

If during the last World Cup you told me that I’d spend a week of vacation during the opening rounds of the one the US is actually hosting chilling at home rather than traveling to go see a game, I’d have thought that was crazy. But I’m pretty happy with my decision.