The US Men's Soccer team: Tons of bluster, cheated the system, and then sh*t the bed in embarrassing fashion. So I'd say they represented America perfectly.
But am I the only one who kinda enjoys that America sucks at (men’s) soccer? It's for the rest of the world. They're completely obsessed and we only pretend to care once every four years. Unlike the rest of the globe, we won’t even use the word “football” – because the sport we do care about snared it.
Lotta hubris to expect all that to yield results. We don't put in the inputs of effort/focus so why should we expect the output of winning? We've got offshore drilling, Silicon Valley, and stealth bombers. Let the Cape Verdes of the world have this.
Meanwhile the US Women’s team kicks a**. Feels odd. Same sport, same country...wildly different outcomes. My theory on why:
In this piece, Thierry Henry looks at why the rest of the world dominates:
“The only way out of the hood” is tough to compete with. Also shows how the French gotta do everything opposite of us. In America, the suburbs are where you move when you get money. In France, the suburbs are where they put everyone who doesn’t have money.
Of course, the President stuck his beak in the mix which turned out poorly (because of course it did).
Sports competition is about equal opportunity. Do you think Senegal coulda had their President call up FIFA and get a call overturned? If not, 47’s action made the entire competition corrupt and reinforced every negative stereotype the world has about America in the process. Yo Donnie: Just because you cheat at sports (and everything else) doesn’t mean America wants you to do the same on our behalf.
Despite America’s lameness, this World Cup has been a blast. (Have you tried unemployment mixed with the World Cup? It’s the best pairing since chocolate and peanut butter.)
The FIFA feed must be an international pool thing because they constantly zoom in on foreign hotties in the crowd in a way US sports coverage never does anymore (because the Brent Musburgers of the world couldn’t keep it in their pants). And I like announcers with fancy accents. They’re so obsessed with “clean sheets” that they’re starting to remind me of my ex.
The biggest winner so far is Norway, which has become the Knicks of this tournament. Erling Haaland is Jalen Brunson and the next round has them facing England, which is Wemby (sorry, France). I’m running back the glory of June all over again. And that matchup is giving historical vibes…
You’ve seen the Viking row (the bang-the-drum-and-chant Norwegian celebration), right?
Ben Stevens@BenScottStevens
Yeah, I’m going to watch Erling Haaland lead the Viking Row after leading Norway to the World Cup quarters about 732 more times today.
10:18 PM · Jul 5, 2026 · 317K Views
18 Replies · 261 Reposts · 7.65K Likes
Accelerando. That’s a big reason why it works so well. It slowly picks up tempo until it explodes at the end. Reminds me of how great pop songs used to build this way: Come on Eileen, The Chain, and Free Bird, for example.
But you don’t hear that much anymore. Modern music production revolves around click tracks and fixed BPMs so gradual tempo changes are less common. We traded musicians reacting to one another in the same room for layered overdubs.
The Norwegian celebration is a reminder of the primal power of loose rhythm and people syncing with each other. Modern recording’s quest for efficiency and precision often smooths away the humanity that makes things actually feel alive.
Ro!
Meanwhile, some politician in Paraguay said racist crap about Mbappe, but I refuse to dig into that one. I miss the days when I had no idea what Paraguayan senators said.
I once heard someone say the local TV news delivered the worst thing that happened the closest to you. Well, social media provides the worst thing that happened far away. Oh, great.
Morgan Housel explained it this way:
The decline of local news has all kinds of implications. One that doesn’t get much attention is that the wider the news becomes the more likely it is to be pessimistic. Two things make that so:
• Bad news gets more attention than good news because pessimism is seductive and feels more urgent than optimism.
• The odds of a bad news story—a fraud, a corruption, a disaster—occurring in your local town at any given moment is low. When you expand your attention nationally, the odds increase. When they expand globally, the odds of something terrible happening in any given moment are 100 percent.
Speaking of bad news…
Yo progressives: Maybe making the PTSD blackout drunk with the N*zi tattoo the face of your cause wasn’t a great idea after all.
These days, having common sense makes you feel like some kinda prophet! This was me a few weeks back…
Call me crazy, but what if the Dems ran candidates who didn’t recently have a stroke or PTSD?
and…
I just can’t with this: “I was an alcoholic with PTSD who behaved badly in all kinds of ways. But hey, that was Tuesday. I’m a new man now! Put me in charge. It’s fine.” Give it a minute (well, decade), please.
He didn’t know the tattoo he had for 20 years was a N*zi tattoo!? Honestly, that might be even worse. You and your crew are a bunch of goddamn fools if you all got inked with Totenkopfs and couldn’t figure it out for decades.
At first, many in the Platner posse leaped to call it all a psyop funded by AIPAC – or some other BS. So this is a good moment to clock who in your timeline is a normal human being and who is an insane, overly online tribalist spouting off about conspiracies in the face of clear evidence.
The reluctance to dump Platner is showing “Believe women” vs. “I hate AIPAC” is irresistible force meets immovable object for some progressives.
NEW YORK (AP) — Two people scaled the Empire State Building’s antenna Wednesday and unfurled a banner about “the power of love.”
Pretty sure I know who was behind that stunt…
Reunion tour, anyone?
Actually, it turns out it was two Russians who rode an elevator, got engaged, took selfies, and unfurled a banner with a Jimi Hendrix quote. This is our age’s daredevil behavior? Even our stunts seem AI now. Gimme a guy in a jumpsuit on a rickety motorcycle leaping over a fountain and breaking 60 bones. Now THAT is America.
Six thoughts on the big wedding…
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