If you ever think that your job is useless, remember that FIFA has an Ethics Committee.

I’m not saying the suspension of the suspension is reasonable. I just doubt that Trump had much to do with it. Infantino is corrupt enough as it is, and he probably thought FIFA would get more money if the US had a better chance of staying in the tournament longer. He also allowed Cristiano Ronaldo to fully participate in the tournament despite his ban, and I’m sure Trump had nothing to do with that. But, again, bigger ratings, more attention if Cristiano Ronaldo is playing vs. on the bench.

To be the end of FIFA, the member countries would somehow have to work together and organize their own competing World Cup. A lot of the power FIFA has is that there are a lot of small football associations from corrupt countries (or at least corrupt football associations from small countries). Even if all the UEFA member states and the South American member states tried to do their own thing, that’s not enough.

Infantino can count on support from countries like Kyrgistan, Laos, Myanmar, Maldives, Yemen, Namibia, Eswatini, Somalia, South Sudan, etc. Infantino is corrupt, but he’s clever enough to spread some of the money to these other places. They know that if he’s removed or replaced, their funds will get cut off.

In the past, the only thing that worked was when a country that didn’t really care about the sport decided to step in. Back when the US wasn’t quite as corrupt as it is now, it chose to investigate FIFA and charged a whole bunch of officials with wire fraud, racketeering, money laundering, etc. I don’t know if there’s any country that has the power, the courage, and the lack of corruption to do that now. Without that, I don’t think FIFA is going to magically become clean from the inside.

He can’t really help. I don’t even think he was necessarily the one who got Balogun’s suspension suspended. All he really managed to do was taint things so Balogun’s suspension suspension is super suspicious.

OTOH, R16 is normally where the knockout rounds start, so the USA just got a free pass to what’s normally the real beginning of the tournament.

I’m saying this as a fan of Canada who didn’t make the round of 16 at all, but still had a wildly successful run by Canadian standards: first ever world cup goal, first ever world cup win, first ever advancement from a knockout round (but only from the round of 32 which normally doesn’t exist).

The US has a decent chance of getting past Belgium, but whoever wins that match faces either Spain or Portugal, and that will probably be the end.

“Birthright” is such a terrible term for that way of obtaining citizenship.

Isn’t it also a “birth right” to get citizenship based on the citizenships of the parents who gave birth to you?

Jus soli is “birthright”, jus sanguinis is also “birthright”. It’s only naturalization that is a way to get citizenship that isn’t a result of your birth.

It’s more and more clear that the Wikipedia editors made the right choice in deciding that the US lost the war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war

THE ART OF THE DEAL!

(written by a ghostwriter)

For me: Gnome + extensions.

The default Gnome feels way too locked down to me, and I don’t like some of the choices. But, with the right extensions “locked down” becomes “simplified enough to get out of your way”.

It is strategic for Canada to invest in its air force because:

1. Hmm, what happened in that far northern area? We should go check it out. Oh wait, we don’t have planes to do that.
2. Russia attacks Finland. Finland calls for help from its NATO allies. Canada sends its air force.
3. Every single flight from Europe to the US west coast flies over Canada. Even flights from Europe to Mexico City pass over Atlantic Canada. One of those flights stops responding and there’s a fear it was hijacked. Oh well, I guess the USAF can check it out once it crosses the border… if it crosses the border.

You can see some of the absurdities of not having a proper air force in Switzerland. They used to have an Air Force that only operated during daytime business hours. In 2014 an Ethiopian Airlines pilot hijacked his own plane and landed it in Geneva. Italy and France scrambled to escort the plane through their airspaces. Switzerland had to just let it do what it wanted because their Air Force didn’t operate 24 hours a day.

In fact, for a huge and nearly empty country like Canada, the air force is arguably the most important military branch. Since prehistoric times, the size of a country / kingdom / empire was defined by the region in which it had a monopoly on the use of force. If Canada wants to claim sovereignty over the entire North, and not just the Montreal to Toronto corridor, it needs to be able to notice an invasion in the north, attack anybody there tying to claim its territory, and transport soldiers up there if necessary. That’s all Air Force stuff.

A modern Air Force might not mean fighter pilots in supersonic planes. As things in Ukraine have shown, it might instead be mostly drones.

Let’s be real, oil / petroleum / gasoline / aviation gas are going to be part of the economy for decades. Countries are going to get by with less oil, but not without oil. There are things like planes that really require a very energy dense source of energy. There are other things like buses and local delivery trucks that can do fine with batteries, but where vehicles are an investment that is paid off over a decade. The new ones might be electric, but the old ones won’t be replaced soon. This might have accelerated the transition in a significant way, but oil is such a big part of everything that it’s still going to be around for a long time.

What I hope is that there are countries, say in Africa, that never really fully industrialized with an oil-based economy. Hopefully they can skip right past that and start with clean energy right from the start.

What do they mean “touches $100 a barrel”? It has been at or above $100/barrel for almost 2 months now.

It’s hard to know the future. People’s habits are hard to change. But, sometimes there’s a change that’s significant enough and people don’t go back.

In the current world where people were already switching to photovoltaics and EVs before the crisis, it’s easy to imagine that a lot of people who switch because of the crisis won’t be going back if oil gets cheap again.

Also, from what I’ve read, each week that the Straight of Hormuz is closed will take about a month for things to get back to normal. So, at this point, we’re already talking years before things could go back to normal. Plus, if this results in another major recession, by the time the economy comes back it might look completely different.

More accurately:

Some scientists came up with a new white light laser. It was amazing. Even laser scientists couldn’t really fully understand how it worked. I mean, no new breakthroughs in physics, but the way it looked was just so different from other lasers. One problem was that to produce the consumable elements for the lasers required absurd quantities of raw materials. But, that was justified by the idea that white light lasers were so important, and whoever got to the purest white light first could own the entire economy.

Everybody was super hyped up about this white light laser, and there was a sense that something that looked so cool had to have some practical uses. Various labs created their own white light lasers and demoed them to venture capitalists, who also were unable to believe how cool the laser looked. Money started gushing in. Unfortunately, while it looked really cool doing “laser things”, it just didn’t actually work all that well. It couldn’t cut as well as a one-wavelength laser. As a pointer it was amazing, but it only lasted a few minutes, unlike other lasers that lasted for hours. Doctors tried it for surgery, but it actually made things more dangerous. It didn’t work for holograms. It made astronomy worse. But, the general feeling was that it looked so cool there had to be a world-changing use for it. Every time it was tried, there were seriously cool things created, but always with serious drawbacks.

VCs who were heavily invested, and some of the early inventors, kept going on the news, doing demos, and hyping up the white light laser. Anybody in a position of authority or influence who mentioned they thought the white light lasers were kinda dumb was blasted as if they were a complete moron and either didn’t understand the lasers, or was just being contrarian and standing in the way of progress. Laser companies sold lasers over the Internet, in kiosks by the side of the road, door to door, in every way possible. These lasers were heavily branded by the company selling them and only cost $1, although they cost at least $1000 to make. The labs were trying to be the dominant white light laser company, so they just ate that extra cost to drive up the hype and get their name associated with it.

Bosses started demanding that people use a white-light laser as part of their workflow, and started firing anybody who didn’t do that. They also fired employees because they reasoned that once their organization had harnessed white light lasers, those employees wouldn’t be needed. Most employees said “this sucks, it makes my job worse”, but the bosses wouldn’t hear it.

Eventually, half the economy was being propped up by the white light laser industry. It was impossible to buy lenses anymore. Everybody just had to use their old glasses / contacts because a decade’s worth of lenses had already been exclusively ordered by one of the White Light laser companies. Every day there were news stories about people being blinded by white light lasers, but those news stories always hinted that the people were using the lasers wrong.

Then a white light laser hit the bubble and it popped, and most people were relieved because the whole thing was just tiresome.

I liked Battle Chess back in the day because it had chess rules but made the capturing of squares more exciting.

So, at least it got a graphics upgrade after about 1500 years. But, I got tired of it because still, it’s just chess. There’s no random element, every game starts the same way. Other games like poker are also largely skill based games, but at least each game starts differently.

I don’t think a lot of Canadians or Mexicans are going to be able to afford to go to the games in their own countries. They may be hosting, but the ticket prices are absurd.

If the World Cup has a lot of half empty stadia, I’d be happy.

It might be interesting if the Mexican and Canadian stadia were full though.

F1 races are also hotbeds of human trafficking.

According to some Russian propaganda conspiracy forum?

There may be some races, but ladies, that’s not why your husband is there.

Sure, nobody who goes to a race goes to see cars drive quickly…

Yes, and as an adult I have no idea how to walk around as a baby, speak with a baby’s vocal chords, etc. The only body I’m used to using is my current adult body.

Yes, and as an adult I have no idea how to walk around as a baby, speak with a baby’s vocal chords, etc. The only body I’m used to using is my current adult body.