AG

[Florida Dad @FLDadReborn]

Have the Euros even stopped to consider that maybe a singular, split-second, borderline foul shouldn’t result in a 2 game penalty?

[Spike Brehm @spikebrehm]

they did it. the mad lads actually did it.

i never talked about my time at DOGE last year because it was so controversial and contentious (remember that?)

early last year, @jgebbia recruited a handful of his most trusted early Airbnb engineers to embed at the Office of Personnel Management to solve the "retirement paper" problem.

processing a federal retirement took months, and in the extreme retirees could wait up to 6 months for their full pension to arrive. what was the holdup? paper. remember hearing Elon talk about "the mine" in Pennsylvania? we got to visit it. in deep underground caverns blasted out of limestone, there were literally acres of file cabinets, as far as the eye could see, storing files detailing federal employees' employment and paystub history. a simple "case" might be only a quarter or half inch thick, but really complex cases filled up whole filing cabinets. one famously took up a whole pallet.

each case was hand processed by case workers in cubicles deep underground. they checked calculations, made sure forms were filled out properly (many weren't), and handled a long tail of complex issues. we'd watch as they keyed data into a black and white terminal, transmitting to the COBOL mainframe built many decades ago.

since cases were processed by hand, there were multiple rounds of human review, and additional rounds for complex cases. case files were walked around between one worker's outbox and another's inbox. sometimes it would sit in one place for days, waiting to be picked up.

to OPM's credit, they'd done multiple rounds of "digital transformation" spanning decades, so some systems were newer than others. there was a big effort in the mid-90s. but the systems were disparate, and it was a total maze getting them to talk to each other. there was a big effort to build a web app where employees applying for retirement could digitally fill out the necessary forms — just to be mailed to the mine and stuffed into the paper file. and few federal agencies were even using it.

when we arrived, OPM was midway through a fresh attempt at digital transformation, delivered by a software contractor.

the blackpill was seeing the terrible quality of the software and interacting with the contractors. coming from silicon valley, i couldn't believe how low the talent and quality bar was for selling software to the government. it's clear, as the OG USDS people explained to me a decade ago, the primary skill these vendors have is securing government contracts. it's a huge moat. delivery of quality product be damned.

we fired the vendor and took over the project. they'd been working on it for more than a year, and there was another year before they were going to deliver it. at first we tried to bend it to our will, to actually connect all the various data sources and get to a decent UX for case workers in the mine to use, but we soon realized we were going to have to rebuild the whole stack from scratch.

it was around this time I had to go back to new york — i had a new job waiting for me, a four month old, and a wife whose patience was running out. but i got to watch from afar as the team cranked day and night, hitting early milestones. and now they've fully done it.

huge congrats to Joe and the team. @yatshitcray was the hero in the trenches. indefatigable, unrelentingly optimistic, and determined to see this project through. when i recruited him for "ok i can do two, maybe three months", he stuck it out over a year making this project a reality.

while the retirement project was under the DOGE banner, it operated different from what you heard from the breathless, negative media — we came in with the attitude of partnering with career OPM employees. we were team members determined to bring our software talents to bear on the problem they've been trying to fix for years, which they hadn't had the resources to solve before. they were wary at first, not sure about us, but they quickly saw how authentic and determined we were to work together toward the same goal. props to Joe for developing those relationships, setting the example of how to collaborate together.

what's the end result? lifelong federal employees, veterans, postal carriers get their full pension installments almost immediately. days instead of months. peace of mind for these people to devoted their careers to serving our country. massively streamlined operations inside of OPM. and NO MORE PAPER 🫡🇺🇸

[AG @Gorantee]

“The beautiful game” this crap sucks

[Carrington Harrison @cdotharrison]

What I’ve learned in my 3 weeks of watching soccer is whenever something cool happens, just assume there was an offsides.

[InsensibleCFC @Chels1an]

Cristiano Ronaldo got a 3 game red card suspension and FIFA just up and decided he was simply too big of a superstar to serve it

So forgive me if I'm not really interested in what "mechanisms" FIFA says are or aren't at our disposal here as it's just Calvinball all the way down

[RedditCFB @RedditCFB]

If you want to radicalize 340 million people that this game is a bunch of bullshit it would be hard to do better than today lmao.

[Rhett Reese @RhettReese]

You cannot - in a once-every-four-years competition - that is largely a single elimination tournament - make a team play 10 on 11 after a red card, and then remove that team’s offending player for the next game. You just cannot, for ANY reason… let alone a silly, unintentional ‘infraction’ like tonight’s. Not when fans care, root, and spend this much. It ruins the product. And also invites corruption among referees.

[Ethan Agarwal @ethanagarwal]

All these Europeans are complaining that Americans are suggesting improvements to soccer.

Improving things constantly is why American GDP is $30T and you still have no AC in 2026.

In our own sports, we've fixed overtime rules in the NFL, flopping rules in the NBA, and added the pitch clock in the MLB, all in the last few years.

Adapt or die.

[Adam Rossi @rossiadam]

NYC had a nuclear power plant 36 miles away called Indian Point.

It supplied carbon-free safe power that would mean no one would need to turn up their thermostats.

But it was closed in 2021 by the degrowth Death Cult. Now NYC relies on fossil fuels for 90% of its power 🫠

[AG @Gorantee]

100%

[Chris Manno @Mann_O_Steel17]

No joke, this is why Americans havent completely bought into soccer.

My Achilles would literally have to be stuck on the bottom of this dudes cleat for me to carry on like that.

This joker got the call, stood up, and played the rest of the match. And Balogun gets the rest of this match, and the next, a win or go home off the pitch.

Clown stuff

[AG @Gorantee]

@GrantPaulsen @MatthewBerryTMR They weren’t right…

[Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath]

yup.

[AG @Gorantee]

@MaxTFortune @Ceruti Exactly!

[AG @Gorantee]

@Ceruti We hate flopping, we hate missed calls

[steve ceruti @Ceruti]

Why flopping works. If Balo goes down here it’s a penalty.

[Fanatic Perspective @Fan_Prspective]

That red card lets me know we don’t have proper home field advantage.

Ain’t no way in Hell a red card coming out for that at Azteca in Mexico City.

[Brent Cooper @brentonhcooper]

There have been a couple of times this World Cup where I’ve thought I should watch soccer more.

This resulting in a 30-minute power play and Balogun’s ejection in the next (elimination) game made me remember why I don’t watch this sport.

[AG @Gorantee]

This is what I’m talking about, this is incredibly egregious

[Shaun Maguire @shaunmmaguire]

It is unbelievable to me that this wasn’t a red card + penalty kick

Balogun was completely obstructed here and still hit the crossbar

He earned two PKs that weren’t called

This didn’t get VAR but an irrelevant midfield tangle led to a red card

Unreal

[~~datahazard~~ @fentasyl]

So every Democrat president is going to mass import 10+M additional third-worlders per term.

And every Republican president is going to mass deport as many as possible.

And that's our official, judicially mandated immigration system now?

Unbelievably stupid development.

[Big Cat @BarstoolBigCat]

We need that Texas Tech judge to free Balogun