John Morris

Reformed Luddite, tsundoku master
@[email protected]

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

Europe just quit the World Cup. UEFA and all 55 of its national associations announced they will not participate in FIFA competitions. No France, no England, no Spain, no Germany in the biggest tournament on earth.

The trigger is wild. Infantino wants to sell a piece of the World Cup to private investors for $4.2 billion. And each of the 211 national associations gets $20 million for voting yes.

211 times $20 million is $4.2 billion. The entire raise equals the approval payments. The investors would be funding the yes votes on their own acquisition.

Infantino thought the voting math made him unbeatable. FIFA runs on one country, one vote, so San Marino counts the same as Germany, and $86 million per federation through 2038 is transformative for small associations that have never qualified for a World Cup. He needs 106 of 211 votes, and he was buying them at retail.

UEFA just found the counter. Europe can't win the vote, so it's destroying the asset instead. European teams have won 12 of the 22 World Cups ever played. European broadcast money anchors the rights being sold. A World Cup without Europe is worth a fraction of the price, and every investor Kushner and JP Morgan are courting knows it by now.

The F1 comparison everyone's making misses the difference. Greg Maffei, who ran Liberty Media's Formula 1 takeover, is structuring this deal, but F1 privatization worked because the teams had nowhere else to race. UEFA already runs the Champions League and the Euros. Europe can exist without FIFA. FIFA cannot exist without Europe.

The vote is September 19. Infantino has the votes. UEFA has the teams. Only one of those makes a World Cup worth watching.

[Ben Rhodes @brhodes]

The strangest thing about the MAGA freakout over Fauci is that Trump was his boss - and ran the government - during the entire period they are so mad about.

[Voices of WW2 @VoicesofWW2]

Seventy-two. That is how many separate wounds John Cruickshank had in him, two of them through his lungs, while he lined up a burning flying boat for a second run at a U-boat that had just shot his aircraft to pieces. Most men have one of those wounds and they are finished. He had seventy-two and he pressed the attack.

He was 24, a former bank clerk from Aberdeen, flying a Catalina flying boat out of the Shetland Islands with Coastal Command. The job was the long, freezing, mind-numbing patrol, fourteen hours over the grey Atlantic hunting the U-boats that were strangling Britain. On the 17th of July 1944, far out over empty water, they caught one on the surface, U-361, and Cruickshank took the big slow flying boat down to attack.

The first run failed. The depth charges would not release. Any sane man makes a note and turns for home. Cruickshank swung the aircraft around and came back for a second pass, low and straight, and this time the submarine's gunners were waiting. Flak ripped through the Catalina. It killed the navigator, wounded half the crew, and tore into Cruickshank again and again, those seventy-two wounds, two punching into his lungs, ten into his legs.

And he flew the attack home anyway. Bleeding everywhere, in agony, with the fuselage holed and on fire, he held the aircraft dead level, aimed, and released the depth charges himself. They straddled the U-boat perfectly. It broke apart and sank beneath him.

Then came the part that should have killed him. He collapsed from blood loss, and the wounded co-pilot, who had never landed a Catalina, took the controls for the long flight back. Cruickshank refused the morphine that would have knocked him out, because he knew the man flying needed him. Drifting in and out, he had himself carried back up to the cockpit again and again through the night to help nurse the shot-up aircraft down, and at dawn they got it onto the water safely. He had lost so much blood the doctors said he had no business being alive.

He lived. He took the Victoria Cross from the King, went quietly back to banking after the war, and rarely spoke of it. And he kept on living, and living, and living. John Cruickshank died in 2025 at the age of 105, the last man on earth wearing a Victoria Cross earned in the Second World War. Seventy-two wounds over the Atlantic, and he outlasted every other hero of that war by decades.

[UEFA @UEFA]

Further UEFA statement on FIFA plans: ⬇️

[Tim Walker @ThatTimWalker]

Reform imploding before our eyes.

[Alfons López Tena 🦇 @alfonslopeztena]

Canada turns to Europe for its security — Canada’s government is determined to snuggle closer to Europe as the U.S., historically the country’s closest ally, becomes an increasingly unreliable and at times downright hostile neighbour https://t.co/jO7sxBfiA2

[Sulkhan Metreveli @Sulkhan]

Finland just closed airspace as drone incursions reach NATO territory. Romania keeps logging violations. ‘Accidents,’ say the usual voices. ‘Don’t overreact.’

These are not accidents. They are measurements.

Every stray drone over NATO soil is an instrument reading: how fast do the jets scramble, what do the politicians say, does anything happen at all. The empire is not attacking the alliance. It is auditing it — response time, unity, nerve — and filing the results for the day the audit matters.

And we have the control experiment everyone pretends to forget. In 2015, a Russian jet crossed into Türkiye for seventeen seconds. Ankara shot it down. Moscow raged, sanctioned tomatoes — and never crossed again.

Seventeen seconds. One decision. A decade of respected borders.

The incursions continue only where the answer is a press release. Every ‘measured response’ is logged in Moscow as permission, and the next probe goes deeper — because the audit found what it was looking for.

Borders are not lines on maps. They are answers to questions.

Stop answering in adjectives.

[Miss Chief 🤨 @Midge1415]

Good. It’s no conscience that that talking boiled egg announced this following the tackiest, shittiest World Cup ever. This has Trump’s greedy, grasping fingerprints all over it. Stick it up your fat orange hole, along with your wanky hydration breaks & cringy halftime yank bilge

[Ian Collins @Iancoll94354676]

Looks like he’s lost the Telegraph.

[Liam Nissan™ @theliamnissan]

Trump got the COVID vaccine and like 12 booster shots. Never forget that you stupid MAGA neanderthals.

[(((Dan Hodges))) @DPJHodges]

The issue isn't just that Nigel Farage is now heading towards Keir Starmer levels of unpopularity. It's that it's happening in direct parallel to his Clacton stunt, which was designed specifically to arrest this decline.

[Brett McGurk @brett_mcgurk]

On Iran, three options remain:

1. Concede: Accept Iran’s effective sovereignty over the Strait.

2. Endure: Maintain blockade and manage tit-for-tat exchanges.

3. Escalate: Intensify operations inside Iran and risk expanding war.

This morning with @KateBolduan on @CNN.

[UEFA @UEFA]

Statement on behalf of UEFA and its 55 National AssociationStatement on behalf of UEFA and its 55 National AssociationStatement on behalf of UEFA and its 55 National AssociationStatement on behalf of UEFA and its 55 National Associations

[David__Osland @David__Osland]

You know that Fourth Lord Rothermere bloke? The billionaire who inherited the fortune the Third Lord Rothermere inherited from the Second Lord Rothermere, who inherited it from the First Lord Rothermere? Well, it turns out he's against inheritance tax.

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Fighter pilot takes Family to an amusement park

[Adam Kinzinger (Slava Ukraini) 🇺🇸🇺🇦 @AdamKinzinger]

I want to make a point that is important here.

The US did not give many long range munitions to Ukraine. In fact probably not enough for one night of bombing Iran. I’ll outline exact details later.

This is an absolute red herring

[Charles Hoskinson @IOHK_Charles]

American healthcare in a single sentence

[Marco Foster @MarcoFoster_]

Hunter Biden: “What’s the one thing in the past 250 years that stands out a little bit? Maybe it’s the guy that paved over the Rose Garden and put a fucking Nazi eagle on the front of the fucking White House. Maybe it’s the guy who just took a fucking jet from the Qataris, the largest gift ever given to a president by a factor of a thousand which is completely illegal”

[No Context Brits @NoContextBrits]

The worst pain known to mankind.

[Historic Vids @historyinmemes]

Just a friendly reminder that Sarah Connor was committed to a psychiatric institution after attempting to destroy AI data centers, a decision made because authorities believed her warnings about the future were the result of delusions.