Pennies make da wallet fat

[Pennies make da wallet fat @Rockfish40]

@RealHacksawJim you were just mentioned on the World Cup telecast after a clothesline in the 92nd minute by Spain on Belgium! Nice mention!

[Greensboro Police Department @GSO_Police]

There is a lot of speculation in the community whenever emergency vehicles are seen on their street. We hope this short guide will answer some questions:

[Pennies make da wallet fat @Rockfish40]

Impressive. I’ve often wondered how I could avoid lavender.

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

A 10-year-old Japanese student named Jo Nagai helped answer a long-standing scientific question: do butterflies retain memories from when they were caterpillars?

Working alongside entomologist Dr. Martha Weiss, Nagai trained swallowtail caterpillars to avoid the scent of lavender by pairing it with a negative experience.

After the caterpillars went through metamorphosis and emerged as butterflies, they continued to avoid the lavender scent.

Nagai documented his findings in a 33-page study, helping prove that memories can survive metamorphosis and that an insect's nervous system isn't completely wiped clean during the transformation.

[Pennies make da wallet fat @Rockfish40]

Hero!!

[Lindsey 🇺🇸🐝 @50Luckydog]

❤️❤️HERO status activated
In TEXAS.

Three little children were trapped beneath an upside down boat in a Texas lake over the holiday weekend.

Parents were screaming that their babies were underneath.

An off duty firefighter took off his hat and glasses, jumped into the lake, and refused to stop until every child was out.

What could have become a horrible Fourth of July tragedy in Texas instead became an extraordinary story of courage.

According to authorities, Midlothian firefighter and paramedic Jason Horne was spending the holiday with his family on Alvarado Lake when another boat carrying nine people capsized, trapping three children between the ages of 3 and 5 underneath.

Published reports say people nearby were desperately yelling that children were trapped.

Horne immediately dove beneath the overturned boat.

In interviews with WFAA and FOX 4, Horne described finding the first child by feeling a life jacket in the dark water before surfacing with a little boy who was still breathing.

He went back under.

The second child, a little girl, wasn’t breathing.

As his 12-year-old daughter, Emilie, called 911, Horne performed CPR until she began breathing again.

Then he dove beneath the boat a third time.

Published reports say another little boy was found tangled in the boat’s anchor line. Horne told reporters the child had no pulse when he was pulled from the water.

He performed CPR until the child’s pulse returned before emergency crews arrived.

Authorities say all three children survived and were taken to the hospital.

One detail from Horne’s interviews stood out to me.

As a father of four, he said he has always insisted his own children wear life jackets.

“I can find you if you’re floating. I can’t find you if you sink.”

His son later shared on Facebook, “God certainly sent a hero to help that family. I am so proud to call him my dad.”

His wife also celebrated him after watching the news coverage, writing, “I’m so proud of them.”

The Midlothian Fire Department praised Horne’s actions, saying he stepped up without hesitation and represented the department with honor.

Sometimes the right person is simply in the right place at exactly the right time.

On Saturday, three little children are alive because Jason Horne didn’t hesitate.

Help congratulate this Texas-sized hero 👏

[Pennies make da wallet fat @Rockfish40]

@RealHacksawJim Drawing the ire of the Boss Man. He was a little angry and my cousin protested until I told her what he was really after. Lol. She shot out of that place like a lightning bolt. Her now husband thinks it is the funniest story he has ever heard. RIP Bossman.

[Pennies make da wallet fat @Rockfish40]

@RealHacksawJim The Big Bossman tried to pick up my cousin one night at the airport Marriott in Roanoke, Va after the matches. He said “would you like to see my room?” My star struck blonde 19 year old cousin says “yeah! I’ve never been in a room here before”. I promptly stopped the train wreck

[Pennies make da wallet fat @Rockfish40]

Yep! You got this one right!

[Etan @EtanBoss]

Landon Donovan says America is missing soccer talent because kids can’t afford to play.

“Only 2% of kids playing organized soccer in America came from households that made less than $50,000.”

“If you don’t make $50,000, your kid cannot play organized soccer.”

“Think about how many kids you’re missing out on in this country because they can’t afford to play the game.”

“There is zero chance I could have played club soccer.”

“My mom made $34,000 a year, single mom raising three kids.”

“She couldn’t pay $4,000 for me to play club. Are you kidding? She couldn’t pay $400.”

“That’s not a good system to create good players.”

[Emmanuel Acho @EmmanuelAcho]

Read nothing else: The tweet below is a perfect explanation of why America, which has the greatest athletes and infrastructure, will never compete against the greatest countries in the World Cup.

[Pennies make da wallet fat @Rockfish40]

Amen!! Fix the system!

[Sam Mahmood @TheSammahmood_]

The U.S. soccer federation is a poor return on invested capital.

I played soccer for 20+ years.

Grassroots.
Academy.
D1 college.
Pursued professionally after.

And I’ll say the quiet part out loud:

The US soccer infrastructure is broken.

In America, we treat playing D1 soccer like it is the peak achievement.

For most families, clubs, coaches, and players, the entire youth soccer machine is built around one goal:

Get recruited.
Get a scholarship.
Play college soccer.

But if the objective is to produce world-class players, D1 soccer is a terrible development path.

From 18-22, some of the most important technical development years of your career, you are preparing for a 3-4 month season built largely around athleticism, direct play, set pieces, fitness, and survival.

Now compare that to an 18-year-old in Spain, Argentina, Morocco, Italy, England, or France.

That player has likely been in a professional environment for years.

Training daily.
Playing meaningful matches year-round.
Competing against grown professionals.
Getting thousands more touches.
Learning how to solve the game under pressure.

The gap is massive.

And it shows.

American players are usually athletic.
They are usually fit.
They usually compete hard.

But at the highest levels, that is not enough.

The biggest difference is technical comfort.

We do not move the ball like Spain.
We do not combine like Argentina.
We do not play with the same fluidity, rhythm, and confidence you see from countries where the game is embedded into the culture from childhood.

That comes down to volume.

Volume of touches.
Volume of street soccer.
Volume of futsal.
Volume of unstructured play.
Volume of high-level training environments.
Volume of meaningful games.

In the US, youth soccer is expensive, overly organized, overly coached, tournament-driven, and too often built around winning games at 13 instead of developing players for 23.

Parents spend thousands.
Clubs charge thousands.
Travel teams fly all over the country.
Showcases become the product.
Recruiting becomes the scoreboard.

But the return on invested capital is poor.

We probably spend more money on youth soccer than almost any country in the world, yet the technical output does not match the investment.

That is a broken operating model.

And like any business, if the output is weak, you do not blame the customer.

You inspect the system.

The US has talent.
The US has athletes.
The US has money.
The US has facilities.

But the foundation is wrong.

We built a pay-to-play, college-recruiting machine and confused it for a world-class player development system.

Those are not the same thing.

Until we fix the grassroots layer, increase meaningful touches, make development less dependent on family income, and stop treating college soccer as the top of the mountain, the US will keep underperforming relative to its resources.

I’m not saying this to trash US Soccer.

I’m saying it because I lived it.

And if we actually want to become a powerhouse, we have to be honest about the infrastructure first.

[Sam Mahmood @TheSammahmood_]

The U.S. soccer federation is a poor return on invested capital.

I played soccer for 20+ years.

Grassroots.
Academy.
D1 college.
Pursued professionally after.

And I’ll say the quiet part out loud:

The US soccer infrastructure is broken.

In America, we treat playing D1 soccer like it is the peak achievement.

For most families, clubs, coaches, and players, the entire youth soccer machine is built around one goal:

Get recruited.
Get a scholarship.
Play college soccer.

But if the objective is to produce world-class players, D1 soccer is a terrible development path.

From 18-22, some of the most important technical development years of your career, you are preparing for a 3-4 month season built largely around athleticism, direct play, set pieces, fitness, and survival.

Now compare that to an 18-year-old in Spain, Argentina, Morocco, Italy, England, or France.

That player has likely been in a professional environment for years.

Training daily.
Playing meaningful matches year-round.
Competing against grown professionals.
Getting thousands more touches.
Learning how to solve the game under pressure.

The gap is massive.

And it shows.

American players are usually athletic.
They are usually fit.
They usually compete hard.

But at the highest levels, that is not enough.

The biggest difference is technical comfort.

We do not move the ball like Spain.
We do not combine like Argentina.
We do not play with the same fluidity, rhythm, and confidence you see from countries where the game is embedded into the culture from childhood.

That comes down to volume.

Volume of touches.
Volume of street soccer.
Volume of futsal.
Volume of unstructured play.
Volume of high-level training environments.
Volume of meaningful games.

In the US, youth soccer is expensive, overly organized, overly coached, tournament-driven, and too often built around winning games at 13 instead of developing players for 23.

Parents spend thousands.
Clubs charge thousands.
Travel teams fly all over the country.
Showcases become the product.
Recruiting becomes the scoreboard.

But the return on invested capital is poor.

We probably spend more money on youth soccer than almost any country in the world, yet the technical output does not match the investment.

That is a broken operating model.

And like any business, if the output is weak, you do not blame the customer.

You inspect the system.

The US has talent.
The US has athletes.
The US has money.
The US has facilities.

But the foundation is wrong.

We built a pay-to-play, college-recruiting machine and confused it for a world-class player development system.

Those are not the same thing.

Until we fix the grassroots layer, increase meaningful touches, make development less dependent on family income, and stop treating college soccer as the top of the mountain, the US will keep underperforming relative to its resources.

I’m not saying this to trash US Soccer.

I’m saying it because I lived it.

And if we actually want to become a powerhouse, we have to be honest about the infrastructure first.

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

In Germany, a talented 14-year-old earns his club money. In America, his parents pay the club $15,000 a year.

That single inversion explains why "we will not" is the most accurate line ever written about US soccer.

FIFA built a global system for this. Training compensation and solidarity payments send a cut of every transfer fee back to the clubs that developed the player, from age 12 onward. Develop one future pro and your academy gets paid for a decade. Barcelona's La Masia, Ajax, every Bundesliga academy runs on this logic. The kid is the asset.

US Soccer refuses to enforce those rules. When Seattle's Crossfire Premier claimed its $60,000 share of DeAndre Yedlin's transfer to Tottenham, it got nothing. Claims on the Dempsey and Bradley transfers died partly because the federation couldn't even produce the youth training records.

So American clubs earn zero dollars when a kid turns pro. They earn when a kid enrolls. Which makes the parent the customer, and the product is whatever keeps the parent writing checks: travel tournaments, hotel weekends, $500 showcase events, private training at $100 an hour. Elite pathways run $8,000 to $20,000 a year. A comparable academy spot in Italy costs about 120 euros.

Follow the incentive one level deeper and it gets darker. A club dependent on fees can't cut its weakest paying players, so rosters optimize for retention over development. The scouting pool shrinks to families who can afford the cliff, which appears around age 11, exactly when development matters most. The country runs a talent filter sorted by household income instead of ability.

Every four years someone proposes fixing this. The proposal always requires the people profiting from the $15,000 model to vote themselves out of business.

They will not.

[Pennies make da wallet fat @Rockfish40]

lol

[Gain of Fauci @DschlopesIsBack]

BREAKING: USA comes back from huge deficit to defeat Belgium 5-4 after receiving four surprise mail-in goals at 3:00am

[Alex Svanevik 🐧 @ASvanevik]

Now that the US is knocked out, I am formally extending an invitation to the American people to support Norway.

Why?

1: The Vikings discovered America before Columbus.

2: There are more ethnic Norwegians in the US than in Norway.

3: Next weekend we can pillage the English peasants together.

4:

[Book Pro Wrestlers @BookProWrestler]

After Road Warrior Hawk passed away, Paul Ellering told his wife, “We’ve got to get the old van running again.” They drove it to Hawk’s funeral.

Today, that same van—the one that carried Paul, Hawk, Animal, and so many wrestling legends across the country—is being painstakingly restored by my friend Mike Rose.

Some vehicles have history. This one helped carry wrestling history.

[Jordan Schultz @Schultz_Report]

Heroes: the beloved Cape Verde soccer team returned home today to a beautiful greeting from airport staff and thousands of adoring fans — on July 5, Cape Verde’s Independence Day. 👏🇨🇻

(🎥 @fcfcomunica)

[SKI @skiistiredasf]

This the news about Black People that never go viral, I wonder why!!! His name is Jeremiah Bledsoe.

[Dave Portnoy @stoolpresidente]

Happy 250th birthday to the best country on earth! I was reading a book the other day and was struck by this paragraph. I don’t know who the author was but I thought it was brilliant and perfectly said…🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[Arthur MacWaters @ArthurMacwaters]

The European mind simply cannot comprehend a random citizen playing the national anthem with a semi automatic rifle in their backyard shooting range