•sexton•

don’t worry. bout a thing. cause every little thing... gonna be alrightt

[Erling Haaland @Erling]

It’s been quite a row, thank you for making it so special 🚣🏼🇳🇴❤️

[valentine @valawakened]

I read somewhere that "When you choose a life partner you're choosing your eating companion for about 20,000 meals, your travel companion for about 70 vacations, your retirement friend, career therapist, & someone whose day you'll hear about 18,000 times" and I really can't stress this enough.

[Noah Ryan @NoahRyanCo]

Do whatever you can to claw your way out of dopamine culture

[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.

[Nick Sortor @nicksortor]

🇺🇸 BREAKING: The largest fireworks show in the history of the WORLD has just kicked off in Washington, DC

850,000 MUNITIONS — last year's was 20,000

Trump PROMISED to make it happen, and he MADE IT HAPPEN! 🔥

[SPANE 🇪🇸 @SperrysandNikes]

Always say yes to a quick 30 minute beer with your friends because that hour and a half could be the best 6 hours of your life

[Owen Tooelve @owentooelve]

if you're a democrat, I don't care

if you're a republican, I don't care

if you're not rooting for USMNT like your life depends on it even though you normally don't give a shit about soccer, go fuck yourself

[Miilato @miiilato]

“why did you take so long in the shower”

me in the shower:

[Alice Smith @TheAliceSmith]

I’m not sure the average British citizen appreciates how horrified the rest of the world is at the multicultural and authoritarian nightmare that’s happening here.

[Grant Lannin @retirementkeys]

Avoiding confrontation is single behavior that will ruin your life

You must CONFRONT. Confront your problems, confront your avoidances, confront those behaving improperly

The only way out is through. And to blast through requires confrontation

[signüll @signulll]

the blue origin explosion briefly forces people to remember what the baseline actually is.

rockets aren’t supposed to feel like commercial aviation.

they feel that way because spacex spent years turning an extraordinary event into an ordinary one.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

I’m in love with this sentence:

“The strongest version of you is buried under the habits you're afraid to break.”

[ranxdeer @ranxdeer]

great era for people fascinated by the collapse of reality

[Taylor Mathis @TMathSports]

If you have ANY extra income, even 5 dollars I would put it in the S&P 500, right now. Things are at an all time high!

[Augustus @AugustusDelano]

Underrated life hacks:
- pray first thing every morning, last thing every night
- always keep an open notebook and pen within sight
- halve the amount time you allot yourself to read books & do your work
- extend your vision out by 5-10 years, then reverse engineer to present
- every time you catch yourself worrying, immediately surrender it to God
- never stop learning, ever, no matter what
- recognize no one is stopping you more than yourself

[Planetary Capital @lanetarycapital]

I am a long term space bull but… this is euphoric. Be careful.

My hopeful scenario is that these prices settle not too far beneath here and we have a new base to value them and grow from.

Except $ASTS

I hope it touches $200 and destroys those who bet against it.

[MeatEater @MeatEaterTV]

The smell of a bonfire on your clothes is just a reminder of good times.

[Blake ™ @NeilNevins]

I’m anti-cruise ships in general, but the last time I was on one for a family vacation, I found one of those soft serve machines out in the open on deck. I was just crushing those cones while staring out at the open ocean and it may be one of the few times I’ve known peace

[Tim @TimproviseDIY]

https://t.co/jYMOSkTeeh