If I believe in dinosaurs, then they believe in me

Anon

[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.

[Savage @Savageboston]

Maybe the worst soccer play I’ve seen in my life and I’ve been watching soccer for an entire 3 weeks.

[Kuleshov @EffectKuleshov]

People are using this to say that her instincts are impeccable (which is still true) but the fact is: anyone above a room temp iq saw this coming months ago

[Chris Arnade 🐢🐱🚌 @Chris_arnade]

Funny thing about the whole red card hub bub is 99% of the world knows FIFA is corrupt — it might be the single thing people across the globe believe and tell you, regardless of if you ask — and then Trump blasts in, without any care, like the kool aid man, and does some small fry FIFA corruption, and everyone is like “Woah . The integrity of the game. It’s gone. It’s ruined forever”

[rosey🌹 @thechosenberg]

The Boomer mind is fascinating

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

One of the most important media companies in the world is run by a guy who's openly anti-democracy and pro-authoritarianism.

I could make a joke or something but man, it's just really, really bad this is where we are.

[Megan McArdle @asymmetricinfo]

Because collectivization of agriculture, the most essential good, tends to end in famine.

[Alec Stapp @AlecStapp]

Happy Fourth of July to all current and future Americans 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

[JoeMcCarthyStan🌹🇮🇱🏳️‍⚧️🇺🇦(She/Her) @JoeMcCarthyStan]

Al Jazeera Arabic (top) vs Al Jazeera English (bottom)

[clara the urbanist @SlopHq]

america’s most beloved neighborhoods, georgetown, beacon hill, the french quarter, savannah’s squares, were all built before zoning existed and every one would be illegal to build today. we spent 250 years creating the things we love and then banned them

[Devin Nunes' Cattle Dog 🇺🇦 🇪🇺🇺🇸🇨🇦 🇦🇺 @Kaos_Vs_Control]

A New 55-Page Congressional Report Alleges Donors Who Wanted to Fund America's 250th Birthday Celebration Were Given the Wrong Bank Routing Numbers Redirecting Their Money to a Trump-Linked Group Instead, Without Their Knowledge, 1 Day Before the Actual 4th of July

Wire fraud?

[William "Balloon Guy" Kim @TheKimulation]

There are two types of countries: those that can deploy a Tactical Burger King anywhere in the world and those that use the metric system

[Stefan Schubert @StefanFSchubert]

It’s more popular to blame elites but the root cause of many societal problems is poor voter judgement

[Jeremiah Johnson 🌐 @JeremiahDJohns]

Thirty eight replies to two likes is an absolutely gorgeous ratio. The kind of posting that inspires a deep run in the Worst Tweets bracket.

[M. Nolan Gray 🥑 @mnolangray]

The refusal of blue states to build housing means that they will lose the equivalent of Wisconsin in 2028 no matter how hard they campaign.

[Richard Hanania @RichardHanania]

The scale of Trump’s fraud on his own supporters is awe inspiring,

Nearly a million traders on his memecoin lost $3.81 bill. That’s $3,800 per person.

He robbed his most devoted supporters in broad daylight and there is zero outrage about it on the right.

What a movement.

[Steve Herman @newsguyusa]

There’s something called the Foreign Gifts and Decorations Act. Any gift worth more than $525 is supposed to go to the government for safekeeping and a president can buy it for fair market value after leaving office. Following the first Trump administration, I tried to track some high-profile ones that I had witnessed the president receiving, including a gold medal from the Saudis, and they were not listed in government inventory and their disposition was unknown per officials.

[Hen Mazzig @HenMazzig]

Turkey just banned a cruise ship carrying nearly 2,000 gay travelers, including Broadway legend Patti LuPone, from docking in Kuşadası and Istanbul.

Officials called the passengers a threat to their "moral values."

Istanbul police then raided a gay nightclub that had operated for 18 years, because it planned to welcome the cruise's passengers.

A state punishing people for existing. If a different, specific Middle Eastern country did this, it would lead every front page for a week. Turkey, a NATO country does it and the human rights industry looks away.

[The Free Press @TheFP]

There is no modern parallel for the scale and shamelessness with which the president is enriching himself in office. https://t.co/aBCGHNCvww