Ronaldo’s ego is incredible, and he’s almost always looking out for himself in everything he does. But, you can’t deny that he’s one of the best ever players. And his charisma means he’s a great choice for something like this where he has to perform and interact with all the “scientists”. Someone like Messi could do the same kinds of moves, but he wouldn’t be able to chat with the presenters and “scientists” between events in a natural way. (P.S. I love that they got someone named Ronald to be the ordinary guy who couldn’t do anything useful, that was just funny.)

I also think Ronaldo genuinely cares about all the biomechanics and all that, as long as it’s something that applies to him, and that he could use to make himself better. A lot of other players just play on instinct and don’t want to have to think about it.

Hearing is definitely part of it, but I imagine it’s only hearing the sound of the ball being kicked. After that it’s going to be far too quiet to hear until it gets close, and he’s obviously reacting long before that. Maybe hearing helps him adjust in the last tenth of a second, but he’s not hearing the ball’s entire flight.

As for the body mechanics of a pitch or a kick, it is amazing. Like, a proper powerful punch involves leg muscles, hip muscles, waist muscles, chest muscles, and only then do you start to get to the arms. For most of us, the best way to realize how coordinated everything has to be is to try to do something with your wrong arm/leg. Everything that flows naturally on your strong side is just completely wrong on your weak side.

What’s amazing is our ability to calculate the path of something in the air.

There’s a test they did with Cristiano Ronaldo where someone kicked a ball to him so he could head it. They shut off the lights before the ball was in the air and somehow from the body shape of the person kicking it, he was able to know how to make contact with it without being able to see it.

https://youtu.be/0k2ey_okQ4E?t=1255

It’s worse than that.

Blockchain Capital LLC was co-founded by Steve Bannon pal Brock Pierce, a major crypto advocate, perennial presidential candidate, and close friend of Eric Adams. Pierce has dozens of other shady MAGA/Russia ties as well.

https://toad.social/@davetroy/113476797192400901

Dorsey’s already out, the people running the project are from the TESCREAL gang.

A feature that makes it easier for their users to migrate to a competitor? Blockchain Capital invests $15M in BlueSky. Insert that Anakin / Padme meme:

Anakin: Now that we’ve invested, let’s make that federation feature priority 0
Padme: As in highest priority, right?
Anakin:
Padme: As in highest priority, right?

The purpose of an apostrophe is to warn people that there’s an S coming.

Fuck the poor, fuck the old, fuck the environment, fuck soldiers and veterans, fuck the sick, fuck food safety…

He was very popular for a long time. He’s been PM under 3 US presidents so far: Obama (only for a few months), Trump (part 1), Biden, and will probably be in for part of Trump’s second term.

Like all leaders, people get tired of them. That’s especially true when there’s a global inflation crisis, and every local leader gets blamed as if it’s their fault.

I think he’s been… fine. There have been some minor scandals, but just the typical stuff where the government helps out politically connected companies. Other than that it’s extremely minor stuff like sticking his tongue out in a playful way in parliament, dressing in Indian traditional costumes on a visit to India, taking a vacation at a place owned by a rich friend. Some of the legislation he passed has been good, like legalizing marijuana, implementing a carbon tax, and a major infrastructure bill. Some has been stupid like the “online news” act that tried to get Facebook and Google to pay the major Canadian for-profit news companies for linking to their stuff… rather than addressing the actual issue of their monopolies.

I don’t think the Liberal party is particularly inspiring. OTOH, they’re so much better than the conservatives. But, because Trudeau reneged on his promise to get rid of First Past The Post elections, they’re going to be his downfall in the next election where the left-wing vote is going to split between the NDP and the Liberals, handing the Conservatives a big majority.

My mom is so stupid she’s a fucking hazard.

If there’s a club for that, I’m in it too.

I literally don’t understand how my mom gets through day-to-day life. It’s just a matter of time before her bank accounts are drained by a scammer because no matter how many times I try to explain it to her, she believes everything she sees online as long as it reinforces something she already believes. If it challenges her beliefs she ignores it.

She got an email that said she owed money to an internet service provider she doesn’t use, and hasn’t ever used. Obvious scam, right? She knows she doesn’t use them, but the email seemed “Truthy” so she was really worried that she owed them money. There’s no way to convince her that it’s a scam because even facts like “that’s not your ISP, you don’t and have never used that ISP” can’t penetrate.

She trusts memes more than family members who have degrees in something and are willing to patiently explain it to her. She spends a lot of money buying snake oil, or overpaying for things she can get essentially for free (i.e. buying bottled water because she’s afraid of fluorine in municipal water). This has made me realize what a huge amount of the world’s economy isn’t people buying things they need, or even things they want because it makes their lives better, it’s people buying things they don’t need because they’re afraid of something that isn’t real.

Anyhow, yeah, Trump won the idiot vote, and he’s going to make changes to the US that will increase the number of idiots. Things are going great.

Online? Yes.

In person to friends while chest bumping and hooting? Yes.

In person to a woman they don’t know in all seriousness, and not just to antagonize? I sure hope not.

It definitely looks like you are.

Someone in their late 40s is not a girl.

It’s amazing the stories that Americans tell themselves about the American Revolution. They pretend that the “founding fathers” were heroic idealists standing up for honorable values against an evil despotic regime. The truth is much more complicated.

A major goal of the 7 Years War was about controlling the colonies in the Americas. Had the French won those wars, the modern people of North America would probably speak French. Look at how many US places still have French names, and especially are named after the French king: Louisiana, Louisville, St. Louis, Mobile, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Detroit, Lafayette, Arkansas, Illinois, Calumet, Decatur, Boise, Montpelier, etc. But, the French lost the war, so the English took over all that territory. Fighting that war was incredibly expensive, but it was worth it for the English because they now controlled a whole new continent with all its resources. To pay for that war, they levied taxes. The English colonists in the US, who were largely the beneficiaries of that part of the war, decided they didn’t want to pay those taxes, so they rebelled. They got the benefit of a continent won for them by English armies, but without having to pay the bill for that fight. Now, again, it’s complicated. The English armies were integrated with the colonial armies. George Washington was initially an officer in the British army (and was part of starting the French and Indian wars, which became the 7-years-war). The US colonists were part of the force that fought against the French and their native allies.

Anyhow, it was complicated. But, the end result was that after a war that took place both in Europe and in the Americas, the British crown had a huge debt. I have no idea what proportion of that debt was due to the part of the war fought in Europe vs. the part of the war fought in the Americas, but overall there was a big debt and the English crown tried to tax whoever they could to pay for it.

Was the English king a tyrant? Sure. Did the Americans have fair representation in the English parliament? Probably not. But, their main reason for rebelling was the same one that is nearly always the cause of rebellions: the rebels are in an area that’s wealthy for some reason, and they don’t want to have to share that wealth with the rest of the country / empire. In fact, it was suspected that the colonists chose not to send representatives to the colonial assembly partially because they knew that if they did that it would undermine their “without representation” argument, and the real issue was that they simply didn’t want to pay taxes.

As for the English system being tyrannical, the reality is that it has been a very slow, gradual change from an absolute monarchy to a ceremonial one. The English crown is significantly less wealthy than Elon Musk, and arguably has a lot less influence on British politics than Musk does on American politics.

By the letter of the laws, the British system is still more classist and controlled by money than the American system. But, is that true if you look at the actual real way that power is used? It doesn’t seem like it to me.

Sure, because everyone who stayed home was a democrat. Every Republican voted.

Voting booths are secret places where people can admit how they really feel without feeling judged. Trump won the popular vote because he appealed to a lot of people who didn’t wear MAGA hats, or walk around in garbage bags.

The sad thing is that this isn’t really a shock to the rest of the world. There’s a reason why, for decades, Americans going on backpacking trips have put Canadian flags on their gear.

The only saving grace here is that it might not be that most Americans are cruel, racist, sexist, classist, etc. It might just be that they’re incredibly dumb. I’ve listened to a lot of interviews of Trump supporters and the vast majority are idiots. They believe in crazy conspiracies. They say they love Trump’s policies then can’t name any of them. They can’t accept that he actually legitimately lost all his legal cases. They regurgitate things they’ve heard, but clearly haven’t even spent a second thinking about, because they go blank as soon as they’re asked to elaborate on anything.

And, if the problem is really that they’re morons, it may not be their fault. For some reason, the US obsession with free speech and free markets means that Internet companies can keep feeding people bullshit that makes them angry, which keeps them engaged, which keeps the ad dollars flowing. US TV networks can tell absurd lies under the guise of news, and they’re apparently immune from being sued for doing it. “Concerned parents” funded by lobbying groups can fuck up the education system so that kids never learn anything that might make them feel bad. The US is allowed to have a government funded state media network that delivers factual video, audio and written news and information around the world. But, most Americans have never heard of it because it’s not allowed to compete with the for-profit media in the country itself.

I dunno, maybe the world can save the US. The fact is, Europe does occasionally have strong influence in the US. Americans have to deal with cookie banners because of a GDPR law that doesn’t apply in the US. Maybe if the EU took on the US tech monopolies it would actually affect the way Americans are brainwashed. But, unfortunately, I have serious doubts about whether the US can dig itself out of the hole it’s in. Right now it looks like the hole is just getting deeper and deeper.

The guy won the popular vote. The people who sat the election out would probably have broken for Trump too.

The problem here isn’t voter turnout, it’s voter preference for a fascist.

I heard yesterday about how a lot of Imams in Michigan posed for selfies with him.

Everyone knows where he stands.

I strongly suspect that isn’t true. I think anti-Trump people know where he stands, but I bet a lot of pro-Trump people are about to be in for a big surprise.

Related: we’ve all heard the stories of a time traveler going back to kill Hitler before his rise to power. One common theme in almost all those stories is that the attempt fails, that’s why history is as we remember. This morning has me thinking that maybe time travel was involved in a couple of Trump assassination attempts.

I like that only Iowa and Arizona are the only states with full names labelled without weirdness, and they’re completely wrong. If it were a human completing this map, I’d say those were the two states they were confident about, and they’re obviously wrong.