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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   3377 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 14, 2026

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

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Just something I feel tiresome since it's World Cup season and inevitably every major Western democracy is getting some variant of 'Don't like foreigners, what about RANDOM AFRICAN who kicked a goal for NATIONAL TEAM' spammed across social and news channels.

Am I the only one who finds it somewhat absurd that the native underclasses of most Western countries are essentially getting kicked out of a rare but real pathway to winning the athleticism lottery and becoming a professional Soccer or whatever-else player? I feel similarly about trying to outsource this kind of job as I do about outsourcing the bullshit bureaucracy non-revenue admin jobs at a Fortune 500 company in which, sure they could technically be done better but they're more about distribution of societal spoils than actually value driven.

I predict that if the USMNT has an all time run (for them) with the world's most accidental American, birthright citizenship will be upheld. The man is scoring goals for the national team because his mother was refused air transport home because she was too pregnant with him at the time. This wasn't even birth tourism: they just didn't want her giving birth over the Atlantic.

If they embarass themselves, birthright citizenship will be rescinded.

If they embarass themselves, birthright citizenship will be rescinded.

Was yesterday's loss an embarrassment?

Balogun was benched.

Bosnia would be an embarrassment:

Potential issue with your crystal ball: the next game isn't until June 19, but the final opinions day this year appears to be June 18.

A) The cosmic power of the USMNT making even the semifinals of a home world cup is so tremendous that it is actually supertemporal in nature, the vibrations would echo back into the near past.

B) One SCOTUS opinion isn't the final word on it. Trump won't accept an opinion upholding birthright citizenship and will seek to undermine it in some other way. And a pro-Trump opinion would merely be that the Constitution doesn't guarantee birthright citizenship, not that it forbids it, so at a later time it would be possible for Congress to write a more orderly birthright citizenship law into effect.

There's zero chance of SCOTUS having all the opinions done by the end of this week, and it's very common for SCOTUS to not post its opinions days until the week before or sometimes even a day before the day. I'm expecting this year to see opinions released until well into the first (and possibly second) week of July.

Yes, I agree now that I figured out how to see the cases remaining to be decided on scotusblog. I count 20 cases not decided yet, so unless the 18th and 25th are marathons, July seems unavoidable.

Many years, they slap some Mondays on the calendar for issuing opinions, IIRC. But at this point, we are indeed getting close to July.

I'm wearing a soccer shirt in national colors today. Because I got it for free and it was on top of the clean laundry pile. I couldn't give less of a damn about spectator sports.

I always, even from my very first memories of watching sports on television with grandpa, did not get how a team could seriously call itself the national or local team while also importing all their players from every corner of the world. It's always been absurd, and continues to be so.

I particularly don't like it since I feel like the current metagame both curtails the ability of native sons to actually get ahead, and it produces strange incentives for foreign imports where a very small population might manage to ascend through the ranks but there's also a plethora of foreigners who are solely pursuing lottery-ticket type careers exacerbating the amount that they cost to support. Having a popular understanding of life amidst one's recent immigrants that one needs to either be a rapper or an athlete to get anywhere is actively contributing to issues with assimilation.

Just something I feel tiresome since it's World Cup season and inevitably every major Western democracy is getting some variant of 'Don't like foreigners, what about RANDOM AFRICAN who kicked a goal for NATIONAL TEAM' spammed across social and news channels.

first_time.jpg?

Am I the only one who finds it somewhat absurd that the native underclasses of most Western countries are essentially getting kicked out of a rare but real pathway to winning the athleticism lottery and becoming a professional Soccer or whatever-else player?

Well, that's too bad, as their countrymen are more than willing to simp and clap for members of negative value-add minorities, including ones imported to replace them, as long as they wear the right laundry and are good at helping kick a ball into a net.

Hence the progressive and mainstream media interest in sports as a vector of propaganda to status-boost low-achieving minority groups and to get/keep whites simping and clapping for them. If whites will simp and clap for members of low-achieving minority groups to score some fackin goals, purpose this habit of simping and clapping for low-achieving minorities will spill into other areas of life.

Hence the progressive and mainstream media interest in sports as a vector of propaganda to status-boost low-achieving minority groups and to get/keep whites simping and clapping for them. If whites will simp and clap for members of low-achieving minority groups to score some fackin goals, purpose this habit of simping and clapping for low-achieving minorities will spill into other areas of life.

I get the opposite feeling from this type of propaganda. Why is tossing or kicking the ball so important, is this underachieving minority incapable of worthwhile accomplishments in other areas? I can appreciate great physical feats on their own merits.

It does seem much sillier in Europe than in America, where watching giants of African descent play sports has generations of tradition behind it.

Hard disagree on the analogy to non-revenue admin jobs. In practice they are used to distribute societal spoils, but the "could technically be done better" is highly nontrivial. My understanding that the majority of corporate incompetence, mismanagement, inefficiencies lower in the chain, non-functional middle management jobs, dissatisfaction with working conditions especially by the more competent employees, etc, all derive in large part downstream from the incompetencies from these admin jobs. Essentially, the CEO is corruptly stealing from the investors by hiring incompetent admins that he likes rather than running a better business.

I do agree with your position on sports. I don't especially care for most sports, but I've heard some good arguments that they should be forced to be local. The sports teams should partition the country into regions, and you should only qualify to join a sports team if you live in that region and have lived there for a number of years that makes migrating for the purpose of changing sports teams completely infeasible (5-10 years might be sufficient). This is unmeritocratic, however sports have little reason to be a meritocracy, it's not as if someone running 20% faster actually does anything for society. They're there for the entertainment value, but having teams which are actually comprised of your local people is likely to inspire more pride and entertainment and give the fans more investment in their local sports team.

Yes but sticking some random foreigner since they're better at playing the job application game into the admin job slots doesn't seem to correlate with notionally improved performance. Then it creates a series of horrendous incentives where the entire filtering system is riddled. Your Gulf states have a better understanding of what to outsource and what to internalize than most Western ones

These comments are especially rich given that, following the Euro 2020(/1) Final in which England lost to Italy on penalties because every black English player who attempted a penalty kick missed while every white player who attempted a penalty kick scored, the language from the British press was what we now understand to be that proactive kindergarten speak loved by the English* (aka “the Norm Macdonald Joke”) where you ignore the gravitas of the thing that actually happened in order to confront imagined horrors from your enemy camp; specifically about how the black players were beyond criticism because they had already been through so much as black people.

When they’re playing well, you’re wrong for criticizing the problem.

When they’re playing poorly, you’re wrong for criticizing the problem.

It’s simple feminine viewpoint oppression / consensus forming on a society-wide scale.

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*note that one of the currently best-selling plays on the West End is all about what racists and bullies the English are for expecting their national team to score and win (in the play, the day is saved when a female psychologist has a talk therapy session with the team to help them realize it’s not about winning…) Don’t bet on England in this World Cup - many of their current players are characters in the play.

These comments are especially rich given that, following the Euro 2020(/1) Final in which England lost to Italy on penalties because every black English player who attempted a penalty kick missed while every white player who attempted a penalty kick scored,

To anyone familiar with the history of the England team, criticising a team which reached a major tournament final for going out on penalties is either performative fan grousing or idiocy. Southgate's team did well to make a World Cup semi-final and a Euro final. Going out on penalties after a great run is what the best English teams are supposed to do. (Admittedly against Germany or Portugal and not Italy). The fans are just doing their job by grousing about the men who missed spot-kicks. Southgate especially knows this - he has a special place in this story after his Euro 1996 miss.

Part of the idiocy of English fandom is that we consistently think we can win the World Cup, and then feel hard-done-by when we don't. This time England do have a chance based on rankings, betting odds etc. and anything less than a semi-final slot will be a legitimate disappointment, but ex ante at the time Southgate was appointed anyone who suggested that a World Cup semi-final and two European finals would be a bad haul would have been laughed at. The criticism of Southgate for playing dull, negative football is fair, although I think England are in the place of old-school Italy (we aren't good enough to expect wins and beauty, and the fans prefer wins) than old-school Brazil (for whom winning the World Cup while playing ugly football would be a disappointing result). So is the criticism for turning Euro 2024 into a slog given our piss-easy draw. (The only difficult match was the semi against the Dutch).

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