u/wial

They're also divorced from reality and our common humanity at a fundamental level. Their whole way of being is some kind of self-reinforcing performative authoritarian millenarian hallucination.

A simple cure would be to set some clear standards for simple factualness for anything approaching news, including religious media, with stiff enforced penalties for violations. Forced adherence to the truth will set us free from almost all their hate and lies.

Not to mention Ferran's winning goal came as a result of Lamine's brilliant cross-field pass to Nico. That was Iniesta-level.

I'm just so tired of him.

I asked a lama what we should do if, as current trends indicate, this planet will become unlivable in a few short years. Should we strive to be reborn someplace less close to destruction? I added a Zen teacher had once said it's more like that movie Groundhog Day -- it's our job to save the planet we're on and we'll keep coming back to such planets until we finally get it right. I mentioned how in the the historical Buddha holds aegis over the "trichiliocosm", made of a billion world systems, found in all branches of Buddhism.

He replied that it is possible to migrate to another world system, but extremely difficult, so we should do all we can to keep this one going.

In that sense, this is a prison planet, just due to how hard it is to get to the next one over, within the Buddhist and western-physics cosmologies.

As others have said, and per at least Tibetan doctrine, we're incredibly lucky to be born human not to mention humans who have had contact with dharma, and we should emphasize that positive view, as I'm sure you'd agree. We should thank our lucky stars!

Their definition of freedom is the freedom to do whatever they want however much it hurts the defenseless and unfortunate. The polar opposite of the christianity they espouse, but we all contain contradictions, right?

Put another way, pedophilia is the moral equivalent of their right to keep aggressive large dogs off leash in populated areas. It's just American. And to be fair, given American history (read Cormac McCarthy), it's pretty mild compared with the indiscriminate scalp hunting and so on their recent ancestors practiced.

The automated google chrome translation is much easier to read and understand:

" 'You will say' The English footballer is delighted with the reception he has received from the Barça fans and says he wants to return the favor with good football.

Anthony Gordon, one of Barça's summer signings RAC1

Interviews - Anthony Gordon: "I didn't believe Barça wanted to sign me, it's a dream" Anthony Gordon has been one of the pleasant surprises of this start to the season. Few knew him when Barça made his signing official and many did not understand that the club paid 70 million euros for his signing. When they have seen him in action they have begun to understand. And he has begun to enjoy integrating into a city, a club and a team that make him feel like he is on a cloud. In fact, he is amazed by the quality of his teammates and the support of the Barça fans. "Antoniu", as some have called him, is so integrated that he has already started to speak Catalan . He spoke about all of this in an interesting interview on Tu diràs with Aleix Parisé .

Gordon explains how his landing at Can Barça is going: "It's been going really well, I love being here. It's still very new. I've only been here a month. But I feel... I feel at home ," he explains with a smile on his lips. He even details the words he already says in Catalan: "Very good!", "How are you?", "good morning and good night"... And obviously "Long live Barça!" He also says that he already eats pa amb tomàquet and that he loves Passeig de Gràcia. Another Catalan.

Anthony Gordon appreciates the welcome from the Barça fans: "I already feel at home" Quique García / EFE The former Newcastle player assures that he did not expect such a warm reception from the Camp Nou: "No, really. That a fan base that has applauded footballers like Messi, Ronaldinho, Xavi or Iniesta now chants my name is something that I am very grateful for. I am trying to do my best to return that affection every time I put on my shirt," assures the winger. Gordon claims to be surprised by the humility of the Barça dressing room and reveals that the player who has surprised him the most is Pedri In this conversation with Aleix Parisé, Gordon also reveals how the process that led him to sign for Barça was . At first he didn't pay much attention when his agents told him about the interest of the Blaugrana club. Until " I spoke on the phone with Hansi Flick and then I understood that things were serious, so I started to get really excited. But, to be honest, it could have been anyone on that call and I would have come to Barça". A sample of how excited he was with this possibility of wearing the Blaugrana. Later he explained that he got his first Blaugrana shirt when he was six or seven years old and that his idol had always been Leo Messi . The excitement comes from afar. 

He talked a lot about this possibility of coming to Barcelona with a compatriot who had already experienced it, Marcus Rashford , who during the World Cup "spoke very well about the club. He told me the areas where I could live. He told me about the squad, the players. So I'm very grateful to him," concludes the Englishman.  They are the best in the world in their positions and you would never think it when you meet them. Everyone is so humble Anthony Gordon Barça player A Gordon who still remembers the Champions League duel with Newcastle that pitted him against Barça last season. He amazed with his football: "I had never faced anyone who could control the game like they did in that match. And, to be honest, you had the two best players in the world in that, with Pedri and Frenkie de Jong ," recalls Gordon.

The Canarian is the player who has surprised him the most. Lamine Yamal already assumed quality, but " Pedri doesn't stand out for his speed or physique. He's not particularly big or strong. But he's extraordinary. He has spectacular technical quality," says a dazzled Gordon. He has also been surprised by the humility of a dressing room with so many stars: " They are the best in the world in their positions and you would never think it when you meet them . Everyone is so humble..." he assures.

Anthony Gordon faced Barça last year with Newcastle EFE / Alejandro García He admits that he wants to score and that at Ciutat de Valencia he finished a point frustrated by not doing so, but says that he is generous in nature as he showed in Elche by giving a goal to Fermín . He admits that "sometimes I should shoot and I always try to pass. But as I said, that's my personality." Barça's number 17 is optimistic about the season ahead and makes his wish very clear in Marta Ramon's quiz: " To win many titles with Barça! ". Hopefully, Antoniu. Hopefully.

"

I'd like to see that forklift operator who was witnessed hitting columns at the Kennedy Center do some time.

To be fair we're going to be destroying any and all monuments to him as soon as the opportunity affords.

I've seen this re Barça before and experienced it myself although I know many don't consider it a factor: the contrast between sunlight and shadow can be disorienting. Maybe it affects Barça disproportionately because normally they coordinate so well. That, and whatever the groundskeepers did to the pitch to further throw them off, plus the unexpected lineup. Flick's Barça especially Pedri has a great reputation for improvisation, but there may be limits to their resilience in unexpected conditions. Very strong hurricanes tend to wobble more easily.

Having said all that, they were painful to watch today, with rare exceptions. What happened Xavi Espart? We saw him take a couple of hard knocks early on -- that plus the giddiness after his first goal might have affected him. Maybe Levante had him in their sights as a potential weak link.

Also I'm a bit worried about Gordon. He doesn't look happy anymore. Maybe he's mad he hasn't scored yet. It can't be at his teammates who have been feeding him good balls. He has a long reputation for a strange kind of mentality issue -- a very strong mentality but he can grow dissatisfied with his teammates and can lose his temper, and has been accused of selfishness. So far as the ESPN announcers remarked he's been almost too altruistic at Barça so far, so I worry he's frustrating himself by trying too hard to erase old black marks.

Also after the prior game I'd stopped worrying about an impedance mismatch between Pedri and Rodri but today we saw Pedri flub passes and no sign he was governing the pace of play the way he usually does. They're making confident sounds in interviews but it's crucial they come to some kind of communion and agreed boundaries of responsibilities, although that might be hard since so much depends on vibe and aura at that level. Can Pedri govern tempo further forward, with both main captains in the front line already?

A lot to sort out but the upside is tremendous of course.

Oh is that why Trump posed in the dump truck during the 2024 campaign? I thought he was just trying to pretend he was with working class Americans, but of course, it was yet another racist dog whistle, wasn't it.

Now Rodri is holding the back Pedri is going to score a respectable number of goals of his own and the whole attack will be energized even more than it is already by his passing.

Olmo and Gordon are going to find some borderline artistic ways of combining, e.g. multiple backheels, as they grow accustomed to their mutual positioning, also much to the benefit of the other players quick enough to participate. We have already seen Olmo's combinations with Lamine but I think we haven't seen nothing yet, as the old song goes. And Raphinha will ascend to godhood.

We may see matches reminiscent of the great CL final against Man U but we won't just pass our unlucky opponent to death, we'll slice them to ribbons.

Shouldn't he be disbarred for this level of bad faith dishonesty?

Repukes and repugnicans are old classics.

That's my worry as well -- Pedri is at his best when he's the whole team's metronome like he was Sunday, and he was very much was not at his best in the WC with Rodri. Something is going to have to give. Pedri played very well with FDJ, and he did grow up playing with his brother, so it's not like he can't be part of a duo, but we saw what happened in the WC. Rodri's influence may overpower Pedri's and thus deprive the team of one of their greatest potentialities. I'll just have to keep repeating "Busquets...Xavi...Iniesta" to myself and hold a positive vision of what could be possible.

Funny it somehow seems incomplete without Donald Trump on the side... oh wait is that him?

[ Removed by Reddit ]

Neymar escaping from Lewandowski's shadow.

but I think that it’s telling that instead of talking about what he wants to do to make the lives of Michiganders better, he takes personal insults at me.

El-Sayed wrote a book about how to make the lives of Michiganders and all of us better, he's literally an expert on the subject. Meanwhile, here's what America's great actual hillbilly poet Jesse Welles has to say about "Vance" or whatever his name is:

I got me a red bulldog, technocratic

Bootstrap-tugging buddy

He wrote an elegy for a people he don't know

And it ain't funny

Certainly anyone incapable of recognizing genocide when it's staring them in the face is not a decent person, nor is anyone who still clings to the idea freedom for business to exploit and pillage is the same as human freedom from exploitation and the right of nature to protection (i.e. neoliberalism). Sure we need trade networks especially as an antidote to wars caused by military alliances, but it's indecent to do that at the expense of global poor. It's indecent to do geopolitics without reference to the accelerating climate emergency. Any article about oil prices that ignores that growing tsunami on the horizon is no people than people going out to gather flipping fish because the tide went out at an unexpected time.

Bernie gets all this stuff. So many politicians don't, blue MAGA as you say, at best, but decent people do. Do we have the right to ask for less in our leaders, given what Bernie through a lifetime of unrelenting effort has shown to be possible?

More importantly we need decent people to vote for.

More importantly we need decent people to vote for.

Can we find Congress in contempt of America?

Since I haven't seen it mentioned here yet, the heart of Barça is its midfield. During the glory days, it was composed of three genius-level players: Xavi, Iniesta, and Busquets. They are why Messi was able to score so many goals. Iniesta in particular was amazing to watch. Many footballers play chess, and some like Harry Kane even get decent Elo ratings. I don't know if Iniesta does, but if he does he'd be a master. He could see so many passes ahead, and because he could, everyone else could play to their maximum potential knowing thanks to Iniesta the ball would get to them one way or the other in an incredibly advantageous way. Plus he could dribble like an angel.

On the current squad Pedri is of that quality although his influence is more as a conductor or controller than a general or strategist. Like Xavi you can't get the ball off him, and when the spirit moves him he can set the whole game on fire with a savage forward run.

Although not a midfielder our superstar Lamine Yamal has that passing foresight Iniesta did, which you can see from an extended highlight of the WC winning goal: he teed up Pedro Porro's pass to Nico just so. It reminded me so much of Iniesta's backheel that started the sequence culminating in Iniesta's own winning shot in the 2010 WC.

The point being, you'll witness extraordinary beauty and brilliance and heroism here in your newfound home. Watch the playmakers. Watch the weighted passes, they can be better than the actual shots. Cubarsí too can be extraordinary in that regard, as can many of them.

He's bad for morale and revenue though, at least among the sizeable portion of Barça's fanbase that doesn't like Franco or Trump. People have a right to their opinions but no one has a right to be fascist and Barça has a right not to tolerate it. If they do, enough people may leave that Ferran may prove to be a huge financial liability. Of course I thought ICE would cause empty stadiums in the WC, so who knows.

To add: the "Again" in MAGA is what makes it so toxic, because it means they think the election of Barack Obama destroyed what was good about America, along with feminism, racial inclusion, DEI (a policy in government and business to encourage Diversity, Equality and Inclusion). So MAGA is racist and not just racist. Fascism embraces "kitsch" which has been defined as a world in which people don't have anuses -- everything is safe and tidy and dutiful daughters never go off with people of color. MAGA wants do go back to an idealized time like what they imagine the 1950s in America to be, when America was rich, women were subjugated, blacks were lynched, cars had wings and so on.

Meanwhile Ferran's goal was set up by a perfectly weighted pass from an immigrant kid from Spain's equivalent of the projects (housing set up with good intentions in America replacing impoverished neighborhoods that turned into living hells).

A lot of fascists are in denial about their racism. A leading Nazi famously said "some of my best friends are jews". How Ferran rationalizes getting hugged by Lamine is an open question. How he rationalizes accepting psychological help is another, since fascists usually deny having such weaknesses. E.g. Nazis drew a line of swastikas up to Sigmund Freud's door in Vienna in the '30s, driving him from the country.

That Ferran calls himself "the Shark" is also interesting since Nazi fighter planes were sometimes decorated to look like sharks -- but this might just be a coincidence or parallel evolution. Part of fascism is the idea you have to be brutal to ensure a safe secure society. Sympathy and empathy are seen as weak left-wing values.

Anyway, sell him while his value holds. He's damaged goods re Barça at this point.