Here’s the first US goal of the Women’s World Cup. I didn’t get to watch it live, which breaks my heart.
The US went on to score 12 more goals in that match. Alex Morgan scored five, already making her a shoe-in for the golden boot award (pun not intended, then later very much intended).
There’s no dodging this: beating a team 13-0 is disrespectful. It’s cold-blooded murder. The talent gap between the US and Thailand is more of a talent Marianas Trench. Thailand is one of the weakest teams in the field, appearing in only their second World Cup, and their players all play for small women’s teams in Thailand (except for one goalkeeper attending college in the US). So I feel a little bad about it!
On the other hand: Forget Sportsmanship and Appreciate the Dominance of the USWNT Dream Team. Blowouts happen often in international sports. The 1992 US basketball team beat Angola 116-48. The 2015 US rugby team lost 64-0 to South Africa. This shit happens, so… (gestures to Shea Serrano, Arbiter of Disrespectful Dunks)
Is this newsletter going to be all soccer news now? Nahhh, just a little. Soccer is maybe the best thing we’ve got going right now (not counting the men’s team… yeesh).
Only 60 Years of Farming Left If Soil Degradation Continues (Scientific American)
DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMSelf-care is the new opiate of the masses (Current Affairs)
“‘Do-it-yourself’ fixes put the burden of improving health on the individual and ignore systemic causes.”Warren Passes Sanders in National Poll for First Time as Biden Tells 13-Year-Old to Watch Out for Boys Creeping On Her (Slate)
Headline of the year so far. I think Warren and Harris will see their stock rise even farther after the debates. They know how to win a room.Ava DuVernay's 'When They See Us' Is the Story of America (Gothamist)
Landmark Deal Reached on Rent Protections for Tenants in N.Y. (NYT)
This is huge for New York renters. These are the kind of tenant protections that cities all over the country need to have on the books. The rent is still too damn high, but this helps.House Democrats Hold Trump Officials in Contempt for Withholding Census Documents (Mother Jones)
The census citizenship question drama takes another turn, with one more White House official being held in contempt. This newsletter’s official position is that adding a citizenship question to the US Census is a racist attempt to game the results for future electoral advantage. Hopefully the Supreme Court agrees (I’m not very optimistic on that).How to Draw a Horse (New Yorker)
A delightful comic by Emma Hunsinger. “Horses are a known enemy of artists.”Google Made $4.7 Billion From the News Industry in 2018, Study Says (NYT)
“Two giant companies—Alphabet, which is Google’s parent, and Facebook—are major distributors for news publishers. The two of them ferry more than 80 percent of external traffic to various sites. That is a far cry from the analog days, when media barons controlled how their publications reached the public and collected all the ad income they generated. But Google and Facebook don’t steer news consumers to news sites out of altruism. Rather, their middleman role allows them to take a huge proportion of online ad revenue. As a result, legacy news outlets have lost a crucial source of income over the last couple of decades, which has led them in most cases to shrink or disappear.”‘Pain is Weakness Leaving the Body’ and Other Lies I’ve Been Told: A Reading List on Mental Health and Sport (Longreads)
xoxo