How long ago was 2019? This article being written in December 2022, you, an average person, probably says “three years ago, of course.” And if you’re a joker, or an especially weird pedant with a penchant for arguing, you might point to the fact that we are just a few days away from 2023 and reply to the normal person with “it’s closer to 4 years ago, and that’s a fact!” But both of you would be wrong. 2019 was in fact 15 years ago and the reason it was 15 years ago is because the speed of change in the world has quickened over the last three years and our collective stress from this has aged us 15 years.
Look at what’s happened in just the last 24 hours (December 15-16, 2022):
-Disgraced former President Donald Trump told everyone that the world needed superheroes now more than ever and that he had a huge announcement to make. The announcement turned out to be so-called “digital trading card NFTs” with Trump’s sort of likeness on them. For a mere $100, his fans could buy a digital picture of him wearing a superman like suit, an astronaut suit, and so on. Just in time for Christmas, he announced, after calling himself the greatest President ever, better than Lincoln and Washington.
-Disgraced former celebrity Elon Musk told everyone he was a free speech absolutist, going so far as to reinstate accounts for Trump and other known liars, doxxers, and hate-speech mongers, and then suddenly changed the ToS on Twitter (which he does all the time) and banned a large number of journalists who had been reporting on him and twitter (along with two openly liberal reporters who did not cover him specifically, nor violate the new “doxxing” policy) for supposedly posting information from a web site which reports on publicly available information on his and his family’s airplanes. He has also banned links to Mastodon, a twitter competitor, and the main Mastodon accounts. Many countries are considering sanctions, much of the press corps are considering withdrawing reporters from Twitter, and Musk’s Tesla has lost huge value in its stock as investors continue to worry about his increasingly erratic behavior.
-And FIFA announced today that they are forming a Super League of their own, a 32 team FIFA Club World Cup starting in 2025. It was part of a rambling and hostile speech by FIFA head Gianni Infantino where he defended Qatar, announced a host of wild new competitions for men and women (including another men’s club competition called the FIFA World Series), and announced record profits for FIFA of over 7bn, more than 1bn more than the previous World Cup. He also projected profits for the 2026 World Cup to reap more than 11bn.
Now, try to tell me that this one day hasn’t aged us all 3 years.
I’m not a huge Twitter user, but it was sometimes useful to see things in semi-realtime. But Musk is just going further and further to making it his own version of Trump’s Truth Social. So yesterday was the last straw. Deactivated my account.
Hopefully the Club World Cup expansion dies on the vine as the big federations/leagues push back against that many more matches. Starting to think the players should unionize.
And yes, 15 years sounds about right.
Stomach churning events for sure and it sure feels like I’ve aged 15 years in the last 4.
Trump’s digital trading cards for…a hundred bucks a pop? There are no words in vocabulary to even start. Surely clueless people run out of money at some point?
We feel compelled to use all social media channels for commercial purposes, for my band and for my music, or so “my people” tell me. ButI have closed my personal account, my 1-Nil account, and my Facebook. I’m happier ands less stressed now.
Infantfool is like a tin pot dictator, drunk with his own power while on the cusp of a second unopposed (HOW is that possible????) term.
His claim that he’s run the “best World Cup ever” while simply facilitating an epic sports wash makes me ashamed to have enjoyed it so much. The football itself is always going to be good – a knockout completion to be crowned the world’s best couldn’t be otherwise – but it could also, and ought, as a result, be so much more a power for good and for change.
It wasn’t in Russia and hasn’t been in Qatar and seems unlikely to ever be under Infantidiot’s deluded leadership.
Great sporting spectacles can brainwash us all – I’m with Solbakken on the people who fail to call it out.
Not a fan of either FIFA or the behavior of the Qatari govt. So feeling a little conflicted.
But man, that was a heck of a final, and a good tournament overall.
France was awful for the whole first half. Dembele in particular played about as bad as I’ve seen a player be in a half of any match. And it didn’t initially look like Deschamps pulling Giroud was the right decision either. But Argentina taking out Di Maria and Deschamps second round of subs changed the match. From there on, it was outstanding.
Good to see Messi getting a trophy to wind up his international career. And full credit to Martinez for backing up his trash talking with some outstanding saves, in particular the one with just a couple minutes left in extra time.