Germany's discourse around Israel is so broken that it silences Jews in the name of fighting antisemitism. I wrote for @jacobin about how Germany's rhetoric of atonement is being used to bash immigrants- strengthening the right and endangering Jews in DE. jacobin.com/2023/11/germany-…

That Gianni Infantino unilaterally altered the structure of football matches is deserving of so much more anger.

My first USA game was a 2008 friendly vs Argentina I had to leave prom weekend at the jersey shore early to make. As fucked as so much of this World Cup is, it’s still pretty amazing to see the US playing at home. Feels at least as good as a weekend at seaside heights

Der Fußball gehörte einst den Fans. Davon ist heute nichts mehr übrig. Die FIFA prellt Zuschauer, duckt sich vor Trump weg und opfert den Sport dem großen Geld. Die WM 2026 ist kein Fest des Fußballs, sondern seine Versteigerung an den Meistbietenden. jacobin.de/artikel/fussball-…

Tbf dreaming of being on a McDonald’s cup on Ronaldinho’s head is extremely specific

I wrote for @jacobin about the coming World Cup and FIFA and Trump’s bizarre form of sportswashing that focuses solely on enabling grift without bothering to try to improve the US global image

James Dolan invited his friend Donald Trump to watch Game 3. In order to do that, they have to ban the organic, historically joyous parties happening outside MSG for fans who can't afford to be inside. Modern sports in a nutshell

When the U.S. men’s national soccer team plays at home, its most loyal fans traditionally sit right behind a goal to cheer on the team. But when the Americans kick off the World Cup next week, FIFA is seating them in the “nose bleeds,” according to a major U.S. fan group. “These are the worst tickets that I’ve ever seen out of the five World Cups I’ve been to,” American Outlaws President Brian Hexsel says. nbcnews.com/sports/soccer/te…

Exclusive @TheAthleticFC FIFA make last-gasp change to World Cup stadium rules: BANNING fans from bringing refillable plastic bottles, so fans must buy water in stadia As of May, empty bottles permitted so fans could refill amid heat concerns. Not now nytimes.com/athletic/7331461…

Wrote about my favorite Marc Johnson part on QS: quartersnacks.com/2026/05/re…

USMNT star and Brooklyn native Timothy Weah at Zohran Mamdani’s affordable tickets press conference:

In Chemnitz on a diplomatic mission to relocate the massive Karl Marx statue to Rockaway, New Jersey. Negotiations ongoing (a security guard has repeatedly asked me to leave)

Since Marie-Louise Eta became Union Berlin's interim head coach: -Became the first-ever female coach to win a match in Europe's Top 5 Leagues -Got her second win today in dominant fashion in her final match -Ensured Union Berlin's Bundesliga survival What a job she's done 👏

Joe Lim estimates that 90 percent of what you see on the internet is advertising in disguise, and he should know. For three years, Lim ran a company called Floodify, which at its peak operated 65,000 dummy social-media accounts used to drum up attention on behalf of paying clients. The point of this kind of marketing is that nobody is supposed to notice it. But lately, the machinery has started to show. In April, Justin Bieber headlined two consecutive weekends at Coachella. Coachella is the biggest stage in pop music save only for the Super Bowl, the kind of event that in theory generates its own attention. And yet on both weekends, a Discord server writer Lane Brown had been monitoring hosted paid campaigns for Bieber’s Coachella performances, offering clippers — people who are hired to turn a song, trailer, interview, stump speech, or whatever into short, social-media-friendly fragments — as much as a dollar per thousand views. “On social media, popular opinion is being formed, measured, and manipulated all at once, and every signal the platforms produce — a trending song, a backlash, a talking point, the feeling that ‘everybody’ is suddenly talking about the same thing — can now be fabricated by unseen actors with hidden agendas,” writes Brown. “Everybody is doing this now,” Lim says. “And if you’re not, you’re behind.” Brown reports on how the same techniques are now being used to fool people on every app they go to in order to find out what other people think, not just in music but across entertainment, politics, consumer products, and celebrity gossip: nymag.visitlink.me/w6Bu9N

A. lived in Germany since he was 2 months and last year gained German citizenship. Now he’s been stripped of it because of pro-Palestinian Instagram posts, in a disturbing legal case that points to the rise of citizenship-on-probation. My latest @jacobin jacobin.com/2026/05/germany-…

And they said the US has nothing to contribute to football culture

In the shadow of NYC, 'the cradle of American soccer' prepares for the World Cup gothamist.com/news/in-the-sh…

‘American Bagel’ in Berlin. Based on the logo and my experience with German bagels I’m going to go ahead and assume what they serve is significantly more antisemitic than anything happening in die Linke

Berlin’s rampant Americanization has apparently even hit far-left Marxist stands at the main union May Day demonstration