Back in June, I traveled with my family to Atlanta to attend a World Cup game.
FIFA is, without a doubt, one of the most corrupt organizations on the planet. But as a soccer fan, the World Cup is a huge deal and is always enjoyable. So, I set my morals briefly aside and secured 4 tickets (for me, my dad, my son and my brother) as this could be a once in a lifetime opportunity to attend.
Rather than go through the entire shitty FIFA ticketing process, once the dates and venues for the games were announced, I bought my tickets “blind” through Stub Hub. I had no idea where my exact seats were, and certainly no idea on who the teams were going to be, but since I knew how much a hassle getting tickets were going to be, I figured that ANY game at the World Cup is better than none, and I knew I would regret it if I didn’t go. I knew the Group that I was going to get
I watched the group draw when it happened (a terrible “show” with none other than Donald Trump in attendance) in December 2025 and followed the qualifiers to see who would make it. Colombia, Portugal, Uzbekistan were drawn in automatically, with three other teams (New Caledonia, Jamaica and Democratic Republic of Congo) competing for the last spot. Congo ended up winning and the Group stage was set.
When the matches were announced, I hoped for Colombia vs. Portugal, or either of those teams against one of the other two, as both as well known soccer countries. Sadly, the draw was not in my favor and I ended up with a match between Uzbekistan vs. Congo, in the last game of the Group.
Uzbekistan had already been eliminated from moving onto the knockout round, but Congo - with a win - could secure a 3rd place spot and move on. Our seats ended up being in the highest deck, right behind a goal, but as my brother put it (who became a soccer convert after attending), having such a high up seat let us watch plays develop, to which I totally agreed.
After a waived off, offside goal by Congo, Uzbekistan scored first and went into half time with a 1-0 lead. In the second half though, Congo came roaring back and ended up winning 3-1. The ironic part about my seats was that even though it was so high up, all 4 goals scored were in the goal we were above, so we got to see all of the best parts of the game right there and in person.
Despite being two smaller, non-soccer powerhouse countries, the venue was almost sold out and the fans were excited and electric. There were many people like me, who had no rooting interest for either side, but it became clear that the “neutrals” heavily started to support Congo. I saw many people wearing the Congo jersey or wearing a Congo scarf who, at least based on their race, likely had no connection to Congo, as it is a primarily Black country.
The overall experience of the World Cup, putting all of the politics of the world and FIFA and the prices and all of that aside, was one of joy and pride. People gathered together to watch the beautiful game, and for those wonderful 90 minutes, all of the other noise and politics and everything else that roils this country and the world disappeared. After the match, Congo fans (and newly adopted Congo fans) were dancing and celebrating through the concourses, filming each other and laughing and high fiving and really just showing what is great about sports, how it can unify people from all walks of life and just enjoy a simple game, played by some of the best humans in the world.
I’m so glad I got to go to experience this, to share it with my son and brother and dad, and don’t regret a single penny spent, recognizing how fortunate I was to be able to afford to go of course.
I was reading Mark Zuckerberg’s AI treatise and the thing that I can’t get over with all of the people who are so in love with AI is the general loss of humanity that embracing AI brings:
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AI makes us more productive - Great, so we offload tasks to a robot that is sometimes right, sometimes not. And what do we do with that “extra” time? More work! So we should embrace AI because it lets us do MORE work?
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AI leads to new breakthroughs - If that’s the case, where are they? Is cancer cured or world hunger solved? No, of course not. At it’s best, AI is good at organizing existing content, not making new things. It might find patterns but those patterns don’t lead to many positive outcomes, at least not at the sheer cost of throwing AI at every possible possible.
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AI will lead to more income equality - Yeah, this one is rich. Aside from the biggest AI companies being controlled by a smaller group of people, the whole idea of “disbursement” of AI wealth is a joke. Anyone who REALLY believes that these companies will just hand out money to improve the world, just for the goodness of humanity, is out of their mind. We are hoarding creatures, always looking out for our own, and anything that threatens that goes against the core tenant of who we are in our lizard brains. If handing out money was even possible in the way the AI folks talk about it, we would have done it already.
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AI can help make us smarter - Sure, it might be good for answering a question about how to do something. But part of learning is making those pathways in your brain to remember how something is done or the “why” in something, that’s what skill building is. If the text is just regurgitated to you, you don’t learn anything and build those skills, you just memorize what you need and move on.
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AI helps us be more creative with our hobbies - This is the one that is the most soul sucking to me. The whole point of doing a hobby is to DO IT, to get better at it and learn and improvise. If we offload that to something else, we don’t gain anything as a person, we just check off things on a list to say that we did them, thereby sucking the joy of learning out of something that we previously enjoyed doing. Using AI to learn things doesn’t teach us skills, it deskills us by making things “easier”
So yeah, sorry Mark, AI is not better for humanity in any way shape or form.
My son starts high school this week, a bizarre sentence to type that I’m sure any parent can relate to. It felt like just yesterday I was dropping him off for pre-K and now here he is, taking the first step on the last step towards adulthood.
High school wasn’t great for me - I was small, quiet and most of my friends from middle school went to a different high school than I did, meaning starting over at a much bigger place with much different people and for the first couple of years it was pretty rough. Thankfully I found some stuff that I was interested in and ended up making a few lifelong friends in the process. But naturally, I worry about how things will go for my son, even though I have no reason to.
I’ve realized that being a parent is all about milestones. There are a lot when kids are born/little and gradually they get further apart, but it has always caught me off guard when they pop up, because it makes you look both back and forward as to where not only your child’s life is going, but also yours as well. And of course starting his next phase of life is important, and I’m excited for him, but it’s also bittersweet because it’s closer to him not being a kid, and me getting closer towards the latter stages of my life as well.
In the end I know he’s going to do great and be successful and hopefully continue on a path to happiness, because I’ve taken all of these years and steps to help him do just that. But I’ll always mark these milestones with a bit of a sigh at the passage of things, even as I’m smiling along with him.
I like to spend my weekend afternoons watching TV, and lord knows I have enough streaming services (like most people) to be able to do that. Some I pay for due to just the volume of stuff to watch and/or for the kids (Netflix, Disney+), some I have through a swap with family members (my Paramount + for my parents HBO Max) and some just because I got a good deal (Peacock) and the comfort food they provide. But pound for pound, I think that the absolute best service when it comes to the quality of the stuff out there, Apple TV can’t be beat. It’s like HBO of the early 2000s, with no ads or tracking, which I highly appreciate.
So I’ve spent the past summer watching some of the new, great stuff on Apple TV and here are the ones that stood out:
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Widow’s Bay - This one sorta came out of nowhere and is way way better than it has any right to be. Described as a “horror comedy” and starring Matthew Rhys (of The Americans fame, one of the best shows in the last 15 years), it’s all about a small Northeastern coastal town where strange, creepy and bizarre things happen. It’s heavy on the dark humor and lighter on actual horror and gore (though plenty creepy), each episode is under an hour and thought each one has a sort of “theme”, they all build to a bigger storyline about the horrors of the island, leaving lots unexplained. Think Stephen King meets Lost meets…well, I can’t think of anything else that is like this. If you can handle some jump scares and a little bit of blood or “thematic elements” then this is a must watch.
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Margo’s Got Money Troubles - Based on a book of the same name, it follows a young woman starting college named Margo (Elle Fanning) who falls for her creepy literary professor, gets knocked up and then has to deal with the ramifications of being a single mother and the challenges that brings in America today, eventually turning to OnlyFans as a way to make ends meet. It offers a lot of social commentary on how our society fails and shuns women who don’t follow their “expected” path, and features amazing performances from her selfish and terrible mother Michelle Pfeiffer who went through the same situation herself with Margo and having to raise her solo, and Nick Offerman as her father, a former professional wrestler struggling to stay sober. Not exactly light topic fare but the show has a lot of heart and humor and like I said, poignant social commentary that makes it worth checking out.
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Star City - A spin-off of the soapy Apple TV launch show For All Mankind (an alternate reality in which Russia got to the moon first), but this time the entire story is told from the Russian perspective. It’s not a rehash of For All Mankind but instead more of a thriller of the awfulness of trying to be innovative and ground breaking in science under the overbearing and stifling, mistrusting rule of the USSR. Hopefully this one gets renewed, because it’s plot lines offer almost limitless possibilities navigating the world of espionage and science.
What are you watching these days?
I spend most of my driving time or when I’m outside doing yardwork listening to podcasts, so I thought it might be worth sharing what is on my weekly rotation. I use Pocket Casts to listen, as I paid for it years ago to get the browser player version, and despite trying some other apps, keep coming back to it as my go to just put something on and listen. On to the podcasts!
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404 Media Podcast - A journalist founded and run independent tech podcast, they break stories every week about surveillance, cyber security, tech and politics and much more. As a paying member of 404 Media, I enjoy their summaries and behind the scenes stories on the stories they publish.
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Lore - One of the original podcasts to break through, the “Lore” comes from folklore, and every week is a new episode about something historical related to folklore from around the world. Often with a creepy bent (think ghosts, witches, hauntings, etc) it never delves into horror territory but is always a fun listen, especially since they alternate between stories based on history and stories based on legends.
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Pod Save America - Look, I’m unabashedly liberal, being highly progressive about just about everything in the US political sphere, and PSA gives good breakdowns and highly opinionated takes on the shit show that is the US political system right now 3x a week. They can be a bit “bro” ish and obviously when the world is on fire, the topics can be depressing, but I still try to listen as much as I can to keep up my media diet.
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Shop Talk Show - Run by Chris Coyier and Dave Rupert, two legends in the front end developer sphere, this one is hit or miss for me in terms of if I listen to it every week or not. It’s not that they aren’t engaging or interesting, it just that some episodes veer into deeper programming content than I enjoy listening to, and their slanting slightly towards AI is also not great when I’m actively trying to avoid it as much as possible. Still, worth a listen to if you are in front end development or web development in general!
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Smartless - A weekly celebrity interview, hosted by Jason Bateman, Will Arnett and Sean Hayes, it’s actually not only entertaining but funny and for three “not smart” celebrities, they ask interesting questions and if you keep up with movies or tv, have some of the best guests around. This one is also a maybe-skip, just depending on the guest.
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The Solid Verbal - My first love, sports wise, is college football and Dan and Ty have been doing this podcast since 2007, and I’ve been a listener for almost that long. Just two friends who love the sport, they break down the games every week, do deep dives into teams and offer a smart and enjoyable way to listen to people talk about college football, especially away from ESPN or any bigger outlets. If you’re a CFB fan, highly recommend, and they are actually the only podcast I am a paying subscriber to, so I’m happy to support them.
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Unexplainable - A Vox podcasts, a rotating crop of hosts talk to scientists and academics 2x a week about, well, the unexplainable things to science in our world. They bring questions like any normal person would, like “What does silence actually sound like?” or “How do birds know how to migrate and why is it because of the Earth’s magnetic field?” that are educational without being too academic
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Welcome To Nightvale - This is one of the hardest podcasts to explain, even though it’s probably one of the oldest and still running podcasts. It’s essentially a “radio” program where the DJ discusses all of the weird and strange things happening in a small desert town called Nightvale, such demonic librarians, dangerous dog parks, the Woman with No Face, Deb the sentient patch of haze and so so much more. The show is essentially one really long running story dating back over 15 years at this point, but you can jump in at any point and still enjoy it. Always make sure to listen to “the weather”, where every week they feature a song from an unknown indie band.
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Version History - From The Verge, each week they look at one gadget and delve into the history of it, what makes it good (or bad), and whether it affected tech and gadgets enough to make it into their (totally arbitrary) “Hall of Fame”. Who knew a deep dive about Furby could be so entertaining?
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You Must Remember This - Currently on hiatus, if you love the history of movies (think pre-2000) and old Hollywood, the scandals and the rise and fall of some of Hollywood’s most legendary stars, I can’t recommend this podcast enough. Each “season” breaks down a topic, such as the Hollywood Blacklist, or Sex in the 90s, or Dead Blondes (famous blonde actresses who met an untimely depth) in deeply researched and deeply discussed topics by host/creator Karina Longworth. And since it’s all history, you can jump in with any season and just enjoy the ride. A new season starts in September and given how much work goes into making each of them, I can’t wait to listen!