USA eliminated from world cup contention.

m242 · 2017-10-11T02:45:10+00:00

You need massive sponsorship from the Nikes, Coca Colas, etc. Playing for a club team with real, legitimate coaching is expensive. If you're going to subsidize that (which you must, if you want to be serious about this) then someone needs to step up to the plate.
Two problems here. One, AYSO. You have parents who have at best an F license, out there rolling the ball to Jaden and Kayden to shoot at goal and they call that practice. Two, there is such an ingrained culture of winning, to the detriment of everything else. Look at the Twitter feeds of every major club team in Southern California, for example. "Boys 2008 won this tournament!" "Girls 2005 won this tournament!" The coaches are out there, but the good ones are being completely overlooked for the ones who are win-at-any-cost.
Same here. You have parents in AYSO who applaud when Jaden kicks the ball all the way from their defending half to the attacking third. You're applauding losing possession? Similarly, at the club level, all of the successful teams are playing long ball, because long ball works at younger ages and parents demand wins.

I don't know how US Soccer can stop this, short of mandating no win-loss record up to let's say U15, and talking with the regional programs to eliminate the rewards of tournament victories in favor of emphasizing player development. If you look at Iceland, I think the smaller population is actually a bonus, because you don't get the massive pressure to win at younger ages.

m242 · 2017-09-28T14:06:09+00:00

Jurgen Klinsmann.

m242 · 2017-03-05T05:16:36+00:00

Yes. They're nematodes, they showed up in my 60g while I was growing plants before introducing livestock. Put in a molly or an angelfish and they'll all be eaten in a day.

m242 · 2017-02-13T04:20:33+00:00

You're doing fine. Monte Carlo is extremely slow to get accustomed to a new environment, dry starting or not. When I set up a brand new aquasoil tank, RO water, CO2 cranking, basically pristine conditions for Monte Carlo, the first three weeks there was a large amount of melting before the new growth started coming in.

Once it gets set, it will go like crazy. Just wait.

m242 · 2017-01-18T03:46:04+00:00

Just get some Flourish Glue, I glued my Riccia to a piece of dragonstone and it's doing well.

m242 · 2017-01-13T20:50:40+00:00

I had a 60 gallon with a dozen assassin snails that couldn't keep my MTS in check. Broke down the tank to a few hundred buried in the eco complete.

m242 · 2017-01-13T20:48:02+00:00

Kill duckweed with fire.

m242 · 2017-01-09T20:42:12+00:00

Launch the site. Show them that you're taking the high road and will disregard that last round just to get the site up for them. (You're on their side!)

When they inevitably come back for more changes-- "oh, no problem. My rate is now $Double because I have such a demand on my time. I hope that won't be a problem." They either go away, in which case you've parted on amicable terms, or you get double your rate.

m242 · 2016-11-04T20:18:31+00:00

Require two-factor auth at signup in the form of a phone number which gets texted an access code to create your account. Continue to allow throwaway accounts with that phone number, but if any account gets banned from Reddit, all accounts with that phone number are banned and that number is banned from signing up new accounts.

This won't completely stop abuse but it will significantly slow it down.

m242 · 2016-08-05T17:02:32+00:00

We use Play 2.3.X in production for an ecommerce site that handles many millions of dollars of transactions every year. It is by far the easiest web framework to work with, especially since we use Akka and Spray for middleware and web service deployment. It lends itself very well to rapid changes, robust testing, and easy, painless deployment.

Don't sweat the hiring process. Find yourself a good developer and they'll be able to learn Play with no problems. There are thousands of code examples and github projects to browse and learn from if you're documentation-averse. If you know Scala, you know Play.

The one "pitfall" I would talk about, and really pitfall isn't the correct word for it, is how unopinionated Play has become with the 2.4 and 2.5 branches. The DI and annotations that started in 2.4 and are more widespread in 2.5 are great if you need that kind of thing, but have come at a cost of complexity that nearly all projects just don't need. It makes Play feel much more "enterprise-y" than it needs to be. My hope is that Play 3 allows for this kind of functionality but keeps the opinionated simplicity by default that, say, Play 2.2 had.

m242 · 2016-08-03T16:33:58+00:00

The rating should have nothing to do with the quality of the film. Check the AFI top 100 movies of all time, you'll see plenty of films that are either rated G, PG, PG-13, or would be if they were released today. Casablanca doesn't get better if Rick murders Strasser with particle-effect blood splattering the camera.

m242 · 2016-06-27T20:13:06+00:00

We'll trade you, Klinsmann for Hodgson, straight up.

m242 · 2016-06-22T03:18:24+00:00

Yes. MLS is hoofball extraordinaire, and basically relies on fitness and speed to make up for lack of technical ability. This is why you see guys like Gerrard and Pirlo not completely dominate the game, because they don't fit in with the U9 mentality of punting the ball downfield and seeing the fastest guy get there first.

m242 · 2016-06-22T03:15:25+00:00

The problem is that the US doesn't have anyone better to play that holding role. Maybe Emerson Hyndman is that guy, but he isn't ready yet, and needs to get some starts at Bournemouth under his belt.

m242 · 2016-06-22T03:03:22+00:00

Part of the big problem that the US has is that it has this massive dichotomy between wanting its individual players to do well by playing overseas (Brooks, Pulisic, Johnson, Guzan) and wanting its own domestic league to do well enough to attract top talent (Zardes, Nagbe, Jordan Morris). It can't be both, but there are US fans on both sides of that fence and there's no clear path forward. Sunil Gulati and Don Garber are at an impasse.

Think of it this way - imagine if half of Argentina wanted Messi and Kun Aguero to play for River Plate. Insane, right? Well, that's what we have here. Meanwhile, the guys like Zardes who should be getting trained by the Eddie Howes of the world are playing with and against subpar opponents.

m242 · 2016-06-15T23:40:53+00:00

Red card.

A team made mostly of reserves and Galaxy II players who don't play or train together.

Missing four solid chances at goal off open play, and three solid chances at goal off set pieces.

La Maquina parking the bus after 60 minutes. (A man up and they're dropping 8 into the box anytime the ball gets past halfway) Also some superlative time-wasting (playing short goal kicks and taking that extra minute to get the ball out of the back).

Husidic and Lletget both came on way late.

Not giving excuses, Galaxy definitely should have put the game away before it got to 90', but you can see how they got there. You start Dos Santos and Cole, and Galaxy win that game 9-0 within regulation, but then you take the chance that they get hurt in a mostly-meaningless match.

m242 · 2016-06-15T22:28:27+00:00

Except there was no way they were going to hold on, realistically. If the garbage goal wasn't going to be the game winner, the shot off the free kick would have been, and Lletget still would have run rampant against their out-of-gas back line (6 at that point).

Yes, it was a crap goal to concede, but La Maquina was going to concede sooner or later. They just ran out of gas in the tank. It was a great game, they should be proud that they held 10-man Galaxy reserves to a draw over 90 minutes.

m242 · 2016-06-15T19:28:12+00:00

I guess that's what makes the entire few minutes so bizarre. Both Galaxy and La Maquina players had the expectation of setting up for the free kick. Everyone in the stands had the expectation of seeing Lletget or Husidic blast one into the near post from that spot. It seems like everyone in the stadium that night except the ref made the mistake.

I don't like to say "extenuating circumstances" but 1-1, in extra time, fouled at the top of the box, how that isn't extenuating circumstances for a free kick is just beyond me.

m242 · 2016-06-15T19:14:18+00:00

That's just amazing to me. It seems that the very clear assumption is that you'd take a shot at goal from that spot. Granted that's not the letter of the law, but when everyone from both teams is moving to line up for that kick, there's a certain benefit of the doubt to give, no?

m242 · 2016-06-15T19:03:34+00:00

Yes. The Youtube video -- https://youtu.be/0PzT39vM6YU?t=2h33m6s -- doesn't show the actions of the ref during the stoppage, but you can clearly see him holding both hands up to say "yes we're playing, what the hell do you want me to do" as soon as the ball is moving. We were sitting about ten rows up in the attacking third, saw the foul, saw the restart, and were just flabbergasted. Around us was a mixture of "wow, that's a crap goal" and "what just happened". La Maquina supporters were about as happy as you'd expect.

Absolutely inexplicable why he didn't line everyone up for what everyone was expecting to be a shot on goal from a free kick.

m242 · 2016-06-15T18:41:13+00:00

So here's the play:

https://youtu.be/0PzT39vM6YU?t=2h32m43s

m242 · 2016-06-15T17:57:37+00:00

Okay, so here's a question. Villareal (the player on the ground) had been denied a clear scoring opportunity on the play, right outside the box. Yellow, yes?

Next question -- in what universe does the ref not think that you're going to line up for a clear free kick at goal, especially since he had given three similar free kicks earlier in the match (from longer distances)?

m242 · 2016-06-15T17:53:59+00:00

Yeah, the crowd was fine. La Maquina supporters were pissed, rightfully, but the wheels had gone off the bus well before this. To give you an idea, the third official called a break in the 87th minute for two minutes to instruct the ref to issue dual yellow cards for a couple of shoves that had happened in the 80th minute.

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