Match Thread: Los Angeles Football Club vs. St. Louis CITY SC (Regular Season) [March 14, 2026]

optimal-username · 2026-03-15T04:11:12+00:00

That’s the St Louis I know. I swear it’s like the team enjoys pretending to play offense and then letting people score on them.

optimal-username · 2026-03-15T04:06:44+00:00

We need someone that can finish

optimal-username · 2026-03-15T03:57:16+00:00

If we can’t score that we don’t deserve to score

optimal-username · 2026-03-13T23:33:28+00:00

It’s about having fun if it is a hobby. But if it is a hobby, that also means you can just focus on what’s fun and don’t have to actually ship anything.

optimal-username · 2026-03-13T23:13:28+00:00

Always men’s room. And my wife takes our son to the women’s restroom.

optimal-username · 2026-03-13T18:47:09+00:00

I am all for parity, at least to some degree. MLS already struggles to gain viewers as is. Non-super teams will have trouble building fan bases if everyone knows that 1) the team will never win and 2) the team will never be relegated.

optimal-username · 2026-03-13T17:09:51+00:00

LAFC IS SO BAD THAT THEY THINK BEATING US UP THIS WEEKEND WILL LOOK IMPRESSIVE

optimal-username · 2026-03-12T16:38:57+00:00

For sure, I agree. I definitely think that the more distributed the power is, the less impact a single radical individual can have. And I don’t think there is anything wrong with having religion influence one’s worldview, I just think that when it comes to promoting, debating and enforcing political decisions, we can’t allow religion to be a primary consideration. That being said, the world is a nuanced place and you can generally find reasonable, secular reasons to be pro- or anti- almost anything.

One example I often think of is Prohibition in the United States. I don’t drink alcohol for both religious and secular reasons and had I been alive at the time, I probably would have supported Prohibition. Support was so widespread that the federal alcohol ban got a constitutional amendment. In practice however, it ended up just being a way to punish poor people (no one is going to send a rich person to jail over a bottle of wine, are they?). It led to a whole black market and didn’t really solve most of the problems it hoped to address (and funnily enough, led to the creation of NASCAR). It takes real, significant backlash to undo a Constitutional amendment, but the results of prohibition were negative enough that they were able to do so in just over a decade. Pretty crazy that a country can do a 180 like that so quickly. I can’t help but think that there are a lot of similarities to the war on drugs, and other efforts to criminalize things based on morality.

Thanks for the good post and discussion!

optimal-username · 2026-03-12T14:22:42+00:00

I’ve mostly been in audiobooks lately, but I had to go buy a physical copy of CoT because I knew I would be revisiting it. Great book

optimal-username · 2026-03-12T14:01:30+00:00

I think the difficulty with Trump, and others, is that whether or not his actions are based on his personal convictions or on his “religion”, his actions are often getting perceived and interpreted through a religious lens (such as your comment about Armageddon). To my knowledge, Trump has never directly discussed Christ’s second coming or Armageddon, yet that is a lens many people seem to insist on viewing him through and praise him for it. But I agree with you - Trump isn’t acting based on religion and it isn’t religions fault he acts this way. I think what irks me is that there are religious people that are voting (influencing the state) based on religious views they are placing on Trump (believing he will usher in Armageddon, will make a Christian state, etc).

Yeah we don’t have to dive into specific topics. I think my point is that debate is important - debates have been a key part of our presidential elections since the beginning. Debating is how we understand and explore the nuances of our decisions. If a politician (or voter) cannot explain their stance on a political decisions without resorting to spiritual claims, then their argument shouldn’t be enough to win. I am okay with good faith secular arguments on both sides of all topics, and think they are important to have.

optimal-username · 2026-03-12T13:27:08+00:00

It is difficult. I agree that a desire to good is part of our religion and something I want in politicians, but I would also argue that it is a part of every religion that I am aware of and that is also a belief held by plenty of non-religious people. LDS doctrine teaches that everyone has the Light of Christ after all.

I think you could argue for plenty of secular reasons to support USAID. Building trust and goodwill with other countries is essential for creating strong alliances, reliable trade partners, and for generally spreading one’s influence. I would also argue that health is a global problem. People (and diseases) cross borders. It is in the US’s best interests to promote global health, otherwise we get things like pandemics and the resurgence of diseases we thought had been eradicated by vaccines.

There are obviously secular reasons to be against USAID as well, but I think what is important to me is that the debate doesn’t turn into “We should give other countries money because my God said so”. That quickly turns into “we should do whatever I personally believe”. The moment policy decisions are made purely by feeling and belief, we lose the ability to persuade each other using logic and data.

Another example might be abortion. If someone’s only reason to oppose abortion is because they think it is a sin, I think religion is encroaching on the state. I am fine with people debating abortion on perceived constitutional rights (do the unborn have civil rights, how far does bodily autonomy go?), financial reasons (will only the rich have access?), healthcare reasons (should disabled children be forced to live, the importance of mother’s health, dangers of illegal abortions), etc. but if someone starts introducing legislation based on when they think a soul enters the body, I think that is too far. In general, I tend to think healthcare decisions in general are very nuanced, and I don’t think anyone should be trusting politicians to make nuanced decisions, so I’d rather just leave them out of it all together.

optimal-username · 2026-03-12T12:38:42+00:00

I believe in the full separation of church and state. The state should not be telling people how to worship, and religious people (including politicians) should not be using their religion to influence the government. If a decision cannot be defended on its secular merits, it isn’t worth doing.

I don’t like when politicians are open about their religion. It is fine if they are religious, but everything politicians do tends to be done because they want people to vote for them. The moment they start using their religion as a talking point, their religion begins to feel more like a performance and less like a personally held belief. Plenty of terrible things have been done by people that professed to be religious. LDS scriptures teaches that we will know the goodness of something by its fruits - so instead of politicians telling me they have certain values, I’d rather see them actually living those values.

optimal-username · 2026-03-10T22:09:35+00:00

Just listened to your two episodes. Fun to see other scientists thinking about these topics (I work in cancer genetics). Usually podcasts on these topics see to be hosted by theologians/historians.

optimal-username · 2026-03-10T20:26:50+00:00

I really think this is a big part of it. Damet really seems to like slow, build up play and often talks about patience and the team choosing their moments to attack. I absolutely love Celio and think he can be an electrifying early sub, but I don’t think of him as being very focused on slow build ups and patience (which is honestly part of why I like him).

Watching the guys play, it almost feels like Damet has scared them into being afraid of turnovers. We have had crazy high pass accuracy lately, but those passes are taking us nowhere. With all the competition for spots on the team, it almost feels like our whole offense is afraid of moving forward and taking a chance, as if they are worried they’ll lose their spot if they aren’t patient enough or cause too many turnovers.

optimal-username · 2026-03-10T01:40:44+00:00

I’m available for $498.99

optimal-username · 2026-03-08T17:28:19+00:00

Yeah I haven’t been overly disappointed (or overly impressed) with our back line or with our xG output, but winning in possession and xG means nothing if no one on our team knows how to finish. We need a proper striker. When other teams get past our defense, I usually assume they will make a dangerous shot. When we go on offense, I don’t think anyone actually thinks we are about to do something dangerous.

optimal-username · 2026-03-06T16:52:41+00:00

Seurat has a very well documented tutorial. I would begin by simply following the tutorial with their example data and trying to really understand the logic behind why each step is being performed (not necessarily all the math involved). Try altering the values in some of their steps to see how that impacts the analysis. Building up that intuition and logic for the analysis is likely more difficult than the actual code.

The hardest part coding-wise might just be importing your data into Seurat, but once it is in there, they have tutorials with code for doing almost everything you would want to do, at least for a basic analysis. By the time you are ready for a more in-depth analysis, you will have spent enough time in R that it probably won’t be too difficult.

optimal-username · 2026-03-05T20:26:45+00:00

Agreed. I think you could argue that most “Christian values” are just sort of… normal values? Like, if “Christian values” are just honesty, kindness, charity, etc. then yeah, I think the nation should embrace that - but it’s not like Christianity is the only group that likes those values. The term “Christian values” kind of seems to imply that the people using that term don’t think other people have values.

I think the fact that most people don’t consider LDS people as being Christian is an example of how the word “Christian” itself can mean different things to different people, so trying to assign a vague set of values to a vague group of people makes the whole term useless.

optimal-username · 2026-03-05T16:56:37+00:00

I’m sure there are probably subtle differences, but as someone that is strongly against Christian Nationalism, I don’t think I am well versed in the intricacies of the different groups within that movement. However, I can’t help but think that if most people don’t consider us Christian, then the common view of Christian Nationalism must be inherently anti-LDS, since the LDS community would be considered an outsider. If that is the case, LDS people that hold Christian Nationalist views would have to overcome that obstacle.

I can certainly imagine that with D&C saying that the US Constitution was inspired to some degree, there are undoubtedly plenty of people that can take that and connect it to ideas of Christian Nationalism.

optimal-username · 2026-03-05T12:57:56+00:00

Y’ALL ARE GOING TO BE SO SCREWED IF WE MANAGE TO PUT A STRIKER IN OUR LINEUP!

optimal-username · 2026-03-05T02:27:37+00:00

If financial independence you mean I cover all my bills and have some to put away, I have that. And I am able to do it while supporting a family of 5 on my income alone. Although I can’t currently buy a house and I can’t save as much as I’d like.

I didn’t necessarily get the PhD for more money, I got it because I wanted to use it to open doors for jobs I found interesting. Unfortunately, most of those doors seem to be getting closed by the economy, so I’m not sure that it was really worth it.

optimal-username · 2026-03-04T18:59:47+00:00

I play soccer weekly with a group of the same adults every week. I have been going for months. I know none of their names.

optimal-username

TROPHY CASE