July 18, 2026

PEP BALL:

Geometry, football and the World Cup final (Conor Boland, July 17, 2026, The Conversation)

Put three attackers in a straight line and one defender can often block both supporting players. But move one supporting player sideways and the passing lines separate.

The defender must choose which route to close. Press the ball and a pass can go around them. Protect the inside route and the outside may open. If another defender steps across, a Spanish player can attack the space left behind.

A useful football triangle does not need equal sides or 60-degree angles. Its best shape changes with defenders’ positions, body orientation, ball speed and the space available.

A narrow triangle is easy to squeeze because one defender may block both lanes. A wide one makes the pass travel farther, giving an opponent more time to intercept it.

In their semi-final match against France, Spain found the middle ground again and again – close enough for quick combinations, but far enough apart to stretch France’s press.

WHEN FAMILIARITY BREEDS CONTEMPT:

Conservative Nativists Live Under the Cosmopolitanism They Claim To Despise: Revealed preferences help us understand the value of diversity. (Zaid Jilani, Jul 16, 2026, The American Saga)

In economics, there is a concept called revealed preferences. Consumers will tell you what they really like by their actual behavior. What they want is what they buy.

The pundits I discussed above all argue as if they feel that America will be doomed when it becomes majority minority. “Import the third world, become the third world,” has become their slogan de jure. If we have a country full of people from Mexican, Indian, or Haitian ancestral origin, we will transform into those countries and bring all their sociological and economic problems.

But through their revealed preferences, we can see that they may not be so confident in this thesis after all.

Walsh, for instance, lives in the thriving metropolis of Nashville, Tennessee. According to the local chamber of commerce, “over 35% of Nashville’s net in-migration from 2024 to 2025 was due to international migration”; around a third of downtown businesses are owned by minorities. While Walsh has been ranting about Somalis in Minneapolis, he would probably enjoy this Somali-owned tea shop in his city (I visited the last time I drove up). In a moment of clarity, Walsh admitted he loves Indian food.

Hemingway and Davis, meanwhile, are denizens of Metro Washington, D.C. A quarter of Northern Virginia’s residents are foreign-born. Kelly lives in and broadcasts from Houston, which was ranked by one measure as America’s fifth-most diverse city and second-most diverse large city (the top three most diverse cities were all in Maryland, also bordering D.C.). Webbon is in Austin, a very liberal and diverse city. Nick Fuentes, the charismatic racist streamer, lives in predominantly Hispanic suburb of Chicago. Brandon Gill, one of the most vociferous nativists in Congress who wants to stop even legal immigration, is married to an Indian American woman.

Speaking of marriage, it’s ironic that the nativists are led by President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. Trump is married to an immigrant and the grandson of one himself. Vance is not only married to an Indian American woman, but he goes out of his way in his memoir to praise her family for its strong bonds.

Recall that while they generally cite which party supported Israel most, much of the Neocon turn to the right was driven by urban crime and racial quotas at elite institutions.