[QuickTidal]

Let it be known that Canada is rooting for England today.

LET THERE BE BLOOD and Let Messi taste defeat.

[Tiste Simeon]

Yeah it's weird. For the first time ever England aren't the most hated and I don't know how to feel.

[Tsundoku]

WTF just happened? I went to the bathroom at 1-0 ENG and it's full time 2-1 ARG?????

It's not coming home. At least now we don't have to put up with "Wonderwall" in the final. Just an overblown extended Stuporbowl halftime.

Go Spain I guess?

This post has been edited by Tsundoku: 15 July 2026 - 09:03 PM

[TheRetiredBridgeburner]

Tsundoku, on 15 July 2026 - 09:02 PM, said:

WTF just happened?

Tuchel bottled it, is what happened. If we'd carried on playing the way we had in the first half, I think we stood a good chance of winning that game. But no - park the bus and allow a team with the attacking quality of Argentina all the momentum and invite them to just keep coming. Ridiculous.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 15 July 2026 - 03:53 PM, said:

Let it be known that Canada is rooting for England today.

LET THERE BE BLOOD and Let Messi taste defeat.

Quote

Humiliated World Cup Team Fall to the 'Curse of Trump'

England's World Cup semifinal loss to Argentina appears to be the latest instance of the "Trump curse."

England captain Harry Kane's comments about playing golf with the president last week took on extra significance to some after his team fell

England's World Cup Team Falls to the 'Curse' of Donald Trump

Of course this is silly. But should he have refused to play golf with the President of the United States?

Yes. Unless he thought he had a chance of using his football abilities to sprint past the secret service and flying headbutt him to death... come to think of it football would be much more entertaining if they were limited to flying kicks and headbutts. With extra points for flying spinning kicks. Like wushu football (or, more accurately, foot+head ball...).

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 16 July 2026 - 01:49 PM

[Tiste Simeon]

 TheRetiredBridgeburner, on 16 July 2026 - 06:56 AM, said:

 Tsundoku, on 15 July 2026 - 09:02 PM, said:

WTF just happened?

Tuchel bottled it, is what happened. If we'd carried on playing the way we had in the first half, I think we stood a good chance of winning that game. But no - park the bus and allow a team with the attacking quality of Argentina all the momentum and invite them to just keep coming. Ridiculous.

Yeah I didn't watch but he completely wasted someone like Kobie Mainoo who would have brought new energy and life into the game.

[Macros]

Don't cry for me Argentina!!!


I was really trying to work something from that but alas. No go.

Whats with thw hatred of the Argies this wc?

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Macros, on 16 July 2026 - 04:10 PM, said:

Don't cry for me Argentina!!!


I was really trying to work something from that but alas. No go.

Whats with thw hatred of the Argies this wc?

Aren't they all the spawn of Nazi scientists? (For better or worse...)

[QuickTidal]

Macros, on 16 July 2026 - 04:10 PM, said:

Don't cry for me Argentina!!!


I was really trying to work something from that but alas. No go.

Whats with thw hatred of the Argies this wc?

The general conspiracy theory is that Fifa is doing shady shit to make sure Argentina wins as Messi is the global superstar and they are a business after all.

I dunno if I believe it...but I would not put it past a shitty corporation like Fifa.

Also Argentina is full of the spawn of Nazi's war criminals who ran isn't it?

[Macros]

Ill write the Fifa conspiracy nonsense off as sour grapes

The nazi spawn well fair enough

[QuickTidal]

Macros, on 16 July 2026 - 05:42 PM, said:

Ill write the Fifa conspiracy nonsense off as sour grapes

I don't know enough about it to comment on it really (beyond finding Fifa shady), but all the football dudes at my office have been ranting about it. LOL

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

QuickTidal, on 16 July 2026 - 04:23 PM, said:

Also Argentina is full of the spawn of Nazi's war criminals who ran isn't it?

Has anyone yet managed to get ahold of Messi's DNA to test whether he's actually just pretending to be of Italian ancestry to cover up his family's Nazi past? And then the opposing football hooligans can righteously tear him apart, like proper holy maenads...

Come to think of it my nonconsanguineal uncle, who's a scientist from Argentina (came to the US at 16 to go to MIT), might also be lying about his Italian ancestry... he might actually look a bit more German than Italian to me in fact---and while his father seemed flamboyantly very Italian, with a thick accent and hand gestures and pasta and all, all that could have been an act to cover for being an escaped Nazi scientist... clearly I need to trick my uncle into giving me some of his DNA! Are they the ones who made Messi?!

Though collecting his DNA would be awkward because my aunt is dead now. Wait, if he's a Nazi, that explains why he married my Jewish aunt... he killed her! Everything makes sense now! (Well, except sportsball... hasn't really made sense to me since they stopped doing the human sacrifice of the losers at the end. But the flying headbutts do look pretty at times.)

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 17 July 2026 - 01:14 AM

[Macros]

QuickTidal, on 16 July 2026 - 05:57 PM, said:

Macros, on 16 July 2026 - 05:42 PM, said:

Ill write the Fifa conspiracy nonsense off as sour grapes

I don't know enough about it to comment on it really (beyond finding Fifa shady), but all the football dudes at my office have been ranting about it. LOL

Eh, I haven't seen any of the matches, but I'd be fairly sure the officials arent fucming with the game any more than officials ever have.

[QuickTidal]

You're almost certainly correct.

[Mentalist]

Messi is fine. The rest of the team has issues with rough play/histrionics. There was some ref deference to the team (and Messi, specifically), but nothing egregious, imho. And Argentina DID pull off some insane comebacks with last-ditch pressure, so they deserve credit for that. Really wish I saw the Cabo Verde game, but I had my own game during that.


Scaloni correctly saw they were out-classed by Spain and tried to shut the game down and take the gamble on PKs (historically, UEFA teams are pretty bad at those).

Spain is just on another level, though.

I am very happy that Torres was the one who got the goal. The dude's been coming off the bench every game, putting himself in good spots and receiving passes, and missed something like 30 shots throughout the tournament. But unlike Olise, he didn't give up, and eventually, he hammered one home when it counted the most. Much better story than the much-touted "Yamal taking over from Messi", since Yamal didn't have a particularly great tournament, all-in-all.

Argentina will need to re-invent itself without Messi, so it'll be interesting to see if they can keep themselves relevant in the upcoming competitions.

Ah well, bring on the Euro qualifiers & Nations League, so that I can get frustrated with Ukraine all over again.

[Tiste Simeon]

Bring on the Euros indeed. I'm going to do my utmost to get tickets for at least one game (don't care who haha) Some games are being played at St James Park and my brother lives near there. I've got friends near Manchester and Liverpool too so I can keep costs lower.

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Apparently a mathematician got bored during the World Cup final and decided to ask a friend of his about the Jacobian conjecture, which has been one of the major unsolved problems in mathematics for the last 87 years.

Quote

The problem made it onto Steve Smale's famous 1998 list of the most important mathematical problems for the next century, sitting alongside the Riemann Hypothesis. It has a notorious reputation. Over the decades, at least five published proofs turned out to contain errors. Unpublished attempts number many more.

A Mathematician Used Claude Fable to Disprove the 87-Year-Old Jacobian Conjecture in a Few Hours — Glitchwire

So his friend asked Fable (Anthropic's flagship AI model) to try to solve it. Before the end of the game, Fable had come up with a counterexample that was easily verified. Here is the text of the official announcement:

Quote

hello there the jacobian conjecture is false thanx to my close friend akhil for asking about it and my other close friend fable for working during the world cup final

((1+xy)^3 z + y^2 (1+xy) (4+3xy), y + 3 x (1+xy)^2 z + 3 x y^2 (4+3xy), 2 x - 3 x^2 y - x^3 z): \C^3\to \C^3, has jacobian determinant -2, and sends (0, 0, -1/4), (1, -3/2, 13/2), and (-1, 3/2, 13/2) to (-1/4, 0, 0)

lol

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 20 July 2026 - 02:57 PM

[Illuyankas]

I'd wait for some actual mathematicians to weigh in before trusting the lying slop machine, personally

[Azath Vitr (D'ivers]

Illuyankas, on 20 July 2026 - 11:02 PM, said:

I'd wait for some actual mathematicians to weigh in before trusting the lying slop machine, personally

As a specific counterexample it's very easy to formally verify. And yes, actual mathematicians have confirmed it.

As for "lying slop machine": Flagship models exhibit PhD-level intelligence across multiple fields. For mathematical proofs their logic can be automatically formally verified in Lean. But for a counterexample like this a few simple calculations are sufficient.

I've been using DeepSeek extensively in my study of graduate level pure mathematics. I always check its work rigorously, and it rarely makes mistakes. Research mathematicians have confirmed the extraordinary usefulness--and even the extraordinary creativity---of LLMs that have been enhanced with reasoning models.

This post has been edited by Azath Vitr (D'ivers: 21 July 2026 - 01:02 AM

[Tiste Simeon]

 Illuyankas, on 20 July 2026 - 11:02 PM, said:

I'd wait for some actual mathematicians to weigh in before trusting the lying slop machine, personally

Shh don't mention AI to Azath or you'll get a massive lecture on why AI raping the world for its resources and stealing all human creativity just so some super rich people can become even more super rich is a good thing actually.

Oh too late.