“Being an American soccer fan meant cheerful, big-throated celebrations of America, celebrations that most of its fans would never embrace in any other context, in large part because soccer was the one place left where rooting for America was an underdog stance; in soccer, America actually was the scrappy upstart we pretend to be in everything else. Rooting for it felt like a cause. Everything changed, of course. If someone comes up to you in a George Washington costume and starts screaming right now, you should probably run.” Will Leitch in NY Mag: Missing the World Cup Is Like Detention for the United States. (It doesn’t matter that the US team isn’t in the World Cup. Trump will say they won and half of America will believe him…)

+ Machine learning predicts World Cup winner.