Met him briefly. Looks good, stoic, making parents proud. Gonna depart back to the military, you know, basically tomorrow.
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Given the logo and content itâs probably based on something like https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-27/dutch-ad-watchdog-tells-shell-to-pull-carbon-neutral-campaign
In other news
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I was under the impression that I was reading a very elaborate advertisement and this:
So far, JC Cole has been unable to convince anyone to invest inâŠ
more or less sealed it. Three million are pennies for billionaires. And at the end I saw that it was an excerpt from a book.
I find it hard to believe that these people ask questions like âShould a shelter have its own air supply?â 
In any case, the solution to their fears is very easy if you have that kind of money.
- You buy ⊠ehm ⊠INVEST in Androrra which is a small mountain country of a GDP of barely 3 billion. If you do not like that country there are others similar (e.g. Lesotho) or you could just buy a massive plot of land with your desired specs. If anyone thinks that the Greek government would say no to a billionaire giving them 1 billion to become âlifelong mayor of an islandâ they have another thing coming
- You invest in wind and solar.
- You import know-how on farming from very advanced farming nations like Holland.
- You buy dirt-cheap the tanks and weapons of countries like Belgium (I mean they sold their modern tanks for 15000 euros each) so you upgrade their military.
- You build your estate there and possibly take over the government by investing in their political parties
- The population will defend itself - and by extension you, their benefactor - from any mob of âzombiesâ should they try to climb the mountain - which is already the most defensible position in any strategy manual. Everyone and their cat knows that the best protection is the one that is offered and not paid.
Anyone in the Forbes list can do that tomorrow ⊠by actually investing in those small countries they could actually end up making more money instead of actually spending any, so there is no need for bunkers and hiding and investing in flimsy protection.
The Dutch soccer association has been actively trying to reduce racism and homophobia in soccer. This includes having guidelines and rules about gender and sexually diverse persons.
People in different places and different cultures have different opinions on what is acceptable, and they also differ in their opinions on how much person A can impose their moral ideas on person B. And all of this changes over time as well.
Iâve heard about this trangender soccer player as well. In the Netherlands, peopleâs opinions would not be uniform on this. Over here, acceptance of transgenders is not as high as acceptance of gay people, but I suppose that in a decade or so, acceptance will be similar, especially by the younger generations.
I find this story about the transgender a bit strange as well, but I cannot really think of a good reason to deny them playing in a women soccer team. Itâs just a part of living in a free country. And IMO itâs a lot less harmful to society than some other rights that some countries have, such as the right to beat your wife, the right to carry firearms in the street or the right to express hate speech.
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Allowing a transgender to play in a womanâs team seems OK if it is not in a highly competitive situation (like a world championship). However I see no reason to allow a 31 year-old person to play in a U16 team, whatever their gender.
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Yes. I understand why they are denied participating in a youth team. It doesnât matter that they are transgender.
But I donât think thatâs the reason why this story is even news worthy. I think itâs just a somewhat sensationalist clickbaity story, because it involves a trans person, which some people might consider âpervertsâ already, and the age issue adds some extra confirmation of that prejudice by insinuating pedophilia.
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At the end of the day - probably a couple of decades later as @gennan said - this will probably lead to the total abolishion of any gender-based leagues and everything will be unified. There is no perfect solution to this issue, so the only way to avoid any discrimination, is to include everyone in to one league.
The only thing that will remain will be objective things like age-based leagues and weight-based categories in fighting sports. Apart from that, total equality and non-distinction is the only way and thus only merit and skill will remain as a judge on who plays in which team/league, just like now in each individual league. If you are very skilled you might be playing for Real Madrid, or if you are not so skilled, you might be playing in the Greek league. That will obviously remain.
That would kill womenâs competitive sports. If women can only play in league 3 and never become world champions, they will never find the motivation to train hard.
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Gender was objective once too. Bold of you to assume the movement wonât âprogressâ to transrace, transage, transweight, transspecies, etc.
If we stopped paying people millions for sports like itâs the greatest achievement of the universe to be very trained and very fit maybe the situation would balance itself out. No, talent doesnât make it more worth it, if anything it makes it less.
*also if parents could be convinced to not live through their childrenâs achievements
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As I said it is definitely not a perfect solution, but it is the only one that contains no discrimination, which is the end-goal in this case. As always there are pros and cons.
What you said will eventually happen as the years go by, as this case shows:
So, when that time slowly comes - ergo the few decades needed - that will no longer be an issue, because it will have happened already. On the other hand women like Vivienne Miedenna who, of what I am hearing from Arsenal fans, would have the ability to land professional contract with the potentially unified team, because she is amazing.
This is the Arsenalâs Premier League team market value:
and according to rumors Vivienneâs contract is among the highest ever, her market value is nowhere near one million.
Just being on the bench of a unified team (and unified earnings from TV and shoe deals etc) have commanded her a market value of 20 times more âŠ
So, there are no perfect solutions, but it depends on what goals and problems are set to be solved. In the case of this problem, society seems to be veering towards the âabolish discrimination, abolish gender leaguesâ solution.
Important note: There are leagues already that do not specify gender in their rules (because a lot of them were made 100+ years ago and so it was left unspecified for obvious reasons). A friend of mine who is into football trivia had told me that a team in an Italian football league had signed a woman once and it was perfectly legal.
Or maybe the opposite will happen. Who knows how people respond to a change in the level of competition?
Good point, but unlike gender where there are a lot of sports where it doesnât really make any difference, if you try boxing, for example, with a much heavier opponent, there is rarely any competition and it would soon return to its original concept.
Highly unlikely. Personally Iâve never bought any of that stuff, but people like what people like and as long as there are enough people willing to spend billions on tickets, advertisements, shoes and merchandice, that money eventually reflects to the playersâ salaries. That part is not about sport, but economics, which is a far harder institution to change.
You heard about Miedema because she plays in women-only competitions. If genders were mixed, she would be nobody, exactly as if Floyd Mayweather had to compete in the heavyweight category.
Thatâs not what the actual fans of the team think, but letâs say she wouldnât be able to play in Arsenal or be on the bench for that team. How do you know she wouldnât be on some other team or the next division. Letâs take a random team there, Sunderland FC:
the ânobodiesâ there - the people that transfermarkt hasnât even bothered to get their picture - still command a better market value.
Letâs not mention the chances of playing in other countries and leagues. A lot of opportunities could exist and a lot of women could possibly play in a unified league. There is no need to be totally negative about it. Besides, that is not what some women athletes think (e.g. Brittney Grinner claiming she could beat DeMarcus Cousins 1vs1 )
Do note that this is not a solution I am proposing or anything. I am just saying that this is what will most probably happen eventually and I am obviously in favour of gender equality.
A top female pro would be on the same level as an average male pro, and an average female pro would disappear completely. Compare with tennis:
When they try to convince me sports is all about height and strength and manly physical attributes
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Height is not so important in football, Maradona was only 1.65m, but running speed and shooting strength certainly help a lot on a football field.
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By the way, inb4, yes there are differences
@jlt height was an example, Garrincha isnât a legend because he was short.