Since the first one in 1930, there have been 20 World Cup tournaments. (They skipped 1942 and 1946, for some reason.) And those 20 have been won by just eight countries – because five of them won it multiple times: Brazil five times, Germany and Italy four times each, and Argentina and Uruguay twice each. The one-time winners are England, France and Spain. Another way to look at it: five countries in Western Europe and three countries in South America.
Those eight represent just 10% of the 77 countries that have ever made it into the tournament. Any way you slice it, it’s a very exclusive club and Brazil, Germany and Italy are the big wigs.
For those not cool/nerdy enough, A Song of Ice And Fire is the name of the book series of which A Game of Thrones is the first. (The name probably comes from Norse mythology, in which the first being, Ymir, was created in the void between ice and fire. There are lots of other Norse elements in the books, like long winter, dragons, frost giants, giant wolves, flaming swords and magical trees. There’s even a blog about all this.) ANYWAY, Slacktory does a really funny job “trying” to explain the whole book series in two minutes:
America got knocked out of the 2014 World Cup today, in the round of 16, with a 2-1 loss in overtime, just like in 2010. But one great thing came out of the loss to Belgium and that was the amazing performance by our goalie, Tim Howard.
The rest of the USMNT (which either means US Men’s National Team or US Mutant Ninja Turtles) wasn’t having much luck in stopping the Belgian offense, but Tim Howard set a World Cup record by stopping 16 shots on goal in one match – more than any other goalie in the recorded history of the Cup. He also had the best goalkeeping performance in any single match this Cup.
Tim Howard plans to retire when his contract is up with the English team Everton in 2017, but hopefully he’ll come back to play with the USMNT at the 2018 World Cup, in Russia. In the meantime, the tournament is now officially a very localized event: the 8 teams left are the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and France from Western Europe, and Colombia, Argentina, Brazil and Costa Rica from South America (or close enough).
My favorite quote:
No playoffs? Again, my job just got a lot easier. Ties and no playoffs…. why do you even do this?
That’s right, 10+ years before the iPad was announced, it had a brief moment (with Spanish subtitles) in the third episode of season two of Felicity. The episode’s script is credited to Andrea Newman, who went on to be a co-executive producer of Cold Case and Chicago Fire, and apparently can divine the future. The show was created by J.J. Abrams, who went on to direct a couple of Star Trek and Star Wars movies.
A video from The Onion goes over the new Facebook feature, LifePoint, which can tell you exactly when your life started going south:
An eyecatching link on a website which encourages people to read on. It is often paid for by the advertiser (“Paid” click bait) or generates income based on the number of clicks.
-from Urban Dictionary
Clickbait headlines are quite possibly the worst thing to have happened to the Internet, ever. And like a virus, it keeps spreading, thanks to the success of terrible, terrible websites like Upworthy.
To fight this scourge, a Twitter guy (it’s gotta be a guy, right?) named @SavedYouAClick started reading a bunch of a clickbait articles and then posting awesomely sarcastic summaries of what you’d find in the article, were you to take the bait. Examples: (which are better understood by starting to read them at the RT, and then reading the beginning part)
Co-valedictorians RT @HuffingtonPost: Identical twins get school’s highest honor
Less than $6 per passenger. RT @cnni: Guess how much money airlines make when you fly. You might be surprised:
Run away. Fast. RT @businessinsider: A former Navy SEAL explains how to escape a dangerous situation
It’s called Drizly. RT @latimes: A liquor delivery app just launched in L.A.:
She’s pregnant again. Those are the details. RT @OK_Magazine: Breaking: @kourtneykardash is pregnant! Details:
LeVar Burton bringing back Reading Rainbow RT @Upworthy: That one time when a famous Hollywood person created a Kickstarter so kids can read
It’s not. It could give you a hand injury, though. @mashable: Why Texting Is Killing You
It’s a red panda. Cute, but not cutest ever. RT @Cosmopolitan: Is this the cutest GIF ~*eVeR?
Abandoned island near the Bronx. RT @HuffingtonPost: We’re pretty sure a visit to this island will give you nightmares
No. Just let it go. RT @GuardianUS: Does a spouse not liking Frozen qualify as grounds for divorce?
Water quality. RT @businessinsider: A chemist has uncovered the secret to brewing delicious coffee at home
Sexism. RT @Slate: What we found while lurking on an anonymous college message board for two years will disgust you:
Invaded Normandy. RT @businessinsider: Here’s how the Allies began to win World War 2, 70 years ago tomorrow
Because you’re not enjoying it. A study found they’re linked. RT @NYMag: Why you’re constantly exercising and never losing weight:
Wal-Mart sells a TON of CDs. RT @FortuneMagazine: Here’s why Pharrell and Robin Thicke played the Wal-Mart annual meeting for free
Florence. (It’s just a user poll). RT @mashable: What is the best summer vacation spot in the world?
If all DVDs purchased in 2011 were streamed instead, the energy savings would have been enough to meet the electricity demands of roughly 200,000 households. It would have cut roughly 2 billion kilograms of carbon emissions.