Image courtesy of The Chronicle of Higher Education

Dear Commons Community,

This posting is derived from an article and interview conducted by Beckie Supiano for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Since the 2024 election, there’s been a lot of discussion about the attitudes and experiences of young men. Public Agenda, a nonprofit research organization, wanted to ground that conversation in what young men themselves have to say. It recently released findings from a survey and focus groups that capture the opinions of men age 18 to 34 on many issues, including higher ed.

Public Agenda found that young men believe it’s socially acceptable to not attend college and that they see trade school and bachelor’s degrees as having similar market value. Like young women, they believe that the value of a degree is declining.

And many don’t think college is for them. Thirty-eight percent of young men said that colleges are designed to benefit women more than men.

Beyond the hard data, the research presented a striking portrait of disaffection: Many young men in the focus groups expressed sentiments of loneliness, social pressure, and deep doubt about the motives of others.

The Chronicle spoke with Andrew J. Seligsohn, president of Public Agenda, to learn more. The conversation has been edited and condensed.

You found a lot of skepticism toward higher ed. What’s driving that?

Young men and young women have skepticism about not whether there’s any payoff to college, but whether that payoff has enough certainty to balance the costs and the likelihood of carrying debt. What’s different is that young men don’t perceive that they belong in college to the same extent that young women do. There’s greater concern about whether, from a political standpoint, the views that they hold are as welcome on campuses.

There is a big political split by gender in this age group, right?

Yes, exactly. Probably any young person who’s conservative is likely to have heard a lot of communication suggesting that college may not be a welcoming place for them. Young men are more likely to be conservative than young women.

Young men and young women feel lonely. They feel disconnected — that’s true for everybody. But young men were more likely to say they really didn’t have anybody to talk to. When we looked at questions about “did you have people to help you make decisions about whether to go to college,” young men — and young men who hadn’t gone to college — were particularly likely to say they had no one to help them with that.

Another part of it is that young men feel very cross-pressured. When we ask them about their personal values versus what they think is expected of men, there’s a big disconnect. A big part of that is anxiety about the economy. We still found young men believe that they are expected to be breadwinners, and they’re not really sure they can do it.

In the focus groups, the idea kept coming up that college is a scam. What did the participants mean by that?

Young people — and this is true of men and women, but it’s even stronger within certain segments of the male online universe — they don’t believe that anyone is ever acting on something other than a market-based value.

We had somebody in one of the focus groups say, and it was said as if everybody must know this: You know, high-school guidance counselors obviously must get somehow compensated when their students go to college, because why else would they constantly tell us to go to college?

When you have encountered the world they have, where you do have scams flying at you constantly, where everybody who seeks your attention is seeking to monetize that attention — and when the institutions themselves have come to speak market language very unself-consciously — how can they distinguish the college president who talks about return on investment from the online influencer who’s offering you a way to get rich quick?

We cover what some of those college presidents are getting paid. Young men might not see those headlines. But — not to be stereotypical here — they probably are aware of what’s happening with money in athletics.

This was not something we dug into in the research; this is my impression. I suspect the role of college athletics in all of this is enormous. I think the cynicism that is implicit in Division I college athletics is evident to everyone in America. It is especially well known to young men. It completely undermines the notion that colleges and universities are out for the public good or for the good of their students, and it completely reinforces the sense that they are money-making institutions who put values to one side when money is at stake.

Why did you ask specifically about nursing and teaching in the focus groups?

So much of the job growth in the United States is in health care. So when you think about economic opportunity and the possibilities of finding jobs that are decently compensated, that are likely to be available in the future, that sector looms so large.

On the education side, it’s more about the social value of having male educators.

About having no one to talk to.

It’s a big part of that story. Many young men will never have had a male teacher along the way. What really stood out to me: We heard participants’ concerns about how they will be perceived, whether people will make false charges about them. That’s a very pernicious part of our society. The idea that any man who, like, cares about children must have terrible motives.

That is worse than “everyone is out to make money off me.” It’s ascribing the worst motivations to everyone.

Exploitation must be behind everything. Yes, exactly. It’s the worst manifestation of that.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading, The American School of Spies by Stephan Talty. It recounts the stories of a team of archaeologists and academics who are deployed to Greece and other parts of the Mediterranean to preserve ancient artifacts from the Germans during World War II.  Rodney Young, an affluent Princeton alumnus who had done important archaeology in Greece in the 1930s, was asked to recruit and develop a team or “Green Desk” of several dozen individuals like himself to help the preservation.  They get involved with saving artifacts, assassinating Germans known to take and/or destroy them, blowing up railroad lines, and other clandestine activities.  Many Germans including Hitler were obsessed with the Greek cultural history even claiming it derived from Aryan roots.  The first half of the book is a tad slow, but the second half is riveting.  The last few chapters cover the post-World War II Greek Civil War among the British, the Greek conservative royal government, and Communist factions.

Below is a New York Times book review of The American School of Spies.

Tony

————————————————————————————–

The New York Times Review of Books

Mission Accomplished: Kill the Nazis, Save the Statues

By Edward Dolnick

Edward Dolnick is the author of several books, including “The Writing of the Gods,” about the deciphering of the Rosetta Stone.

In “The American School of Spies,” Stephan Talty tells the story of the desperate struggle to preserve antiquities during World War II.

On April 27, 1941, German troops marched into Athens. “The capital is falling into the hands of the conquerors,” a radio announcer declared. “Very shortly the Radio Station of Athens will no longer be Greek. It will be German, and it will broadcast lies.”

Greece would suffer grievously during the occupation — a staggering 5 percent of the population would die — and seeing the birthplace of democracy in Nazi hands was painful. Shortly after marching on the city, Nazi troops removed the Greek flag from the Parthenon and raised an enormous swastika in its place.

Stephan Talty’s compact, lively “The American School of Spies” tells the story of two sets of agents sent to Greece by the Allies, with distinct missions. One was to harass and kill Nazis by blowing up trains, calling down airstrikes and ferreting out military secrets. The second was to safeguard Greece’s trove of archaeological treasures.

Two missions required two sets of spies, and Talty moves between their stories. The commandos were Greek American volunteers who could pass themselves off as locals. They boasted a variety of skills — among them were not only soldiers and saboteurs but “radio operators, safecrackers, pigeon trainers (for delivering messages)” and medics.

The archaeologists were a more eccentric group. Their leader was a wealthy classicist named Rodney Young, a third-generation Princeton man who bore some resemblance to Cary Grant. Young recruited a team of friends and colleagues, all of them amateurs familiar with statues and vases but unacquainted with ciphers and disappearing ink.

The Greek Desk, as the archaeologists called themselves, was part of the Office of Strategic Services, the spy network created by Gen. William “Wild Bill” Donovan that would become the C.I.A. — a group so gregarious and patrician that some joked their initials stood for “Oh So Social.”

One member of the Greek Desk was among the last Harvard graduates to write his dissertation in Latin. Another was an authority on the ceramic vessels called amphora. “It was hardly an ecumenical group,” Talty writes. “Overwhelmingly male, all WASPs, most from moneyed families, not a Greek American in the bunch.”

The commando team had scarcely any interest in antiquities, but they helped preserve Greece’s artistic heritage even so. “With thousands of stolen artifacts leaving Greece in the rucksacks of ordinary soldiers or in the vehicles or trunks of officers,” Talty writes, the commandos played a role that “most of them were unaware of: stopping the theft of relics by killing the Nazis stealing them.”

In every country they occupied, the Nazis looted art on a colossal scale. In Greece the danger was even greater because of a harebrained doctrine, espoused by Heinrich Himmler, that ancient Greece had in fact been shaped by Aryans. The relics of classical Greece, therefore, rightly belonged to Germany.

First alone, and then with the help of the O.S.S., Greek officials labored mightily to guard their treasures. Much of Talty’s story turns on these curators and their quiet efforts to thwart German theft. Shortly before the Germans moved in, the Greek government had created a group called the Committee of Hide and Secure, which stashed away countless statues and artifacts. At the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, staffers had cracked open the floors and dug deep pits.

The customary task of archaeologists is to unearth relics; here the process operated in reverse, with statues and vases carefully wrapped, cast in molds and buried underground. Then concrete slabs were poured on top, to seal the artifacts away.

Next ensued a bizarre cat-and-mouse game, in which the Germans demanded that the Greeks hand over their antiquities and the Greeks professed to have lost their records, or to have misplaced the necessary tools, or to have run into any of a dozen other “insurmountable difficulties.”

But if it was farce, it was desperately serious farce, and Talty tells the story well.

There was a war on. Greek farmers were being barricaded in their homes and burned to death, along with their sons and daughters; Athenians woke each morning to fresh bodies on the street, handkerchiefs placed over their faces by early risers. The bureaucrats passed those bodies on their way to work, where they drafted polite letters about which second-century B.C. statues were available for viewing on guided tours.

On June 4, 1946, a year after the Allied victory, curators at the National Archaeological Museum prepared to break open the floor they had sealed shut five years before. Workmen began wielding pickaxes and shovels.

Onlookers gazed into the pit, astonished. “Statues, still sunken in the earth, appeared naked from the waist up, planted at random,” wrote one observer. “It was a chorus of the resurrected, a second coming of bodies that gave you a crazy joy.”

Credit…Timo Lenzen

Dear Commons Community,

When Google prepared to go public in 2004, Larry Page, a co-founder of the company, wrote a letter to shareholders describing the internet firm’s responsibility to the world.

“We believe a well-functioning society should have abundant, free and unbiased access to high-quality information,” Mr. Page said.

Google fulfilled that responsibility by acting as a gateway to the internet. It answered people’s search queries with lists of hyperlinks, pushing users out to what is known as the “open web” — the millions of websites run by merchants, publishers, universities and others — for more information. In the ensuing decades, Google became one of the planet’s richest and most powerful companies by directing people to the vastness of the open web.

Now in the age of artificial intelligence, Google appears to be shrinking back from the open web — and may be imperiling it.  As reported by The New York Times.

Since last year, the Silicon Valley giant has revamped its search with A.I. It introduced AI Mode, which replaces search results of hyperlinks with conversational responses written by Gemini, its A.I. chatbot. Most recently, Google changed its iconic search box for the first time in 25 years so that people could add photos and videos to their queries and assign A.I. “agents” to run searches for them.

The effect of these moves is becoming clear: People are spending more time with Google than ever.

Users are writing queries three times as long as the keyword-heavy questions they asked of traditional searches, Google said at its developer conference in May. People are spending one to nine more minutes in AI Mode than on traditional Google searches, according to three studies from researchers tallied by The New York Times. One October study from Growth Memo, a newsletter focused on search and marketing, found that in about 75 percent of sessions, users never left AI Mode for the web.

For publishers, businesses, banks and others that relied on Google to funnel its billions of users to their websites, the impact has been unmistakable as the company has increasingly incorporated A.I. into search. Google’s users are no longer leaving Google after a search and are just reading its A.I.-generated answers, they said, which means fewer people are coming to their websites and search traffic has dropped.

Nilay Patel, the editor in chief of the technology website The Verge, has warned publishers for years that they would face “Google Zero,” a moment when traffic from Google would plummet to nothing.

“For publishers, Google Zero is already here,” he said. “It wasn’t until AI Mode arrived that people could see that the slow creep was about to hit a tipping point.”

The changes threaten the open web and show how rapidly A.I. has upended the technology landscape. Tim Berners-Lee, the computer scientist credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1989, had envisioned the web as a tool for global collaboration without borders, where people could launch their own websites and flit freely among sites created by others.

Much of that vision has been chipped away over the years, as tech behemoths like Apple and Meta created “walled gardens,” or tech ecosystems where users could get almost everything they needed under one roof. Now A.I. has indisputably accelerated that trajectory, Mr. Berners-Lee said in a 2024 essay.

Tech companies have built empires that locked users in and were focused on maximizing profit instead of enhancing public utility, Mr. Berners-Lee wrote. “The rapid advancement of A.I. has exacerbated these concerns,” he added, “proving that issues on the web are not isolated but rather deeply intertwined with emerging technologies.”

Google has denied that it is endangering the open web. In a blog post last August, Liz Reid, a vice president of search, said that the company’s ethos had not changed and that it was sending out a “relatively stable” number of clicks numbering in the billions. Reports of a decline in search traffic were “inaccurate” and relied on “flawed methodologies,” she said.

“We care passionately — perhaps more than any other company — about the health of the web ecosystem,” Ms. Reid said.

Since publishing that blog post, Google has added more A.I. to search. It also created some features intended to push users out of AI Mode and into the broader web, including previews of websites to some responses and a tool that lets people set “preferred sources” so that A.I. refers to their favorite news outlets more frequently. The company also created a profile that helps publishers and creators promote their work in search.

“Google’s AI Search features send billions of clicks to the web every week, meeting people’s evolving preferences for how they want to find information while driving significant traffic to websites,” a Google spokesman said in a statement, adding that the company’s A.I. features highlight links to the web.

He said the study that found that users stayed in AI Mode 75 percent of the time was flawed because it relied on a small sample size and gave users specific tasks that did not reflect normal user behavior.

Even so, searches are increasingly being performed by A.I. chatbots while the number of people visiting websites is falling, according to Cloudflare, a content delivery network company. While someone might once have Googled a soccer player’s World Cup performance and clicked to a sports site or a social media thread for commentary, a bot now crawls the web for that information and returns the player’s statistics to the user, who stays on Google.

In total, more than 50 percent of web traffic is now nonhuman, Cloudflare said. Between June 2025 and April 2026, human traffic to websites of businesses in industries like finance, publishing and retail dropped nearly 40 percent, it added.

The web’s fundamental economic model has changed, Cloudflare said, and chatbot-style search tools like Google’s could put the open web in peril if left unchecked.

Google’s A.I., along with other popular chatbots, have hit Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation, which manages the online encyclopedia, said it had experienced an 8 percent decline in human visitors to its site over the past year. At the same time, it has seen an increase in bots scraping its site for data to train A.I. models.

“My work is to ensure that people don’t forget about us because Google’s user interface changed,” said Selena Deckelmann, the Wikimedia Foundation’s chief product and technology officer.

Wikipedia has started promoting its own app and social media channels to establish connections with readers outside Google’s ecosystem, she said. It also began charging Google and other A.I. firms for access to its data for training.

Last month, Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority mandated that Google change its A.I. search tools in the United Kingdom to address publishers’ concerns. The regulator said Google must include clear links to attribute content in chatbot responses, a move intended to help send traffic to websites. The company is also required to allow website operators to opt out of having their content appear in A.I. summaries, and is making the changes across search globally.

For some open web proponents, the fact that people can leave Google’s ecosystem remains enough.

“Whether it uses a traditional search method or A.I., I think Google is still facilitating access to the open internet,” said Tori Noble, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit focused on defending civil liberties online. “It’s not a closed universe” compared with walled gardens like Facebook, which requires a login for access, she added.

That’s little comfort to some website operators.

In May, Vox Media, which owns The Verge and other publications, began selling some of its sites. Jim Bankoff, Vox Media’s chief executive, said the “decimation of search traffic” had influenced his decision to explore other ways of reaching readers, like a podcast network, and ultimately to sell about half of the company to James Murdoch. In June, The Verge and several other Vox Media websites were sold to Penske Media.

Google has often said it was “sending out more traffic and the web is bigger than ever,” Mr. Patel said. “And then right next to that is a bunch of publishers whose businesses are getting destroyed.”

Google’s move should not be a surprise to anyone!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul signed an executive order barring the construction of new large-scale data centers using 50 megawatts or more of power for up to one year, making the Empire State the first state in the nation to impose such a ban.  As reported by CNBC News.

“We’re in the midst of one of the most significant economic upheavals in generations … perhaps ever,” the governor said, announcing the executive order in New York City. “These hyperscale AI data centers consume enormous amounts of power, truly threatening to outpace our grid’s capacity,” she added. “They drive up costs for local ratepayers, and I refuse to let those costs get passed down to New Yorkers.” 

Hochul’s sentiment echoes that of many state residents and environmental leaders, who have heavily scrutinized hyperscaler data centers on the basis of their excessive consumption of power and natural resources, particularly fresh water. 

The announcement noted that New Yorkers have seen their electric bills surge, with the state’s average residential electricity price climbing nearly 68 percent since 2019. This fact has skewed public opinion starkly against new data center construction, with major public backlash against proposed facilities in townships such as Lansing and East Fishkill. 

Leaders of the data center opposition celebrated the governor’s decision. 

“This one-year moratorium is a huge step forward for New York communities fighting against an onslaught of massive data center proposals,” stated Laura Shindell, director of New York State’s Food & Water Watch, a high-profile environmental nonprofit. “It comes as the direct result of immense public pressure from people across the state demanding their elected leaders protect them from Big Tech’s assault, which threatens the state’s clean air and water and New Yorkers’ financial security.” 

Praise was not limited to environmental and community leaders, however, as it also came from the governor’s allies, both in Congress and in the state legislature. 

“This one-year moratorium is fundamentally about trust,” said Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, in a statement provided to WRGB Albany. “Right now, New Yorkers aren’t convinced these massive facilities benefit them. Before we move forward, our communities need ironclad guarantees that their energy bills won’t spike, their water will be protected, and their air will remain clean.”

“Technology should make our lives better, not pollute our water, strain our energy grid, or drive up our utility bills,” State Senator Kristen Gonzalez, a Democrat, stated in the New York State announcement. “By giving our State time to plan, we can ensure that development and innovation do not come at the expense of all of us.”

Many, however, voiced their dissatisfaction, claiming that the moratorium would hinder New York’s — and the United States’ – ability to compete in a rapidly expanding technological field. 

“A statewide moratorium is the wrong answer to the right questions,” New York State Assemblyman Scott Gray, a Republican, and three of his colleagues wrote in a letter to the governor in June opposing data center moratoriums. “It freezes investment, takes decisions away from the communities that should be making them and duplicates or ignores work the governor’s own administration already has underway.”

“Siting belongs to local communities. Albany’s job is to set the regulatory framework, facilitate interconnection and protect ratepayers and grid reliability,” Gray and his colleagues wrote.  “It is not Albany’s job to decide for a town or village whether it wants one of these projects. That is a local decision, and it should remain one.”

“China wins,” said Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman in an X post on Tuesday morning. 

There have been claims made by those building data centers that foreign rivals of the U.S. are supporting the anti-AI movement, and evidence of foreign-created anti-AI content being published for a U.S. audience.

A data center moratorium remains popular in the state. A Siena Research Institute poll conducted in June revealed that 46% of respondents believed that a “one-year moratorium on new permits for large data centers in New York” would be good for the state, whereas only 21% said it would be bad. The issue appeared to be fairly bipartisan as well, with Democrats backing the idea by a margin of 37 percentage points and Republicans supporting it by a margin of 13. This same poll showed Hochul, a Democrat, leading her Republican challenger, Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, by a margin of 20 percentage points – a promising sign for her reelection campaign. 

The first-in-the-nation statewide moratorium marks a significant show of authority by Hochul, who has now carried out a landmark policy that her Democratic colleagues, such as Maine’s Janet Mills and Virginia’s Abigail Spanberger, have cautioned against. Fourteen state legislatures across the country have introduced bills restricting new data center construction, none of which, to this point, have been signed into law.

Tuesday’s moratorium might not be the last action taken by the governor’s office, either. The Responsible Data Center Development Act, passed by the state legislature earlier this year, contains a one-year moratorium on the construction of new data centers with a peak energy demand of 20 megawatts or more. Hochul has yet to take action on the bill but has indicated that she will work with the legislature to “further review” its nature. Furthermore, a statement released by Hochul’s office stated that the governor is actively “pursuing legislation to repeal sales tax exemptions for massive data centers across the state.”

In addition to the pause on new data center construction, Hochul directed the NYS Department of Public Service to “consider approaches to require data centers to fund new clean electric generation dedicated to their operations, including but not limited to customer-sited distributed energy resources and battery storage.”

Once the state develops a comprehensive framework to support municipalities and strong standards for construction, Hochul says, the moratorium will be lifted. New York was ranked by CNBC as being among the best-positioned states to win AI data centers in its recent annual rankings of Top States for Business.

Good move on the part of Gov. Hochul!

Tony

Team Spain Celebrates. Getty images.

Dear Commons Community,

Ferran Torres’ goal early in the second period of extra time was enough as Spain secured their second World Cup with a 1-0 win at New York/New Jersey Stadium (MetLife Stadium) on Sunday. Here is an analysis courtesy of ESPN.

The Barcelona forward had side-footed the ball home after Nico Williams’ header fell to him following Pedro Porro’s cross. Before that, it had been Spain with the better chances, controlling possession and forcing a number of choice saves from Argentina keeper Emiliano “Dibu” Martinez, including a superb stop from a Williams shot at the start of extra time.

The game itself followed the script many had predicted, with Spain possessing more of the ball and Argentina waiting for their moment to find Lionel Messi. Accommodating his 39-year-old legs had served them well during this World Cup as he proved decisive in late comebacks against Egypt and England. But Spain were simply fresher and more technically gifted than previous opponents, and the end result is that Argentina’s first shot of any kind came in the 115th minute, a record of futility for a World Cup.

The upshot was a physical game, with referee Slavko Vincic loathe to intervene and opting to let play run on. But Enzo Fernández left him little choice when he upended Pau Cubarsí in injury time, earning a second yellow card.

Messi had said this was his last World Cup, and he left the stage after a tournament that saw him record eight goals and four assists. It was the third time that Argentina reached the final in the last four World Cups, having lost to Germany in 2014 and beating France in 2022.

As for Spain, already the reigning European champions, they crown a tournament that saw them concede a single goal in eight matches, against Belgium in the quarterfinals. Coach Luis de la Fuente surprised many with some of his team selection, with Pedri again starting on the bench, but he was ultimately vindicated. 

Persistence pays off for Spain

Spain fully deserved their World Cup win over Argentina, but they needed to dig deep to do it after a bruising, challenging game. 

It was a hard watch for much of the time, and arguably the worst World Cup final in living memory, but Spain held their nerve and beat Argentina through sheer persistence and belief that their superior quality would win in the end.

It did, and it was a victory for control over chaos. Spain dominated possession in every game they played and Argentina couldn’t get close to the European champions by fair means, so they attempted to drag them down by less savory methods. But Spain maintained their composure long enough for Torres to win the game with his goal deep into extra time.

By the end, Spain had registered 20 shots compared to two by Argentina, with 12 on target and none by the outgoing world champions.

De la Fuente’s team might lack the explosive brilliance of France’s or Argentina’s ability to drag games out of the fire, but they simply know how to control possession and the tempo of a match. And when a team can do that as well as Spain, it is going to win a lot and it shows why Spain are now on an incredible run of 38 games without defeat. — Mark Ogden

What got Argentina to the World Cup final is what cost them the trophy

If you go 117 minutes without registering a single shot, you’re either not playing a sport of any kind or you have a big problem. And that’s what Argentina had Sunday afternoon. Regular time ended without a single shot — off target or otherwise — toward the Spain goal, something that’s objectively difficult to do. In fact, it happened to Costa Rica (twice) and nobody else since records of this kind have been kept.

Their lack of shooting continued well into injury time, with the mitigating factor that Fernández’s sending off left them down to 10 players.

How to explain the attacking sterility? A lot of it has to do with Spain, who end the tournament having given up just a single goal in eight games. Their ability in possession and intense press denied Argentina both ball and time, two things you need to shoot on goal.

But a lot has to do with the formula that manager Lionel Scaloni chose for this World Cup.

Scaloni built the team around Messi knowing that Messi, at 39, simply can’t contribute off the ball the way he used to. And to mitigate this, he built a team to play narrow so that when it lost the ball, there would still be density and opponents would be forced wide. He also packed the team with players he trusted and whom — crucially — Messi trusted: Alexis Mac Allister, Rodrigo De Paul and Leandro Paredes (who didn’t start the final, but came on and played an outsized role) — players who are tough in the tackle, but not exactly examples of dynamism.

Messi’s presence also meant playing with one striker, which in turn meant choosing between Julián Álvarez and Lautaro Martínez every game. Being the lone “out ball” on a team like this is a thankless and tiring task. And, of course, it meant there was no room for someone like Nico Paz, arguably one of the more gifted players in this squad, but for whom Scaloni couldn’t find a position.

The setup worked — with a bit of luck and a lot of Messi — until it didn’t.

You can second-guess it all you like: Scaloni would say that this was the only way to incorporate Messi and his performances at this World Cup — eight goals and four assists — justify his decision. Maybe so, but the lack of an alternative framework became very telling Sunday as Argentina degenerated into frustration and physicality, while some of their most talented players were stuck on the bench. 

‘Dibu’ Martínez nearly succeeded in keeping Argentina alive

Goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez will be remembered as the only standout for Argentina during the World Cup final in what can otherwise be considered a disappointing team performance.

Martínez certainly grew into the game, making routine saves throughout the first half before going on to record game-changing deflections. He made a total of 11 saves in the 120 minutes, tied for second most in a World Cup knockout stage match in the past 60 years.

Martínez made history all while nursing an injury in his right hand. The Argentina goalkeeper suffered a fracture in his right ring finger when warming up for the Europa League final with Aston Villa. The injury forced Martinez to train separately from his Argentina teammates during the first games of this World Cup before finally integrating with the group. Still, he acknowledged Friday that his hand hurts every day.

“No, it still hurts every day. I knew it was going to hurt a lot. I avoided surgery,” Martínez said.

Martínez was determined to play throughout the World Cup and be the figure Argentina needed between the posts. Despite the score, without Martínez, the game could’ve gone very differently. 

Messi quietly leaves the stage

The fairy tale ended here, with reality crashing into the fantasy that at 39 years of age, Messi could continue to carry a nation on his back. He did it throughout a stellar tournament, but Spain were too much and, ultimately, the numbers were brutal. One shot (blocked), zero touches in the opposition box, dispossessed twice, fouled four times. All this in 120 minutes plus injury time.

As you watched the clock tick down and Messi continue to try to thread the needle between conserving energy and securing a spot on the pitch where his teammates could find him, you kept believing that, at some point, he could turn the game. Heck, he had already done it several times this tournament.

But the job only got tougher after Fernández was sent off in the third minute of second-half stoppage time. Messi was effectively the lone center forward in a de facto 4-4-1 formation. In those conditions, you really couldn’t expect much of anything.

And to think that it was after defeat in the 2016 Copa America final, in this very stadium, that Messi had announced his international retirement, frustrated with the Argentina FA and its failures in major competitions. His retirement lasted only a few months and, upon his return, Argentina won a World Cup and two Copa Americas, as well as the 2022 Finalissima. All this after his 34th birthday.

Needless to say, as muted as his exit was, Messi’s achievements in his previous 1,100-plus games for club and country will resonate forever. 

Congratulations to Spain!

Tony

Credit…Demetrius Freeman for The New York Times.

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd in her column yesterday entitled “Low-T, High Chair”, roasted Trump as an obsessive sore loser who lacks “T” as in testosterone.  Referring to his speech on Thursday, she commented:

“…Trump has reduced the grandeur of obsession to something pathetic. When you commandeer prime time, or try to, you’d better have something prime to say. Trump didn’t. His speech on Thursday was a dud — a batty stew of whiny complaints stemming from an election that he claims was stolen that wasn’t, during a period when he was running the country. If something was wrong, dude, why didn’t you fix it? He still has no proof, and he muddied matters by releasing documents containing information already known and warning about “vulnerabilities” his administration has made worse.”

She concluded:

“If Trump wants to continue to be “the world’s most famous sore loser,” as Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia calls him, he’s going to need to be more high-T. But can that hormone be prescribed to babies?”

Wa-wa – ouch!

Dowd’s entire column is below.

Tony

——————————————————-

The New York Times

Opinion

By Maureen Dowd

July 18, 2026

Ordinarily, I love stories of obsession: “Wuthering Heights,” “The Story of Adèle H.,” “Remembrance of Things Past,” “The Caine Mutiny,” “Fatal Attraction,” “The Good Wife,” “Moby-Dick” and the new Gen Z horror hit “Obsession.”

My Netflix algorithm is trained to compulsively hunt for tales of compulsion.

But President Trump has reduced the grandeur of obsession to something pathetic. When you commandeer prime time, or try to, you’d better have something prime to say. Trump didn’t. His speech on Thursday was a dud — a batty stew of whiny complaints stemming from an election that he claims was stolen that wasn’t, during a period when he was running the country. If something was wrong, dude, why didn’t you fix it? He still has no proof, and he muddied matters by releasing documents containing information already known and warning about “vulnerabilities” his administration has made worse.

And, if the president believes what he is saying about China being a huge danger to our elections, why hasn’t he retaliated against Xi Jinping, the man he warmly calls a “friend” and a “great leader”?

Trump seemed very low-T in his East Room address. I’m surprised that Pete Hegseth, who says his “High-T Department of War” will start screening testosterone levels of “war fighters” age 30 and older, didn’t rush over to shoot up the flaccid 80-year-old commander in chief with the elixir of manhood needed, as he put it, to give America “the leading edge of lethality.”

There was barely a peep from Republicans on Capitol Hill about the speech. No organized effort to polish his tirade. You could almost hear the fervent wish of Republican lawmakers watching the president: Please, Donald, move on!

Sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter  Get expert analysis of the news and a guide to the big ideas shaping the world every weekday morning. Get it sent to your inbox.

But he can’t. His father’s admonition that there are only “killers” and “losers” plays in a loop in his head, reducing him to jelly.

He is willing to undermine and destroy any institution, law, norm or ideal cherished by Americans in a bonfire of his vanities. He claims to be Christian but mocks the sanctity of human life with his cavalier attitude about ICE murders. He puts his own ego above everything else, even democracy.

As The Times’s Peter Baker wrote, the deeply unpopular Trump “seems intent on laying a predicate that, at the least, could explain away a defeat and, at most, his critics fear, potentially justify direct intervention aimed at changing the results” of future elections. Markwayne Mullin, Trump’s new homeland security secretary, picked up Friday where the president left off, threatening jail time for local election officials who dared disobey the administration’s diktats.

Trump’s Ahab-like fixation on the election he lost has gone on for six years. As Maggie Haberman reported five years ago, Trump said after he lost that he expected to be reinstated to the presidency by August 2021.

Usually, the president is able to whip up some Poseidon-level winds of conspiracy to blow his critics off course. But, Thursday night, he seemed impotent, raving about nonsense, threatening to punish ABC and NBC for not taking his weird rant live. He struggled to wield his superpower: creating a fake alternate universe for his supporters. Does anyone believe Trump’s make-believe that “there’s no third world country that has elections like we have”?

(Trump has also failed to convince people that vandals made a gash nearly three football fields long with a boxcutter in the Reflecting Pool, rather than that his crony contractor applied the liner wrong.)

Even Fox News acted more skittish than sycophantish for a change, not wanting to relive its $787.5 million debacle as part of its settlement with Dominion Voting Systems after claiming its machines switched votes from Trump to Joe Biden.

Aishah Hasnie, a Fox White House correspondent, warned on “Hannity” that the network was “not in a position to evaluate the accuracy of the president’s statements and claims at this time,” echoing almost word for word what Bret Baier had said earlier.

The next morning, Mediaite reported, “Fox & Friends” did not mention the address once in its three-hour show.

Trump’s profiteering in office seems to be breaking through to Americans concerned about their own stretched finances.

After making $2.2 billion in his first year back in office, Trump and his family are jumping on corrupt ways to cash in. His media company is planning to sell faster access to his posts, which in the past have shaken the stock market.

The aroma of venality in the White House is so powerful that even minor players want to get in on the act. A teleprompter operator for Trump won about $100,000 placing bets on Kalshi, the prediction market, auguring what he already knew: what Trump would say in his speeches.

King Midas has finally persuaded Scott Bessent to put the braggart president’s face on our currency — a $1 gold coin.

If Trump wants to continue to be “the world’s most famous sore loser,” as Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia calls him, he’s going to need to be more high-T. But can that hormone be prescribed to babies?

Christopher Nolan’s conception of the Trojan horse. Credit…Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

Dear Commons Community,

On Friday, I posted about the new film “The Odyssey” which I saw on Thursday evening. Since then I have had several conversations and email exchanges about the film with neighbors and colleagues. I had read the poem by Homer in high school and have read other books on Homer and his work over the years.  Yesterday, The New York Times had an article entitled “What to Know Before Seeing “The Odyssey”.  It contains useful information for those not familiar with Homer’s original story. Below is the Times article.

Tony

——————————————-

You already know “The Odyssey” will be epic given its director (Christopher Nolan), its nearly three-hour run time and the mammoth IMAX cameras used to shoot it.

Based on an ancient Greek poem by Homer, the film, now in theaters, tells the story of Odysseus (Matt Damon) as he spends 10 years trying to return home to his wife, Penelope (Anne Hathaway), and son, Telemachus (Tom Holland), after the fall of Troy. Also in the cast are Robert Pattinson as Antinous, Penelope’s primary suitor; and Zendaya as the goddess Athena.

You may have read the poem in high school. But there’s no “Star Wars” scroll to refresh your memory; the film drops you quickly into the final weeks of Odysseus’ journey.

While many parts of the story — the Trojan horse, the involvement of the gods, any mention of magic — are decidedly fictional, historians do generally agree that a conflict did take place at some point between the Greeks and the people of Anatolia (modern-day Turkey), where the ancient city of Troy was located. The poem probably amalgamates several real skirmishes, raids and trade rivalries into a legendary 10-year siege.

Here’s what to know.

When does ‘The Odyssey’ take place?

It’s approximately 1200 B.C., and the decade-long Trojan War has just ended. The events of the epic poem span the next decade. (Yes, if you’re counting, this means Odysseus will have been away from his family for 20 years by the end of his journey back to his kingdom of Ithaca.)

What was the Trojan War about?

It all started over a woman whose name you’ve probably heard: Helen.

On one side was the Bronze Age city of Troy; on the other, a coalition of ancient Greek kingdoms.

Helen (Lupita Nyong’o), the most beautiful woman in the world (a.k.a. “the face that launch’d a thousand ships”), was married to Menelaus (Jon Bernthal), the king of the Greek city-state of Sparta. While Menelaus was away, Paris, a young prince from Troy, paid a visit. Stories differ on whether he seduced Helen and convinced her to follow him back to Troy, or whether he abducted her, though Homer seems to favor the seduction version of events.

Menelaus was not pleased. He convinced his brother, Agamemnon (Benny Safdie), the king of Mycenae, another ancient Greek kingdom, to lead an army into Troy to pillage the city and retrieve Helen.

The campaign took 10 years. It was a blood bath, but the Greeks ultimately emerged victorious, thanks to Odysseus and his Trojan horse ploy.

What was the Trojan horse?

Even if you know nothing else about the Trojan War, you’re probably familiar with the expression “Trojan horse,” which has entered the lexicon as a metaphor for something that appears harmless but contains hidden malice. The ancient reference appears widely in pop culture, including in shows like “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “Doctor Who.”

In this case, the name is pretty literal: It refers to a giant hollow wooden horse that Odysseus and several dozen soldiers hid inside as a means of penetrating Troy’s city walls.

So how did this work? After a long day of fighting the Trojans, Odysseus and his men seemed to admit defeat, retreating from the battlefield and leaving behind just the soldier Sinon (Elliot Page) and the enormous horse, which they positioned outside the city gates.

The horse, Sinon told the Trojans, was a peace offering to the goddess Athena. The Trojans fell for it and dragged the supposed offering inside the city walls, celebrating what they believed to be the end of the war. After the city went to sleep, Odysseus and his men emerged and opened the gates to the waiting Greek army, catching the Trojans by surprise and leading to the city’s surrender.

What happens after the war?

For Odysseus, finally, it’s time to return to Ithaca after being away from Penelope and Telemachus, now a teen, for 10 years. Cue the events of “The Odyssey,” which follows Odysseus’ harrowing journey.

Along the way, he encounters sea monsters; a Cyclops; tempting Siren songs; and a sorceress, Circe (Samantha Morton), who turns men into pigs. Good thing he has Athena, the goddess of wisdom, looking out for him.

What’s going on back in Ithaca?

Penelope, who was a mere teen when Odysseus left, is now in her 30s. (Nolan ages her up; Hathaway is 43, though Damon, at 55, is around the same age as Odysseus at the end of his journey.)

Penelope’s attracted dozens of suitors — basically the island’s entire population of young, rich men — who are staying at the palace, ready to pounce if only she’ll admit what seems obvious to them: Odysseus is probably dead. They’re ready to murder his son and take the throne.

Penelope, though, never gives up. In an interview with Time magazine, Hathaway said she and Damon understood “The Odyssey” as a love story between soulmates. Penelope devises various means of keeping Antinous and the other suitors at bay.

What is Zeus’ Law?

It’s an implicit agreement between hosts and travelers, and it’s enforced by Zeus, the protector of strangers and guests. Hosts are required to provide food and shelter to travelers, who are in turn expected to be courteous and to not overstay their welcome. Violating it was seen as a grave risk; that stranger at your door might have been a god in disguise.

Who are some of the other major players?

In Nolan’s adaptation, Nyong’o is playing not only Helen, but also Helen’s sister, Clytemnestra, who is married to Agamemnon. Yes, two sisters are married to two brothers. (If you want more on what happens between Clytemnestra and Agamemnon after the war, check out Aeschylus’ “Oresteia” trilogy.)

Charlize Theron also makes an appearance as Calypso, a nymph who traps Odysseus on her island for seven years in the hope of making him her immortal husband.

Other notables: John Leguizamo plays Eumaeus, Odysseus’ blind swineherd and childhood friend; Mia Goth is Melantho, a maid serving Odysseus and Penelope; Himesh Patel is Eurylochus, Odysseus’ second-in-command; and Bill Irwin is Polyphemus, the Cyclops whom Odysseus blinds with a stake.

The rapper Travis Scott is also in this version, playing a bard. Nolan has said he included the character because he wanted to reference how the poem had been passed down orally, in a parallel to modern hip-hop culture.

How is ‘The Odyssey’ related to ‘The Iliad’?

The two epic poems are by Homer, with several characters, including Odysseus, appearing in both. “The Iliad” is essentially the prequel: It covers the final few weeks of the Trojan War. (Achilles is the protagonist; Odysseus is a supporting character.)

“The Odyssey” picks up roughly 10 years after the events of “The Iliad.”

A poster of Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader, in Tehran on Saturday. Credit…Arash Khamooshi/Polaris for The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

Two American service members were killed and a third was missing after an Iranian attack on a base in Jordan, prompting U.S. forces to launch an eighth straight night of strikes against Iranian military targets, U.S. Central Command said on Sunday.

The U.S. soldiers’ deaths — the first from hostile fire since a truce with Iran in early April — came after a week of the heaviest fighting since the war began in February. The Jordanian base came under fire from Iranian ballistic missiles and drones on Friday, according to U.S. Central Command.  As reported by The New York Times.

In response, the U.S. military said earlier  today that it had struck Iranian military coastal surveillance and air defense facilities, among other targets, and had targeted Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps forces that were responsible for the attack in Jordan, without providing specifics.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the deaths of the U.S. soldiers, which brought the total of American service members killed in the war to 16, “only stiffens our resolve.”

The United States and Iran have expanded the scope and intensity of their attacks, with no sign of an off-ramp to end the fighting. Iranian state media reported on Saturday that bridges and roads in southern Iran had been damaged and a water desalination plant in the city of Jask was hit in U.S. attacks. It cited a local official as saying that about 10,000 people were facing water shortages. The U.S. military did not immediately respond to a request for comment on those claims.

Iran’s military has responded with attacks on American allies in the Middle East, targeting U.S. bases in the region. The Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday that it had launched new drone attacks at U.S. facilities in Kuwait, a day after the authorities in the Persian Gulf state said that Iranian strikes had hit a second power and water treatment plant, causing fires, and damaged an oil facility.

The intensifying hostilities have failed to break the deadlock over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for global oil and gas shipments that Iran has blockaded. Last month, the United States and Iran reached a cease-fire meant to reopen the strait and allow for broader negotiations. Iran, citing a clause in the agreement, has continued to assert control over the waterway, attacking ships trying to transit through routes outside its territory.

The United States has also reinstated its own blockade on Iranian ports. With no apparent negotiations taking place, the two sides appear to be sliding toward a wider war.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to bombard Iranian infrastructure, including power plants and bridges, in an effort to force Iran’s leaders to make a deal and end the war. Analysts say there is little guarantee that stepping up attacks would force Iran to change course, and such attacks on critical infrastructure could constitute war crimes under international law.

The deaths of these American soldiers will not sit well with the American people.

May they rest in peace!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

This weekend is a smorgasbord for sports lovers.  Here is the lineup.

Soccer – The World Cup

The World Cup Championship will be played tomorrow at 3:00 pm (EDT) at Met-Life Stadium, in New Jersey. It will feature Argentina’s high-powered offense led by Lionel Messi against Spain’s shutdown defense.

Golf – The Open

The third and final round of the Open Tournament (formally the British Open) is being played today and tomorrow at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, Merseyside, England.  The leader as of yesterday was Lucas Herbert at 8 under par.  Cameron Young who was born and raised in Sleepy Hollow, in Westchester County, NY is tied for second at 6 under par.

Yankees and Dodgers

For those us who remember the great Yankee Dodger rivalry here in New York prior to 1957 can relive it a bit as the two teams square off for three games this weekend.  The Dodgers won last night in a pitcher’s duel, 2-1.

More Soccer – USL League Two Championship Playoffs

Thirty-two teams from around the country will be playing the first two rounds of the USL League Two Championship Playoffs this weekend.  It started last night and I watched Ballard FC representing the northwest defeat Utah United representing the northwest mountain region in a thrilling game-ending shootout. Ballard won 4-2 in the shootout.  My grandson, Michael Divano, plays for Ballard. Round two will be played tomorrow.

My TV remote is going to overheat this weekend!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez is suspending her campaign for governor after a week of trying to navigate the fallout of a financial disaster. As reported by the Wisconsin Examiner.

“As we have continued to dig into our financial reports, it has become clear that there are issues that would be an ongoing distraction —  not just for this campaign, but for the primary and for Wisconsin,” Rodriguez said yesterday in a statement and a video posted to X. “This race is too important to Wisconsin to let that happen.” 

Rodriguez’s troubles emerged when she announced she fired her campaign manager, Kara Spencer, on Sunday due to “serious mismanagement and inaccuracies in campaign finance filings she prepared.” Rodriguez’s January finance reports showed hundreds of duplicate contributions, and during a press conference on Monday, Rodriguez said she had hundreds of thousands of dollars less than she expected, but was determined to push ahead, calling it a “bump in the road.”

While she sought to continue on, additional mistakes arose when she submitted her campaign finance reports Wednesday. Her initial report showed she had less than $35,000 in the bank and over $150,000 in debts to sort through. 

However, her campaign put out a statement saying that she had raised $219,000 since July 1 and would be launching a new campaign ad. Her campaign also said that it was still “actively working to ensure our financial records are accurate and complete.” 

The initial report showed a payment to WI Federation of Republican Women, which was a mistake that was fixed in the amended report. However, the amended report also dramatically increased the tally of her campaign dollars to show she ended the period with $643,206. 

The campaign later said that report was a mistake, and the campaign did end the period with only $34,991 in cash-on-hand after all. 

Rodriguez in her statement on suspending the campaign said that she “cannot in good conscience allow these questions to become a cloud over an election that Democrats need to win.”

“I am deeply hurt and betrayed by what happened,” Rodriguez said. “As I said on Monday, part of being a leader is taking swift action, doing the right thing, and being as honest as possible when there’s a problem.” 

“This was never just about any one race or any one candidate,” Rodriguez continued. “This is about protecting Wisconsin from a legislature hell-bent on putting corporations over schools and insurance companies over patients. It’s about showing the rest of the country that we can win here, govern here, and fight for the middle class — and that Wisconsin will lead the way.”

Her exit from the race is the third in recent weeks, narrowing the field to four candidates: former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, state Rep. Francesca Hong, state Sen. Kelda Roys and Joel Brennan, former head of the Department of Administration.

There are just 25 days until Wisconsin’s primary election.

Rodriguez’s campaign appeared to be growing momentum ahead of the financial scandal partially due to the endorsements of her former Democratic opponents, Missy Hughes, the former CEO of the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp., and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. Crowley dropped out last Wednesday and endorsed Rodriguez on Thursday, around the same time that Rodriguez said she realized something was amiss with her financials. 

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, there is a push to get Crowley to re-enter the race, and two Democratic sources told the newspaper that Gov. Tony Evers is “very seriously considering” backing that effort. Late Friday, Crowley released a statement from “Democratic candidate for governor David Crowley” calling a press conference in Milwaukee at which he will make an announcement at 11 a.m. Saturday.

Evers has so far stayed out of the race. When the two-term governor announced his retirement, however, he left open the door for endorsing in the primary saying “never say never” and “if there’s somebody who really needs support, and I want them to win, I might get in.”

Hughes also called on Crowley to get back into the race in a post on X.

While some Democrats sought to pull Crowley back into the race, candidates still in the race highlighted their campaigns  and hoped to pull supporters over to their campaign. 

Brennan, the only other current or former member of Evers’ administration still in the governor’s race, was the first to issue a statement Friday.

“I deeply respect Lieutenant Governor Rodriguez and the ideas and energy she brought to this race,” said Brennan. “This is no doubt disappointing for her and people who supported her campaign, and I am committed to joining her in the fight to protect the Wisconsin we love.”

Brennan has been among the most vocal critics of how the Rodriguez campaign had managed its finance and compliance operation. He emphasized when he submitted his own report this week that her difficulties had weakened her as a candidate in the general election against the likely Republican nominee, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany.

“While a lot has changed in the Democratic primary, one thing has not: we need a governor who can win and who will fight for Wisconsin to get things done,” said Brennan, adding that he was “the candidate who will get big things done.”  

Sen. Kelda Roys followed shortly after with a call Friday “to unite the party so that we can defeat Tom Tiffany and deliver a Democratic trifecta.”

Both Brennan and Roys have finished further back in polls on the race to date. Until this week Rodriguez, Barnes and Hong have been the top candidates in polling.

The Republican Party of Wisconsin Chair Brian Schimming said in a statement that Democrats are “in full meltdown mode.” 

“With zero clear candidate and lackluster fundraising, any hope Democrats had has turned into a dumpster fire,” Schimming said. “As Democrats fight among themselves in primaries and scramble for resources, Republicans are organized, well-funded, and laser-focused on victory in November.”

Not a good situation for the people of Wisconsin.

Tony