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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Al-Jazeera article linked below gives a decent overview, but it's surface-level. I'll try to give a more in-depth summary. After WWII, there was significant local resistance to the traditional Middle-Eastern monarchies. These were seen as decadent, old-fashioned stooges to Western sugar daddies. Arab Nationalism, and related ideologies like Nasserism and Ba-athism, sought to cast off the yoke of these monarchies and institute modern, socialist-leaning, authoritarian governments that wouldn't be afraid to play the US and USSR against each other. Egypt was the most dramatic of these. Nasser skillfully kicked out both the monarchy and the British, and while Western governments initially had confidence in him as a reformer, he was soon regarded as a loose cannon; when the US refused to sell him arms for use against Israel, he had no problem turning to the USSR, who had no problem accommodating him. Iran would have its own shot at this in the early 1950s, which was famously cut short by the US's own covert restoration of the monarchy.


Nasser's own pan-Arab dreams would lead him to advocate for similar revolutions in other countries. Iraq and Syria would see their own revolutions, and Aden would kick out the British along similar lines. But monarchies still remained, most notably Saudi Arabia, whose close ties with the United States were regarded as suspect. When dispossessed Palestinians formed the PLO in 1964, they looked to the Pan-Arab revolutionaries for inspiration. It was a nationalist movement, but it was also socialist.


When Israel occupied the West Bank following the 6-day war in 1967, the PLO was forced into Jordan, from where they staged terrorist attacks into Israel. The problem was that Jordan was a monarchy under King Hussein. The other problem was that while Jordan was officially at war with Israel, Hussein was a pragmatist who enjoyed good relations with the United States, and he didn't like the idea of the PLO turning his country into a terrorist state. The last straw came with the PLO's attempted assassination of Hussein and overthrow of the Jordanian government in 1970. Jordanian troops would expel the PLO, who then took up in Lebanon.


So now the PLO is in southern Lebanon, and Yassir Arafat is gaining notoriety as the world's preeminent Arab terrorist. The situation is much the same as it was in Jordan, except that the Lebanese government is a mess and isn't equipped to do anything about it, giving the PLO essentially free-reign in the South. When Lebanon erupts into civil war in 1975, Israel, who supported the existing Maronite government, took the opportunity to invade and establish a buffer zone. While they got their buffer zone, it didn't eliminate the PLO, but drove them further north. By 1981, and international peacekeeping force had brokered a ceasefire agreement, which ended the war but left a peacekeeping force in place.


In the meantime, Pan-Arabism was on its last legs. Following Nasser's death, Anwar Sadat took control of Egypt in the early 1970s. With Soviet help, he took one last shot at Israel in the Yom Kippur War, but was soundly defeated. Realizing that the only hope at regaining any of the lost territory was through a negotiated settlement, he agreed to the Camp David Accords in 1978. While this didn't mean the immediate fall of the other secular states, it cast a pall on the movement as a whole. Egypt would no longer be the alpha dog in the region.


But who would? Among the remaining secular states, Iraq was the most obvious candidate, with its central location, large population, and large army. In a couple years Sadaam Hussein would rise to power in an attempt to assert this vision. Syria was small and was wrapped up in wars in Israel and Lebanon it couldn't win. Jordan had its own Israel problems; while officially at war, Hussein was too pragmatic about his relationship with the country to be openly hostile. The other monarchies were small and weak, and some were barely independent. The one that wasn't was Saudi Arabia, awash in American arms and domestic oil money. But as a monarchy, it had a credibility problem similar to Egypt's. The ruling family was significantly more conservative than most of the various Kings and Emirs, and while this meant they didn't seem as decadent as the others, it did make them seem more old-fashioned. It would be hard to unite the people around a King, of all things.


And then there was Iran. Persian where the rest of the region is Arab, Shia where the rest of the region is Sunni. Still one of the monarchies, but things are changing. An exiled Ayatollah has found something for the people to cling to that's a far cry from Pan-Arabism: Religious fervor. Guys like Nasser saw this kind of thing as detrimental to their countries' modernization, but by 1979, its day had come. Kohmeni would swoop into Tehran and depose the Shah, instituting his own ideal form of religious-led government. I'm going to assume you know about the Iranian revolution so I won't recount the story here. But there was a lesser-known revolution in Saudi Arabia around the same time. In the wake of the Ayatollah taking power, Juhayman al-Otaybi and a group of 600 fanatics seized the Grand Mosque at Mecca in an attempt to overthrow the House of Saud. The attempt was unsuccessful, but it spooked the royal family enough that they abandoned the meager steps they had taken towards modernization in favor of an increasingly Islamist policy.


By the early 1980s, there were three powers squaring off to dominate the region: Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran. Iraq, sensing weakness in the chaos surrounding the Iranian Revolution, struck first, invading Iran in 1980. Meanwhile, Israel invaded Lebanon again in 1982, laying siege to Beirut, in an attempt to drive out the PLO for good. By the end of the year, Arafat agreed to move operations to Tunis, far out of striking distance of Israel. But that didn't solve Lebanon's problems. Shiites in the south had become resentful of the constant occupations, whether from the PLO, Israel, or international peacekeepers. This resentment culminated in the 1983 bombing of the American embassy in Beirut and the formation of Hezbollah.


Iraq, having committed itself to a war that was looking increasingly like a stalemate, and not being too keen on the whole religious fanaticism thing, was looking less and less like the new alpha dog. Iran's chance didn't look much better. It was bogged down in the war itself, and it would be hard to find followers of Shiites in a region that was overwhelmingly Sunni. There were plenty of Shiites in Iraq, but the situation on the ground made it inconceivable that Iran would be able to draw them into its sphere. But Iran did have one advantage that Saudi Arabia didn't. In 1983, Egypt was at peace with Israel, and Hussein was unwilling to get too involved. Assad in Syria blamed Israel for everything, but he was a secular Ba'athist and his military situation wasn't great. But now there was Hezbollah, Shiites in a land of Sunnis, in perfect position to pick up where the PLO left off before being exiled to Tunis.


So Iran decided to become Hezbollah's sugar daddy. This became readily apparent to the United States relatively early. As Hezbollah started taking Americans hostages in the 1980s, it became clear to negotiators pretty quickly that they took their marching orders from Iran (the Iran-Contra Affair was an attempt to negotiate the release of these hostages). As the power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia has grown more acute over the decades, Iran has used its position as a supporter of Iran and enemy of Israel to gain support among the wider region. Consider the Abraham Accords. The basic idea behind them is that if Muslim-majority countries establish diplomatic relations with Israel, it will isolate Palestinian hardliners and force them to the negotiating table. The one potential weakness in such a policy is that, while the governments of these countries know that peace with Israel benefits them in the long run, the position is still wildly unpopular among the Arab public.


Iran knows that keeping the Israeli-Palestinian conflict going on as long as possible is to its long-term benefit. While I agree with the Trump's policy in this area generally, I shake my head when he or Jared Kushner says that the October 7 attacks wouldn't have happened had he been president. Biden continued Trump's diplomatic policy in the region, and a year ago it looked like Saudi Arabia would be establishing relations with Israel in the not-too-distant future. October 7 provoked a response from Israel that made any chance of recognition politically impossible. A policy of alienating Hamas terrorists has been replaced by a policy of simply eliminating them. The more support Iran can give to those who are on the front lines, the more credibility they build with the Arab public, while Saudi Arabia, beholden to the United States, is forced to stand aloof. They're also far enough away from Israel that the risk of direct conflict is relatively low. This is why Israel assassinated Haniyeh in Iran. Beyond being a high-value target, it sends a message — You're not safe. We can waltz into your country any time and kill anyone we want to, and there's nothing you can do about it. Lob all the poorly-guided missiles you want to.


Whether this strategy plays out for Iran is anyone's guess. Power politics has completely overtaken religious fundamentalism. Saudi Arabia is liberalizing, and the more extreme fanaticism of Al-Qaeda and ISIL has given the movement a bad name locally in some of these places. After 45 years, Iran's sphere of influence is limited to Hezbollah, Yemen, parts of Iraq, and Hamas, and the last of those is very recent and not exactly in a good position right now. The Saudis, meanwhile, have all the weapons and all the money. They have the West; Iran has Russia and North Korea. They've also seen internal resistance in recent years that, while it was never close to bringing down the government, was much more than Saudi Arabia has had to deal with.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It's only been a few days. The flooding still hasn't subsided and larger rivers are still rising from the water working it's way downstream. Three of the four interstate routes into Asheville are closed due to landslides. Bridges are washed out, making some areas hard to reach without an airlift. Roads are destroyed. When this happens in the mountains it isn't like a storm surge that recorded rather quickly. Flat land doesn't slide, and while rivers may flood, the velocity they reach in the mountains makes it more likely they'll take out bridges. And bridges are everywhere; here in Western Pennsylvania pretty much every road has a creek running alongside it, and a lot of people have bridges to get into their driveways. We're just getting to the point where we can even start cleaning up; Gov. Cooper just called up the National Guard yesterday. Biden said he's visiting later in the week. It's also a bit rich for Trump to criticize Biden's disaster response after Hurricane Maria.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
That sounds good in theory, but the reality is that court backlogs aren't the reason these cases take so long to resolve, and trying to force the issue actually increases the chance that the prosecution loses. Technically speaking, appeals are on a strict timeline. In reality, like most things in law, nothing is that strict. I can't speak for all states, but here's how it works in Pennsylvania:


After sentencing, the defense has 10 days to file a post-trial motion. This is where you list all the errors you think the court made and politely ask the court to reconsider them. Since you only have ten days to file, though, you pro-forma list every adverse decision the judge made. At this point, the judge has 120 days to grant or deny the relief. Since these motions are rarely granted, the default is that if no decision has been rendered in 120 days, they are automatically denied. Since this doesn't require the judge to actually do anything, you can expect to wait the full 120 days. Then you have 30 days to file notice of appeal. Once the notice is filed, the court will send a docketing statement, that has a deadline by which you must file a Statement of Errors with the trial court. Except you just got the transcript after 4 months, and this transcript is 11,000 pages long, and you need time to go through it to catch all the errors. So 2 weeks before the Statement is due, you file a motion with the court for an extension, which they grant, because the prosecution doesn't oppose it, because if they did then defense counsel would never agree to their extension requests. So the deadline gets extended by a month.


Once the Statement is finally submitted, the trial judge has to actually respond to every argument. And he's going to take his sweet time responding because he's about to start another trial which he isn't about to postpone for the third time just so he can respond to your long-shot motion, so add another couple months onto that. Once he's explained why your arguments are bullshit, you have to file a brief in support of your motion, which you nominally have 30 days to do but which you're going to ask for an extension on because you've raised so many issues that you need time to properly research the issues and apply the law to the facts in this monster transcript. And the prosecution again raises no opposition, because they don't exactly have an attorney assigned to handling this appeal and the trial team are all busy trying to incarcerate criminals who aren't in jail indefinitely and don't have the time to spend going through that 11,000 page transcript themselves and countering all of your arguments. After all, if they contest your motion then you're not exactly going to be inclined to grant them any extensions, which means their brief would be dogshit and you'd waive oral argument while the appeals court remands the case for a new trial and they're back to square one. So you get your extension. And since you got your extension, you're in no position to request their request for an extension, and they get one as well. And once you get their brief you now have 14 days to file a reply brief, which you probably don't do unless they made a particularly bad argument, but anyway. Now, a year and a half after sentencing, we're finally at the point where the case can even get scheduled for argument.


The upshot is that it's not so much the court's time that's the problem but the attorneys' time. We can certainly increase the speed of these appeals by hiring dedicated appellate teams for local DA's offices, but these offices don't have the budgets to fully staff their offices as it is. Why would we prioritize these cases? These defendants have already been convicted and are going to be in jail forever and a day regardless of what happens. Every capital case that gets fast tracked means another case gets bumped. Is this really more important than a free speech case? Or a case where there are legitimate questions about illegal searches? Or even a commercial case where the law is genuinely ambiguous? Shouldn't we dedicate what limited resources we have toward prosecuting crimes where the defendants haven't been convicted and might not be? Or do we raise local taxes to give DA's offices more money? That won't sit well in red areas. In Washington County, a rural/exurban county outside of Pittsburgh, the new DA has decided to make a statement by charging every murder he can as a capital case. His first year in office there were 9 murders in a county of about 200,000 people. He charged 5 capital cases, including 1 woman whose only connection to the crime was that her fingerprint had been found on a shell casing. This isn't a particularly large office. He probably could've gotten plea deals on most of these, but instead he has to waste taxpayer money on a quixotic attempt at securing the death penalty in a state that has a moratorium on executions, and that is considering abolishing capital punishment on the grounds that it's an inefficient generator of the bullshit described above.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Executing someone, in the USA, even those guilty beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt, is somehow more expensive, but that speaks more to political opposition and organizational failure than the price of a bullet or a noose. It is not intrinsically difficult or expensive to end a human life, quite the opposite.






And that may as well be cheaply. Because the rest of us are paying for it with our finite time and money. Not without due process, extra care even, but the kind of people who end up on Death Row aren't particularly sympathetic characters if the recent discussion about the questionable candidates that the Innocence Project were forced to advocate for are any indication.




The only extra care given to capital cases in the United States is the bifurcated nature of the trial with both guilt and penalty phases and the requirement for death-qualified juries. While these impart some additional amount of time and expense, the biggest contributing factor is the lengthy appeals process. This is what's usually in the crosshairs of people who want to speed up the execution process, because it's the most obvious contributing factor; the trials may take a bit longer, but people don't start the clock on these things until after the sentence is pronounced. The problem, though, isn't that the appeals process is any different for capital cases than it is for other cases, but that the entire process is almost always utilized.


Most criminal convictions in the US are the result of plea bargains, and there isn't much to appeal in those cases. You could theoretically claim that an incompetent attorney talked you into taking a bad deal, but winning that appeal would at best get you a trial, at which you could be convicted and sentenced to a stiffer penalty. So no point in appealing that unless the situation is desperate or your attorney really likes your chances of winning. Also if there's a DNA exoneration or something like that, but those are rare. Even without a plea, though, most defendants don't appeal because it simply isn't worth it. Defendants who do appeal will usually only do so when there are clear avenues for appeal, and they will limit their appeal to those avenues. They'll also usually stop after losing at the first stage, and will only press further if there's a serious constitutional issue at stake.


Death penalty cases never result from plea bargains, and the defendants have no incentive to not file every appeal they can. So rather than focus on a few key issues they'll throw the entire record into question. Challenge everything in there that can be challenged. And capital cases are complicated and bifurcated so they have incredibly long records. This means the prosecutor has to wade through thousands of pages of trial transcripts to properly contest the appeal, and he's on the public payroll. So take your appeal to the intermediate appellate court and wait a couple years. When that appeal is rejected, take it to the state supreme court to be rejected (some states have tried to short-circuit this process by giving all capital appeals directly to the supreme court). Then maybe appeal that ruling to the US Supreme Court. They probably won't take it, but you'll by some time waiting for them to deny cert.


By this point, your appeals are exhausted, but that's not the end of it. Now you start filing for post-conviction relief. This is where you argue that defects outside the record merit reconsideration. Things like ineffective assistance of counsel, discovery of new evidence, and an intervening court decision. These also take a while. But then after that you get to argue the same things in a Federal habeas corpus petition. All of this by itself take a long time, but in a significant number of cases the defendant actually wins an appeal or a motion for relief. The thing is that winning these doesn't get you out of jail, but simply gets you a new trial, or a new sentencing phase. So now the defendant goes back to square one (or two) and starts the whole process over again.


The incentives in this process line up so that the goal is to expend as much time as possible. Someone serving a ten year sentence isn't going to do it this way because he's probably going to be out of prison before the appeals are exhausted. Someone serving a life sentence isn't going to do this because if they can theoretically get out they want out as fast as possible; buying time does nothing. But death row inmates aren't that stupid (or at least their attorneys aren't). Any postponement is a bonus, even if the end result is the same.


I honestly don't see any way around this. I understand the sentiment around not wanting to waste time, but these are protections that are enjoyed by everybody, and we have to look beyond death row if we want to scuttle them. Yeah, most death row inmates are total pieces of shit, but in some cases there really were serious procedural mistakes, in some cases there really was ineffective counsel, and there occasionally are exonerations. I'm not comfortable with the idea of intentionally scuttling constitutional protections across the board for the sole purpose of making it easier to execute people. I'm not sure what exactly is gained from that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
At the risk of sounding insensitive, do you know anything about this hurricane? Evacuating the entire "broad path" of the hurricane would mean evacuating an area about 600 miles long and 200 miles wide that includes several major cities such as Tallahassee, Charlotte, and Atlanta. Evacuating at least 10 million people potentially hundreds of miles on short notice isn't exactly easy, or even desirable.




Dunno if this one is an exception, but I believe hurricanes are routine occurrences in this region.




No, they aren't. Asheville is in the western part of North Carolina, at least 250 miles from the nearest coastline.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As an avid cyclist, I've taken a couple of test drives, and I'm honestly not that impressed. To be fair, the one I took the most extensive ride on was a mountain bike, so it's not exactly typical commuter conditions, and with that in mind, the whole experience felt kind of stupid. I felt less like I was riding a bike and more like I was driving some kind of motorized vehicle. Pedaling felt less like moving the bike and more like actuating the motor, as if i was just flipping switches. Shifting seemed pointless; why bother with the higher gears when I can just keep it in low gear and adjust the power output as necessary? Now, I don't want to knock e-mountain bikes particularly, because I know a lot of older riders who are only able to stay out because of them. I also don't have any problem with people who use them for commuting or otherwise as a form of transportation.


My issue is with the people who buy them for recreation and take them on bike trails. It used to be that the only people who would do 20 mph on these trails were serious riders on serious bikes who were skilled enough and had enough courtesy that they weren't a problem. It also didn't hurt that there are few people in good enough shape to do 20 for any distance. Now that any schlub can do 20 there are regular near-collisions with teenage jackwagons who think they're on dirt bikes. At a state park near me, where several concessionaires run e-bike liveries, they're having serious problems with erosion on the crushed lime surface. This isn't a problem with e-mountain bikes, because the terrain naturally limits speed (the only advantage is on uphill sections, which already see much faster speeds from downhill riders). On a wide open trail though, it doesn't take much skill to open up the throttle.


Beyond that, what's the point? I fail to see how much advantage there is to an ebike when riding on a relatively flat path at normal speeds. As much as I dislike the asshole riders, there are plenty of normal people riding them slower than I'm riding my pedal bike, and all I can think of is "Why?" Only the frailest among us would have trouble pedaling a normal bike at reasonable speeds, and these people don't seem to ride their ebikes any faster, or at least much faster. And I lied about e-mountain bikes. One problem I do have isn't with the bikes themselves, but the people who claim they get just as good of a workout on them as they did on pedal bikes. Bullshit. I went on a weekend trip with friends this past summer, a couple of whom had ebikes. A friend of mine had a gizmo you could use to estimate wattage, and we took turns trying it out. Those of us on pedal bikes averaged about 225 watts, and the hardest riding guy peaked at over 700 watts on a tough climb. The ebike guys averaged around 70 watts of output at the cranks, with little change on hills. Like I alluded to earlier, it's an equivalent workout to riding a pedal bike in low gear at low cadence.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Because, depending on the program, it can be significantly cheaper than owning. In Pittsburgh, the bikeshare program charges $120/year for a subscription with unlimited 30 minute rentals. Compare that to owning one, which is going to cost at least $2,000 for one that's worth buying, and comes with the attendant maintenance and theft risk. Compare that to transit, which in Pittsburgh is over $1,000 for an annual pass and requires you to operate on their schedule. Compare that to a parking lease, which is going to run you between $170 and $350 per month depending on where it is. And the network of stations is much larger than I would have thought, covering pretty much the entire East End plus the South Side and most of the lower North Side. (It should be noted that other parts of the city are cut off from any potential bike network by extreme topography and dangerous roads. This is doable for some people, but most will balk at the idea and it's certainly a liability nightmare.) For a certain kind of person, this subscription makes sense. Based on the pay-as-you-go rates, this makes sens for anyone who thinks they're going to use the service 20–30 times per year. I can't speak to how this works in New York or any other city.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 30, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Before ebikes became common there were plenty of similar rental programs for pedal bikes, and the program in Pittsburgh still has pedal bikes. They're just slowly replacing them with e-bikes because they're an easier sell to the typical American who's allergic to exercise.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly NFL Thread: Week 4
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


You fire the coach before trading the QB because replacement level coaches are nearly as good as great coaches, while replacement level QBs are essentially useless for a win-now roster.




I think you have too optimistic a view of replacement-level coaches. First, we need to define out terms, and since it's raining this morning, I took a look at every head coach who has coached since 2007, the year Mike Tomlin, the longest-tenured current head coach, was hired. The trouble with defining replacement-level is that head coaches are normally judged on one thing and one thing only: Wins. The median winning percentage for all head coaches is .427. The mean is only slightly higher, at .430. And this is average, meaning a full half of all coaches are going to have worse records. In order to divorce wins from the equation, I looked at the number of seasons each team coached, under the presumption that good coaches tend to coach longer than bad ones. I used the same coaches as before, but eliminated anyone currently coaching to reduce the sample size problem, e.g. it makes Mike McDonald look like the greatest head coach of all time, though no one thinks he's going to end his career anywhere near 1.000. I will also add that I included data from these coaches' entire careers, not just 2007 and later. The goal was just to limit the coaches sampled to ones who are reasonably recent (I don't want oddball data from the 20s and 30s skewering the results), and I want to be able to name "replacement level" coaches one would actually be familiar with.


The median coaching tenure among NFL head coaches is 4 years, including current head coaches, and the mean is 6.4 years, though this is heavily skewed by people like Bill Belechick who coach forever and by the fact that I didn't include anyone still on their first year. Numbers are similar for men no longer in the game; a median of 4.2 years and a mean of 6.3 years. What kind of guys coach for 4 years? Think Pat Shurmur, Frank Reich, Mike McCoy, Kliff Kingsbury, Jim Mora, and Matt Nagy. If you want average coaches in terms of win percentage you get guys like Todd Bowles, Tony Sparano, Herm Edwards, and Dick Jauron. Remember, this is an average. Dick Jauron coached 9 years with a losing record. Ken Wisenhunt coached 7.4 years with a .403 winning percentage.


The point of replacement level is that average guys are hard to find, since half the guys hired are going to be worse than that. When looking at replacement level coaches, I first looked at the shortest tenures (I didn't include interim coaches or interim stints in this, since these guys were only coaching out of necessity, even if they ended up with the job the next season). The guys with very short tenures are who'd expect, and I'll call these guys "below replacement". Urban Meyer, Bobby Petrino, and Nathanial Hackett didn't even last one season. Cam Cameron did, but at 1–15 he has the lowest winning percentage of any coach on the list. Every coach who lasted fewer than 2 seasons has a winning percentage below .400 with 2 exceptions: Mike Singeltary (.450) and Ben McAdoo (.464). The way I see it, the true replacement level guys are those who lasted 2 or 3 seasons and have records somewhere in the .300 to .400 neighborhood. These are guys like Matt Patricia, Greg Schiano, Brandon Staley, Rod Marinelli, and Tom Cable. Brandon Staley, with a .500 record is a steal. If any of these guys look attractive to you, then fire Sirianni, whose .667 winning percentage is behind only Jim Harbaugh, Matt LaFleur, and Tony Dungy among coaches surveyed, and ahead of Reid, Belichick, and Tomlin. Remember, if you're firing your coach, you're lucky if you get anyone better than Kliff Kingsbury.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Though blue collar, these longshoreman are extremely well paid. With overtime, 1/3rd of the union members earn over $200k per year.




Where are you getting this from? Per an NPR article, the current top rate is $39/hour. With time and a half and regular double time on Sundays and Holidays you'd have to average 70–80 hours per week to hit 200k. While I'm sure there are some guys who can keep up with such a schedule for a full year, even the most hardened blue-collar guys I know can't work that much. And the way they talk about the guys who do, they're the ones who end up dying of heart attacks three weeks after retiring.




This is all before an election season. The Biden administration could in theory wield the Taft-Hartley Act to break the strike, much like Reagan did with the air traffic controllers. But breaking a union, even a very well-paid one, is not a great look right before the election.




Biden has already said that he won't invoke Taft-Hartley, and that he's encouraging the sides to reach a resolution. This is the correct move from a political perspective; he can't force a contract upon management, so Taft-Hartley is the only card he has to play other than (possibly) mediator. Republicans have been trying to court unions in recent years (and have been pretty successful among the rank and file), but most of them still harbor many of the sentiments expressed downthread. Hell, even Trump complimented Elon Musk on his supposed union-busting tactics. If there is a strike it will take a hell of a lot of restraint for Trump, or any other Republican, to blame Biden for not sending them back to work. Putting this fornt and center within a month of the election isn't a good look.


Of course, I don't think Trump is stupid enough to make that kind of error. More than likely he does his usual schtick where he invokes his self-ordained status of Master Negotiator and says that if he were president then this strike wouldn't have happened because he would have been able to mediate an agreement. At which point Kamala Harris informs him that if he's so great at it then he could end the strike immediately be leaving the campaign trail to mediate a deal. There is, of course, zero chance that Trump actually does this, and if he tries, there's little chance that he'd be able to do anything (if the parties involved even let him get near the dispute), at which point he has to move on to do something else. But my guess is that no one will make a big deal about this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I certainly have the ability to evaluate hypotheticals. Where I get off the train is when people treat these hypotheticals as though they're short-term inevitabilities. You can take any technology you want to and talk about how improvements mean we'll have some kind of society-disruping change in the next few decades that we have to prepare for, but that doesn't mean it will happen, and it doesn't mean we should invest significant resources into dealing with the hypothetical disruption caused by non-existent technology. The best, most recent example is self-driving cars. In 2016 it seemed like we were tantalizingly close to a world where self-driving cars were commonplace. I remember people arguing that young children probably wouldn't ever have driver's licenses because autonomous vehicles would completely dominate the roads by the time they were old enough to drive. Now here we are, almost a decade later, and this reality seems further away than it did in 2016. The promised improvements never came, high profile crashes sapped consumer confidence, and the big players either pulled out of the market or scaled back considerably. Eight years later we have yet to see a single consumer product that promises a fully autonomous experience to the point where you can sleep or read the paper while driving. There are a few hire car services that offer autonomous options, but these are almost novelties at this point; their limitations are well documented, and they're only used by people who don't actually care about reaching their destination.


In 2015 there was some local primary candidate who was running on a platform of putting rules in place to help with the transition to autonomous heavy trucking. These days, it would seem absurd for a politician to be investing so much energy into such a concern. Yes, you have to consider hypotheticals. But those come with any new piece of technology. The problem I have is when every incremental advancement treats these hypotheticals as though they were inevitabilities.




Again, doomers are worried about future, better models. What would you be worried about if you found out that models had been made that can do your job, and all other jobs, better than you?




I'm a lawyer, and people here have repeatedly said that LLMs were going to make my job obsolete within the next few years. I doubt these people have any idea what lawyers actually do, because I can't think of a single task that AI could replace.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I have considered it, but that's just science fiction at this point. I'm only going to evaluate the implications of Open AI being a private company based on products they actually have, which, as far as I'm aware, boil down to two things: LLMs and image generators. The company touts the ability of its LLMs based on arbitrary benchmarks that don't say anything about its ability to solve real-world problems; as a lawyer, nothing I doing in my everyday life remotely resembles answering bar exam questions. Every time I've asked AI to do something where I'm not just fooling around and want an answer that won't involve a ton of leg work it's come up woefully short, and this hasn't changed, despite so-called "revolutionary" advancements. For example, I was trying to get a ballpark estimate on some statistic where there wasn't explicitly published data that would involve looking at related data, making certain assumptions, and applying a statistical model to interpolate what I was looking for. And all I got was that the AI refused to do it because the result would suffer from inaccuracies. After fighting with it, I finally got it to spit out a number, but it didn't tell me how it arrived at that number. This is the kind of thing that AI should be able to do, but it doesn't. If the data I was looking for were collected and published, then I'm confident that it would have given it to me, but I'm not that impressed by technology that can spit out numbers I could have easily looked up on my own.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Because I eventually found what I needed in non-paywalled internet articles.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 23, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The only danger AI, in it's current implementation, has is the risk that morons will mistake it as actually being useful and rely on the bullshit it spits out. Yes, it's impressive. But only insofar as it can summarize information that's otherwise easily available. One of the reasons my Pittsburgh posts have been taking as long as they have is that I'll go down a rabbit hole about an ongoing news story from 25 years ago that I can't quite remember the details of and spend a while trying to dig up old newspaper articles so I have my facts straight and reach the appropriate conclusions. I initially thought that AI would help me with this, since all the relevant information is on the internet and discoverable with some effort, but everything it gave me was either too vague to be useful or factually incorrect. If it can't summarize newspaper articles that don't have associated Wikipedia entries then I'm not too worried about it. I'd have much better luck going to the Pennsylvania room at the Carnegie Library and asking the reference librarian for the envelope with the categorized newspaper clippings that they still collect for this purpose.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly NFL Thread: Week 4
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As a lawyer who litigates in Pennsylvania, that seems about right. I'm honestly surprised that anyone litigates anywhere in the state other than Philadelphia, since they tend to award the biggest verdicts, and I've seen comparable awards tlgo to plaintiffs who couldn't claim nearly the same level of economic damages . I can't find any info on the appellate ruling that isn't pay walled, but I doubt there were any good grounds for appeal. I'm not sure what you're angle is here.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Weekly NFL Thread: Week 4
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If Hurts can't figure it out, there will be broader implications for the league going forward. The past few years have seen QBs getting huge contracts with a lot of guaranteed money on the theory that it's impossible to win without one and you have to strike when the iron is hot, whatever the cost. But two things have happened since 2020 that have challenged that idea. The first is the sheer number of albatross contracts — Cleveland, the Giants, Jacksonville, Denver, and now possibly Philly are all saddled with them. Arizona is still questionable, as is Dallas. Of the 5 undefeated teams, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and Minnesota are all starting QBs who were considered washed, and Josh Allen is past the point where guaranteed money is an issue. That leaves Kansas City, winners of 3 of the last 4 championships, and Mahomes's contract is more complicated than the others. He's also Patrick Mahomes.


That leaves Cincy, which leads into the other reason these contracts might be on their way out: Burrow is good; the Bengals aren't. A lot of this can be chalked up to their non-existent defense, but one wonders how much of that is due to salary cap considerations. The days when teams can win by chucking the ball deep and hoping that speed will defeat man coverage are over. The return of cover 2 means QBs can't rely on the long ball like they used to. The elimination of blitzing in favor of a spy or additional coverage means that they can't rely on their legs to get out of trouble if there's nothing open. Even without the blitz, sack rates are actually up, since the paucity of open receivers and lack of escape lanes has QBs sitting in the pocket too long.


The upshot is that offenses now have to pound the run game, run heavy packages, and take what the defense gives them on pass plays. There are occasional opportunities to go long, but these rely on being able to read the safeties post snap and not just having a good, accurate arm. Kansas City figured this out early and won two Super Bowls because of it. Miami hasn't figured it out yet, which is why they can't beat good teams. San Francisco figured this out early, which is why they were able to get to the Super Bowl with a seventh round pick.


Take a look at Justin Fields, for example. He was a physical freak who could throw a good long ball and had an excellent set of legs on him, but in Chicago he had a tendency to force deep passes that weren't there and he couldn't transition beyond his first read. Put him in an offense where he isn't expected to win games on his own but play ball control all game and he's in the catbird seat. Now, Fields is more talented than the average bum off the street, but his success, limited as it's been this far, is proof that you don't need a guy making 50 million a year to win games.


As for Hurts, I don't think that lack of talent is his problem. The problem is that Sirianni continues to run the same kind of RPO-heavy college offense that he ran two years ago, when you could still get away with shit like that. The problem is that when you've already given him a contract like that it's hard to put him on a short leash. It worked with Mahomes, but there the Chiefs were getting out ahead of the curve and not making a desperate attempt to adapt to a changing league.


Does this mean that the Eagles should fire Sirianni? I don't think so, but as Steelers fan I'm of the opinion that coaching changes should only be made in the most dire situations, and the Eagles situation is nowhere near dire. If the problem is that they're simply a bad team, a coaching change isn't going to do anything; at best you'll get a truly terrible coach who can play scapegoat for a couple years while the team rebuilds. But you also run the risk of going through coaching carousel hell where guys come in alevert other year with high expectations and get canned as soon as those expectations aren't met.


On the other hand, he's also the kind of guy who cut his teeth in the league post-2010. He's similar to the "system guys" you see in college who have a system they run and don't know anything else. A few years ago these guys seemed like they were the future. Now they seem irrelevant while old guys like Andy Reid have no trouble adapting. I have a theory that any time a coordinator is deemed an " offensive wizard" he's doomed as a head coach.


That being said, firing a coach with a winning record who's taken you to the Super Bowl and made the playoffs every year a few games into the season because the team looks bad is a bush league move. It's like something Cleveland would do.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for September 20, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I used to work a job doing inventories where we used machines that were nothing but a keypad and a one-line LCD display. After banging on that for 8 hours a day I'd be hard-pressed to find anyone who can enter numbers faster than me without one.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for September 20, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I thought about posting this last night in response to the question about the new NFL kickoff rules, but since that thread is a bit stale I'm posting it here today. First, the new kickoff rules are dumb. There are more returns, but it seems like all these returns end up at the 30 yard line anyway, so there's no point in not kicking it out of the end zone. If we want to "fix" kickoffs, here's my proposal: At the beginning of the 1st and 3rd quarters, the receiving team simply takes the ball at their own 25. Onside kicks are rare enough in these situations that little is lost by eliminating them. We move touchbacks back to the 20 where they belong. After a touchdown the scoring team kicks from their own 40, practically guaranteeing a touchback. After a field goal, though, they have to kick from their own 25, pretty much guaranteeing a return and pretty good field position to the returning team. The obvious positive consequences are fewer field goals and more 4th down conversion attempts. But the real benefit is less obvious: More situations for mentally overwhelmed coaches to fuck things up in comedic fashion.


Consider the following situation: The Steelers are trailing the Chargers by 4 points on Sunday with 7 minutes remaining in the game. After a third down pass that ends up short of the sticks after the receiver inexplicably runs backwards after catching the ball, the Steelers are 4th and 3 at the Chargers 22 yard line? If the Steelers kick the field goal, they're still down a point and give LA excellent field position to finish off the game. If they score a touchdown, they have the lead and LA will almost certainly have to start the ensuing comeback drive from their own 20.


So what does Mike Tomlin do in this situation? First he wastes a timeout unsuccessfully challenging the spot of the ball. Then he wastes another timeout so he can think about the decision. Then he kicks the field goal anyway, because of course Mike Tomlin was going to kick the field goal. Then the Chargers start the ensuing drive at their own 40, but the Steelers defense forces a 3 and out. The Steelers then take over deep in their own territory and begin to quickly march down the field, only for time to expire before they can get into field goal range because they were out of timeouts (they wasted their other timeout to avoid a delay of game penalty on first down early in the third quarter). Then I get to listen to yinzer heads explode on talk radio the next day because they totally would have scored a touchdown if they had had Justin Fields run a keeper / given the ball to Jaylen Warren / run some other dumb play that probably wouldn't have worked. At no point would the poor clock management come up.


I love the Steelers, but I must admit that the inevitable meltdowns make losing almost as good as winning.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				NFL Weekly Thread: Week 3
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Not unless you allowed unlimited scoring per possession, i.e. the scoring team gets to receive the ensuing kickoff and possession doesn't change unless the defense makes a stop. Otherwise it would be like baseball if teams were limited to one run per inning. One side effect of this is that there would be a lot less going for it on 4th when in field goal range, since 3 points and maintaining possession is worth more than the risk of turning the ball over on downs. The real reason this would never happen, though, is that it would lead to longer games, and the accompanying injury risk. Instead of teams running out the clock you'd have teams putting scrubs in to manage their starters, which I doubt would make for entertaining football.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				NFL Weekly Thread: Week 3
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think Tannehill is interested on signing with a team that plans on benching him as soon as the starter becomes available in a few weeks. Especially considering how he was running out of town a few years ago. I imagine he's looking for the ACL tear or something that means he's in for the rest of the year, especially if it's a competitive team. If he wanted to be a backup he'd probably have been signed before the season started.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				NFL Weekly Thread: Week 3
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, but you gain him as a down field blocker, and that's a much bigger advantage. I think that you're opinion of this is based on when you've seen it called — which are otherwise legal plays that broke down — but haven't considered the implications of a permanent rule change and what that would mean for play design. You could run a play that effectively neutralizes the d line by having the o line slip past them for a quick pass to the TE out of shotgun, a sort of jailbreak screen on steroids. The only way to defend against this would be to stack the box on every play, opening up the long ball. Zone defense would be a thing of the past. Even run plays become easier since the defense doesn't know if they need to crash the RB or stay on their man. There are a lot of implications for this rule change.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				NFL Weekly Thread: Week 3
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


This might be sleep-deprived anger after MNF, but I've never really understood the purpose of the ineligible man downfield penalty.




Like most penalties, it's to avoid giving one side an unfair advantage, in this case, the offense. Since it only applies on passing plays before the ball is thrown, as it stands now defenses know that if a lineman starts blocking downfield that it's going to be a run play.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The fact that it's an affidavit is suspicious in and of itself, as the right has, in recent years, acted as though anything in an affidavit must be The Truth (see all of the Sidney Powell affidavits). The most common use of affidavits is in litigation. If I want to depose someone, standard practice is to execute an affidavit that gives an outline of their testimony and the points I want to make. I'll submit that to opposing counsel, and if they have no objections, the affidavit will be admitted in lieu of the deposition. In this case, they're simply a tool for greater efficiency. Even if opposing counsel always wants a deposition (so they don't waive their right to cross examine), they're still useful in at least we have a concise outline of the major points counsel is trying to make.


They have other uses, mostly in property law where someone will execute an affidavit as to the property's history or something like that to make it easier for title researchers to get a picture of the land in the absence of formal recorded documents. Again, they're a tool, but since they aren't deeds, etc., they aren't dispositive and can be challenged in court.


I don't know what purpose an affidavit like this serves. Is there pending litigation? Even still, affidavits only attest to facts, not opinions. ABC is allowed to be biased. It may be a political scandal but there's no legal cause of action here. Even if this is completely legitimate I don't see the purpose for it; it's not like Trump can sue ABC for being biased. And even if they could, and this guy was their star witness, I wouldn't execute the affidavit like this. It draws conclusions rather than simply state facts. I doubt this is real, because no lawyer would draft this.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
One example: A guy and two women attempted to enter a bar but were denied admission because the guy had an expired ID. As they were walking away the man was approached by a man who had been in a relationship with one of the women several years earlier. The other man started yelling at the first man and cornered him in a doorway. The first man claims that the other man threatened to kill him and it looked like he was carrying a concealed weapon in his sweatshirt. So the first man shot him with a licensed gun that he was carrying legally. It seems like a fairly anodyne story when told that way, but when the news starts out with a story like "23-year-old Javonte Diggs was arrested outside the Pause nightclub after an apparent dispute with 22-year-old Martavius Allen", the online right doesn't start making the guy a martyr of self-defense and concealed carry.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Oh, it's totally strawmanning. But in court I'm not giving you the benefit of the doubt in any argument; if you say something, I'm going to run with it. Unfortunately you won't get to point out my illogic to the jury because you've already taken your turn, and I doubt your client will take too much comfort in the fact that his guilty verdict may rest on a fallacious argument.


It seems to me that you're simply arguing a policy position; namely, that lethal force is an appropriate response to any attack. And while that's a perfectly fine position to take from a policy perspective, it doesn't get around the fact that the state criminal statutes are pretty clear that this isn't the case — lethal force is an appropriate response to some attacks but not to others. If you don't like this then what you're looking for is a political solution, not jury nullification.