Rov_Scam
25m ago
To give a more complete answer, a lot of these products used to exist, but were slowly discontinued, not because of some grand conspiracy to make people pay more but because they didn't sell. Probably the best example was Photoshop Elements. Yes, you could d a lot with Photoshop but yes, it was expensive software designed for the professional market. So Adobe came out with a stripped-down version designed for consumers. It didn't sell, and wasn't widely adopted despite being bundled with a number of consumer-grade digital cameras. The reason it didn't sell well is that if you advertise something as lacking features, the consumer feels like they're missing out on something. And usually they are. Every digital photography handbook out there talked about curves and how useful they were. Elements, however did not have this feature. Why? Well, there are other ways to adjust contrast and the like that will get you 80% of the way there, which should be good enough for most people, and they need to keep something exclusive to the full version. Sure, the average user may only need 15% of the features, but it's a different 15% for each user, and if you distill a product to only the basic features that everyone uses, you get a product that doesn't work for anybody but the most basic user.
The one suggestion I've seen to combat this has been to make the software modular, so that you download a version with basic functionality but can install modules for more advanced features. This doesn't work either. In the late 2000s iTunes was the king of the digital media players but was starting to get slow and bloated. The best free alternatives were MediaMonkey (which had the best kind of paid tier—not essential but absolutely worth the modest cost) and MusicBee, both of which realized that the marketing features and store were to blame; they got rid of this crap but otherwise offered products with even more features than iTunes. Winamp, with its totally stripped-down nature, predated iTunes and had widespread adoption. After it was formally discontinued, it was ressurected as Foobar, which kept the bare-bones functionality but offered a modular design so that more advanced users could expand functionality. I tried using this, mainly because it seemed to be what all the cool kids were doing. The problem I had was that it was a pain in the ass figuring out what modules I needed and then installing them. Want to do x? Download a plug-in and get it to work. Repeat 50 times. And this was with a piece of free software; imagine having to pay for each of these modules. Elements doesn't come with curves, but you can download a module for $30, or get it for an additional $2/month added on to your subscription. Repeat 50x. Suddenly full version looks like a good deal, and the modular version looks set up to nickle and dime consumers.
Of the three possibilities, living with the bloat is the one that makes the most sense. Look at the developer forums for any popular open-source software and they're loaded with feature requests. I don't see anyone responding that the software is perfect and don't add anything to increase bloat. Or keep everything as a separate plug-in because I like the version of Gimp that only lets me adjust tone and contrast and I don't want it bloated with your stupid curves and brushes.
Rov_Scam
6hr ago
The "somewhere" is increasingly "somebody else's computer". With how much software companies are pushing web-based cloud models that don't run anything locally, I don't see why this would be a problem.
Rov_Scam
10hr ago
There was an HD logo in the corner of the screen that would light up when it was in digital. Tapping it turned it on or off.
Rov_Scam
18hr ago
I can answer this question for you and @SkoomaDentist. The same thing to me happened about a decade ago. It seemed to always happen during Pirates games; it was noticeable because I'd be sort of listening and would be struck by the fact that the announcers just said the same thing they had already said, like the broadcast was jumping back in time. I eventually figured out the culprit: HD Radio. This car was from 2012 so it was an earlier implementation that didn't have any buffering. The way it worked was that the station had both an analog and digital signal. The digital signal was preferred because there was less static, but it was weaker and prone to interference. When ever the digital signal would go out, it would automatically switch to analog until the signal was strong enough, at which point it would switch back to digital. The problem was that the digital signal was a few seconds behind the analog signal, so every time it switched back over to digital it would be like hitting the rewind button. I could manually switch the radio to stay in analog all the time, and I noticed that I could replicate the effect by switching back and forth while I was in digital range. The reason I didn't notice it in the other direction was because I wasn't paying close enough attention and if it jumped forward it would be new material that I hadn't heard yet. The car I have now only uses the analog signal if available and the digital substations take a few seconds to buffer before I'll get sound.
I'm guessing that what you heard was the digital signal dropping out and switching back to analog. If the radio is ancient it might not have a sufficient buffer.
Rov_Scam
18hr ago
Software is protected by copyright, not patent, which means that while the term is longer, the protections aren't as strong. Copyright doesn't cover the software itself but the source code, which means you could develop a program with identical functionality to an existing program as long as you use different code. What this means in practice, however, is that you have to develop the product independent of the existing product, i.e. you can't just take the existing code base and make superficial changes. Courts generally require that the code itself be developed entirely independently. All the programs you listed (Gimp especially) aren't even clones of existing products, just products with similar functionality. Gimp wasn't developed by someone taking Photoshop's code base and modifying it. If what the AI is doing is taking the existing product and reverse-engineering or reverse-compiling or whatever it is to figure out what the code is, then as far as the law is concerned it's no different than if they copied and pasted the executable file. And no, it's not a strong defense that their versions don't have the account control features that verify that the user is a paying customer.
Rov_Scam
20hr ago
It was bound to happen. If vibecoding is so easy that software companies can dump all their programmers, then why do we need software companies to begin with? For that matter, why do we need software? If ChatGTP can generate complex code off of vibes, then certainly it can manage spreadsheet functions on its own, or obviate the need for Photoshop (see me comment below), or do whatever SalesForce does, or run engineering simulations, or anything else you want software to do except maybe play games.
Rov_Scam
20hr ago
You're hopelessly naive if you think that these clubs have anything but a vague historical connection to the ethnicities they represent, or that the members would admit a black person if they weren't forced to. If you think the governor of the German Club is going to be impressed by a black guy speaking German, there's about a 0% chance he speaks German and a 50% chance he doesn't have a drop of German blood in him. Of course, none of this matters, because he's not getting served to begin with, and if he were ever interested in membership, the humiliation of getting kicked out wouldn't convince him that these are people he wants to hang out with. The same was true for a different local club that I forgot to mention earlier, that had a swimming pool that notoriously didn't allow blacks to the point that kids would have birthday parties there and be specifically told not to invite any black friends. This was 30 years ago and the club has since closed, though it was pretty explicitly segregated well into the 90s at minimum. Hell, my dad was a member of a whites-only sportsmen's club, though it's my understanding that they've since adopted a nondiscrimination policy.
The clubs I know that are still segregated get away with it because they're otherwise pillars of the community, and incidents haven't made the news. The police certainly know what is going on, and will give them special privileges wrt DUIs and the like, and will remove an uppity black person who refuses to leave. They won't specifically cite any whites-only policy, only that it's a private club and they have a right to refuse service to anyone, and that any discrimination claims are a civil matter. Not that a civil case would be successful, since private clubs aren't subject to the civil rights act as they aren't open to the public (the particular clubs in question have restrictive enough membership that it's not like an American Legion where if you ring the buzzer and want to join someone will sponsor you as long as you don't seem like a troublemaker; they only admit new members once a year, and it's difficult to get in even if you're white). I don't even think that the members are particularly racist; like I said they're just older and protective of what tradition they have, even if that tradition sucks.
Rov_Scam
21hr ago
You're reading too much into this; any time a player rejects their team, they're going to get booed when they come back. There was speculation that he was unhappy stemming back to last winter, which became a self-fulfilling prophecy when he couldn't tune it out. After he told them he wouldn't be resigning with the team under any circumstances it was over for him, and the no-trade clause meant that he was able to force a trade to the Panthers. So the team was left in a bind—either keep him around for two years while his lack of commitment is known and might affect his play and infect the dressing room, or trade him for less than market value. It was a lose-lose proposition, and the fans have a right to be pissed. Jaromir Jagr got booed in Pittsburgh on two occasions, a decade apart, for a lot less. The first time was when they traded him to Washington for scratch-off lottery tickets because they legitimately couldn't afford his contract (commentary that suggesting this was a bad trade ignores the fact that every team knew Pittsburgh's hand was forced and could thus name their price). The second time was when he came back to the NHL in 2011 and signed with Philadelphia for more money than Pittsburgh was able to offer. Yes, the Pens made him a fair offer, but the Flyers were willing to overpay by a lot, and the Pens didn't have the cap space to match. The fact that Jagr acted like an entitled brat his last few years with the Pens didn't help, but his reasons for leaving/not returning were justified. Barry Bonds similarly got booed in 1993 for the sin of signing an outrageous (by 1993) standards contract with the Giants. And this is after everyone knew that the Bucs were in dire financial straits and had no hope of signing him.
Rov_Scam
21hr ago
If I ever get the time (a big if), I'd like to install the clone on a VM and see how it compares. I say this as someone who pays for Photoshop, but who isn't a graphic designer or using it for anything work-related. The problem with a lot of this testing is that, even if you do have the full version of Photoshop for comparison, the relative quality isn't going to be apparent from testing alone. You actually have to rely on the thing in question for some time and see how it goes, and see how the frustrations build. To give an example, ChatGTP's image generation is actually fairly good at doing things that Photoshop can't, notably upscaling low-resolution images. The first few times I tried it, the results were impressive, and I started making it part of my PS workflow for stubborn images that would take too long to edit the traditional way. The problem (if you can call it that) is that it only works about half the time, and that's being generous. It's not merely editing the image but generating an entirely new one based on what it thinks the old one should look like. When it gets that wrong, which is often, it generates something that is not only an incorrect representation but one that can't easily be rectified in Photoshop. It also works better if the images are in good shape going in, so there's a lot of preprocessing involved.
The upshot is that, a not insignificant percentage of the time, AI actually increases the amount of work involved. To be clear, I'm using this primarily to edit album covers for which clean versions don't exist, and the work involved can range from minor editing of a decent-sized image to working magic so a small, poorly taken one looks presentable, to completely reconstructing an image from scratch using the original as a guide. I now need to add a brief extra step of deciding whether it's worth attempting to use AI. Then I need to find an image to use, and prepare it. The extra work involved comes from the fact that the best image to use for an AI reconstruction isn't necessarily the easiest one to edit manually. I would also add that even successful AI generations have a tendency to oversaturate the colors or otherwise screw them up, so there's an extra step of loading the finished image into Photoshop and dialing things back (I have to do this anyway because ChatGTP generates 1200×1200 images and I want 1000×1000). When it works well, the results are nonpareil. But getting it to work well means doing 75% of the work for a 50/50 shot at something usable. It isn't so much a time-saver as it is an overall value-add.
The whole experience kind of sums up my opinion of AI workflows in general and why I'm not convinced that it will dent employment in any significant numbers. It seems impressive when you first use it, but when you actually try to implement it, it doesn't produce results with the consistency one can expect from doing the work manually. Yes, humans make mistakes and do shoddy work to, but humans screw up in predictable ways. The mistakes AI makes aren't ones that humans typically make. For example, people talk about AI use in my own field, law, as though it could eliminate 90% of our work. Aside from the fact that people who say this don't seem to have much of an idea about what lawyers actually do, the well-publicized boo-boos of lawyers submitting filings to the court that contain hallucinated cases that happen to perfectly fit with the case at hand aren't the kinds of mistakes lawyers typically make. In fact, if I fabricated a case in a motion because my argument was a loser or there wasn't anything on-point, I'd be sanctioned by the judge and fired from my job. Even if a first-year attorney submitted something to me for review, I'd assume from the outset that the cases he cites are real and that he's not misrepresenting them. Having to fact check every citation does not cut down on the amount of work involved. It may mitigate it somewhat, but that assumes that we're drafting from scratch; most motions I file are similar to ones that I've filed before, and I'm not going to reinvent the wheel every time I need to file one. AI drafting could theoretically give me scaffolding from which to work, but even then I can probably find a motion someone else has filed if I'm looking for a bare template. And that doesn't even get to the problem that I need to be prepared to argue the motion and am thus going to have to do the research equivalent anyway. So AI may shave some time off of drafting motions if I need to draft something I haven't done before, and even then it's not like I spend a ton of time drafting motions to begin with.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
It's on the record that he jumped bail, moved to Pennsylvania, and spent the next several years moving around to duck extradition warrants. I'm just pointing out what the attorney can and can't say regarding that kind of advice, and I doubt his attorney actually gave that advice.
Rov_Scam
1d ago
If the lawyer advised her to skip bail and hope the DA would give up and drop the charges, then yes, that would be unethical. If the conditions of the defendant's bond were such that precluded him from leaving the county, or state, or other geographic area, then yes, it would be unethical. If it were merely advice that they needed to leave the town and not draw any attention to themselves, and none of this violated any conditions set forth by the court, then it wouldn't be unethical. It's usually good advice for someone involved in a legal dispute, whether civil or criminal, to keep their mouth shut and avoid being the center of attention. If, for example, you're sued for a car crash and you think the Plaintiff's injury claims are bullshit, don't go on social media saying as much and putting forth your version of what actually happened. Any public statements you make about a dispute will be entered into evidence, and you'll be questioned about them, and if there are any inconsistencies with sworn testimony, it calls your credibility into question.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
Though defenses have gotten more sophisticated, it's more a generational thing than a mark of sophistication. If you're not familiar, there are two basic kinds of pass defense: In man-to-man each defender is assigned a receiver to cover, while in zone the defenders are assigned zones of the field and will cover whichever defender enters that zone. Man requires players who are athletic enough to stay with the men they're assigned, and it fails when their unable to do that. Zone's weakness is that there aren't enough defenders available to cover every zone on the field, and a skilled quarterback will be able to read the defense ahead of the play and change the play at the line to direct receivers into holes in the coverage. Good receivers in turn will be able to adjust their routes based on what they see. When passing began to pick up in the 21st century, it was largely because guys like Brady, Brees, and Manning could pick apart zone defenses like nobody's business. So defenses adapted by playing more man. Now it was up to the receivers to beat the coverage, and guys like Darelle Revis made careers out of being unbeatable.
One feature of a typical man defense is a on-high safety look. Say the offense is lined up with one running back, one tight-end, and three wide receivers. A typical defense will respond with a nickel package, with four linemen, two linebackers, and five defensive backs. Four defensive linemen will rush the quarterback. Three of the defensive backs will cover the receivers, one (usually a strong safety) will cover the tight end, and one of the linebackers will cover the running back. The free safety will play a large deep zone. He will watch the quarterback to see where the ball is going and help that defender in coverage or to prevent a big play; he's the last line of defense. The other linebacker can be used for a variety of purposes. He may assist the linemen with the QB rush. One variation that the Patriots used a lot during this era is called "robber" coverage, where the second linebacker takes a zone below the free safety to guard against crossing routes. To beat man coverage, offenses relied on fast receivers like Tyreek Hill. Strategy shifted from finding holes in the coverage to managing matchups and figuring out where the extra help was coming from. The thing that really threw things into overdrive, though, was running quarterbacks.
Running QBs have existed to some degree for a while, but they were either guys like Steve Young who were good at scrambling, or novelties like Michael Vick. In the 2010s, coaches were increasingly willing to use running QBs like Cam Newton, Robert Griffin, and Colin Kaepernick, and towards the end of the decade, quarterbacks like Lamar Jackson and Josh Allen took the running game to an entirely new level. But it wasn't these outliers that changed things. By 2020, guys like Manning and Brees, who were statues in the pocket, no longer existed. All quarterbacks had at least some scrambling ability, and were liable to take off if everything was covered. Remember the second linebacker? One of the things he could do was spy the quarterback as if he were a running back. But doing this takes him out of the coverage, and more is open downfield. In the early 2020s, defenses were routinely getting foiled by fast receivers, and if there weren't any fast receivers, there were receivers who could shake defenders underneath. And there wasn't any help from the linebacker, since the quarterback might run with the ball. How did defenses deal with this? They went back to zone.
More specifically, the dropped another safety to cover the deep part of the field. This turns a Cover 1, which I described earlier, into a Cover 2. Instead on one safety covering the entire deep field, there were two safeties. And since an offense in a 3 receiver set is usually only sending 2 deep, both of them are effectively double covered. Since the cornerbacks aren't chasing the receivers deep, the flat is covered in case the quarterback runs. Your extra linebacker can drop back into coverage, and you have three zones across the middle of the field. To make things even better, if the qb does go deep the ball is in the air long enough for the second safety to leave his zone and help out the other one. This isn't much different than the way things were when Brady and Manning were working their magic in the 2000s. But none of those guys are in the league anymore.
Since defenses switched to running mostly 2-high a few years ago, offenses have struggled to adapt. Speed isn't as much of an asset for a receiver if a safety is waiting for you downfield, which is why the Chiefs let Tyreek Hill walk; his skill set was no longer needed. Speaking of the Chiefs, the reason they've been continually successful despite the lack of receiver talent is because Mahomes is one of the few quarterbacks to adjust to the new defenses without batting an eye. It's why Travis Kelce was able to go from being a typical good passing tight end to one of the most prolific receivers in the league; both he and Kelce knew where the soft spot in the zone was. People often wondered why Kelce couldn't just be doubled or something. The reason is that any decent defensive back could neutralize him in single coverage, the problem being that that would only work by switching to man coverage, which would have let Mahomes run wild, hitting receivers deep and scrambling for yardage when they weren't open. The best bet was to hope that Kelce wouldn't find the sweet spot.
This obviously oversimplifies things, but it offers a general explanation of why passing is down from its highs in the late 2010s and early 2020s. It's still not off much from the late 2000s and early 2010s, which is still high by historical standards. These things come in cycles, and I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
In the Pittsburgh area there are plenty of all-white "ethnic" clubs that refuse to admit blacks or even serve them as guests at their clubhouses. If you see something like "French Club", German Club", "Croatian Club", or anything similar is probably whites-only, especially if it isn't affiliated with a national organization. There's one near my that I know members of an I've been offered membership on a couple of occasions but declined. I have been in the bar before to drink, but I'm reluctant to go if invited. As @Lewis2 points out, social censure more than any illegality keeps their membership down, though @Bleep is incorrect in at least this instance as membership isn't a bunch of racist weirdos. It definitely skews older, but membership of all social clubs skews older. It is, in fact, fairly difficult to become a member, as they only admit new members once a year, and you need a member to sponsor you, and they are allegedly selective in that members who pay dues but aren't really active don't have as much pull as people who drink at the bar regularly.
The issue comes in that they don't tell you up front that blacks aren't permitted. This wouldn't be an issue if the prohibition was limited to membership and denial of blacks would be understandable in the context of it being hard to get in anyway. The problem arises when a member brings a guest who is black. They will immediately be refused service and told to leave. I know two people who have made the mistake of bringing a black guest only for both of them to be humiliated and dumbfounded. My uncle was briefly a member and quit when he found out about the policy. He's liberal, but I know MAGA people who refuse to drink there as well for that reason. The old timers who drink there aren't even particularly conservative. One friend of mine excuses it by saying that it's pretty common for private clubs to be whites-only and leaves it at that, and he's pretty down the middle politically.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
A few years back, the Wall Street Journal did an oft-quoted analysis that found that in a 1-hour football game (that takes up 3 hours of broadcast time on average), there was only 11 minutes of action. People who don't like football took this as proof that the game was stupid, but 11 minutes is actually the perfect amount of time, and it explains why football is so popular. It's counterintuitive, but it's true. Sure, hockey has continual action, but unless you're at the game, this actually works to its detriment. Too much excitement is no excitement. A football game is broken up into chunks whose meaning is clearly evident to anyone with a working understanding of the game, and there's plenty of time in between to both contemplate what we've just seen and anticipate what is going to happen next. Commentators have more room to show replays and offer in-depth analysis. If you're watching with friends you can have a conversation, pause during the play, then continue your conversation. Constant action is like watching a Western film that's nothing but shootouts. Yes, the shootout might be the most exciting part of a normal western, but it has an ebb and flow that makes the shootout meaningful. I love hockey, don't get me wrong, but I understand why it's not as popular as football. If you watch a football game at a bar, you'll get a dozen opinions on what Team A just did and what they should do on the next play. Most of these people don't know what they're talking about, but there's enough meat on the bone for them to at least have an opinion. In hockey, strategy is completely lost on the casual viewer. There isn't enough time in between plays for the announcers to explain it, and the action is so fast that unless you've been involved in the sport for years you won't be able to spot it. the best you get is people yelling for them to shoot more on the power play.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
Let's break down Amendment 3. The average Florida home value is about $375,000, and the current exemption amount is $50,000. It's my understanding that the tax rate is approximately $750 for each $50,000 in value, so as it stands the average taxpayer would pay $4,875 per year on the average home. If the bill passes, full implementation would reduce this amount to $1,875. A 61% decrease in property taxes for the average homeowner does not seem fiscally responsible, especially since the bill also caps annual increases on non-homestead property at 5%, down from 10%. I honestly don't see how local governments can handle that kind of decrease, and there's no mechanism in place to replace the funding.
There is also the problem of landlords passing the tax on the current renters.
Landlords can't claim a homestead exemption, so this wouldn't affect renters at all.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
As someone who owns one of these mailboxes, it's pretty clear to me that the real group made a typo and the fakers deliberately used a fake address. Not that the mailer includes a suite number but no box number. The plaza that the UPS store is in labels the units by letter, not suite number. So the address looks close to a real address but is actually unreturnable, since even if the post office was able to figure out the street address they wouldn't know what business to deliver it to. They have good reason as well; if some of the mail is undeliverable, they don't want the organization they're spoofing to get tipped off by a bunch of returns.
Rov_Scam
2d ago
Football talent isn't declining; internet talk is a bunch of guys in high school and college who haven't been around long enough to realize that the league goes through ups and downs and that some players are mercurial. To the extent that there is a decline, the short answer for the reason for it is that since 2018 teams have been swinging for the next Josh Allen or Lamar Jackson, and draft capital ends up going to guys like Trey Lance and Anthony Richardson. To be fair, there isn't much of a choice, as few colleges run pro-style offenses anymore, so rookie QBs have to be taught basic skills like taking a snap from under center. Fun fact: Steve Young never took a snap out of shotgun once in his entire career. We're also coming out of an era where it was expected that the top ten QBs in the league would all throw for 4,000 yards. This was an anomaly brought on by rule changes and the aforementioned changes in college football. Now that defenses have adapted to it, you aren't going to see it as much.
Anyway, just for fun a took a look at the starters this year and compared them to starters from 2007. I picked the year arbitrarily, but it was long enough ago that nobody old enough to start would have been prohibited from playing football as a child due to fear of long-term cognitive impacts.
The Top Tier Mahomes and Brady are equivalent as they're both the undisputed alpha's of the league at this point in their careers. They may not have the most impressive stats, but they're up there, and they have multiple championships to back it up. Behind them you have Peyton Manning and Josh Allen, who everyone agrees are the most talented if not the most accomplished. This year the top tier also includes Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, Brock Purdy and Jared Goff. In 2007 it also included Ben Roethlisberger, Phillip Rivers, and Drew Brees. There are more QBs today who can reasonably be described as "top tier" than there were in 2007.
The Second Tier Good QBs, but nobody would argue that any of these guys are better than any of the guys in the first list. For example, one might argue the relative merits of Burrow over Jackson, but nobody would take Trevor Lawrence over either of them. Also in this category are Sam Darnold and Jordan Love. The 2007 version includes Donovan McNabb, Eli Manning, David Garrard, Matt Hasselbeck, and Carson Palmer.
Cowboys QBs The parallels between Tony Romo and Dac Prescott are too big to ignore. Both are very good quarterbacks statistically. Both are underrated by Cowboys fans due to lack of team success, which is almost entirely due to Jerry Jones.
They Come with Baggage Players who showed promise in the past but whose talent is now beginning to be questioned. This is where Justin Herbert, Baker Mayfield, C.J. Stroud, and Jalen Hurts land. The 2007 equivalents were Jeff Garcia, Kyle Boller, Chad Pennington, and Marc Bulger. Advantage 2026 because that comparison seems cruel now that I look at it, but it could easily go that way for either of these guys.
The Young Guns They've showed promise but it's too early to tell how their careers will go. This year it's Drake Maye, Bo Nix, Jayden Daniels, Caleb Williams, and Jaxson Dart. The 2007 equivalents were Alex Smith, Jay Cutler, Derek Anderson, and Matt Schaub. I'm going to tentatively give the advantage to this year, since none of the guys on the 2007 list ever actually made the playoffs at that point, and Smith is the only one whose career can't be called a disappointment.
The Young Busts Cam Ward is the only bad young player with a regular starting job. In 2007 we had Trent Edwards, J.P. Losman, Brodie Croyle, and Jason Campbell.
They Still Have It Matthew Stafford is this generation's Brett Favre. Both have played consistently well throughout their careers, and aren't slowing down despite being in their late 30s.
They Have It (Again) Kirk Cousins was a good but not great starter who got stuck in a crappy situation in Atlanta and is having a good season on the Raiders even though he has no business doing so. Kerry Collins was a good but not great starter who got stuck in a bad situation in Oakland and had a good season with the Titans even though he had no business doing so.
Whatever the Hell This Is Jameis Winston was a highly touted prospect who got dumped from his original team in favor of an aging veteran (Tom Brady) for throwing too many picks, became a backup, and was later forced to start due to injury. Daunte Culpepper was a highly touted prospect who got dumped from his original team and was replaced with an aging veteran (Brad Johnson) for throwing too many picks, became a backup, and was eventually forced to start due to injury. I give Jameis the edge since the Giants might win the division, even if it's by default.
Let's See What We Have Tyler Shough and Tavaris Jackson were both untouted second-rounders who were made starters at the beginning of the season after their teams decided that they wouldn't be resigning aging vets, Derek Carr and Brad Johnson respectively. Neither showed much promise, and I doubt Shough's fate will be any different than Spencer Rattler's.
We Don't Know What We Have Bryce Young looked like a bust several years into his career and still might be. Rex Grossman took the Bears to a Super Bowl but was constantly injured. Neither of these guys is reliable going forward.
The Journeyman Backups There is little difference between Jacoby Brissett and Josh McCown.
The Aging Vets 2007 had a surplus of aging veterans who ended up starting and don't fit into any of my other categories. These included Trent Green, Jon Kitna, Damon Huard, Brian Griese, and Trent Dilfer.
He's Still in the League? Aaron Rodgers and Kurt Warner are both Hall-of-Famers who, after getting dumped by their teams, went to New York under terrible circumstances and got better after leaving the Big Apple. Advantage to Rodgers since Warner didn't do shit in Arizona until his fourth year there.
Only Starting Due to Injury The following don't count for this year: Cooper Rush and Jalon Daniels. In 2007, Cleo Lemon and Joey Harrington similarly didn't count.
Special Cases DeShaun Watson is in a class of his own, unprecedented in league history, made even more unprecedented by the unexpectedly good season he's had so far. Malik Willis was a 3rd round project who Miami signed as a starter after he had a few good weeks as a backup in Green Bay. Daniel Jones was a bust, then not, then went back to being a bust, then had a good start last year but the Colts missed the playoffs anyway. Geno Smith was a bust who had a mid-career renaissance before going back to being bad. Kyler Murray was a decent QB who didn't live up to the hype but his doing well in Minnesota. Nothing weird like this happened in 2007.
The Verdict QB play these days is better than it was 20 seasons ago, or at least isn't noticeably worse. There are 6 QBs in the top tier now compared with 5 in 2007. The second tier has 3 this year compared to 5 then, but this doesn't account for the comeback stories of Murray and Watson. All the other categories are either washes or give 2026 a slight advantage. Case Keenum starting for an injured Caleb Williams doesn't say anything, especially when he was promptly replaced by an undrafted free agent who played in Division 2 in college. The asterisk guys in particular are what gives it away. Of Bulger, Garcia, Boller, and Pennington, Garcia was the only guy who had any real hype, and he was never as good as Herbert was early in his career. Add in that Hurts won a Super Bowl and it's no contest. Boller was only ever good in the context of the low standards of Ravens starters, Bulger had one decent year and was then just sort of there, and Pennington got a little bit of hype for blowing out Peyton Manning in the playoffs but had accuracy and injury problems. If picking a team it would be hard for me to take any of the 2007 guys over any of the 2026 guys, though that may just be recency bias. Anyway, it's pretty clear to me that, at least based on this historic year, there's no reason to believe that QB play has declined substantially. I'm not seeing a few good QBs surrounded by a revolving door of dogs. If anything, teams in those days seemed to give aging veterans longer leashes.
You bring up the Colts signing Phillip Rivers off the couch last year, despite being 43 and out of the league for several years. Well, what were their other options? They lost their top 2 QBs to injury and were down to a rookie sixth-rounder who had played terribly in relief of Jones. The Colts were still very much in the playoff race at this point, but it was past the trade deadline. Rivers was old, but he was a borderline Hall-of-Famer and had played for the team before. And it didn't work; he lost all three games he started. Any available quarterback of normal age would have been one not good enough to play third string on another team. But there are occasionally old guys out there who will still play if they can start but aren't going through training camp and road games and what have you so they can sit on the bench all season. Rivers was one of those guys. Compare this to 2007, when the Panthers signed 43-year-old Vinny Testaverde off the couch after Jake Delhomme's injury, despite having David Carr and Matt Moore on the roster, both of whom were in their 20s and had prior NFL experience. It wasn't past the trade deadline, and Testaverde wasn't anywhere near the player Rivers was.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
I grew up in a semi-rural area 3 miles from the closest small town (about 500 people) and it took exactly 6 minutes to get there. Hell, most people in the suburbs commute more than 5 miles in traffic, and it isn't a big deal.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
If you think online poker rakes are astronomical you should try playing at a casino.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
By contrast, in Britain or America elite housing and business districts in the urban core routinely abut absolute shitholes full of the worst scum these societies have to offer. Yes there are suburbs far away from the chaos, but those exist in every country and true bourgeois professionals consider them crass anyway.
I'm not sure what golden age you think American cities had that compares favorably to today. If you're following my Pittsburgh series, one of the themes is that there are no golden ages. For all the problems American cities have these days, they don't compare to the problems they had in the first half of the 20th century, which you probably don't even think about because they have largely been solved. Have you ever smelled burning coal before? I have, and while it isn't entirely unpleasant when one house in a rural area is burning it, it's quite another when, say, everybody in Pittsburgh, or New York, or London is burning it all winter, not to mention railroad and industrial air pollution. Garbage collection wasn't the most efficient, and it was common for people to dump rubbish in alleys or over hillsides. Large portions of cities weren't paved until well into the 20th century, and the roads turned to mud whenever it rained, and dust when it didn't. It wasn't until midcentury that most cities had modern sewage treatment facilities and sewers, which were largely open at the beginning of the century, discharged into the nearest watercourse. Even into the 1950s, poorer sections of cities didn't have full plumbing facilities in every household. In some houses the only running water was in the basement. At the beginning of the century, there was often a shared spigot in a common yard area, that was a permanent mud pit.
Most Northeastern and Midwestern cities peaked in population in 1950. This wasn't so much "denisty" as modern armchair urbanists like to see it as it was overcrowding. Due to the effects of the Depression and War, there hadn't been any large-scale construction since the 1920s. For the generation who fought in the War, staying in the city meant living with your parents, or in a small, worn-out apartment. These problems had been evident in cities across the globe for decades, but progressive reforms ran head-on into a political class that wouldn't sacrifice economic growth. Le Corbusier's dream of bulldozing Paris and replacing it with The Radiant City wasn't just a personal affectation but a reflection of enlightened reform thinking of the time. This is why my paternal grandparents moved to the suburbs in 1940, and on my mother's side 1955. To that generation, there was nothing cool or nostalgic about urban life. There was no reason to be concerned about walkable cities when everyone had a car, and for corporations, there was no reason to be downtown if your entire office staff lived in the suburbs.
The result was that at at time when America was experiencing an unprecedented level of prosperity, major cities were experiencing an urban crisis that saw middle class residents decamping for the suburbs at an alarming rate, employers threatening to do the same, and tax revenues heading into a death spiral. Even New York, one of the few cities to gain population during the postwar period, suffered declining property values as new residents were poorer than those displaced. The urban renewal projects that are much-maligned today did not happen because city leaders collectively went insane, or because they all hated minorities (the deleterious effects to minority populations weren't apparent until well into the renewal era); they happened because governments at all levels were desperate to stanch the bleeding, and the only way they saw out of the crisis was to demolish everything that made the cities unattractive and outdated and replace them with what was attractive and modern.
We know now, of course, that these efforts were doomed to failure. Lots of projects were never completed after preliminary results looked grim, but even fully-realized projects never had the effects that were expected. The ensuing decades saw increasing crime and disinvestment, where abandoning properties in what should have been prime real estate was more cost-effective than rehabilitating them. New York almost went bankrupt in the 1970s, and most other cities outside the Sun Belt weren't doing much better. The crack epidemic and the rise of gang violence took things to unprecedented levels, and the crime wave that began in the 1960s has only subsided relatively recently.
The places that abut downtowns you are so appalled by have always existed, and it's only recently that these districts aren't like that. When everyone had to walk to work, downtown areas were the only desirable places to live, despite the disadvantages inherent to living in areas that were often industrial in nature. If you owned a foundry or a textile mill you preferred to live next to it, and so did your employees. Just outside of this downtown core was an area occupied by those who could not afford to live downtown. Since cities weren't as economically segregated in those days, this meant the poorest of the poor, usually blacks and immigrants, who were crammed into shoddily built tenements and in some cases lived in what were essentially shantytowns. When the railroad and later streetcars made commuting possible, the middle classes leapfrogged these slum areas and moved to areas further out, while the wealthy had what were effectively country estates. As better and better transportation became available, people moved even farther away, and what were once fashionable suburbs became occupied by those of decreasing means, but the areas closest in were never fashionable and became increasingly desperate as time went on.
In some cities, these were the target of renewal efforts, as with Pittsburgh's Lower Hill District, or Mill Creek Valley in St. Louis. In some cases the neighborhoods continued to deteriorate but were later revived, as in Cincinatti's Over-the-Rhine, Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square, and Boston's North End. And in some cases they simply never gentrified, like in the Tenderloin and Skid Row. You can complain about these areas now, but things were unbelievably worse 50 years ago. So please answer this question for me: When exactly do you think things were so great in American cities?
Rov_Scam
6d ago
The longer this war goes on, the more screwed Ukraine is demographically.
France in WWI had a population roughly equivalent to Ukraine in 2022 and suffered 1.3 million military deaths throughout the war compared to 200,000 Ukrainians in a similar amount of time. You can argue that the Ukrainian numbers are underestimates, that the overall demographic picture is different, etc., but that's not going to be anywhere near enough to account for a 6.5x difference. And France was not demographically screwed in the long-term; in fact, they managed to lose a Ukraine war's worth of military deaths a generation later and still turned out no more worse for wear.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
Both parties have their moments, but this is an issue where the Democrats aren't going to be as nakedly exploitative as the Republicans.
Rov_Scam
7d ago
Just because something hurts the other side's supporters more doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt your own supporters, and just because Republicans have lost all pretense that they aren't hacks willing to do anything for partisan advantage doesn't mean Democrats are willing to do the same.
I comment more extensively above, but Microsoft Works was a thing. And nobody bought it, because nobody wants to miss out on functionality. Google Docs has its fans, but I tried to rely on it for work (nay, a company I was contracted to wanted everyone to work in active shared documents so if work had to be reassigned someone else could jump right in) and it was brutal. I ended up just doing all my work in Office and uploading it as a Google Doc to turn it in.
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