colin

I like the very tough early test. Even tho we've been bounced vs KC in the post season so much, I think our worst match ups are cinci and Baltimore (you can throw in Philly, the only team Allen has never beaten). We have the suspensions and whatever injuries, but this season will come down to our new look defense. Good test out the gate!

You and your friend seem to be pretty impressed with yourselves, but this is pretty well treaded ground. Economic scarcity and IP have had a lot written about them, and it is very different from communal property, and way way different than slavery. You might want to read something on the topic.

Not at all, you are missing a simple point entirely. Firstly, you just claim it's theft, the argument I described is that it's not. Information is simply not economically scarce. There is no finite element to the supply of information. Your assumption is that watching in a stream lowers the revenue of the producer of the content. That is only true if the person watching the stream would have other wise payed the full price to watch it. If I'm willing to pay one dollar for a bills game broadcast, and they charge 10, they don't lose 10 if I watch it for free (be it via a bootleg stream or by me staring through my neighbor's window) because I would not have chosen to pay them that price anyhow. Producer surplus does not exist without a paying customer. If a person is willing to watch a game for free, say as background noise, but otherwise would never bother, then the NFL (or broadcaster or whoever) loses nothing because of the stream. Intellectual property rights are different from all other property rights, and in fact they violate other property rights in their enforcement. I own my phone, I pay a telecom provider for their spectrum (which they lease from the government who on paper works for me as a taxpayer) and enforcing the NFL broadcast monopoly violated my personal rights to use my phone (which is economically scarce) how I want. Your examples about big business being greedy, or that retail loss is covered by insurance, are quite separate from my argument. The point of the thought experiment is to determine at what point does one violate someone else's (in this the IP owner) property rights. Is me singing a Taylor Swift song stealing from her? What if my daughter likes my version as much as Taylor's so she doesn't go out and buy or stream the song, which means less revenue for Taylor Swift? There were laws against lending compact discs when they were new because the record companies were worried people could make really good copies and just not buy their own. I think those might have eventually been struck down (John's stossel had some shows about this stuff a while back). Einstein is claiming a bootleg stream is theft, my question is why? At what point is not paying for intellectual property theft, and at what point is it not?

At first I thought this was about Adrian Peterson. I was like cot dang this guy is having a rough post retirement life.

There is a very meaningful distinction (economically and possibly morally) between shoplifting and watching streamed stuff without paying the going rate. Goods at Walmart (or anywhere) are economically scarce -- for you to have them someone else must in principle not have them. Information is not economically scarce, if I know (or watch something) no one else will lose that knowledge because of my streaming (or playing a song, reading a pay wall article, etc). Now, of your morality is strictly inline with the legal code, then it's definitely illegal, so by that code it's wrong. Things like my TV and even Napster when it first came out are much more gray. There were cases and arguments and so on where sharing on Napster was not illegal, or at least not punishable at some point, for example. You also have a nearly perfectly segregated market -- prices in Europe or Canada are a small fraction of what they are here in America. You will see a similar thing with soccer but I'm reverse -- way cheaper here for say Italian league seasons pass vs in Italy or Europe in general. A further complicating factor is that the NFL is not a free enterprise but a regulated trust. They have a special status existing as an exception to anti trust laws, so some people feel the law should not be how it is, and the current practices in streaming and black outs (in the past at least) are not legal in a correct interpretation of the law. From a libertarian/pure free market point of view it's no clearer. Information ownership requires government intervention to enforce IP laws. If your morality is at least in part based on a libertarian view of fairness (and in fact many Americans poll strongly along these lines) then you will see these IP laws, or at least the case of the NFLs current implementation of it, as wrong. For physical goods (and some services) there is a rule that "the lowest price is the law" where it is in at least some cases illegal to charge one person more for something than you would charge another. Limited offers, sales, and so on often get around this, but it is still a thing. It's complicated, but here is a little thought experiment -- if it's wrong to watch streamed content on a bootleg stream, is it wrong to watch the same content at your friend's house? What if he's a paying official stream customer? How about using his login when he's not using it? How about watching it through the window of a bar? Would it be wrong to cover a song you heard on the radio and record it? Would it be wrong to sing a Taylor Swift song with your daughter and record it (many do this on tik tok and such)?

The new coaches they brought in make me think McDermott is making changes within his scheme. I know baby babich is the DC, but unless I see something entirely different in a more than occasional basis, I'm saying this d is still McD's

I was a Cole booster out of college, he had a really sheet rookie year. For us to win it this year, he'll have to improve a ton and fast. He's got the athletic ability to be a top SS, but it all has to come together. I think he had no confidence in coverage and the d we ran was too much for him to get comfortable with after his pre season injury. He, Coleman, Carter, and all of our rookie selections this year will have to have much better development than what we saw last season. We are pivoting to a younger faster and more athletically gifted team.

The td rate of our o, along w the insane lack of toxic plays is the story. Our wrs are not good, but our talent at OL, RB, TE, and QB as a collective is better than any other team in the NFL IMO. Allen carries a lot of that, but two yoked up yetis at OT and some other big mean uglies gave out coaches the (over) confidence to just run a simple QB sneak to the left in nearly every short yardage situation, and it only failed in the chip game vs KC on a horrible call from the blind refs.

I'm not happy about this, but he, ogun, and Hoyt are all on this team so that we don't have Jordan Phillips and Solomon and two street free agents taking late game snaps vs the ravens and chiefs late in the game because Oliver Groot and even AJ are dog tired after being out there for 70% of the plays on long sustained drives in the playoffs. Mcds ideal d is capable of playing the pass with waves of d linemen causing team based pressure and playing the run with penetration all in front of smart cover lbs and a nickel secondary that erased the deep ball and forces bad passes. When more than one part of that fails the d is a house of cards that gets trucked slowly all game. Our lack of depth and talent killed us in every playoff loss. Short of adding a Myles Garrett, the build we have now is about perfect for what McD wants to do. It of course is possible the picks and free agents are all pumpkins and we do the same crap in the post season, but young, agile, mobile, and hostile is a pretty solid formula for football, so I like our chances

These drugs basically all stopped getting real development in the 80s (some small operations have found different delivery mechanisms mainly to beat testing, but only recently have big pharma companies done work in the area). The chemistry and applications are very well understood and documented. Drug testing, especially the lax NFL protocols, is essentially IQ testing. Guys who knows what they are doing get away with it, or get cought rarely (von Miller, Brian cushing) but their performance stays (until injuries and father time show up, anyhow). Big time sports is an industry of bending and breaking rules and false representation, it always has been. College football/basketball had paid players and guys who literally couldn't read graduating from top level colleges, players committing various crimes including sexual assault and it getting swept under the rug, and the criminal proclivities of NFL athletes are well known. The idea that these guys wouldn't use drugs that make them better because it's "cheating" or that coaches would be too worried about ethics or player health is Pollyanna bull hickey.

This year I feel better about the bills than I have since the start of the season following 13 seconds, and I like this team more. The moves may well not workout, and it might be the same bitter tears in January, but but the theme of our losses has been lack of athletic ability and talent/depth on dealing with open book play calling on d in the playoffs. They brought in new coaches who do some different things, they got the fastest corner, a pretty elite looking interior pass rusher, bosa Hoyt and ogunjobi, pass rusher Jackson, that science experiment in the 4th, and two real athletes who play utility (seems like the two of them can be depth in slot, out side CB, and safety) db stuff well. We extended our better talent, and we signed palmer. The only place we didn't get better was rb and lb, but we some horses there. The biggest risk is injury (what else is new) and cook deciding he's gonna hold out. Throw in a very easy schedule (extra home game year, Cincinnati Baltimore iggles and KC are all at home) and we have our best shot ever at the 1 seed and some actual NFL talent on the dline and secondary for the playoffs. A team with Jordan Phillips and that other street guy we signed last year, with the ghost of von, getting a lot of reps on the line, and Hamlin, washed Douglas and Elam plus raw rookie bishop in the secondary in the conference chip game is just so much easier to play against than the same team with actual NFL talent all over the shop. Can't wait

I think the margin is super slim, but sadly we've just been on the (barely) short side of it. Basham, Elam, and AJ were top 50-60 picks that were total busts or at best barley ok, and we gave a monster contract to von who hasn't been an even above average player for us in a single playoff game, and gave big extensions to Milano, Knox, and diggs who got hurt or just fell off and become malcontents. That's 7 players who were expected to start and play well, 5 on d, who just didn't perform. Milano came back but is no longer at his all pro level, and last year we had Elam, a washed Douglas (is he in a team now?), TJ on his worst form, raw bishop and flipping clone (I forget his name) at safety. We need this draft (and our top 3 picks from last draft who have basically sucked so far) to ball out and look like the KC 2022 draft for us. The rest of the team is in place

If we borrow a page out of the lorax days, and I think you are right that we will, it's a 5 2 4 with lots of matchup and gamed alignments up front. One of the down lineman will be in a LB position, but won't really be playing a 4-3 olb position post snap. If we think about it, taron plays LB on a lot of our downs, especially when they are reading the run. I think most of the time we will just be in a 4 2 5, but if we can play man over and zone under in the back end it creates wrinkles that we didn't have last season. I'm being an off season homer but I expect massive 3rd down and pass rush improvements.

Need a fingers crossed emoji

Is that true? It kinda makes sense, 4 of 22 regular starters (ignores special teams, but let's presume a similar portion play special teams as start on O/D) are DL, so about 11/12 of 53 (as dl rotate out more than OL, QB, CB, LB) Interdasting