Bartimaeus

lol @ the two memos that Trump's attorneys pre-emptively sent to Mueller to defend Trump against possible obstruction of justice charges. The Nixon defense - obstruction of justice laws do not apply to the president - and slandering Comey's character. Yeah, I'm sure those arguments are really giving Mueller pause.

They are experimenting with softer helmets this year, somewhat spearheaded by the Seahawks. I hope they are successful, though players have to choose to wear them. Seahawks are also big teachers of rugby-style wrap-up tackling (and if "big hits" are illegalized in the near-future, the Seahawks will probably be the best equipped to immediately evolve past them, which will probably give them a bit of a competitive advantage for a couple of years assuming Pete Carroll is still head coach). I really don't think we'll notice that much of a difference in the game if big hits become illegal - the elimination of the three point-stance will probably have a much bigger effect on the game, and it's what's likely causing CTE in linemen.

Oh, yeah, if you're looking to play sports professionally, baseball (and basketball*) is definitely the way to go. Football is a pretty crappy deal compared to other sports, all things considered - the relative low amount of money, lack of guarantees, horrible injuries, short career - but it does employ some different body types than other sports do. *Basketball has such tiny rosters, though, so your chances of ever making any decent money off of the sport is really low.

I wouldn't - at least, not outside of a few of the "safer" positions like a punter or kicker, maybe long snapper with the (head) protections they're afforded today. There's little point in earning millions of dollars if your brain is in such bad shape that you're perpetually making terrible monetary decisions (what is it, somewhere around 70-80% of players are bankrupt within like three years of leaving the league?) or cannot think straight or act normally a decade after retiring. Your brain is your entire mortal existence: it's not worth selling to this bloodsport.

Yep. Like I said, we really don't know exactly had bad or widespread CTE really is, even now. It'd be insane if it was actually 99% of the football population, and I very sincerely hope it's not (and I don't think it is because of the huge selection bias of only looking at people who already thought they had it - I just don't know how valuable that statistic can be without looking at players who didn't think they had it...but you can't get their brains to look at if they or their family don't donate their brain, so...). Either way, though, given the awful consequences of head injuries in the NFL and at the collegiate level, the head honchos of this sport are almost certainly going to need to re-examine the way the game is played if they want it to continue being top dollar in the U.S. in the decades to come. I certainly don't want us to go back to baseball...or soccer. Eugh.

Yeah, that's not really how statistics works. As you just said, 99% of tested players - aka, guys or their families who felt pretty confident that they had it, enough so that they were inclined to donate their brain after they died for testing exactly that - had it. That's a pretty big selection bias. If there's a conclusion to be made there, it's probably more like if you played football and actually showed symptoms of the disease, you probably have it, especially if you and your family don't have a history of mental illness. I think it's pretty unlikely to be nearly that high among the general football population, but maybe it's that high for linemen, who knows? Without being able to test it on still alive players, it's hard to peg down exactly.

What? Why would "99%" of players have it?

Luckily, neither Oby or Qistina have accounts anymore.

...that starts at the high school (or lower) level, when parents and school reps are pressuring kids to play and where kids obviously don't know about the risks of playing football when they're starting. By the time they finish their collegiate careers, they have already likely suffered brain damage without receiving anything more than an education for it. This is also looking at the issue with a modern and knowledgeable perspective: for decades, the NFL have tried to cover up issues of brain health as it relates to football, and I think the issue was especially murky for the young black men coming from awful situations that the NFL relies so heavily upon. Nowadays, the risks are more well-known...and what do you know, more and more parents are not having their kids play the game. Personally, I don't want these next 5-15 years be the final years of a golden age of football as the game suffers from a dearth of talent due to mostly preventable brain injuries, especially when it's so painfully obviously that we'll look back on these years as being unnecessarily brutal and awful for no real reason. (e): ninja-ed by Shady

Unlike a lot of people, I look forward to the day where players have to tackle properly (i.e. wrap-up) instead of trying to knock each others' brains out, and when interior linemen aren't smashing their heads together on every snap. Yeah, it'll slow the game down some, but it's necessary and the change will be forgotten for the most part in a few years once it's done (...although defensive linemen will probably struggle to evolve for a while if the three-point stance is eliminated). In regards to Ezekiel, it seems as though Schefter from ESPN (pretty much the only guy worth anything that still works at ESPN and has actual insider sources...) now thinks that there's a decent chance Elliot's suspension is reduced (which is interesting, because I'm pretty sure he previously thought it wouldn't be - something must've changed his mind).

The only one I can think of that I've played is Broken Age (e: also, for anyone who hasn't played Broken Age or doesn't know anything about it, there are two protagonists, Vella and Shay, that are equally important and you have to play through both of their parts to progress through the game).

Thank you for the links, especially the first one, which is the best info I've seen so far on it. Although this appears to an official NFL website, I don't recall this document being publicized a couple of weeks ago. (e): Based on the document, the general feeling seems to be that he likely did it (and based on what they said, I wouldn't disagree and I don't think there's any reason to doubt their integrity), but there mightn't be enough hard evidence to criminally convict him. It's not ideal, but at least it's not as much of a flaming crapheap of an investigation as Deflategate was.

Well, I tried reading an interview from Tonya Davis on the case, but uh, it was pretty worthless. A whole lot of generalities and background information that maybe have some kind of implications if you're really trying to read into it...but which had nothing to do directly with the case. I wasn't expecting her to like, you know, totally spill the beans on the case or anything (that'd probably be a real quick way to never have any input on something like this ever again), but if you're trying to convince an indignant and confused fanbase of something that is seemingly not supported by any real evidence, ya' probably could do a little better than that. Would you care to link to a more insightful interview?

Ezekiel Elliot reportedly looking to go to court over his suspension. I suppose the NFLPA is driving it, perhaps so that it can point to these incidents to the players so they know what they're fighting for in the new CBA come 2021 and so that they don't immediately cave (it should also help that a few of the owners, including Robert Kraft and Jerry Jones, should definitely feel wronged by the commissioner's broad power at this point). EE will 99.9% lose, and he probably won't even be given an injunction on the suspension at this point.

I appreciate you keeping politics out of the funny thread unlike everyone else.

That's fair. ...Although the fact that they put that atrocious line in their launch trailer surely is not promising if you're trying not to assume that it'll be same elsewhere...but hey, a little optimism never killed anybody.

Yeah, that makes sense, and I'd agree with it for most other languages...except Japanese. Every time I've ever heard a Japanese dub of something, my feeling has basically been, "These voices don't fit these characters in the slightest, and they just sound like total dorks." I remember comparing the Japanese and English dubs of a DBZ episode against the Abridged voices a few years ago, and being a little annoyed that Frieza just didn't really have quite the right timbre or menace in the English dubs...and then I listened to the Japanese version and was just blown away by how utterly ridiculous he sounded. Japanese voice-acting just doesn't seem to work for me.

I'm not a big fan of Japanese voice-acting (the timbre of voices they tend to use for Japanese dubs as well as the inflections specific to the language are usually pretty jarring to me), but, I mean, it's gotta be better than that garbage.

I don't really mind not having a choice (i.e. playing a designed character), per se, but if there is one, then it can depend. Is there voice-acting in the game? If so, whomever I like better there (an example for this would be something like Mass Effect). If there isn't, or if there's a number of voice-acting options (e.g. Baldur's Gate), then it can depend upon the appearance of the character (in some games, male characters can look silly, and in others, it's the other way around). It can also depend on what kind of character I'm going for (for example, I'm just not the biggest fan of playing straight up beefy warrior-type women - just not my ideal character type). When given a choice, though, I generally (but certainly not exclusively) play opposite sex characters. (e): As for gender, I've never really considered it...which makes sense, since I'm not really a video game romance person.

but on the other hand, who's gonna wanna play a remake that has the most garbage voice-acting added (seriously, watch the video on the Steam Store page to get a "taste" of it - bad voice acting is so much worse than no voice-acting and I'd rather stick with the original just for this reason), and where they replace the decent 2D sprite-work with...that. I mean...c'mon, into the trash it goes. Them fixing up the story/dialogue (mistranslated and cut stuff) would probably be the only draw here. As for SD3, luckily, there is an actual fan translation, which I have not played (and so can't compare to other great fan translations like MOTHER 3), but it's at least something.

Kat Swenski's comic-gifs are always nice.

Gorka is out. While I can't say that he'll be missed, his reason for doing so (specifically mentioning our re-commitment to Afghanistan) is an interesting one.

That's good, because it was pretty poorly written outside of the overall narrative, too. I also just remembered that it was posted here in the funny things thread...which seems an odd place for it if you're taking it at face value...maybe it's a parody of something else?

And boiling it down to women in the West being...aggressive, abusive, manipulative?...and women in the East being...sweet and submissive? I mean, really, it just seems kind of pathetic...

I've read some bad comic strips in this thread, but I think that one really takes the cake.