Not good enough to win a beauty contest, but good enough to move up the playoff rankings.

Washington played well in the RZ.

So did the Rams. That was quite a job keeping them out of the end zone near the end. Dunno what Rivera was thinking on his use of TOs, but I don’t care.

The Rams would good enough to keep Stafford clean, and good enough to keep DC from capitalizing on their errors, so…

Saints have to travel. Rams don’t.

Let’s go.

zn wrote:

Zooey wrote:

Well done, Cincinnati.

So Jake Browning out duels Nick Mullens for the 27-24 win. As was written in the prophecies.

The key thing here is that both Green Bay and Minnesota have 1-game losing streaks, and are trending in the right direction.

JackPMiller wrote:

If somehow Dallas and Philly each lose the next three games, and the 9ers go 3-0, that game against us, will not mean a thing. Because the 9ers would have home field throughout the NFC. It makes me think, they will sit their main guys, after the first Quarter.

Yes, but if the 9ers also somehow lose the next three games, the Rams could play them for the divisional title.

zn wrote:

He has the 21st-best PFF grade among all defensive tackles

I don’t think that Pro Bowls feature 21 DTs.

I am very happy with Turner, especially considering that he is a rookie, but if I’d written that article, he wouldn’t have made the list.

Why now?

pic.twitter.com/gJAwEtOuko

— Los Angeles Chargers (@chargers) December 15, 2023

Determining something is AI, and proving it, are different things. AI-generated text sounds perfunctory, it’s “soulless,” it has no “voice” to it. Human writing is like a fingerprint. Everybody is different. I can tell immediately if a student is suddenly using compound/complex sentences when, in the past, they used only simple sentences in the passive voice. (I recall an incident in our board history, now that I think about it, when a poster was accused of posting under two different identities, denied it, and then I undressed him by an analysis of how he used stylistic devices and punctuation {garlic in the shadows? What was his name}.

What I’m saying is…I can tell. I can’t always prove it to people who don’t understand writing well, and that’s a problem. The entire issue is one that academia is working with right now. Some places already have policies. Some places are wondering if Composition needs to be taught any longer. Some are working to find a framework to deal with it, since it won’t go away.

I don’t know what zn means by “invariably AI writing is going to do things I openly and clearly and very specifically don’t allow.” I try to write prompts that require synthesizing material that isn’t (likely to be) available to AI. If that’s what he means, then we are approaching the problem the same way.

There is a program called turnitin which schools can subscribe to which searches its databases for duplicate material, and flags it. That takes care of a lot of plagiarism. It has an AI detection feature that was pretty good for a while, but it seems to me it has been dialed back a lot in the past 2-3 months, possibly out of concern for litigation. That is…it is showing AI likelihood at much lower rates generally than it used to.

This term, for the final essay (and this isn’t new, but I haven’t done it in a few years), the students will be required to handwrite an essay in a timed-writing setting, without the use of laptops or phones.

It’s an interesting and challenging issue. But I am developing a growing resentment at the fact that I am being strained at having to police students – to whom I am only too happy to teach knowledge and skills that will benefit them for their entire lives – but who don’t care about that knowledge, or those skills, and only want a “grade” that will usher them into the land of plenty with less effort.

zn wrote:

Rams Brothers@RamsBrothers Byron Young (3rd round pick): 26 pressures, 6 sacks, 5 TFL, 2 FF —> 4-years, $5.5MM Kobie Turner (3rd round pick): 12 pressures, 5.5 sacks, 5 TFL —> 4-years, $5.39MM Jalen Carter (1st round pick): 16 pressures, 4 sacks, 6 TFL, 2 FF (1 TD) —> 4-years, $21.8MM Nolan Smith (1st round pick): 2 pressures, 1 sack, 1 TFL —> 4-years, $11.9MM Credit to the Rams’ entire staff for getting this kind of value/productivity out of the rooks. And Aaron Donald.

Byron Young and Kobie Turner play next to Aaron Donald, and Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith don’t. It may be that Carter and Smith play next to HOF DL on their respective teams. I don’t know other teams’ personnel well. But I do wonder how much of the credit goes to Donald for Young’s and Turner’s success.

How has it gone for Brockers, Gaines, Sebastian J-D, A’Shawn Robinson, et al. since they parted ways?

Hram wrote:

Kicking game would be a lot better if they could re-sign Massey to be the long snapper. just saying

Yeah, but, at this point, Massey would cost like $12/hour, or something

nittany ram wrote:

Robbie Gould

I suppose you would like the Rams to trade Stafford for Garoppolo, too. 🙄

That Bobby Brown tackle. When that happened, I gasped. He didn’t really get a body on him, and I thought for a microsecond that the dude was going to escape the tackle, when all of a sudden, Brown just flicked him backwards like a booger.

Kyren Williams absolutely decks Myles Garrett

Wow. That’s one of my favorite things from this season.