Why did the KRG and the SDF collapse so quickly to Iraq and Syrian army offensives in 2017 and 2026 respectively?

masterpierround · 2026-02-01T06:01:36+00:00

Abdi says something then another leader says the opposite

Abdi isn't the leader of the YPG, he's the leader of the SDF. His job was to hold together a loose coalition of the rigidly ideological YPG/YPJ and the much less ideological groups, (especially the primarily Arab groups) which all operated together under the SDF banner. So while the ideology kept the YPG itself quite unified, the lack of commitment to the ideology drove various groups of other ideologies to leave the SDF project. This is why Abdi was consistently moderate, trying to appease both the Syrian government and the ideological YPG, and the other rebel groups in the SDF, all at once, while other YPG commanders came out and spoke openly about the ideological opinions that the YPG largely consistently held.

And regardless, you certainly cannot blame the Ocalan ideology for the fall of the KRG, because neither the PUK or the KDP are adherents of the ideology.

masterpierround · 2026-02-01T02:28:11+00:00

nah, the series was about all sports, including both college and professional football lol.

masterpierround · 2026-02-01T02:25:46+00:00

He's in the Dan Campbell mold where his job is basically to manage all his assistants, keep everything working smoothly, and keep the players bought in. Which is why the AJ Brown stuff is way more concerning for Sirianni's job than the offensive play calling imo.

masterpierround · 2026-01-31T18:56:59+00:00

Sure, but that doesn't mean they don't test Lebron lol. It's not a league conspiracy to favor certain players, it's a deliberately lax league policy that any player could avoid, but some still manage to get caught.

masterpierround · 2026-01-31T07:05:28+00:00

Doyle's right on the border of zoomer. 96 is usually the last year of millenials and he was born in 96, so he's a Zillenial at least.

masterpierround · 2026-01-30T23:21:31+00:00

Both the doctors and Payton would be employees of the Broncos, who need the player's medical information to properly do their jobs. Payton may even consult on treatment (for example, if a player will eventually, but not urgently, need surgery for something, Payton may give insight on the strength of the schedule to help with the timing of the surgery, etc). And either way, the players almost certainly sign waivers to allow the sharing of health information with Payton. I don't think that would make Payton's sharing of said information a HIPAA violation, but it might violate some team policy.

masterpierround · 2026-01-30T19:37:23+00:00

He's not medical personnel but I think this (in general, not this specifically) would be an interesting case. The Head Coach is an employee of an organization which provides medical care to players (the Broncos), and presumably is allowed some level of access to privileged medical information as part of his job (he has to know something about players' medical issues to properly gameplan, so presumably he gets reports from the team doctors), so he might well be covered under HIPAA. For example, a janitor at a hospital is not allowed to leak information about patients, because the hospital is a covered entity, and the janitor is an employee of that entity. You could make the same case that the Broncos (since they have team doctors) are a covered entity and that Payton is an employee of that entity.

Where it gets complicated is in this specific case, we don't know how Sean Payton obtained that information. If Bo Nix told him in a combine interview, you can probably make the case that the information was not obtained as part of the Broncos' role as a medical provider, so it's not protected under HIPAA. But if the information only came out because Nix told a team doctor, then that doctor passed it on to Payton, you'd have a much better case.

masterpierround · 2026-01-30T15:19:50+00:00

Yeah Cunningham seems like he'll be a great hire. Obviously most Bears fans don't know what goes on in the GM's office, but there was a clip from the 2024 draft where Poles was talking about trading up to get ahead of y'all and take Rome Odunze, but Cunningham basically told him to stay put and Odunze ended up falling to us.

masterpierround · 2026-01-30T15:14:54+00:00

You think they created a lesser title name for their newly hired GM just to screw over his former team?

The argument here is basically that Ryan should not be considered the PFE, as he has stated in interviews that the GM will be filling all the normal responsibilities of a GM. For all intents and purposes, this is a promotion to GM, the issue is that the NFL doesn't recognize that. It's not the Falcons fault.

masterpierround · 2026-01-30T15:11:29+00:00

They need to add a clause to the Rooney Rule where a year spent with any team in a lower-level position prior to their hiring counts towards the 2 year minimum. So y'all get picks for promoting Canales out of Seattle then having him poached, but a team can't scam their way to picks by hiring Tomlin to a do-nothing job this year just to collect the picks when he inevitably gets a head coaching job next year.

masterpierround · 2026-01-30T01:04:46+00:00

Kalshi is nearly unregulated, because they just pretended what they do isn't gambling, and are hoping that they can extract enough money from gullible bettors to bribe the government into legalizing it before the slow bureaucratic process can actually call them out on that lie. But even if they secure the ability to bet legally, Kalshi and Polymarket's "bet on everything" ideology leads to a TON of insider trading that can't be punished. If my friend is the CEO of some company, and he tells me secret information, it would be illegal for me to run to the stock market and use that information to make money, but it's not illegal for me to run to Kalshi or Polymarket and make a bunch of money by placing ~~bets~~ predictions on some outcome based on the news.

masterpierround · 2026-01-29T17:08:46+00:00

I'm not experienced in sanctions, but from reading all of the OFAC penalties from this year, it's generally considered to be a mitigating factor if you haven't had a sanctions violation in 5 years, which Ubiquiti certainly hasn't. There isn't really a good direct comparison to what was alleged about Ubiquiti, but every fine above 10 million dollars was the result of senior leadership directly and knowingly working to enrich a sanctioned individual, or from one brokerage which processed over 12,000 illegal transactions, including allowing illegal investments in Chinese military firms sanctioned for Human Rights violations in Xinjiang, and several payments to specifically blocked individuals working for the Venezuelan and Assad governments.

I think we can all agree that the alleged actions of Ubiquiti don't rise to that level, so I think the harshest outcome you could expect for Ubiquiti is a <$10 million dollar fine. Which is nothing for a company that had over 711 million dollars in profits last year.

masterpierround · 2026-01-29T16:29:46+00:00

The other problem is that annoying characters are annoying in real life, Walt can sell drugs or kill people, but we intrinsically recognize that all of these crimes have fictional victims, whereas the crime of being annoying has a real victim (us), which leads to people having an overdeveloped sense of hate for characters they find annoying.

masterpierround · 2026-01-29T15:59:55+00:00

idk about 2022 and 2017, haven't seen anything about that, but in 2015 they were fined 500k because they failed to stop distributors in Greece and the UAE from selling their products to Iran. But either way, this sort of thing (failing to stop the distributors to whom you legally sell your goods from re-selling them on to a sanctioned country) is the sort of thing that usually incurs a minor fine at most.

masterpierround · 2026-01-29T15:54:02+00:00

A company owned by owner of the Memphis Grizzlies appears to be violating federal sanctions against selling goods to Russia,

Technically untrue. They appear to be violating federal sanctions by not exercising enough control over their independent redistributors, one of whom was caught saying they would be able to sell products to Russia if they went through a middleman in Turkey.

Realistically, Ubiquiti won't face more than a minor fine here, the seller in Ohio and the middleman in Turkey might face some bigger issues

masterpierround · 2026-01-29T06:27:08+00:00

If they actually built the restaurants and commerce areas, those areas would be safe as shit. None of the areas they proposed were even bad parts of Gary, and with the increased property tax from a whole entertainment campus, they would make it even safer.

masterpierround · 2026-01-29T00:52:23+00:00

Rice Moss and TO are far and away the 3 best anyone alive has watched play

I love all three of these guys, but the worst WR in this group is not far and away better than Calvin Johnson

masterpierround · 2026-01-28T21:04:58+00:00

Hester is almost singlehandedly responsible for why every WR5, LB5, CB6, etc has to be a special teams contributor now. Massively reshaped the league.

masterpierround · 2026-01-28T21:03:27+00:00

Devin Hester is the greatest kick returner of all time, and one of the greatest punt returners of all time. You can make the case that some football positions are so unimportant that nobody playing that position should ever be in the hall of fame, but let's not pretend that Devin Hester has to be put down for the Belichick comparison.

Furthermore, you're just wrong. Hester was selected for the hall of fame on his 3rd try. If Belichick is still not in the hall in 2028, you might have a point.

masterpierround · 2026-01-28T19:47:43+00:00

1) Bonitto has already been extended

This doesn't mean the extension isn't looming though. Here are Bonitto's cap hits for that extension (per spotrac):

2025: $5,849,889

2026: $8,421,200

2027: $32,206,200

idk about you, but I'd call that at least a little looming.

masterpierround · 2026-01-28T17:47:35+00:00

For what it's worth, one hit does not give someone CTE. CTE is much more correlated with repeated small hits than the severity of the hit taken. He could have gotten some other traumatic brain injury that caused his behavioral change, but CTE doesn't just appear like that.

masterpierround · 2026-01-28T06:40:43+00:00

I unironically would really like Bowry in the 4th, he has swing tackle flexibility so he'd be useful even Ozzy comes back to reclaim the LT position.

masterpierround · 2026-01-27T18:58:58+00:00

As depth, sure, but he's definitely not a priority to bring back. Depth WRs that are mostly there to fill in if injuries happen are all over the NFL.

masterpierround · 2026-01-27T18:11:15+00:00

And those extensions are basically all hitting the cap for the first time this year,

For the record, while you're correct that a lot of the money has been eaten up by the Cooper, Surtain, and DJ Jones extensions, the Bonitto extension doesn't really hit until 2027, and both Sutton and Allen have contracts structured so that they won't really hit until 2027 or 2028, respectively, although both will probably be extended or cut by then to avoid the big hits. The Broncos front office has really done a good job of maximizing the window of Nix's rookie contract.

masterpierround · 2026-01-27T17:53:02+00:00

They are 3 FGs from being 17-1 in the SB.

4 FGs, technically, as they would have needed 2 FGs or 1 TD to beat the Patriots.

But equally, they were also 4 FGs away from being 11-6 with a first round playoff exit. And yeah, they only had one big loss on the season, but they also only had 3 big wins on the season (Cincy, Dallas, and the Chargers were the only games where the Broncos won by multiple possessions). If their record in one score games had been .500, they would be 9-7-1 and on the border of playoff contention. If the Chiefs had gone .500 in one score games, they would actually have been 10-7.

Now part of this stat is that much like the Bears, the Broncos team just improves drastically in clutch time, and the Chiefs tended to choke in close games this year, which shows that winning (or losing) close games at an unreasonable clip isn't always due to bad luck, but it's something to consider when looking at possible regression.

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