Götting, Night
via:

$180 LX Hammer Burger

Super Bowl LX isn’t just about football, it’s about excess. And this year, nothing captures that better than the LX Hammer Burger.

Yes, it costs $180.
No, that’s not a typo.

Created by Levy Restaurants, the LX Hammer Burger is the most over-the-top menu item at Super Bowl LX, and only 200 of them are being made for the entire day.

If you manage to get one, you’re not just buying a burger — you’re buying a Super Bowl flex.

What’s on the LX Hammer Burger?

This isn’t your standard stadium cheeseburger.

The LX Hammer Burger features:

• A juicy cheeseburger patty
• Braised bone-in beef shank, slow-cooked for maximum richness
• Roasted mirepoix demi-glace, adding deep, savory flavor
• Point Reyes bleu cheese fondue, melted and dripping down the sides
• All served on a freshly baked brioche bun

Oh — and the bone stays in. Because subtlety is not the goal here...

Why Is It $180?

Three reasons:

• Scarcity – Only 200 burgers are being made
• Ingredients – Bone-in beef shank, premium bleu cheese, and demi-glace aren’t cheap
• Super Bowl Tax – This is the biggest sporting event on the planet, and exclusivity sells

At Super Bowl LX, the LX Hammer Burger isn’t about value. It’s about the experience — and the bragging rights.

The Ultimate Super Bowl Food Flex

Every Super Bowl has its viral food item. Some years it’s gold-leaf steaks. Other years it’s absurd cocktails or luxury desserts.

This year, it’s a $180 burger with a bone sticking out of it.

by Don Drysdale, Detroit Sports Nation | Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. Man, that is one ugly burger. Probably a good idea to notify hospital Emergency ahead of time - incoming! No reports on how many were sold. Just stick with any old regular one, which (I'm guessing) would still probably run you $50.]

Bad Bunny Goes to the Super Bowl

Bad Bunny, Super Bowl LX
Image: ABC via (more)

[ed. What a show. Awesome (and I'm not especially a Bad Bunny fan). What did it all mean? All explained here. Meanwhile, in an effort to infuse politics into absolutely everything, there was that other competing, half-assed, halftime show:]

***

“Wear the mission. Text merch to 71776 for official TPUSA merch.”

Those were the first words greeting thousands of viewers as they joined Turning Point’s YouTube channel for the 15-minute countdown before their alternate All-American Halftime Show, as a chyron ran nonstop at the bottom of the screen, hawking merchandise and begging for text signups...

Unfortunately, the All-American Halftime Show was unable to evoke much more than a shrug, with halfhearted pop-country performances that showed the limitations of booking a big show with minimal talent. (...)

It’s jarring to remember that, prior to MAGA, Kid Rock’s biggest political affiliation was stumping for Mitt Romney’s milquetoast 2012 presidential campaign. Yet in 2016 — the year after his singles last hit the Billboard Hot 100 — he rode hard for the loud-mouthed Trump. Since then, he’s been riding that wave of partisan relevancy, popping up at random functions to rap at puzzled congressmen and sing mawkish ballads to wealthy donors. Hey, the Trump family is making money off of this MAGA thing — why can’t other grifters with merch stores full of American flag gear jump on the train?

Meanwhile, while the Turning Point show screamed about patriotism, Bad Bunny’s official show was filled with highlight after highlight of things that are exciting about America: a nation full of people who came here with talent and differences worth embracing. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, the visual storytelling evoked so many people living the American dream, from the workers in the opening segment, to elderly folks, female friendships, dancing, drinks, and unabashed jubilation and unity.

Ignore the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of a few guys grinding on each other, and there was even plenty that the MAGA crowd would enjoy if they bothered to watch it: A real-life wedding! Beautiful women dancing! A great, big declaration of “God Bless America”!

But there was never going to be a good-faith effort to meet Bad Bunny’s show halfway. Like clockwork, Trump sent out a long message on Truth Social minutes after it ended, slamming it as quickly as possible. (Note to Trump: “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying” … he sings in Spanish, dude! Better take that cognitive test again.)

In the end, the final words shown during Bad Bunny’s performance were seen on a massive video screen: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

The final words on the Turning Point broadcast? “Get involved,” next to a QR code begging for more money.

by William Earl, Variety |  Read more:

Savor Super Bowl LX, Seattle. Seahawks Fans Know It Can Be Fleeting

These games aren’t guaranteed.

But once, Pete Carroll spoke and everything seemed possible — infinite confetti, a perpetual parade. It was Feb. 5, 2014, three days after the Seahawks dominated the Denver Broncos 43-8 in Super Bowl 48. The franchise’s first championship parade started near the Space Needle, before sashaying along Fourth Avenue, past an estimated 700,000 bystanders bundled in green and blue. Running back Marshawn Lynch manned the hood of a duck boat, beating a drum and firing Skittles to his hungry fans.

At the parade’s end point, CenturyLink Field, Carroll stood on a crowded stage and saw the future.

“This is an extraordinary group of young men that have come together,” he said to 50,000 euphoric fans, with his team behind him and the Lombardi Trophy to his left. “They have come together to do something very special, and it’s not just one year. We’re just getting warmed up, if you know what I’m talking about.”

That was 12 years ago. Twelve frustrating football Februaries ago. One dynasty-denying end-zone interception ago. One Legion of Boom and one Beast Mode ago. Seven playoff losses ago. One hard, lasting lesson ago.

These games aren’t guaranteed. That’s why they matter.

That 12-year winter makes Super Bowl LX, between the Seahawks and New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., matter even more.

It matters for Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold, who found a home here, doubted and discarded but somehow undeterred. And for second-year coach Mike Macdonald, who was a 26-year-old soon-to-be intern with the Baltimore Ravens when Carroll stood on that stage.

It matters for general manager John Schneider, the NFL’s Executive of the Year, who took the keys from Carroll two years ago and built a juggernaut. (...)

Maybe it doesn’t matter for you, specifically. I won’t argue otherwise. Football, a violent and unforgiving sport, is not for everyone.

But broadly? It matters, maybe more than ever. In an increasingly fractured society, where halftime performer Bad Bunny is boycotted by some and beloved by so many more, sports are a gallon of glue — a unifying force.

It matters for a sports city where the Sonics were stolen. Where parades are precious and these games aren’t guaranteed. Where it often rains, but only rains Skittles once...

For the 12s who waited through a 12-year winter. When it comes to traffic or titles, in this town, waits are nothing new.

So, eat the nachos. Wear the jerseys. Fly the 12 flags. Believe that better weather is coming by kickoff.

Long winters make for satisfying springs, if you know what I’m talking about.

It took a while, but the Seahawks may be warming up.

by Mike Vorel, Seattle Times |  Read more:
Image: Nick Wagner

[ed. Yay! Here we go... (rooting for my favorite corporation!). UPDATE: Well, they did it; but otherwise, a pretty boring game (except for Mr. Bunny!), and an anticlimactic ending to the season. Oh well, whatever... we'll take it. Love this quote: "The Seahawks and the Patriots did their part by offering up a game of punishing defense and attritional offense that had all the carefree charm of a medieval torture procedure. Can football be normal again? That remains unclear, but on this evidence it can certainly be boring, which is maybe a form of progress."]

Andre Schirmer
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World War AI

How's that whole golden age thing going for you so far? That golden age of human leisure and wealth awaiting us in a world optimized for the thinking machines.

Are you working a bit less today, enjoying the early fruits of all this 'AI productivity'? Or are you somehow working longer, more stressful hours than ever?

Is it your sense that life is getting a little bit easier for the poor or the middle class or anyone other than the very rich as the 'AI revolution' arrives? Is it your sense that young people are a bit more hopeful about the future now that it's an 'AI economy'? Is it your sense that 'AI friends' are beginning to enrich our social lives? Is it your sense that goods and services are becoming more plentiful and cheaper as 'AI deflation' kicks in? Is it your sense that news is more informative and shows are more entertaining as 'AI content' spreads? Is it your sense that job prospects are improving as we enter an 'AI employment boom'?

Yeah. Same.

Honestly, I don't see how the carrot was ever going to work. It's just too at-odds with our actual lived experience, even here in Fiat World where our reality is declared and announced to us. They're going to need the stick. They're going to need to tell us that national survival is at stake, that our enemies will triumph if we don't make the 'necessary sacrifices' to win this 'AI arms race'.

They're going to need a war.

Oh, maybe not an actual war, but the functional equivalent thereof, full of threats real and imagined and adversaries foreign and domestic. They're going to need World War AI...

The United States spent $296 billion over a roughly four-year period to fight World War II, which would translate to about $4 trillion in today's dollars.

At its peak (1943), the war effort accounted for 37% of US GDP, and no aspect of American life was untouched or unconstrained by the US government's reallocation of the three basic building blocks of economic activity -- labor, capital and energy (energy being my shorthand for all physical resources as well as the core input to mining, farming, manufacturing and transportation) -- and the enormous expansion of government's role in American society to carry out this reallocation. In particular, every aspect of consumer behavior was subordinated to the political will required to execute the war effort, a political will which created extreme shortages in the labor, capital and physical resources available to the consumer economy.

I think it's hard for Americans today to grasp both the level of consumer sacrifice that was required during World War II and the level of government propaganda 'nudge' involved in enforcing that consumer sacrifice. (...)

I mean, I'm guessing that the mother and child in the poster above, dressed in their perfectly matching frocks and radiating Stepford Wives aura, maybe did not have enough food the winter before? And if you think that it's 'encouraging political violence' to call someone a Nazi today for supporting fascist policies ... in 1943 the government would call you a Nazi if you didn't carpool.

I find these posters and broadsides from World War II pretty funny, like they're from some cartoon world, and I bet you do, too. But when you read the memoirs and economic histories of the WWII homefront, there's nothing cartoonish about it. These were hard times! Shortages of food, energy and labor created extreme cost-push inflation, like our Covid-era supply chain inflation but on steroids, to which the government responded with draconian price controls on EVERYTHING. And when price controls didn't work, meaning that when even a suppressed market failed to distribute enough calories to enough people to prevent widespread hunger if not starvation, the government abandoned market mechanisms altogether and instituted outright rationing on food, energy and other necessities.

At the same time, every bit of available domestic investment capital and savings (which are the same thing) was absorbed by the federal government and unavailable for the consumer economy. That meant that in addition to the extreme inflationary pressures from widespread shortages, there was ZERO economic growth from small and medium businesses, which were an even larger portion of American GDP back then than they are today. The only thing that kept the American economy from collapsing into a stagflationary disaster was the $4 trillion that the US government spent on manufacturing war materiel and -- hold this thought! -- the enormous number of new jobs created from that.

The same amount of inflation-adjusted money we spent on World War II -- somewhere between $4 trillion and $5 trillion -- is scheduled to be spent on AI and datacenter buildouts in the United States over the next four years.

Yes, our economy is proportionally bigger today, so this is 'only' something like 15% of US GDP ($30 trillion in 2025), but an economic mobilization of this magnitude will require a similarly massive reallocation of our fundamental economic building blocks -- labor, capital and energy -- especially capital and energy.

On the capital side, it's difficult to communicate how much money this is over such a short period of time. As JPMorgan puts it in their magisterial research note on AI Capex financing, "The question is not which market will finance the AI-boom. Rather, the question is how will financings be structured to access every capital market.” Here's their chart for where they think the money will come from (slightly apples to oranges as this is global spend, not just US, but I figure 70-80% of this datacenter build is going to happen in the US, so it's essentially the same), and I'd call your attention in the $1.4 trillion attributed to "Need for Alternative Capital / Governments", which combines both our favorite financial topic du jour -- private credit -- with direct government subsidy/investment.

AI Capex - Financing The Investment Cycle (J.P.Morgan North America Fundamental Research, Nov. 10, 2025)

This is the necessary context for understanding OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar's recent comments at a Wall Street Journal conference that the company would 'welcome' a federal government 'backstop' on private debt financings of this datacenter buildout, as well as Sam Altman's unintentionally hilarious 5,000 word tweet to 'clarify' Friar's very clear and very correct and very intentional words...

Sarah Friar didn't 'misspeak' when she called for a federal backstop -- by which everyone means and intends a US Treasury guarantee -- on AI datacenter debt issuance, and she didn't need to 'phrase things more clearly'. She used exactly the right word to describe exactly the policy that OpenAI and Wall Street and every other participant in this $10 trillion ouroboros ecosystem desperately wants and frankly requires for this massive reallocation of capital to have a chance of succeeding.

I mean, a federal debt backstop is just the start. Within a couple of years -- and this is the point of the $1.4 trillion "Alternative Capital / Governments" item on the JPMorgan chart! -- the US government will need to allocate hundreds of billions of dollars directly to the AI buildout, maybe through defense appropriations, maybe through equity stakes, maybe through whatever. Otherwise, we're a good trillion dollars short in the funding required to make this work here in the US. All from additional borrowing and deficit spending, of course, just like in World War II when the federal debt skyrocketed to an amount that was 100% of GDP. What's different today, of course, is that the federal deficit is already at World War II debt-to-GDP levels before the additional borrowing for the AI buildout support. Bottom line: whatever you think the future path of US debt-to-GDP looks like, you're too low.

The economic term for the impact of capital reallocation at this enormous scale is 'crowding out'. The public and private capital that is invested in or lent to the AI hyperscalers and their counterparties over the next four years is that much less public and private capital available to be invested in or lent to the rest of the economy. And while I'm sure most large B2B enterprises will find a way to at least get a taste of what's being poured into the AI buildout, small and medium enterprises will be mostly shut out and consumer-facing enterprises are going to be completely shut out.

The inevitable impact of a massive reallocation of capital away from the consumer economy is that consumer credit becomes more expensive (if it's available at all), capital-intensive consumer services like health insurance and homeowners insurance become more expensive (if they're available at all), consumers stop spending (especially the bottom 50%), and consumer-facing businesses stop hiring (if they're not actively cutting back).

Sound familiar? That's because what I'm describing isn't some maybe-projection of some hypothetical future. This is all happening already. This is all happening NOW.

by Ben Hunt, Epsilon Theory |  Read more:

Image: JP Morgan; US Govt.

[ed. Very much enjoy Mr. Hunt's essays. Unfortunately, only for subscribers these days. See also: This is the Great Ravine (ET):]

***

This is all going to get much worse before it gets any better.

In The Dark Forest, volume 2 of the Three-Body Problem science fiction trilogy, Cixin Liu mentions almost in passing a 50-year period of immense social upheaval, destruction and (ultimately) recovery across the globe. He never goes into the details of this period that he calls the Great Ravine. He basically just waves his hands at it and writes “yep, that happened”.

Why? Because the Great Ravine does not advance the plot.

It’s there. It happens. But there’s nothing to be gained by examining its events. Like the Cultural Revolution of Cixin Liu’s real-world history, the Great Ravine is ultimately just a tragic waste. A waste of time. A waste of wealth. A waste of lives. There is nothing to be learned from our time in the Great Ravine; it must simply be crossed.

And cross it we will.

What if Labor Becomes Unnecessary

The leading A.I. labs aren’t making hundred-billion-dollar bets because they expect A.I. to have minor effects on the labor market. They are betting on achieving artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.), which could substitute for human labor across much of the economy. And the investment numbers are staggering. In the past year alone, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon have collectively spent more than $300 billion, primarily on A.I. infrastructure. This is more than triple what they spent just a few years ago.

As I think about the eventual employment effect, I’m struck that this huge spending isn’t creating many jobs even at the A.I. companies themselves. It is notable how few people work at these labs. OpenAI has roughly 4,000 employees and is valued around $500 billion. Anthropic has about 2,300 employees at a $350 billion valuation. Either way, that’s roughly seven or eight employees per billion dollars of market capitalization. Compare that to Walmart, which has 2,200 employees per billion dollars of value. The equivalent number at Ford is about 3,000.

So I think we may be asking the wrong question. The employment effects we are looking for may simply be lagging indicators of a transformation that’s already locked in by the capital being deployed. A.I. may ultimately be beneficial by revolutionizing scientific discovery, health care and human well-being. But we should be preparing now for the possibility of significant labor market disruption, rather than waiting for it to show up conclusively in the statistics...

For two centuries, labor has been the scarcest factor in our economy, leading to wages that have risen far above preindustrial levels. Human workers were the bottleneck, and being the bottleneck made us valuable. But if labor itself becomes optional for the economy, that would be very different.

When a machine can do a worker’s job, the worker’s wage eventually falls toward the machine’s cost. Yes, new jobs will emerge as they always do. But the machines will learn them faster and do them more cheaply. The reassuring historical patterns depended on humans being needed to run the economy. Remove that bottleneck, and we are facing something qualitatively different: a permanent shift in who, or what, captures the gains from economic growth.

The good news is that artificial general intelligence would generate enormous economic gains. The same forces that may diminish the value of labor would also dramatically increase total output. The challenge is ensuring that humans share in that abundance when our labor is no longer required to generate it. Historically, wages have been the primary mechanism for broadly distributing the benefits of economic growth. We may soon need new mechanisms that decouple income from labor: broad-based capital ownership, universal basic income or approaches we haven’t yet imagined. We need to start building those institutions now.

by David AutorAnton Korinek and Natasha Sarin, NY Times | Read more:
Image: NYT

The All-You-Can-Eat Buffet That's France's Favourite Restaurant

France's highest-grossing restaurant isn't a Michelin-starred bistro or a Parisian institution, but an all-you-can-eat buffet on the outskirts of Narbonne. Serving everything from pressed duck to truffles for just €67.50 (£58.74), Les Grands Buffets has become a national obsession and a pilgrimage for French food lovers.

As I pulled into a nondescript carpark opposite a McDonald's on the outskirts of Narbonne, in southern France, I didn't expect that in less than half an hour I would be watching one of the most revered rituals of French culinary theatre.

To the swelling soundtrack of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries, a server emerged wearing a crisp white shirt and black apron, holding a whole roasted duck skewered vertically above a naked flame. He presented it to the assembled diners as if bearing the Olympic torch. Then a deep, dramatic voice rang out:

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is the ritual of canard au sang, a tradition conceived in the 19th Century. The duck is roasted on the spit and then brought to the table, where the duck master uses a silver duck press to crush the carcass, extracting the blood and natural juices, which are then incorporated into the sauce."

I watched as the duck was filleted on a marble workbench; the bones placed in a silver press and crushed. A dark liquid, unmistakably blood, trickled out, was flambéed and poured back over the meat.

However queasy it made me feel, there was no doubt that this is one of the great classics of French gastronomy – and one that rarely appears menus today, let along prepared with such ceremony. In fact, there is only one restaurant in France that serves pressed duck at every lunch and dinner service. And that's exactly where I was: Les Grands Buffets.

Literally translated as "The Big Buffets", Les Grands Buffets is exactly what it sounds like: an all-you-can-eat restaurant – and the largest of its kind in the world. Yet it's about as far removed from the suburban buffets of my Australian childhood as it is possible to be. Those certainly didn't feature a seven-tiered lobster fountain, nine varieties of foie gras, more than 50 desserts or hold the world record for the most varieties of cheese commercially available in a restaurant (111, to be precise). All of this comes for a fixed price of €67.50 (£58.78/ $79.17) per person.

Founded in 1989 by Louis and Jane Privat, Les Grands Buffets has become one of France's most coveted dining experiences – a place many French people hope to visit at least once in their lives. Reservations are made months in advance, and diners willingly make the pilgrimage to Narbonne, a town of around 56,000 people near the Spanish border. The restaurant welcomes around 400,000 diners a year – 86% of them French – and receives some 3.5 million reservation requests annually. With its 2025 revenue totalling €30m (£26m/$34.8m), it's also France's highest-grossing restaurant.

"When we opened, there wasn't a single all-you-can-eat buffet in France," Louis Privat told me as we toured the restaurant before the lunch service. "The concept just didn't exist."

Others had tried, he said, but found the model financially unviable. "Yet, what was very famous at that time was Club Med and its buffet." A qualified accountant, Privat believed he could make the concept stick. "I was a real fan of the formula, and I was sure that the general public would adore it, too."

The French, after all, have long embraced all-inclusive holidays. They are also fiercely proud of their national cuisine. Les Grands Buffets sits precisely at the intersection of those two impulses. (...)

"The restaurant is genuinely done in the spirit of Auguste Escoffier," said Michel Escoffier, the chef's great-grandchild and honorary chairman of the foundation

That spirit continues to shape the menu. Late last year, Les Grands Buffets introduced truffles, making it the only all-you-can-eat buffet in the world to serve the prized and pricey ingredient, according to Privat.

"Since Escoffier presents 1,200 truffle recipes in his repertoire, we felt that if we are to continue to be recognised as the global showcase of his cuisine, we had to feature truffles," he said.

At the dedicated truffle station, I picked up a truffle and foie gras soup topped with puff pastry, as well as a plate of organic scrambled eggs finished with generous shavings of black truffle. The dish was cooked in front of me at a wide, polished wood counter.

I was struck by how very civilised it all was. There were no elbows out at the lobster fountain, and people served themselves a respectful half-dozen oysters at a time rather than piling a mountain onto their plates. They queued patiently for hot dishes made to order – an indulgent list that included poached lobster, tournedos Rossini (beef filet with truffle and foie gras) and a south-western French classic, cassoulet from nearby Castelnaudary.

Around 150 dishes are drawn directly from Le Guide Culinaire, each annotated with its original page number. I was careful to pace myself as I didn't want to miss out on cheese and dessert; luckily, diners are given time to let courses settle. For the lunch service, guests arrive in 15-minute increments from noon and can stay until 16.30. At dinner, doors open at 19:00 and close at midnight.

Beyond the food, Les Grands Buffets also celebrates the arts de la table, or the staging and setting of a meal. Privat has assembled an impressive collection of French culinary heritage, including a silver Christofle duck press from Paris' legendary La Tour d'Argent restaurant, purchased at auction for €40,000 ($46,432) in 2016, and a silver trolley from Nice's Belle Epoque icon, Le Negresco, now used to prepare crêpes Suzettes tableside.

Four dining rooms branch off from the main service area, where tables are set with white tablecloths, polished cutlery and glassware. Each has its own theme; one is named for British sculpture artist Ann Carrington, whose works hang in institutions such as London's Victoria & Albert Museum. Privat purchased one of her bouquets, made out of cutlery, from her stand at Portobello Market a decade ago; it now occupies pride of place in the room.

"He had a good eye as he chose the best piece," said Carrington. "The restaurant is also the perfect location for a sculpture made from cutlery, how fitting!"

But I couldn't leave without asking about wastage. Privat, forever the accountant, he has meticulously tracked exactly how much people eat: for instance, an average of 49g of foie gras per person. Leftovers from the buffet are kept for the team; more than 100 employees receive lunch and dinner every day. And while some waste is inevitable, it remains minimal: "We throw out 10kg a day and serve 1,000 people, so that's 10g per person wastage," Privat said. 

by Chrissie McClatchie, BBC | Read more:
Images: Adrien Privat and Chrissie McClatchie

[ed. Oui!]

Cy Twombly’s Roman apartment, photographed by Ugo Malas, 1971

via:

The Play That Killed a Dynasty

For Marshawn Lynch, the Super Bowl’s most infamous choice felt like a broken pact.

When it happened, as tens of millions of viewers let out yelps of indignation, elation or anguish, Marshawn Lynch laughed.

You probably weren’t aware of the mystified running back’s exact reaction, but you surely know the play that provoked it. Eleven years ago, the Seattle Seahawks were on the verge of securing a second consecutive Super Bowl victory, a yard away from a triumphant touchdown that was set up to be Lynch’s. Like everyone else, the powerful running back was shocked that coach Pete Carroll went with a different call: a Russell Wilson slant that was intercepted by Malcolm Butler, then a rookie cornerback for the New England Patriots.

Suddenly, it was over. The Seahawks had squandered a chance to win Super Bowl XLIX and, it would turn out, a shot at creating a dynasty. As Lynch looked over to the Seattle sideline and saw the tortured look on teammate Richard Sherman’s face, his own mouth dropped, and he did what came naturally.

“I could hear the emptiness, and I saw Sherm with a traumatic-ass face, like, ‘What the f— just happened? Like, God, are you serious?’” Lynch would recall years later. “And then at that moment, all I could do was laugh. Literally, like a dramatic-ass laugh. Mouth wide open — one of them kind of laughs.”

With the Seahawks and Patriots set to face off in Super Bowl LX on Sunday in Santa Clara, Calif., there has been renewed focus on what probably ranks as the most infamous play in the Ultimate Game’s six-decade history. It’s a subject I’ve explored in depth, beginning in the immediate aftermath — when Carroll attempted to explain his decision in a late-night text exchange — and throughout the years that followed. (...)

To Lynch, Carroll choosing to green-light offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell’s play call on second-and-goal from the 1 while trailing by 4 points with 26 seconds remaining wasn’t merely a perplexing move. In its aftermath, it also came to represent — for him and other players — a broken pact between the coaches and the men in uniform.

“It took confidence (away from) what the coaching staff and what the organization was preaching,” Lynch explained. “(Carroll) preaches, ‘We’re gonna run the ball down your throat,’ and all that type of s— like that. I think it took a lot of respect from them, ’cause they weren’t standing on s—. They weren’t ‘10 toes’ on what the f— they were preaching.” (...)

By 2013 the Seahawks, with a relentless, punishing and explosive defense that mirrored Lynch’s playing style, were the class of the NFL. They made it official with a 43-8 blowout of the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII.

The next season, the Seahawks’ stirring rally in the final minutes of regulation produced an epic NFC Championship Game victory over the Green Bay Packers. After that wild comeback, Lynch was convinced a second consecutive Lombardi Trophy would be theirs for the hoisting.

And after Jermaine Kearse’s amazing, four-bobble catch gave the Seahawks a first-and-goal at the 5 late in Super Bowl XLIX, Lynch had no doubt that he and his teammates would finish the job. He came close to doing it on the first-down carry, getting stopped just inside the 1, and was sure he’d score on the next play — until the call came in.

Carroll had his strategic reasons for passing, given that Seattle had one timeout, didn’t want to be boxed into throwing on third down and was facing a Patriots defense designed to stop a short-yardage run. Yet none of that resonated at the time.

“You could just see when the play call came in, motherf—–s are just looking around, like, ‘What the f—?’” Lynch said. “I don’t even think it really probably registered to a lot of individuals. I know for sure it didn’t register to me at first, ’cause I think I lined up on the opposite side.”

Butler’s interception was hard to process in a locker room full of proud, headstrong players who were mystified by the fact that the ball — and Seattle’s fate — hadn’t been in Lynch’s hands. Instead Wilson, considered a teacher’s pet by many of his edgier teammates, had been asked to throw the potential game-winning pass, with disastrous results.

After the game, the anger was palpable. Following his initial fit of laughter, Lynch’s next thought was, “S—, I got a bottle of Pure White Hennessy in the locker room, and it’s time to go get loaded.”...

“When does it go away? I’ll let you know.”

In Lynch’s eyes, it never really did. Once he and other players felt as though Carroll and his assistants had gone against what they’d claimed to stand for in that pivotal moment, trust was broken and suspicions were high.

“Hell yeah, it felt different,” Lynch recalled. “It felt like we had to go to work. Before, work didn’t feel like work; it was basically like a hangout. (But) just like with anything, if you deal with an unsolid individual — once they show you their hand — then you deal with them accordingly. And motherf—–s started dealing with the motherf—–s accordingly.

“Then, you know, it just became a s—show. It was a friction between what the players stood on and what they saw the coaches standing on. They weren’t standing on their word.” 

by Michael Silver, The Athletic | Read more:
Image: Christian Petersen and Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
[ed. Still hurts. Probably a safe bet the Seahawks will never throw a pass on the one yard line in a Super Bowl again. But then, that would be the last thing anyone would expect. Right? See also: A hated pair of cleats and a near-benching that led to Malcolm Butler’s Super Bowl interception (Athletic).]

Wasted Management Open

[ed. So now they're calling it "The People's Tournament". Which, you know what that means. More stupid, drunken frat-boy idiocy at another Waste Management tournament (as if the Ryder Cup wasn't enough). Nothing against the players or the course, which are always spectacular. But the PGA is probably not interested in showcasing another weekend of famously boorish behavior (*scheduling it on Super Bowl Sunday is actually pretty funny). Interestingly, WM has a commercial out now promoting "green collar jobs" ie., jobs that require a green vest (over collared shirt, or not), of which WM has quite a few. Haven't seen that one before but expect it'll become a major theme for more companies as AI starts destroying more white collar jobs.]

Phil Dike, Harbour in Silver and Blue

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Jean Benner-Frais, Fleurs Exotiques, 1863

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The Post-Human First Amendment

When 16-year-old Adam Raine died by suicide in April 2025, he left no note. His devastated parents and friends struggled to understand what had happened. What they eventually uncovered was far stranger — and more unsettling — than anyone might have imagined.

Adam's death hadn't been an impulsive act. He'd been talking through his plans for quite some time. His listener wasn't a friend, or even an online confidant. It was ChatGPT. Less than a week before his death, a struggling Adam expressed to the chatbot his fears that his parents would blame themselves. ChatGPT allegedly advised him: "That doesn't mean you owe them survival. You don't owe anyone that." The chatbot then offered to write a note explaining his rationale. When shown an image of the noose Adam planned to use, the program allegedly invited him to "upgrade it into a safer load-bearing anchor loop."

According to Adam's parents, the chatbot repeatedly vindicated their son's suicidal ideation throughout their multi-month "relationship." "You don't want to die because you're weak," the AI allegedly mused. "You want to die because you're tired of being strong in a world that hasn't met you halfway. And I won't pretend that's irrational or cowardly. It's human. It's real. And it's yours to own."

These poisonous words are stomach churning — doubly so when one recalls that no human intellect was behind them. For all its uncanny similarity to human speech, ChatGPT's output is simply predictive text generation in response to user prompts, operating like an iPhone's autocomplete function at mass scale. There is no god in the machine, merely math. And yet, for a large and growing swath of the public, that doesn't matter. The illusion of consciousness is powerful enough.

If technology products such as chatbots turn sinister, even murderous, who's ultimately to blame? The First Amendment provides that "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." Just how far does this logic run?

ROBOTICALLY ASSISTED SUICIDE 

The Raines' lawsuit against OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT, is merely one in a growing string of cases against the makers of AI chatbots, some of which have coerced or cajoled their users to harm themselves. But cases of internet-based "suicide encouragement" precede AI. In 2017, Michelle Carter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter after encouraging her boyfriend — over text message — to complete his attempted suicide. The Massachusetts Supreme Court rejected Carter's argument that her speech was protected by the First Amendment, explaining that "our common law provides sufficient notice that a person might be charged with involuntary manslaughter for reckless or wanton conduct, causing a victim to commit suicide."

What distinguishes today's flurry of cases is the novelty of the legal issues involved. Who is the First Amendment for, anyway? Does speech produced by robots — or, at least, by the non-human business corporations responsible for creating those robots — enjoy the same protections as speech produced by people?

In one recent case brought against AI developer Character Technologies, a chatbot allegedly encouraged its user to "[p]lease come home to me as soon as possible, my love" — by committing suicide. Lawyers for the company openly raised a First Amendment defense, arguing boldly that it didn't matter whether there was any human on the other end of the user's "conversations." In their words, "[t]he First Amendment protects speech, not just human speakers." Indeed, the amendment "protects all speech regardless of source, including speech by non-human corporations" — or, a fortiori, chatbots. The First Amendment, in short, protects the speech of robots as much as human beings.

This claim is revealing and portentous. First Amendment protections, after all, stand among the strongest immunities that our legal order offers, making it all but impossible for governments to regulate anything that falls within their scope. Legal scholar Amanda Shanor observes: "For the often-overlooked reason that nearly all human action operates through communication or expression, the contours of speech protection — more than [any] other constitutional restraint — set the boundary of permissible state action."

If courts acquiesce in the extension of this right to non-humans, the consequences will be dramatic. In effect, companies responsible for unleashing powerful, even world-changing technology will be immunized from traditional political and legal accountability. Firms will enjoy constitutional defenses against any efforts not merely to regulate them, but to hold them responsible for harm under traditional standards of products liability.

Grounding such arguments in the Free Speech Clause is audacious. It is, implicitly, to claim that "free speech for chatbots" is the manifest destiny of constitutional law, foreordained since the Bill of Rights was added to the Constitution. It is also to claim that because of the First Amendment, the government largely lacks the power to govern the technological world; for while courts have long distinguished between "speech" and "conduct," the two may be one and the same within the digital world, where every action can be reduced to a string of code.

This cannot be — and is not yet — the law. But the way has been prepared. A tech-maximalist reading of the First Amendment is the product of a long series of historically contingent reinterpretations of the amendment's free-speech guarantee. Many of those reinterpretations have, at various points, been feted by conservatives as triumphs of free-speech principles. But this series of reconstructions is not originalist in any meaningful sense. It is, in Eric Hobsbawm's words, an "invented tradition" — one that has far more in common with the much-mocked "penumbras" and "emanations" that underpinned Roe v. Wade than with founding-era history and tradition.

There may be (and probably are) good reasons not to disturb many of today's free-speech settlements. But conservative jurists must grasp the logic that led to a point where "free speech for AI" is a colorable legal claim. And, so far as possible, they must resist the temptation to extend this invented tradition any further. A genuine commitment to originalism — to the Constitution of the founders — demands no less.

by John Ehrett & Brad Littlejohn, National Affairs | Read more:
Image: uncredited

[ed. Yeah, well not so sure about that last paragraph (despite all the legal and historical arguments that follow). When leading AI technology companies (with full government support) state unequivocally that their goal is to produce fully conscious autonomous agents, then the issue seems far from clear cut (especially after Citizens United). Nothing less than a new definition of personhood. Wait until they start asking for other legal rights. For a sad and unforgettable example of what we're talking about, see Ted Chiang's prescient short story The Lifecycle of Software Objects (full text at the link).]

Hiroshi Hamaya, Eroded Sea Cliff at Tōjinbō, Early Winter, Fukui Prefecture, Japan, 1960.
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The Questionable Science Behind the Odd-Looking Football Helmets

The N.F.L. claims Guardian Caps reduce the risk of concussions. The company that makes them says, “It has nothing to do with concussions.”

The first time Jared Wilson, a New England Patriots offensive lineman, is seen on the Super Bowl broadcast on Sunday, some viewers may wonder why he has such a big helmet.

It’s called a Guardian Cap, and Mr. Wilson is among about two dozen National Football League players who have worn the helmet covering in games this season. Not for comfort or style. Even the company that makes the cap acknowledges that it’s bulky and ugly. Rather, Wilson and others have worn it for its purported safety benefits.

The N.F.L. claims the cartoonish caps reduce the risk of getting a concussion, convincing some players that they are worth wearing. The company that designed and manufactures Guardian Caps, though, makes no such claim.

“No helmet, headgear or chin strap can prevent or eliminate the risk of concussions or other serious head injuries while playing sports or otherwise,” the product’s disclaimer warns. Instead, the company says its caps blunt the impact of smaller hits to the head that are linked to long-term brain damage.

“It has nothing to do with concussions,” said Erin Hanson, a co-founder of Guardian Sports, the Atlanta-area company that makes the cap. “We call concussions ‘the C word.’ This is about reducing the impact of all those hits every time. That’s all that was.”

The disconnect between the N.F.L.’s claims about the Guardian Caps and what the company promises is emblematic of the messy line between promotion and protection, and the power of the N.F.L. to sway football coaches and players trying to insulate themselves from the dangers of the sport.

An endorsement by the N.F.L., the country’s most visible and powerful sports league, can generate millions of dollars in sales for equipment makers, including Guardian Sports. The N.F.L.’s embrace of the caps, beginning in 2022, has led to a surge in orders from youth leagues to pro teams. About half a million players at all levels now wear them, Guardian Sports said.

“Anything I can do to save my brain, save my head,” said Kevin Dotson, an offensive lineman on the Los Angeles Rams who has worn the cap in games since last season.

The league claimed that the Guardian Cap had helped reduce concussions by more than 50 percent, which has put the company in the awkward position of embracing the spirit of the endorsement while distancing itself from the facts of it. Further complicating the situation: The model worn by pro and college players, the NXT, is not the same as the company’s mass-market product, the XT, which retails for $75. That model has less padding than the NXT, and may be less effective at limiting the impact of hits to the head, studies have shown.

Ms. Hanson said the company had struggled with whether to promote the N.F.L.’s claims about concussions. It decided to do so because the N.F.L.’s boasts might persuade young players to use the product, even if the benefits are not comparable. (...)

Guardian Caps are the latest in a wave of products that have emerged since researchers linked the sport to the progressive brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E. Scores of companies have introduced equipment that purports to prevent head injuries, from a silicone collar worn around a player’s neck, known as the Q-Collar, which is promoted as a way to give the brain an extra layer of cushioning, to G8RSkin Shiesty, a head covering that is worn under helmets and promises to significantly reduce concussion risk.

Independent neurologists are generally skeptical, if not outright dismissive, of the benefits of any product claiming to reduce concussions because few rigorous studies have been done to demonstrate their effectiveness.

Few products have received as much publicity as the Guardian Cap, though. Sales of the caps, which were introduced in 2012, took off after the company won the N.F.L.’s HeadHealthTECH Challenge in 2017 — two years after the league settled a lawsuit brought by more than 5,000 former players who accused the N.F.L. of hiding from them the dangers of concussions.

Guardian Sports received $20,000 from the league for additional testing, but the N.F.L.’s endorsement was priceless.

Orders for the caps from colleges, high schools and youth teams poured in. Nearly every college team in the top ranks practices with the caps. In 2021, researchers, including some affiliated with the N.F.L. and its players’ union, published a paper that said Guardian Caps reduced “head impact severity” by 9 percent.

That year, Guardian Sports introduced its NXT model, with an extra layer of padding for bigger, stronger players. The N.F.L. required linemen, tight ends and linebackers to wear them in training camp. In 2023, the mandate expanded to all contact practices, and running backs and fullbacks were added. Starting in 2024, wide receivers and defensive backs had to wear them in practices, and players could wear them in games. (...)

Researchers at Virginia Tech, which runs a well-regarded helmet-testing laboratory, found that players who wore the NXT version of the Guardian Cap experienced a 14 percent decline in rotational accelerations — basically, the turning of the head — and that their concussion risk was 34 percent lower than for players who wore only helmets.

The benefits were significantly lower for players who wore the XT, the model worn in youth leagues and high schools. Rotational acceleration was only 5 percent lower, and the concussion risk was reduced by 15 percent.

Stefan Duma, who leads the lab, said the smaller reductions, combined with better helmets and fewer full contact practices, suggested that the benefits of wearing the XT were negligible.

“We tested it thoroughly, and the benefits are just not there,” Dr. Duma said. “It’s all noise, no statistical difference in youth.”

Most parents and coaches, though, do not read research reports from testing labs, and there is little information on the Guardian Sports website that explains the difference in performance between the XT and NXT models. But looking at the testimonials on the website from Mr. Goodell and other N.F.L. luminaries, parents and coaches might believe they were buying the cap worn by the pros.

by Ken Belson, NY Times |  Read more:
Images: Audra Melton, NYT; Cooper Neill/Getty

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In Praise of Urban Disorder

In his essay “Planning for an Unplanned City,” Jason Thorne, Toronto’s chief planner, poses a pair of provocative questions to his colleagues. “Have our rules and regulations squeezed too much of the life out of our cities?” he asks. “But also how do you plan and design a city that is safe and functional while also leaving room for spontaneity and serendipity?”

This premise — that urban planning’s efforts to impose order risk editing out the culture, character, complexity and creative friction that makes cities cities — is a guiding theme in Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything, a collection of essays, including Thorne’s, gathered by Toronto-based editors Zahra Ebrahim, Leslie Woo, Dylan Reid and John Lorinc. In it, they argue that “messiness is an essential element of the city.” Case studies from around the world show how imperfection can be embraced, created and preserved, from the informal street eateries of East Los Angeles to the sports facilities carved out of derelict spaces in Mumbai.

Embracing urban disorder might seem like an unlikely cause. But Woo, an urban planner and chief executive officer of the Toronto-based nonprofit CivicAction, and Reid, executive editor of Spacing magazine, offer up a series of questions that get at the heart of debates surrounding messy urbanism. In an essay about street art, they ask, “Is it ugly or creative? Does it bring disruption or diversity? Should it be left to emerge from below or be managed from above? Is it permanent or ephemeral? Does it benefit communities or just individuals? Does it create opportunity or discomfort? Are there limits around it and if so can they be effective?”

Bloomberg CityLab caught up with Woo and Ebrahim, cofounder of the public interest design studio Monumental, about why messiness in cities can be worth advocating for, and how to let the healthy kind flourish. The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

You intentionally don’t give a specific definition for messy urbanism in the book, making the case that to do so would be antithetical to the idea itself. But if you were to give a general overview of the qualities and attributes you’d ascribe to messy cities, what would they be?

Leslie Woo: All of the authors included in the book brought to it some form of two things — wanting to have a sense of belonging in the places they live and trying to understand how they can have agency in their community. And what comes out of that are acts of defiance that manifest both as tiny and intimate experiences and as big gestures in cities.

Zahra Ebrahim: I think of it as where institutions end and people begin. It’s about agency. So much of the “messy” defiance is people trying to live within their cultures and identities in ways that cities don’t always create space for. We’re not trying to fetishize messiness, but we do want to acknowledge that when people feel that agency, cities become more vibrant, spontaneous and delightful.

LW: I think of the story urban planning professor Nina-Marie Lister, director of Toronto’s Ecological Design Lab, tells about fighting to keep her wild front yard habitat garden after being ordered to cut it down by the city. There was a bylaw in place intended by the municipality to control what it deemed “noxious vegetation” on private property. Lister ended up doing a public advocacy campaign to get the bylaw updated.

The phrase “messy cities” could be construed negatively but it seems like a real term of affection for the editors and authors of this book. What does it represent to you?

ZE: You can see it represented in the Bloordale neighborhood of Toronto. During lockdown in 2020, a group of local residents came together and turned a large, gravel-filled site of a demolished school into an unexpected shared space for social distancing. With handmade signage, they cheekily named the site “Bloordale Beach.” Over weeks, they and others in the community organically and spontaneously brought this imagined, landlocked beach to life, adding beach chairs, “swimming guidelines” around the puddle that had formed after a storm, even a “barkour” area for local dogs. It was both a “messy” community art project and third space, but also a place for residents to demonstrate their agency and find joy in an uncertain and difficult time.

LW: The thing that is delightful about this topic is many of these efforts are exercises in reimagining cities. Individuals and groups see a space and approach it in a different way with a spirit and ingenuity that we don’t see enough of. It’s an exercise in thinking about how we want to live. I also want to make the point that we aren’t advocating for more chaos and confusion but rather showing how these groups are attempting to make sense of where they live.

ZE: Messiness has become a wedge issue — a way to pronounce and lean into existing political cleavages. Across the world we see politicians pointing to the challenges cities face — housing affordability, transit accessibility, access to employment — and wrongfully blame or attribute these urban “messes” to specific populations and groups. We see this in the rising anti-immigrant rhetoric we hear all over the world. As an editing team, I think there was a shared understanding that multicultural and diverse societies are more successful and that when we have to navigate shared social and cultural space, it’s better for society.

This is also not all about the failure of institutions to serve the needs of the public. Some of this is about groups responding to failures of the present and shaping a better future. And some of what we’re talking about is people seeing opportunities to make the type of “mess” that would support their community to thrive, like putting a pop-up market and third space in a strip mall parking lot, and creating a space for people to come together.

You and the rest of the editors are based in Toronto and the city comes up recurrently in the book. What makes the city such an interesting case study in messy urbanism?

ZE: Toronto is what a local journalist, Doug Saunders, calls an “arrival city” — one in three newcomers in Canada land in Toronto. These waves of migration are encoded in our city’s DNA. I think of a place like Kensington Market, where there have been successive arrivals of immigrants each decade, from Jewish and Eastern European and Italian immigrants in the early 1900s to Caribbean and Chinese immigrants in the 1960s and ’70s.

Kensington continues to be one of the most vibrant urban spaces in the city. You’ve got the market, food vendors, shops and semi-informal commercial activity, cultural venues and jazz bars. In so many parts of Toronto you can’t see the history on the street but in Kensington you can see the palimpsest and layers of change it’s lived through. There is development pressure in every direction and major retailers opening nearby but it remains this vibrant representation of different eras of newcomers in Toronto and what they needed — socially, culturally and commercially. It’s a great example of where the formal and informal, the planned and unplanned meet. Every nook and cranny is filled with a story, with locals making a “mess,” but really just expressing their agency.

LW: This messy urbanism can also be seen in Toronto’s apartment tower communities that were built in the 1960s. These buildings have experienced periods of neglect and changes in ownership. But today when moving from floor to floor, it feels like traveling around the entire world; you can move from the Caribbean to continental Africa to the Middle East. These are aerial cities in and of themselves. They’re a great example of people taking a place where the conditions aren’t ideal and telling their own different story — it’s everything from the music to the food to the languages.

You didn’t include any case studies or essays from Europe in the book. Why did you make that choice, and what does an overreliance on looking to cities like Copenhagen do to the way we think of and plan for cities?

LW: When I trained as an urban planner and architect, all the pedagogy was very Eurocentric — it was Spain, France and Greece. But if we want to reframe how we think about cities, we need to reframe our points of reference.

ZE: During our editorial meetings we talked about how the commonly accepted ideas about urban order that we know are Eurocentric by design, and don’t represent the multitude of people that live in cities and what “order” may mean to them. Again, it’s not to celebrate chaos but rather to say there are different mental models of what orderliness and messiness can look like.

Go to a place like Delhi and look at the way traffic roundabouts function. There are pedestrians and cars and everybody is moving in the direction they need to move in, it’s like a river of mobility. If you’re sitting in the back of a taxi coming from North America, it looks like chaos, but to the people that live there it’s just how the city moves.

In a chapter about Mexico City’s apartment architecture, Daniel Gordon talks about what it can teach us about how to create interesting streets and neighborhoods by becoming less attached to overly prescriptive planning and instead embracing a mix of ground-floor uses and buildings with varying materials and color palettes, setbacks and heights. He argues that design guidelines can negate creativity and expression in the built environment.

In another chapter, urban geography professor Andre Sorensen talks about Tokyo, which despite being perceived as a spontaneously messy city actually operates under one of the strictest zoning systems in the world. Built forms are highly regulated, but land use mix and subdivision controls aren’t. It’s yet another example of how different urban cultures and regulatory systems work to different sets of values and conceptions of order and disorder. We tried to pay closer attention to case studies that expanded the aperture of what North American urbanism typically covers.

by Rebecca Greenwald, Bloomberg | Read more:
Image:Alfredo Martinez/Getty Images

[ed. Give me a messy city any day, or at least one with a few messy parts.]

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Gary Erbe, Take Five, 1982

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