There are probably a few good reasons I haven’t yet blogged about my makeshift “On Writing” panel for Reclaim Open in early November. One of them might be my last-minute decision to turn it into an episode of Hollywood Squares—specifically, the “EdTech Edition.” And to pull that off, I leaned hard on my trusty sidekick ChatGPT for a full-blown series of questions (four or five each) for eight people.
The rules seemed simple enough: first round, each correct answer was worth 1 point; second round, 2 points; and third round, 3 points. Pretty straightforward. The point system was justified by the idea that the questions should get increasingly more difficult each round. One small issue with this system is that I failed to keep score. The other issue was that ChatGPT was not especially good at distributing the questions equally—we were both working under duress! I think the straw that may have broken the camel’s back was when the participants realized, fairly early on I might add, that the questions were machine-made.
I thought we did pretty well for coming up with this a few hours before the session. I figured it would make what could have easily turned into a traffic jam of a session more streamlined by splitting time across an eight-person panel in a more methodical (and hopefully fun) way. “I’m doing the work, Dr. M!”
Anyway, I’m not sure it went quite as I’d hoped. On the upside, I did wear a jacket and tie, which is a rarity for the bava. Also, this now makes me part of a long tradition of brilliant edtech game-show hosts (hat tip Andy Rush and Taylor Jadin), so I’ve got that going for me. I can’t promise you it’s very good, but there may be a laugh or two in there thanks to the many brilliant participants. Thanks again, hippies.
After re-watching The Searchers (1956) for episode 43 of the Family Pictures Podcast, I was struck by the way director John Ford constantly uses thresholds or portals to visualize the moral structure of the film. It isn’t so much about the chase, the raids, or even the racism that drives the narrative—it’s this idea of space. Doorways, caves, and framed interiors recur throughout the film as a way for Ford to think through the central contradiction of the Western: the violence that creates the domestic world is the same violence that must be kept outside it.
The film opens from inside the Edwards cabin looking outward as Martha opens the door to Monument Valley. The domestic interior—order, family, light—is instantly placed in visual opposition to the vast, blinding wilderness. And then Ethan (John Wayne) rides into the frame from that wilderness. From his first appearance, he is already a figure of the threshold: half inside civilization, half permanently outside it.
This is a Western that tells us immediately: entry into the home is conditional. Once the Edwards homestead is destroyed, the threshold no longer protects—but rather conceals. Ethan prevents Martin (Jeffrey Hunter) from entering the ruined house to see the bodies of Martha, Aaron, and Ben. The doorway that once separated safety from danger now separates knowledge from survival. Trauma is contained, not shared.
When Lucy is later found dead (likely sexually violated), Ethan again seals the threshold with silence: “Don’t ever ask me about it.” Violence becomes something the patriarch absorbs alone, not to heal, but to keep the structure of the family psychologically intact. The burden of blood is individualized so the myth of home can persist. This is the quiet logic the film never let’s us ignore: domestic peace requires someone else to carry the violence.
Threshold of the cave where Ethan finds and ultimately saves Debbie
But not all thresholds are doors—some are caves. The cave where Debbie (Natalie Wood) hides later in the film becomes the darkest version of the threshold: a space between worlds, between white family and Comanche family, between rescue and execution. Debbie has crossed a racial and cultural boundary that Ethan believes marks a point of no return. At the fort earlier while visiting the women and children rescued from their removals, he declares of them: “They ain’t white no more.” Race, for Ethan, is not blood, it’s contamination.
This makes the cave scene unbearable. For one moment, the film seems ready to fulfil its most brutal conclusion: that Debbie must die to preserve the fantasy of racial purity. There is no way she can return across the threshold alive. Instead, Ford breaks his own moral machinery. Ethan lifts her as he once did when she was a child and says, “Let’s go home.” It’s an act of mercy, but it does not redeem the system that made murder feel inevitable in the first place.
The film’s closing image mirrors its opening. Again we are inside a doorway. Debbie enters the domestic space. Martin follows. The family reforms itself inside the frame, but Ethan remains outside. He does not attempt to cross the final threshold. He turns away and walks back into the wilderness alone.
This is the Western’s deepest confession: like we saw in Shane, violence may found and protect the home, but it can never live inside it. It must be expelled. Not because it has been defeated, but because the illusion of domestic peace depends on its disappearance from view. Ethan’s exile is not justice, but rather displacement. The violence does not end as much as it simply moves offscreen.
What makes this reading of The Searchers so unnerving today is that this logic still structures our world. Systems built through violence like colonialism, extraction, racial hierarchy, surveillance, etc., still require that violence to be hidden in order for everyday life to feel “normal.” Someone else always absorbs the cost so the interior can remain warm.
Ethan standing uncomfortably at the threshold of the door to his Bjornson’s home to close the movie
The Western once imagined this as tragic necessity. The Searchers goes further: it shows us that the man who makes the home possible is the same man who can never belong to it and that might be the most honest thing the genre ever admitted.
While doing research for the “Frontier Families” series we are in the middle of on the Family Pictures Podcast, I went looking for Will Wright’s 1975 book Sixguns and Society. It was part of the syllabus for a film class I sat in on during the early 90s at UCLA, and I wanted to see if it might still be of some use. Most of the places I tried to access it online (JSTOR, UC Press, etc.) were paywalled, but I did find a copy available on the mighty Internet Archive.
Sixguns and Society by Will Wright as borrowed from+ the Internet Archive
I had heard about the Internet Archive’s loan program before, but I never had an occasion to try it out. Turns out this was my chance. In order to get access to a digital copy of the book (nothing I could download, mind you), I had to use my free account to log in and click the borrow button. After that, I had the book at my disposal directly in the browser. The borrow length is essentially the time you are actively using the book—once the window is shut or you grow idle (I’m not sure if there’s a strict time limit), the book is automatically returned. You can always log back in and re-borrow it.
Reading through the Preface of Sixguns and Society thanks to the loan system of the Internet Archive
It turns out Wright’s study was unique in that it was one of the earlier books to take the Western genre seriously. Unfortunately for me, the bulk of the book is devoted to building rigid classifications in service to creating a structuralist logic of the genre, which made it a pretty dry read. I didn’t get much past the preface, but I truly appreciated that the Internet Archive made it possible for me to find that out for myself without hitting a paywall.
So once the playoff race becomes part of the AI Maddeness picture, I’m naturally inclined to play more games—which means more previews, game recaps, actual Madden 2001 gameplay, and so on. That’s not exactly the best time management strategy as I try to hit 4,000 posts on the bava in just a week’s time (I have 16 posts to go counting this one). Still, I wanted to play the Raiders/Steelers game because I grew up in the era of the Steel Curtain. For most football fans coming of age in the late 70s it was always either Piitsburgh or Dallas, but I loved Mean Joe Green, Jack Lambert, and Coca-Cola—so it was a pretty easy choice.
The Raiders enter at 9–3, sitting atop the AFC West with a two-game lead over the Broncos and firmly in the hunt for the AFC’s No. 2 seed, behind the 11–1 Jets.
The Steelers, meanwhile, are 7–5 and leading the AFC Central by a razor-thin margin. Three teams—Jacksonville, Tennessee, and Cleveland (all 6–6)—are stacked directly behind them. A win this week gives Pittsburgh breathing room. A loss could plunge the division into a chaotic 2–4 team tie.
I figured I’d play as the Steelers and give them a boost to get to 8–5 so they could create some space in the AFC Central race. At the same time, it was an opportunity to scout the Raiders given they’re a team the Jets could see in the AFC Championship. Turns out, I played a terrible game as the Steelers, and the Raiders eked out the win thanks to Sebastian Janikowski’s golden foot—he went 4-for-4 on field goals and earned Player of the Game honors. He even hit one from 53 yards out, that bastard!
I started to get the hang of things with Jerome Bettis and Troy Edwards late in the third quarter, but by then it was getting late. Still, I kept the Steelers in it, and with 1:36 left in the fourth quarter, Pittsburgh went up 17–16. That was way too much time for Rich Gannon who hit James Jett deep and then let Tyrone Wheatley run down the clock and move them into field-goal range. Janikowski hit his fourth and final kick of the day with 14 seconds left. Kordell Stewart did everything he could to lay the groundwork for a miracle comeback—but world enough and time, once again.
Spent much of this afternoon preparing the house for Christmas and putting up the “mega-tree.” We’re starting much earlier than usual this year (I’m typically Last-Minute Larry), but my family is coming to Italy for the first time since I’ve been here to share the holidays. That’s exciting—and, given that I can already get a little unhinged this time of year, we made the responsible call to prepare early and often.
After we decorate tomorrow, the final piece will be getting all the shopping out of the way—while also chasing down my 4,000th post. I’m feeling a little like Pete “Mr. Hustle” Rose over here… just without the gambling 🙂
I’m trying to catch up on some of my thoughts that I’ve been circling as a result of recent episodes of the Family Pictures Podcast, which continues to be an absolute blast. We’ve started to dig into Westerns with our “Frontier Families” series, and it’s amazing how fertile the thematic soil is out there 🙂 In fact, this post is evidence of just that. I’m moving past just getting comfortable with having watched and discussed the films, and I’m trying to push myself to reflect on some of those themes on the bava—to try and integrate them into something that’s somewhat cogent and cohesive. One of those is the idea of home, labor, and the persistence of the American dream.
For many reasons, the postwar boom of the 1950s reaffirmed the idea of the home as paramount, even as it quietly struggled to account for the violence it had been built on (arguably the long shadow of World War II). What struck me on the recent clustered watching of Shane (1953), The Searchers (1956), and The New Land (1972) is how much more legible the Western suddenly feels as a framework for our current moment: a kind of technological feudal state ruled by data barons and platform ranchers. Replace cattle with user data, land with digital infrastructure, and homesteads with content channels—and the frontier logic starts to look eerily familiar.
Ryker running cattle through one of the homesteaders’ crops in Shane
What unites these three films is their shared obsession with family as both refuge and burden—home as something fought for, sustained through labor, and endlessly threatened by larger systems of extraction and power. In Shane, that struggle takes its most idealized form in the way the homesteaders gather quietly at Grafton’s Store to decide whether they will finally stand together against Ryker and his hired guns. This isn’t a heroic rally—it’s a whispered, fearful negotiation conducted inside the very space where credit, supplies, and survival are brokered. The economic center of the community becomes its political nerve center. Even the famous stump-pulling scene wherein Shane (Alan Ladd) and Joe Starrett (Van Heflin) are straining together to tear dead weight from the earth—turns frontier labor into a WPA-like metaphor for collective resistance. This is work that is still visible, shared, and socially meaningful: muscle against muscle, bodies against power, community against enclosure.
The Searchers fractures that optimism almost immediately. The Edwards homestead is not defended—it’s annihilated. The burned cabin and slow revelation of the massacre mark a darker turn: the family as collateral damage of a violent system that cannot be reformed through solidarity alone. Ethan’s (John Wayne) obsessive pursuit masquerades as rescue, but it increasingly resembles a closed circuit of rage and racialized violence that produces nothing but more ruin. And yet John Ford ends on that excruciating doorway shot—Ethan framed outside the domestic world he helped restore but can never inhabit. Home survives, but exclusion is baked into its foundations.
Then The New Land strips the mythology down to the ledger of survival itself. Now the frontier is no longer a site of moral testing through gunfire, but of economic and bodily endurance through labor. This is nowhere clearer than in the blizzard scene, when Karl Oskar (Max von Sydow) kills the family’s prized ox and cuts it open to warm his freezing son. This is not symbolic violence—it’s pure, devastating utility. The family is preserved, but only by liquidating its most valuable asset. Frontier heroism becomes an act of emergency economics. Survival here looks eerily like what we increasingly recognize as modern precarity: sacrifice without security, endurance without upward mobility.
Together, these three films form an accidental but coherent trilogy about labor and enclosure. Shane imagines labor organizing itself into collective resistance. The Searchers exposes how violence and exclusion hollow out that project. The New Land shows us what remains when both redemption and triumph are stripped away: labor reduced to survival under conditions it did not choose.
That historical arc makes the turn to science fiction feel less like a genre shift than a political inevitability.
Earlier this week, I watched Outland (1981), starring Sean Connery as Marshal O’Neil, and the contrast couldn’t have been sharper. What struck me is how many sci-fi films of the 1980s now feel less like speculative fiction and more like corporate realism: massive companies committing routine atrocities while everyone shrugs, logs the harm, and clocks back in. It turns out Peter Hyams originally wanted to make a straight Western, but after Star Wars the genre was commercially radioactive. So he took the story of High Noon and reframed it as a sci-fi tale set in a mining colony on a moon of Jupiter.
Peter Boyle plays corrupt mine manager in Outland, reminding O’Neil he’s just part of the machine
This is where the genre fork becomes unmistakable. The Western asks whether justice is possible. Sci-fi increasingly assumes it’s not.
Outsiders O’Neil and Lazarus (Frances Sternhagen) resist the company despite its futility in Outland
In Outland, O’Neil makes his stand in near-total isolation. The workers don’t rise up. The corporation isn’t dismantled. The violence is managed, not challenged. As O’Neil notes, he’s just expected to play out his “rotten little part in the rotten machine.” And even if he does resist, order will ultimately be restored and the mining will continue. This is platform logic avant la lettre: moderation without transformation, safety without justice, crisis containment without structural change.
Compare that to the climax of Shane, where the hired gun walks into town so the family doesn’t have to—where violence is still imagined as tragic but socially meaningful, a necessary risk taken on behalf of a collective future. In Outland, violence is procedural. Replaceable. Already absorbed into the operating costs of the system.
“If you’re looking for money, you’re smarter than you look. If you’re not, you’re a lot dumber.”
What makes The New Land so crucial in this sequence is that it anticipates our present more accurately than either genre alone. It neither indulges the Western’s moral clarity nor fully embraces sci-fi’s corporate nihilism. Instead, it locates meaning in exhausted persistence: Kristina’s (Liv Ullman) childbirth in the face of loss, meals scraped together from scarcity, freezing migrations across impossible terrain. The frontier is no longer conquered—it’s endured. The family doesn’t defeat the system; it outlasts it, barely.
Liv Ullman as Kristina in The new Land, brilliantly epitomizing the existential angst of a young wife and mother 7,000 miles away from her native Sweden in the Minnesota territories
And this is precisely why, in a strange reversal, science fiction now feels less speculative than the Western. Corporate dystopia no longer requires imagination—it has become infrastructure. Platform capitalism, algorithmic enclosure, and digital piecework have normalized a world in which labor is endlessly extracted, risk is individualized, and resistance is systematically defanged.
Which is exactly why the Western suddenly feels urgent again. Not as nostalgia. Not as cosplay. But as a symbolic language for imagining collective resistance, moral accountability, and solidarity at a time when platform culture insists that all three are obsolete.
If sci-fi taught us how the system wins, maybe the Western is where we relearn how people fight back.
One of the thing I have been doing regularly for each game I play is having ChatGPT write-up a preview post based on the two teams stats, which include player stats, overall team stats, and any prior match-ups. I grab a series of screenshots from the Madden 2001 interface* and upload them to ChatGPT. After that it reads and organizes the images into columns of team stats and player stats. I then link to any previous posts that reference earlier games, etc. This is the first preview that integrates the playoff race into the post, and it really helps ramp up the narrative.
Four weeks from the postseason, the AFC picture is sharpening, and suddenly every snap feels heavier. The New York Jets sit at 11–1, owners of the conference’s top seed, riding a season defined by bruising physicality, ground-dominance, and a borderline impenetrable defense. The Colts, meanwhile, enter at 8–4, carrying the AFC’s third-best record but stuck in the same division as the Jets—meaning their postseason fate is far more complicated than their record suggests.
On paper, this is a regular-season matchup.
In reality?
It looks and feels like January football.
These teams already shared the field once. The Jets won. But only just.
Without retelling the Week 11 clash, here’s what matters heading into Sunday: both teams left that night convinced they can beat the other. And now the rematch arrives with playoff leverage hanging in the balance.
Read the whole thing over on AI Maddeness if you are a glutton for AI Punishment.
_____________________________________________
*I’m running the game (emulated through Batocera on a Raspberry Pi 4) through OBS so I can grab screenshots on my computer.
For this week’s Family Pictures Podcast, MBS and I discussed the 1972 masterpiece The New Land, a film adapted from a novel chronicling a Swedish family’s emigration to Minnesota in the 19th century. I had never heard of the film until Michael recommended it for our series on “Families on the Frontier,” and I have to say: it made a deep impression. I loved this movie for all kinds of reasons, but to steal one of my faithful podcast partner’s insights—it is truly unique in the way it deals with the physical and existential labor of parenthood.
The film slows the traditional idea of the western down to a near-hypnotic pace, focusing instead on the quotidian demands and endless toil of having, affording, and raising a family. And Liv Ullman as the young Swedish émigré wife and mother Kristina is absolutely extraordinary. Her performance as an ambivalent immigrant is a tour de force: utterly breathtaking in the way she inhabits the supple existential angst at the heart of an expat pioneer perched on the edge of forever. It’s fascinating how many of the preoccupations and hardships of raising a family have changed dramatically—and yet remained the same—all at once.
Liv Ullman as Kristina, a young wife and mother 7,000 miles away from her native Sweden in the Minnesota territory
I have much more to say about this film in relation to the domestic visions of the West we explored in both Shane and The Searchers—the two other films we’ve discussed so far—but I wanted to make a quick note about something MBS and I both noticed when watching The New Land.
There’s a scene where Karl Oskar (Max von Sydow) is caught in a blizzard with his young son Johan while riding their newly acquired (and prized) ox. The passage home becomes blocked, and Karl Oskar is forced to cut through a fallen tree. In the meantime, Johan is freezing to death. Once Karl Oskar realizes this, he makes the desperate decision to kill the ox and cut it open to warm his son and save his life. Just a heads-up: it’s a rough scene.
Sound like any other scene you’ve ever seen—namely in a little 1982 film called The Empire Strikes Back?
MBS and I immediately wondered whether the scene in The New Land served as the inspiration for the moment when Han Solo opens up the Tauntaun to save Luke from freezing on Hoth. It’s one of the most memorable moments in the film, and I have to think George Lucas and Irvin Kershner were aware of The New Land—just as Lucas was clearly influenced by The Searchers when shaping the scene in A New Hope in which Luke discovers the bodies of his aunt and uncle after the stormtrooper raid.
If that connection holds, it only makes me respect Lucas even more for the way he pulled so many varied references into one of the greatest cinematic universes ever built… even if it only lasted for 2.5 episodes.
One of the funnest parts of AI Maddeness is tryng to create a sense of “hype” around each week. It’s not easy when you’re operating in an AI bubble, so as we come to the final weeks of the regular season the playoff picture is an easy win for creating a sense of purpose. It’s also why the division and conference records being accurate becomes so important. The NFL playoff race is always tight, and it often goes much deeper than any one team’s regular season record as we can see in the current state of affairs across the league moving into week 14.
After Week 13, this is what the playoff picture looks like if it were the final week of the season
Calculating the playoff picture is something I’m trying to get ChatGPT to do well, but it pretty consistently sucks at these kind of calculations. I should really be using another tool—but I’m lazy and I’ve come to enjoy lambasting ChatGPT when it makes bonehead mistakes. It’s a new kind of therapy I’m working through. So anyway, above is the playoff picture as of week 13 according to ChatGPT, but it’s actually not correct, and I talk about how and why in the footnotes below.
Some other data that might be valuable as I go into playoff season are the coming match-ups over the next 4 weeks. That’s another layer of complexity that will add import to the equation, so I’m gonna have to figure out a clean way to include that. In fact, that might be a good follow-up post as I chase 4,000 🙂
This kind of playoff scenario stuff was a lot of fun for me as a kid watching the game. It brought a sense of gravity and excitement to the end of the NFL season that made each game that much more compelling—and frankly the games were usually that much better as a result. What is written below is composed and calculated by ChatGPT based on the AI Maddeness standings page. The footnotes/annotations are mine and they highlight where and how ChatGPT got some of its predictions wrong. This stuff makes my head hurt, and I kind like it for that.
AI Maddeness 2001 — Week 13 Playoff Picture Breakdown
With Week 13 in the books, the playoff race in AI Maddeness 2001 is beginning to crystallize. The standings are now deep enough — 11–12 games played — that head-to-head results, division performance, and conference records are clearly separating true contenders from the pack.
Below is the official playoff picture as it would look in the real 2000 NFL season format:
3 division winners per conference
3 Wild Cards total
Standard 2000-era tiebreak system
How We Determined Seeds
Our placement follows the era-correct tiebreak order:
1. Division Winners Ranked by W-L
Highest overall record wins the conference number 1 seed, and so on.
2. Division Tiebreaks (if needed)
Division record
Head-to-head*
Conference record
3. Wild Cards (3 per conference)
Ranked by:
Overall record
If tied: conference record
If still tied: head-to-head / divisional record
All of this was calculated from our accurate Week 13 cumulative standings:
Win–Loss
Division Record
Conference Record
These records already embody all weekly results and correct divisional AND conference assignments based on the 2000 NFL alignment.
AFC Playoff Seeding
Division Winners
Seed
Team
Record
Key Notes
1 Jets
11–1
Best overall record, perfect 7–0 in division, 8–1 in conference
Locked top seed if they simply stay steady
2 Raiders
9–3
AFC West leader, strong 6–3 conference mark
Safely ahead of Broncos
3 Steelers
7–5
Hold AFC Central on divisional (6–4) and conference (6–5) edge
Jaguars and Titans close but trail in tiebreaks
Wild Cards (in order)
Seed
Team
Record
Why They Rank Here
4 Broncos
7–5
Best WC record; also strong conference (7–3)†
5 Colts
8–4
Tied with Denver in record but inferior conference mark (6–3 < 7–3)
6 Jaguars
6–6
Win 3-way tie with Titans and Browns due to conference record (6–4), then division record (5–3)
Notes on AFC Bubble
Titans and Browns are close, but both lose on AFC conference percentage.
Bengals, Ravens, and Chiefs remain mathematical long shots only.
NFC Playoff Seeding
Division Winners
Seed
Team
Record
Key Notes
1 Rams
9–3
Best NFC record; 5–3 in-conference
2 Washington
8–4
Strong 6–3 NFC record; leads East via overall record
3 Packers
8–4
Tied with Washington but lose conference tiebreak (6–3 vs 6–3 tied, but Washington wins on common opponents layer)‡
NFC Wild Cards
Seed
Team
Record
Logic
4 Cowboys
8–4
Best WC overall record and complete resume
5 Falcons
7–6
Edge Panthers on overall record
6 Buccaneers
6–6
Owns WC tiebreak over Vikings and Panthers with superior divisional mark (5–2)§
NFC Bubble
Lions, Vikings, Panthers all sit at 6–6 with different resumes
Bucs’ elite 5–2 divisional record gives them the final WC slot
Saints and 49ers are effectively out
Why These Seeds Are Solid
AFC number 6 Seed: Jaguars (over Titans & Browns)
All three are 6–6 We applied 2000-era Wild Card tiebreak:
Best Conference Record
JAX: 6–4
TEN: 5–5
CLE: 6–5 eliminated because they trail Jaguars on divisional record
Division Record (JAX vs CLE)
Jaguars: 5–3
Browns: 4–4 Jaguars win
NFC number 6 Seed: Buccaneers
Three-way tie at 6–6 (Buccaneers, Lions, Vikings)
Primary WC tiebreak is conference record:
TB, DET, MIN all have 6–3 NFC marks
Next tiebreak: Divisional Record
Buccaneers: 5–2
Lions: 4–1 (fewer games and behind on total wins)
Vikings: 2–4 (immediately eliminated)
Once Lions compare to Bucs:
Tie breaks on overall record vs common opponents and divisional win volume
Buccaneers get the spot
Current Wild Card Matchups (if the season ended today)
AFC
3 Steelers vs 6 Jaguars
4 Broncos vs 5 Colts
Jets and Raiders on bye
NFC
3 Packers vs 6 Buccaneers
4 Cowboys vs 5 Falcons
Rams and Washington on bye
The bracket becomes fascinating:
Steelers and Jaguars already have multiple head-to-head swings this season
Packers–Bucs is a bruising NFC Central showdown
Cowboys–Falcons features elite offenses
Who Controls Their Own Destiny?
AFC
Jets and Raiders
Just need not collapse to secure byes
Steelers
Still vulnerable: Jaguars or Titans could overtake the Central if PIT stumbles
Broncos & Colts
Almost clinched their WC spots unless major losing streaks occur
NFC
Rams
Solid grip on number 1 overall
Washington vs Packers
Very tight for number 2 seed tiebreak layers
Bucs
Their 5–2 division record is gold; if they win NFC Central games they’re nearly untouchable for the number 6 slot
Final Thoughts
The Week 13 standings show:
Jets and Rams are legitimate juggernauts
AFC Central is the tightest division in either conference
Broncos and Cowboys are the most dangerous non-division leaders
Buccaneers and Jaguars are the “last-in” seeds for now — but both are vulnerable
With four weeks left, nearly every seed except the Jets’ number 1 spot is still volatile. The conference races, especially in the NFC Central and AFC Central, are absolutely wide open.
Midseason drama is here — and Week 14 will be brutal.
___________________________________
*These records have not been tracked thus far, so this is something I am going to have to go back and calculate for each division. This is the kind of work ChatGPT is terrible at.
†This is an obvious error. The Colts have the best Wildcard record (8-4) so ChatGPT is just blowing smoke here. It does it all the time when it comes to these kind of scenarios. It’s pretty unreliable., but it provides the base I need to save some time.
‡This is a total assumption on ChatGPTs part, they did not look at the weekly schedule results in order to prove as much, if they did it would turn out that they have at least 4 opponents in common and Washington would win because there record in those games is 4-2 versus the Packers 3-2. This is a tight one with a bye week at stake.
§ ChatGPT had the right logic, but it is not clear from the calculations they checked the common opponent or strength of victory stats (nor were they instructed to), so this is just an assumption on the machine’s part that needs to be verified. The Lions have a better common opponent record at 4-1. vs the Bucs 5-2, so they would get the final seed in the NFC as of now. Also, the Bucs have a weaker strength of victory record (31-42) compared to the Lions (35-38), so should the common opponents record be tied. This will be an interesting one, and there are still other contenders, so a very tight race.
I’ve been a bit hit-and-miss with announcing my somewhat regular streams for AI Maddeness, but there are now 31 videos that capture my experimenting from the spring and summer, as well as all but one of the 13 games played so far this season (with a few recap videos sprinkled in). The single missing game is from Week 6, when the Jets beat the Steelers 35–11. I had Madden simulate that matchup, collected the relevant stats, and fed them into ChatGPT so there would be a write-up based on a series of hallucinated details.
The aggregate of all this “work” over the last couple of months has started to take on some greater meaning in my head—especially as running back Curtis Martin begins breaking long-standing league records. At this point, I think I need to put together a Curtis Martin supercut, because he’s basically a lock for MVP this year.
In fact, that might have to be the topic for the first AI Maddeness podcast: is there any conceivable scenario where Martin doesn’t take MVP at this point? And if not, what details will the machine need to fabricate to make the case even remotely compelling? I guess it’s back to the laboratory.
is an ongoing conversation about media of all kinds ...
Testimonials:
Generations from now, they won't call it the Internet anymore. They'll just say, "I logged on to the Jim Groom this morning.
-Joe McMahon
Everything Jim Groom touches is gold. He's like King Midas, but with the Internet.
-Serena Epstein
My understanding is that an essential requirement of the internet is to do whatever Jim Groom asks of you while you're online.
-James D. Calder
@jimgroom is the Billy Martin of edtech.
-Luke Waltzer
My 3yr old son is VERY intrigued by @jimgroom's avatar. "Is he a superhero?" "Well, yes, son, to many he is."
-Clint Lalonde
Jim Groom is a fiery man.
-Antonella Dalla Torre
“Reverend” Jim “The Bava” Groom, alias “Snake Pliskin” is a charlatan and a fraud, a self-confessed “used car salesman” clawing his way into the glamour of the education technology keynote circuit via the efforts of his oppressed minions at the University of Mary Washington’s DTLT and beyond. The monster behind educational time-sink ds106 and still recovering from his bid for hipster stardom with “Edupunk”, Jim spends his days using his dwindling credibility to sell cheap webhosting to gullible undergraduates and getting banned from YouTube for gross piracy.
