lostinbr

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I'm about to start the last episode of season 2.

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I think that might be my favorite episode of the whole series.

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That is simple economics. Apparently, 60% of people don't have $1000 they can use for an emergency, which means they can't afford to hire an attorney for even a simple misdemeanor charge.

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Especially when you consider the population that actually requires a criminal defense attorney (i.e. people charged with crimes). Think about the median income of those defendants compared to overall national median income.

I’d be curious to know how much of that 20-25% with private representation is DUI cases. I imagine it’s even more skewed when you look at violent crime.

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I don't understand the point of this series. it's the same characters and same timeline as the movies. We already know what happens to them during this time period.
Seems rather stupid to simply remake what already happen. If you're going to make a show during the same time frame of the movies, then you'd think they would focus on other characters, like Malfoy, or even Snape or Dumbledore. At least we know they were doing things in the background of the movies that we haven't seen. Pretty sure we know what Harry did during this time, at least the important stuff.

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I mean.. we knew what Harry did before the movies came out too. Why make any adaptation? :dunno:

They can cover a lot more ground in an 8-episode season than the film could cover in ~2 hours. Which may not be a huge deal in the first season, but absolutely will make a difference when they get to the later books that were 600-700+ pages. And since the first few books were shorter, I suspect they will give the other characters more screen time.

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I know plastic is a scam. I am not sure about metal and paper

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From what I’ve read it sounds like paper is probably the biggest problem for unsorted curbside recycling. People throw pizza boxes, greasy paper plates, etc. in the recycling bin and it fricks everything else up.

Glass and metal recycling are legit.

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Need to focus on perfecting fusion before moving on to antimatter

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Different applications entirely. Since there aren’t appreciable amounts of naturally-occurring antimatter available for harvesting (as far as we know anyhow) we have to make it ourselves. That means a net energy loss. Antimatter can theoretically serve as an incredibly mass-efficient way to store energy, but it’s not an energy source in the sense of tritium/deuterium fusion fuels.

The big theoretical application (outside of the obvious one - weapons) is space flight. An antimatter rocket would have orders of magnitude more delta-V than a chemical rocket of the same dry mass.

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Fusion solves most of this planets energy issues.

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I disagree. It sounds good in theory because of the low cost of fuel, but the theoretical capital costs of fusion power plants (even after solving the engineering problems and getting net energy output) are staggering. The fuel could be free, and it still wouldn’t be competitive with fossil fuels due to capital/operating/maintenance costs. It’s the same problem fission has. Less (but not zero) radioactive waste, sure, but the biggest issue with nuclear power today is simple economics compared to CCGT generators.

Now if we run out of fossil fuels, then yeah.. eventually fusion becomes cost-competitive. But at that point we have a major problem because it means the price of energy has skyrocketed globally. There’s also the thought that fusion plants can generate economies of scale, but there’s a limit to how much you can centralize power generation before transmission becomes a major problem.

That’s not to say that fusion won’t have a place (assuming we figure it out) but it’s not going to be the energy revolution people seem to think, at least IMHO.

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A milligram of antimatter meeting a milligram of matter would release as much energy as a small nuclear explosion.

I’m glad these scientists had fun though.

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Good thing the amount of antimatter in the container was 18 orders of magnitude less than a milligram, then.

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When we changed coaches after Jones we simultaneously had a huge operating cost drop as well as huge ticket sales increase. These people have no idea what they’re talking about.

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Where are you getting this? I thought it was surprising, so I looked at the financial statements over a 6 year period.

Operating costs associated with men’s basketball:
FY2015: $5,678,283
FY2016: $5,891,536
FY2017: $6,078,781 (Jones’ last year)
FY2018: $7,674,523 (Wade’s first year)
FY2019: $8,399,671
FY2020: $8,081,675

Revenue* associated with men’s basketball:
FY2015: $1,754,441
FY2016: $2,162,644
FY2017: $1,586,579 (Jones’ last year)
FY2018: $1,807,046 (Wade’s first year)
FY2019: $1,826,918
FY2020: $2,049,551

*Does not include conference distributions (i.e. TV revenue). That said, the team’s actual performance has very little impact on the conference distributions anyway considering how the SEC splits up media revenue.

So from Jones’ last year to Wade’s first year, MBB operating costs increased by $1.6 million and MBB revenue (excluding SEC distributions) increased by $220k.

If we look at the average of Jones’ last 3 years and Wade’s first 3 years, operating costs increased by ~$2.17 million while revenue increased by ~$60k.

If I look at the annual NCAA financial reports it’s even more stark.. Jones’ last year brought in $8,135,734 in revenue with $6,516,370 in operating costs ($1,619,364 net revenue over expenditures) while Wade’s first year brought in $8,911,799 in revenue with $8,618,878 in costs ($292,921 net revenue over expenditures). Those numbers include conference distributions/media rights.

The point is.. either way: A) the operating costs increased most certainly did not have a “huge drop” and B) the added revenue didn’t come close to offsetting the added cost. And Jones’ buyout was way smaller than McMahon’s. I’m not saying LSU should keep them, but I think some of y’all might be out on a limb with the financial justification. Even in the year Wade went to the Sweet 16, MBB’s “profit” was over a million dollars less than Jones’ last year.

Here is the law, for reference.

The relevant portions:

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A. An intercollegiate athlete at a postsecondary education institution may earn compensation for the use of the athlete's name, image, or likeness subject to the following:

(1) To preserve the integrity, quality, character, and amateur nature of intercollegiate athletics and to the extent prohibited by the rules of athletics governing associations, a postsecondary education institution or an officer, director, employee, or agent of such institution shall not provide a current or prospective athlete with compensation for the use of the student athlete's name, image, or likeness unless authorized by one of the following:

(a) A court order nullifying or declaring unlawful current restrictions on player compensation.
(b) The bylaws or regulations of the athletics governing organization for the postsecondary educational institution.
(c) A settlement agreement or consent decree which has the same effect as a change in bylaws or regulations of an athletics governing organization.

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M. Any document disclosed by the intercollegiate athlete to the postsecondary education institution that references the terms and conditions of the athlete's contract for compensation shall be confidential and not subject to inspection, examination, copying, or reproduction pursuant to the Public Records Law.

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The part about contracts being confidential is clearly referring to contracts disclosed to the university as part of the due diligence process for 3rd party NIL. That’s from the original NIL law passed in 2021 (I believe).

However, the part in A.(1) describing when a university can contract directly was added in 2024, specifically because of the House settlement.

I guess the journalists are going to argue that there’s a distinction between contracts “disclosed by the intercollegiate athlete to the postsecondary education institution” and contracts that the institution itself is a party to? Regardless, between that and the FERPA claims it seems like an uphill battle.

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Y’all do realize the vast majority of money brought into each program and team is from TV revenue. It is not from butts in seats or concessions.

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That’s not really true. From LSU’s FY25 NCAA financial report:

Ticket sales: $53.6 million
Program/parking/concession sales: $10.8 million
Contributions: $65.7 million
Media rights: $53.1 million

Media rights include all TV/radio/etc. rights, both paid directly to LSU and via SEC distributions.

Ticket sales alone are more than media rights. And a big chunk of the “contributions” come from seat fees that are, effectively, part of the ticket price.

Media rights certainly make up a huge part of the athletic department’s revenue, but it’s certainly not the “vast majority.” Media rights do make up the majority of men’s basketball revenue, though, since we get a pretty big paycheck just for being part of the SEC.

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It all comes down to accounting. Women's basketball and baseball (and gym, etc) all get credited with $0 from the Non-sport specific TV revenue. Which is basically ESPNs lump sum for rights to all non-event programming and non-football/ men's basketball sports.

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This used to be true, but LSU changed how their financial reports are formatted starting in FY24.

In FY23, LSU reported $120MM in “administration” revenue and $62MM in sport-specific revenue.

In FY25, LSU reported $28MM in “administration” revenue and $138MM in sport-specific revenue.

The huge buckets for tradition fund, SEC distribution (which includes SEC media contracts), and “net revenue-related activities” (whatever the hell that means) have been removed from the “administration” portion of the report.

So LSU is now splitting up that media revenue somehow.

FWIW baseball revenue increased from $5MM in 2023 to $8.4MM in 2025, following the change in reporting. WBB increased from $1.5MM to $2.6MM.

There is still a $27MM line item for “sports productions” (previously titled “electronic media” before the formatting change) that is not allocated to a specific sport. I’m not 100% sure but I think this includes the Playfly Sports contract among other things.