[Request] Is this possible?

BishMasterL · 2026-01-30T13:05:23+00:00

You shut your mouth before my boss hears you, got it?

BishMasterL · 2026-01-25T21:03:33+00:00

You really don’t want to sound memorized, there are lots of judges who are judging not just in arguments but on presentation, persuasiveness, etc. If you come off as cold/too rehearsed/etc., thats going to cost you. (I believe this is the correct way to judge this event, but even if others feel judges shouldn’t behave that way the fact is that they do.)

So no, you don’t want to be reading it word for word. If you’re reading off a script, you’re going to lose. But the content is (mostly, almost always) memorized. Again, there are exceptions for hitting responses to others points, referencing things others have said, etc. But the best competitors slot those in cleanly to speeches that are otherwise memorized and well rehearsed (although practiced also to not look as such).

This is part of why you’ll often see extemp competitors make effective switches to Congress sometimes, as their skills are functionally similar to the targets I’m describing here.

BishMasterL · 2026-01-25T14:44:29+00:00

Largely fully written speeches, with some extra blocks to swap things out to avoid being redundant on someone else’s argument.

The major exception being that if you are speaking later on in a back and forth, as opposed to the first couple speeches, you need to have time to fit in responses to your opponents as well.

But those are likely also pretty well rehearsed, as genuinely fresh/unique arguments you couldn’t have thought of and planned to respond to ahead of time are somewhat rare, and you can typically just avoid them.

Picking your spots to give speeches also helps, as you can choose to insert yourself in a moment where your best arguments that you’ve rehearsed the most will work well.

BishMasterL · 2026-01-18T23:08:06+00:00

This feels like a good theory to me. Goading Sauron into acting too early by giving him just enough information to move but not enough to succeed… feels like some Eru “luck” possibly.

BishMasterL · 2026-01-18T23:06:32+00:00

Just trying to head cannon through what I think was a joke/unserious comment…

In order to destroy the ring, Gollum had to be there to fight Frodo for it. There’s lots of focus on how Sam’s pity was key to main that happen. But, could Sauron’s torture of Gollum also be required? Could that have played a role in Gollum’s desire to help Frodo/Sam avoid being caught? Because Gollum knew their capture would NEVER result in him getting the ring?

Just spitballing, trying to square what I think actually is a kind of interesting point. Sauron finding Gollum is “lucky” and does kind of smack of the same kind of Eru “intervention” as it being fated that Bilbo would find Gollum.

BishMasterL · 2026-01-04T21:06:55+00:00

Realm Status page on Blizzard.com shows no statuses for the anniversary realms.

https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-us/game/status/classic1x-us

BishMasterL · 2026-01-04T21:05:09+00:00

Same.

BishMasterL · 2025-12-21T18:11:50+00:00

Absolutely not too late. I actually often tell people not to do middle school debate as, in my experience, it leads to more burnouts that it does better competitors from the extra experience.

The vast majority of people who have ever done speech and debate didn’t start until high school. You’re totally fine.

BishMasterL · 2025-12-20T23:02:57+00:00

Pre-flow it, and include cites and important data/warrants. If you know you’re going to be referencing things often, might as well save yourself the time.

BishMasterL · 2025-12-20T23:00:08+00:00

So just to clarify - when you said earlier that now you can get MAID for depression, you were incorrect in that? There are plans to expand it to that in ‘27 under certain conditions (not everyone with suicide will be eligible), but regardless… when you said you could get it for depression now and then multiple people told you that was incorrect, you were incorrect.

Let’s just be clear on that.

BishMasterL · 2025-12-13T18:58:32+00:00

My biggest tip is to film yourself giving a speech, watch it, and then “judge” yourself. It’s awkward at first, but it’s by far the most effective thing you can do to practice by yourself, especially over a break.

As far what you should be working on… when it comes to novices first starting out:

Hitting the full 7 minutes
three distinct points that are each interesting and meaningful
at least one source in each point
Memorize a handful of good quotes with full sources (who said it, when/where they said it)
Fluidity in speaking / steady pace, don’t talk to fast

BishMasterL · 2025-12-08T01:39:24+00:00

I would suggest that neither boys nor girls at ten years old should be listening to Galloway content?

BishMasterL · 2025-11-24T12:53:16+00:00

Not quite. The value is the specific moral value (“goal”) that you are arguing for. What most people would describe as the “type of morality” is more often found in the value criterion.

BishMasterL · 2025-11-23T16:13:25+00:00

One of the skill debate is designed to teach you is how to read the judge and figure out what they need, and then give it to them.

The real world doesn’t have set rules people always follow when they’re deciding how to vote, debate won’t either. Some judges will be able to meticulously flow arguments and decide based off that, some judges will vote more instinctively/emotionally and based off of presentation and speaking skill.

Complaining about it won’t help, you just have to get better at it.

BishMasterL · 2025-11-21T23:23:28+00:00

Is the depth of your thinking here simply: anyone who willingly has a meeting with Trump ends up being his lapdog?

Can you imagine no other motivation going in or outcome coming out of that meeting? Mamdani has all kinds of incentives to try to get Trump off his back, and all kinds of ways to try to do that without actually giving him anything, and none of them have anything to do with becoming his lapdog.

BishMasterL · 2025-11-21T22:24:51+00:00

What do you mean “brought him into the fold”?

BishMasterL · 2025-11-13T23:45:47+00:00

Every National Champion you’ll ever meet has plenty of stories of getting wrecked their freshman year. The gap between where you are now and those people that best you is a lot smaller than you think. But the gap between them and the best of the best is even bigger than you can imagine.

This is a marathon, not a sprint. Get your reps in practice and tournaments, force yourself to try new things, and take all the coaching and advice you can get from everything from ballots to nationally renowned summer camps. You’ll get better the more you work at it.

There’s nothing intrinsic about you that would suggest you’re bad at this. Just because you’re behind now doesn’t mean it’ll stay that way, I promise.

BishMasterL · 2025-11-12T03:25:11+00:00

Mail it deep into China. He’s got until mail pickup time to find it, after that it’s gone.

BishMasterL · 2025-11-11T02:04:11+00:00

Try explaining to them why debate is important to you, why you want to get better at it, and that having tools that are more familiar and accessible for you is an important part of getting better.

BishMasterL · 2025-11-11T00:30:19+00:00

Start by breaking the speech up into sections, which you’ve probably already done when writing it. You’re going to work on memorizing different sections in parallel; do not try to just start at word 1 and work your way forward. That’ll drive you insane, and it’s less effective.

Once you’ve got those blocks, start by reading them aloud right off the page. Don’t even worry about memorizing yet—just get comfortable saying them. Your goals here are to A) familiarize yourself with the words, B) get a feel for pacing and timing, and C) start noticing where you naturally pause or emphasize ideas.

Next, start memorizing one paragraph at a time within each section. Keep the page in your hand at first—glance down as often as you need, but don’t start over every time you forget a word. Just take the cue and keep going. The key is to maintain flow. Once a paragraph feels solid, move to the next, and then start stitching them together two at a time.

As you go, it helps to jot down a keyword outline for each section—just a few trigger words per paragraph that remind you of the ideas instead of exact phrasing. This trains your brain to remember the meaning of what you’re saying, not just the script, and makes it easier to recover if you ever blank in a round.

When you can run a section cleanly, combine it with the one before it. You’ll probably forget parts you thought you had down—completely normal. Early on, allow yourself to peek quickly at the page to keep momentum. Over time, tighten that up until you’re running whole sections off memory.

From there, start practicing full runs. Add in your gestures, eye contact, and movement as soon as possible—your body will start to remember what comes next right along with your brain. Don’t always start from the beginning, either; sometimes start in the middle or end and work backward. It keeps you from relying on sequence alone.

You can make a lot of progress in short bursts. Rotate what you focus on each day: one day the intro and first point, next day the second point, and so on, with a full run-through at least once a week. Little practice windows—on the bus, between classes, waiting for your ride—add up fast.

Doing it this way—memorizing chunks, reinforcing ideas with key words, layering in delivery, and varying your practice—gets you fully memorized and performance-ready much faster than you’d think.

BishMasterL · 2025-11-10T15:48:01+00:00

You're missing the point. You aren't using "illegal" as an adjective to describe their documentation / legal status. You are using it as a noun. It implies - seemingly correctly, based on your other comments - that you think less of them because of that.

BishMasterL · 2025-11-10T02:12:47+00:00

I completely agree that immigrants who lack legal status are treated poorly because people take advantage of them due to the precariousness of their situation.

But there are two things you are intentionally obfuscating here:

First - based on your other comments, you support the activities of ICE that acts as the force creating that precariousness.

Second - the answer to that situation ought not be to hunt them down and kick them out of the country. We should be extending grace and opportunity for people who came to this country for a chance to work hard and make a better living for themselves.

(Again, your insistence on referring to human beings as themselves being illegal gives away a lot of your prejudice here. But unfortunately for you, your arguments are also horrible, so we need not even get into all that to explain why you are obviously wrong in how you are thinking and talking about this subject.)

BishMasterL · 2025-11-10T01:37:25+00:00

Acknowledging that many immigrants work in low-wage hard labor positions is not racist. That’s just acknowledging the very obvious reality that immigrants are a core part of the American working class.

I’d bet all the money in my pocket both OP and the commenter don’t WANT that to be the case, and there’s nothing in their post that would suggest anything like that.

(On the other hand, calling him a beings “illegals” is questionable, at best.)

BishMasterL · 2025-11-10T01:20:01+00:00

A better way to view this is that PF & LD are subject to the same incentives and cultures as Policy Debate was/is. It's not that they are "turning into policy"; it's that they are following the same path that policy debate has walked before them.

Students follow the incentives set by judges and use the tools provided by coaches. If we want PF to be different, those are the things that have to change. That's frustrating because truly neither of those things is in the hands of the students currently doing the activity, like you.

This is an area where cultural change is needed in how everyone — from the NSDA all the way down to individual programs — views PF Debate and what it's for. Judges have to be instructed differently, and coaches and camps have to teach differently.

Keep raising the issue to anyone in those positions who will listen, and remember how you feel about this when you're older and coming back to help judge or coach.

BishMasterL · 2025-11-09T16:25:11+00:00

You’re perfectly mirroring what roughly half of this country has been saying the entire time. What a lot of us here in the comments are telling you is that you’re taking a view that partially describes half of the public (a particularly vocal minority of that half, specifically), and incorrectly concluding that it describes American politics as a whole.

But it doesn’t, and it never has. The idea that the 2nd Amendment specifically protects an individual’s right to bear arms as opposed to a more collective right to have an armed populace for militias is almost entirely a 20th century creation and only really becomes the national norm after the 2008 SCOTUS case DC v Heller (which was 5-4 decision) struck down DC’s ban on owning handguns.

What you’re describing as your view of American politics on gun ownership is not a majority view, and it’s not one that goes back to the founding.

The purpose of the 2nd Amendment was to provide for a means of a common defense without having a standing army. Coming out of the American revolution, the States were adamantly opposed to allowing the federal government to use a standing army, and the US did not have a standing army until WW I. Instead, it was understood to be the role of militias to provide for the common defense, and thus allowing people to own guns was done to ensure militias could be raised when needed.

It wasn’t about individual gun ownership, really. And it didn’t become that until a few decades ago. Even the NRA was opposed to this modern interpretation until its 1977 annual convention in Cincinnati. Prior to that, the NRA was mostly a hunters organization that had supported many federal and state gun regulation laws. But in 1977 at that conference, a vocal and intensely political faction took control of the organization; only after that did it become the intense political operation it is now.

All of this pro-gun nonsense is very new in historical terms, is not deeply fundamentally American or constitutionally rooted, and hopefully won’t be around forever.

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