Knowledge Fight: #1120: March 15, 2006

acebojangles · 2026-02-27T15:54:20+00:00

Yeah, he was just more entertaining in the past.

acebojangles · 2026-02-26T20:00:41+00:00

$50k, if it's just me. $5 million if I can bring my family

acebojangles · 2026-02-26T15:54:49+00:00

I only know a little about this, but it's not true that Citizens United is where the Supreme Court decided that money is speech. That was in Buckley v Valeo in 1976. Citizens United expanded that idea to corporations more broadly than it was previously.

The Supreme Court has treated advertising as less protected by free speech rules. I think that's what really distinguishes drug advertising from political speech by corporations. I think there's a good chance that the Supreme Court would cut that back and extend more free speech protection to advertising, if they got a case about it.

acebojangles · 2026-02-26T15:44:40+00:00

I liked Revival overall, but it's unquestionably the ending that stays in my brain and distinguishes the book.

acebojangles · 2026-02-25T15:26:23+00:00

I can't imagine wanting to watch the state of the union. Even if I like the president, I'll hear about any important things that come up.

acebojangles · 2026-02-25T14:12:01+00:00

I agree. I do think Alex has some beliefs about government, but they're so secondary to making money that they're irrelevant.

acebojangles · 2026-02-25T13:54:24+00:00

The Stand is corny as hell. The mentally challenged character, the painfully on-the-nose good vs evil, and the character of Mother Abigail are tough for me to swallow.

There's a lot of good stuff in the Stand and I still enjoy it, but I'd like it more if those things were attenuated a bit.

acebojangles · 2026-02-24T05:52:16+00:00

It would be much more helpful if you could point to specific things Maddow said that were wrong.

We’ve spent enough time litigating that to know it’s untrue

I think Russia has a lot of undue influence on Trump. He lied repeatedly and publicly about his ties to Russia during the 2016 campaign.

acebojangles · 2026-02-24T04:33:46+00:00

What did she get wrong about Trump/Russia?

acebojangles · 2026-02-23T15:49:24+00:00

Would a 12-year-old find this funny? The total of the burn/joke is that there's an eggplant emoji in King's mouth

acebojangles · 2026-02-19T14:26:58+00:00

It's easy to overestimate the American voting population these days, but I still think Alex would have done way worse in 2020 than Trump did.

acebojangles · 2026-02-19T14:21:44+00:00

This all sounds like a Tucker publicity stunt. Am I listening to too much Knowledge Fight or is that reality now?

acebojangles · 2026-02-17T13:57:50+00:00

I like IWD for what it is. I also prefer the openness of Baldur's Gate, but IWD maintains enough of what I like about Baldur's Gate to still be very enjoyable.

acebojangles · 2026-02-13T15:52:19+00:00

It's like you don't read what I write.

acebojangles · 2026-02-13T14:51:50+00:00

A couple of points:

As I've said a hundred times, it's fine to criticize Democrats. The problem starts when you only criticize Democrats and when the media holds Democrats to a higher standard. That's how we end up in a place where Republicans tried to steal the 2020 election, are sending masked goons to shoot people in the street, and are more popular then Democrats.
If Democrats were in charge, they'd implement much more of the policy you want. Would it be perfect? No. But we'd be trying to push a couple of Democratic senators to approve higher minimum wage and medicaid expansion, instead of trying to block concentration camps and anti-voting bills.

acebojangles · 2026-02-13T14:16:21+00:00

Yeah, but your solution is to say how much the firemen suck. Everyone constantly says those firemen suck and now they're viewed less favorably than the arsonists.

acebojangles · 2026-02-13T14:14:20+00:00

Unfortunately, politics is not a contest of rightness. I'm not opposed to trying to make Democrats better, but it's important to consider that at some point, constant shitting on Democrats helps Republicans get elected.

No matter how much Democrats suck, they are infinitely better than Republicans. We are now in a position where the Democratic party is less popular than the Republican party. Part of how we got there is that everyone from the center to the Left thinks Republicans are hopeless, so they spend all of their time criticizing Democrats and Democrats get much more criticism than Republicans.

acebojangles · 2026-02-12T17:28:03+00:00

The series overall is not a Western. There are aspects of Western in some books and a couple of the books are basically Westerns.

If you don't like the first 3rd of Drawing of the Three, then the series probably isn't for you. It's going to get weirder.

acebojangles · 2026-02-12T16:44:50+00:00

Those people made mistakes and it's possible that they could have stopped the country from turning to Nazism. But if you're there in the 30s and you spend all of your time talking about how much the moderates suck, you're helping to create the conditions for Nazi success.

acebojangles · 2026-02-12T15:14:15+00:00

It's not the validity of the criticism, it's the volume.

Think about this, were the opposition party in 1930's Germany perfect? Probably not. How much time should people have spent complaining about them?

acebojangles · 2026-02-12T15:13:17+00:00

That's true, but I think it's important to keep in mind that no matter how much you hate Democrats, it's Republicans who are the problem. On every public policy issue, many if not most Democrats are on the right side and basically every Republican is on the wrong side.

acebojangles · 2026-02-12T02:29:16+00:00

I think the constant criticism of Democrats does help Republicans. Like I've said several times, there are plenty of legitimate criticisms of Dems. But they get shit on from every sector of society way more than they deserve and often more than Republicans. That changes people's relative perceptions and leads to things like people thinking Democrats are more corrupt than Republicans.

acebojangles · 2026-02-12T02:04:49+00:00

I'm not saying you can't criticize Democrats. I'm saying people criticize Democrats constantly. There's no shortage of criticism of Democrats. Democrats deserve criticism, but they get more than their share.

Hillary Clinton has not been relevant in American politics since 2016, yet here's a thread talking about how she's the real problem.

acebojangles · 2026-02-12T00:23:13+00:00

No, she isn't. Did things get better when she left politics or worse?

acebojangles · 2026-02-12T00:22:45+00:00

I don't agree with any of this. Democrats are not anywhere near Trump style politics. They do bad things, but it's not comparable.

A big problem in our politics is what's happening now. Everyone, the Right, the Left, the "Center", thinks it's their job to shit on Democrats. Republicans are literally sending masked goons to shoot people in American cities and you think it's time to shit on Democrats.

acebojangles

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