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PaperclipPerfector  6mo ago (text post)   3171 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 20, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

Still on Future Shock and Committing Journalism. Starting Galactic Patrol, in the Lensman series.

I'm reading The Count of Monte Cristo and enjoying it a lot. It feels very much like a sort of shlocky Hollywood action movie dressed up as literature, but like in a good way. A man is wronged by his friends, imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, escapes, becomes rich and plots his elaborate revenge on his enemies? I can just imagine Dumas whispering "hell yeah" to himself constantly while writing this.

You'd like the 2002 film with Jim Caviezel and Henry Cavill. Sturdy action film which makes good use of the premise.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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