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PaperclipPerfector  7mo ago (text post)   2463 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for January 29, 2025

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Motte! For my wellness, I need your umbrella recommendations.

  • Any price within reason
  • No telescope shaft. I want a proper beefy umbrella
  • Preferably with a traditional cane handle
  • Very sturdy and wind resistant
  • Size not an issue!

I want the lost luxe, longest-lasting specimen of umbrella-craft with home-defense durability available on the market.

You may be thinking, that sounds like a Gustbuster umbrella, I should recommend that! Then you would be fucking wrong, because they made the spoke-things out of plastic, and they will break where they are supposed to attach to the canopy web/frame.

Can I recommend you get a packable rain jacket instead? Umbrellas are just a bad invention. Bulky, fragile, take up one hand, cannot protect you from windy rain.

If you need a plausibly-deniable self-defense weapon, get a Maglite.

If you can believe it I’m less likely to put on an extra layer than I am to carry an umbrella out the door. Something about the hassle of donning clothing seems vulgar to me. I prefer to keep it in the closet.

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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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