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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   1850 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 11, 2025

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?

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Hey, The Motte. Recommend us some books that are fun to read and that aren't about the destination, but the journey. Books that delight the reader with clever turns of phrase, witty jokes or badass scenes every few pages.

Practical Guide to Evil.

It doesn't exist in book form (yet) but I need a physical copy of it yesterday. Multiple times I thought I knew where it was going only to have the rug pulled out from me repeatedly, and it easily satisfies the requirement for cool characters doing cool things.

Yes, but:

  1. It's so massive that it's actually inconvenient. It's around 3 times the length of the entire Harry Potter series, which is a lot to jump into. 2.If this matters to you, it felt like there were more gay than straight characters.

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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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