site banner
PaperclipPerfector  11d ago (text post)   2706 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 23, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I don't think she's paler than your average European north of the Alps so I'm not sure what point you're making, and anyway her dark eyes and hair make her appearance higher contrast.

My point is simply that there are a lot of Europeans with similar (or darker) skin tones and dark hair who don't have traditions of extensive facial jewelry. In other words, skin color doesn't seem to play a causal role, and not all cultures agree that facial jewelry looks bad on pale people, and not all pale cultures abstain from facial jewelry.

That looks like AI to me.

Reverse image search turned up this a photo of the same woman in the same getup, timestamped 2017.

I don't think there's anything AI looking about this photo, but it's interesting that if this photo was from 2024 I'd have no way of proving this to you.

Current AI will routinely have crisp foreground and similar but blurred background --no doubt because it has been trained on such images (that, like this one, are real). The cleanup and lack of any granular detail here also looks AI, but that's probably just the usual digital airbrushing. My mistake.

Some one definitely went in with photoshop and obliterated the fine structure high entropy noise from her skin. Or maybe that's make up, idk.

Yeah I'm really not getting the point either way.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats