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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3754 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022

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?

I'm still on Dorian Gray. The prose seems more to my liking this time around. Must be the influence of other books.

The Bridge over the Drina

By far the best book I have ever come across for depicting the human side of Balkan/Ottoman history and just an incredible series of observations about the human nature, societies, change, continuity and modernization. Serves as a great account of an already complex and developed civilization's contact with the Western culture, which is a phenomenon often overlooked in modern narratives in spite confrontations in Africa/America/Australia where the civilization levels were much more mismatched and there is a clear dynamic of conquerer/conquered.

Also written wonderfully and doesn't bore one at all. Won its author a Nobel prize in literature and a seat in the (communist) Yugoslav parliament even though he wasn't really a communist at all. Throughly recommended.

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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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