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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2639 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 8, 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?

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 the Iliad, Dialectic of Enlightenment and McLuhan's The Classical Trivium. Picking up Nudge: The Final Edition.

I've been reading the murderbot series after watching a few episodes of the show and deciding I liked it and didn't want to wait.

After watching the series and reading all the books I can definitely tell the books are better. Some cliches are there for a reason, I guess.

That is interesting, I'm not surprised I like the books better, but I wouldn't have thought many other people were the same.

The books can be sparse on details in a way that I like. The show fills in those visual details, mostly because it is forced to do so by the medium of film.

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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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