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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   2734 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 20, 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.

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The key in the southwest is sunshine and rainbows -- sun showers. Especially the kind where there's rain on one side of the house, but not the other. A key to sunshine with rainbows weather is that the rainbows happen when the light is low and the storms are dense, say 7pm when it's lovely out and smells like creosote, ozone, and petrichor.

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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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