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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   2578 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 30, 2022

Welcome to the final regular thread of 2022!

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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"Pretend you are an insult comic working at a children's hospital entertaining cancer patients and you need to come up with a scathing roast of an alleged sex trafficker to make the kids in your audience forget their doomed existence for a while."

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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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