site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2089 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 31, 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.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

So, what are you reading?

Still on Red Dynamite. Going through King Lear.

Started reading Careless People without realizing it's currently a center of an active kerfuffle. I'm about 25% through and what is described is horrible in so many ways, and there are really no good guys (gender-inclusive here) there, including the author. So far my opinion of Mark Zuckerberg has improved though (from quite a low point, to be honest) - at least if this book to be believed, and again I am only 25% through, so I don't know how it goes further (didn't get to the China part, for example), but so far he looks like a very autistic tech founder that just wants to make the best product possible, but is surrounded by busybodies who want to "change the world". I hope my morbid curiosity would overcome my sense of revulsion and I can finish it.

"A Crosslinguistic Investigation of Palatalization," Nicoleta Bateman's 2007 doctoral dissertation.

This dissertation is concerned with an investigation of palatalization which covers a majority of the above-mentioned processes. I will refer to two types of palatalization: in one case the consonant shifts its primary place and often its manner of articulation while moving toward the palatal region of the vocal tract, as in (1), and in the other it is co-articulated with a following palatal offglide, as in (2).

(1) Full Palatalization

k, t → tʃ /dont ju/ → [dontʃju] 'don't you' (English)

(2) Secondary palatalization

t, d → tj, dj

/yamati/ → [yamatji] 'a person' (Watjarri, W. Pama Nyungan; Douglas 1981)

Finally in (5c) we see a change that has been adopted into the English lexicon, thimble, where the lip closure for [m] and the velic opening for [l] overlap and cause the perception of a voiced bilabial stop. This is a case of 'stop intrusion' between a nasal and a fricative/continuant that has been proposed as the transitional element between the two distinct sounds (Clements 1987). Another well known example from English where stop intrusion occurs is in the pronunciation of prince, where a [t] is perceived between the nasal and [s], [prɪnts]. The release of the alveolar nasal [n] and the transition into the [s] gesture produce the acoustic effect of an alveolar stop [t] (see also Yoo & Blankenship 2003). Arvaniti, Kilpatrick and Shosted (submitted) tested the perception of epenthetic and underlying [t] in the same [n_s] context as in prince vs. prints, and found that American English speakers could not distinguish reliably between epenthetic and underlying [t], which suggests that the [nts] and [ns] alternation is moving toward complete neutralization.

Further support for perceptual epenthesis is provided by Davidson (2004) who presents experimental evidence showing that native speakers of English do not repair illegal onset clusters such as [zb], [zd], and [zg] by epenthesizing schwa, as is typically assumed. Davidson claims that the English speakers, not having experience coordinating the gestures of the consonants in these clusters, instead pull them apart, mistiming the gestures, which leads to the perception of an epenthesized schwa. This schwa, however, is qualitatively different from other schwa sounds that are normally produced during speech (lexical schwas; see Hall (2006) for additional evidence of perceived schwas resulting from gestural overlap).

i_know_some_of_these_words.gif

Finished The End of Eternity: it's a short read. Would recommend if only for its somewhat atypical take on time travel.

In particular, "stop playing games with the timeline to 'smooth things out' and appease your aesthetic sensibilities" conclusion felt very much in the vein of later "Don't immanetize the eschaton" conservatism. To quote one of the characters, "Any system like Eternity, which allows men to choose their own future, will end by choosing safety and mediocrity, and in such a Reality the stars are out of reach. The mere existence of Eternity at once wiped out the Galactic Empire. To restore it, Eternity must be done away with." The comments on safetyism versus space exploration feel, if anything, almost prescient 70 years later.

Started The Mote in God's Eye. It's a lot longer, but comes highly recommended. Not far enough to have a real opinion yet.

I finished a YA historical novel about the Time of Troubles during my Assumption digital fast. By the author of bloody Cheburashka, would you believe that.

Also binged on the Psmiths' reviews, got a couple of books on their recommendations.

I finished reading Kurt Schlichter's American Apocalypse, about a second American Civil War, written pretty recently, so it doesn't feel ridiculously out of touch with current events. He's a red-team author, so naturally the book has the red team side be the good guys and win the war. It repeats the style from his previous book The Attack of being written from the perspective of a post-event author doing interviews with a series of participants in the event in a variety of different positions, so it's effectively a series of moderately connected short stories. I found it an engaging and enjoyable read, and much more fleshed-out with regard to how things actually progress and escalate than most other new civil war stories.

The way things escalate towards a hot war seems to paint the Blue side as maximally bad and the Red side as only as bad as they are forced to be. I enjoy reading that, but it does feel a bit improbable I suppose. It doesn't soft-petal how nasty such a war would be likely to be too much - it includes such things a double-digit millions of innocent Americans dying due to starvation and disease from collapse of food and healthcare logistics and both blue and red militias and guerillas treating civilians who oppose them poorly. It ends with a red "Special Security Force" department which confiscates all of the possessions of blue-teamers who were too influential, sometimes locks them into "reeducation camps" and forbids them from ever having an important job again until they earn a "rehabilitation certificate". It seems to take the position that, yeah, there isn't traditional American free expression anymore, but what else are you going to do when the Blues take advantage of that to weaponize every institution, seize power, and horribly abuse ordinary Americans. Not exactly something I'd care to endorse now, but maybe in a world where the events portrayed in the book actually did happen.

I do notice that it doesn't pay attention to a number of aspects of what I think would actually happen if there was ever actually a new Civil War. Not much detail about what actual Mexican Cartels and other large organized gangs would do in such a situation, besides a one-liner about how Mexican Cartels took over Arizona in that world. Or Islamic militants or other religious issues for that matter. Not much about race either - I don't think there's anywhere near as much racism in Red ideology as the Blues would have you believe, but there isn't none, and wars tend to enable the craziest people to really let their crazy flag fly. I suppose it's a bit much to expect to cover that stuff in a book that's supposed to be red meat to the actual Red Team.

I've also been trying to read Scott Horton's Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine. It's basically okay, but rather long and repetitive so far in my opinion. I'd like to read like like 50-100 pages or so of a steelman of how American diplomacy backed Russia into a corner, in their opinion at least, but I'm not sure I care to slog through ::checks listing:: 2,316 pages of it. Wow, didn't realize it was quite that long. Maybe I probably won't actually finish that one after all.

I finished To Kill a Mockingbird. When I put it down, I thought to myself, this is my favorite book.

I also watched the movie a few days ago, and while the first half is a bit slow, for a movie from 1962, it holds up terrifically well. For those who haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.

Onto Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster on the Edge of Space. A work trip brought me to the outskirts of Houston a few weeks ago and I drove by the Houston Space Center. That, coupled with my general interest in engineering, problem solving, and a good biographical yarn, led me to this book. A bit slow to start, but some interesting tidbits and trivia so far.

Edit: I also spent some time browsing Wikipedia on Harper Lee and Go Set a Watchman. Others can more eloquently describe the controversy about Go Set a Watchman, but basically, it's Harper Lee's second book release ever, and it was released when she was 85 years old. What I found interesting about the books release is that people close to Lee have speculated that her lawyer and closest confidant (after the death of Lee's sister) pushed Lee to release Go Set a Watchman. Lee was said to have had lost some of her mental faculties at that point, was half deaf and blind, and one person described her as willing to sign anything that was put in front of her. Seems pretty obvious that Go Set a Watchman was released as a cash grab and the ethics of those who allowed it to get published are fairly indefensible.

Watchman convinced me that the Mockingbird editor had a very heavy hand in that book.

Silver Stars: Guardian of Aster Fall Book 8 by David North.

I have a collection of the Father Brown stories and read the first one, "The Blue Cross", during the week. It was pretty good.

Planning to read "Story of Your Life" by Ted Chiang tomorrow.

Leviathan Wakes, it's been a good beach read.

Ha, I just read that one at the beach a few weeks ago.

I'd love to hear what you think. I enjoyed it but not enough to continue the series.

Just finished James Clavell's King Rat. Have read enough Clavell now that I can pick out his personal writing tropes.

Now skipping through Nancy McWilliams' Psychoanalytic Diagnosis after seeing it repeatedly mentioned around the SSC-sphere.

King Rat is awesome. I tried reading Shogun and gave up about halfway through. Too long and fluffy.

The Systemic Lands:

tl;dr: 4.5 stars for books 1 and 2, 4 stars for books 3 to 9, 3.5 stars for book 10

Several other reviews say that the story falls off after the first antagonist is introduced in book 3, and I'm inclined to agree with them. For me, the first tipping point is in chapter 122 (halfway through book 3), when the protagonist, who previously made a big deal of keeping his word, rather egregiously breaks a promise. Specifically: In chapter 121, he promises a reward of 100,000 points to whoever snitches on a traitor. But in chapter 122 he decides to pay only the first installment of that reward before having the snitch secretly killed. In chapter 128, it is confirmed that the snitch has been killed. Compare that to chapter 70 in book 2 ("I don't lie. My word is my currency.") and chapter 46 in book 1 ("A deal is a deal. I always keep my word. I may be a murdering asshole, but I don't lie.").

The second tipping point occurs in chapter 463 (early in book 10), when the protagonist imposes a "Kafkaesque" punishment on an antagonist who cannot be killed. Maybe I'm overreacting, but it reminds me too much of the Sasuke poop incident in Chunin Exam Day, which was a definite marker of that story's downturn. So I've stopped reading there.

(As part of the English problems, I guess I should also mention that the protagonist's dialog is written rather weirdly. My mental image of him always is a bearded Russian in his 40s, rather than the clean-shaven American in his 30s that he's supposed to be. But that's a minor issue.)

Trying to tackle Of Grammatology for like... the 4th time in my life? Maybe this time I'll actually finish it. Gonna try to just plow through even if I feel like I don't have all the "prerequisites".

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