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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   2887 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 12, 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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I want to do a simple socioeconomic Mottizen survey: what class are you and why do you think that?

Middle class. In my age range, I have a salary that's around the 80th percentile in my country, but I do live in big city which skews it. I rent a relatively large 2 bedroom apartment in a safe, quiet neighborhood. Though our finances are stressed from doing so while trying to maintain a middle class lifestyle, I am able to support my wife studying full time. Inheritance aside, on my own, I would be able to afford an unimpressive house in the exurbs. With my wife's help, assuming she has a 50th to 75th percentile salary, we would be able to buy a pretty nice house in the exurbs or an unimpressive house in the suburbs. While I don't have a higher education degree (college didn't agree with me), I fit in culturally with people who do. My parents had higher education degrees, my mother a college graduate, my father a university graduate. My job is in the same field as my father, and I would estimate my career level to be roughly comparable to his at the same point in his life.

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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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