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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2952 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for September 21, 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?

Still on G. Kirilenko and L. Korshunova's What is Personality? Also going through some Gramsci essays.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World by Haruki Murakami. It's the kind of book that makes me wish I was fluent in Japanese so that I could read it in its original form.

I love Murakami! Is this your first one? I'm always amazed at how well written they are even in another language.

Yes, essentially. I'll have to check out more of his work and I've been impressed with the translation, too. I've particularly noticed the abbreviated speech of some of the characters and I can't help but think that the translator is mimicking the Japanese tendency towards the same in their speech.

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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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