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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2895 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 12, 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?

I'm still on The Eternal Dissident.

The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. It's the book which is widely credited with inventing YA fiction, for better and for worse. An easy read which I know I'll never read again, and probably the best book written by a 17-year-old girl I've ever read. The name on the protagonist's birth cert is "Ponyboy"; now there's another reference I understand, RIP.

One of those movies where the casting director should have been given a raise or something.

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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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


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