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PaperclipPerfector  17hr ago (text post)   512 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 28, 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.

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Married Christmas Celebrating Mottizens: what did you and your spouse get each other for Christmas?

I got my lady a wooden thread spool holder, a couple of ring necklaces, and a salt shaker from IKEA.

She got me a whittling kit, complete with knives and blocks of wood and a book that teaches you how to whittle.

What's a ring necklace?

Basically a necklace to hold a ring. If you google ring necklace you can find a lot of images, can't remember how to embed them here.

My lady works in a lab so she has to frequently take her ring off, and the necklace helps her not lose/forget it lol.

We do 4 gifts within our immediate family:

Something you want Something you need Something to wear Something to read

I gave snow boots (need), long sleeve shirts (wear), zoo membership (want) and project hail Mary. I got gloves, a new mower battery, an earthquake table game, and a reader ESV bible (no verse marks or footnotes single column layout).

Mostly consumables (food, drinks etc). My wife insists on doing stockings for eachother so that's pretty easy. Plus I bought her a voucher for a massage place.

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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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