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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   2280 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for February 1, 2026

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 adding Said's Covering Islam to my list.

Currently reading Jane Austen's Persuasion for church book club. (Everyone can pick the Austen novel of their choosing; this is in observance of her 250th birthday. I've previously read Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Northanger Abbey and enjoyed them a lot, especially the last one.)

I'm about 1/3 of the way in and I have to say, she has not really got me to care about the characters much yet. Anne seems a decent girl, but I don't know why it's so impossible for her to move on from Captain Wentworth, for all that he's very charming and everyone likes him. As we meet people like Charles Hayter and Captains Harville and Benwick, we repeatedly see that there are plenty of nice men around. Eight years after my first relationship, I never thought about it anymore.

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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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