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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  3mo ago (text post)   689 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for February 17, 2026

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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I recently read a book that started with "My mother was late to my birth". I remember thinking "ok, that's a pretty decent starting line, good job!" Also, recently read this: https://gwern.net/blog/2026/make-me-care which I think makes a lot of sense.

I recently read a book that started with "My mother was late to my birth".

What was the book?

Empire of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio. I didn't remember entirely correctly though - it wasn't the very beginning, there was a short intro paragraph before that. But it would probably worked fine if it were the first sentence too.

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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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