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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1424 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 1, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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There is an irrigation ditch, owned by the water association, and I could certainly stand in the ditch as he drives past, or in my own driveway, which merges with his, it just doesn't seem very useful. He already knows we don't like it.

Yeah, the sheriff department said that we could try calling their help line each morning, and maybe they'll come check it out. It just seems annoying for both us and them when nothing will probably come of it. They said they can, if they come when he's still here, pull out a decibel counter, if he doesn't notice them and turn it off or something. One time they came to check on him, and he went completely dark and silent for three days, which surprised me and seemed disproportionate.

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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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