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PaperclipPerfector  17hr ago (text post)   640 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 10, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Want to spruce up your online appearance? Worried the mods will ban you for having a confusing username? Would like to set yourself apart from the boring grey persona but can't afford to pay your second-most-favorite Twitter artist to create a mediocre likeness of you?

Well, good news, you too can have a passable pfp for free. That's right, we've finally found something we can all agree AI is actually pretty good at.

I think I am perhaps somewhat more demanding than the average AI image generation user (and, I assure you, for entirely different reasons than most people who are demanding of AI art) but one thing I've been impressed with is their ability to generate profile pictures. I assume this is because they were trained on a million of them. You can get them to add colored borders, if you like, or similar effects. You can even get them to use specific color hex codes. I've also gotten good results getting them to incorporate other things into their art, such as specific symbols.

Consider my pfp, which I think is a little bit appealing (and perhaps more importantly distinguishes me from several other fine members of this forum who have usernames that begin with "S' and happen to be roughly as long). Copilot did most of the work. Here's my prompt:

Please generate me an artistic pfp in the shape of a bird, specifically a loggerhead shrike.

This probably isn't news to anyone here, but there are still lots of people (including up until yesterday, me) who don't have unique pfps and I find image generation fun, so...check it out if you have five minutes and the default Motte profile picture.

Profile images should be banned on forums. The point of a forum is to influence others through the quality of your arguments. Exploiting the halo effect by being attractive IRL is unfair, and that goes double for using profile images that are even more attractive than your IRL face. On Kiwi Farms, one prolifically-posting moderator represents himself with various images of Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender, and the degree to which it unfairly advantages him actually makes me angry. People should not be allowed to misleadingly imply that they are birds and princesses when their true forms are neckbeards and legbeards.

Until this website implements a ban on profile images, I recommend (1) using a barebones solid-color profile image for yourself and (2) using custom CSS (.profile-pic-20{display:none!important;}) to hide the profile images of all other users.

(This is very approximately half a joke.)

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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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