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What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.

Why are you called The Motte?

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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If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

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PaperclipPerfector 24d ago (text post) 307 thread views

Transnational Thursday for April 23, 2026

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

NunoSempere 21d ago

Some headlines I'm reading:

Geopolitics

Pakistan prepares for Iran-U.S. talks but Tehran's participation unclear

Russia and North Korea connect road bridge ahead of summer opening

Over 181,000 drones, EW systems and other equipment delivered to front via yeBaly in 2026 – Fedorov

China bans dual-use items exports to 7 European entities over Taiwan arms sales

United States

Under sustained pressure from the United States, President Claudia Sheinbaum has doubled down on a “kingpin” approach—military operations, high-profile arrests and extraditions—to decapitate cartel leadership. Her government has extradited nearly 100 suspected cartel members to the US since 2025. Cartels have fragmented and retaliated.

US memo on distillation

Rest of the Americas

Bukele Enforces Life Sentences for 12-Year-Olds in El Salvador Amidst Controversial Security Policies

Europe

Russia could be ready for NATO conflict year after Ukraine, Dutch warn

Middle East

Hezbollah says ceasefire 'meaningless' as fighting continues in south | Reuters

Hundreds of Hezbollah terrorists killed in 24 hours before Israel-Lebanon ceasefire, IDF reveals

Israel, Lebanon to Hold Second Round of Talks in Washington on Thursday

Sudan's Al-Burhan welcomes defection of RSF commander to army – Middle East Monitor

Iran

Iran Fires on 3 Ships in the Strait of Hormuz, Complicating Efforts to Resume US-Iran Talks | Military.com

Witkoff and Kushner headed to Pakistan for Iran talks, White House says | Reuters

Iran launches drone strikes on US military vessels after cargo ship seized near Hormuz

Iran War: US Boards Supertanker Carrying Oil From Iran in the Indian Ocean - Bloomberg

India/Pakistan

Injection culture, syringe reuse, weak enforcement fuelling HIV outbreaks in Pakistan

Africa

Donors pledge 1.5 bn euros as Sudan marks three years of war

Africa: Almost Half of African Countries Battling Measles Outbreaks

Boko Haram threatens to kill 400 women and children if Nigeria refuses £2.7m ransom

Biorisks

Bangladesh measles outbreak kills 194 children

Artificial Intelligence

OpenAI now lets teams make custom bots that can do work on their own

Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team (AWCFT) / Project Maven. Transitioning to a formal system of record.

Death by A.I - New "Autonomous Warfare Center" will automate targeted killings

OpenAI releases GPT-5.5 and GPT-5.5 Pro in the API

ChatGPT Images 2.0

I gave an AI persistent memory, self-learning, and earned autonomy

Scaling Codex to Enterprises Worldwide

Our eighth generation TPUs: two chips for the agentic era

Qwen3.6-27B: Flagship-Level Coding in a 27B Dense Model

Discord group says it accessed Claude Mythos by guessing location

Kimi K2.6

Newsom signs executive order requiring AI companies to have safety, privacy guardrails. Order seems pretty meek though.

Amazon will invest $25B in Anthropic, Google $40B

xAI cursor deal

Last week we discovered something unusual: a single person had mass-registered 900+ accounts on our platform using automated email services, then orchestrated them into a distributed AI swarm all running on free-tier credits across 11 platforms

SONY AI | Project Ace, for the first time AI/robotics is competitive against pro table tennis players.

AI hallucinations found in high-profile Wall Street law firm filing

Anthropic told a federal court it can't control its own model once deployed

Google/Sundar Pichai claim: 75% of code at Google is AI-generated

China PLA Navy base report: governing AI use via 'negative list' red lines

Meta deploys employee activity tracking to train AI agents (MCI)

Two thirds of organizations have suffered from a cybersecurity incident related to the deployment of AI agents during the last year, says report

OpenAI new model

Qwen3.6-27B: Flagship-Level Coding in a 27B Dense Model

More tech

DeepSeek v4

Economy

Cursor has given SpaceX the right to acquire Cursor later this year for $60B

Meta 10% layoffs

SpaceX Cursor deal

Context

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.

Why are you called The Motte?

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.

New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!

Rules

Recommended Realtime Chats

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