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PaperclipPerfector  7d ago (text post)   2135 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 3, 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 getting interested in Ellul. Also about halfway through The Handmaid's Tale. Can't say it has really moved me yet one way or the other, but it seems to be moving towards something. It vaguely occurs to me that some of the undertone of resentment might be intended for readers like myself, but I can't quite figure out what precisely it is angry about yet. Hopefully it will be something that I can use.

Finished He Who Fights with Monsters 12... I liked it, did we really need to introduce trans pronoun norms to a whole universe?

Started Red Rising. Been many people who have raved about it, I should have seen it was young adult, but I wish someone would have warned me It's Hunger Games for Boys. I don't hate it but I started to see where it was going and got a little annoyed. I hear things shift for the latter books.

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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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