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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1133 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for May 15, 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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Cupid and Psyche? Till we Have Faces (inspired by the former)?

Well, I'll grant the lavish and inaccessible house with invisible servants and beautiful husband, but Psyche was a princess, not from a poor family, I don't think there's any special aging involved, she doesn't long to leave the mansion and in fact is not a prisoner at all (she just leaves after spilling spaghetti oil everywhere).

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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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