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PaperclipPerfector  20hr ago (text post)   682 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 24, 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 still on Sayers' Whose Body? Also reading Abelson's The Seven Liberal Arts after rereading Sayers' essay The Lost Tools of Learning.

Currently reading:

  • Desolation Island Patrick O'Brian
  • The Monastery of the Damned Nicholas Tobias
  • Interwar Articles Ernst Junger
  • The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630–1865 Mark Peterson
  • High Output Management Andrew S. Grove

I really need to read some Junger. Never heard of him before the SSC reviews of Marble Cliffs but his work sounds so cool.

Try reading On Pain by Junger. That’s one of my favorite short-reads of all time. Storm of Steel was the first work of his I’d ever read and I was hooked after that.

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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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