site banner
PaperclipPerfector  17hr ago (text post)   583 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for June 19, 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.

Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

One of my kids is doing summer swim. As a parent you have to volunteer at the swim meets if your kid is swimming in them. I found out before hand that certain positions count double when you volunteer. So I'd only need to volunteer every other swim meet that my kid is in. The position I got is "stroke and turn" judge. Basically I have to monitor the swimmers and make sure they are doing all legal strokes, turns, and finishes. I shadowed someone at the saturday meet, and then at the monday meet I was on my own.

Ya'll I DQed so many kids. At least 20 if I had to guess. Almost entirely on breastroke and butterfly events.

Afterwards I was thinking that @ToaKraka might appreciate the pedantic nature of the rules(pdf).

One of the interesting aspects of the judging is that you are supposed to give an equal amount of attention to all swimmers. Usually there are 4 lanes to watch for each judge. Which means each swimmer is getting 25% of your attention. Where it gets interesting is that sometimes events are not full. So you might only have 1 swimmer to watch in your 4 lanes. You are not supposed to just watch that single swimmer. They are still supposed to get 25% of your attention. I was standing there plenty of times just watching 3 empty lanes for 75% of the race.

The swimmer I felt the worst for was a girl doing butterfly, but she must have forgotten that for a half second and came up off the dive doing freestyle (or crawl as its sometimes called), it basically violated all the stroke rules for butterfly.

I had the largest number of simultaneous DQs when three of the four lanes I was watching for breastroke were doing a fully extended arm pull (instead of bring the arms back forward before they passed the hip line.) Then two of them also failed to touch the wall with both hands. It was a frantic minute of filling out forms after that race.

That is another thing, the whole meet basically moves at the pace we do. They won't start the next race until we are done filling out our disqualification slips and are ready to watch the pool again.

The English of this document sounds suspiciously like it was written a hundred years ago.

Confidence can only be attained by studying the rules, attending training sessions and working regularly at meets

this does feel like something that might be in a turn of the century advice or manners pamphlet.

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 Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats