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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   1860 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 19, 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?

Reread Campbell's Dauntless. The writing could use a lot of work, but the basic idea works: the legendary Black Jack Geary wakes up to a universe where military discipline has been forgotten, and he has to work to restore it while saving the fleet. Despite the many problems with the writing, it has a quality that makes one want to read it again. Perhaps it is the authenticity of the military aspects combined with Geary's leadership style.

Not much progress on Taylor's A Secular Age.

Just cracked open (electronically) LIght on the Other Side of Divorce: Discovering the New You by Dr. Elizabeth Cohen.

No reason.

It's nice to know I was right, but I sure wish I wasn't. I'm sorry to hear that bro.

Thanks, fellow Mottizen, I appreciate it. It's really been inevitable the whole time, I've just spent most of the last five years struggling to accept that. I had hoped that after our last separation that she'd be ready to try and make things work but she flat-out told me recently that she didn't want to deal with her issues, she hated them, and wanted them to go away. I seem to have done more soul-searching and changing than I gave myself credit for, because surprisingly enough, I'd actually rather build a new life and figure out what to do with myself now, rather than stay in a failed marriage which had been my entire identity for all those years. And as good as it could feel to play the White Knight, the uglier truth is that I've just been enabling her behavior by being overly empathetic and not setting boundaries and enforcing my limits because, of course, to do so would have threatened or even ended the marriage. Being on the other side of that, wanting to divorce before things get any worse after all this time and all that's happened, is a strange thing, but hardly the worst of things.

It sounds like you're in about as good a place mentally as you could hope for in these circumstances. If you don't mind my asking, do you have children?

I don't mind and no, we don't. Kids are a whole separate story, but tl;dr, my wife wasn't supposed to be able to have children but she nevertheless got pregnant early in our relationship and miscarried 20 weeks into the pregnancy, probably due to a partially detached placenta. She blames herself for the loss of our son and I'm sure that the trauma from that has had a significant negative impact on our relationship. Regardless, we tried off and on again to have another child for the next few years before she decided that the uncertainty was too much and opted for the copper IUD.

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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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