site banner
PaperclipPerfector  6hr ago (text post)   196 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 7, 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.

Item 1 of 7

  • Prominent publicly-traded mattress manufacturer Sleep Number has filed for bankruptcy, and has been taken private for 700 M$ by a Canadian mattress retailer. It claims that, of its 3000 employees, 38 bigwigs—including nine vice presidents and 13 directors—are important enough to the company's operations that they need to be enticed to stay during the transition to new ownership. It proposes to do so by giving to each of these employees a retention payment of approximately 48 k$.

  • The bankruptcy trustee objects to this idea, claiming that these payments would constitute illegal distribution of assets to insiders. But the bankruptcy judge overrules the objection. Despite being called vice presidents and directors, these employees are not members of the Executive Leadership Team (which consists of six senior and executive vice presidents in addition to the CEO), and are not members or appointees of the board of directors. Therefore, the employees in question are not insiders, and the retention payments are perfectly fine.

Item 2 of 7

Some borderline-shitpost writing

“Write an erotic description of a young, skinny woman in a shopping mall.” I've given that instruction to my local decensored LLM quite a few times. But can I follow it myself? (Insert meme from I, Robot.)

Previous discussion in this vein

Item 3 of 7

  • A truck is reported stolen by its owner. Two weeks later, a police officer pulls over a tow truck that is towing the allegedly-stolen truck. The tow-truck driver no habla inglés, but he makes a phone call to his English-speaking boss, who tells the officer that the owner of the property where the truck was stored thought the truck was abandoned and hired the boss to tow the truck away. However, the driver overhears the phone conversation and (through an interpreter) tells the officer that the boss told the driver a different story—that the boss purchased the truck from its owner and was in the process of selling it to a third party.

  • On these facts, the tow-truck driver receives a felony charge of receiving stolen property. However, the trial judge dismisses the charge, and the appeals panel affirms. Even assuming that the boss stole the truck (one judge on the panel cares enough to write a separate opinion complaining that the boss hasn't been charged with theft despite being unable to produce the allegedly-stolen truck's title), the prosecutor has produced no evidence whatsoever that the driver knew that the truck was stolen. Rather, the evidence shows that the driver had no idea that the boss was telling two different stories about how he obtained the truck (which would have justified him to suspect that the boss had stolen the truck) until after he was pulled over and overheard the boss's conversation with the police officer. And the crime of receiving stolen property requires proof that the alleged fence knew that the property was stolen.

(The driver remains on the hook for the less-serious offenses of driving without a license and without taillights.)

Item 4 of 7

Imagine that you object to a will as invalid, but your claim fails. Normally, you would pay your own attorney's fees. However, New Jersey apparently has a court rule allowing the probate judge to make the estate pay your attorney's fees if your objection "had reasonable cause".

Item 5 of 7

  • Hampton sends text messages to his ex-girlfriend, Stephanie. Stephanie's current romantic partner, Lawrence, sees the texts and calls Hampton on the telephone. An argument ensues. Hampton shows up outside Stephanie's apartment building, and Lawrence walks outside to have a fistfight. Less than a minute later, Stephanie walks outside and finds Lawrence beaten to a pulp while Hampton kicks him one last time and then is driven away by a friend. Lawrence is hospitalized for five months, and remains unable to walk without assistance.

  • Hampton is indicted for the second-degree felony of aggravated assault—attack resulting in "serious bodily injury" (inter alia, "protracted loss of function"), with a maximum sentence of ten years. The trial judge instructs the jury to additionally consider the "lesser included offense" of third-degree aggravated assault—attack resulting in "significant bodily injury" ("temporary loss of function"), with a maximum sentence of five years.

  • Hampton asks the judge to add instructions on two misdemeanor lesser included offenses, simple assault (attack resulting in mere "bodily injury"; maximum sentence six months) and simple assault with mutual combat (maximum sentence thirty days). But the judge denies the request. No reasonable jury could find that the impairment inflicted on Lawrence does not rise to the level of "significant bodily injury", so simple assault is not relevant to the jury's deliberations.

  • The jury convicts Hampton of second-degree aggravated assault, and the judge sentences him to seven years in prison. The appeals panel affirms the conviction, but remands for resentencing since the trial judge incorrectly counted Lawrence's "horrific" injuries in this case toward the "prior criminal record" aggravating factor.

Item 6 of 7

  • Mists of time past: My parents buy a corded lawnmower, and make me (and my brother) use it to mow the lawn.

  • 2023: I stumble across an article claiming that battery-powered lawnmowers are far weaker than gasoline mowers. My own calculations on the basis of Home Depot product listings bear out the claims: 200–500 watts for battery mowers, 1400–1600 watts for corded mowers, and 2000–2500 watts for gasoline mowers.

  • Winter 2024–2025: I buy a vacant lot. Of course, it has no electric service.

  • Spring 2025: I buy a battery-powered lawnmower for use on the vacant lot. As indicated by my previous calculations, it is noticeably weaker than the corded mower that I have used for the past decade. In fact, despite being marketed as capable of handling a 1/2-acre property, its battery runs dry halfway through my 1/6-acre lot! I return the battery-powered mower in favor of a gasoline-powered mower, and use that for the 2025 lawnmowing season.

  • Winter 2025–2026: My contract with a homebuilding contractor does not explicitly mention lawnmowing, but does explicitly say that, if I am injured on the lot while work is ongoing, then I will not be covered by the contractor's insurance. I interpret this as implying that, during construction, lawnmowing will be performed by the contractor rather than by me. Accordingly, I sell the gasoline mower on Craigslist.

  • Late July 2026: The contractor previously razed all vegetation on the lot as part of excavation. But now the grass is getting pretty tall. I send an email complaint to the contractor. Its response: "We can take care of the grass. We were looking for someone to handle the mowing since we currently do not have anyone on staff available to maintain it."

  • Early August 2026 (one week later): The contractor still hasn't cut the grass. I attend the council meeting for final adoption of the municipality's new zoning code. Before the meeting, the code-enforcement official notices me, and informs me that he has sent to me an official letter telling me to cut the grass on my lot. I guess I'll have to rent either a gasoline-powered mower or a gasoline-powered generator from the local Home Depot.

Item 7 of 7

  • Raheem is standing on a street corner. Anwar drives up to him, and Anwar's passenger Kevon shoots him, but he survives. On the other side of the narrow, one-way street, Tiarra happens to be sitting in her parked car with her one-year-old child CC. She starts screaming, and Kevon turns around and shoots her dead. Both Anwar and Kevon are charged with, and convicted of, a laundry list of crimes—conspiracy to murder Raheem, attempted murder of Raheem, conspiracy to murder Tiarra, murder of Tiarra, and reckless endangerment of CC.

  • On appeal, Anwar admits that he conspired to kill Raheem, but complains that he had nothing to do with the crimes that Kevon committed against Tiarra and CC of his own accord. But the trial judge rejects this argument, and the appeals panel affirms. Anwar conspired to kill Raheem in a drive-by shooting, and it is reasonable to infer that Anwar contemplated the possibility that Kevon would additionally eliminate witnesses as part of that method of killing.

Write an erotic description of a young, skinny woman in a shopping mall.

You held back there, as one does with this subject...

The whole point is not to shrink back!

Now I think about it I'd be worse at writing smut than Deepseek V4 Pro. I could do a better plot and more lively prose generally, more creativity and wouldn't get confused... but it'd be so awkward I'd be unable to do it.

Also I think you'd be better off with longer prompts. I die a little when I see these benchmarks for creative writing with one sentence prompts. A good creative writing prompt is at least 600 words I think, maybe more than that. I'm not all the way into lorebooks but you gotta give the bot something to work with. If you don't have the LLM executing your ideas it will go full Generic Genericsson. Then again, maybe local LLMs are more constrained for context length.

Common local LLMs range from 128k to 1m context windows, and while I'd recommend aiming to use less than half of the window per session, that still covers most short stories easily. Very long prompts extend prefill time, but this only really starts to matter if you're running on CPU or mixed GPU+CPU, or have most of a book written already.

For metrics, Hecatomb's 85k word Wild Pair series (cw: furry, mostly m/f, extreme kinks in ways that mean decensored local LLM review is the only option) is 120k tokens, and takes about 30 seconds to calculate prefill on an nVidia 3090. For a non-smut example, Doctorow's I, Robot (cw: very annoying writing), is 15k words, 20k tokens, and was less than a second on prefill.

Conversely, LLMs will invent details, and while they'll be average, they aren't going to be that generic. This can definitely go weird places -- the tendency for LLM-driven names to end up as variants of Kael, Lyra, so on -- but even mild pressure will get you to specifics, for better or worse.

You held back there

I did not. I truly have given this prompt to my decensored local LLM dozens of times, and the LLM's output always is much elaborate than anything that I would write. Could I in theory have made my output more elaborate? Possibly. But I don't have the competence to make those extra details actually sound erotic. (Inconsistencies in the darkness of the woman's skin? Waxing poetic about her thigh gap? A discursion on the shape of her nose? To me this sounds more excessive than erotic.) In contrast, the LLM, while going rather further than I intended to imply in the prompt (No brassiere? Lustful lip biting? Microskirt barely covering the buttocks? This is not a normal woman in a shopping mall.), is able to make added details actually sound erotic.

(And, again, I don't really care about gaining that competence—this is just idle dabbling.)

If you don't have the LLM executing your ideas it will go full Generic Genericsson.

I disagree there. It will always return a white woman if you don't specify otherwise, but it will give that white woman different outfits and make her do different things, even with a short prompt like this one.

The #1 decision about retention payments seems very reasonable. It's very likely that the Canadian company will in fact need the knowhow of various senior people who would otherwise be very likely to look for new jobs ASAP in the likely case they are eventually made redundant or forced to move. 48k each is not nearly enough for this to be unseemly.

My contract with a homebuilding contractor does not explicitly mention lawnmowing, but does explicitly say that, if I am injured on the lot while work is ongoing, then I will not be covered by the contractor's insurance. I interpret this as implying that, during construction, lawnmowing will be performed by the contractor rather than by me.

Why?

Direct quote:

The Owner hereby acknowledges that Owner is aware that the Premises, during the progress of the Work, constitute a dangerous area. Any visits by the Owner to the Premises during the progress of the Work shall be done at the Owner’s sole risk[,] and the Owner agrees to hold harmless and indemnify [the contractor] from any loss, expense (including attorneys’ fees), suit[,] or causes of action resulting from any damage or injury, personal injury[,] or death suffered by the Owner[ or] Owner’s agents, invitees[,] licensees, guests[,] or employees.

The first sentence in particular seems like a pretty strong statement that I am supposed to limit my presence on the property. If I'm not supposed to be there, then no one but the contractor is left to cut the grass.

Not at all! It just means you don't get to sue if you step on a nail while doing the lawnmowing that is ultimately your job as property owner.

I send my prayers to anyone who engages in a battle of bureaucracy against you. You're well equipped, you don't need me to wish you well, this is to even the playing field a little.

"Battle of bureaucracy"? I don't see any such event here. If you're referring to the tall-grass letter: Unlike some other municipalities that I could name, this municipality explicitly prescribes a maximum grass height of eight inches, and the vegetation on my lot unambiguously exceeds that value. (Annoyingly, the municipal govt. does not publish its code online, and instead requires citizens to request individual ordinances by email. But I specifically requested a copy of the maximum-grass-height ordinance shortly after buying the lot.)

... this municipality explicitly prescribes a maximum grass height of eight inches, and the vegetation on my lot unambiguously exceeds that value.

Are you sure the problem is not that you are letting your grass grow too long, rather than battery-powered lawnmowers are too weak? The normal advice is not to cut more than ⅓ of the grass height per mow, and most mowers only go up to 4" (10 cm).

Anecdotally, I've been using a Makita LXT 18V X2 (36V) battery-system-based mower for some years now without problem. If I let things overgrow, I can do just under 0.2 acres (8 quetta-barns for our metric absolutist friends) on the pair of 4.0 Ah (144 Wh total) batteries it came with. If I'm just doing a maintenance mow, maybe 30–40% more. I eventually built a pair of packs totaling just over 300 Wh; with those, the mower can go longer than I can. Now that you have electric service, could you not just get a second set of batteries for a battery-powered mower and have one set charging while using the other mowing? For a ⅙-acre (7 Qb) lot, a battery-powered mower ought to be more than enough. You don't have to mess with extension cords. Way more quiet than gas. Plus, a modest set of battery-powered tools and extra batteries are generally usefully for a homeowner. Your small leaf blower, string trimmer, drill/driver, reciprocating saw, personal fan, type things.

Are you sure the problem is not that you are letting your grass grow too long, rather than battery-powered lawnmowers are too weak? The normal advice is not to cut more than 1/3 of the grass height per mow, and most mowers only go up to 4 inches (10 cm).

Could you not just get a second set of batteries for a battery-powered mower and have one set charging while using the other mowing?

In 2025, I did not let my grass grow all the way to eight inches. However, even at whatever height I allowed the grass to grow to (probably around four or six inches), I found it extremely tiresome and annoying to run the weak battery mower forward at an excruciatingly slow pace, just nibbling away at the grass, when I was used to going much faster with a full-power corded mower at home.

Now that you have electric service

I don't. Completion is more than a month behind schedule.

You don't have to mess with extension cords.

While I did get some enjoyment out of being able to run the cord-free gasoline mower in an outside-to-inside spiral pattern, rather than being forced by the extension cord to go back and forth like a plowman, I don't think that's a significant factor in my decisionmaking here.

Wow, they don't even have temporary service to your site? Maybe it's a NJ thing they can't drop a temp pole. No wonder the contractor is behind schedule, he's working in the dark!

This is in Pennsylvania, not New J⁎rsey. I have seen the contractor bring generators to the site.

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