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PaperclipPerfector  23hr ago (text post)   833 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for September 25, 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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Have any of you tried feeding a list of your favorite songs to ChatGPT / Claude and have it analyze your music taste?

I've long been bothered by Spotify's utter garbage recommendations, so I sent my 500 track 80s playlist to ChatGPT and had a long conversation with it about other examples I like and don't like. The result is frankly eerily accurate and manages to simultaneously explain my distaste for all post-1996 popular music and how Kraftwerk, trad Irish music, 80s pop and mid 90s Eurodance all fit neatly and consistently under the same "me like"-umbrella.

The result is frankly eerily accurate

Well, what is it?

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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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