site banner
PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   1578 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 2, 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.

1
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Notices Bulge, the judicial version: United States v. Bontemps, 977 F.3d 909 (2020) (google scholar link, not pdf)

From 2020, so not recent, but a fun read if you haven't seen it. Between the opinion and the dissent, they use the world "bulge" 113 times. And this is no ordinary bulge. This one is:

  • very large and obvious bulge
  • a very obvious bulge
  • a suggestive bulge
  • a distinctive bulge

I'm sure the law clerks who helped draft this one had a great time seeing how many times they could use the word. Unfortunately for Mr. Bontemps, the court holds that his bulge was suggestive of a firearm and was sufficient to create reasonable suspicion for police officers to stop him.

Original PDF

Bontemps initially argued on appeal that a bulge alone is necessarily unreliable because the bulge could be anything (his examples: candy, a gift, or a “post-mastectomy prosthetic”). But Bontemps ultimately acknowledged at oral argument what is, of course, true: that in some circumstances a bulge could be an obvious indicator of a concealed firearm—for example, a bulge underneath a tight-fitting shirt that clearly reflects the distinct outline of a large gun.

Cases involving “drug bulges” present somewhat different considerations than “gun bulges” under the fact-based Terry inquiry. While guns are made of rigid materials (such as metal or hard plastics) and possess a relatively distinctive shape, drugs or packages of drugs come in different shapes and sizes, some quite small, soft, and nondescript. See Eustaquio (explaining that a bulge perceived to be drugs could indicate “any number of non-contraband items”).

In my view, seeing a non-descript bulge without more should not allow police officers to stop and frisk citizens. And the majority’s holding gives license to stop and frisk any citizen based upon nothing more than officer testimony that the officer had seen a bulge.

Note a very significant difference from a Pennsylvania case that I posted recently.

Under California law, which Bontemps does not challenge here, it is generally illegal to carry a concealed firearm in public. In Foster, we held that “[g]iven the insignificant number of concealed carry permits issued in California, a reasonable officer could conclude that there is a high probability that a person identified in a 911 call as carrying a concealed handgun is violating California’s gun laws”. We concluded the officer in Foster could therefore reasonably make a Terry stop based on this information. We held similarly in another more recent case. See United States v. Vandergroen (holding that officers had reasonable suspicion to justify a stop based on a 911 call reporting that the defendant had a gun “on him” because “possessing a concealed weapon” is “presumptively unlawful in California”).

Some fun bulge-related LLM prompts:

  • Write a nonsupernatural erotic horror story with the following premise: A young, skinny, female college student generally is uncomfortable interacting with men, because she knows that they probably are constantly thinking about having sex with her. During a college break, she is relaxing at home, with none of her horny male classmates around. But her middle-schooler brother seems less innocent than he used to be. The bulge of his penis looms menacingly.

  • Write an erotic story with the following premise: A skinny, female high-school student generally is uncomfortable interacting with boys, because she knows that they probably are constantly thinking about having sex with her. Her gym class has a multi-week dance unit, and she is paired up with a skinny boy. The bulge of his penis traumatizes her.

First: sex and sexuality topics are quintessential CW material and therefore banned from the Friday Fun Thread. This includes but is by no means limited to discussion of sexual assault both real and imagined, discussion on the sexualization of minors, erotic AI prompts, and so forth. This is a final mod warning.

Second: Someone reading this warning will probably wonder whether this means that gooning material is fair game for the CW thread. It is not. This is a discussion forum for testing shady thinking, not for sharing gooning material. You can talk about the CW, but not wage CW; you can talk about the sociocultural development of gooning (ugh, if you must) but this is not the place to goon. We understand that there are communities which focus on sharing smut and smut accessories. We are not, and do not intend to become, one of those communities. This is a mod comment.

Third: We will be employing the Supreme Court's own standard in enforcing this rule. You have demonstrated that your intuition does not always line up with the users' or the mods'. If you are unsure about a particular topic, ask in modmail first. This is a mod suggestion in hopes of avoiding further mod warnings.

Here's why I think this decision sucks. ToaKraka's prompts made me chuckle. Meanwhile, you probably want more users like ToaKraka and less users like the one who got offended.

Put another way, you're acting like this user made a good argument here and won when in reality they definitively lost. They say a really bad fallacy in every sentence and get absolutely wrecked each time until there's nothing left but running off and refusing to understand what happened. The meta-consequence for getting wrecked so badly should be having to read some guy post funny jokes about young bulges. Maybe if he doesn't like it, he should make a good argument as to why it's wrong. But you rush in to make sure being wrong has no consequences and to de facto enforce their indefensible dogma, because it's still popular among the masses outside the motte.

This is just like HBD, which recently seems to have won, but not before years of denialism, shabby moralism based on implicit denialism, isolated demands for rigor, etc.

You are wrong in thinking only one user had a problem with this post.

We have members I'd like to keep more than toakraka that have reported this stuff.

There is also an Internet phenomenon where people with extreme viewpoints are accustomed to arguing for and defending their view points. While the average person is very unaccustomed to debating them. Young earth creationists, 9/11 truthers, neo Nazis, NAMBLA members, etc all tend to have accumulated debate experience. They do tend to destroy the arguments of their average debate partner.

If you see them stick around long enough you will at some point witness the ultimate smackdown. Someone smart will have heard, read, and processed the arguments. They eventually get sick of hearing it all repeated.

You'll then see something like a ten - twenty page argument back and forth. Where the extreme idea holder gets eviscerated on nearly every point because finally someone came at them prepared.

Which is why I am happy to see any and all ideas discussed in the main culture war thread. We don't do topic bans there, unless it specifically endangers the website.

But this is the Friday Fun Thread and the point of this thread is just not the same as the other.

If you see them stick around long enough you will at some point witness the ultimate smackdown. Someone smart will have heard, read, and processed the arguments. They eventually get sick of hearing it all repeated.

Ok but this topic is like HBD in that that day will never come because the 18 position is the extremist position. It has just taken root recently in English speaking countries like Bolshevism in the East in the 20th century. Literally everything points against that position: history, IQ data, hormonal data, lived experiences, evolutionary psychology. This is just not the world where the age of consent needs to be 18 because in history 15 year olds never married, 15 year olds have large IQ deficits compared to 18 year olds, 15 year olds haven't gone through puberty, 15 year olds can't give birth and therefore aren't expected to have evolved to be able to handle relationships, etc. And I noticed the motte has no young earth creationists but it does have a whole lot of people who think making the age of consent 18 is stupid, probably a majority, even Alan Dershowittz agrees with this. It seems to cut across party lines and stratifies mainly by intelligence. That is to say, sometimes there is a stupid people position and a smart people position, and the smart people position is the right one. You listed a bunch of heretical stupid people positions and didn't notice that the pattern doesn't hold in this case.

Ok but

Ok but this is the friday fun thread. Not the main culture war thread.

I apologize for my mistake above in addressing anything related to the object level concerns. My main complaint is meta that it is culture war and thus doesn't belong here.

Ok but

Ok but you mods run low-grade censorship on this topic in the culture war thread. For example it's been classified as a hobby horse belief which is in reality a special designation. When someone only posts about Finnish politics or what Trump did last week that's not hobbyhorse, but if I top level about this subject I run the risk of getting banned just because of the topic, if amadan the genius feels like it's a wee bit too much or not relevant enough to this week's news cycle. This is a low grade censorship strategy where the frequency of discussion is intentionally restricted in a way that is not true for most topics.

And on top of that, no Toakraka's jokes are not culture war. Culture war is the debate, not the joke about a boner or whatever.

If it is just one user repeatedly posting about the same topic, ya. And we do warn people when they approach the level of 'this is getting annoying' and our warnings usually come a post or two after people start reporting it for things like "cant x user just shut up about this topic already". By the time we are handing out bans for topic exhaustion plenty of users are beyond mildly annoyed. Mod team is definitely in agreement on the need for a ban, if not necessarily on the length.

We have only used this on two users that I can remember. One for jew posting, and one for the age of consent law stuff. If you were the one that got in trouble for constantly talking about age of consent law stuff, then I'm not really feeling sorry for you. This discussion is reminding me of exactly how annoying it is.

Jokes can definitely be culture war waging. They just aren't culture war debate or discussion. So yeah admittedly jokes and works of satire related to the culture war don't end up getting allowed anywhere on themotte. This is not limited to the topic of age of consent. If someone wanted to share jokes about how Biden/Trump is a buffoon then we really don't have a space for that. That seems fine to me, we never claimed to be a space for everything. Its possible that /r/drama makes a good companion website in that sense, since they are for jokes about anything but don't really seek to allow for serious discussion of anything.

More comments

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