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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.

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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."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.

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PaperclipPerfector 4d ago (text post) 2435 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for October 9, 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.

Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Rex 3d ago · Edited 3d ago

I enjoy YouTube far more than cable tv. There are a lot of great channels out there and I find the best ones are usually in the 2k to 30k subscriber range. Discovery is typically pretty hard and they will randomly show up in various recommendations. New videos typically come out every few weeks or months - not the daily slop from big channels.

Anyone have any recommendations?

I’ll share one. @josh_from_xboxlive.

https://youtube.com/@josh_from_xboxlive?si=j_AwTobz8Jn73lv7

I like it because while he ostensibly talks about film, books, and pop culture, he has some novel takes I have not seen elsewhere.

Highlights include What’s Wrong with Modern Horror, where he takes down this whole concept of “elevated horror” in films.

Writing as a Magical Praxis where he describes a nexus of tarot and storytelling. I knew nothing of tarot and he had an interesting thesis.

Also he has great playlist on “the Homer of the 20th Century” aka George Lucas. Very interesting analysis of Star Wars as a modern myth and the various thematic elements of the series. I have not seen these takes anywhere else.

Anyone else have any recommendations?

Context

bro Rex 3d ago · Edited 1d ago

From a light survey of some playlists, extremely and mournfully inexhaustive, within the spirit though not quite the letter of your small-channels exercise:

Jeffrey the Librarian (100k subs)

Early American history (Mayflower through Civil War) via maps and surprisingly effective hand-drawn crude graphics
Bosgoed Animal Paradise (70k subs)

Cute animal videos from a dutch dad who keeps like 200 small animals on his modest property in a non-sloppy way, a little garden of eden; don't miss Kobus, the crow who was raised by chickens
Type 56: The Story of China's Army (60k subs)

Interesting tales from the development of the PLA (often through the lens of weapons procurement; occasional collabs with the premiere historical firearms channel Forgotten Weapons (3.2M subs)
RojoFern (50k subs)

Tornadoes and nuclear weapons, elaborately produced in a very entertaining style; an indictment of the algorithm that he isn't much, much more popular (also has a prehistory of other videos I'm not interested in)
Point Blank Science (50k subs)

Veteran in Idaho who, as an exercise/for fun, practices doing covert surveillance on small towns and chip fabs
Marshall Bruner (50k subs)

Radar, more than you every thought there was to know, explained in absurdly high quality and quantity with original animations and simulations
lunarmodule5 (45k subs)

Real-time replays of historical American space missions with the original audio
Armageddon '41-'45 (formerly StalData) (40k subs)

Some original-in-english archival research on mostly primary documents from and the aftermath of The Battle of Stalingrad; sometimes collaborator sometimes antagonist in TIK's (430k subs) true masterpiece series Battlestorm: Stalingrad (51 eps, ~40 hours, 2 nervous breakdowns)
Mike’s Videos of Beavers (40k subs)

A guy in Saskatoon who goes down to the river and films the beavers from perhaps irresponsibly close up
TNMoC (25k subs)

Talks and demos from a historical computer museum
康康 Kang (14k subs)

A newly-minted chinese factory worker's daily life (attn @DaseindustriesLtd)
The Warshipologist (6k subs)

High-quality well-organized WWII naval infographics, artifacts, and original research, a natural supplement in the Drachinifel (600k subs) basin, yet he seems to have been punished horribly by the algorithm for some reason
valerobowie (650 subs)

Exactly 2 topics: Yorktown-class aircraft carriers and The Alamo, explored in high autism mode through original 3D models

If I stretched the exercise much past 100k subs I'd be here all week. There are many bigger channels that are very good. The problem is not channel sub count, it's letting your algorithm stay tuned to normie slop. You want to get to a place where sub-count is a neutral heuristic.

Context

pusher_robot PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS bro 1d ago

Timely, possibly-related investigation as to how RedLetterMedia maintains its viewership with seemingly little to no algorithmic attuning: https://plainenglish.io/web-scraping/i-analyzed-2-500-youtube-videos-to-understand-why-redlettermedia-are-internet-darlings#1

Context

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

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