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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   2010 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 25, 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?

I'm picking up Pierce's The Life and Legacy of Ja'far al-Sadiq. Still on Archaeology of Babel.

Airships by Barry Hannah. Short stories (some extremely short like 2-3 pages) about the South from the Civil War to modern day (70s). Jeb Stuart shows up a weird amount of times. A lot of the stories take some pretty wild turns. Good read so far, I'm almost done. I've always thought the South had a really tragic quality to it much of the rest of the country lacked and this book nails it tonally

Did you ever read any Wendell Berry? Finished Jayber Crow recently and it was of this genre and had that quality.

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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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