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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3995 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for April 30, 2023

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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The literal ads don't bother me; they've got to pay the bills somehow. The "Suggested For You" garbage annoyed me to no end, until I discovered that you can avoid it by switching from "Home" to the "Feeds" tab they added ... and now I log back in, and it looks like "Feeds" has just been removed again?

have almost all of my friends finally stopped using it

I guess if they're smart, they have. It's clearly gone full user-hostile death-spiral at this point.

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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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