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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   5911 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for May 21, 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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I remember being in school during geography and actually signing up for this. I signed up on a school email, which is now lost to time, but I specifically remember them being a legit web site.

I choose to believe it's a psy op.

I suspect that the flat earth society is a lot like many so-called "right wing militias", nine hundreds feds rationalists and one sincere autist who will be used by said feds/rationalists to justify why normies suck and ought to be disenfranchised.

As the joke goes, 14/88 stands for 1 FBI agent, 4 state troopers and 8 8th-graders, a typical composition of a right-wing extremist cell.

And it breaks up when the State troopers lose patience with the FBI agent's increasingly violent rhetoric and decide he needs to be taken out before he blows up a building.

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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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