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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3691 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 7, 2024

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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It's bad. Screenshot of the home page. I just want it to be a blog, and it insists on trying to be a whole social media do-everything site. I'm honestly disappointed when authors I follow encourage this by tweeting and chatting on it. (Apparently Substack asks them to? maybe pays them, or says it'll boost their engagement, not sure)

The main gripe I have with the subscribe reminders is that they pop up at the start of the page. If I'm reading something new, I obviously don't know if I like it yet. Why would I ever subscribe after only reading the first 5% of an article? If you must annoy me with a popup (and I'd really rather you didn't), do it at the end, please.

It seems like just about everything does that now. At least the prompts to enable notifications seem to have gone away, but for a while, basically every website would nag you to subscribe by email, turn on notifications, and watch a related video before you could even start reading the actual article that you clicked on.

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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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