site banner
PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3282 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 19, 2024

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.

3
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Apologies if you've seen all these already.

https://curiosityandcode.tumblr.com/post/145100433806/swanjolras-gosh-but-like-we-spent-hundreds-of

Do you count comics as memes? The best do spread virally. These three didn't really start hitting like hammers until I became a parent:

https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=3106

https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2996

https://imgur.com/sUv6KZw

And this one (in the original blog post form) took on more meaning after I read it to my daughter one night, as the only thing I could think of to assuage our despair at the discovery that my mother's minor health issue was actually incurable cancer.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ljmifo4Klss

That imgur one reminds me of an old Levi's commercial.

Damn, that Imgur link hit me like a tonne of bricks.

I get it... It's sad because she didn't give him any grandchildren, right?

These are great.

I hadn't seen those particular SMBCs before, and I relate hard.

https://imgur.com/sUv6KZw

Reminds me of an observation I read, probably shared on Reddit:

One day, your parents picked you up and put you down, and then never picked you up again

That hit me in the feels dawg. I'd like to postpone that some more, but both my parents have slipped discs and are maybe two-thirds my size, so I suppose I can delay the pain by me bear-hugging them or picking them up instead. May we all live long enough that carrying our parents is a burden lightly borne, and not just because of osteoporosis.

One good thing about Indian culture is that we're far more open to being touchy-feely with your family, the way the average Westerner behaves with their parents once they're adults make me gawp at the apparent coldness. If some girl gets the ick because I still like to hug my mom, she can get the boot (not a claim that all Westerners are like this, but that would be such a weird fucking thing for an Indian to do).

I'm sorry your mother didn't live long enough to see a cure for her cancer. Or a cure for cancer. I don't think it's all that far off, even without AGI, but it is some reassurance to genuinely believe that many of the horrors of the universe will one day be a distant memory. First smallpox, soon to be polio, we'll kill them before they kill us.

Reminds me of an observation I read, probably shared on Reddit:

One day, your parents picked you up and put you down, and then never picked you up again

That hit me in the feels dawg

When my son was younger he liked me to play this game with his stuffed animals with him. Once it hit me profoundly that one day it would be the last time we played it. For a little while I was really conscientious to play it with him, but you know, you forget.

Anyway, 2-3 years later he still asks me to play and the game has simply evolved with his age. My misjudgment on the fleeting finality of a part of our relationship helped take the edge of this sentiment overall.

It's still sad and life is short and you don't get the stages back and all that. But.. life's a series of concentric circles that slowly bend into and inside of and around one another more than it being a line with checkpoints.

It helps me to remember that "picked you up" is most importantly a metaphor, spanning generations. My parents once told me they'd been planning to remortgage their house if I had needed help with college tuition; later I found they'd barely touched their retirement savings, so they'll be picking up their grandkids' tuition instead.

I still get to carry one kid, thanks to a gym with a rock climbing obstacle that he's strong enough to complete but not tall enough to reach without a boost. Still keeping my eyes open for other cheats like that...

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


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats