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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   4774 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 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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I'm still on And the Band Played On. It is such an engaging, well written book, that among other things it is making me think of how much I hate writers who make everything depressing and grimdark all the god damn time. Shilts wrote ATBPO, about AIDS, while dying of AIDS, after most of his friends died of AIDS, and it is filled with humor, irony, wry observations and satires. It's hardly ligthhearted, but it maintains a lighthearted degree of readability.

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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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