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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   3335 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 21, 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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Go to an IRL Toastmasters meeting, or better yet, a Toastmasters area contest. You will feel very accepted.

Go to an IRL Toastmasters meeting

Looking into it, but so far most Toastmasters groups here have gone entirely to Zoom. (And my internet doesn't have the bandwidth and quality for doing that.)

I'm not necessarily looking at the moment, but I was underwhelmed the time I did try going to Toastmasters. That was mostly because I had spent some time before that in the Republic of Georgia, home of the best toasting parties and toast masters in the world, and it turned out that American Toastmasters was not going to train me to be one, which was where my interest lay. I went ahead and hosted some toasting feasts with a couple of friends anyway, and although I am a somewhat lame tamada, they were still much more what I wanted to do.

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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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