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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2320 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 13, 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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Reading The Expert Guide to Fertility. Not because I'm looking to get pregnant or impregnate someone, but research for a project.

Finished Lethal Injection by Jim Nisbet the other night. Decent, but the comparisons to Jim Thompson probably oversold it a hair. For such a short and temporally compact book (barely 150 pages in the edition I read, with the action taking place over a few days), it felt remarkably slow at times.

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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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