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.
- 110
- 1
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
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Thanks for your experience!
This was one of the main things that kept me from switching from Windows back before I got married. I don't really game much anymore, and it's instead the wife that is making me hesitate to switch...
I almost installed Peppermint on a random old device I have; downloaded the iso and everything. I was trying to solve some problems with getting Home Assistant running, but I eventually figured out how to get HAOS working on it. It does seem like a real contender. What made you fed up with Ubuntu?
Not really, but that was supposed to be kind of the point of the design. You can run Linux on it via crostini, and I've done that for a few things (just the default debian; I think you can install other distros, but I've never bothered). The GUI support is a little janky for some programs, and I've never bothered just living on a different browser in it on a regular basis. It kind of defeats the purpose, and I feel like if I was going to go down that route, I'd just say screw it and go full Linux.
I still haven't tried Brave at all. I've been sticking with Firefox outside of the Chromebooks. Nightly on my phone; I set that up a while back, because that was the only way to use extensions like uBlock on FF for Android, though I think that has probably been relaxed since then. I've not yet gotten to the point where FF is doing something annoying enough or Brave is offering a feature killer enough for me to make the switch.
I don't know what exactly they did, but it started feeling bloated. Took forever to boot up, or start / close programs.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link