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ArjinFerman  Tinfoil Gigachad  3d ago (text post)   461 thread views

Tinker Tuesday for February 25, 2025

This thread is for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

If you want to be pinged with a reminder asking about your project, let me know, and I'll harass you each week until you cancel the service

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The problem with asking questions about how Substack works is that anyone with experience there is too busy raking in the bucks to post here. From the consumer side, I don't think it has much of a direct discovery mechanism (like Youtube recommendations or whatever), or at least I'm not using it. The way I find out about content is by recommendations from other creators, so your best bet is triggering someone bigger into replying to you, or getting on some sort of interview circuit.

Hmm.. That sounds sensible to me, and roughly what I expected/feared. Still, I'll probably give it a shot, given that I write anyway for this audience, then I don't think I'm doing too much extra work, and it has its upsides. Thanks!

Well, on the flip side, I periodically get notifications that people started following me, and all I ever do is comment (and I do so very rarely). I always thought they're bots, but maybe I'm too pessimistic. I definitely encourage giving it a try (just don't abandon us once you make it big)!

Aww.. I don't mean to, I'm fond of this place (or I wouldn't volunteer my time to janny it, let alone have >3k comments). I've already had the value of my free time multiplied massively courtesy of the large nominal and relative pay raise going from a third world country to a (debatable) first world one entails, and I'm still here haha.

Even if I was purely mercenary, I think that half of the AAQCs I write are in response to things someone else said over here. It's a fertile breeding ground for ideas and strong arguments for said ideas, not many places like it out there.

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.


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