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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   2312 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 23, 2025

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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Angel Numbers. Essentially a superstitious belief that the appearance of certain numbers provides meaning.

We're surrounded by numbers, from car mileage to receipts to credit cards. My wife and I have long had a joking superstition that single-digit order numbers on Wawa receipts are important and mean something will happen (for those of you less fortunate, Wawa order numbers go from 000-999, and Wawas are open 24-7 so they reset at random). She did get her first real job the same day we got the 001 receipt for the first time.

Looking for random patterns is fun.

Like 4Chan dubs? Nice.

My gf and I are fans of 11:11 meaning yay look at that it’s a happy time

She believes it I guess

It’s really just fun and cute

I'm a big fan of 12:34pm. Less so of 12:34am, but that's because nothing good happens after midnight.

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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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