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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   4612 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 20, 2022

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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I keep notes, random thoughts and pictures in an empty Discord channel because it's convenient and accessible from anywhere. Discord automatically timestamps everything and gives me a very powerful search engine and API to use bots to auto scrape and save an offline copy every week. Very useful for transferring small information between my phone, home PC and work PC.

Not judging because I've done it too, but oh God I hate that this is the easiest way to sync stuff between your own devices.

I use a slightly more bootleg version of this. I use a whatsapp chat with myself as a commonly shared dump among my phone, PC and laptop.

Much in the same way, GitHub is just free cloud storage for my personal coding projects.

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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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