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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4073 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 29, 2023

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?

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Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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Becoming Trader Joe - after learning it existed in this viral tweet

This probably seems weird to Americans, but up in Canada, we have a certain reverance for those uniquely American food chains. We have burger joints, but they're no In-N-Out. Donut shops, but they're no Krispy Kreme. Grocery stores, but no Trader Joe's. Trader Joe's occupies a special place in this pantheon because its products can be brought back. "Oh my god, Sasha went down to Seattle on the weekend and brought back cookie butter from Trader Joes! Cookie Butter! eeeee!". For a while, we even had a guy running a grey market Pirate Joe's.

Oh it's the guys before Aldi, now that does sound interesting.

Which is funny, because Trader Joe's is just the American emanation of German grocery company Aldi Nord.

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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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