site banner
PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2814 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 1, 2023

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.

4
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Update on singing Christmas carols with kids.

First, thanks for all the recommendations! There were some I had never heard before and that I plan to sing.

I ended up printing off some songs from A Collection of Christmas Carols, a site that has PDF of a few hundred Christmas songs along with free midis and even a GitHub repo so you can create something of your own with the material. Really cool resource!

So far, we've learned The Twelve Days of Christmas, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Gaudete, and We Three Kings. Today we started on the Sussex Carol, which is a little trickier for kids.

The kids are enjoying all of them a lot. Twelve Days of Christmas is fun because each one gets their own item in the list for a solo (baby gets to say "partridge in a pear tree!"). They love shouting the chorus of Gaudete and We Three Kings. And my daughter has started trying to harmonize on our own during We Three Kings, which is extra exciting because part of the reason I wanted to do this was to trick them into learning to enjoy singing!

Overall, great experience so far. 10/10, would recommend if you've got small kids.

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


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats