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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   4080 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for January 7, 2024

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 was trying to convince some devs at an up-and-coming twitter-esque platform to do away with whitespace and their only argument was that people viewing on a wider screen don't want an entire sentence to span across horizontally.

I wish that these people would get it into their heads that some people do, in fact, want that. I want it very badly! But nobody will give it to me, and it drives me crazy.

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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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