“On the grasping hand”?

Question

I understand on the other hand.

But what's on the grasping hand?

Source: Stack Overflow blog.

Answer 1

The poster is mis-quoting "On the gripping hand", as mentioned introduced in the novel The Mote in God's Eye by American writers Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

and is used (by the alien species Moties, and us nerds who read and enjoyed the book) when there are three alternatives
One one hand...
On the other hand...
On the gripping hand...

The saying is native to the alien Moties, who have three arms, one of which is stronger but possesses less finesse.

Original text [bold is mine]:

Of course, there are other factors to consider; for instance, now that you have a mostly-empty server sitting around, you’ll probably find ways that it can be put to use. On the other hand, your electricity bill is probably a few $/month higher than it would be if you didn’t have that server. On the grasping hand, if you used a good online backup system (cough tarsnap cough) you probably wouldn’t have to upload all 5GB every day, since there’s probably large amounts of that data which remains unchanged from day to day.