whatever, quid

In any case, I wish you all the best @quid - and I hope that your "break" from Stack Exchange is just temporary.

And one could say the same about me - I am definitely less active here than I used to be.

I'm not strict regarding starring here.

I won't be surprised if the above message will lead to the question whether guys is gender-neutral or not. (I think I saw many discussions around this on SE.)

Is this something that people did in the Before Times?

$$\Huge \color{blue}{\text{HAPPY FRIDAY !!}}$$

Y'all were rather well behaved as regards the starring. I am almost disapointed.

@user85795 yes

@user21820: I would go even further that one should have the guts to face the consequences of their actions rather than justifying their acts on basis on religious texts (or anything said by some authority). The idea of getting away with the consequences seems to give a high to a lot of people.

@quid $\star \star \star \star \star \star\;\;$...

I'll see all the glory of your starring sprees when I come back.

In my opinion, it is best to always try to improve yourself rather than trying to outdo others.

Sometimes when I look at some random stats on MO, I have to say that it is quite impressive how much work quid did there.

@quid I wish I could downvote comments... BOOO!

@MartinSleziak ah, I did not recall that. I understood what I had said but did not recall the source or why I knew it. Getting old or wise maybe.

@MartinSleziak I have no preference, freeze is fine.

But in general, I think contest math gives a false sense of "smart" to those who do well, and a false sense of "not so smart" to those who don't do so well on a timed test, where speed and tricks and shortcuts are of the essence. Too many math competitions measure competitiveness, capacity to think clearly under time pressure, capacity to recall mnemonics and shortcuts and tricks from eons of training. Those qualities do not map, bijectively, with qualities indicating mathematical brilliance.

@BillDubuque Stop changing the subject every time anyone makes a valid point you know not how to answer or address.

I don't know whether I am in the minority, but I don't think we should give any kind of explicit or implicit permission (worse still if we say God gave it) for intentional sexual assault of an unwilling person. If war makes you go crazy, do not go to war!

@OmarS as @Xander said the goal is really to prevent bursts. If you edit one question per hours no one will complain even if you total 16 in the end.

Wow suddenly there seems to be a big crowd.

You have a lot of fun and get to talk about things you like, but sometimes you have to give people you like bad grades, which sucks.

Unrelated to what I said above, I generally avoid war stories (whether fiction or non-fiction) because the evils in real life are already depressing enough. Now you know why I like fantasy. =)

*cheap?*

@XanderHenderson TATTLETALE when I tell your mother what you did with all the ink.

@amWhy "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"

I always recommend reading bukowski rather than listening to what people say about him, though. For some reason a lot of people are very opinionated about him in ways that don't seem to have any basis in reality

Now, suddenly, there are a much larger number of young women who have role models. In principle, if one does this every year for a while, you should start to see a return on the investment, in that you will have more young women who apply to the program, because they suddenly have role models.

Thanks for spending time here, today, @quid. I really appreciate it. I will leave you in peace. And I'm sorry to have interrupted in what seems to have been a busy day for you today.

Similarly, spelling bees have very little to do with writing ability.

To qualify the above a bit. It's also fine, maybe even desirable, to engage in "useless activities" if one enjoys them. I mean I play chess which also not really useful. But it's not something one should feel one needs to do.

@quid I've been thinking a lot on the following: I think SE should have one annual day: "We're all new users Day", where, for one SE day, all users, save for mods, are temporarily, for one day, set to rep one, to help remind long term users of the restrictions that new users face, and to experience much of what they've long forgotten. I just think it could be fun. Even if only for a few hours.

Number Theory is also a wide field.

@ArjunRana the point of a pseudonym is not to reveal them.

@Zacky an issue to me is that it raises confidence if users try to be transparent in their approach.

I would however also say that there are limits to the attention we should pay to opinions coming from accounts with no or hardly any activity on the site. Of course we need to listen to concerns of new users, and certainly one does not need to be a "power users" to be involved in debates. But if stiring up meta-controversy is the main activity of an account it does raise questions.

@RithikKapoor I am not a fool.

@RithikKapoor Why? Anyone is free to participate in CURED. They don't even have to speak up, or even show up in the side bar; they can read the entire transcript without ever making the presence known.

@VerónicaRmz. especially in pure math it can be important to explain why one studies something and to motivate it.

@MartinSleziak Thank you for pointing this out to me. I did get a notification. It used to be true that site mods could be pinged in chats associated to the site very easily (and mods have a chat-specific "superping"). But I infrequently use chat superpowers. Anyhow, I will update my answer, probably this evening.

@BillDubuque I honestly have no idea what you are talking about.

@BillDubuque Again, your PERCEPTION of organized voting.

Stop moving the goal posts.

@BillDubuque I think it is a mistake to dismiss feedback from peers like this.

i don't think there's anything wrong about your writing style, @Bill, but if people find it hard to read, they're gonna downvote you. at least they're telling you why

@user1993 as others said mostly it is really a question of luck. It's like riding public transport bus without a ticket, for some nothing will happen, others will get a fine. It does not mean that the ticket controls are biased.

Indeed, moderators generally don't "punish" anyone unless there is a clear pattern.

And moderators don't generally take action unless problems are brought to our attention.