The Reading Room

verbose

2:29 AM

@Randal'Thor Can the same answer be multiply bountied?

bobble

Yep

1081

A: Build a working game of Tetris in Conway's Game of Life

This began as a quest but ended as an odyssey. Quest for Tetris Processor, 2,940,928 x 10,295,296 The pattern file, in all its glory, can be found here, viewable in-browser here. This project is the culmination of the efforts of many users over the course of the past 1 & 1/2 years. Although t...

verbose

ah. Thanks!

Alex

Possibly a record:

474

A: Story where the number 3 is the monster?

The story is "The Homework Horror" by Greg Cox. It was originally printed in Amazing Stories, Volume 62, Issue 1, but was reprinted in Bruce Coville's Book of Nightmares II: More Tales to Make You Scream, which is probably where you read it. The evil number in the book is 5, not 3. Five st...

15 bounties.

Revision history is something to see:

verbose

that is ... quite something

Alex

2:52 AM

For some context, I think it had been the site's top unanswered question. You can see that the answer came 4+ years after the question.

There were an additional 7 bounties on the question from before the answer was posted, so 22 in total.

verbose

ah. but don't bounties posted before an answer expire after two weeks?

Alex

All bounties expire after one week. If no answer is posted than the bounties can't be awarded.

Reminds me of a couple of questions that have their revision history spammed by community bumps.

verbose

Why does Community bump a question?

Alex

97

A: What can cause a question to be bumped?

The following activities will cause a question to be bumped: Addition of an answer Editing the question or any of its answers (even if the answer is deleted) (with some exceptions; see Exceptions for edits bumping posts below) A suggested edit gets approved Using the rollback button or the 10...

The Community user will bump non-negatively scored, open questions every hour that have at least one answer scoring 0 and none scoring more than that.

verbose

3:07 AM

@Alex ah

y'all are weird, how do you remember all the rules and stuff by which this site works? Like, I've been on since 2017 (I was in private beta!) and I still have no idea

bobble

I got a good mind for rules, and a burning desire to know how things work

verbose

I don't mean I was in private beta (he hastens to clarify). I mean I was around when Lit SE was in private beta

I don't remember anything about the time when I was in private beta

Alex

Most of what I know comes from other sites on the network.

bobble

I have extensively read meta discussions on basically everything

verbose

@Alex ah. "All I know is that I know nothing."

@bobble Ah.

bobble

3:10 AM

sometimes when I'm bored in school I'll pick a random tag and look at its highest and lowest voted questions - main-meta or other metas

Alex

That's a good start.

verbose

@bobble ah

Alex

I used to be pretty active on Meta.

Nearly have 10,000 reputation.

verbose

@Alex and @bobble is like "I never meta discussion I didn't like"

What part of the world do you live in, @Alex?

I assume you're not in NYC any longer

Alex

The Underworld.

verbose

3:22 AM

ah

Alex

@verbose Does that imply that I used to be there?

verbose

Well you're at least very familiar with its geography

Alex

Based on my comments to your geography question a few weeks ago?

verbose

yes

Alex

Out of curiosity, what would make you think that I'm not there any longer (on the premise that I was there originally)?

verbose

3:25 AM

Speaking of the underworld, I wonder how that actually works. I mean, if Proserpine is on the surface during spring and summer, and in the underworld during autumn and winter ... like, how does that work in the Southern hemisphere?

@Alex Because you are in chat at times that would be rather late at night (or early in the morning) for NYC.

Alex

That may be good sleuthing. But I also tend to have odd hours.

verbose

@bobble leaves the chat in a very disciplined fashion at around 10p PT, and you waltz in right around then

which would be 1a ET

@Alex okay, good to know.

bobble

@verbose are you sure it's a waltz? I could've sworn I heard a salsa

Alex

I'm not very good at waltzing, though.

verbose

@verbose of course maybe the Southern Hemisphere is the underworld, which would make sense on so many levels

@Alex I never said you waltzed into the room gracefully. I merely said you waltzed in.

@bobble h'm, maybe. Alex is rather saucy

Alex

3:30 AM

Sassy, maybe.

bobble

I've seen you chaps punning off each other. Did you know it takes two to tango?

verbose

@Alex Isn't that a synonym? I thought "sassy" was just a slangy way of saying "saucy" that has become standardized

@bobble nobody wants to see me dance, trust me

Alex

@verbose Hmm, seems you are correct.

verbose

one point to me

bobble

What's the score?

verbose

3:34 AM

@bobble oh Alex is definitely winning

Alex

It should be one that is conducive to waltzing.

Or whatever form of dancing Verbose will try.

@verbose Is that so?

verbose

@Alex it's your personality, you have a winning one

Alex

Thank you.

Wouldn't want to lose that.

verbose

@Alex haha

Alex

3:54 AM

You know, if we don't keep the conversation going you're going to eventually say that I disappear at this time and then try to guess where I am based on that, though in reality I'm still here.

bobble

... but ARE YOU?

Alex

That remains to be seen.

verbose

@Alex (1) You're not typically in the chat at this hour, per previous observation that you tend to come in around the same time @bobble tends to leave, so I wouldn't draw any conclusions (2) I'm actually not that invested in where you live, it was a casual question, and I'm perfectly happy to say "he prefers to keep that information private" and move on, so I wouldn't actually pursue that reasoning

Alex

In that case I no longer need to be active specifically at certain times. I thought I had to throw you off my trail.

(That's a joke.)

verbose

Maybe I'm merely saying that to trick you into letting down your guard, though

Oh well

Alex

4:08 AM

I like that. Always trying to outsmart me.

verbose

@Alex I'm sad that I passed up the opportunity to say "the hours you keep aren't the only odd thing about you" when I had the chance, but I didn't think of it until just now

Alex

That would have deserved a point. But since it took so long I think you lose a point instead.

But I would point out that there's no point in counting your points, because in point of fact I win either way.

I hope that didn't disappoint.

verbose

4:22 AM

@Alex ne point, as the French say.

Alex

Excellent counterpoint.

You're really on point today.

verbose

5:16 AM

@Alex no, no, I've never had ballet lessons, and in any case, I'm male and it's only ballerinas who are en pointe

Rand al'Thor

6:53 AM

@verbose It's the most bountied answer on the entire SE network. The answerer has more than 9000 rep just from that one single post. This blog post gives some idea of why that answer was considered so extraordinary.

@verbose TIL

verbose

7:50 AM

@Randal'Thor ah

b_jonas

8:08 AM

@Randal'Thor Yes, but its position is perilous: stackoverflow.com/a/21468591/2200827 can take over any time with just one bounty.

And StackOverflow has enough users with lots of reps that if they want to race, they can keep up giving more and more bounties to keep the pace with us.

verbose

@b_jonas ah

b_jonas

8:32 AM

Also I encountered like the fourth case when I borrowed a book from a library then later found the same book already on my bookshelf.

verbose

@b_jonas I think I'm missing some context here

b_jonas

There's not much context. It's this book: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/57873442#57873442

The previous one was Stevenson's Treasure island.

That one was even more embarrassing because it was right here in my apartment.

verbose

Oh I see

I didn't parse your phrasing correctly and so was confused, apologies

But if it makes you feel any better: I have two copies of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man because I bought the second having forgotten that I owned the first

And in total I have purchased three copies of that novel over the course of my life

I had a copy in India which I didn't bring with me when I moved to the US

and then I purchased a copy here

and then I purchased another copy here

sigh

Rand al'Thor

8:49 AM

You could rename the second and third copies to A Portrait of the Artist as a Middle-Aged Man and A Portrait of the Artist as an Older Man.

Or maybe every time you buy a new copy, your age reverts to the same as when you bought the first copy. No, wait, that's Dorian Gray.

verbose

@Randal'Thor A few days ago a friend and I were observing that an evil politician (I won't say which party he belongs to because @b_jonas will yell at me) looked considerably older than his years. I mentioned that perhaps in his attic there was a portrait that remained ageless and continued to show him as a young man

Bookworm

11:35 AM

0

Q: Comic strip from Mad Magazine

I'm trying to find a comic strip that originally appeared in Mad and was reprinted in a paperback collection of material from that magazine. I read it in the paperback collection. The strip shows a young man, high school or college age, alone in his bedroom. He is pondering existence. His thought...

Alex

12:06 PM

@verbose Apparently, I did the same with The Prince.

Tsundoku

12:43 PM

@verbose I did the same thing with the Penguin edition of The Merchant of Venice and with My Uncle Napoleon.

@verbose Or the southern hemisphere is the location of Purgatorio.

bobble

8:16 PM

inspiration (and maybe remove character-analysis? literature.stackexchange.com/q/5257/11259

name-significance? literature.stackexchange.com/q/2963/11259

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Yep.

@bobble I suppose so. But if you edit that question, its score may considerably decrease ;-)

bobble

Is a certain mod's vote locked?

Rand al'Thor

Congrats to @GarethRees on being the second person to reach 400 answers here.

bobble

I got 27, that's almost as good, right? :)

Rand al'Thor

It's also a perfect power.

Tsundoku

9:12 PM

I have created tag wiki excerpts for the new tags, except mariem-mint-derwich and elene-dariani (for which we need to do research to answer this question).

It's been a while since I have actually answered a question. Those dirty rotten spammers.

AncientSwordRage

5

A: What should you look for when deciding whether a children's book would be "dyslexia-friendly"?

The article 12 best kids' books for dyslexic and reluctant readers from The Independent may be lumping a few things together because, as the article points out, While you’ll probably know if your child isn’t keen on reading, it’s not always so easy to tell if they are dyslexic, acknowledges Sue ...

Off-topic?

@Randal'Thor I'm 2/3 of the way there, with 00

Tsundoku

@AncientSwordRage Five upvotes and never a close vote. So it's fine, apparently.

AncientSwordRage

@Tsundoku things can be out of scope for a site and still be upvoteworthy

I would have vtc but I don't have the off-topic option yet

Tsundoku

I really can't see anything in it that makes it off topic. Can you?

AncientSwordRage

I was under the impression literature SE was more about the content of books

I could be wrong. Some stacks are better at some types of questions then others

Tsundoku

9:22 PM

We have lots of questions about works that aren't fiction. And you can't define "literature" by looking at content alone. Defining "literature" is like defining "weed", which cannot be defined on the basis of biological characteristics.

Rand al'Thor

@AncientSwordRage Some questions that aren't.

AncientSwordRage

I'm not talking about defining literature. For instance, Sci-Fi stackexchange does story identification where as Movies and TV stackexchange doesn't.

@Randal'Thor that's interesting

Rand al'Thor

It's a bit of an ... odd part of the site scope, quite separate from other types of question, but they've been accepted here for a long time.

AncientSwordRage

@Randal'Thor awesomesauce

Bookworm

11:11 PM

0

Q: In Blood Meridian, significance of puppy shooting scene?

The judge buys for much more than they are worth a couple of puppies which he promptly tosses into a river where they are shot. It is remarkable that someone who very livelihood consists of mass murder, the more the better (and to imagine that such people really existed) would have no better recr...

blood-meridian

Tsundoku

11:36 PM

@Bookworm I though, ha, I'm going to add the author tag, but, as usually, @bobble got to it before me.

@bobble I still haven't identified "it", so I'm calling it "a day" for now.

@Bookworm We've also had a question about someone shooting a dog in To Kill a Mocking Bird. Allusion?

bobble

@Tsundoku poor "it", know one knows its true self

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