The Reading Room

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Hamlet

12:22 AM

@BESW if you ask the question ill go to bat for it.

BESW

...That would probably require knowing/caring more about Randian narrative.

user15026

1:13 AM

Apropos of nothing, A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is really good so far.

BESW

Ah, yeah, that was a fun little book.

1 hour later…

Hamlet

2:38 AM

well, we'll see how the site reacts to me going as political as I can go.

A: Why rename Kipling's poem "The Beginnings" to “The Wrath of the Awakened Saxon”?

Given the kinds of websites that are publishing this poem, I don't think it's a stretch to say that this change has something to do with race or racism. And the thing about race and racism is that these ideas are inseparable from gender and reproduction. There's a reason why so many states and ...

Although I'm not really injecting my own politics into that answer (other than my use of quote marks); I'm just explaining other people's politics.

Oh, if anyone asks about my citation of wikipedia... I'm citing it for a basic historical fact that serves as background for my answer, but doesn't make up the meat of my analysis.

Hamlet

3:15 AM

As an aside, one of my biggest beefs with literary academia is they focus on things that aren't really that important, such as plays written by some dead guy, and overlook all of the more important things they could be studying that have huge implications for the present day.

I don't begrudge people studying the writings of dead guys, but when it's an entire profession that is supposed to create value for the rest of humanity...

BESW

Mmm. I'm definitely of the opinion that media crit tends to fall unnecessarily into the category of "such academic pursuits as begin and end in words alone."

I'm more fond of theories and lenses which focus on understanding how contemporary audiences interact with works and what effect that interaction has on the community.

Hamlet

@BESW well yeah, that's another thing; I really dislike the emphasis on text.

BESW

> The learned of the day must direct the people to acquire those branches of knowledge which are of use, that both the learned themselves and the generality of mankind may derive benefits therefrom. Such academic pursuits as begin and end in words alone have never been and will never be of any worth.

> "Lawḥ-i-Maqṣúd," by Bahá'u'lláh

Hamlet

@BESW what's the context of that quote?

BESW

3:30 AM

It's a letter written by the Founder of the Bahá'í Faith to an early believer in the community of Damascus and Jerusalem, some time between 1873 and 1892. It's got broad sections that are generally about the importance of education in the advancement of humanity.

user15026

@Hamlet yesssssss this

Hamlet

There's a reason why I don't study literature formally.

5 hours later…

BESW

8:16 AM

Next Monday! The e-Tangata storytellers discuss what they are working to achieve. https://natlib.govt.nz/events/the-e-tangata-storytellers-october-02-2017 https://t.co/oBqvwrf5zI

Tweeted by NLNZ on September 26, 2017 at 11:40 PM

2 hours later…

Bookworm

10:04 AM

Q: Does "Animal Farm" explicitly state anywhere in the text that it is in fact an allegory?

I first heard of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" in high school when a teacher mentioned that it was an allegory of the Soviet State. So I read it 2 years later with that understanding. While recently reading another novel on the same subject I was led to wonder: If I had come across "Animal Farm...

4 hours later…

BESW

1:46 PM

@Librarian We're the Stack Exchange. We live by the notion that not all forms of communication are created equal, and that placing strict but thoughtful limits on form can create a community that produces improved content.

(Also, this conversation has been had before. Every Stack has it. It's a beaten pulp of an equine on meta.se. I know how it plays out, and the result is dependent only on the tension within each Stack community between individual defensiveness and experiential learning.)

There are many reasons to allow comments-as-answers, yes. But those reasons do not, have never, and likely never will, outweigh the drawbacks in their effect on the quality of the site and its community culture.

Hamlet

@BESW given our eternal beta amnesia...

BESW

Eeeyup.

I mean, sure. Show me a Stack that's figured out how to get answers-as-comments turned into good answers in a timely fashion more than 30% of the time and I'll be happy to re-engage with the issue.

But barring evidence I'm unaware of... nope. Comments as answers are a barometer for a Stack's understanding of what makes the Stack work.

Hamlet

Admittedly, I have left comments as answers if I'm closing a question but feel bad about it.

BESW

Most of us are guilty. I went through a defensive phase about it myself.

And there are times when asking for clarification and giving an answer in a comment are durn near the same thing.

But the typical answer-as-comment is self-admittedly (again, see meta.se) "I could answer this but I'll leave it as an exercise for someone else instead."

The Stack used to have a mechanic for that. It was called Community Wiki. They stopped using that tool for that purpose because it wasn't producing quality content in a ratio that made the effort of curating it worthwhile.

Why would a medium that's harder to curate be a better place?

CW could be curated by everybody. Comments can only be curated by mods.

That's the crux of the issue: it's never "is there any potential good to be had in this policy?" It's always "Is the change in quality content sufficient to justify the effort of enforcing this policy?"

Hamlet

2:05 PM

STOP MAKING SENSE

BESW

I need to wash dishes but a gecko is eating the ice cream dregs out of the bowl in the sink.

It looks so happy I don't want to disturb it.

BESW

2:20 PM

One last thing:

in RPG General Chat, Jun 30 '15 at 1:42, by BESW

Handy rule of thumb: If you ever ask yourself "Should I make this post community wiki?" the answer is "No."

(As always, RPG.SE has done this drama for you, so you don't have to.)

2 hours later…

Bookworm

4:53 PM

Q: Metaphors about hardship

I have been racking my brain with the meaning of three expressions: taut-jawed men - does it mean that they are stern looking, that their facial expression is tight and tense? brick-lipped, hard-heeled women - same sense as number 1, I mean that they are with pursed lips or are they wearing som...

meaning

2 hours later…

Hamlet

6:56 PM

unsurprisingly, "What demarcates literary fiction against popular fiction?" is attracting some very poor answers.

Gallifreyan

Was in our library's reference section near the microfilm machine.

Hamlet

7:21 PM

If I had to make one critique of the various answers this question has attracted, it's that the answers all talk about processes, but don't answer questions such as who or what is behind these processes, and how or why these processes occur. If you find yourself saying things such as "literary fiction is widely considered _____" or "books become classics when ____" but don't explain who or what is behind literary fiction being widely considered as _______, or why literary fiction is widely considered as _____, it's worth thinking about rewriting the answer. — Hamlet ♦ 7 mins ago

Hamlet

7:39 PM

@Ash any chance I can persuade you to write an answer to this: literature.stackexchange.com/questions/3611/…

If you wrote an answer describing your experiences with reading, say, young adult novels (which are frequently derided as not literary), that would get an upvote and a bounty from me.

Honestly, pretty much anything would be better than these here's a definition, I'm not going to tell you why it's a good definition or where it comes from, but trust me, it's correct sort of answers.

user15026

@Hamlet Heck, I can probably do it from a perspective of YA and/or romances (both of which I read a decent amount of). It won't be til after work today, but I could consider it and see what I come up with. It's not going to have much beyond my own experiences with lit vs. not but I will do what I can

Hamlet

@Ash your own experiences would be perfect. Just try explain the why behind your experiences. And examples are always good.'

user15026

8:03 PM

I will think it over

Hamlet

8:22 PM

thanks!

1 hour later…

BESW

9:47 PM

I Moved to LA to Work in Animation by Natalie Nourigat.

"a newspaper writer in 1840 ignited a national craze for "machine poetry"—mechanical, soulless verse, with the conceit of machine production.

...okay, the new one-boxing-images-inside-tweets thing has a few bugs to work out.

BESW

10:39 PM

The Holotypic Occlupanid Research Group: A Database of Synthetic Taxonomy.

Bookworm

11:31 PM

-1

Q: Is there a good English translation of "Foundations of Geopolitics" by Aleksandr Dugin?

This book is fairly geopolitically significant, because it describes a lot of the recent events in the world as driven by Russia and Russian disinformation campaigns. I'm looking for an English copy of this book in order to read it myself, but as of yet, I've been entirely unable to find a reli...