The Reading Room

12:56 AM

Do y'all think this question is still too vague?

It was definitely too vague before the edit, but I'm not sure how much your edit pushed it into answerable territory. Will defer to the more experienced users.

Prince North Læraðr

I'm not sure if I want to vote to reopen yet. I will also wait on more experienced users

verbose

2:48 AM

@PrinceNorthLæraðr What I really wanna do is have four of us each give one answer: (1) It's deeply philosophical (2) It's emotional (3) it's carefree and (4) there's no overall tone. Then the four of us can have a deathmatch on chat to see which one wins.

Prince North Læraðr

Hehe

Well, the "four of us" would be you, Rand, Tsundoku, and Gareth. I'm just the intern/secretary :P

verbose

No, no, I respectfully decline. It has to be the four folks with the greatest rep on the site. I think that would mean it's Mithical instead of me. (He just underwent basic training in the IDF, so the smart money is on whatever he chooses as the tone.)

Prince North Læraðr

^They

Mithical's pronoun is they :)

Mithical doesn't answer as much any more, so the four most prolific answerers: Rand, Tsundoku, Gareth, and Matt can duke it out

bobble

My bobblies will line the stands as the cheering section

Prince North Læraðr

Cheering for whom? :P

bobble

3:03 AM

they'll draw straws and split up evenly to be fair

Prince North Læraðr

Ah

verbose

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Ah. Thanks for the correction, and deepest apologies to Mithical.

verbose

3:29 AM

@bobble a propos of nothing, during the Democratic primaries, whenever I'd see Tom Steyer nod his head up and down for no apparent reason, I'd want to buy bobblehead dolls of all the candidates

bobble

for reference, these are bobblies:

in The Sphinx's Lair, Nov 14 at 0:27, by Sciborg

verbose

Ah. I misunderstood what your username meant, not knowing the reference

bobble

they are little crowns with pointies on top, and they drain puzzling ability

The bobblies actually came after the username + avatar; they were birthed out of random chatter in The Sphinx's Lair

Prince North Læraðr

Ah yes. The Bobble Meta

New Topic Challenge Suggestion

4:23 AM

0

A: New Literature SE Topic Challenge Suggestions Thread

Literary Hoaxes Every few years, the literary world becomes aware of a new hoax perpetrated on it. The persona of JT LeRoy and the fake memoir of James Frey are two relatively recent examples. Examples of literary hoaxes go back at least as far as the 5th century BCE, when Onomacritus inserted fo...

verbose

@Tsundoku New topic challenge suggestion?

Prince North Læraðr

Eyy exactly 1500

verbose

@PrinceNorthLæraðr not sure whether you're aware of the discussion about an old-english-literature tag. I agree with you that English 1.0 is sufficiently distinct from English 3.0 to merit its own tag.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr congratulations!

bobble

If I downvote three answers, I'll have exactly a third of North's rep

Prince North Læraðr

5:07 AM

Old English is about as similar to Modern English as Latin is similar to Italian

bobble

5:38 AM

Italian = LAT(AI<)IN* = ITAL(IA)N*

So Italian is just mangled Latin with some backwards AI thrown in

Rand al'Thor

8:26 AM

@Tsundoku I agree, but things like fiction-identification or resource-identification are again straying into the territory of "doesn't sound natural for all the different things we might try to ID". Maybe we can have identification-request and put a big note in the tag wiki excerpt that quote-ID is a separate thing with its own tag.

@Tsundoku Tell them to read some Hercule Poirot ;-)

What's the difference between Flemish and Dutch? I thought they were the same, and that Belgian people are generally either French speaking or Flemish/Dutch speaking. Wikipedia calls Flemish a "dialect cluster of the Dutch language" - does that mean it's a separate thing or more like a subset of Dutch?

@bobble Just the series tag, no need for individual book tags within that. PS: the answer might be "because Brandon Sanderson can't write" :-P

verbose

8:44 AM

@Randal'Thor or what if we rename quote-id to something like quote-source or, if it's not too long, quote-source-query

Rand al'Thor

That's a really good idea actually.

verbose

@NapoleonWilson okay as you suggested I did make rather substantial edits instead of going in to tinker with little ones. The two answers needed them anyway. I still hate that they get bumped to the top of the list, but eh.

Rand al'Thor

It's not really "identifying" quotes in the same way that we "identify" stories and books: in story-id we're given a description and we need to find the name of the book/author; in quote-id we're given the quote itself and we need to find its source.

verbose

@Randal'Thor right, that's why I'm suggesting quote-source-query

Rand al'Thor

You're absolutely right; I'm just articulating an argument for why, in case we need it for a meta post later :-)

verbose

8:50 AM

ah

Bookworm

10:53 AM

0

Q: What's the implying meaning of "sentence" in "Home is the first sentence"?

An excerpt from essay by Marita Golden in the book "three minutes or less: life lessons from America's greatest writers " Writers are always headed or looking for home. Home is the first sentence, questing into the craggy terrain of imagination. Home is the final sentence, polished, perfected, n...

meaning

Tsundoku

11:17 AM

@Randal'Thor "Flemish" means from or related to Flanders. In a linguistic context, such a dialect research, the term can indeed be used to refer to a dialect cluster. But the official language is called Dutch.

There are a few differences between (standard) Dutch spoken in the Netherlands and (standard) Dutch spoken in Flanders, mostly related to pronunciation and vocabulary & usage.

@Bookworm The Great Vowel Shift question became HNQ twelve hours ago.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Congratuations! How many of those reps came from tag edits?

CowperKettle

11:50 AM

> It was the first, and being first, was best,
but now we lay it down to ever rest.
Now pause with me a moment, shed some tears.
For auld lang syne, for love, for years and years
of faithful service, duty done, I weep.
Lay down thy packet, now, O friend, and sleep.

Requiem of the ARPANET, February 1990

Bookworm

12:32 PM

0

Q: What does "tickets, visas, lingua franca will all become irrelevant" in a context?

An excerpt from essay by Marita Golden in the book "three minutes or less: life lessons from America's greatest writers " Like their creator, my fictional characters reject the notion of life lived on automatic pilot. The most important people in my books see life as a flame, something that when...

meaning

Rand al'Thor

3:21 PM

@Tsundoku Another deserving HNQ.

New Topic Challenge Suggestion

3:34 PM

0

A: New Literature SE Topic Challenge Suggestions Thread

I wish to propose the name of Alberto Moravia pseudonym of Alberto pinchable. Born-NOV 28.1907 Rome ITALY Died on SEPT 26 1990 ROME.His works are available online. Italian journalist,short-story writer, and novelist are known for his fictional po...

bobble

4:25 PM

How much do I need to put into my "why is this ironic?" question? I currently have the relevant quote and my specific questions; is anything else required?

Mithical

not... really

my general questions structure is: 1-2 sentences explaining the background; relevant quote; 1-2 tautologies of the question title

bobble

googles "tautologies"

Mithical

it's the science of stretching ropes, or pulling strings

3

(that joke has several different layers and I am unduly proud of it)

Bookworm

4:41 PM

0

Q: Why does Slowswift find this remark ironic?

In The Hero of Ages, Vin and Slowswift have this conversation: "Cett is one of the finest poets I know, child," said Slowswift, waving her toward a chair. "We shared our work with one another for a good decade or so before politics stole him away. He didn't like stories either. To him, everythin...

brandon-sanderson mistborn

Prince North Læraðr

@Mithical claps

@Tsundoku 652!

I only need 5 more edits to usurp Benjamin to the 6th place of "all time editors"

(I'm coming for you, Gareth)

Except Gareth actually edits stuff, so it might be a tad more difficult

Bookworm

5:06 PM

0

Q: Was it normal in 1917 for someone to call his uncle "sir"?

In chapter 17 of The Just Men of Cordova (1917) by Edgar Wallace, the author is describing a conversation between an old uncle and his nephew, who was an assistant-commissioner of police. In a previous passage, the old lord said, revealing the real identity of his nephew: "I thought it was," sai...

edgar-wallace the-just-men-of-cordova

Gareth Rees

6:26 PM

@Bookworm Question looks good! Irony is indeed difficult.

I think my favourite instance of poetic irony is the line "Brave Galuppi! that was music! good alike at grave and gay!" from Robert Browning's "A Toccata of Galuppi's" -- Browning manages to squeeze three levels of nested irony into a single line

Rand al'Thor

@bobble I've read the Mistborn series, but some years ago. Who are Cett and Slowswift? I remember the main features of the story, but not enough to get the context of that question.

Eddie Kal

@Bookworm This is something I wondered about for a long time. Indeed a great Q&A

Rand al'Thor

6:42 PM

@Bookworm Also congrats @bobble, this was apparently the 4000th question on the site. (Excluding deleted ones, so its exact position in the list of all questions may change over time.)

Eddie Kal

@Mithical That would be "repetitions" as opposed to "tautologies". People are overusing the word "tautology"

It is not and shouldn't be used as a synonym for repetition

A tautology is a sentence/paragraph where you say the same thing twice

bobble

@Randal'Thor I'll add some explanation to the question, then

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Oh, no need to edit it into the question! Anyone who's more closely familiar than the book, or has it available to search, would get it. I was just asking in case you can jog my memory enough to understand the claim of irony.

@EddieKal Technically a tautology is a statement which is true under any possible Boolean valuation of its variables.

;-)

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor So that's you saying "Math trumps language"? :)

bobble

Cett used to rule Fadrex, until he left to try and conquer Luthadel from Elend (and failed). Vin is on a reconnaissance mission in Fadrex, and Slowswift is one of the informants that Cett told her to contact.

Eddie Kal

6:47 PM

There's the logical tautology and there's the linguistic tautology. When the latter meets the former, they say, "no relation"

bobble

Elend and Vin want to take Fadrex back mostly for its resource cavern, but also to placate Cett, who is annoyed that he doesn't have his city back

Tsundoku

@EddieKal Logic allows you to make infallible weather predictions: "Tomorrow it will rain or it won't rain."

bobble

Is that enough, Rand?

Eddie Kal

@Tsundoku Yup, and when you say, "I say tomorrow it is going to rain and it is going to be wet out." That's a tautology of a different kind.

Tsundoku

Exactly.

Rand al'Thor

6:53 PM

@EddieKal And (here my inner descriptivist stifles my inner pedant) the casual tautology in the sense used by Mithical?

bobble

how many inner personalities are fighting inside you?

Eddie Kal

@Randal'Thor No, their sentence calls for "repetition". "Tautology" is a misuse.

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Oh, Cett's that guy? Unable to walk, became a local ruler after the events of books 1-2?

bobble

yep, Cett's the paraplegic

I don't remember books 1-2 as well because I only own The Hero of Ages

Mithical

7:09 PM

@EddieKal "saying the same thing in different ways"

Tsundoku

@Bookworm "Sir: 4. A title given to the loin of beef, which one of our knigs knighted in a fit of good humour". Samuel Johnson, in A Dictionary of the English Language, 1799. Sounds perfectly normal to me.

Prince North Læraðr

7:36 PM

Happy thanksgiving to all y'all aMeRiCans

@Mithical ~~Oh, like Mith is stupid~~ LIKE MITHICAL IS AMAZING :)))))

Tsundoku

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I wish you happy thanksigving, my liege.

Prince North Læraðr

@Tsundoku I don't know, aren't you the superior editor?

bobble

@PrinceNorthLæraðr why isn't the "n" capitalized? seems inconsistent

Prince North Læraðr

Nah, it's usually "random"

Tsundoku

@PrinceNorthLæraðr What did I misspell?

Prince North Læraðr

7:45 PM

@Tsundoku That's a question I should be asking

Rand al'Thor

@Tsundoku Your Liège?

Tsundoku

my liege

Rand al'Thor

I know. Was just funny coming from a Belgian :-)

Prince North Læraðr

I was considering making that joke :P

@Randal'Thor @Tsundoku What to do with proverbs?

Rand al'Thor

One solution would be to leave it alone and let the single-question-no-wiki algorithm get it.

It's borderline. My initial instinct was that that's not worth a tag, but then I thought maybe it's a valid topic.

Prince North Læraðr

7:56 PM

Yeah, that's my thinking too

Tsundoku

So now two users have posted 342 answers:

bobble

I've posted 2, so I'm 1/171 of the way there!

Rand al'Thor

Some proverbs might be so old and traditional that an original source and author can't be identified. Then how would one tag a question about them? Maybe proverbs would make sense in that case.

Prince North Læraðr

Hm

Still waiting on Tsundoku

Tsundoku

I don't see why we should keep proverbs.

Prince North Læraðr

8:00 PM

And why not?

Tsundoku

For the same reason that we don't have time-travel.

Prince North Læraðr

It's a sub-topic?

@Randal'Thor I don't know. I initially opposed it, but it might be along the same vein as like oral tradition. But upon further deliberation I think the tag might be too niche to be of real practical use

Tsundoku

It seems even less than a subtopic.

Prince North Læraðr

I think maybe a broader sayings or something might be needed? It doesn't fit neatly into oral-tradition

Or maybe it doesn't even need to be worried about?

Removed the proverbs

bobble

8:54 PM

@Randal'Thor, that was certainly an unexpected answer :D

Prince North Læraðr

Hehe

verbose