The Reading Room

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1:15 AM

@Randal'Thor they applied that retroactively as well, right? I got small bumps in rep on various sites at some point, I think because of that change. Since I tend to answer more than ask on most of the sites I'm actively on, they weren't huge bumps though.

@Randal'Thor I think what happens is that I start with a question, then start looking into the question to frame it properly, and in the (often minimal) research I do to try to make the question good, I end up finding the answer, and so never posting the question.

While it's broadly true that answers are more difficult to write than questions, I think there are some excellent questions as well, that merit all the rep and upvotes that a well-crafted deserves

verbose

1:29 AM

For instance, I think this question is terrific.

7 hours later…

Rand al'Thor

8:36 AM

@verbose Yep. It did a lot of shaking up of the reputation leagues on various sites. For instance, on Puzzling where I have 200+ questions, I was overtaken in summer 2019 by someone who never posted a question. Then they did the rep recalc, I gained 10k, and he still hasn't re-overtaken me since then.

And yeah, far be it from me to underestimate the value of a good question! Just on average, more work usually goes into an answer than a question. There are exceptions, of course, like your Ant-Man question which contains more research and references than many answers on this site :-)

> Ver Bose: so good at SE posting that his questions contain more information than others' answers.

2 hours later…

verbose

10:12 AM

@Randal'Thor As always, you're just too kind.

verbose

10:26 AM

Did all you LotR fans see the news about the lawsuit filed in Texas against (I kid you not) every member of Congress elected in 2020, every state governor, and every state's Secretary of State, plus (for some reason) Mark Zuckerberg? The lawsuit asks that the court overturn the entire legislative branch and install stewards by analogy with what happened when Aragorn left Gondor kingless.

Here's the relevant footnote:

I read the entire filing, and I'm not entirely sure why they're suing Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, the man doesn't even exist

Well, I missed a step: overturn the legislative branch, which means the counting of electoral votes for Prez and Veep was illegitimate (since no legislative branch exists), which means Biden/Harris (who aren't parties to the lawsuit) aren't legitimately installed, hence the need for stewards.

Very cute.

Bookworm

10:56 AM

Q: Is Candide more noble than Cunégonde?

The Candide novel starts with: The old servants of the house suspected [Candide] to have been the son of the Baron's sister, by a very good sort of a gentleman of the neighborhood, whom that young lady refused to marry, because he could produce no more than threescore and eleven quarterings in h...

verbose

11:07 AM

@Bookworm Isn't it just that because his father is unknown/unacknowledged, he has no quarterings anyway?

Gareth Rees

@verbose It's not even an accurate summary of Tolkien — the kings of Gondor didn't "abandon the throne" as claimed, rather Eärnur was killed by the witch-king

verbose

11:29 AM

@GarethRees Oh dear, the entire suit is likely to be thrown out on a technicality because they got that minor detail wrong 😢

verbose

11:39 AM

H’m I wonder whether Aragorn is eligible to be President. Does anybody here know whether Viggo Mortensen had a Caesarean birth?

The Constitution says the President must be a natural born citizen

Rand al'Thor

11:55 AM

@verbose What the actual heck. ROFL.

@verbose Who's Viggo Mortensen? This is Literature SE, Movies & TV is that way ---->

> Despair thy charm; and let the angel whom thou still hast served tell thee, Aragorn was from his mother's womb untimely ripp'd. Then yield thee, Nazgûl, and live to be the show and gaze o' the time: we'll have thee, as our rarer monsters are, painted on a pole, and underwrit, 'Here may you see the Witch-king.'

verbose

@Randal'Thor here goes:

Rand al'Thor

I was Caesarean born too.

verbose

Me, I sprang fully accoutred from out my father’s forehead.

5 hours later…

b_jonas

5:15 PM

@Randal'Thor They should go back to a system where question upvotes are worth 10 rep points at the summer solictice, 5 rep points at the summer solictice, and intermediate values between them.

Rand al'Thor

@b_jonas I guess one of those "summer"s should be "winter"?

b_jonas

oops, yes. 5 rep points at the winter solictice.

2 hours later…

Bookworm

6:58 PM

Q: Looking for the title and/or author of an older book... It was a book I read in the 90's, paperback, red cover, kind of racy for the times

(I've italicized the things that I know are facts. the rest is possibly confabulated memories.) a. I read this book in the 90's, I don't remember the actual storyline. I do remember that the main character was a man and that there was mention of cocaine use and hookers. I remember this because I ...

identification-request mystery-novels

2 hours later…

Bookworm

8:41 PM

Q: Faust on necromancy

As a comment on a disaster, someone quoted orally in German from Faust and during the brief interval we had explained it like that one should be careful with calling upon bad spirits. The German verb "mahnen" was used. May someone be helpful in coming to terms with where and how this is expressed...

quote-source johann-wolfgang-von-goethe faust

Bookworm

9:07 PM

Q: Did Gaiman and Pratchett troll an interviewer who thought they were religious fanatics?

TVTropes says: In real life: Gaiman and Pratchett did a radio interview when the book came out, and slowly realized that the interviewer wasn't aware that the book was fictional, and thought they were a couple of religious kooks writing about what they thought would be the real apocalypse. They ...

identification-request neil-gaiman terry-pratchett good-omens

bobble

@Bookworm @Randal'Thor I found a transcript of an interview where the two spoke about that interview... would that be an answer?

Rand al'Thor

@bobble Sure, that would at least confirm that it happened.

bobble

I did not expect to write a Lit answer today, but that question was a bit too tempting. Posted.

Rand al'Thor

@bobble We might go HNQ with it too.

bobble

true, with the title alone

Rand al'Thor

9:19 PM

+2 / +2 in less than 20 minutes and an interesting title.

bobble

should I try to drive friends into upvoting it? o_O

Rand al'Thor

No.

Let it go naturally where it will.

2 hours later…

Eng Lit Learner

11:37 PM

Q: In the Whiter Shade of Pale is the miller's tale a reference to the "Miller tale" in Chaucer's, "The Canterbury Tales?"

Chaucer's The Miller's Tale in the Canterbury's Tales is a weird story about a older Miller, his young, beautiful wife who sleeps with a young Oxford student and a admiring young clergyman involved in a strange sexual relationship