I couldn't resist bookmarking yesterday's limerick extravaganza as Limerick NIght.

Most of the conversations I've bookmarked are D&D sessions, but here is a funny one where North considered which class (from D&D) various biblical figures would fit into

A bit puzzling if you're unfamiliar with D&D, like I am, but nonetheless funny.

You missed limerick writing night, @Gallifreyan!

I did read it

Never was good at writing any sort of poetry myself

Someone gifted me a sketchbook for New Year's and now I'm turning it into a bullet journal

In hopes it'll make its way to properly suggestible person in some distant future and they'll reconstruct me from it a la Tom Riddle's diary

Maybe I'll add haikus to it

Well, at least that's useful. I haven't used bullet journals myself, but there are plenty of YouTube videos about it, for example by people who use it for language learning.

I've seen subreddits dedicated to bullet journals

I'm already discouraged from continuing with it because everyone else seems to have been to bullet journal art school

And then there's me, not able to write in a straight, parallel lines

I could've sworn I had a question I was going to ask here on the site, but now I can't remember

I've also seen some of those artsy examples on YouTube, but that isn't necessary.

I used to carry a notebook around for that sort of thing. I still don't have a smartphone.

@Tsundoku That's the modern-day anarchism we need

@Gallifreyan I know what you mean, but I would hardly call not owning a smartphone "anarchism". It's non-conformist at best.

Duly noted

My favourite new word of the week is "swot"

The noun, that is

Something for a haiku? ;-)

Re-watching Doctor Who, actually

"Haiku" rhymes with "Doctor Who". You are clearly on your way to becoming a poet! ;-)

@Tsundoku I once tried to get out of doing the laundry by asserting that separating the whites from the coloreds was inherently racist. My (Caucasian) husband, unmoved, said: "just think of it as getting the whites into hot water."

Also, my niece used to shelve her books by color. I don't know whether she still does it.

@verbose Hot water? I wash it all at the same temperature.

@verbose So did not only know how to do things with words but also with books.

@Tsundoku If "whites" includes sheets and stuff here, iirc it's recommended to wash them at a higher temperature for hygienic purposes, not to mention towels and stuff

@Gallifreyan Isn't that advice a bit outdated because laundry detergents have become much more effective over recent decades?

Perhaps it's geared towards the "use fewer chemicals" crowd, or some detergents are more effective than others

If I was something at a higher temperature, then it's 60°C.

And more and more types of fabric can't stand being washed at higher temperatures.

Yep, there's that

That includes fabrics made from cotton.

Though I do believe bed related things were more conservative in that regard

I should probably check that though

Right, bed sheets can still be washed at 90°C, as far as I know. (Well, if they are cotton. I don't have silk bed sheets are anything fancy like that.)

(Reminds me of Sheridan from Keeping up Appearances.)

For a short time in early February 2021, the Reading Room was known as the Launderette.

A hygiene PSA a day keeps the germs away

@Gallifreyan "The Witch's Familiar", Missy storytime?

Only place I can remember the word "swot" being used in DW.

I seem to have missed out on some fun here

@Tsundoku I also tried getting out of laundry duty by saying, plaintively, to the husband: “But I don’t want to deter gents. I want to encourage them.” 🧺 He was unimpressed

@verbose "deter gents" :-D

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I almost changed my username to Tsundoku misses PrinceNorthLæraðr.

maybe the key is to write a limerick about North

I really have no inspiration tonight.

*and so forth

It's 6 a.m. here. What am I doing?

I don't know. Perhaps the Tsundoku should zzz

Yeah, he should. But he wants to post an answer first.

So I took a lot of time to write an answer about a poem that end with the word "It is time". I should have heeded what I read ...

go zzz

I willzzzz

@Tsundoku Aww

@verbose Sorry been pretty busy

Bit tired, but I will get to the tags tomorrow :D

Geez it's been a week since I've dropped by

less time than me and the Lair

Blowing my own horn here a bit, but for those of you who like Shakespeare: I wrote an essay some time ago that might be of interest.

What quest brings you here @PrinceNorthLæraðr ? A quest for a gold badge, I presume? ;-)

@Tsundoku Hehe, you know me :P

How about stopping by to say hello to some old friends? :P

Of course. When some of the regulars don't stop by for some time, I wonder how they are doing.

The Best Books by Albert Camus recommended by Jamie Lombardi.

The Stranger was the first time I absolutely loathed a book assigned by English class

And it's not even an English book.

@bobble mine aren't double lined, the ones that don't fit just get stacked all over the place

Currently reading: Inkheart, by Cornelia Funke.

I've been in a book rut for some time now. Finished off a few books that I really liked and nothing else seemed to compare. Been hard for me to start another.

Plus I have been (inadvisably) reading news

@verbose is on 8808 rep. Get two more silver badges and eight more upvotes, and you'll have a lovely rep-badge set to screenshot.

or mess with the source code a bit to make it show up as such right now

@Mithical Oh nice. That's a fun read for fantasy book lovers. Very easy to, um, get sucked into the story.

(If you don't get yet why that's a pun, you will in book 2 at the latest.)

I heard they made a film out of it, but dunno if it's any good.

@Randal'Thor (groans)

@bobble Hehe, reading the news is a rabbit hole. Once you start, you can't stop

@PrinceNorthLæraðr No, that's reading Watership Down.

Ha!

Also I've been reading the Fontane poems quite a bit, trying to think of Topic Challenge questions... I have two now, so I'm beating you, Rand!

Are you glad you joined Lit SE, bobble? :P

Still feeling a bit guilty about not having many answers, but reading other's answers is fascinating.

@bobble Good!

I try to contribute questions to almost every topic challenge, but I don't want to be the bus factor 1 in the topic challenge program :-P

@bobble eh, i don't have very many answers here either

@GarethRees, I wasn't sure if inspiration applied to my question because the excerpt & wiki seem to indicate that it only works for questions about a specific part of a work, instead of about the work as a whole. Is my understanding wrong/incomplete, then?

@bobble The tags work for us, not us for the tags! So we can use our power to change the tag description.

Wow, what an interesting poet

I see you looked into McGonagall

Well, I had to, to write his wiki tag

How does one become a "bad poet"?

poor use of rhyme and meter?

some of his rhymes just straight-out don't work

I just

Never thought I'd read a Wikipedia post that said

"Some of his works are considered the worst in English literature"

Bwahahahaha

It just took me by surprise to have a question that features one of the worst poets of all times

Like

I'm so used to writing about why X author was such an influential writer

> He read his poems while the crowd was permitted to pelt him with eggs, flour, herrings, potatoes and stale bread. For this, he received fifteen shillings a night. McGonagall seemed happy with this arrangement, but the events became so raucous that the city magistrates were forced to put a ban on them.

Bwahahaha

> In episode 13 of season 2 of the Canadian TV series Murdoch Mysteries, a murder victim is holding a copy of a book entitled "The Collected Works of William Topaz McGonagall". While the death appears accidental, the detective suspects foul play because "it is highly unlikely that anyone would voluntarily reach for a volume of McGonagall."

Hahahaha

Wow, just how bad are his works? Geez

did you read the poem I linked in my question?

I'm reading "The Famous Tay Whale"

His poems unironically reminds me of a poem I wrote once except I purposely wrote it as bad

Like it was a junk poem

Are you going to ask a question about him?

Very tempted

> In the Harry Potter books, author J.K. Rowling chose the surname of the Professor of Transfiguration, Minerva McGonagall, because she had heard of McGonagall and loved the surname.[27]

I was wondering if they were related

Except Minerva McGonagall is an absolute goddess

Curt, sarcastic, and hella BADASS

Well William was bad, and was probably called an ass as an insult

so bad-ass

there

True

> You look in excellent health to me, Potter, so you will excuse me if I don’t let you off homework today. I assure you that if you die, you need not hand it in

Worth updating the question? I was referring to Fontane as a German poet because that's what I saw him described as. Does it matter that when he wrote the poem in question Germany didn't exist?

Hm, not really the right person to ask -_-;

I honestly forgot a large amount of cramming for AP World, it's been too long

I'd rather forget everything I learned in WHAP

@bobble Even the German Wikipedia article says, "Heinrich Theodor Fontane (...) war ein deutscher Schriftsteller, Journalist und Kritiker." So describing him as a German author should be fine.

should I (or someone else) respond to the comment?

Before I forget: I have written a limerick to celebrate @Mithical's multilingual punning skills:

> "Plong!"

The perils of rhyme ...

and keeping a time ...

@Randal'Thor That's the one. Impressive memory you've got there ;)

Okay all the empty tag wiki excerpts have been written

I'm coming for you, Gallifreyan

heh, I'm in the top 10!

Hold crap bobble is going to surpass me in rep soon if I don't start posting questions

you were just as surprised when I passed you on Puzzling a while back

Yes

Quite the ambitious one, eh?

Ooh, some rivalry here?

quite the curious one

@Tsundoku No, not really. I'm just trying to delay the inevitable

My questions are, in general, not that highly voted

I only have one Good Question badge here; on Puzzling nearly every question has one

Most questions here aren't that highly voted

You're lucky if you get five upvotes

It's true. I think I still have questions without any upvotes.

okay, not nearly every on Puzzling. 23/33 questions have at least +10

Okay, flex

also, I worked the whole morning and this DARN STUDY GUIDE isn't even half done

gheiowuhguiaeh

Out of the 223 questions I have posted here, only 7 have 10 or more upvotes.

I have one question with 17 upvotes and that's the only post that has 10 or more upvotes

How about answers?

I have 4 answers

one is the interview one, at +41

14 questions, 12 answers

wait +41

that's huge

!!!

then Mind Game at +5, Streets of Gold at +4, and Caged Bird at +2

That's ridiculously large

well, 42 now :P

hehe

I assumed you had already upvoted

My two highest-rated answers on Puzzling are +64 and +40, the HNQ'd mazes a while back

My highest-voted answer across the SE network is on German SE, where I haven't contributed that many answers.

I actually haven't checked up on this site's activity in a while

@Tsundoku hehe

My highest is in Puzzling SE

with 45 upvotes for a question

pouts all I got is +37

My highest voted question is an accessibility issue I posted on Meta SE: +49.

Fun fact: my fourth-highest voted answer is about How to pronounce 'C++' in Spanish even though my Spanish is far from impressive. But I did some research and raked in 31 votes.

^ And that question has 10 answers.

@Tsundoku you might get some more upvotes on that - the answer has several typos which I have submitted a suggested edit for

@bobble Oh, thanks. But several typos?

meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/77028

admittedly I had to add some clarifying quotes to get over the 6-char limit, but there was a typo that would have make some inline code broken

Ah, in the answer. I had overlooked that.

i am a typo finder

> bobble-checker

@Bookworm You could probably ask the same about boating accidents on Lake Erie. ;-)

@bobble votes aren't everything

Sometimes, the thing that gets tons of votes is something you'd prefer to not have to post at all

@NapoleonWilson I admit that it would be trivial to flood the front page with "why did X write Y" but I'm really curious on this one in particular as well as the topic of "why did X write Y" in general

Sure. Though, looking at Maynard, the Tay bridge and this one, I guess he just had a hunch for catastrophies.

Mith, did you ever reproduce the bug for linking-account creation and how "cancel" doesn't work?

We have diaries, letters and notebooks by Fontane, plus testimonies from contemporaries, so it is plausible that the question can be answered based on biographical information. This is not the case for every author.

I did not

@PrinceNorthLæraðr The way to have a bunch of highly voted posts here is to have been around during the private beta period.

Couldn't figure out login for my sock

@bobble oh no! Not the news!

Day 1 of Lit.SE had ridiculously many questions.

@Tsundoku gasp you left an Oxford comma out

@bobble I don't use the Oxford comma.

heathen

^

Rand, I implore you to fix Tsundoku's grave error by editing his message

I already use more than enough commas in German, so I prefer to go light on them in other languages.

I found a Data.SE query about who has the highest average question score, and most of them were people who were active in the private beta days (even without so much quality) and drifted away since then.

People like Tsundoku and Gareth missed out by not having been around in the very early days.

It took them quite a while to rise to the top row of the rep leagues, despite the quality of their posts.

@Randal'Thor That confirms the impression I have always had about private betas.

where are we now?

In the Reading Room.

(source: Gilles via HDE)

@bobble gasp You didn't begin your sentence with a capital letter! :-P

Wow, that's indeed a lot worse!

Use Oxford commas or my bunnies will attack you

@bobble Pfff, I'm a Stratfordian. The Oxfordians are nutcases. :-P

@bobble You were right about the upvotes.

@verbose Bookmarked. Which brings me to my next limerick:

eats, shoots and leaves

@Tsundoku technically it was the other way round. I always liked Sidney but concluded he was the 🐐 only after some deep-dive research

@bobble thinking about leaving off the Oxford comma just so those cuties will attack me

note to self: ask some Sidney questions here, they'll get good answers

Here's a cuter picture of my buns <3

@bobble squeeeeeee

@bobble do you follow @noahpinion on Twitter? He tweets about economics, bunnies, the ‘rona, and Taiwan 🇹🇼 (not necessarily in that order)

@verbose no, because I don't have a Twitter account. I don't read it either, except for lone Tweets linked in news articles.

What should one do for what is essentially a link-only answer to an identification question? (here)

@bobble In the 21st century there are still folks who don't have Twitter?! Oh ... how I envy them. 😁 Good on you. Twitter is a toxic cesspool and a huge waste of time.

What are them bunnies called?

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I dunno, it comes naturally to me

The slightly larger one, on the right, is called Midnight because she is pure-black except for her belly and paws. The one on the left is called Diana because she has small white specks on her back, which my sister evocatively says "are dotted around like stars in the sky". Diana, the Roman goddess, has the moon as her symbol. Plus my sister is a Riordan nerd like me.

They're sisters, adopted from a local rescue because their previous family was unable to care for them.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr That's more votes than I've ever gotten on a question, and more than I've gotten on most answers. My top two upvoted questions (16 and 13 votes) were both asked this week, and both on French.SE, of all places, smh. They were both about Belgian French, and I suspect @Tsundoku just unleashed his hordes on them or sth.

On Lit.SE, all my questions and all but one of my answers have at least one upvote. The one answer that doesn't actually got an upvote, but then a downvote from a user who is now suspended. (He commented saying he was downvoting, and gave a totally bogus reason. 🙄 )

@verbose Well, I got 45 upvotes for kidnapping mods, so don't be too jealous

And the 17 upvote question was because it was a LoTR question :P

My 37 upvotes were for describing tic-tac-toe with flags, which I think was popular because it was simple and relatively novel.

Yeah

It was creative!

My +21 question here is at least 50% because it said "profanity" in the title, which I admit was stretching it a bit

I just spent an hour practicing improvising responses to potential questions from judges

My brain is a bit fried

(mock trial stuff)

look at above picture of bunnies

bunnies are cute

Yes I saw

And I am appalled that Tsundoku does not use an oxford comma

Perhaps we should petition to remove his modship. How can we trust someone who is on the *whispers* other side? It shows a grave error in judgement.

*whispers* but he's a tag dooku! You don't know the power he wields

cough ack my throat is tired from just talking and talking

oh no... do we have to go through the tags to see if he left out any Oxford commas?

O_O

@bobble Nice names!

@bobble Hehe, imagine making a meta-post about that

Okay, now I'm really, really tempted to make a mod post about "Petition to revoke Tsundoku's diamond unless he starts using Oxford commas

@bobble sonorously clears throat

As a result, we, the community, believe we must suspend Tsundoku of the diamond until he denounces his primitve ways

This insurrection is going nowhere, folks. Just go to bed.

We will not be silenced!

You go to bed. It's a nice and sunny afternoon here in SoCal for me

@PrinceNorthLæraðr Are you aware you can be suspended for leaving out the full stop at the end of a comment?

Oxford commas are important for preserving life, liberty, and the readability of text!

@Tsundoku I will not be silenced by mere threats, Tag Dooku!

I take a zero-tolerance approach to Oxford commas.

@PrinceNorthLæraðr I have the power to take away your "princely" title, North!

Hmm, I'd better keep an eye on the suggested-edits queue in the next few days...

Oh no!

Let's put this to a vote

I vote that Oxford commas are good!

Aye!

The case against the Oxford comma. You can thank your parents, Barack Obama and Mother Theresa :-P

That sounds like an insult from like Fox News

"These darn liberals, they can thank their parents Barack Obama and Mother Theresa!"

@bobble On questions, a mod's vote is binding, and I vote "Nay".

... North, help!

Ah, but Randy has voted aye!

Oh wait, it was Mith

@PrinceNorthLæraðr "These damn republicans, they can thank their parents Sarah Palin and Pat Robertson."

"These darn independents, they can thank their parents... wait pretty sure they don't have parents."

Why Using The Oxford Comma Is A Sign Of Bad Writing.