The Reading Room

are the arrows missing for other people?

Clicking on the headings makes them shift as if there was an arrow, but the arrow is still missing

I see the arrows and they behave as expected?

12:46 AM

I'm on the "Delete" page

I see the arrows on all pages, including the one you appear to have taken the screenshot on

or of

Though on that page, the "Recently Imported", "Recently Protected", and "New Tags" arrows are missing

@bobble yes, missing for me too

On the "Close" tab, "Most Votes" and "Recent Votes" are missing for both Close and Reopen

yes, missing for me too

12:50 AM

huh, this is weird

if you click on a different time setting, such as "14d", then the arrows briefly appear before going away

yes, can reproduce

The bug, I mean

Do any of the main-meta users here either a) know of where this bug has been reported (I didn't find with [10k-tools] missing arrows) or, if the answer is "no", could you report it?

otherwise it goes on my list of "bugs to report once I make a main-meta account"

I can report it. What should the header be? I'm struggling with finding a good way to describe what's going on?

Alex

1:08 AM

The arrows are for expanding a list to show what is not shown by default. If there is nothing to expand then there is no need for arrows.

These are the same screens with different date parameters.

Since there are no applicable items when the date range is just today, there are no arrows. As soon as you enter parameters that contain enough items to have a dropdown, the arrows appear.

1:37 AM

Then the names shouldn't move to the side when you click on them, because there's no arrow

(was out dinner-ing)

Q: Why did Sinclair title this novel "Oil"?

1:50 AM

Why did Upton Sinclair decide to call his novel Oil? Does the title connote some metaphor or is it just the literal meaning of the word the writer chose?

title upton-sinclair oil

6 hours later…

Q: How can the "Won't I bleed 'em in the end" line from Les Mis's "Master of the House" be interpreted?

7:24 AM

In the Les Misérables musical, there's a song "Master of the House", in which the inkeeper sings about how he essentially scams all of his customers into paying much more than they expected. There's one section that goes like this: Everybody loves a landlord Everybody's bosom friend I do whateve...

song-lyrics les-miserables

1 hour later…

8:46 AM

@bobble I'm sorry you had a depression attack. I hope you are feeling better.

9:29 AM

gosh I'm almost too sleepy to finish my drink 🥃

ah well, mission accomplished. g'nite, ladies!

9:55 AM

Don't call those UI elements "arrows"; call them "disclosure widgets" or "disclosure triangles". feeling smug

1 hour later…

11:11 AM

Today, my heart does not go out to all those deluded people who celebrate Shakespeare's birthday on the wrong day.

Mithical

@Bookworm I was unsure about tagging on this, by the way.

12:05 PM

@Tsundoku Because the real Shakespeare's birthday is 12 April? ;-)

Q: Which schools did Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi attend?

In his article "Technique du coup du monde", published in Internationale Situationniste no.8 in January 1963 and in English translation as "A Revolutionary Proposal: Invisible Insurrection of a Million Minds", Scottish writer Alexander Trocchi writes "It used to be said that the British Empire w...

alexander-trocchi

12:28 PM

@Randal'Thor No, because Shakespeare was baptised on 26 April according to the Julian calendar whereas we are using the Gregorian calendar today. According to our calendar, Shakespeare's birthday is somewhere in early May.

England didn't adopt the Gregorian calendar until 1750/1751.

The bill for the calendar act of 1750/1751 was proposed by Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield, apparently the same person after whom the chesterfield sofa is named.

> It's a small world, but I wouldn't want to paint it.

1 hour later…

1:48 PM

@Bookworm Is this on topic at all?

Cf. earlier question about W. S. Maugham:

Aug 17 '20 at 11:02, by Rand al'Thor

@Bookworm @Tsundoku Is this a literary question about Maugham, or just a biographical one? There were a couple of old meta discussions on questions about authors, with the conclusion that not every question about a writer's life should be on-topic. I don't know much about Maugham as a writer; is this detail from his childhood likely to be relevant to his literature?

Mithical

I don't think it's on-topic here, but History.SE might take it.

2:19 PM

There was a discussion in chat about the on-topicness of this question. While questions about an author's life as it relates to their literature are allowed, not all biography questions fall into this category. (meta discussion). The suggestion was made to move this to History. Do you think this question is a better fit here or there? — bobble 17 secs ago

OP has been poked

@Tsundoku Well, it's directly related to something Trocchi wrote (quoted in the question). Then the question might be whether that "article" is enough like "literature" to be on-topic here.

3 hours later…

5:12 PM

All those triple digits are quite pleasing.

@verbose, one more day till your first gold badge! You damn well better log in tomorrow :-)

Q: What plight of the Kurds is suggested in Mem and Zin chapter 5?

5:26 PM

I'm reading online Salah Saadalla's translation of the Kurdish classic Mem and Zin. The early chapters aren't part of the main story: two chapters addressed to God, two to the prophet Mohammed, two about the Kurdish nation, and then a prologue. But even these contain some interesting content and ...

historical-context kurmanji-kurdish-literature mem-and-zin ahmad-khani

2 hours later…

Q: How is Bradley described in "The Black Prince"?

6:57 PM

How is Bradley described in The Black Prince? He mentions that he is going to write his own story from his point of view at that time. He accepts that he is wrong in the past. However, his acceptance of this seems like positivity to the reader. What else can be said for him?

character-analysis iris-murdoch the-black-prince

2 hours later…

8:56 PM

@bobble Thanks for the sleuthing. These are all gone now.

@Bookworm HNQ.

@Bookworm Hmm, doesn't hat sound a bit broad? (I read that novel in my first year at university. I wonder if I still have the book.)

9:13 PM

@Tsundoku was the spam yummy?

@Tsundoku A broad hat?

9:42 PM

@bobble I smoked them out but that didn't improve the taste.

10:11 PM

Happy 457th birthday, Will!

11 hours ago, by Tsundoku

Today, my heart does not go out to all those deluded people who celebrate Shakespeare's birthday on the wrong day.

@Tsundoku but that's not how it typically works? That is, we didn't shift the celebration of Christmas by eleven days to be on January 5 after the passage of said act

@Tsundoku that was funny

@verbose We couldn't shift Sol Invictus, which is the day that was chosen to celebrate Christmas on. Nothing to do with that person's real birth date, as far as I know.

@Tsundoku I wasn't referring to whether or not it was Jesus's actual birthday. I meant simply that celebrations of any sort associated with certain calendar days continued to be associated with the same date, not with a 365- or 366-day offset from that date.

Sol Invictus stayed Dec 25th, not Jan 5, after the shift.

@verbose If that date was ever chosen because it was near the winter solstice (but I don't know that), then shifting it would not have made much sense.

I have filled in the empty tag wiki excerpts except elene-dariani (requires more research) and indiana-jones (which does not refer to a work of literature).

10:29 PM

Again, I'm not talking about the reasons why a specific date was chosen. I'm just saying that fixed feasts, as opposed to movable ones, retained their calendar specifications. Like, I don't think the anniversary of George II's ascension to the throne of England would have been celebrated 11 days later after the shift. Or particular saints' days. Or even individual birthdays.