The Reading Room

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7:15 AM

With all that is going on in Israel and Gaza right now, I hope Mithical and others from here who are there IRL stay safe as possible and reasonable under the circs. (Not tagging them because they don’t need to be drug in here right now)

withdraws into generalized weltschmerz and misanthropy

Rand al'Thor

@bobble No, 11.

(see the hover text on mousing over the "Voters" tab)

Spagirl

7:36 AM

@Tsundoku I see you have resumed your natural place at the head of the quarterly rankings... alas my tenancy in that hallowed spot was but fleeting, alas, alas...;-)

b_jonas

8:04 AM

@verbose When we were kids, we couldn't imagine that the Yugoslav war could end. We even told the classic genie joke about it. The Middle East situation sounds worse than that, but now I hope I live long enough to see it cleared up somehow.

1 hour later…

Tsundoku

9:23 AM

@Spagirl It's not really my natural place, though. Verbose "won" the previous two quarters.

Rand al'Thor

9:39 AM

Only four people on this site have ever topped a whole quarter, but maybe @Spagirl will be the fifth. She's one of the only five people who've topped a month more than once.

Mithical

@verbose thanks

Spagirl

I don’t think I’ve ever realised that monthly and quarterly rankings were a thing up until I noticed I was #2 on the quarterly at the weekend. Certainly didn’t know I’d ever topped a month. :) Of course now that I know I won’t suddenly get all competitive about it at all.

Rand al'Thor

@Spagirl I went to check the past leagues when I was documenting verbose's sudden rise. You can find all the historic leagues as well as the current ones here.

Spagirl

10:04 AM

Cheers, I am apparently very unobservant about all the time and category options on that page!

2 hours later…

Bookworm

12:14 PM

Q: What is the meaning of Akutagawa's reference to centaur

The following is an excerpt of Ryūnosuke Akutagawa's novel «The life of a fool»: «He read a book by Anatole France, his head propped up by a pillow of skepticism exuding a rosy fragrance; the presence in that same pillow of a centaur quite escaped his notice». Having read some novels written by...

Tsundoku

12:58 PM

@Bookworm This questions went from the bogs to the HNQ without taking a shower in between.

2 hours later…

Librarian

2:46 PM

Q: Let's choose an example question for the Tour (restrictions can be lifted)

Our site Tour features an example question to show how the Stack Exchange system works. Currently, it's set to the default post about preventing unicorns from eating daisies (spoiler: not a real Q&A). Moderators have the power to select an actual question from the site to be featured on the Tour....

discussion featured help-center

3 hours later…

Bookworm

5:30 PM

Q: Katherine Ann Porter's "HE": What is He?

I recently read Katherine Ann Porter's "He", and, after reading it twice, am still left in the dark about one thing. It is said that "Rolls of fat covered Him like an overcoat", and he is portrayed as being physically larger than the average boy his size, remarkably strong and agile, yet slow to ...

short-stories character-analysis katherine-ann-porter

Rand al'Thor

6:18 PM

@Librarian @bobble's suggestion isn't that bad - I haven't downvoted the answers there - but something rubs me wrong about choosing one of those private-beta-times got-more-votes-than-it-deserved posts to give extra promotion in the Tour page. The question featured on the Tour often gets a larger than usual number of drive-by upvotes coming in over the years (at least judging from my experience on Puzzling).

bobble

@Randal'Thor it was the first one with short answers that I found by clicking the query at random :) I'm fine if you don't want it

Rand al'Thor

6:37 PM

@bobble Well, I didn't feel strongly enough to downvote your meta answer :-) I posted a couple of alternative suggestions though, let's see what other people think.

3 hours later…

bobble

9:10 PM

two answers is probably enough for me :)

Tsundoku

We currently have 1,075 questions with no upvoted or accepted answers. This is the lowest level since 12/13 February, when that number jumped from 1048 to 1128.

bobble

9:23 PM

Do you anything that would be useful here? literature.stackexchange.com/q/9315/11259

Tsundoku

@bobble That sounds like a list question to me. I have never seen it before.

bobble

hmm, closable under the "recommendations" reason?

Tsundoku

Yes.

Tsundoku

10:03 PM

@verbose "There was a story the other day that at Brighton College, a very good private school, the English teachers got in trouble because they didn’t know their grammar. So the headmaster got in the Latin teachers to teach them English grammar. It’s not a magic quality of Latin, it’s because of the old-fashioned qualities of Latin teaching at its best, that grammar was taught." CC @bobble

Quoted from The Best Books on Learning Latin.

verbose

10:54 PM

@b_jonas what classic genie joke? looks sadly at Kashmir

@Tsundoku Oh, interesting. Thanks!

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