@Robusto Like Britney Spears, you mean?

@Cerberus It's really not. No American is ever told they're "supposed" to say a flu-or-esce. It's considered a "silent letter". Maybe if we had subatomic particles named fluons to go with muons and gluons we wouldn't drop it, since those are all clearly two separate vowels and syllabic nuclei in American English. But the British may say "moons" there for muons, because they let the second vowel fade to schwa and die a lonely, unloved death.

moowawns

Her work has more intellectual depth.

@alphabet Are you mocking Rob?

gliuwannas

You're mocking Rob.

@alphabet Of course that's what I mean.

@Xanne In your meta question, you say the point of limiting close votes by users is to " give others a chance to acquire skills" and "limit domination by a few users". It hink that is very much a secondary consideration when what I think we all think here is that, for the most part, the purpose is to stop so many good questions being closed, and specifically by a small number of people. You didn't bury the lede, you left the lede out.

@tchrist Maybe if the /m/ in flummox was silent.

Flux is a thing.

gets out anti-anxiety weighted blanket

@Mitch Both would be silent. As it is today, only one is silent.

@Robusto Oh. I see where you're going with this.

Say more with pronouncing less.

Say everything by saying

Sometimes nothing is a pretty cool hand.

.

And I meant it to sting.

Phew I'm glad martial law in South Korea has been revoked.

Or what does one do with it, cancel?

@Cerberus I hope the US isn't next on that list.

@alphabet What -do- kids listen to these days? Taylor Swift is pretty old school by now.

@Robusto If he tried that, praesumably the various forces in society would react in the same way.

@Cerberus Yes, but if his cronies and political hack appointees will not hesitate to "sic the dogs" on the citizenry.

@Cerberus there are a lot of people in the police and armed forces that are orange-leaning.

@Robusto jinx

@Robusto That remains to be seen.

@Mitch Usually the lower ranks.

@Cerberus Here's hoping my fears are unfounded.

@Cerberus I haven't heard one way or the other.

That is usually how it is.

@Robusto If you had remained a Dutch colony, I would have appointed someone else.

@Cerberus It's good to have a friend.

But really, what are the kids listening to in the Netherlands? Sabrina Carpenter? Tate McRae? Chappell Roan?

Are these politicians they ought to be listening to or singers?

Yes.

You knew I was going to say that.

Yay...two more upvotes for you @Robusto

@Mitch blushes

@Mitch One of them mine, I'm invested in this, I'm a newcomer :-) In C.SE we only have 1-2 users who like to do VTC for salvageable or for philosophical questions, but the traffic is much lower so we don't have this problem.

@GratefulDisciple well here it's not that some people are monopolizing the close votes preventing others from doing so, but instead that they're over doing the close votes.

@tchrist Speak as you spell is generally a factor.

@Mitch But since in English.SE the threshold is only 3 than the usual 5, if there are 3 frequent closers then in practice they're "monopolizing" since they don't give other voices a chance? Maybe the solution is to increase the threshold to 5?

@GratefulDisciple That would be a help, certainly. I remember when everyone thought that barrier was too high. Little did we know.

@Robusto Is this set in stone, or can the community vote in meta to change the threshold, or maybe the moderators can talk to the community manager to change it?

@Mitch Not mocking, just sarcasm.