The Reading Room - 2017-04-05

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6:01 AM

I think I fixed my orbits

user image

Those are for equal masses

And here the first mass is 400 time the second mass

user image

4 hours later…

10:00 AM

@Gallifreyan Yep.. I added that before this conversation happened. o_o

10:20 AM

@Mithrandir You Maiar are supposed to be prophetic, aren't you?

@Gallifreyan Don't think so...

Ah, well. You'll be the first ;)

It's OVER 9000 ...

@Randal'Thor Yes, you have around 5k more rep than the second place user on the site (AKA me).

:-o

10:30 AM

:/

It's starting to feel like this actually did hit HNQ, instead of just being linked from an HNQ. (And the comment is still voted higher than the question.)

Also, @Randal'Thor, Announcer worked, but the others didn't, otherwise I would have gotten a gold badge by now.

@Mithrandir What do you mean?

@Randal'Thor I got Announcer from linking to the Hobbes question with my link. My question has has 2700 views (I got the Popular/Notable badges only after it was linked). I didn't receive the Booster or Publicist badges.

@Mithrandir You don't know if those 1000+ views were all from your link and from distinct IPs. Also:

12

A: I received the Announcer badge for a link to a site-meta shared on a hot network question

This is not a bug. Yes, your link won't count if people clicking on it are coming from a Stack Exchange site. But the only way for Stack Exchange to detect this is by looking at the Referer (sic) header that a browser sends with the request. But because some people feel that that header reveals ...

Mhm.

It's only the people that SE doesn't know are from SE who count towards the badge.

Which is going to be a relatively small proportion of all the people who click your link.

10:37 AM

Right, so we were all wrong :P

"We were both right and we were both wrong." -- Atreyu

Announcing Unpaywall: unlocking #openaccess versions of paywalled research articles as you browse http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/impactofsocialsciences/2017/04/04/announcing-unpaywall-unlocking-openaccess-versions-of-paywalled-research-articles-as-you-browse/

Tweeted by edyong209 on April 5, 2017 at 7:36 AM

@BESW 0.o can't you already access those by searching the title in LibG... oh, wait!

4 hours later…

3:18 PM

mornin

2 hours later…

5:27 PM

@doppelgreener ...so you're saying I'm a Shokh puppet?

@Shokhet I found one short story! 3 pages long. But I would appreciate if you still could ask a room owner, I will read more soon again and would appreciate recommendations from other users. Thanks — E.Bob 9 mins ago

So...could a room owner (@BESW, @Randal'Thor) grant E.Bob access to the room?

5:43 PM

@Shokhet Actually, since he's already got 55 rep on Mathematics, he should be able to chat in any public room already.

He doesn't seem to have a chat account yet though (unless it's under another name).

@Randal'Thor Oh, I didn't see that. I'll tell him.

Lemme try a superping.

@E.Bob Hello! This is the Reading Room, main site chatroom for Literature SE. Feel free to drop in here and ask for book recommendations - there are plenty of well-read folk around who I'm sure will be happy to help :-)

2

Turned my numerical modeling homework in - professor assigned another one.

@Gallifreyan oh yeah? did you add more gravity?

@DForck42 Yeah, I imported some

I wrote 20 short programs in Python yesterday. It was wonderful. Perl, I'm leaving you.

12 hours ago, by Gallifreyan

I think I fixed my orbits

That and the following 3 messages

5:57 PM

@Gallifreyan lol

6:37 PM

0

Q: "Still" and meaning in 'Ode to a Nightingale'

This resource on 'Ode to a Nightingale' by Keats says that the word "still" in stanza 6 ("Still wouldst thou sing") might have more than one meaning. However, I can't see it meaning anything beyond 'You would continue to sing'. Could there really by another viable interpretation?

poetry meaning john-keats

6:52 PM

Just wanted to let people know that Mythology is taking question on Blake's pantheon. (Might provide a different perspective from English Lit scholars)

We really need your questions, Literati!

@DukeZhou k

7:24 PM

@VicAche Why add [allusions]? The wiki excerpt says "Use this tag when asking for sources of a reference in books," which is not something that this question is doing. — Shokhet 19 secs ago

...should I just remove the tag, or has the usage of allusions evolved beyond the wiki excerpt?

@VicAche ^^^

7:43 PM

@Shokhet I think we should modify the wiki excerpt

will call for it on meta if needed

8:04 PM

@Shokhet @Randal'Thor I'm starting to think that the solutions to tags like allusions and symbolism is to just not have these tags at all. Are there really experts in [symbolism]?

0

Q: Should I read Stephen King or David Baldacci?

I'm fifteen years old and want to start reading either King or David. A few books of King's I'd like to read are It, 11/22/63, The Shining and Carrie. Baldacci's would be the King and Maxwell series or the Camel Club series. Will I not understand any of these authors' books? Heartfelt suggestions...

@VicAche ...the question had nothing to do with allusions, though. It had to do with meaning.

Even if your answer used the word "allusion," that doesn't define what the question is about

@Hamlet 1) There could be experts in [symbolism], I dunno 2) Is "are there really experts" the test that determines whether or not there should be a tag (not arguing, just wondering) 3) what do you think about meaning (I assume the same)

8:23 PM

@Shokhet yeah, the tags are a little weird to me. just because a question is asking if a work makes a particular allusion, doesn't mean the question needs to be tagged with allusions

but... shrugs

Yeah. I haven't followed all of the discussions, but Lit.SE is still very much working out the tagging system

9:25 PM

House of Loaves.

@Hamlet I think these kinds of tags are useful. As well as dividing literature into specific authors and works, things like symbolism and character-analysis define specific types of questions which can be asked about literary works.

Questions about symbolism, or questions about character analysis, form reasonably clearly defined subsets of all literary questions, which are worth demarcating with tags IMO.

10:23 PM

@Mithrandir Inspired by the mention of Philippa Gregory in our chat in another room: literature.stackexchange.com/q/2263/17

user15026

@BESW This reminds me I've not yet actually read House of Leaves

@Randal'Thor woohoo, story id! :P

Now. Seriously. Zz.

@Mithrandir Yeah ... that's why I linked it in here and not the Screening Room :-P

Also, this means george-orwell has been knocked out of our top 4 tags!

3

Q: Fairy tale story in two parts: "as I first heard it" and "when I wanted to know more"

I read this book some years ago, probably around 2010, though it was definitely older than that. It had a fairly short and simple title, of the kind one might expect to find on a fairy tale: "The Lost World" or "The Princess's Journey" or something in that vein. I thought it might have been writt...

story-identification

user15026

10:38 PM

@Bookworm I am super curious what this book is.

@Ash Still working on it myself.

user15026

10:55 PM

@BESW Oh god reading that answer kinda makes it 100% more intimidating

It's not a simple book, that's for sure.

But it's not Masquerade.

@Ash HOLY HELL.

How did anyone manage to write that thing?

user15026

@Randal'Thor That's my other thing that I can't wrap my brainmeat around - someone PUT THIS ALL TOGETHER.

I'm more impressed they convinced a company to publish it.

user15026

@BESW That too.

user15026

11:01 PM

There's another book like that, that a few of my friends recommended to me, but it's escaping me now as to title or anything.

@Ash GoodReads list

user15026

@BESW O.o that's a larger list than I expected

user15026

I think it was S that they were referring to

user15026

I struggle with non-traditional book forms like that

Being GoodReads it's hard to say exactly how much they're like House in terms of ergodicity.

user15026

11:13 PM

@BESW Ah, that's the word I was looking for. :)

But yeah, ergodic texts aren't exactly new and while they aren't common they aren't quite rare either.

Actually ergodic texts are mostly only rare as adult literature.

user15026

I keep thinking of like...the Jolly Postman kids books

user15026

I don't know if they count or not

user15026

(They are also among my favourite children's books)

I think it does!

I grew up with books like Pat the Bunny, The Eleventh Hour, and ... urg, what's it called? [rummages goodreads lists]

user15026

11:18 PM

I love Pat the Bunny

Hah! Round Trip.

user15026

Oh, that looks like an excellent book.

I'd love to see more ergodic texts for adults that don't feel like they have to be complex mindtwisting masterpieces in order to overcome the sense that ergodicity is for kids.

(Pat the Bunny always made me a little uneasy; it felt far too much like an invasion of the bunny's personal space.)

The Very Hungry Caterpillar Finger Puppet Book, though... that was brilliant.

user15026

I have that book somewhere!

user15026

@BESW I'd like that.

user15026

11:28 PM

I feel like the Griffin and Sabine books might count?

I think it totally counts, as the physical act of reading the book requires nontrivial thought and influences the meaning of the text.

user15026

I think a lot of kids books fall into this

user15026

although its weird that we tend to assume that for adults, it has to mean like complexity on the order of complete confusion

user15026

like it's some sort of intellectual test

Aye.

For kids, it's often about learning manual tasks and/or about keeping them engaged. So we apply that concept to all ergodic texts unless they're super obviously not for kids at all.

Kinda like how it took Maus and Sin City and Harvey Pekar to expand the range of themes the American public might think of graphic novels as being capable of handling.

user15026

11:47 PM

Yeah, I wish we could do more approachable stuff with ergodic text for adults. It'd be nice to see

...speaking of graphic novels for an adult audience, Britten and Brülightly‌.

It's a picture book about a suicidally depressed detective and his partner who is a talking teabag (we are reasonably sure Brülightly‌ is not actually talking and it is just Britten's cracking mind at work).

user15026

This reminds me of a book that an author I like is working on, apparently involving a sentient sourdough starter.

Nice.

(I recently had to face the fact that I probably can't keep a ginger bug alive in my current circumstances.)

user15026

I've never made anything that needed any sort of starter.

user15026

It intimidates me

11:58 PM

We've made yogurt a couple of times, but haven't kept the starter around for more than two or three batches in a row.

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Apr '175

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