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• The stuff in How to Get Thousands of Leads from Quora in Five Months!!!! by Nick Nicholas on The Insurgency actually happens. On Quora.
• To quote Robert Maxwell, from https://insurgency.quora.com/How…:

Another comment asks if we remember the time when people didn’t have to promote themselves on Quora—I think people always did, if, perhaps, more naively, and more narrowly. But now the hucksters have figured out the system, as they do.

Instead, we’ve dug down and built dens and hollows in the earth, showed each other the tunnels and mistaken it for the surface. And when one of the peacocks manages to peck into the tunnel, we shudder and tell ourselves that it’s not of this world. It’d be too terrifying, otherwise.

The BNBR is fresh. It still smarts.

OK, that aside,

• That Hayley More, she who asked me, may have three kidneys.
• Yeah, in-joke, whatevs. Pit orchestra, Hayley. That’s where the big bucks are.
• That Michael Masiello has an American accent.
• He’s my confrere, he’s grandiloquent, he’s Rabelasian: how can he have a mellow chill East Coast accent? How does he not sound as British as Falstaff?
• That Habib Fanny has a West African Francophone accent.
• Again, colour me surprised that an Ivorian would sound like an Ivorian; but the guy is so culturally fluent, with such panache, that I was expecting him to have the accent Michael does. And you know, I would have been less surprised if Michael had Habib’s accent.
• That Dimitra Triantafyllidou’s baby curls did not persist into her middle age
• It’s not like I had much more to go on at the time than her profile photo.
• That Dimitris Almyrantis is the age he is.
• I’m not repeating it, I’ve blown his cred enough with it. He really does write as if he’s three times the age, though.
• That Jeremy Markeith Thompson has grown a beard.
• You’ll always be smooth shaven in my mental scrapbook, Jeremy!
• That all of Comrade Victoria Weaver’s profile pics are of the same person.
• I’m minded to stop calling you “Comrade” and start calling you “Proteus”.
• That Mickie Southam is not a bloke called Mickey.
• You’d think I’d be attuned enough to the subtleties of English spelling to have worked that one out.
• That Tracey Bryan really does sound that Ocker.
• Sorry I’ve been scarce, Trace. You know. Stuff. Will try to catch up soon!

Xenophon, Anabasis (as a shout-out to Desmond James):

6.6.31: Ἔχεις μέν, ὦ Κλέανδρε, τοὺς ἄνδρας, καὶ ἡ στρατιά σοι ὑφεῖτο ὅ τι ἐβούλου ποιῆσαι καὶ περὶ τούτων καὶ περὶ αὑτῶν ἁπάντων.

Cleander, you have the men; the army has bowed to you and assented to do what you wished with respect to these two members of their body and themselves in general.

2.1.4: καί, εἰ μὴ ὑμεῖς ἤλθετε, ἐπορευόμεθα ἂν ἐπὶ βασιλέα.

Indeed, had you not arrived, we should ere this have begun our march upon the king.

In Frege’s classic formulation of Sinn und Bedeutung, sense is the definition of a word’s meaning, which is decoupled from the denotation of a word—what it references in the world. The decoupling is necessary so that words can have distinct meanings even if they refer to the same thing, or to imaginary beings.

For more, see Nick Nicholas’ answer to What is the meaning of meaning, philosophically speaking?

Will you take a UML Sequence diagram? I like those.

Some might say this diagram is a little… cynical? Perhaps. (I didn’t put anything in about design though!)

But of course, this is a speculative question anyway; Quora is very chary about sharing details of how it works internally.

The only google hits for this phrase is this question, and a contract saying “The Supplier shall deliver the products selected and ordered by the means chosen by the Purchaser or stated on the website”. Which likely isn’t it.

If the notion is of ordering as in sorting, putting some entities in order, the means might be the statistical Means: you have a set of sets, and those sets are ordered by their means (more commonly referred to as averages); there are two google hits for “ordered by the averages”.

*shrug* It’s as good a guess as any.

This question was disfluent in its English when first asked—

Michaelis Maus, what made you even more attracted to yourself when you noticed (only) latent pretending tendencies on the internet?

then mangled by Quora Content Review—

What made Michaelis Maus even more attracted to themselves when you noticed (only) latent pretending tendencies on the internet?

then, remarked on by Michaelis, and then lobbed over by Michaelis to me; I have an occasional, distant fan relation with Michaelis, because I try not to inhale. (John Walton has more of a symbiosis.)

The wording is still confusing; I’ve tried to clean it up.

What made Michaelis Maus even more attracted to himself when he noticed (only) latent tendencies towards pretension on the internet?

Is it online pretence or pretension that is supposed to have made Michaelis even more of a nihilistic narcissist? And why is that I’m supposed to know the answer?

Let’s speculate. What would make Michaelis even more of a bad seed through online interaction?

If Michaelis has seen people be pretentious online, he has discerned that they have feeble grounds to be pretentious about, and he can be pretentious with much more class and conviction. Who of the pretentious wears his fashion like he does? Who knows the ins and outs of an Oxford shirt as intimately? Who can twirl his moustache so non-chalantly? Who can ruminate so debonairly on the impracticalities of containing his titanic schlong within his life partner’s purloined briefs?

If Michaelis has seen people adopt pretence online, he prides himself on being able to see through it. People enslave themselves to strictures of convention; he sees through it. People hide who they are because they fear censure; he sees through it. People deny what they want and claim what they aren’t and preach what they can’t; he sees through it. He merrily quizzes his dealer’s security about whether they’d like to earn some extra cash, ridding the world of one more poseur; poses, and comes up with a new apophthegm for the ages.

Michaelis Maus’ answer to What is one thing popular Quorans would like to say to their followers?

Stop reading my writing and start thinking for yourself; after all, what is morality but violence ossified by history?

Dang…

As in, who is Occam’s razor – Wikipedia named for?

Occam’s razor (also Ockham’s razor; Latin: lex parsimoniae “law of parsimony“) is a problem-solving principle attributed to William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), who was an English Franciscan friar, scholastic philosopher, and theologian. His principle can be interpreted as stating Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.

William of Ockham – Wikipedia

William of Ockham (/ˈɒkəm/; also Occam, from Latin: Gulielmus Occamus; c. 1287 – 1347) was an English Franciscan friar and scholastic philosopher and theologian, who is believed to have been born in Ockham, a small village in Surrey. He is considered to be one of the major figures of medieval thought and was at the centre of the major intellectual and political controversies of the fourteenth century. He is commonly known for Occam’s razor, the methodological principle that bears his name, and also produced significant works on logic, physics, and theology. In the Church of England, his day of commemoration is 10 April.

Ockham, Surrey – Wikipedia. Only one pub for a village of 400 people. I’m disappointed.

To confirm what Alberto Yagos said:

• The best Princeton’s database of Byzantine translations has is Iamblichus’ Life of Pythagoras, or, Pythagoric life, which includes some sentences by Stobaeus.
• Here’s some bits translated online: The Gentle Exit ” Stobaeus Extracts Sentences and Precepts. By bits, I mean one paragraph.
• Here’s Roger Pearse, Patristic blogger, asking the question in 2010: Stobaeus, Florilegium, and getting a negative answer in 2017.
• A translation of Hermes Trismegistus is based heavily on Stobaeus: Thrice-Greatest Hermes
• This is a review of a translation of one extract of the Eclogues: Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2000.02.37.

The complete anthologies by Stobaeus, pretty clearly, have not been Englished.

You can have an answer collapsed. (You are not notified of it unless it was for BNBR.)

You can get a BNBR warning on a comment or answer. If it’s on a comment, the comment gets deleted.

You can be edit-blocked. Initially for a week. For repeat offences, the period can be extended to a month, three months, or six months. Nick Nicholas’ answer to What does it mean to be edit-blocked or banned on Quora?

You can be banned.

Some of the time, your ban can be rescinded.

Some of the time, your ban can be reinstated.

Scrolling past, and seeing everyone say “just take a break, coz we love you man”, and wondering “but is that best for Jeremy”…

… and I see Masiello say: if it’s no fun, then leave.

I was gonna say that. Damn you, Magister!

And then he says he’ll eventually bail too.

Damn you double!

Jeremy, we’re here because it’s fun. Yes it’s addictive too. But if it stops being fun, quitting is always an option. It has to be.

You also took an extended break a few months back because you wanted to focus more on your non-profit idea. If this is removing your focus from what you think is more important, then you’re entitled to quit on that account too.

Of course I’d prefer you stick around, and we keep *cough* collaborating on *cough* research projects. And of course, taking a break is the less drastic option. But it’s not my life, it’s yours. You get to weigh up the pros and cons.

Whatever you decide: we’re proud of you.