Because there was a perception 50 years ago that Italians were dirtier than Northern Europeans. They may not be saying that now, but there is still stereotyping between parts of Europe, and the claims that this saying is impossible ring hollow to me.
I don’t have a smoking gun of someone saying it; but I do have a smoking gun of someone expressing the sentiment. That someone was Greek, and in fact, he was expressing annoyance at how clean Austria was compared to Italy.
Why does everything have to be so clean? A Southerner will never understand this. Over in Tarvisio, ten Italian paces from here [Arnoldstein], there’s waste paper, filth, dust, leftovers from horse and cow hindquarters. Tourism pleads: “keep the area clean!”, but noone pays any attention—except for the pine trees, who are law-abiding citizens when they’re up on the mountaintops. Here in Arnoldstein, it’s as if they’ve made 300,000 Austrians lick the road clean. There’s not one piece of rubbish. Austria should be ashamed of how clean it is.
He says pretty much the same crossing the Swiss border into Italy at Valpelline.
I can learn to live with the trolls, the conspiracy theorists, QCR, the anonymous OPs, the glitches, the bugs, the daily outages, the imbecilic UI changes, everything. But I can’t stand the peacocks.
This, I’m seeing from comments, is a very common sentiment among the readers of this blog.
And yet, I had a long discussion with Jennifer Edeburn about whether that last post defining Peacocks was BNBR, and that prejudice against them was a snobbery, that Quora could have no part of.
So I’m going to ruminate through why we don’t like Peacocks (those of us that don’t), and why that can’t matter to Quora.
(And here, I’m going to start reducing “we” from “we who use Quora” to “we who don’t like Peacocks”. Part of the point of what I’m saying is, the latter is a small subset of the former.)
There is abiding confusion on what Quora is for. The mission statement is extremely vague, and Quora’s own interpretation of what it’s about seems to have morphed several times since the beginning, when its hubris was untenable. Mills Baker has admitted that Quora has done a poor job of explaining its mission, although his own attempt was even less clear.
So we’ve made our own sense of what Quora is for. There are clear clefts in the community on what it’s for. Quora is not a debate site. The best of Quora is in the comments. Quora is for hard knowledge. Quora is for opinion.
But there’s a notion that Quora is for smart people. A notion that Peacocks themselves capitalise on: “a community for intellectuals to voice their opinions.”
So. What kind of a site do smart people think they want, and that they don’t think Peacocks belong in?
Smart people, I’ll guess from self-serving introspection, want a forum where they can further knowledge, in discourse with other smart people.
And what kind of knowledge do they value?
Not puppies and cat videos. Weighty knowledge. Verifiable knowledge. Well-argued knowledge. Knowledge provided disinterestedly. Knowledge provided for the joy of it and the sake of it. Knowledge provided by peers.
You can see why that definition of knowledge runs counter to Peacocks or Businesses. The knowledge they provide is not disinterested. It is provided with ulterior motives. It is, by common intellectual criteria, frivolous, not argued, and not open to verification. It does not come across as a peer activity.
Sure. That’s my notion of what Quora’s for.
That can’t be what Quora’s notion of knowledge is restricted to.
First, because the restrictions Quora used to impose at the beginning were much narrower, and many of us would resent them. All Venture Capital and coding, all the time. No meta discussion of Quora. No humanities (an imbalance that is probably still reflected in the distribution of quills). Not that much socialising. If you read the early StackExchange reactions to Quora, it’s dismissed as fluff; we are choosing not to be on StackExchange instead of Quora.
Second, because clearly, there’s an audience for Life Advice and Relationships, though those topics, too, were initially avoided by Quora. There are people that want answers to their questions there. We could say that their questions are less worthy than the questions we take interest in; but how would we draw a line that would exclude half the people we know here? And after all, don’t people deserve advice on what do in their lives, from a site that advances all kinds of knowledge?
And the Peacocks get upvotes there. Massive upvotes, and appreciative comments. There’s an audience for what they have to say. We can think that the advice the Peacocks give is self-serving and facile; we can think that there’s better advice to be had. Some of us, after all, even offer it. But if the Peacocks get the upvotes, that means that what they are saying is being valued by a lot of people, even if not by us.
And in this postmodern time of truthiness, I don’t know of a definition of knowledge to be furthered through Quora, that excludes Peacocks, and doesn’t exclude half of what we value (since we’re not on Wikipedia or StackExchange).
We don’t have to interact with Peacocks, or Businesses. But I’m having difficulty how that can be anything more than an individual choice, rather than a site-wide alignment.
Same goes for the fact that Peacocks get Quills. Lots of people get Quills, promoting lots of different kinds of knowledge, and lots of different aims of Quora. I’d assume that those Peacocks that get the Quill get it for how responsive their content is to the querents that they’re addressing (even if they aren’t us), and that they don’t get it because of how effectively they promote themselves. If the call is made that they do, well, good for Quora; that furthers Quora’s goals, after all. That’s all the Quill is about. Furthering Quora’s goals, of satisfying querents and attracting eyeballs; and Quora gets a lot of different eyeballs.
The good news is, the Quora feed sequesters us into the niches we prefer to sit in. Maxwell’s dens and hollows. I think we have good reasons why we dislike the Peacocks’ content and why we think they write it. And they’re our reasons, not everyone’s. And Quora isn’t just for us.
I will be assembling a list of the names and terms I make up and keep using to talk about Quora. I like assembling my own personal mythologies; but that does get in the way of communication.
One of the terms you may well have seen me use recently is Peacocks. The term describes the union of “life coach” types and “personal branding” types, who seem to use Quora primarily to enhance their commercial social media presence, and whose contributions to Quora are primarily platitudes and anecdotes of how to live life to the fullest, like them.
I was startled to discover one such, advertising how to game Quora metrics, and I named him here. I got a Benburr for that (oh, that’s another glossary term), and I deserved it.
Because I was sanctioned, I held back from reposting Robert Maxwell’s tirade against that kind of person in comments. But it does not name anyone, and it is actually a critique and not just a rant. And since it was the genesis of the term, and a magnificently written piece of prose, I’m now choosing to elevate it to a post.
I went to university with a bunch of these marketing/growth gurus—they were wannabes at the time—and, well, let’s say my personal opinion of them would strongly cross the BNBR line. The terminology is spot on—”thought leadership,” for instance. I think of this sort of thing and feel my bile rise on some atavistic instinct, an in-born genetic memory on par with how elephants find graveyards and retirees find Florida. Perhaps, in some dark corner of my ancestry, Glug went on about referral metrics until half the tribe got eaten by a sabretooth.
That said, this is a symptom, and, as much as we might tell ourselves that this is a Quora we don’t inhabit, I sometimes worry it may be the other way around. Quora has long since been the preserve of marketing, PR, startups and that entire ecosystem of preening peacockery that puts one in mind of Hunter S. Thompson’s comments on used car dealers from Dallas chasing the American Dream in the predawn chaos of a stale Las Vegas casino. Even in the early days, those topics dominated.
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 saddest song of a composer who wrote consistently sad songs. It’s the lyrics, but much more it’s the music, which belies the lyrics.
Don’t be angry at me, my dear eyes, for going abroad I’ll turn into a bird and I’ll come back to you once more
Open your window, my blond basil, and with a sweet smile bid me goodnight
Don’t be angry at me, my dear eyes, now that I’ll leave you Come out for a while so I can see you and farewell you
Apart from the idiosyncrasies of Greek terms of endearment (Eyes, Basil), pretty much what every man ever had said farewelling his sweetheart. But the music is pessimistic: it’s all descending lines, it knows that he’s never coming back—sometimes in a low resigned register, sometimes in a high anguished register. What cements it is, it has brief moments of major key respite: two beats in the verse, a more convincing 2–5–1 cadence in the chorus—that immediately gets quashed by the minor key V: there is hope, and that hope is brushed aside.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=atSRXP-Xx-4
2. The letter. Lyrics: Giorgos Mitsakis. Music: Giorgos Zambetas, 1956.
If Markos Vamvakaris was the Bach of the bouzouki tradition, and Vassilis Tsitsanis the Beethoven, then Giorgos Zampetas was the Offenbach: his music was fun, frothy, and not usually that memorable. This song is an exception, and I’m not surprised that it only became popular in a revival 20 years after it was released. It has that solemn, stern dignity of the best of laiko, even if it’s just that bit too European.
And ah, that last stanza: who hasn’t been there.
When you receive this letter, I’ll be long gone And you’ll believe it that two loves cannot fit in one heart.
When you receive this letter then will you cry with black tears.
You always spoke behind a mask and wished to have two embraces But where did you get the right to toy with two hearts?
And so ends a story with this sad letter. I don’t regret that I once loved you. But I am sorry that I still do.
3. I want it to be a Sunday. Music & Lyrics: Vasilis Tsitsanis, 1961.
This is not Rebetiko, of course; Tsitsanis the Beethoven was very far from the stern jauntiness of Vamvakaris, even if he got his professional start soloing on Vamvakaris’ album. (And his virtuoso playing sounds utterly out of place in 1938.)
In this song, he’s unabashedly wearing his heart on his sleeve, and wailing in a way that hadn’t been heard since the Anatolian antecedents of Rebetiko: the whole song is a study in the hanging leading tone, which never resolves up, but always collapses down.
There is extramusical context to the song, which I didn’t know beforehand: it was written four years after the death of Marika Ninou—a singer who Tsitsanis had worked with extensively, and who the movie Rembetiko (film) was based on.
I met you on a Sunday I lose you on a Sunday I want it to be a Sunday on the day I die
You set like a star and vanished, my joy. My sorrow was so heavy that it blackened Sunday and broke my heart.
The hour of parting is heavy and unbearable In my dark life I have the black heavens as my companion now.
I would die on a Sunday to give Death joy to end a life that is nothing but a prison for me that is nothing but dead weight for me
EDIT: One more Dalaras song. (Yes, Evangelos Lolos, you’re on to me.)
The reference to gypsies at the start of the song simply reflects the distribution of labour in traditional Greek society: gypsies on the mainland got to be blacksmiths—or musicians.
I actually don’t know what Western ears will make of the verse’s scale, with its blue IV note squirming around its own misery, or the relative major ending up a relative minor. (D minor with a G♭ note, modulating to B♭ minor.) I do think they’ll get the chorus, at least, with its IV–V–I soaring on a despairing F major, before it sinks back to the blue notes of the verse.
The song is a study in depression—although I’ve been avoiding it the more serious my depression has gotten.
Come, gypsy, gather hammer and anvil, and sit and make a prison to fit the black pains which won’t fit within a soul.
This is no nighttime which will be over. This is no daytime which will be past. This is my lifetime, in this creation, and it’s just like Good Friday mass.
Come, gypsy, gather hammer and anvil, and sit and make a golden cage to capture that nightingale which might just console my Sunday.
The first print edition of Plato in Greek was done by Henri Estienne (in Latin, Henricus Stephanus). Accordingly, all of Plato is cited according to the page number a passage had in the original Stephanus edition, with a letter between a and e to indicate how far down the page the passage is: Stephanus pagination – Wikipedia
So in your example, St. II p. 70 means page 70 of Vol II of the Plato edition by Stephanus starts at that point. The usual citation would drop the volume number, and just give the Plato work, the page number, and a letter. For example, Alc II 140c, meaning halfway down Vol. II p. 140 in Stephanus’ edition of Alcibiades. You just cite Meno as Meno 70a, 70b, 70c, 70d, or 70e, depending on how far down the page you are; we already know Meno is in Vol. II. The letters A-E should appear in the sidebar.
This is obscure. But Quora is a stamping ground for me to pass on anecdotes.
This anecdote involves one of the doyens of Mediaeval and Modern Greek Studies in Fair Albion, Professor Geoff Horrocks.
Author of the most authoritative English-language summary of the history of Greek there is:
That’s the second edition cover. The first edition cover is to my mind more accurate, and I loved the look on classicists’ faces when they saw it:
Anyway, the anecdote takes place a couple of years before he published the first edition. The Second International Conference on Greek Linguistics was being held in Salzburg, in 1995. The conference had a couple of Russians, a few Anglos, two Dutch-speakers (one of them Flemish), and a gajillion voluble Greeks. And your humble correspondent was present, too; in fact, I got a paper published in the proceedings.
Towards the end of the conference, Khorox (as the Greeks present all pronounced him) thought it might be a good idea to moot the formation of a professional association of Greek Linguistics.
Oh, Khorox, that was not a good idea. Not a good idea at all. The lecture theatre instantly got consumed by polemics of Athens Uni vs Salonica Uni. (There is a longstanding ideological dispute between the two departments—but of course there is an even longer standing dispute between the two cities.) Me and Helma the Dutch speaker just sat at the back of the lecture theatre, chuckling at the rich cavalcade of histrionics.
After maybe a half hour of this, Khorox stands up and says, “can we please try and arrive at some consensus before Doomsday!”
The Grecian ears ignored him, and kept on duking out Athens vs Salonica: The Grudgefest. My antipodean ears were more finely attuned, and so were Helma’s: we just looked at each other and blinked. That was pretty much the British equivalent of Khorox grabbing a baseball bat and going postal.
In a roomful of Athens vs Salonica: The Grudgefest, though, it was hardly noticed…
I was living in Orange County, and I’d already decided to quit my job; I was leaving to come back to Australia in two months. It was a hermetic, unpleasant work environment, and I was already not on speaking terms with my colleagues—over some inconceivably unreal pique.
I tended to sleep in; I still do. I was roused at 7 am, rather earlier than usual, by a phone call from my mother.
—Nick! Turn on the TV! Some planes hit a building in New York!
—… Wha? What are you bothering me with that for? Go away.
I hung up, and blearily turned on the TV.
I stayed pinned to the TV for the next six hours. And while the fourth plane’s whereabouts were unknown, I was convinced that it was heading straight for my head.
I tried calling a friend in upstate New York; I didn’t even bother trying to call my friend in Manhattan. I didn’t get through to upstate New York. (I did get through to my friend in Manhattan some days later. He knew what was coming next, and he sang me peace songs on the phone, in a hushed voice.)
I ended up at work in the afternoon, but not a lot of work got done that day. Or the next. And of course, noone bothered with not being on speaking terms any more.
People walked around in shock that day, and the next few weeks. People were walking on egg shells. People were extra polite and solicitous. There was an upsurge of American flags on cars, but it did not feel tubthumping and jingoist at the time.
The yellow triangle is because Quora’s Credential Bot thinks your credential is not serious or helpful or whatever else the Quora Credential Bot thinks. You should be getting a warning message on the Credential:
The Quora Credential Bot doesn’t notify you that it doesn’t like your credential; it just preemptively hides it, and users typically end up stumbling on this alert. Especially confusing, when it applies to bios that predated the introduction of Credentials (Show your expertise with credentials by Jackson Mohsenin on Quora Product Updates). The yellow triangle is only visible by you, since it is an indication that Quora is suppressing that credential, and picking some other credential out of your list.
This metric represented our goal much more clearly than counting the total number of added bios did, and in fact, when we tested the entire Credentials package towards the end of the project, we got less total Bios but more helpful Bios compared to the previous system.
See? It worked! Success! Sure, a whole bunch of people opted out of using bios, and a whole bunch of people had their existing bios rejected by the Credential Bot, and a whole bunch of people kept editing their bios to placate the Credential Bot unsuccessfully. But the remaining credentials were much much more helpful than before!
Even unto their bans, Quora Moderation is not specific.
May none of you, esteemed readers, ever see this in your mailboxes.
XXXXX (Quora)
[fill in date-time here] PDT
Hi [fill in user first name here],
Quora believes that all members of the community should make an effort to contribute helpful content to the community and, ultimately, make the site a better resource for all.
The following are some of the reasons for which we will ban an account:
They vandalize content on the site that is editable by everyone, including questions (https://www.quora.com/What-is-Qu…) and answer summaries.
The account is linked to suspicious and/or malicious activity.
After reviewing your activity on Quora, we’ve determined that you violated one or more of the reasons stated above. Unfortunately, the ban on your account will not be overturned. This decision is final, and you will no longer be able to use Quora.
