I will preface this by saying that I am speaking from a position of profound ignorance.

As full disclosure, I will now say everything that I know about Azeris.

• Azerbaijan and Armenia seem to have been on the edge of going to war, for a while now.
• Azeri sounds to me like Turkish with Persian vowels.
• Tabriz is where the Byzantine astronomer Gregory Choniades studied. Which is why half the words in his first textbook on astronomy are untranslated Persian.
• Pegah Esmaili is awesome, and should be given lots of money.

This concludes the list of things I know about Azeris.

Which makes the Anon A2A delightful. Yay, more bulls-eyes on my back.

(Is this the Anon I think it is?)

OK, so how does one objectively work out the question of who is the main and central group is, out of the Baku Azeris and the Tabriz Azeris?

Is it about population? If that was the only criterion, English would have been renamed American a long time ago.

The choice of the group that is deemed the most central in an ethnicity is that group which is the most prestigious vehicle of the ethnicity.

What criteria make a group most prestigious, when it comes to the ethnicity?

• History: if the group claims immediate continuity, genetic or geographic, with the past of the group.
• Culture: if the group has produced the more cherished component of the ethnicity’s cultural heritage.
• Power: if the group, either previously or currently, exercises power over the rest of the ethnic group.

Because I know nothing about Azeris, I have no idea which way the criteria weigh.

There is, of course, a fourth criterion, which is pretty straightforward.

• Having a country with the ethnic group’s name on it.

Even if the History, Culture, Power and Population all weighed towards Tabriz instead of Baku (and I have no idea if they do or not), Azərbaycan Respublikası [Republic of Azerbaijan] sounds more like where the main and central Azeri group hangs out, than Şərqi Azərbaycan ostanı [East Azerbaijan Province].

That’s the outsider’s perspective.

That said, of course Rashad is right. There shouldn’t be a competition about who is more Azeri than the other. That’s counterproductive. Objectively.

It’s almost as clear an objective truth, as the assertion that Pegah Esmaili is awesome, and should be given lots of money.

Category:Greek fairy tales – Wikipedia

Category:Greek folklore – Wikipedia

That’s a start.

We’ve got Christmas goblins (kalikantzaros), we’ve got vampires (vrykolakas), we’ve got mermaids (gorgona). Fairy tales involve, interchangeably, fairies (neraida), ogres (drakos), and black men (arapis). And saints.

My favourite fairy tale rather incongruously involves Jesus Christ. The Blessed Card Deck, from Kephallonia.

Let me summarise.

---

Once there was a card shark. He gets a knock on the door one night. It’s Jesus Christ.

“Mind if I spend the night?”

“Nah, that’s cool. Come on in!”

In he comes. The twelve disciples right after him.

“Oh. All… right then…”

And he entertains them with all the hospitality a Greek would muster for 13 people at the last minute.

The next morning, Christ heads off, and he tells the guy:

“Thanks, man. Three wishes.”

“Hm. OK, fairy tale logic applies, right?”

“Natch.”

“OK… so what do I want…”

St Peter prompts him: “Immediate admission into Paradise.”

“OK, I want a Magical Card Deck that never loses.”

“Done.”

St Peter prompts him: “Immediate admission into Paradise.”

“Magic Pear Tree, that people get stuck to until I say otherwise.”

“Done.”

St Peter glares at him.

“Oh, OK, and that immediate admission thing, what the guy with the key said.”

“Done.”

The card shark has a long successful career of winning at cards. Until one day, the Angel of Death rocks up.

“Oy. Time’s up.”

“Oh. Yeah, cool. Listen, I’m in the middle of a card game right now. In the meantime, how about you go out the back, and help yourself to some pears.”

“Thanks, man!”

So he plays on for another few decades, until he finally gets bored, and he goes out the back to the pear tree.

“OK, Angel of Death. Let’s go.”

The peeved Angel of Death leads him along. On the way, the card shark accosts various randoms, and plays cards with them. If they lose, they have to follow him.

By the time he gets to the Pearly Gates, he’s got 12 randoms tagging along.

“Hey! It’s the key guy!”

“What the hell?! Who are these people?”

Christ comes out to see what the fuss is.

“You know, I only granted you immediate admission into Paradise. I didn’t say You And Guests.”

“Yeah, well you rocked up with 12 guys, and I didn’t complain, did I?”

“Oh. Fair enough. Come on in!”

(Much, much chattier original text: Σκιαδαρέσης, Σ. 1951. Η βλοημένη τράπουλα. Mélanges offerts à Octave et Melpo Merlier. Athènes: Institut Français d’Athènes. 2:379–395.)

This is a subject of acute interest to many a Melburnian.

Best:

• Overall, reliable. Yes, when it falls over, it falls over horridly; but considering how much of the infrastructure is 150 years old, it is bearing the load remarkably well.
• Reasonable coverage, given it’s 150 years old. So long as urban development followed the train tracks, which was the case until a decade ago.

Worst:

• Overcrowding; if you’re in Zone 1, don’t even bother boarding a train between 7:30 and 9.
• Chronic underinvestment. I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords; at least they understand infrastructure. (And they don’t have federalism as a mechanism for everyone to dodge the responsibility of infrastructure.)
• If you’re in exurbia, particularly in the Western Suburbs, you’re shit out of luck: the train network is radial, not tangential. In fact, real estate agents in the Western Suburbs are reportedly told not to even bother showing clients a house, if it’s not 10 mins away from a train station.

The lack of a train connection to the airport is unfortunate, but not the worst thing possible.

Improvements?

• More money. And none of this bullshit federal/state nonsense. Take Tony Abbott out with a projectile tram if he ever comes into power again.
• More longterm thinking. I hope the new central tunnels are part of that.
• More tangential connections. Good that money is being poured into more central connections, I guess, but exurbia is tumbleweeds, and radial connections only get you so much 50 km out.

Besides the Positive personification of Greece, Athena, there’s also the negative personification of Greece, Ψωροκώσταινα Psorokostena, “Kostas’ Mangy Wife”. In fact the cartoonist Bost (Chrysanthos Mentis Bostantzoglou) in the ’60s drew Psorokostena as a Mangy Athena:

Although the contemporary blog Psorokostena has adopted a homelier figure:

The story of the historical Kostas’ Mangy Wife is one I didn’t know until today, and it’s… well, it’s sad: Ψωροκώσταινα

Panorea Hatzikostas (feminine form of surname Hatzikostena, though the suffix usually attaches to a husband’s given name) was a refugee in Nafplio from Ayvalık, during the Greek Revolutionary War. In 1826, she gave up her last belongings to fund the Greeks in the Third Siege of Missolonghi. Her gesture inspired the admiration of her countrymen.

Which would be a Good Thing, right?

But then, the meaning… evolved. As the Greek Wikipedia puts it,

“Kostas’ Mangy Wife” refers to the Greek State as a poor country, relying more on volunteer contributions and efforts by its citizens, than on the proper and well-thought out organisation and administration of its funds.

“Kostas’ Mangy Wife will pay for it” meaning that the Greek people will be unjustly forced to pay for expenses incurred by the actions and omissions of the governing class.

Erroneously, the expression “Kostas’ Mangy Wife” is used to describe a poor country, with no sources of revenue, doomed to eternal impoverishment. [citation needed]

In my twenties, I was like Jordan. Silence unnerved me. I sought noise. I made noise. I was loud. Sunday nights, when it was deadly quiet as I was working on my PhD, I would put on the community radio Metal show, because I couldn’t deal without noise. (And not because I had any idea what constituted good Metal.) When I moved to the States, I’d spent late nights at Denny’s, so I wouldn’t be alone in the quiet. Music constantly. TV as a comforting buzz in the background.

In my forties, I’ve turned into McKayla. I feel refreshed if I spend a couple of hours staying back at work, with just stillness and quiet and nothing around me. Background music makes me antsy. I rejoiced at the ongoing buzz of Greektown, till 1 AM, when I moved here; seven years on, I stay the hell away from it. I feel at my most euphoric if I’m walking home late at night, in absolute stillness. I don’t particularly seek out music much any more.

Oddly, my neurological situation these days is probably closer to Jordan’s than McKayla’s (something I’ll post about… maybe later). So I’m not sure what the explanation is. But it really is recent; last 3–4 years.

• The Byzantine navy had already been dissolved in the 1320s; Venice and Genoa ruled the waves.
• The crown jewels were pawned off in 1343, never to be redeemed.
• Byzantium had been wracked by civil war for decades; and the civil wars were being fought on behalf of the factions by Serbs and Turks.
• Gallipoli was occupied by the Ottomans in 1354, establishing an Ottoman presence in Europe; the Byzantines re-took it in 1366 (through the Savoyard crusade, the last time the West did anything to contain the Ottomans for a long time); and the Byzantines surrendered it back in 1376, to repay debts incurred in yet another civil war. Once the Ottomans were in Europe, it was all over.
• The Byzantine emperor John V (1354–1391), humiliatingly, was reduced to begging for help in Western courts.
• The Serbs were defeated in 1371, and the Ottoman Emirate was the only regional power that mattered any more.
• Byzantium was a vassal state of the Ottomans by 1372, and John V was obligated to take part in the emir’s military campaigns.

What Yonatan Gershon said in his answer:

I give you free reign to be an asshole, until you abuse that privilege.

I hate blocking and deleting comments. As I’ve said elsewhere (hello Clarissa; yes, Jae, I did finally give in and follow you), I know that it’s easy for me to take that attitude when I’m privileged.

But I’m an irenic, conflict-averse kinda guy, when it comes to topics other than comment blocking. And I’ve been online for 25 years: I’ve seen it all.

In making sense of my responses to comments, bear in mind what a Greek once said of me: “picture a Greek greengrocer, who’s culturally British”. A Brit not responding to you is the equivalent of a Greek running at you with a pitchfork.

So.

• I banter in comments. I welcome banter in comments. If we’ve got rapport, you may even get a really badly drawn cartoon.
• If you come at me with arguments, I won’t always like it, and I may well not change my answer; but I will have a lot of respect for you.
• If I mention you without hyperlinking to you, I don’t like you, and/or (usually and) I don’t want you to know what I’m saying about you. That usually extends to Quora staff, but there are two or three regular Quorans I do it to as well.
• If you tick me off, I may just… no, I’m pretty sure… Yeah, my mind’s made up: I will definitely refuse to upvote you.
• But that’s assuming you *really* tick me off.
• Like that guy who thought it useful to share with me that my wife’s name is awful? Seriously, what the hell’s up with that guy?
• If an argument is going south, feel free to have the last word. It’s not like any bystander won’t be able to tell which of us is the nutjob.
• I’ll give you a hint: I’m an irenic, conflict-averse kinda guy.

See also Why are YouTube comments so bad?

Yonatan Gershon’s answer substantially covers the differences:

Quora’s comments are much, much better. Both because of more well-thought-out methods of enforcement, and because Quora is a smaller platform upon which to attempt meritocracy.

In addition, for all that Quora likes to distance itself from being social media, it’s more social than YouTube. Following and exchanges are built in to the fabric of Quora much more than YouTube, where interactions are pepper spray. So there are less social repercussions on being an arsehole there; the absence of BNRB enforcement on YouTube is a symptom, not (just) a cause.

And, again for all that Quorans often differentiate answers and comments, answers and comments are part of the same fabric on Quora: exchange of ideas. On YouTube, the point is the broadcasting of media; it’s democratised, but it’s only occasionally two-way. The comments are not part of the same fabric, they’re more incidental. So they don’t attract much care and thought to begin with.

That said, YouTube’s much larger size would defeat any but the most numbskulled attempts at moderation.

Originally Answered:

Why has Quora changed the feed layout to show the icon of the topics above the question (October 2016)?

The motivation, I guess, is to foreground the topic classification of feed items over all other aspects of the item.

I would have rolled out a variant of this, where topic icons appear only over questions.

The topic icons are the least noxious aspect of this current variant.

Just got this misfeature in my feed today.

I know why they’re doing it: they’re explaining, more prominently, why an item has shown up in your feed. Because items show up for social networking reasons, they’re emphasising the social network connections back to you (the follower, the commenter, the topic) over the author. Because, apparently, now the UI team has decided Quora is social media after all.

Yes, I think it’s as idiotic as all the other continuous and never-ending tweaks to the UI. If there’s meant to be a difference between header and footer information, this is obviously less important information that belongs in the footer. Less important than WHO WROTE THE ANSWER, FFS.

And using the same icon for commenting and writing? When I have to squint to make out the author icon to begin with? Really?

There have been, like, two changes to the feed in the past year that have improved my experience. This is yet another one that hasn’t. I do want to know why an item is in my feed. And this was not the way to do it.

EDIT: in the latest iteration, the relative sizes of the icons are more sensible.

Was it my unhumble contribution that led to this reversal? Ah, who can tell…