Why did Quora rescind automatically forcing users to follow any question they answer? It was a great feature previously (and the time before that, though that was before my time on Quora). Having to follow manually each time is extremely annoying. At least make it optional under settings.
I can only think that this perspective on who is and isn’t Dutch is tied up with Western European, civic notions of nationhood, rather than stereotypically Eastern European, ethnic notions: the 2nd generation Surinamese born in Rotterdam is more Dutch than the 2nd generation Dutch-Canadian, because he lives there and is acculturated there.
Authenticated, eponymous users lead to higher quality answers—which is consistent with the Quora Real Names policy (which is severely undermined by anonymous users). But that does not explain why you have to log in just to read.
Valuation: “Look! We have 10 million gajillion registered users! Please give us more money!” Which makes the most sense, though I’d have thought IP tracking has made tracking unique visits a solved problem.
Establishing Token Cost (aka Keeping the Riff-Raff Out). Quora is invested in being better quality than Yahoo Answers, and if you can read, you can post—though it still seems an unnecessary extra step to force login just for passive consumption.
Encouraging Community Effect. Having ID for who’s upvoting who is certainly useful to how Quora works (if only it weren’t in so much denial about being a social site); I guess they want the eponymous clicks badly enough, that they make you pass the extra hurdle of logging in: as soon as you can read the stuff, they figure, you’ll want to click and comment and answer.
There’s a cost in forcing login; I can only surmise that they think it’s worth it in terms of the increased quality of input they get, and aren’t worried about Reddit-like volumes. They get very highly ranked on Google, after all.
I’m turning 45 in a month, actually; but this Cretan song I heard in my youth has been haunting me since I turned forty. I even had the first verse of it as my Skype mood message for a fair while.
Άχι και σαραντάρισα, δεν κάνω μπλιο γι’ αγάπες και μου ’ρχεται να τροζαθώ και να γλακώ στσι στράτες. Γιατροί μου απαγορεύουνε, μα λεν το κι οι γι-ανθρώποι: ξέχασε κειανά που ’κανες και τη ζωή την πρώτη. Μην παίζω μπλιο, μην τραγουδώ, μην ξενυχτώ τα βράδυα. Να πάψω να τσιλιπουρδώ στσ’ αυλές και στα σκοτάδια. Ρακί, κρασί μην ξαναπιώ, τσιγάρω μην καπνίσω, Μηδέ το μήνα μια φορά να μην ξαναγλεντίσω, και προπαντός τα όμορφα μην τα λοξοκοιτάζω. Χώρες χωριά και γειτονιές απού ’κραζα μην κράζω. Και λέω ίντα θα γενώ, και τρέμει η ψυχή μου. Σαν του χοχλιού το κέρατο εζάρωσε η χολή* μου.
Μα συλλογούμαι ίντα θα πεις Σαββάτο γή Δευτέρα, και συνταγές και γιατρικά θα τα πετάξω πέρα, και από τσι χάρες τση ζωής τσι πλια όμορφες θα πάρω, να αφήσω αποδιαλέουρα στον κερατά το Χάρο.
Alas I’m forty, fit no more for love. I feel like running crazy down the streets. The doctors ban me, people say so too: forgot what you once did, and your past life. Don’t play no more, don’t sing, don’t stay up late. Don’t hang around in courtyards and dark corners. No wine, no brandy, no more cigarettes, don’t have a party even once a month, and never steal a glance at pretty girls. Stop haunting towns and neighbourhoods I’d haunted. What’s to become of me? My soul, it shivers. Like a snail feeler my gall bladder* shrivels.
I wonder what you’ll think come Saturday, when I throw all my scripts and pills away. I’ll sample all the best life has to give. The leftovers—that bastard Death can have.
Patriarch Cyril Lucaris made overtures towards Calvinist theologians in the 1620s, and many though not all specialists believe he was pursuing a reform of the church along Calvinist lines. His contemporaries certainly thought so, and attributed the Calvinist Confession of Cyril Lucaris to him.
The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) repudiated both the Confession, and Cyril’s authorship of the Confession, three decades after Cyril’s execution.
There is one Quoran who upvotes just about everything I write (or at least, did the first few months I was here). He’s one of the few Quorans I knew online pre-Quora. I appreciate it: I regard him as my Quora sponsor.
There are Quorans I consider close Quora-friends, and I upvote most of their stuff I see in my feed, as a mark of group loyalty. Not all of it; if it was unspectacular, or trollish, or something I both disagree with and think was not well argued, I’ll decline to upvote. And hope they don’t notice. I don’t want to upvote automatically, but I will upvote by default.
In both cases, these are people I’ve gotten to know already. If some random starts upvoting me lots, well, I’ll make a point of getting to know them; but if we have that kind of overlapping interests, my experience until now has been that I already have gotten to know them.
As for comments: no, I cherish comments. If anything, I am the one creeping out other people with comments. Some people make it clear that they appreciate the banter, and reciprocate. Some people make it clear that they don’t; well, their loss.
As discussed in Bosom of Abraham and Paradise, the notion of heaven as a place where the righteous dead go, rather than Sheol for everyone, is a notion that was kicking around in late Judaism, including Jewish papyri and apocrypha such as 4 Maccabees.
That understanding of heaven is mentioned a couple of times in the Gospels, and was developed further by early Christian writers; but it was not alien to the Judaism of Jesus’ time.
Ditto hell: Gehenna as an antecedent to Hell is not much in evidence in the apocrypha, but it’s there in the Targums and the Talmud.
(I gotta say, btw, this was the result of 5 minutes on Wikipedia, and I’m astonished that none of the answers given looked into Jewish antecedents to heaven and hell.)