Category: Uncategorized

Because they remove any question relating to the banning of any user. Kearns is not being singled out.

Will Quora Moderation explain why a particular user was banned?

New Blog:

Quora News

The blog does not have a mission statement yet, and it might overlap with other Quora blogs, from back when Quora blogs were a thing. (Given how underexposed blogs are, how would we know?)

But passing this on as an item of interest to readers of this blog.

I’m withholding answers this fortnight. Jennifer will tear me a new one, because Time Out on Quora really is supposed to mean Time Out on Quora, where I would be just updating entries on Necrologue.

But, on the Necrologue:

2017–06–20 by Nick Nicholas on Necrologue

2017–06–17 by Nick Nicholas on Necrologue

Your account has been banned because it has been linked to suspicious and/or malicious activity that violated Quora’s policies and guidelines.

Without knowing about, or wanting to know about, the particulars of these bans:

Quora was giving no justification for bans for a long time. Then it was, and it was mostly BNBR. Then it wasn’t again.

Then it started giving justifications so vague, I’ve been counting them as equivalent to None Given: “Multiple Violations”.

This month, “Suspicious and/or Malicious” has shown up.

The acute problem with this is, “Suspicious” is not an assertion that an offence is proven, only that it is suspected.

Users being banned on the mere suspicion of nefarious activity? That’s even worse than not giving any rationale at all.

I’m now resuming my Quora Time Out.

When confronted with horrifically Kafkaesque opacity, one can only retaliate with sunlight.

This is an accidental find:

What’s happening to one of my answers on Quora? Are there upvote bots?

From the details:

UPDATE: After an investigation, it seems my answer was targeted by spam bots or spam profiles (unknown reasons). Attached is the message from a Quora Moderator. It pays to colour within the lines and to report suspicious activity!

So, whatever else it may mean, “suspicious activity” is a new word for Spamming.

EDIT: Maybe. Though this putative moderator was themselves banned, and the ban wording was “The content was deleted because it is in violation of our spam policy”: The Mystery Moderator. So my conclusion was premature.

P.S. I’m fascinated at my spontaneous themselves just then. It has a specific referent alright, but one whose true identity (and thus true gender) is under dispute; so I used the gender-neutral alternative after all…

If you want to make sense of English vowel pronunciation, Middle English phonology – Wikipedia is always a good place to start.

Do had a long ō. (As it still does, allowing for the Great English Vowel Shift.)

The Middle English 3rd person of do was dōeth, if the verb was a main verb, and dōth, if it was an auxiliary.

Long ō before a th normally became /uː/, as in sooth, booth; but it sometimes became /ʌ/, as in mōther, ōther. And dōth. (No, I don’t know what the rule was, if any.)

Does is a conventional spelling of dō-s replacing dō-th (evoking do-eth). As far as I can tell, a Middle English dōs could only have ended up pronounced as /duːz/: I doo, you doo, she dooz. The pronunciation of the oe in does, to rhyme with buzz, is clearly carried over from the o of dōth: the -th changed to -z only after the ō had changed to ʌ.

… Ah. I see Brian Collins’ answer to How come does is not pronounced as /doʊs/? is the same as I worked out.

Give to her joy, you callused world, give peace,
this lady who should never, ever cry.
Let it have air to bloom, roots to release,
this beauty which should never, ever die.

This smile, which neither coin nor bonds can buy,
let it be sheltered from the bondsman’s blame.
This heart so generous, this glance so wry,
let their reward be more than they can name.

Sleep now, my sweet, sleep while the world’s aflame.
There will be time to mourn it yet. Your hair
smoulders in auburn whorls, which none can tame.
Tomorrow, you’ll catch fire again and flare,

to stand your ground, and take what you deserve.
The stars fall at your feet, eager to serve.

Nothing as comprehensive or as well maintained, for the reasons given in Michael Chen’s answer: noone’s strongly motivated to reinvent NLTK when NLTK is already there.

There’s a list of projects at gopherdata/resources. There’s bits of what NLTK does among them.

What does fluency mean in a conlang like Klingon?

Actually “fluency” is something of a misnomer I committed. What does good style mean in a conlang like Klingon? People clearly do differentiate between good Klingon and bad Klingon; on what basis do they do so, when the language is made up, and we don’t have any utterances from its creator longer than a couple of lines of barked orders?

It would be a challenge to get a linguistics department to take it seriously. It would be even more of a challenge to get a literature department to take it seriously, and it would be the kind of thesis that could do with input from someone dealing with rhetoric (which linguists tend to think beneath them). But there’s a PhD in it, for sure. And it spans across mental models of style, and fads in English prose style, and translation theory; in fact, it reaches into the theory of aesthetics.

It’s the question that got me into linguistics, btw (in its Lojban iteration). And I sort of have an answer for it, as the answer linked shows. But it can be filled out a lot more than that.

Did Socrates really say “if you get a bad wife, you’ll become a philosopher” in any original texts like Plato’s or Xenophon’s dialogue?

Two sources named:

John Uebersax’s answer to Did Socrates really say “if you get a bad wife, you’ll become a philosopher” in any original texts like Plato’s or Xenophon’s dialogue?

Diogenes Laertius, Life of Socrates XVII

And he used to say, that one ought to live with a restive woman, just as horsemen manage violent-tempered horses; “and as they,” said he, “when they have once mastered them, are easily able to manage all others; so I, after managing Xanthippe, can easily live with any one else whatever.”

Michael Kambas’ answer to Did Socrates really say “if you get a bad wife, you’ll become a philosopher” in any original texts like Plato’s or Xenophon’s dialogue?

Xenophon, Symposium (2.10)

“If that is your view, Socrates,” asked Antisthenes, “how does it come that you don’t practise what you preach by yourself educating Xanthippe, but live with a wife who is the hardest to get along with of all the women there are—yes, or all that ever were, I suspect, or ever will be?”

“Because,” he replied, “I observe that men who wish to become expert horsemen do not get the most docile horses but rather those that are high-mettled, believing that if they can manage this kind, they will easily handle any other. My course is similar. Mankind at large is what I wish to deal and associate with; and so I have got her, well assured that if I can endure her, I shall have no difficulty in my relations with all the rest of human kind.”

Diogenes Laertius had συνεῖναι τραχείᾳ γυναικὶ “to be with a rough woman”; Xenophon had χρῇ γυναικὶ “you are supplied with a woman”. Neither of them had an explicit word for marrying at all.

Oh, shut up, QCR.

Masiello and Gwin.

Others applaud them. I panic for them. I want it to work out, they are both good souls who have earned respite, and find it in each other; I worry that they may not work out, because the world is a cruel place.

Yes, nothing ventured nothing gained. And at least, they are both old and wise enough to know.

I worry so much, that the first song to pop into my head was this. Lyrics Kostas Tripolitis, Music Mikis Theodorakis, 1981: late Mikis. Lyrics disillusioned and fearful; music soaring and yearning. Αγάπη: Love. stixoi.info: Αγάπη

Love of bread and fire,
Love of brackishness.
Billboards will choke us
and empty beer cans.

Where can I take you away?
Glass and sheet metal
have filled the years
with expired months.

Love of bread and rain,
Love out on the balconies.
You’ll see blood on the asphalt
and plastic containers.

Where can I take you away?
Glass and sheet metal
have filled the years
with expired months.

I worry, too, that you’ll talk each other mad. Too wise to woo, bickering constantly, exasperatingly, charmingly, like Beatrice and her Benedick. But they got to have their day in the sun, in the end. And so do you: