Category: Uncategorized

… but this comment triggered me, I guess. I have written on this before as an answer.

Yasin Karahan:

Well, f**k…the thing is: Wouldn’t it suffice to excell at what one does? With all due modesty: I’m pretty f’ing good at what I do and my professor agrees. Might be a tough nut to crack, but…is it really more of a utopia? How’d all those professors end up where they are? Money and “Beziehungen”? It didn’t have anything to do with them being good at what they do?

https://www.quora.com/How-diffic…

Ach, Yasin. My heart breaks that you are halfway through a doctorate, and you’re only now working out about Vitamin B. (For non-Germanophones: Vitamin B = Beziehungen = Contacts.)

When I was doing my PhD, and had worked this out, and was bemoaning it to my relatives in Greece, they sadly nodded their heads. They were in Greece: they knew all about a shortage of positions meaning that contacts take priority over merit.

Let me give you an anecdote. I was out of the PhD 8 years, but still hanging around uni (as an IT guy now). I was mates with a current PhD; German, as it happens. We’d learned that a PhD student who’d just finished was already lined up for a postdoc at Berkeley.

—Who does she know?, I growled to him.

—Nick, I must object! said my German friend most Germanly. X is an excellent scholar!

—And so are you, German friend, and so am I. Who does she know?

X was an excellent scholar. She was also the favourite of the head of department, who was well connected. She got a lectureship back in Australia five years later. A couple of years after that, so did my German friend. Also an excellent scholar.

I work in IT. I was no worse a scholar. I was worse at having contacts, did not pick my supervisor strategically, and worked in an area that would never get me a job.

Yasin: Publish. Network. Work on fashionable areas. Rinse, repeat. And like Haidar Abboud said: Perseverance. (Which means have alternative sources of income in the meantime.)

And punch your Doktorvater in the face, next time you see him, for allowing you to think that merit alone is going to get you a uni job.

For Victoria Weaver.

Music came early to me. Soaking up the multiple musical traditions of Greece while living there, from 8–12.

(Or to be more precise, the musical traditions that Greek State TV allowed through. Crete was in by then, but no violins, only lyras, by an ahistorical metric of authenticity—I was living in violin country, and assuming the local fiddler was some sort of interloper. No Ionian islands: barbershop quartets, too Western. No brass: too suspect in their Balkanness.)

And then, when back in Australia, my mum got me a tape of best-of Bach organ music, as played by Helmut Walcha.

She walked past the racket as I was listening, puzzled, entranced. “My fault for buying it”, she winced. Yeah. Her fault indeed.

Music is my literature, music is certainly my art. Music lit was the high school course I got the most enduring learnings out of, scrutinising how those pieces ticked, putting them back together. Berg’s Violin Concerto; Bach’s Christmas Oratorio; Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms.

Music is where I learned of tradition and innovation. Music is where I learned of the manipulation of tradition. (See second para.) It’s been a fond pastime, all too rare, for me to take the time to immerse myself in a new musical tradition, and work out how it varies, and how it hangs together. Ars Subtilior. Georgian folk. Country blues.

Hence the mandolin; I got turned on to country blues by a blues guitarist and mandolinist (docwhite)—which made me realise that the Piedmont style was my thing, even if the Delta style was all I’d ever heard. My wife got me a mandolin, and I banged away at it a bit; even improvised a few times. But I’m not at the age where I can practice or stick to things much any more. The mandolin gets taken out maybe once a year.

I took to mandolin, because it’s the same tuning as a violin; in fact, my wife got me a mandolin because that’s what I’d idly commented to her during the first show we saw of Doc White’s. And I had played violin. Primary school violin lessons; resumed in high school, though I never got to be all that good at it. I did at least get to play in orchestra once or twice. Useful experience, being part of a band.

I wrote some music in high school too, for what that was worth. I’d gotten the inspiration to. Not the technique to. Certainly not the perseverance to. Ironically, it was only after I finished a doctorate, that I got enough perseverance to finish anything at all. I had a spare year between my PhD and my monograph while stateside; Compositions are the result. No, they’re not that long. No, I didn’t have that much perseverance after all. Yes, I’m happy with them.

Lots. Your search term is tsitakismos, the Greek name for the affrication of palatal /k/ [c] to [tʃ, tɕ, ts], as exemplified by the pronunciation of /ke/ “and” as /tʃe/ instead of Standard Greek [ce].

Going through the Centre for the Greek Language’s writeup of Modern dialects, and looking for that tsitakismos keyword:

• South-Eastern
• Some islands in the Dodecanese
• Chios
• Cypriot (as [dʒe])
• Northern Dialects
• Lesbos, Skyros, Mykonos
• Cappadocian (refugee, moribund)
• Southern Italian Greek (not in Greece)
• At least some parts of the Peloponnese
• Tsakonian
• Old Athenian (including Aegina, Kyme, Megara)
• Cretan and the Cyclades

In fact, as I’ve already mentioned in another answer, somewhere, the better questions to ask is: Where does tsitakismos not happen? The answer appears to be the Greek mainland and the Ionian islands, some bits of the Peloponnese and Attica excepted.

Incidentally, Greek dialectologists seem to have only worked out in 1983 (Contossopoulos’ paper) that the real split between Greek dialects is the word for “what”: τι vs ίντα, separating Aegean Islands and Old Athenian from the Mainland. That split corresponds closely to the tsitakismos isοgloss. The three Northern dialect exceptions, for example, are islands.

EDIT: cc Dimitris Almyrantis Philip Newton I’ve just stumbled on this paper from last year by Pantelidis: http://ins.web.auth.gr/images/ME… , which fascinatingly suggests that there are old connections between Old Athenian and Peloponnesian, and concludes that Old Athenian used to be spoken in Eastern Central Greece, which now speaks Northern Greek or Arvanitika. He notes, pp. 307–8, that tsitakismos turns up in bits (bits) of both the Peloponnese and Central Greece, though there is just too little data to work out how old and extensive the phenomenon is.

Originally posted in Some levity by Nick Nicholas on Necrologue

By Sophie Dockx:

Victoria Weaver here has A2A’d me
to give a high school roster, drawn from peers
that on the roads of Quora wander free,
who I should learn from, were I back at school.
What manner folly this? I still have dreams
of being forced to reenrol in schools,
where I would fain not linger. Yet, I warrant,
if teachers such as these were at my beck,
the nightmare might be more endurable—
so long as I am spared exams, bologna,
jocks—and the whole high school “experience”.

For Physics is Sam Murray my fond choice;
by then they’ll have completed their degree.
And such infectiousness as they display
when speaking here of kink or drugs or love
would be the very physic Physics merits.

For English choose I Jordan Yates, of course,
a writer most insightful and engaging,
who is embarked on paedagogy’s road.
Drama, I fear, is taught not separately,
in my antipodean experience;
yet any pretext sees her take the stage.

I find that latterly Philosophy
is taught where I once studied. If the school,
however, is of religious predilection,
Religious Ed will be an offering.
For either, I can find no substitute,
either for dogma or for moral soundness,
better than one McKayla Kennedy.

Of Mathematics I no longer know
who is to follow and who is to teach;
to Uri Granta would I give the post,
just so I may have access to his teaching,
both well considered and encyclopaedic.

For Music, Comrade Weaver, I choose you,
for we have much within the repertoire
to wage debate on. You might also take
the subject on of Politics—before
you find a lovely bridge to shoot me under.

… Then I awoke from out my reverie,
and realised that such a happenstance
I have no need to ponder. Here on Quora
I get all that, and more—without a schoolhouse!

(And here, too, all cool kids are in detention.)

Definition of EQUITABLE

1. having or exhibiting equity : dealing fairly and equally with all concerned an equitable settlement of the dispute
2. existing or valid in equity as distinguished from law: an equitable defense

Michael Masiello’s answer to What do you hate about Quora as of March 2017?

So here’s the deal. I’m not writing any more answers for this site. I’ll watch. Maybe you can ban me for that. If so, fine. Blow me. If not, fine. Blow me.

Meanwhile, maybe you could let someone smarter than your whole brain trust put together — his name was Aristotle, you should look him up — offer a cogent gloss on your application of your policies. I will write here again if and when this site becomes “equitable” rather than what (supposedly) passes for merely “just.” Otherwise, this is not worth my time any more.

No, you should report this as a bug, and Quora should fix it, because this answer from a Quora staffer in 2012 said this constitutes a bug:

Kat Li’s answer to Why does the Quora algorithm repeat the same question in the feeds?

Don’t use the bugs@quora email though. Apparently they don’t use that any more. Use “Report a Bug” in the fine print in your Profile menu.

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Btw, Quora Inc.: do try and prevent your staff from using in public the in-house word story for answer or post.

What would be a bug is if the same story showed up in your feed

I’ve seen story used on the Quora blog pretty recently. Your users (remember them?) are not exposed to your in-house jargon, and it’s not like you onboard them even with the stuff you expect them to know.

Speculation, but I’m assuming there’s a direct line from haxxor to doxx(er) to vaxxer.

Leetspeak, the affective use of creating spellings in hacker communities, has taken up the use of -xxor or -xx0r as a creative spelling of –cker; thus, haxxor for hacker. haxxor – Wiktionary. The duplication of <x> is an affectation. In fact the very use of <x> instead of /k/ is an affectation: it is misusing the plural hacks (hax) as the stem of the noun hacker (†hacks-er) instead of hack. The spelling haxx – Wiktionary is also used for hacks and hacking, and I’m assuming it is a back formation from haxxor.

dox – Wiktionary is the Leetspeak respelling of docs (abbreviation of documents) in the sense of “Documents, especially information sought by hackers about an individual (address, credit card numbers, etc.)”

When it came time to form a verb out of the action of seeking dox on someone, the spelling doxx – Wiktionary prevailed. I am assuming it was done by analogy with not just haxx (still a noun), but also the verb *to haxx implicit in haxxor. Hence why the noun dox is more often spelled with a single x, and the verb doxx with a double xx (although both spellings are used). And I think this was affective analogy; I don’t think you needed the intermediate step of doxx0r (document hacker) for that to happen.

Now, English has a longstanding spelling convention that when you add a suffix to a word ending in short vowel + consonant, you double the consonant to keep the vowel short. Sit > Sitter. Spam > Spammer. You could say that by analogy, dox > doxxer. But there was no use of xx like that before in English: box > boxer.

Nor am I convinced that the need to make the vowel before the <x> short played a role: I just don’t think leetspeak would have ever spelled baker as baxor, for example, so that you would need to spell backer as baxxor to contrast the vowels.

So what I think happened is that the –xx spelling of haxxor and doxx opened up the possibility of applying the consonant doubling rule to other verbs. Once doxx was in place as a verb, and haxxor was already there, it became easier for verbs ending in /ks/ to be spelled with an xx, and even more easy for –xer nouns to be spelled as –xxer—as long as they are analogous to doxx: that is, primarily used online and informally, and clearly abbreviations of of something else. In fact, the parallel of haxxor made it possible to go straight from dox to doxxer, without even positing an intermediate verb to doxx—you can just draw an analogy now with spam > spammer.

The adjective is anti-vax – Wiktionary. By analogy with doxx and haxxor, and for that matter spam > spammer (a rule now applied to anti-vax by analogy with haxxor): anti-vax > anti-vaxxer – Wiktionary.

Heavens, a lot of righteousness in this thread.

I’m going to… well, I’m going to answer this the way I would. I saw the answer before OP clarified, and I’m giving the same answer I would before, but maybe with a bit more details.

I am cis het, and present as such. I’m also middle-aged, so I predate the current increased visibility of trans people. Which means, you know. I’m the group OP is likeliest to be worried about, if they meet me in close quarters.

I have just OK liberal credentials with regard to transgender issues, I guess. I have learned a lot in the past year from being on Quora. I number several transgender and genderfluid people among my online friends, and I make a conscious effort to be supportive of them and to respect their boundaries—which I’m only finding out about now. I don’t volunteer with any transgender groups, and I don’t know any transgender people IRL; so yes, I could do more. But I guess ideologically, I’m aligned with most of the people who’ve responded so far.

Would I feel awkward talking to a transwoman at close quarters, who obviously does not pass?

Yes.

There’s some clear reasons for that, and I’m going to take the time to think them through. OP deserves as much.

First, I don’t actually know any transgender people IRL, so it would be a novelty. Not something to be proud of, but there you go.

Second, I anticipate that, with someone who obviously doesn’t pass, from a group that I have had minimal IRL contact with, I would experience a bit of the Uncanny Valley effect—the freakout people get when they see someone who doesn’t quite match their preconceptions of what normal is.

Of course one’s preconceptions are preconceptions, and nothing to be smug about. Of course preconceptions are battered down by more and more exposure to different images of how people do gender. Of course heteronormativity (cis-normativity?) is a thing.

And people unaccustomed to seeing trans people who obviously don’t pass (can I abbreviate that? TPWODP?) are going to stare a bit more, and feel awkward about the novel encounter, even with all the good will in the world. That’s not an excuse, but it is a thing that you will run into.

But you know, I’ve had that experience of awkwardness before. I’ve had it when I first moved to Melbourne, and saw Asians for the first time. If I stared every time I saw an Asian Australian in Melbourne, I’d never get anything else done; but I did stare at the age of 12. I’ve had that experience when I first met Australian Aboriginals. I’ve had that experience when I first met a butch lesbian.

And I got over it, and in fact I got over it within the time frame it would take me to hypothetically get stuck in an elevator with OP. My best friend for a decade was a butch lesbian. (Well, baby dyke, really, but I didn’t know the distinctions when I first met her; after all, I was unfamiliar.) I was bantering and singing with the first Australian Aboriginal I met within a half hour. The guys I’ve kept in touch with from high school are Asian Australians.

OP, you’re right to be worried about how people will interact with you. Some will not get over their unfamilarity. Some will be assholes. You need to be prepared for that, and you need to seek advice of people who’ve been on the receiving end of it, not just the dishing out side of it. Jae Alexis Lee for example.

But, if this cis het guy can say one positive thing: I stumbled across the transition timeline that my friend Nic posted online. Literally stumbled, actually; she was surprised I found it. (But hey, she did post it publicly, and gave me the address to her blog.)

And what others have said about their transition, well, it was true to see there too. As she transitioned, the light came on behind her eyes. The corner of her lips turned up. The confidence was visible. The joy in experimenting with different kinds of makeup was obvious.

She’s more beautiful now than before: not because there was anything misshapen about her as a boy; not because she is aligning more to heteronormative norms of what a chick looks like. She’s more beautiful now than before, because she’s visibly happier in her own skin than before.

And you know what? Those who do not willingly blind themselves: they’ll see that too.

Drawing on:

History of Constellation and Star Names

In Greek astronomy the stars within the constellation figures were usually not given individual names. (There are only a few individual star names from Greece. The most prominent stars in the sky were usually nameless in Greek civilization. If there was a system of Greek star names then it has not come down to us and also would appear unknown to Ptolemy.)

List of proper names of stars – Wikipedia

From the Wikipedia page, clearly the only prolific namers of stars were the Arabs and the Chinese.

EDIT: I am adding data from Κατηγορία:Αντικείμενα Bayer – Βικιπαίδεια and Κατηγορία:Αστέρες ανά φασματικό τύπο – Βικιπαίδεια from the Greek Wikipedia. Additions are asterisked. As it turns out, several Latin names are translations of Classical Greek names.

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In this catalogue, Ancient names are in boldface. The provenance of unbolded “traditional” Greek names is not always clear from the sources, but I am assuming they are post-Classical.

• θ¹ Eridani: (Arabic) Acamar. “The Greek-Persian astronomer Chrysococca [Georgios Chrysokokkes: Γεώργιος Χρυσοκόκκης – Βικιπαίδεια] called it Aulax in Greek, meaning the Furrow” Αὖλαξ.
• *α Tauri: (Arabic) Aldebaran. Greek name was (descriptive) “south eye of Taurus”; Ptolemy called it “bright star of the Hyades”; Modern Greek name is Lampadias Λαμπαδίας.
• α Scorpii: Antares Ἀντάρης
• α Boötis: Arcturus Ἀρκτοῦρος (already in Homer)
• ι Carinae: Aspidiske Ἀσπιδίσκη (per Iota Carinae – Wikipedia, Greek translation of Arabic Turais)
• ξ Puppis: Asmidiske †Ἀσμιδίσκη (Xi Puppis – Wikipedia: “a misplacement and mistransliteration of Aspidiske, the traditional name of ι Carinae; hence the name Asmidiske for Xi Puppis is not currently IAU-approved”)
• *α Orionis: (Arabic) Betelgeuse. Georgios Chrysokokkes called it Ōmon Didymōn Ὦμον Διδύμων “Shoulder of Gemini”
• α Carinae: Canopus Κάνωπος
• *α Aurigae: (Latin) Capella. Greek Aix Αἶξ (Aratus), Olenia Aix Ὠλενία Αἶξ (cf. Ovid: Olenium Astrum), Amaltheia Ἀμάλθεια. Capella “goat” is a translation of Aix; Amaltheia was the goat that brought up Zeus.
• *α Geminorum: (Latin) Castōr. Presumably also Greek Kastōr Κάστωρ. Also in “late Greek antiquity” Apollo Ἀπόλλων.
• α Canum Venaticorum: (Latin) Cor Caroli, Asterion Ἀστερίων
• β Canum Venaticorum: Asterion Ἀστερίων, Chara Χαρά
• This one is messy. Hevelius created the constellation, and named the Northern Dog Asterion and the Southern Dog Chara. β CVn is now named Chara, and α CVn Cor Caroli. Antonín Bečvář assigned the names Asterion to β CVn and Chara to α CVn.
• *α Ursae Minor: Polaris. Ancient name: Cynosure Κυνόσουρα (according to Greek Wikipedia, referred in antiquity only to the entire constellation), Phoinikē Φοινίκη.
• *β Leonis: (Arabic) Denebola. Ancient Greek Alkaia Ἀλκαία “lion tail” (also the origin of Denebola: ðanab al-asad).
• α Comae Berenices A: Diadem Διάδημα
• *ζ Aurigae: (Latin) Haedus. Hipparchus, Ptolemy: Eriphos Ἔριφος “kid goat” = Haedus. If Greek Wikipedia’s Protē Eriphos Πρώτη Ἔριφος “first kid goat” is classical, then η Aurigae: Haedus II would be Hetera or Deutera Eriphos Ἑτέρα/Δευτέρα Ἔριφος, “other/second kid goat”
• ζ Hydrae: Hydrobius Ὑδρόβιος (not official, not mentioned in Zeta Hydrae – Wikipedia)
• β Herculis: Kornephoros Κορ[υ]νηφόρος (properly in Ancient Greek korynēphoros)
• ζ Puppis: Naos †Ναός (Zeta Puppis – Wikipedia: intended to be Naus Ναῦς “ship”, over-Hellenised)
• β Geminorum: Pollux. Presumably also Greek Polydeukēs Πολυδεύκης. Possibly also Heracles Ἡρακλῆς, which was still used in Renaissance.
• *η Geminorum: Propus Πρόπους (in Hipparchus and Ptolemy)
• α Canis Minoris: Procyon Προκύων (in Aratus)
• *α Leonis: (Latin) Regulus. Ancient Greek Basiliskos astēr Βασιλισκὸς Ἀστήρ “royal star”. (Regulus means “little king”); Kardia Leontos Καρδία Λέοντος (? Ancient) corresponding to Latin Cor Leonis and Arabic Al Qalb al Asad.
• *β Orionis: (Arabic) Rigel. Georgios Chrysokokkes called it Pous Didymōn Ποῦς Διδύμων “Foot of Gemini”
• α Canis Majoris: Sirius Σείριος (already in Homer)
• α Virginis: (Latin) Spica (in Aratus: Stachys Στάχυς)
• ω Sagittarii: Terebellum (Terebellum (astronomy) – Wikipedia: originally Tetrapleuron Τετράπλευρον “quadrangle”, an asterism of four stars identified by Ptolemy, of which ω Sgr is the brightest)
• *α Lyrae: (Arabic) Vega. Greek Lyra Λύρα, after the constellation.
• ε Virginis: (Latin) Vindemiatrix (in Aratus: Protrygater Προτρυγετήρ, of which Vindemiatrix is the Latin translation)
• Pleiades:
• η Tauri : Alcyone Ἀλκυόνη
• 21 Tauri: Asterope Ἀστερόπη
• 27 Tauri: Atlas Ἄτλας
• 16 Tauri: Celaeno Κελαινώ
• 17 Tauri: Electra Ἠλέκτρα
• 20 Tauri: Maia Μαῖα
• 23 Tauri: Merope Μερόπη
• 28 Tauri: Pleione Πλειόνη
• 19 Tauri: Taygeta Ταϋγέτη