Regarding the firestorm that was Monica's firing, mods resigning, SE non-apologizing, then backpedaling, then apologizing, then putting out the wildly negatively received FAQ on the new CoC regarding pronouns, it's been pretty hard to follow, hard to understand, and frustrating to hear about.  What hasn't been hard to follow and identify, however, is the both explicit and subtle instances of homophobia, queerphobia, and transphobia that have emerged.  I suppose, since most everyone is frustrated with the new pronoun CoC, LGBT-phobes have decided they can blend their bigotry in with the general and appropriate outrage that isn't directed at the LGBT+ users on SE, but rather SE's mishandling of an important issue.  As a queer woman, seeing comments with lots of upvotes criticizing queer and trans users and blaming this mess on them, lamenting political correctness that requires you refer to someone how they'd like you to, and anger at the fact that SE sort of, maybe, at the very beginning, wanted to protect LGBT users, is very troubling and uncomfortable for me to see.  I feel, right now, with all of this in mind, like I can't be open about my identity on SE.  To my fellow LGBT+ users, do you feel the same way?  If this is the case with others as well (and me hopefully not just being a snowflake), how can we fix this?  Most importantly, can we fix this?   (My question is, is this issue fixable, not, is it an issue.)
This is a followup to my question  . StrongBad, in a comment replying to one of my comments, suggested that I go ahead and ask something along these lines. This question is directed at those who have experienced unwelcoming behavior. I'm so confused over the nature of the unwelcoming behavior that others have alluded to. If I can't figure out what is happening because it gets deleted quickly, there's little I can do to work toward preventing future occurrences. What, specifically, can individuals in the community do to support those who have experienced gender bias? I'm asking you -- those of you who have experienced bias related to being LGBTQ or some other sort of gender bias. What do you want or need us to do so that you feel welcomed?  Are you looking primarily for greater awareness of the issues you commonly face? That is, there is nothing really that specific for us to do except to attend sensitivity training, show greater empathy, etc. Do you want us to be more vigilant in voting down and flagging unwelcoming content so that it gets deleted quicker? Are there a few specific users that you want to be &quot;taught a lesson&quot;, and the rest of us are caught up in the crossfire? Do you want us to proactively ask you for your pronouns or other biographical or identity details before we engage with you? (I apologize for accidentally misgendering Aza in my previous question, but there's nothing on her profile to indicate her gender or that she wants people to be particularly sensitive in this regard towards her. Perhaps I could have sent her a note &quot;Hey Aza, I'm going to reference you in an upcoming post, what are your pronouns?&quot;, but that seems so awkward.) Do you want help with lobbying Stack Exchange into making changes to the existing system such as adding support for adding pronouns, sexual orientation, etc. to user profiles?
What will result in better page ranking in search results: Page views or time spent on page? How should I implement hook_menu()? Understanding Lasso Regression's sparsity geometrically Whenever someone writes about Lasso and Ridge Regression thy draw this diagram with the circle or with the diamond.    In the case of the diamond (Lasso regression) it is then always stated that Lasso forces one of the coefficients to 0. Therefor it introduces sparsity. I understand it somehow, but whenever I see the diagram my doubts return. Why couldn't one just draw it like this:    Obviously none of the coefficients is forced to zero in this case. Both can take number between -1 and 1. What am I missing? My drawing has to be wrong, but I don't get it why they always draw so that it hits $\beta_1=0$  Edit:  Just found this quote:     However, the lasso constraint has corners at each of the axes and so the ellipse will often intersect the constraint region at an axis   Is that it? It will intersect often with the constraint region, but it doesn't have to? Can't wrap my head around it. I can only imagine that in higher dimensional cases hitting a corner becomes more likely or even inevitable. How can I create light trails without a blurry subject? I would like to achieve this effect using my Nikon P510:      Are there any suggestions or tips that would help me do that? Is your mount an enemy of your target in terms of triggering sneak attack? I was working on building a Zorro character and this question came up: if a rogue is riding on a mount, is that mount considered an ally, or, specifically, an "enemy" of your target?  One of the ways Sneak attack can be trigged is...     "... if another enemy of the target is within 5 feet of it, that enemy   isn’t incapacitated, and you don’t have disadvantage on the attack   roll."   My assumption is yes. Every mount I'm aware of has some kind of attack at its disposal, and thus they represent a threat to your target in addition to the increased threat potential they grant you as the rider. Moreover, if a gnome can proc a sneak attack by acting as a distraction, I don't know why a warhorse wouldn't be able to. That said, is there anything in the books or elsewhere that defines what "enemy of the target" is allowed to include? Software center disappeared [19.10] I have had trouble with sound (now fixed) since upgrading to 19.10, and in the middle of trying the common solutions, the Software Center "disappeared". I got aware of quite late, so I don't know what caused it.  Anyway, would you know how to reinstall it ? Trying sudo apt-get install software-center doesn't work. How can we connect a PHP script to MS Access (.mdb) file?  I tried by including following PHP code:  $db_path = $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '\WebUpdate\\' . $file_name . '.mdb'; $cfg_dsn = "Provider=Microsoft.Jet.OLEDB.4.0;Data Source=" . $db_path; $odbcconnect = odbc_connect($cfg_dsn, '', '');   But it failed and I received following error message:   Warning: odbc_connect() [function.odbc-connect]: SQL error: [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source name not found and no default driver specified, SQL state IM002 in SQLConnect in C:\web\WebUpdate\index.php on line 41 The sentence     Women driving cars is, of course, such a foreign sight to a society like   Saudi Arabia   The subject is not "women" (otherwise, the verb would have been 'are'); the subject, as I mean to use it, is the rarity of seeing women driving cars. The subject, in other words, is "women driving cars" as a thing. Does this give me licence to use 'is' here? Thank you. Prove or disprove: For every integer a, if a is not congruent to 0 (mod 3), the a^2 is congruent to 1 (mod 3) Prove or disprove: For every integer a, if a is not congruent to 0 (mod 3), the a^2 is congruent to 1 (mod 3)  SO this is for abstract algebra and I am really struggling with this. Here are some of the definitions and theorems I think would apply.  -an integer a divides and integer b if there is an integer q such that b=aq -Let a and b be integers, with a>0. Then there exist unique integers q and r such that b= aq+r and 0&lt;=r  The question says hint: use 2 cases but I'm not really sure what that means. I'm guessing it wants me to look at it when a is congruent to 0 and when it's not? so i tried to do that but just ended up stuck. below is as far as i got with that attempt  Proof: Case 1 There should be some information about letting variables exist in certain number sets here  assume a is not congruent to 0 mod 3, then 3 does not divide a-0, therefore a-0 does not equal 3q for some q in the integers  I was trying to get this to wind down to thus 3 divides a^2-1 but even tho it seems true (I couldn't find a counter example) I couldn't figure out how to prove it with what I have.  Next i tried reversing it thinking I could contradict it or something.  I think this would be case 2? assume a is congruent to 0 mod 3, then 3 divides a-0 and a-0=3q for some q in the integers, then 3q=a since 0 is the additive identity, therefore 3 divides a,  and again stuck and my brain hurts a little..  Can anyone help me figure out how to work this. 2-10x Slower Deployments with Winter '15? How does Python evaluate the expression 1+++2?  How many ever + I put in between, it is printing 3 as the answer. Please can anyone explain this behavior  And for 1--2 it is printing 3 and for 1---2 it is printing -1 Can 'home' be an adjective as well as an adverb or a noun? All the dictionaries I've consulted say that 'home' is an adverb and a noun, depending on context. For example:  (1) He went home. [adverb] (2) He is at home. [noun]  Also, there's  that seemingly resolves the issue of why 'home' sometimes should be analyzed as an adverb. But what about this example?  (3) I can find my way home.  Can you also say that home in (3) is an adverb? It seems to me that home in (3) cannot be an adverb, because I think it functions as a complement of the noun way and that my way home as a whole is a noun phrase. Even if we accept John Lawler's analysis in the above quoted answer of considering home &quot;one of those idiomatic locative nouns that are allowed to drop determiners and occasionally even prepositions,&quot; we cannot say home in (3) is an example of &quot;how a noun can be used as an adverb&quot;, because (3) can be analyzed as John Lawler suggests:  (3') I can find my way (to my) home.  Here, to my home is not an adverbial prepositional phrase but an adjectival prepositional phrase that acts as a complement of the noun way. So, to take what John Lawler said and adapt it to (3), &quot;what it is is an [adjectival] prepositional phrase that has been stripped of its prepositions and determiners, leaving only a naked noun to stand for the whole phrase. That's how a noun can be used as an [adjective].&quot; Now, does this mean we should call home a noun, an adverb, or an adjective, depending on context? Does the Lunatic Cultist spawn on iPad? I was searching for more answers on the internet. I kept searching, and I found one thing that help me a little. I went back to Terraria and tried it out, but the Lunatic Cultist didn’t spawn.  Does the Lunatic Cultist spawn on an iPad? Prove the following equality using mathematical induction: Prove the following equality using mathematical induction: For any integer $n \ge 1$  $$\sum_{i=1}^{n} \frac{1}{i(i+1)} = \frac{n}{n+1}$$  I understand for the base base I need to have $n=1$. If I substituted $n$ for 1 and $i$ for 1 I would get   \begin{align} \sum_{i=1}^{1} \frac{1}{1(1+1)} &amp;= \frac{1}{1+1} \\ \sum_{i=1}^{1} \frac{1}{2} &amp;= \frac{1}{2} \end{align}  As for the inductive step, I inputted $n +1$ but it did not work for me because honestly I did not know what to do with the $i$ and what I should do next.  How would I go about doing the next step and an explanation for $i$ would be helpful. Mathematica9: NDSolve slows down after repeated calls Purpose of hole in stove leading to oven I'm staying in a hotel and have access to a "electric coil stove" for one of the first times.  I accidentally turned on the oven light and saw that the light was shining up through only one of the stoves:    There's only a port from the oven into the top right stove, and note that the stove is not on.  Here's a view from within the oven:    Is there a hole here as a vent for the oven for some reason, or is this for the stove? I typically use a glass "flat-top stove" that doesn't have an oven underneath it. I've never seen a direct hole from a stove to the oven before, and have to wonder what the purpose is. Solving multiple congruences by CRT = Chinese Remainder Theorem $2\cos^2x=1+\sin x$.  Determine the exact values of $x$ such that $0 \leq x \leq 2\pi$.    I am experiencing problems with factoring this question.  First I started by getting everything on to the left side so: $2\cos^2x-\sin x-1=0$.  Then seeing as there are two trig variable here ($\cos$ and $\sin$), I used the pythagorean identity and replaced $2\cos^2x$ with $1-2\sin^2x$ to make it into a one variable question: $1-1-2\sin^2x-\sin x-1=0$.   By collecting like terms it then becomes $-\sin^2x-\sin x=0$.  Now you could factor these with $0$ and $-1$, but then it creates uneven brackets so this musn't work.  I don't think the quadratic formula is necessary, but I am wondering if this could be treated as a difference of squares question.    If you replace the $\sin x$ and make the question into $-x^2-x=0$ it is a little easier to look at, however I am not sure if this is the right approach.  If someone could please clarify my answer, that would be appreciated! How to run a background task in a servlet based web application? I want to prove this:  Prove that if $a \in \mathbb{Z}$ is divisible by $4$, then there exist $b$ and $c$ where $b,c \in \mathbb{Z}$ such that $a = b^2 - c^2$  I want to prove this directily:  $4\mid a $,  $a\in \mathbb{Z} \implies \exists b,c \in \mathbb{Z}, \quad$ s.t. $a=b^2-c^2$  Let $k\in \mathbb{Z}$. Then $4=a\cdot k$ and $k$ can divide $4$. Hence,  $\frac{4}{k} =b^2 - c^2 = (b-c)(b+c) \implies \dfrac{4}{k\cdot(b-c)} = b+c$  Is this proof correct?