Several years back I read The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings.  I recently discovered (when going through some old boxes I hadn't unpacked after moving house) that I've got a few additional books which I've never read, mainly The Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales Pt. 1 + 2.  Is there any order to these? Which should I read first? Or doesn't it matter?
I've already read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, which I assume would be the best start in any case. I also got about halfway through The Silmarillion several years ago and am quite familiar with the legendarium as a whole, but for the sake of argument let's assume I'm starting from scratch.  What is the best order for a budding scholar of Middle-earth to read Tolkien's books? Or does it even matter once you've covered the core novels? Chronological order clearly isn't the most logical approach here, and even publication date isn't necessarily best.   The Hobbit The Lord of the Rings The Silmarillion The Children of Hurin The History of Middle-earth Unfinished Tales The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien Anything else   Note: After asking this question I found  on Reddit. It covers even more material and in more detail than my original question or any answers here.
Disabling Google Chrome Download auto numbering for existing files Restore Missing "Settings" (gnome-control-center) Icon in Ubuntu 18.04 I have been running Ubuntu 18.04 for a couple of weeks. I upgraded from 16.04 and all went smoothly.   I am not sure what I changed, but this morning I noticed that the "Settings" Icon that launches gnome-control-center is missing from "Show Applications" and the applications menu as well. When I searched from "Show Applications" for gnome-control-center or just settings, nothing showed up.   So, I figured I must have accidentally removed it and figured a reinstall of the package would resolve the issue. I have searched and found several postings where this worked. I tried:  sudo apt install gnome-control-center   And then rebooted - which reinstalled the gnome-control-center and I could then launch it from the command line. However, there was still no Settings Icon in any of the menus.   I also tried many other suggestions including:  sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome-control-center sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop --reinstall sudo apt-get install unity-control-center   However, none of these has been successful in restoring the icon into "Show Applications" or any applications menu.   Anyone have any suggestions on something I haven't tried? Would be much appreciated.  Or, is there a way to just manually recreate the icon?   Output of locate gnome-control-center.desktop:  /usr/share/applications/gnome-control-center.desktop  /home/dccrens/.local/share/applications/gnome-control-center.desktop /home/dccrens/.gnome/apps/gnome-control-center.desktop   I am running Ubuntu 18.04 desktop on kernel 4.15.0-45-generic. Integrate JavaScript in JSF composite component, the clean way on proving bac-cab rule, $\vec{A} \times ( \vec{B} \times \vec{C})= \vec{B} (\vec{A} \cdot\vec{C})- \vec{C}(\vec{A}\cdot\vec{B})$ I noticed something when I was doing a proof of the BAC-CAB rule, and wanted to check if my intuition was correct.   First, when I actually multiplied out $\vec{B} (\vec{A} \cdot\vec{C})-\vec{C}(\vec{A}\cdot\vec{B}) $ I noticed that I got the same thing. That is, the two quantities are equal. This makes sense since they are dot products. But that further implies that the expression goes to zero.  Well, that means that $\vec{A} \times (\vec{B} \times \vec{C})$ would have to be zero too. And when I thought about it it occurred to me that $\vec{B} \times \vec{C}$ describes a vector perpendicular to both B and C; it's orthogonal. But $\vec{A} \times$ (any vector) will describe a vector perpendicular to (any vector) and in this case, that's $\vec{B} \times \vec{C}$. That is going to be parallel with the vector described by $\vec{B} \times \vec{C}$ itself and that further implies that the cross product of the two is equal to zero. Which is equal to the BAC-CAB quantity above.   So, what is the big honking flaw in my reasoning here? :-) How to strike through obliquely, e.g. to indicate cancellation? How can I strike through an expression (e.g. "2x") obliquely, e.g. from bottom left to top right, so as to indicate cancellation? With the \sout command from the ulem package, I can only strike horizontally. SemanticImport vs Import differ on same CSV file? Isomorphism involving Eilenberg-Maclane space, Tors. Let $\pi$ be a group and let $K(\pi, 1)$ be a connected CW complex such that $\pi_1(K(\pi, 1)) = \pi$ and $\pi_q(K(\pi, 1)) = 0$ for $q \neq 1$. Does there exist an isomorphism between $H_*(K(\pi, 1); A)$ and $\text{Tor}_*^{\mathbb{Z}[\pi]}(A, \mathbb{Z})$? What uses are there for "placement new"? Has anyone here ever used C++'s "placement new"? If so, what for? It looks to me like it would only be useful on memory-mapped hardware. Hat duplicates when info is expanded It seems like there is a bug that is causing a duplicate hat to appear when I expand info, like pressing &quot;(more)&quot; on a suggested edit. This bug does not seem to be specific to the suggested edits review queue though, as others have reported seeing this bug in other places, like code snippet expansion. Steps to repro:  Put on a hat. Navigate to one of your own suggested edits. (You can just also open the Suggested Edits review queue and go to a random suggestion, but there is no guarantee any of those users will be wearing a hat.) Click the &quot;(more)&quot; button to expand the top box.  What should happen: Hat should shift down with the rest of the content. What happens: All the content shifts down, but a duplicate hat remains in the initial place. Before expansion:  After expansion with duplicate hat: Ways to give users some specific education about question quality and topicality Important: This question is being asked here, and not on the Programmers Meta,  because I believe that several SE sites suffer from this same, specific problem.    On Programmers, I see a pattern emerging.   New User sees the "Programmers" site title, and asks their incomplete, "fix my broken code" question. Community members comment that their question is off-topic, and recommend Stack Overflow.  New User says "thanks" and leaves, leaving their undeleted question for the community to clean up.    What seems clear to me is that:   New User has never seen the "What kinds of questions can I ask about here" page, or if they have, they've clicked through it without reading it. New User doesn't know how to move their question to the right place properly  (i.e. post on new site, delete from old site). Community cleanup of such questions is onerous.  The moderators on Programmers, following the principle that the community should moderate itself for the most part, are not proactive about removing such questions unless they're especially egregious. Migration is even more onerous.   OK, so we have the .  Here's what it says about topicality, about halfway down the page:    Note to those who are confused about Programmers' site scope: it's all right there, in black and white.  However, I do notice a problem.  It's circled in red.  That's our fault, the fault of the Programmers community.  What we really meant to say was "Don't ask your code troubleshooting questions here; those belong on Stack Overflow."  Coding tools deserves its own bullet.  We should fix that.  However, what are the chances that the user is actually seeing this, and evaluating whether or not they should ask their question based on this?  So here's my question, in two acts:  ACT I:  Is there a way to highlight the pain points of a particular site to new users specifically, so that we can be very clear that we don't want those questions that are clearly and unambiguously off-topic on our site, before they ask their question?  ACT II: Failing that, is there a way that we can fast-track the removal of such questions so that they no longer pollute our front page? Does iOS have a firewall? Does iOS support a built-in firewall like macOS does? I don't see anything about it in Settings. I used to say "sharp sign" to refer to the # sign.   Today a friend told me that the correct term is number sign or hash sign or even just hash.  What is the difference between these options and what's the correct usage of the names for this sign? How to directly prove that $M$ is maximal ideal of $A$ iff $A/M$ is a field? An ideal $M$ of a commutative ring $A$ (with unity) is maximal iff $A/M$ is a field.  This is easy with the correspondence of ideals of $A/I$ with ideals of $A$ containing $I$, but how can you prove it directly?  Take $x + M \in A/M$.  How can you construct $y + M \in A/M$ such that $xy - 1 \in M$?  All I can deduce from the maximality of $M$ is that $(M,x) = A$. How did the Swooping Evil Venom infused rain affect the magical community? I didn't see any wizards drenched in the rain at the end of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (don't recall, actually). But would the rain equally affect the wizards as it did no-maj's?   This event is something that doesn't necessarily need to be forgotten by the Wizarding community. How would they avoid being obliviated by the rain?  (They could avoid the rain by Apparating, but what about the showers and drinking water?)  This question is picking at my brain. Separate long math text under sum symbol into different lines? Cannot log in with Apple ID after performing password reset My wife forgot the password to her Apple ID account. Her Macbook Air (OS X Yosemite) restarted to install some updates. She has her user account set up through her Apple ID account.  Since she forgot the password she reset it from my laptop.  She can log in to iCloud and Apple ID with the new password, but cannot log in with the new password on the Air.  When she tries to log in she is greeted with this message:     "This account uses an iCloud password to log in. If you need to change   the password, use another device to change it at appleid.apple.com." Prove that $\operatorname{trace}(A) = 0$ if and only if $A^2 = 0$. Do compound subjects like "everyone ... and everyone..." take singular or plural verb agreement? Here are the examples of compound subjects:      Everything on the bed and everything in the closet was organised   in under an hour.   Everybody who witnessed the shooting and everybody   in the room were interviewed.   Anyone on the soccer team and   anybody on the basketball team was eligible for the scholarship.   Should I also use was instead of were in the second example? Or the first and the third examples are incorrect that I should use were instead of was. I stumbled upon a question given like:  Let $m$ and $n$ be two integers such that $m \geq n \geq 1$.   Count the number of functions $$f: \{1, 2, · · · , n\} \to \{1, 2, · · · , m\}$$ of the following two types:  (a) strictly increasing; i.e., whenever $x &lt; y, f(x) &lt; f(y)$, and  (b) non-decreasing; i.e., whenever $x &lt; y, f(x) \leq f(y)$.  I tried in the following way.  For (a). We can say $f(n)&gt;f(n-1)$ AND $f(n)&gt;f(n-2) \ldots f(n)&gt;f(1)$ (total $n-1$ elements)  Similarly for $f(n-1)&gt;f(n-2), f(n-1)&gt;f(n-3) \ldots f(n-1)&gt;f(1)$ (total $n-2$ elements)...  and $f(2)&gt;1$  Like this $$(n-1) + (n-2) + \ldots + (1) = \frac{n(n-1)}{2}$$  Is this correct?  For (b). Since there's equality, it will be $$n + (n-1) + ... (1) = \frac{n(n+1)}{2}$$  Is my approach correct? Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance. How to include jQuery and JavaScript files correctly? I'm doing it right now with the following code:   function uw_load_scripts() {     // De-register the built in jQuery     wp_deregister_script('jquery');     // Register the CDN version     wp_register_script('jquery', 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js', array(), null, false);      // Load it in your theme     wp_enqueue_script( 'jquery' ); } add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', 'uw_load_scripts' );   This works, but should I do this for everyone, like this, or for everyone but admin (so that backend uses the WordPress version?):  if (function_exists('load_my_scripts')) {   function load_my_scripts() {       if (!is_admin()) {       wp_deregister_script( 'jquery' );       wp_register_script('jquery', 'http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.7.1/jquery.min.js', array(), null, false);      wp_enqueue_script('jquery');        }   }   }   add_action('init', 'load_my_scripts');   This version doesn't work at all actually, I get the WordPress jQuery-version and not the Google one.  Therefore, should I deregister the jQuery that is included in WordPress at all?    Also, how do I add my own scripts (slider scripts, modernizr and my own custom.js) the correct way? I guess I should do this via functions.php as well and not in the header like I'm doing it now, but I'm unsure of how I would do that.