Can someone help me understand what's happening here? I don't think I have seen this before, thank you so much!  "The takeaway is clear: cats are a growing environmental concern because they are driving down some native bird populations."
121407
How does the subject-verb agreement work when a singular noun describes a plural one? Of the following, which sentence is righter?  The computers is a good choice. The computers are a good choice.  Is there a rule about these types of formations? Please explain.
51382
I came across some scenarios like these:     Case 1: Obviously not true       Q: Why does the sun rise and fall every day?   A: Because the Earth .   A2: Because .     Case 2: Letting the OP do what is declared not to       Q: How can I charge my phone without a charger?   A: Try the USB ports on your computer.   A2: Go buy a charger.    Case 3: Attempt to joke (despite looking like a real answer)       Q: What's this round bird in bright red? [An image]   A: It may be a rare or mutated species of sparrow.   A2: It's a .   A3: It's an .    Should I flag A2/A3 as NAA in those cases?
27957
Motivation: I once had one surplus card on my hand, and knew the robbers would come soon. So I gave it to someone for free, to avoid losing more cards when they hit. I was surprised by how badly this was received. Two of the three other players (the hosts of the game) acted upset, like I had tried to cheat. I had to take the card back, get robbed the next turn and 'giving cards away for free' was banned immediately. (Oh, how I hate mid-game additions to the rules. But that's beside the point.)  So now the question: Is this really illegal in Settlers of Catan? Is it generally considered underhanded in any way? If so, why?   My reasoning was like this:        Consider players A and B.   A wants to give B a sheep.   A trades a sheep and one rock to B, in exchange for wheat.   A trades the received wheat for the (formerly his) rock.   A and B now both have the same resources they had in the beginning, only the sheep has moved from A to B.
18067
I came across  and at the time there were no suggested answers. After reading Mark Hubbart's comment (at the time with four upvotes), which was the correct answer, and seeing that it had been over 30 minutes since his comment, I figured I would provide that answer in my own words, which I did. My answer is longer, and I think more rounded and more useful, but the core of the answer came from the comment. I have no idea if I'd have thought up the answer on my own--a definite maybe to that.  Now had I tried to be "honorable" or something, such as instead of answering, suggesting to the commenter that he make his comment an answer, I would only have accomplished giving away easy rep to some other user not as into gratuitous self-denial.  The commenter had merely to enter his comment into an answer box instead of a comment box! It was his choice! Whether he was too lazy or didn't think his answer worthwhile or some other reason is not my responsibility. Must I bend over backward to help him earn points that he so carelessly left lying around for another person to take? It just took a tiny bit of non-laziness on my part to get my text typed into the box that would reward me instead of the box that wouldn't.  If my perspective is incorrect and the community would rather see such answers-as-comments rewarded and supported, I will gladly accept that. In the meantime, I just want to shake off the tiny bit of guilt my overly-nice and overly-concerned-with-propriety self is feeling. :)
32009
just showed up on 's front page like this:    ... which makes no sense, because the question hasn't been modified since May 25th, and the person who edited it wasn't CatLord anyway:    Turns out what actually happened was that CatLord cast a fifth reopen vote to reopen the question.    So that stamp in the questions list should probably say this instead:     reopened 4m ago CatLord 10.7k   Or just:     reopened 4m ago
99174
Context: I am a non-binary user who uses singular they as my chosen pronoun. I'm also a relatively new user who just started paying attention to meta right when the situation over the sudden firing of a moderator was becoming a thing.  First, my thoughts on the Monica situation (). From what I've been able to glean about the situation I personally believe that SE mishandled the situation. I feel that they violated their own rules and values by moving way too quickly. I would like it if the issue of Monica's rehiring was put before the moderators and that they would be allowed to make a decision on how things should proceed on that front.  Now onto what I feel about the whole CoC drama. I personally think this situation has been mishandled by both the community and SE. I personally feel that SE should've delayed the release of the new change until after the Monica situation was fully dealt with. This would've allowed for people to disassociate this new change from the previous situation and would've allowed users to approach it with a perspective untainted by anger.   While I do feel SE is at fault for how this was received I also feel that some of the communities' reaction, especially the lashing out at members of the LGBTQ+ community, has been completely inappropriate. Within the past few weeks, I feel like I haven't been welcome here. I have felt attacked and demonized simply because of who I am. It honestly makes me hurt and sad that a community that I had felt was a bastion of rational thought has descended into fights over what I feel should not be a difficult question, but a trivial decision to extend a certain group of people a basic amount of human respect.  While I do feel that many protesting these changes have good intentions I still feel that many hurtful and disrespectful things have been said. whether they were intentional or not doesn't matter. I feel that both the community and SE should hold a burden of shame when it comes to this.  How we can resolve this current drama? And how we can do it without causing further harm to vulnerable groups?
59375
Can someone explain what  is?  I was searching for a book or something that can help me in this regard but so far I have found none. Google also returns practically nothing aside from the papers.
35225
It looks like this guy  without even knowing it.  I don't get the impression that he was trying to harm anyone with this process.  What about a warning message that triggers after a person upvotes (or downvotes) the same person X times within Y time span (with X and Y being thresholds that are well below the limit that actually results in a vote fraud reversal)?  Say, twice within 15 minutes?  Maybe display a warning pop-up that says:     Whoa, Camel!  It looks like you're starting to perform serial voting on a particular user.  Did you know that    I have little doubt that this guy would have stopped had he been (gently) warned.  Perhaps others will stop, too.
65307
I heard of this in high school, but never learned its title or author- supposedly the aforementioned worm butterfly would have played a part in evolution that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs (instead of that meteor most people blame now). This story might even have been parodied on a certain Simpsons Halloween Special (the one where Homer accidentally makes a time machine trying to fix the toaster).
7283
Recently, Sara Chipps posted her message . After reading it, I wanted to compare it with . It turns out that she deleted it. Does anyone know why? It looks strange since (as far as remember) it was a sort of official position of SE. Why would such a statement be deleted?
121022
I'm reading an article about two pets rescuing their owners. After the cat managed to wake up the mother, she tried to wake up other members but they wouldn't wake up.     Cathy tried to tell her husband and son to leave the house, but they wouldn't wake up.   Why wouldn't and not didn't?   (I checked possible duplicates but they weren't convincing at all. Besides, none of the answers were confirmed. One said would is used for permission and another said it's for emphasis!)
24451
While adding to an Answer to  question, I needed to use the above phrase, and I suddenly realised I was unsure whether to write "is" or "are".   There is more than one way to skin a cat. If there are more than one species of cat, we will flay each species differently.   I don't think that second example above sounds quite right to me (disregarding the meaning - sorry!), but in my original Answer I felt "is" would have been even worse.  Is "are" always wrong here? If so, what exactly is the rationale? If not, is there a case where it's unquestionably preferred – and why is that?    Note that in both the problematic Answer and my example attempting to mimic the same context more briefly, the writer doesn't know how many there are. There may be one, more, or even none.  Getting even more specific, the writer might have an opinion on how many there might be, and wish to convey his leanings by choice of verb form if language allows this to be done succinctly.
38301
Users  with freeimagehosting.net are getting SO flagged.  Not sure where else to post this, but I thought I'd let the meta-mongers know. I obviously know it's not an issue personally but it could potentially freak people out.
110334
So, Michonne's pet walkers: who were they, and where did they come from? Is it ever revealed?  I guess this question would be directed more towards the comic book fans, since the best answer in the show has been "they deserved what they got, they weren't human to begin with". Other that that she always clams up at the subject.  I have my theories, but because she is so reluctant to reveal anything about herself it's really difficult to put any stock in those theories...
30111
I've just started getting these messages:     Please avoid extended discussions in comments. Would you like to automatically move this discussion to chat?   Why should one avoid doing this? I think it adds to the site...  (Tagged  in more ways than one!)
49895
I am a member of the network and posting anonymously for my safety.  CW: References to and examples of hate speech  I don't want to put blame anywhere, but unfortunately due to the huge turmoil created by the recent CoC changes, several right-wing websites have started reporting and thus directed attention of far-right groups to this network. I don't want to provide any links, but it's not too difficult to find examples with your favorite web search engine.  Now, while you have the typical gut wrenching hate speech with murder and torture fantasies, there was one particular case where someone posted pseudo-code for automatically going through the member database of SE and finding users who have listed their pronouns in their "about me" section. The pseudo-code then moved those users into a category for torture and extermination. While at this point it's pseudo-code I fear it's not too unlikely to think that someone could put this into a working tool for doxxing LGBTQ users on this platform. It seems that the Neo-Nazis consider the downvotes on the CoC FAQ an affirmation of their views.  I therefore have removed my pronouns from my "about me" section. This is unfortunate. In the past I did feel welcome. The few situations in the past where someone misgendered me have all been resolved quickly and easily, with everyone being friendly, understanding and accepting when I corrected them.  Now I don't dare correct people any more, not because I fear backlash from the particular person in the particular situation, but because literal Neo-Nazis are now watching this platform with horrible intentions.  I have no idea how to fix this, but I guess we can only wait for things to settle down.
115056
On the , there is some concern regarding the use of a photograph taken of a comic book. The question is located .  I am actually the person who asked the question and took the photo. I considered asking the question without using the image, but felt that the image would help explain the situation better than I could in words. So, I assumed  and uploaded the two panels to imgur.com.  Some clarification about SE's stance on using such images would be appreciated.