The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Q: How is Captain America able to wield Mjölnir expertly in Endgame?

3:29 AM

0

In Avengers: Endgame (2019), Captain America uses both Mjölnir and his shield in the final fight against Thanos. Now we're aware that he's always been worthy to wield the hammer - or at least he has since Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015) - but in canon, he'd never wielded the hammer until that scen...

marvel marvel-cinematic-universe captain-america avengers-endgame mjolnir

2

Q: 1970s? Novel, people with ESP powers hiding out in a carnival

Story is Probably from 70s or 80s. In English probably a US Paperback. It was set in contemporary times (1950-70s) Story revolves around a small group of people (3-5?) who are trying to hide (it's possible they are humanoid aliens). They have ESP gifts. I think they each had different gifts (Tele...

story-identification telepathy teleportation telekinesis

12:01 PM

youtube.com/watch?v=Xn2Qzh__0wg looks like SF.SE got a shout out here :D

12:13 PM

@LogicDictates Regarding scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/256000/…, FTR, I think you were fine posting an answer, particularly if you note it as a "just to make sure there's an answer present" answer. But that is, of course, a personal choice. I know I've had people squawk at me. :)

1:37 PM

@JourneymanGeek oooh, channel? I can't YT at work but I'm curious

@AncientSwordRage Skallagrim talks about the lightsaber video that corridor digital did...

@JourneymanGeek ahh I know that name

links to scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/110753/…

@FuzzyBoots I don't have an issue with LD posting an answer, but I don't think I'm in agreement with the thought process (relevant part extracted)

> My thought process was that it increases the likelihood of the answer being marked as accepted if it's posted by someone other than the OP, since an OP has to wait 48 hours to accept a self-answer. <...>

(My own, hopefully informed, opinion) The primary purpose of answering is to answer the question, having it accepted shouldn't be the primary goal. It's a good measure that you've answered, but shouldn't be a target in itself

2

If I were in LD's footwear of choice, I would like to think my motivation would be to show them how the usual process works: question -> answer -> (maybe an accept)

@AncientSwordRage pretttttty much

1:42 PM

instead of what the OP did, which is question -> edit question-> abandon

especially when there's more than one approach/interpretation to answer a question

@JourneymanGeek true, even for Story-ID Qs

@AncientSwordRage someone might google a curiously similar book....

which isn't the same

This reminds me of Goodhart's Law:

> "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
In other words, when we set one specific goal, people will tend to optimize for that objective regardless of the consequences.

3

paperclips!

1:44 PM

@JourneymanGeek SO.MANY.PAPERCLIPS

In short, optimize for the human being asking questions, not the numbers on your profile

I try very hard to optimise for "OOH I KNOW THIS AND EVERYONE ELSE NEEDS TO TOO"

2

@JourneymanGeek Or even, as specific the ID question might be, it could have multiple valid different answers.

@AncientSwordRage yup!

Sorry, hurt my wrist trying and failing to install a sliding cupboard door and my typing is a little imprecise

Ah, my thought process is that an edited question (or an answer in a comment) does not indicate that there is an answer, let alone a correct one, so I'll often post an answer (as good of one as I can) with a note that if the OP comes back, they can copy over as much as they want and I'll delete my answer (even if it means I lose my fake internet points).

@FuzzyBoots that's the 'right' way to do things IMO

Although I joke "All is fair in love and Q&A"

2:03 PM

I usually make it a CW-answer in a case like this, but not everyone agrees with that either.

@SQB I don't think CW's are "get out of rep"

CWs were meant for something we never did use it for - community built/collectively owned knowledge bases

@JourneymanGeek I kind of like our common use case for the "identify these 100+ objects in the picture" question where it's unlikely any one person is providing the whole answer.

Well that's very much the on label use IMO

I personally don't like posting my own answers as CW because, well, I put the effort into writing them. If people don't upvote them because the OP could answer it, that's fine, and as said, I'll happily delete my answer if I feel someone else "deserves" it and my answer will just draw attention away, but generally only if they have sufficient detail and/or are willing to copy over my information.

:-P And, as has been my experience in the past, I'll keep a separate answer if the OP refuses to use my info. Information should not be lost. :-D I suppose I probably could convert my answer to CW at that point, but again, I put some effort into it and I am proud as such.

LogicDictates

2:23 PM

@FuzzyBoots Thanks. It occurs to me though that by posting an answer to that question so soon, I was potentially discouraging the OP from posting a self-answer, which could earn them some reputation. In future, I definitely won't post an answer in those situations as early as I did there.

@JourneymanGeek not necessarily "get out of rep", although that is part of my motivation, but more of a way to say "this is not my answer, I'm just writing it down for posterity."

2

If I have to do a significant amount of work to make it a good answer, I don't make it CW.

Q: How did the strangers sync the memories of all the inhabitants?

2:38 PM

2

In Dark City (1998), the strangers didn't imprint everyone when they were 'tuning'. Besides, some of the buildings were also considerably altered during the process. How did they sync the memories of all the inhabitants?

dark-city

Q: In the Eternals movie why did this characters presence not affect the Earth?

3:03 PM

0

Towards the end of the Eternals movie As can be seen in the video below: My question is: How massive is this celestial here and how does his presence not instantly ruin the Earth and the moons planetary orbits?

marvel-cinematic-universe eternals

Q: Is there a canon source from the 1980s covering the death of Matt Tracker's brother from the MASK franchise

4:42 PM

1

Many modern fan sites covering the Mobile Armored Strike Kommand (MASK) franchise say that Matt Tracker and Miles Mayhem were originally partners, but that they split up for form MASK and Venom respectively after Mayhem killed Tracker's brother. Is there a canonical source from either the 1980s ...

comics cartoon idw-comics

4:55 PM

I've created mobile-armored-strike-kommand since mask might be a bit ambiguous.

Maybe m-a-s-k?

I'm surprised we didn't have any questions about it until now.

5:15 PM

So here's another one.

5:28 PM

@SQB Ok... well now you've made me relive my childhood there may be many more questions

@SQB Mask should be used I think

it's more discoverable

We could use the-mask-1994 for the film, and the-mask for the related comic?

Q: Why was Gloria Baker's Shark never released as a toy?

1

Wikipedia informs me that Gloria Baker's Shark — a Porsche 928 that could turn into a submarine — was never released as a toy, even though this was her main vehicle in the TV series. Considering that the toy line came before the TV series and this vehicle was introduced in the second episode, thi...

production toys mobile-armored-strike-kommand

Rand al'Thor

5:49 PM

> in case I was so excited about getting to explaining the fragments of plot I remember that I forget to mention it was a comic book

@FuzzyBoots I see what you mean about failing memory :-D

I saw a post recently (due to some obsolete comment flags) where you'd initially forgotten to put the title of the story in a story-ID answer.

@AncientSwordRage That's a good one. I'll need to remember that.

6:04 PM

@FuzzyBoots about that answer, I tried to edit it, so that it flowed and read a little more easily, but I couldn't unpick it without rewriting it all

Q: Are M.A.S.K fighting 'all the time' or 'overtime'?

6:46 PM

1

Growing up, watching M.A.S.K myself and my brother would always hear in the intro song: Masked crusaders, working overtime! Fighting crime! I guess we assumed that all their work for M.A.S.K. was outside of their day job, which made it overtime? Regardless, we'd joke they weren't paid enough. H...

cartoon mobile-armored-strike-kommand

0

Q: Was T-Bob inspired by astromech droids or something else?

One of the characters I remember most from M.A.S.K was T-Bob who always reminded me of R2D2. The page on fandom states that Wikipedia used to have a whole page for the character making the connection, but as T-Bob now redirects to the List of Characters page instead. The writers of the show were...

cartoon toys mobile-armored-strike-kommand

@Marvin the nostalgic rush listening to just the first few seconds of that could have powered all of Disney's live action remakes for a century...

7:08 PM

@AncientSwordRage Was that the one about Hellraiser?

Q: What short story was about counterfeit cultured meat?

2

I'm trying to remember the name of a short story, I think by Ken Liu, but could have been someone else. The plot was a woman who was an expert at making cultured steaks that looked exactly like the real thing. A man was blackmailing her into creating a bunch of steaks for a fancy dinner he was ho...

story-identification short-stories

@Marvin I've heard tell that some workers can get double their rate for working overtime on holidays.*

*<footnote>Of course I've also heard that leprechauns are real. YMMV.</footnote>

Question for the room: does it make sense to accept cosmetic edits on downvoted posts? (Where the edit does not fix the substantive problem(s).)

(I've rejected them in the past, since fixing a typo didn't seem worth bumping the post, but I frequently got overruled.)

8:06 PM

@DavidW I accept them because any improvement is good, and the bump doesn't really push it on the front page for that long.

When I actually get a chance to review something

8:19 PM

@FuzzyBoots it was your meta answer to my question

@DavidW if it's the only typo problem is probably fine?

@AncientSwordRage In the immediate case the post was a -3 answer that had been downvoted for not actually answering the question (speculation when the question specifically asked for canon). Fixing a couple of typos really doesn't address the major problem with the answer...

10:05 PM

@DavidW no, true

10:24 PM

10:34 PM

Does anybody recognize this film?

@xkcd That's wrong; if places further north are getting less daylight per day then the date there will be behind you, not ahead. So, yes, they'll have a week-long day, but it'll still be late November.

11:09 PM

@uhoh No, but presumably it's linked from his IMDb page. Probably Kung Fu Traveler [2], just based on the milieu.

uhoh

11:28 PM

@DavidW Oh I didn't know there was a [2]! Yes you must be right. Thanks! :-)

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Internet

No problem.

uhoh

@DavidW until a few hours ago I didn't know who Tiger Chen was. I just decided to try to figure out who that guy in the yellow jacket was in the Chateau fight scene in the Matrix Reloaded.

Cereal Bot

posted on November 15, 2021 by tech

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