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12:13 AM
oh darn you roman numerals!
I was trying to follow a reference that didn't make sense, and now I see that it says "book VI" which means book 6, whereas I thought it was book 4
@Marvin wait, is this serious?
apparently it is
 
 
2 hours later…
1:58 AM
0
Q: Why did the Lady Jessica harbour antipathy towards the Old Duke?

BatpersonEarly in the first book, the Atreides family take up residence on Arrakis. While unpacking and settling in, Jessica has been discussing where to hang a portrait of Leto's father: Jessica turned away, faced the painting of Leto's father. It had been done by the famed artist, Albe, during the Old ...

 
 
1 hour later…
3:14 AM
0
Q: About orcs, elves, ents and trolls

user101289I was discussing LOTR with my son tonight, and we were puzzled by something-- Treebeard tells Pippin and Merry that trolls are "mighty strong" but are merely weaker imitations of Ents made by the Enemy in the great darkness, as orcs were made in mockery of elves. If that is the case, and granted ...

0
Q: What laws of physics would have to be addressed by magic to stand on the inner side of a Dyson sphere rotating around a mass-less sun-equivalent?

ShaneSay you were standing inside a Terran-like interior of a Dyson sphere the size of Mercury’s orbit around our sun. And there were tectonic plates(obviously great hazards to switch from one to another) that rotate at different angles so that centrifugal force is the same between the equator and the...

 
 
5 hours later…
8:23 AM
0
Q: How should we tag questions about "The Last of Us" (TV show and video game)?

galacticninjaHow should questions about the HBO TV show The Last of Us (2023) and the video game it is based on, The Last of Us (2013) be tagged? Should a franchise tag and a separate game / TV show tag with the year appended be used? (the-last-of-us + the-last-of-us-2023 for the TV show or the-last-of-us-201...

 
9:09 AM
0
Q: Two copies of same quirk existing simlutaneously?

CrimsonKn1ghtIn My Hero Academia, Shigaraki is implanted with All for One quirk while real "All for One holder" still lives with the same quirk. How is this possible? Is it possible to duplicate a quirk totally? and then also implant it onto someone else! Could this be done with One for all too? It hasn't eve...

 
SQB
9:33 AM
@AncientSwordRage Doesn't seem to have worked.
 
@SQB Might be an inline link versus list link thing
 
SQB
@TheLethalCarrot Could be. I'd expect to see a global replacement along the lines of s/http://(www.)?(isfdb.org)/https://$1$2/ though, so that shouldn't have mattered.
 
I would have done too but I know I had 20 odd posts edited and I usually do inline links
 
SQB
Ah. I almost always use link lists.
 
10:24 AM
0
Q: In what order must a Stargate address be entered?

ShadeIn the Stargate film, Daniel Jackson shows the known reason for having seven chevrons, i.e. that 6 points are required to locate a point in space plus the seventh being the point of origin: We know that the last chevron is the point of origin in seven and eight chevron addresses. This leaves som...

 
10:43 AM
@SQB that might be more arduous than whatever method they took 🤔
 
1
Q: Trying to identify a 1980's novel or short story about nuclear bomb detonation

JackBTrying to find a book or short story read in high school in the mid to late 80's - Possibly US based, it centred around the actions of some survivors after a nuclear bomb has gone off. I don't remember much in the way of detail other than a key part: During the description of the event, there is...

 
11:15 AM
2
Q: Story identification 50s/60s Pulp SciFi fiction series involving dimensional travel action

AlastairI am trying to find the name and author of a series a books I read in my teenage years, bought from second hand bookshops in the mid 1980s. As far as I remember it was a SciFi pulp fiction series of paperback books, published in the 1950s or 1960s, I read two, but I believe there might have been ...

 
 
1 hour later…
12:31 PM
0
Q: Why is the mirror of Erised up in the school, when it's supposed to be down in the chamber guarding the stone?

The Boy Who LivedThis has always struck me as odd, why is the mirror even up in the school at all, when it's supposed to be down below guarding the stone? Hagrid retrieved the stone from Gringotts in July and Harry finds the mirror in December. So why is it taking so long to put the stone in the mirror, and the m...

 
SQB
12:56 PM
@AncientSwordRage I dunno, seems pretty straightforward to me.
Except that I used forward slashes both in the regex and its replacement, and as separators.
So it's more like
s{http://(www.)?(isfdb.org)}{https://$1$2}g
 
1:48 PM
0
Q: In TNG "disaster", could Worf have given an order to a higher ranking officer?

Michael StachowskyIn "Disaster", Worf is put in charge of ten-forward by commander Riker. However, there are higher ranking officers on board (for instance a department head like... Picard's love interest whose name escapes me). If one of those officers were to come in, could Worf give them orders? Could that offi...

 
 
2 hours later…
3:26 PM
Does anyone know if there's an online synopsis of the storyline from Darths & Droids? I'm confused now about Rey's in-story parents, and I don't feel like reading through all 400 comics from the first movie to try to figure it out.
 
3:40 PM
They have a coherent storyline? O_O
 
Well... It is conceived as the record of a RPG session, so it's about as coherent as any other tableful of gamers. :D
But overall it does make sense, and frequently has a better storyline than the actual movies. (Certainly the first three had better characterizations and motivations.)
 
SQB
Hm, haven't read it in a while, I'm way behind.
@DavidW Might as well ask on the main site.
 
4:16 PM
@SQB Ah, I found it on my own; googling site:darthsanddroids.net father pulled it up for me.
 
-1
Q: If you travel into the future which branches off into say, two timelines, what timeline do you go to?

Firestar464Let's say that I have time branches off into two timelines in the future (this is too simplistic if we were to assume the existence of the multiverse). If I were to travel into "the future," would I travel to one of these timelines, have a greater chance of arriving in one of these timelines, hav...

 
I admittedly never once clicked through to one. I thought they're just random Star Wars comics.
 
SQB
They're actually quite funny, but it's been a while.
> TC-14: It's an honour to have two such illustrious Jedi ambassadors on board.
> Obi-Wan: "Jedi"?
> Qui-Gon: It's a type of cheese.
 
The initial strips are somewhat a bit of a gag-a-minute format, but it settles down fairly well, and I've been really impressed with the thought and attention to detail they put into it.
They've used only screencaps from the movies to tell a slightly different story.
I admit I was never really fond of the character of "_," but he fit, and in-story (well, the meta-story) it worked.
A lot of things that seemed dumb in the movie make more sense as a PC insisting on trying something that'll be super cool if it works and rolling a natural 20.
2
 
 
2 hours later…
6:19 PM
posted on January 31, 2023 by tech

Click here to go see the bonus panel!Hovertext: I honestly don't understand why birders are all so happy. It's like constantly rubbing your face in human limitations, and then you don't even get to shoot the source of your suffering. Today's News:

 
7:16 PM
-1
Q: Is there a canonical example in the Star Trek TNG/Voyager/DS9 era of a junior officer giving a mistake order that a senior must correct?

Michael StachowskyI know that there are lot of examples of senior officers doing something and then a junior dramatically shouts "Belay that order!". What I'm talking about is a situation in which a junior officer gives an order thinking it's the right move but that is an obvious mistake that has to be corrected.

 
 
2 hours later…
8:57 PM
0
Q: In "Faerie After", why did Karin make the final decision she did?

BasyaWhy did Karinna I know the reason given in the story as written, that Elin was with them through the years after the war. Is that really the whole story? Karin didn't desert them, she lost her mind and was taken away by her brother. She couldn't go back (especially after her mother died). I'm...

 
Oh, continuing my Martha Wells binge, I finally got The Harbors of the Sun (5th book of The Raksura series) from the library yesterday, and read it.
I'm realizing that one thing I really like about her books is that her protagonists grow in more interesting ways than simply getting more powerful.
It puts me very much in mind of McKillip, except that McKillip mostly wrote stand-alone works so she didn't need to carry character development over multiple novels.
 
9:23 PM
0
Q: In "Faerie After", why was Karin (before her mother's death) less able to function than Toby

BasyaIn Faerie After, we understand that Karin had lost her mind after the war, as a plant speaker, due to what she heard from the trees as they died. She was completely unable to function, and her brother had to use his healing abilities to render her senseless long enough to carry her out of Faerie....

 
1
Q: Trying to find back about an old childbook story

corydalisI'm trying to remember the title of a childbook that I read when I was a kid in the late 90s, in French. The year must have been about 97 or 98, not later than 99-2000, that's for sure. The only thing I can remember distinctly is the main story: it was about an anthropomorphic cat (as in, it was ...

 
 
1 hour later…
11:04 PM
1
Q: Anime/cartoon featuring characters that had stone dice with powers. Aired on CN mid 2000s

Munsif BaigThe characters used to throw ancient stone dice. When the dice/stone touched the ground, a shape or magical circle would appear. (I remember it was purple and seemed like dark energy; also the dice glowed because of that energy). They used to carry the stone dice in a pouch. There was a fighting ...

 
11:54 PM
1
Q: A novel's name I can't seem to remember it

Manou LaIt's the story of a girl that get killed by her father because of her step sister and a treasure related to a phoenix than she get reincarnated in the same world in the body of a girl with missing parents,than she go looking for her parents and her brother and she tamed the 4 mitical beasts.

 

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