The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Q: Identify A 1950s-60s B&W Horror/Sci-Fi Movie from a Brief News Report Scene

4:16 AM

1

Classic Horror/Sci-Fi News Reporter Clip of Doom While in pursuit of information related to my long-term burning question of an old sci-fi movie involving ants or termites Looking for a late 1950s to early 1960s movie or TV show with some similarities to "The Zanti Misfits" I located a video ...

movie identification

Q: When did Ash and the gang get ultra guardian suits?

5:36 AM

0

As in when did this ultra beast suit control room and elevator become made? I mean its a cool new series of Pokémon but when was this room made?

pokemon

Babel fish

6:09 AM

0

Q: Valyrian - what living languages does it resemble the most?

I'm interested in knowing what living languages Valyrian resembles the most in its grammar and/or vocabulary. I've gathered here some very basic examples of what kind of similarities I would like to know of: History/Culture To the layman the history of the language group seems to resemble th...

game-of-thrones

Q: Identify this Beer Commercial - Men Devolve into Salamanders - "Worth the wait"

8:43 AM

-2

I would like help identifying a commercial I saw years ago: The commercial starts out in a bar, with three guys having a beer, and suddenly this (kinda catchy) music starts playing and time seems to reverse, and everything around them starts to devolve, including the guys. As the Earth devolve...

commercial

Would that be on-topic here? The devolving and all.

Asking before redirecting the guy...

Seems somewhat on topic aye... and I think I remember the ad too haha

In fact I've found the ad

Yeah

I thought it was a bud ad but it isn't

The Evolution of Man - guiness - Great beer ad / commercial Anúncio verveja

►

Aye

8:49 AM

BRB IRL stuff

9:29 AM

Looks like the mods deleted the post so who knows if the OP saw my comment or not

Q: Why does the Doctor want you to subscribe to the official Doctor Who YouTube channel?

9:57 AM

-1

Most of the Doctor Who trailers by Peter Capaldi and the ones I've seen by the new Jodie Whitaker Doctor have the Doctor asking at the end of the YouTube video to subscribe. Why would the Doctor want me to subscribe to the official Doctor Who website when the Doctor shouldn't be able to know the...

doctor-who

Q: Where was Fury in the post credits scene for "Far From Home"?

10:57 AM

0

In the post credits scene from Spider-Man: Far From Home it is revealed that Fury The scene switches to show Fury relaxing on a beach, which turns out to be an "illusion" and then it shows that he is actually Do we have any more information on what this was and where he was? It appeared as ...

marvel marvel-cinematic-universe spider-man-far-from-home nick-fury

Q: Novel where a group of scientists in a spaceship encounter various aliens

12:17 PM

2

I read this novel long back, possibly 2 decades ago. The story is narrated from one scientist's (male) POV. The team is on an exploration mission, and come across threats like: an alien which looks like a cat an alien which is a solar system sized cloud which envelops their ship a group of alie...

story-identification novel

0

Q: Older novel, 1700’s France, scientist discovers evil experiment and manages to foil it with help from his journals

He read this novel “years and years ago,” and remembers it may have journal or diary in the title. The main character is named something like Luminiere, and the author may be Lawrence.

story-identification

0

Q: How old were Fred and George when they left Hogwarts, and what year were they in?

I’ve been struggling to find out this answer! Help would be appreciated!

harry-potter

Q: Book where the stars go black due to aliens stopping human observation collapsing quantum possibilities

12:57 PM

3

In this book the stars went black and the people on Earth took a while to figure out why. The solar system had been surrounded with a 'sheet' to stop human observation. It turns out human observation was causing collapses of quantum wave forms/relativistic possibilities in the universe, and the a...

story-identification books astronomy quantum-physics

1:07 PM

@DarrelHoffman It's to group questions together with the same answer so that the different descriptions and information are kept together to better help people in the future. Duplicate closure is not a bad thing and it is not meant to say "you should have looked here", in fact we don't even close on id questions until both have an "accepted answer". It's merely just for housekeeping reasons and like I said to keep the common information together. If you'd like I could dig up a relevant meta for further reading? But again it is not a bad thing. — TheLethalCarrot 6 mins ago

That makes sense right?

Q: What movie are the following gifs from?

@Jenayah it would. We've had commercials here before.

2

Maybe someone can help me out, I can't figure out what the name is of the movie seen in these gifs:

story-identification movie

@SQB FWIW I flagged for migration and it was marked as helpful, presumably we're just waiting for a mod here to accept it

@TheLethalCarrot ah, cool.

So we're just waiting for @NapoleonWilson to see it?

Nah, the MTV mods have done what they need to do I imagine

Waiting on one of our lot

Considering none have been about since I flagged that makes sense

Ah, we need @Randal'Thor.

1:16 PM

Wasn't there another existing dupe-target for that one movie?

Don't know

Does this review show the question body for anyone? scifi.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/150560

@TheLethalCarrot Yes. The only "problem" with closing story-id duplicates is that closed questions don't count for the "Refiner" badge. :)

Avnish Kabaj

@Stormblessed Oh yes I finished the entire series. It's brilliant just the thing I was looking for.

@DavidW Oh don't they? Didn't know that

@TheLethalCarrot Not for me, but I'm still a lower order of being. :)

1:27 PM

Well it's not deleted so you should be able to see it, think it's a bug

I can't see it either

@TheLethalCarrot I had my count drop one day, because 2 questions I'd answered were closed as duplicates.

@TheLethalCarrot can't see it.

Do you have a link to the question?

@DavidW Huh can't find any mention of that criteria only within 12 hours and answer score > 0

Nvrmnd, I think I found it. Weird.

Q: How old were Fred and George when they left Hogwarts, and what year were they in?

-2

How old were Fred and George when they left Hogwarts, and what year were they in? I’ve been struggling to find out this answer!

harry-potter

That one

1:31 PM

This answer? scifi.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/150559

No was the question for it

So this one: scifi.stackexchange.com/review/first-posts/150558 Which I can see.

Posted a meta report for it meta.stackexchange.com/q/330760/345161

@DavidW Well the LQP not the FP

Yeah, I got that. I was just poking about to see if there was something specific about the post or if it was just about that queue.

Something about that post I believe though could be a change in the queue

Same issue on Arqade: gaming.stackexchange.com/review/low-quality-posts/273612

I knew I'd seen it happen before

A: New three-tiered badge idea: Explainer →Refiner → Illuminator

1:38 PM

24

Final requirements: Edited n questions within 12 hours of posting an answer (that's 12 hours before or after answering), where: The question was asked by someone other than the answerer Neither the questions nor the answers are deleted The questions are not closed The answers score > 0 The que...

Ah cool, the main "wiki" post on badges doesn't have that info

Donald.McLean

1:54 PM

Greetings, Earthlings.

@AvnishKabaj Wow, you read fast :P

took me three months to read the first one the first time...

I'm re-reading it and then going to the second

@Donald.McLean Greetings, Hubble Guy!

2:25 PM

@TheLethalCarrot I'll go with your superior knowledge. Apologies, it just made no sense to me as an answer to the question.

It's wording isn't great which isn't helping matters

2:42 PM

So a TV show is not on-topic if one of the episodes has something clearly sci-fi but the rest never mention it?

The sci-fi part of it would be but not the whole show

Ok

@Jenayah @Null Is this being migrated across?

@Jenayah Certainly

Null

@TheLethalCarrot Moderators don't accept incoming migrations. At the most we decline a migration by closing it (which any user with the close vote privilege can do, too). If the M&TV mods did not migrate it (which seems to be the case) then it's probably not coming here.

2:53 PM

@Null Ah I thought both parties had to "accept it" before it got migrated, weird that they wouldn't migrate it though

Whaaaat

Mods don't accept incoming stuff? That's stupid

How does rejection work?

Can the mods just hit a big button that throws it back at the other site?

@Stormblessed Close the post, Null put that in his comment

Can it then be migrated to a different site?

Oh, I thought rejection was a specific type of action and closing was different.

That sounds like lots of talkings between mods rather than having a simple tool for the cases that are easy to handle

2:58 PM

@Jenayah That question in the RO queue sounds on topic to me now

Null

@TheLethalCarrot Sometimes the migrating mods ask the target site's mods if it's worth migrating but it's not required.

Gotcha, lets see if @NapoleonWilson knows why it wasn't migrated then

Null

The recommendation is just to migrate it as long as it's not obviously crap, and let the target site's community reject it by closing it if it's not on-topic.

What now?

Just wondering why this Q wasn't migrated across to us, I did flag it for migration, it is on topic for us and the flag was marked as helpful

3:05 PM

We don't tend to migrate these questions, I think.

@TheLethalCarrot well, it doesn't sounds on-topic to me, hence my leave closed vote ;)

I marked the flag helpful because it was true, I guess. But since the dude already got told that he could reask, there's wasn't much else to do.

Sorry for the confusion. I guess I could also have declined with "doesn't require attention".

@Jenayah "Question Older sci-fi, fantasy novel", "Somewhat more fantasy", "There is science, which would be advances for the time period for the novel is set it." - they all seem to make it on topic to me personally

Seems the question was later deleted, though.

@NapoleonWilson Well to be fair he was "last seen" before my comment and didn't return, and still hasn't, after the deletion

I suppose the deletion made things a bit awkward

3:08 PM

@TheLethalCarrot True. That's why I didn't delete the question, so he would have a chance to see the comment.

Leaving another comment myself wouldn't have had much use, though.

I suppose the only use would have been if a mod left a comment after the deletion because of the super ping

@TheLethalCarrot True, I guess. Happens.

@NapoleonWilson oh okay then

Avnish Kabaj

@Stormblessed nah, I had plenty of time back then. Exams had finished.

@TheLethalCarrot mmmmh, gut still says meh, but our guts can disagree

And guts can be wrong sometimes;)

3:11 PM

@Jenayah Aye, the experiments thing is borderline but it still needs expanding on, reopened now anyhow

@NapoleonWilson Would it be worth migrating it now anyhow or you just gonna leave it be and see if the user re-asks it over here on their own?

@Jenayah Oh btw did you like my answer to your Ghost question?

I don't know. Following this we don't really tend to do that. But if it's your heartfelt desire and you have reason to believe for it to not be in vain, it can be arranged, I guess.

Well it wouldn't be in vain as in I know the answer so we would be able to help the OP out and it is on topic so what harm would it do? And wasn't that meta post more about the mass migration than anything moving forward?

I mean I know the bold part says "don't flag for migration to SFF here, ever." but that just seems like a way for him to manage the mass migration easier

The last paragraph talks about new ones, though. But whatever, I see you're commited to it, so I'll migrate it.

To be fair it's more that the post was deleted so the OP likely didn't know they could ask here, if it hadn't been deleted I'd have been happy to wait and see if the OP reposted it

3:26 PM

Granted. That's why I refrained from deletion. Though, not a big fan of having these stick around for ages either.

Aye it is a tight line as you'd want to discourage others asking them

I guess marking the flag "helpful" has also added to the confusion. And that's when I primarily did that because I thought it was the way of least resistence. ;-)

Well that's where you went wrong you see, you didn't account for me being difficult/awkward

2

Well, I thought I did. ;-)

Or I'd just have slapped a "don't bother the mods" decline onto it. ;-)

Lol

3:35 PM

Wait, that meta discussion doesn't actually say it would only be on-topic if the dude didn't know it was a commercial, does it?

Anyway, the original is deleted, so I guess it doesn't matter if it gets closed.

Well the meta discussion is just saying that particular question is on topic regardless of it being an ad

A: ID questions about sci-fi or fantasy films

4:01 PM

10

Flags are a bad fit for this. They're expedient if you only expect to migrate maybe a half-dozen questions, ever, but if you expect to migrate "as many as possible" of the 4K+ ID questions here it puts entirely too much responsibility on entirely too few people: the flaggers from SFF and the mod ...

What’s this about migration of tons of questions on sites with “no active users”?

Comments purged; please don't make me regret suggesting this approach. It doesn't matter how much you personally love ID questions, unless you're volunteering to personal migrate, retag, edit, answer and forever maintain hundreds of them then you're not defending anything - you're volunteering the time of other people who've already invested gobs of it and aren't willing to invest any more. We've successfully done these mass migrations on probably a half dozen sites, including sites with no active users whatsoever - that's why I like it, and that's why you should too. — Shog9 ♦ Jan 23 '18 at 5:06

Q: 70s/80s Radio drama about a young man who can't remember his name, stranded on a planet run by robots

4:17 PM

2

This radio drama was about a young man who can't remember his name and is stranded on a planet run by robots. I think it's a mining operation. He comes across a girl and they both fight to get off the planet. They have some teleportation device they try to keep from the robots. At the end of one ...

story-identification radio-play

@TheLethalCarrot meh

It was the best I could find and come up with currently but I thought it was half decent... still gonna look to see if anything further gets released though

That's educated speculation alright, doesn't mean it's really interesting speculation though

I mean the actual answer is likely to be very dull sure

But meh, I felt it didn't really add more concrete

Oh yeah the actual answer is just yes or no pretty much haha

Q: Science fiction radio drama aliens find Earth deserted

5:17 PM

0

Anyone know of a radio drama about an advanced alien civilization visiting Earth (we don't know it's Earth until the end). Everything is deserted. They send down teams to investigate and one team accidentally engages the drive in a high speed underground shuttle that takes them into a tunnel and ...

story-identification space-exploration radio-play

0

Q: identify science fiction story or novel: humans do not leave apartments, communicate via two-way television, "McCloo" mentioned

I once read a concise, printed description of a science fiction story or novel. The story's central idea: a future civilization in which humans lived in presumably windowless apartments, never left said apartments, and communicated with each other via closed-circuit two-way television. Within thi...

story-identification short-stories science-fiction-genre

Babel fish

5:30 PM

-1

Q: How can Tony Stark still live as a 'Jor-El' character?

How can Tony Stark still live as a 'Jor-El' character? ... virtually alive as Superman's father.

marvel-cinematic-universe

I saw Tremors yesterday, surprisingly good movie

@Marvin before my title edit it was about some on-air drama aliens :P

Q: Science fiction trilogy: endless corridors, humor, speeding vehicles, assertive woman

0

I used to own a paperback of a science fiction novel; the third and final story of a trilogy. On the cover, a young adult couple were in an futuristic open-cockpit long automobile, speeding down a mod, windowless corridor. They seemed to be having a good time. Wild, perhaps, as if "life is just a...

story-identification books

@Marvin you’re being slow today

@TheLethalCarrot no

Q: Isaac Asimov short story: circa 1976, male astronaut saves space station inhabitants during solar storm

5:57 PM

0

I've read through several in-print lists of Isaac Asimov short stories, and have been unable to identify one short story. It may have been published in THE SATURDAY EVENING POST around 1976. In the story, a male astronaut rose from the Earth to save humans aboard an orbiting space station. Becaus...

story-identification short-stories isaac-asimov

Q: Why does Hellboy file down his horns?

6:17 PM

1

In Hellboy (2019) the titular part-demon files down his horns nearly flat as part of his daily routine. He even places such a high priority on this that, after assuming his apocalyptic form near the end of the movie, he breaks his horns off immediately. Why is this? Certainly it doesn't help hi...

hellboy

Q: Change "8 hours old" HNQ criteria to "8 hours old on the site it's currently on"

6:35 PM

So that beer commercial thing already hit HNQ (sheesh), which means the "8hours old" HNQ criteria is a general 8 hours, not "8 hours old on the site it's on". Hence, this feature request

4

This question was asked on M&TV, closed as off-topic, and later migrated to SFF. It got answered there and hit HNQ about an hour after (see timeline). The problem I have with that is that while it does meet the "8 hours old" criteria, said 8 hours weren't hours of availability on the migration t...

feature-request hot-questions migrated-questions

6:49 PM

@Jenayah That seems eminently sensible.

Yep

7:38 PM

Happens about once every 5 years, though. So...whatever.

What does?

Migrated stuff becoming HNQ?

Q: Did someone break the font?

8:22 PM

Ugh what happened

The reputation thing is a weird bold font now

Is this just my computer?

It's normally not bold

@Catija was the font changed for the reputation inbox?

Oh, it did change; testing in my copy of Chrome on a different SE account shows that it's not just Firefox

18

I just refreshed a couple of different SE sites & the Achievements drop menu seems to have gone all-bold. I'm hoping that's not intentional. Before... After... [different Stack as I can't go back to the previous version] Inbox affected too, but only for Unread items... After comments -...

bug achievements-dialog

Ah

Can someone ping me in a second?

@Stormblessed

@Stormblessed 2

@Jenayah thanks

This looks a little off, IMO

You're welcome

I guess it's fine

Wait can you do that again in like .5 seconds please? Sorry to bother you

8:37 PM

@Stormblessed

@Stormblessed 2

Q: Story Where Everyone Takes Nootropic Drugs

0

I remember reading a story about where everyone used cognitive enhancement drugs to perform intellectually. The main character had a daughter that used them (in law school?) but they were earlier drugs that had negative consequences (burning people out, making them stutter, other cognitive proble...

story-identification

@DavidW Weird, those didn't show in the inbox

Hi, @Mithrandir

How's it going?

8:53 PM

Someone wanna confirm for me that the achievements is no longer bold?

Mithrandir

@Catija still bold

@Stormblessed o/

It's fixed on MSE. We roll builds out in phases. :P

Mithrandir

Yeah, looks fixed there.

Q: Double-sided action figure, early 80s?

0

Around 1983 or '84, I had an odd action figure. From the waist down it was basically a guy in an orange spacesuit. From the waist up, the figure was double-sided. One side was again the dude in the orange jumpsuit. I think he had brown hair. He had a little button near his waist, and if you click...

object-identification toys

9:12 PM

@Catija fixed on SFF as well

Cool :D Thanks!

9:26 PM

Anytime

Damn

The hacked Radiohead stuff isn’t for sale anymore :(

I didn’t get around to buying it

(Someone held it ransom and then Radiohead sold it for charity online, I’m not talking about buying stolen Radiohead music)

9:48 PM

Is that supposed to embolden badge notifications as well? If so, well, it doesn't seem to be working. Sorry for the dark image, took the screenshot with my luminosity filter on and forgot it gets captured as well — Jenayah 28 secs ago

@Catija ^

Sorry for the dupe ping but as I don't know if Jane's around and you guys seem to be working in that anyway... :)

@Jenayah Your padding is off... is that a userscript?

Which padding?

Also, shouldn't be a userscript. I don't have any on my phone

Well not that I installed anyway...

What, the badge thing? I don't remember if I ever saw it padded differently

That spacing is really broken.

9:53 PM

Lemme see if I have screenshots from a while back...

Is that the full site view or the mobile view?

That's full-site view on mobile, judging by the number of icons in the nav bar.

I have this, from October 2018

Mine (full site on mobile) is showing the exact same thing; the bronze badge is bottom-left and not taking up enough space to set the alignment of the following text properly.

But the mobile view itself (which just shows a bronze dot, not the site symbol) is fine.

9:57 PM

@Jenayah Yeah, you've got padding there, but not in the current one.

@Catija mobile view, but from the review page, which does behave a bit like full site (top bar, etc)

Oh, the review page isn't responsive yet.

Ah nevermind, the October screenshot isn't from the review page

@Catija oh, that's settled then

Hmmmm. I can't repro that on the review page (iPhone)...

Does it look OK on a question page or on the questions list?

Yeah, works fine, just like the October screenshot.

10:01 PM

OK. The spacing is wonky on that page, though... so I'll need to see why it's messed up for you. Can you post a bug report with which pages you see that on, your browser type/phone OS?

@Catija I don't have an iPhone, FWIW

I think focus on the spacing rather than the bolding for now, let's get it looking better before we worry about the font weight. :(

@Jenayah Yeah, I know. That's why I mentioned it. :P

The square, circle and triangle on the bottom kinda give it away.

@Catija I can, sure, but how is it a bug if it's stuff that isn't designed to do stuff XYZ in the first place?

@Catija oh, right xD

@Jenayah Even if the page isn't responsive, the padding between the items should be fine. It's fine on my phone so we need to figure out what's buggy... and it seems like @DavidW is having a similar issue?

I've gotta run but I'll check in later.