The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Zaphod

00:18

7

Q: When did Harry become a better wizard than Hermione?

I have a memory of there being a canon statement to the effect that some point during their time at Hogwarts, Harry became a "better" wizard than Hermione. I think it was around their fourth or fifth year. Was this the case, or is my memory mistaken? It may have been due to a quote from Rowlin...

Alex

@Zaphod Is it odd to award a bounty to an answer without upvoting it?

Marvin

01:26

1

Q: Can we have a civilization living at close to the speed of light?

Imagine many ships traveling close to the speed of light. If they diverge paths to explore distant galaxies, they could calculate their travel so that the same amount of time passes for all ships. Since traveling close to the speed of light will substantially slow down the passage of time for tho...

time-travel space-exploration physics space-colonization

Marvin

03:25

1

Q: Movie where a boy gets bigger because of a spaceship that follows him home

So I was around 3 when I watched this movie, so I don't remember much. First thing I remember is two people one of them defiantly male (brothers maybe) are driving home the one that is defiantly male is a smaller and seems to be to young to drive but it shows them driving down a road to go home w...

story-identification movie aliens

Marvin

04:14

0

Q: Why Sidious never sought to turn Rey toward the dark side of the Force?

We learned from the film Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019) that Darth Sidious or Palpatine offered to Kylo Ren a new Sith Empire along with the title of Emperor but only if he killed Rey. Later on, Sidious rejected the notion that he wanted her dead, rather brought to him to su...

star-wars darth-sidious the-rise-of-skywalker rey

0

Q: Does the Dra'Azon have a physical presence?

While reading book 1 (Consider Phlebas) in the culture series, I'm struggling to understand what the Dra'Azon actually is. The Dra'Azon will attack ships that attempt to breach the quiet barrier around Schar's World, and it's powerful enough to prevent both the Idiran's and the Culture from breac...

the-culture

AncientSwordRage

10:25

@TheLethalCarrot I think it's a good mix of lack of consistency and word of author being so prevalent

At the same time we get Qs like this with lots of upvotes:

13

Q: Do Italian wizards go to Beauxbatons?

I'm asking this for a YouTuber who thinks that Lavender Brown survives, marries an Italian man and has 3 children who go to Beauxbatons. Do Italian wizards go to Beauxbatons?

harry-potter

TheLethalCarrot

Almost all of the recent HP questions have an opinion based CV on them; I don't think there's a reason beyond it other than "cos HP"

AncientSwordRage

hmmm

I can see people having a vendetta against it for being so popular/controversial author?

but I could see the above Q being flagged as opinion based BUT maybe JKR answered a question at a book signing once and confirmed it one way or the other

I think she does that sort of thing more than most authors

TheLethalCarrot

It used to happen around 2018/2019 IIRC for HP Qs

But at least back then the CVs seemed to be a bit more appropriate even if not always applicable

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot I wonder what happened then? First FBAWTFT movies?

TheLethalCarrot

@Alex would probably be able to tell you more if he can remember it

I can't remember there being any stimulus to it though

(Is stimulus right there? It seems like it should be but something in my brain says that's an odd use of the word)

AncientSwordRage

10:40

@TheLethalCarrot more technical usage of the word

TheLethalCarrot

Reminder: the election starts in <1 hour. If you have a question for the questionnaire I'd post it ASAP. Remember to vote as well!

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot I have the election page open and I'm refreshing it in anticipation

TheLethalCarrot

Your fingertips are going to be bleeding if you keep pressing it until it's live haha

I'm just interested to see who'll run

Rand al'Thor

Me too.

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot I'm vert interested as well

TheLethalCarrot

10:49

I'm green with anticipation too

Alex

@TheLethalCarrot I don’t think there was any particular stimulus back then. We had a couple of Meta discussions about it; probably just different views of what makes something opinion based. Now it seems like every question gets at least one vote/flag. It may be something along the lines of “we have nearly 7,000 Harry Potter questions already, so all the decent ones must have been exhausted already”.

TheLethalCarrot

Aye, maybe. Only started very recently though. The past couple of weeks is when I've noticed it

AncientSwordRage

Some of the recent ones looks like they might have been POB, but the HP Experts prove they aren't

TheLethalCarrot

There's overlap between "we don't know" and POB (and also I specifically don't know) and I feel like a lot of people err on the side of POB. Although that had subsided until recently

It doesn't help that we get a lot of HP questions of varying quality of course

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot true

TheLethalCarrot

10:56

Hi @Mast

AncientSwordRage

it's how a lot of people flag low quality answers as very low quality

Mast

@TheLethalCarrot Hi

AncientSwordRage

low quality: "Yo it's this [movie](example.com)"

VLQ: "WTF FYI ksnf;ne;s"

there probably some grey in between

TheLethalCarrot

@AncientSwordRage we do have a higher tendency to delete stuff here than other SE sites. FWIW though I sometimes use the NAA and VLQ flags interchangeably since, AFAIA, they have the same effect in the system

@Mast What brings you by?

@AncientSwordRage I don't know why people insist on trying to delete those answers. Unless there's already a confirmed work that is an answer to the question. It just needs developing/elaborating on (more)

Mast

@TheLethalCarrot Pure chance and moderation brought this room to my attention. Decided to drop by and see how everyone's anticipating the upcoming election.

Are there any confirmed nominees yet?

Marvin

11:01

Recent Questions - Science Fiction & Fantasy St…: Stage-wise life-cycle sapient bipedal species examples

posted on June 07, 2021 by Zelos Malum

I am working on my own universe and its many sapient species and I was thinking, what if instead of like mammals where its small to just bigger reshaping, what if more extreme changes? Of course this is jack all of new thought. But I got curious on what has been done before so I am asking for examples on it that are interesting and "Well-thought out", the last part I mea…

Mast

I know it hasn't officially started yet.

TheLethalCarrot

Consider myself fully ~~braced~~ anticipated

I'll most likely be running unless something drastically changes

I have no idea of anyone else really

Mast

Ok.

Alex

May the odds be ever in your favor.

Mithical

@TheLethalCarrot There are a couple edge cases where they're treated differently, but for all intents and purposes they work the same way.

@AncientSwordRage That gets a rude/abusive flag.

@AncientSwordRage Some people vote to close questions that ask about stuff that's not confirmed in canon. Concensus has been to leave them open, though.

TheLethalCarrot

11:09

@Mithical Really? I thought they were exactly the same under the hood

Mithical

And "we don't know" is a perfectly valid answer, and doesn't mean that the question is POB.

Mast

There used to be a difference between them, IIRC. Probably fixed that with the overhaul.

I've gotten comments from moderators in the past to please use the correct flag.

But that's years ago.

Mithical

@TheLethalCarrot some weird edge case involving automatically raised internal flags... I really don't remember the specifics.

TheLethalCarrot

Ah okay

AncientSwordRage

@Mithical bad example on my part

Mithical

11:18

@Mast It's entirely possible that it was changed, it's been a couple years since I poked at all this stuff.

@AncientSwordRage My stance on the VLQ flag hasn't changed:

in SFF community cleanup room, Jul 4 '17 at 8:17, by Mithrandir

VLQ is an obsolete flag type that should be removed.

Alex

I always viewed it as Not an Answer being about the post having a problem as an answer, but Very Low Quality being about the post having a problem as a post.

Not an Answer - how does this post answer the question?

Very Low Quality - what is this post even saying?

AncientSwordRage

@Alex yup

but maybe one is redundant, as @Mithical says

Alex

Leads to something like this:

in The Reading Room, Jun 4 at 0:23, by bobble

that's a first, I got an NAA declined because I apparently should've used VLQ

Rand al'Thor

@Alex On this site at least, people often use VLQ for posts that are bad enough to be deleted even if they aren't complete gibberish.

AncientSwordRage

@Alex I've seen LQ answers flagged as NAA

Rand al'Thor

11:32

I often leave them alone in the mod queue and the community deletes them via the review queue.

Alex

@Randal'Thor Are there that many answers that are not gibberish and not Not an Answer that deserve to be deleted?

AncientSwordRage

@Alex I can think of wild speculation as one type of bad answer

Rand al'Thor

The SFF community is quite heavy on deletion of very low-quality answers. Even an answer that isn't bad enough to be mod-deleted will often get deleted by high-rep users.

Alex

@AncientSwordRage At a certain point I would consider that to fall under Not an Answer. Say I ask, a story-identification question and list ten points, and someone posts an answer that matches none of the ten points. I would argue that the answer is not just wild speculation, but actually Not an Answer, because implicit in the question is that it has to relate to the points mentioned.

Marvin

11:49

0

Q: Why did Dumbledore say that it was "essential" that Voldemort kills Harry if Harry was bound to life by his blood inside Voldemort?

This is for me the biggest unresolved question of the Books. Dumbledore planned from the beginning that Harry should first destroy all Horcruxes and then should die by the hand of Voldemort (which leads to Piton telling to Harry that he must die) and that Harry should kill Voldemort as last thing...

harry-potter albus-dumbledore

AncientSwordRage

@Alex not everything needs a flag reason though

the system is designed to handle bad answers by letting the community downvote things into the ground where needed

Alex

True. So maybe just one flag: "This should be deleted".

AncientSwordRage

you can use chat for that, or just hope it's seen

it's been too long, but I'm sure just the act of voting to delete will put it in a queue somewhere

that way there's no flagging required

Alex

I don't think a queue, but there a section in the Tools page that shows posts with recent delete votes.

TheLethalCarrot

Only flagging will send it to the LQP queue; delete votes just show in the Tools page and on the post

AncientSwordRage

12:03

@TheLethalCarrot hmmmm

I need a refresher then

TheLethalCarrot

Well flagging or the auto system flag on post length; repeated characters etc.

AncientSwordRage

12:24

@TheLethalCarrot again, not the best example as I shortened it for chat

TheLethalCarrot

12:40

@Mithical I don't know about. VTC as POB

Boolean

When it comes to the election, where will it be displayed/shown? (will a banner show up on meta?)

I ask as I haven't voted before in an election

Mithical

There'll be something in the site bulletin on the sidebar.

Boolean

ok thanks

Mithical

Every user who's eligible to nominate or vote will also get an inbox notification.

TheLethalCarrot

13:00

Do we get one for it starting and for the vote starting? Can't remember

Mithical

Yep. Both.

Marvin

14:12

0

Q: What is the timeline of the rescue of Han Solo?

In Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi, we see R2-D2 and C-3PO arrive at the palace of Jabba the Hutt, bearing a message from Luke Skywalker, and themselves as gifts. Then we see general Leia Organa arrive, disguised as the bounty hunter Boussh, claiming the bounty on Chewbacca. She tries ...

star-wars return-of-the-jedi

Cereal Bot

14:26

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Invest

posted on June 07, 2021 by tech

Click here to go see the bonus panel!Hovertext: You also want a portfolio of evil deeds, in case some turn out to be ineffective. Today's News:

SQB

@Marvin that started out from one of those slave-Leia obsessed questions we received a couple of years back, the one whether Leia slept. That made me wonder how Leia was held in slavery by Jabba, and from that I started wondering how long all of the events took.

TheLethalCarrot

I don't think there is any detail to it BTW

Marvin

0

Q: How realistic is the 1 kg/km² solar sail in "Death's End"?

From Cixin Liu's 2010 sci-fi novel Death's End (pages 68–69): "A radiation sail can be made very thin and light. Based on the current state of material sciences, we can make a sail of about fifty square kilometers and limit the mass to about fifty kilograms. That should be big enough." The speak...

remembrance-of-earths-past propulsion quantum-physics deaths-end

TheLethalCarrot

Not going to answer it though as there might be a comic or something that covers it

SQB

14:41

TBH, I expect Valorum to have a pdf of the relevant books somewhere.

So the real question is if someone beats Valorum to it.

TheLethalCarrot

At least as far as I can see in the novelisation the only 2 relevant quotes are what I've posted as comments

I could turn it into an answer but it feels a bit lacking

AncientSwordRage

@Randal'Thor Oh yeah I forgot to mention that I managed to ping TH on Twitter

Rand al'Thor

15:21

@Mast Heh, first time I've seen your name blue in chat :-)

Mast

:-)

Rand al'Thor

Phew, this was an odd day for me to be so long AFK.

At least I'm back online before the election starts.

AncientSwordRage

@Randal'Thor yay

TheLethalCarrot

@Randal'Thor I'm probably not gonna be around for the start of it or much this evening

I'm gonna miss out on the F1 start of it all :P

AncientSwordRage

I wonder who will wake up tomorrow, unknowingly having had their name put into the Goblet of Fire, and have the mods shouting "Did you NOMINATE YOURSELF Harry!?"

TheLethalCarrot

15:31

"Did you NOMINATE YOURSELF Harry!?" AncientSwordRage asks calmly.

Rand al'Thor

ROFL

@AncientSwordRage Will our candidates be representing different schools?

Schools of thought, maybe.

AncientSwordRage

@Randal'Thor perhaps

I often find myself reaching for references to HP that don't actually rely on HP and find myself coming up short

Mithical

15:48

I'll be around providing snarky commentary as necessary...

AncientSwordRage

for instance being sorted into houses, is something that predates HP, but is too tangled up with it

@Mithical so no change?

Mithical

Precisely.

AncientSwordRage

And I've been told that "X is my Spirit Animal" can be insensitive, so I should use "X is my Patronus", except now HP is not a great topic to bring up

Babel fish

16:02

0

Q: Is there an author who could be considered the Steinbeck of Arizona?

Growing up adjacent to the coast and valleys of central California, we always had great pride in Steinbeck and his attachment to the land there. Since moving to Arizona, I’ve wondered if there is any author who has a similar command of the land and its people. I’m not expecting a literary giant, ...

identification-request

Rand al'Thor

@AncientSwordRage Why, because of the close votes?

@AncientSwordRage I suppose nowadays most people's exposure to various facets of the British public school system is through the lens of HP.

AncientSwordRage

@Randal'Thor because of JKR's opinions on transgender people

@Randal'Thor there was a recent MTG expansion that was set in a magical school and some of the criticism was that it was too much like HP....except it was nothing like HP

@TheLethalCarrot I don't have many more details unfortunately

TheLethalCarrot

So not like a villain villain really?

Marvin

0

Q: As well as the Devil’s Mirror, is Hans from Frozen based on the Prince from the fairytale the Snow Queen?

We know that Hans is based on the Devil’s Mirror from the Snow Queen fairytale, and it shows, because he mimics others perfectly. However, his Disney Wiki says that Hans is also based on the PRINCE from the same fairytale. So IS he?

frozen

1

Q: Which comic issue does Superman fight someone powered by prayer?

I read a comic once, long since given away, where Superman fought someone who was powered by prayer, without using force. I'm hazy on the details, and there wasn't much to the story besides the 'powered by prayer' conceit. I read it some ~7-8 years ago, and it was current at the time because it w...

story-identification superman

Rand al'Thor

@AncientSwordRage Most things that people associate with HP don't really originate from HP - it's just a trope codifier

TheLethalCarrot

16:13

14

A: Did Superman ever attend Sunday School in Smallville?

I haven't found anything explicit but in Action Comics Issues 848 and 849 Clark has a bit of a battle with faith and in it we get some insight into his early life in Smallville. In Issue 848 we get a few flashbacks to Clark as a child and in some of these we see him going to church. Click image ...

Rand al'Thor

^^ warning, TV Tropes link

TheLethalCarrot

@TheLethalCarrot @AncientSwordRage that ring any bells?

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot unsure

Rand al'Thor

Interrupting Carrot, going for Obie's job there? :-P

TheLethalCarrot

Lol

AncientSwordRage

16:13

they may have been forcibly converting folks overseas?

I'm really not clear

TheLethalCarrot

dc.fandom.com/wiki/Action_Comics_Vol_1_848

And the following issue

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot thats the one

I may have only read the first of those issues though

TheLethalCarrot

I remembered it from this answer of mine

14

A: Did Superman ever attend Sunday School in Smallville?

I haven't found anything explicit but in Action Comics Issues 848 and 849 Clark has a bit of a battle with faith and in it we get some insight into his early life in Smallville. In Issue 848 we get a few flashbacks to Clark as a child and in some of these we see him going to church. Click image ...

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot the first image of that answer is in the issue I read

TheLethalCarrot

Posted it as an answer, got to go soon so will flesh it out a bit more later if need be

AncientSwordRage

16:20

@TheLethalCarrot thanks!

DavidW

PSA: Please fix URLs too when fixing other things.

2

TheLethalCarrot

Unless SE regex it like with the Memory Alpha links unfortunately I doubt we'll ever clean them all up

16

Q: Can we fix Wikia links before they break?

We've had the broken Memory Alpha-links fixed directly on the database. Thank you, @Shog9 and @Catija. Can we do the same for all Wikia links, since wikia.com has moved to fandom.com? There's a redirect in place currently, but we don't know for how long. There are far too many links to Wikia to ...

support editing

Mithical

...I can't really imagine they're going to kill the redirects.

TheLethalCarrot

FWIw I'm turning up 687 unique wikia links: data.stackexchange.com/scifi/query/1180429/wikia-links-in-posts

No I'd be very surprised if they do

Rand al'Thor

3.5 hours till showtime.

DavidW

16:37

@TheLethalCarrot At the very least it'd probably be good to manually fix the "http%3A%2F%2Fstarwars.wikia.com" links; those probably don't work even now... :p

But 7200 and change starwars.wikia.com links? That's discernably lower than it was before I started fixing them, so progress can be made.

Mithical

As for images, we're at... 9953, looks like.

DavidW

It's still going up. :(

Do we have a party when we hit 10k? :)

AncientSwordRage

@Randal'Thor thanks for reminding me to update the post

Mithical

at 10k I'll have to change my query, because it's only grabbing the newest 10k

DavidW

Or don't, cause I'm working from the bottom of the list (oldest) and the last few pages are ones I've bailed on. :)

Rand al'Thor

16:44

@AncientSwordRage Heh, I missed that you've been updating that.

Unlikely that any new suggestions now are going to gain traction.

b_jonas

@DavidW I don't think those links will break

they will be redirects forever.

Mithical

@DavidW Double digits... those are old.

b_jonas

Wikia still has control over their old domain, it's not like someone else bought them out, and knows they have a lot of links to the old address.

We don't have to edit our posts every time they decide to rebrand themselves or change their theme colors.

Rand al'Thor

@AncientSwordRage I did a bit of mod abuse too :-P to add a link

AncientSwordRage

@DavidW why do I feel the need to tackle those ones now?!

@Randal'Thor I'm sure TLC doesn't mind

I don't think we have tie issues anymore anyway

Babel fish

16:50

0

Q: Who wrote, and what is the name of, this famous essay on criticism?

The long essay has a terse title, something like "On Criticism" or "On the Art of Criticism" or "Criticism"--if I recall correctly. Perhaps it's by Disraeli or Erasmus or Diderot (my bet is Erasmus). The essay begins with a very long paragraph describing how famous writer X thought the work of fa...

identification-request

Rand al'Thor

@AncientSwordRage We now have four posts tied at a score of 8 (for the last three spots in the questionnaire).

@Babelfish Weird, that got fed here before the Lit room.

AncientSwordRage

@Randal'Thor counting is not one of my strong points

Rand al'Thor

I won't count on your support then.

AncientSwordRage

@Randal'Thor set your expectations low enough and I promise not to disappoint

@Mithical is there a way to see who has the most image description edits?

Mithical

not AFAIK, unfortunately

AncientSwordRage

17:03

@TheLethalCarrot Any idea how many single post links?

@Mithical I might ask in the SEDE chat

TSQL is not one of my strong points

and with that, I'm off to the shops

DavidW

17:19

@b_jonas I was looking at the URL as it was written. If you put "%3a%2f%2f" in a URL instead of "://" then I don't expect it to work. [test](https%3a%2f%2fwww.google.com%2f).

@Rand, since you're here, is there a reason that the first link in this answer doesn't link directly to memory-alpha instead of google? I've seen that in other posts as well, and I'm not sure what it means.

Rand al'Thor

17:35

@DavidW Huh, dunno. That was one of my very first answers on SFF, way long ago. Probably it means I copied a link from the Google search result list rather than copying the URL after clicking through to the page itself.

Unless it's a Google cached version of a page that no longer exists, maybe?

DavidW

No, I check the link and it goes to the page URL embedded in it.

In the absence of a good reason not to, I think that when I encounter links like that I'll update them with the actual destination. It's friendlier to users, and why advertise your web traffic to google unnecessarily.

AncientSwordRage

in TRPG General Chat, 7 mins ago, by bobble

to prevent anyone from panicking: lists are broken across all SE sites for the time being: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/366240/the-styling-for-lists-numbered-and-bulleted-got-switched-to-none

Early election bug? ^ ;p

Mast

Oh fun.

Elections have been a bit buggy lately.

Because they're doing it the new way since a month or so.

I think CR and Chemistry were among the first doing it new-style.

Rocket Nikita

17:50

Wow

nice theme

Rand al'Thor

18:04

:-D

Every newcomer to SFF chat says that.

Well, some of them hate the theme and leave :-P

@Mast Math[s] Overflow was the first.

Skooba

@Randal'Thor halp ther r too many starz, cant read my own text

Napoleon Wilson

@Randal'Thor Are you saying Britisch children aren't all dressed up like judges and reading from old tomes in neo-Gothic palaces at school?

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson That's only Jacob Rees-Mogg's children.

Napoleon Wilson

Though, I have to say the only British university I ever visited pretty much looked like Hogwarts. ;-)

AncientSwordRage

18:19

@NapoleonWilson they're overrepresented by my estimation

Rand al'Thor

@NapoleonWilson Was it Durham? I think some of the Harry Potter films were shot there.

Or Oxbridge, which is pretty much "British public schools for grown-ups".

Napoleon Wilson

Bangor, Wales. But they probably only led us through the fancy areas anyway, since it was a conference social event.

TheLethalCarrot

18:39

@AncientSwordRage over 10k at least

AncientSwordRage

Thanks for helping me count

Rand al'Thor

Helping your count? I didn't know you have an earl.

Mithical

Ooh, fight! I want to see you two duke it out.

TheLethalCarrot

18:59

@AncientSwordRage I don’t think the relevant information is exposed in SEDE but I might be wrong. And even if it was it would be difficult to work our

You might be able to do it with PostHistory actually

AncientSwordRage

@Mithical no because this place would be baron after such an epic duel

Mithical

I'm sure rene could do it, he's a magician...

TheLethalCarrot

Probably, I’m no sql expert. And no way I’m attempting it on my phone haha

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot I mean, just how many in the list only have one post

TheLethalCarrot

What do you mean

Rand al'Thor

19:10

@Mithical And he's a mod now too.

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot the query brings back how many posts have that link

Some only feature on one post

How many in the list of Wikia links have one post?

TheLethalCarrot

data.stackexchange.com/scifi/query/1419138/wikia-links-in-posts

Lazy hack, might work?

Catija

If you haven't cast votes on questions, now's the time to do them. Questionnaire will be finalized shortly.

Rand al'Thor

New votes have been coming in thick and fast today, but there's still a multi-way tie for the last question in the questionnaire.

It was a two-way tie earlier, but it's back to four-way again.

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot wrong link?

I tried earlier and got a varchar is not an int error...

TheLethalCarrot

19:29

If the number of links is 1 I think it means the wiki link only shows on 1 post

on phone though so I may have mucked it up

I changed it so it sets the index find to -1 meaning after finding 1 wikia link in a post it moves on. It’s not 100% accurate cos of a post has 2 different wikia links in it it’ll only count one but could do the job

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot I'm still seeing starwars.wikia etc

TheLethalCarrot

Scroll to the bottom, just look at the ones with a 1. I didn’t put the where clause on it cos being lazy

AncientSwordRage

I wanted the total count... Like "there's 9001 wikias with only one post on Sci-Fi SE"

TheLethalCarrot

Oh okay

data.stackexchange.com/scifi/query/1419157/wikia-links-in-posts

248 roughly with the caveats mentioned above

@Randal'Thor such is life; funny though

Rand al'Thor

19:57

> nomination begins
in 2 minutes

DavidW

@Randal'Thor Are you really expecting there are people (well, more than one anyway) who are counting down the seconds waiting to jump in there?

Rand al'Thor

Just building excitement :-P

AncientSwordRage

Just checked... No nominees yet? 😲😓😜

hyper-neutrino

Imagine not writing up a nomination post beforehand and FGITWing as soon as the page opens :P

DavidW

I was just about to say; 3 minutes and no nominees yet. It's like someone's oversold the excitement of this thing. :)

TheLethalCarrot

20:03

That query what you wanted @AncientSwordRage

Rand al'Thor

@hyper-neutrino That sounds like your site - shortest nomination post wins :-P

TheLethalCarrot

i can post a crappy stub to keep the excitement levels at an all time high if you want?

hyper-neutrino

@Randal'Thor heh :P my nomination post actually exceeded the limit initially so I trimmed some hardly relevant stuff off of it

(this chat room's theme makes it really hard to read things :/)

Mast

@AncientSwordRage Some people write their answers before they make the nomination official. Takes a while to get the answers done properly first, and then short enough so it fits second.

Catija

No candidates yet? I'm disappointed.

:P

AncientSwordRage

20:07

@Mast I've seen multiple ways of doing it

@Catija get in line, we've all been saying it!

hyper-neutrino

@Mast That's a good point. I wrote my questionnaire answers before my nomination post as well. I also spent about 3 days deliberating whether or not to nominate myself, lol.

AncientSwordRage

@hyper-neutrino oh no that's no good

Catija

Bah. :P

Y'all did not make this questionnaire easy to compile. :P

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot I just scrolled a little up and saw 👍🏻

Catija

No ties, though. :D

TheLethalCarrot

20:09

Kind of disappointed at no ties in the end after all that excitement

Mast

Agreed.

AncientSwordRage

@Catija a casual election then

Catija

:/

hyper-neutrino

Freshly leaked, the secret mod oath : "Flags gather, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no prisoners, hold no hands, favour no users. I shall wear diamonds but win no glory. I shall live and die reading posts. I am the pitchfork in the manure. I am the watcher of the firewall. I am the shield that guards the site from spam. I pledge my life and honor to the Mod Team, for this year and all the years to come." — Amarth May 31 at 20:53

who leaked our secrets??

Rand al'Thor

@Catija I guess the questionnaire posting process still isn't automated ...

@Catija You didn't have to cast a tie-breaking vote in the end?

Catija

20:10

It's automated but I still have to review the questions and reformat them if it's wonky (and remove all the monologuing y'all did in the questions).

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot http://[http://harrypotter.wikia.com is not a valid link...

Catija

@Randal'Thor Nope

Mast

@hyper-neutrino If you like that kind of thing, this farewell post is in the same style.

Marvin

0

Q: Winged mutant caused by parents being exposed to fields from high voltage

I initially believed that this was the original backstory for Marvel's X-Man Angel before they settled on a more vague triggering of the X-gene, but I have found no references online indicating as such, which makes me think this was another work that I conflated to Angel in my head. The protagoni...

story-identification short-stories mutant

AncientSwordRage

@Catija monologuing? What did you expect!

TheLethalCarrot

20:12

@AncientSwordRage there’ll be some mistakes in it, it was relatively hacky when I did it the first time around

Never mind with the further phone edit hacks to it :P

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot I'm wondering if there actually a broken link out there

TheLethalCarrot

Could be; it is from the html though so might just be a goof in how I’m separating the links from the html. I sorted out a few edge cases initially but could have missed some

DavidW

6

Q: Does any other wand share the same core as the Elder Wand?

The story between the owners of the elder wand goes through a long journey, particularly Albus Dumbledore. I don't have any idea if the elder wand has a twin at all since it was made by the Death and was bestowed to Antioch Peverell. Based on its details, it was the most powerful wand ever made....

harry-potter wandlore deathly-hallows

Skooba

as they say in internet speak.... FIRST

Catija

The first contestant has entered the ring!

:P

TheLethalCarrot

20:14

Pure raw excitement

Catija

Questionnaire is up. Go proofread it for me and tell me what I screwed up.

DavidW

@AncientSwordRage It's not actually used though, it's just stale noise.

Catija

2021 Science Fiction & Fantasy Stack …

Open discussion for scifi.stackexchange.com/election/5

4

AncientSwordRage

@DavidW there was an extra, funky link in the quote

DavidW

Hah. My eye skipped right over it.

AncientSwordRage

20:18

@DavidW understandably

Rand al'Thor

@AncientSwordRage What do you reckon about closing Brace yourself as a dupe of the election announcement?

AncientSwordRage

@Randal'Thor done

b_jonas

20:32

Nice! Election is open, Skooba already nominated

Skooba

@b_jonas someone had to be first. Figured I might as well get it out of the way! I am really interested to see the field as we have so many great and qualified users.

Just the best really, no other site come close. I've been saying this for years.

Slartibartfast

7

Q: 2021 Community Moderator Election

The 2021 Community Moderator Election is now underway! Community moderator elections have three phases: Nomination phase Primary phase Election phase Most elections take between two and three weeks, but this depends on how many candidates there are. Please visit the official election page at ht...

discussion featured moderators election

hyper-neutrino

It's been 40 minutes

time to change Slartibartfast's name to Slartibartslow?

TheLethalCarrot

That’s my job; to complain about how slow the feeds are

hyper-neutrino

we recently replaced three of our chat room's six feeds with a chatbot because we got tired of them being too slow :P

Catija

20:43

Meta is always slow

The feeds only pull from meta about half as often or less than from main.

hyper-neutrino

oh, TIL, lol.

DavidW

21:11

Heh. The "Recent Badges" section on the "Badges" page is a string of "Caucus" badges. :)

It's nice to see so many people paying attention.

Marvin

21:24

2

Q: Why didn't anyone hear very much from/about Sinclair during seasons 2 and 3?

Before War Without End, Sinclair was the head of the rangers. The rangers were a large presence at the time and they should have gotten orders from him indirectly or at least talk about "Ranger One". But the only times people saw/heard about him is when he chose to contact them. Why is that?

babylon-5

hyper-neutrino

Can't relate, don't have the reputation to vote :D

Alex

22:23

@Randal'Thor Surely a restaurant should be fed before a reading room?

Rand al'Thor

22:35

@Alex Fair point!

On the other hand, the end of the universe should come after everything else.

Alex

@Randal'Thor Depends which end.

Slartibartfast

0

Q: Is The Clan of the Cave Bear (and related works) on topic?

I just stumbled upon this well-asked and received question about the series of novels of which Clan of the Cave Bear is the first book. While certainly fictional, and predicated upon imaginative vision of prehistory, what makes this book and series on-topic for SFF.SE? Contrast with Harrison's We...

discussion scope specific-question

AncientSwordRage

23:10

@Alex canonically it was the latter end

Alex

@AncientSwordRage Is that the end you have to climb to?

AncientSwordRage

@Alex however you get there is takes 3 billion + years

Marvin

0

Q: What government agency is responsible for defending against Godzilla and other related monsters?

So I know next to nothing about Godzilla and haven't watched any of the movies, but I was wondering if in any of the movies there is a government or UN agency responsible for dealing with giant monsters such as Godzilla. If so, I would also like to know what sort of technology, vehicles, and othe...