The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

12:31 AM

0

Q: What are the subgenres of each Ender's Game book?

In the introduction to "The Investment Counselor" published in Far Horizons, Orson Scott Card discussed the Ender series as it existed at the time, and gave subgenres for each of the books. In order to set up the novel Speaker, I had to rewrite the original story as a novel; thus the novel Ender...

xkcd

12:50 AM

The plug fits really snugly, so it should be safe in a crash.

AncientSwordRage

1:55 AM

@DavidW maybe the reason why neo worked is because he had a name that anagrammed well

The previous heroes were Wot, Reeth and Rofu

DavidW

2:08 AM

Heh. Pretty much. :)

Marvin

3:55 AM

0

Q: Sci-fi novel (c2000±10) of time differential universes

Trans-solar human society, consciousness download to mini-bots fighting bugs, a scientist & an autist in an asteroid (Ceres?), and alien invasion foiled by travel to a time differential universe. That sums up the novel in a TL;DR nutshell. The question is: What is the title of this book? The exp...

story-identification novel soft-sci-fi

Marvin

4:21 AM

0

Q: In the movie Thor: Ragnarök (2017), could Dr. Strange have brought Odin back to life using the Time Stone?

In Thor: Ragnarök (2017), if Dr. Strange had decided to go over to Norway shortly after he had sent Thor and Loki there, could Dr. Strange have brought Odin back to life using the Time Stone? (This would of course have depended on Thor preventing Loki from killing Dr. Strange once he showed up th...

marvel-cinematic-universe infinity-stones thor-ragnarok odin

Marvin

5:37 AM

1

Q: Q: Maze-game with top-down perspective, each level you need to kill monsters and destroy their dens

I remember seeing this game in a net-cafe when I was young and didn't know English so I cannot remember the title. I have tried searching "maze game", "labyrinth game" and still haven't found it so I tried asking here. Even though the name eludes me, I can recall quite a few details about the gam...

story-identification video-games

Marvin

6:03 AM

0

Q: Iron Man comic from the 1970s that featured a blue, "security guard" version of his armor?

Plot Summary/Details I remember the basic plot of this one. There's a huge protest going outside of Stark Industries because of their military contracts. Stark/Iron Man is concerned that things may turn violent and cause people to get hurt. He has a trusted employee (I cannot remember the name...

marvel iron-man

Marvin

6:28 AM

0

Q: What X-Men comic features Storm being attacked by a group of drug addicts in a housing project, and is saved by Luke Cage and Misty Knight?

Plot Details/Summary I don't remember the entire storyline from the issue, but I do have pretty good details on the scene I'm trying to remember. Storm is in Harlem, I believe, and she's wandered in to a housing project. I can't remember exactly why, just that she does so. She comes upon a room...

marvel x-men

Marvin

7:19 AM

-1

Q: What does "it" refer to?

Professor Lupin leaving Hogwarts: Lupin: This time tomorrow, the owls will start arriving and parents will not want... well, someone like me teaching their children. Harry Potter: But Dumbledore... Lupin: He has already...risked enough on my behalf. Besides, people like me are... Well, let's jus...

harry-potter

TheLethalCarrot

8:27 AM

Magic wand time - what does your community need? (More questions from the Community VP)

3

Get your wishlist in now ;P

Feeds

9:26 AM

Darths & Droids: Episode 2028: Who am I to This Foresee?

posted on July 29, 2021

AncientSwordRage

10:55 AM

18

Q: I'm not getting reputation notifications

I haven't been getting reputation notifications since recently. (I reloaded several times, closed and reopened my browser, and restarted my computer) New rep is still shown in the profile page Reputation tab:

bug status-review reputation notifications

anybody seeing that here?

TheLethalCarrot

I didn't get followed notifications on a question closure so I think so

Go serially upvote me and we'll find out

:P

AncientSwordRage

:o

Babel fish

0

Q: Foreshadows in Batman V Superman

I was rewatching this intro scene from BvS... I just realized something. The entire scene foreshadows the life of Bruce Wayne. After the Wayne murder, at the funeral, he ran away from Alfred and the rest of the people kinda hinting at the idea of him leaving Gotham. He then goes in the wilderness...

dc-extended-universe batman-v-superman-dawn-of-justice superman filmography batman

SQB

12:49 PM

@TheLethalCarrot I'd like a custom flow for asking story IDs, that hits most points in the list.

TheLethalCarrot

Post it, you never know the magic wand might get waved in your general direction

DavidW

What would you have done differently?

TheLethalCarrot

Something we were talking about in the mod room (that @AncientSwordRage brought up) was adding more functionality to spoilers. Or rather tag level spoiler preferences

SQB

0

A: Magic wand time - what does your community need? (More questions from the Community VP)

SF & F I would like to see a custom question-flow for asking story ID requests. They're about half of our questions, most of them are by new / drive-by users, and most need to be coached in the comments to tell us when they read or watched it, where, what language, and so on. A custom question-fl...

AncientSwordRage

@SQB I like it

TheLethalCarrot

12:55 PM

@SQB That's the first time in a long time I've seen someone use fantasy.se over scifi.se

SQB

Easier to type on mobile.

"Fantasy" gets recognised by the spelling correction.

"Scifi" wants a hyphen.

AncientSwordRage

@SQB you need a better auto-correct

Rand al'Thor

And I came here to say good on you for promoting the fantasy side of the site.

We're not just SciFi SE dammit!

AncientSwordRage

@Randal'Thor that's just your fantasy

DavidW

Looks like we've lost our themed 404?

AncientSwordRage

1:08 PM

scifi.stackexchange.com/foobar seems to agree

TheLethalCarrot

I checked main meta and SO as well, all that same one rather than custom ones

DavidW

Boooo. :(

2

Jumping back to previous discussion, a custom story-id workflow wouldn't work in all those cases where the story-id tag has to be added in review... Which are frequently the same cases that might have benefitted most from more guidance.

TheLethalCarrot

If you have an initial window though which filters what type of question you're asking it would work like what SQB mentioned on his main meta post

@TheLethalCarrot or even a manual choice: "do you want to identify a story?", which could be "do you need help with a homework assignment?" or "do you have a piece of non-working code?" on SO. — SQB 19 mins ago

I'm sure something like that was trialled on SO at some point

AncientSwordRage

@TheLethalCarrot something was I'm sure

also in terms of the tag hierarchy, I'm sure there's some custom code that sees you write say sql it prompts you to specify which kind of SQL.... it's not a million miles from what we want

Rand al'Thor

@DavidW I just posted on meta. Maybe a dev just pressed something by mistake, like the orange theming we got the other day.

TheLethalCarrot

1:22 PM

@AncientSwordRage The new ask question wizard and tag warnings can sort of accomplish that but it works on an individual tag level so not overly useful for hierarchies

AncientSwordRage

true

I'm watching a video called "Did These Giant Sloths Poop Themselves to Death?" and it's great

2

DavidW

1:36 PM

@AncientSwordRage There's definitely code on some of the sites that makes tag suggestions based on the content of the question. I'm not sure how they implement that though, or how broadly applicable that feature might be.

@Randal'Thor Arg. I got downvoted for being slow. Way to encourage engagement guys!

Rand al'Thor

1:53 PM

@DavidW Aww, now I feel bad, as you noticed it first and I just heard about it from you.

TheLethalCarrot

Look at Rand, the little main meta rep goblin

Mithical

:(

I thought I was the little main meta rep goblin.

TheLethalCarrot

You do have more main meta rep so the slightly bigger main meta rep goblin?

Rand al'Thor

Edited my post to acknowledge that DavidW noticed it first.

DavidW

@Randal'Thor Not blaming you; I did review the "might be duplicate" list that refreshes as you write the post, and yours didn't show up. I'm complaining about the people who apparently thought that a duplicate post within a few minutes was bad enough to deserve downvoting, even though it was obviously independent.

Rand al'Thor

1:56 PM

@TheLethalCarrot Getting 10k rep on main meta is when you know you officially have a sad life.

DavidW

(As in, posted separately in response to the same event, rather than being a copy.)

Rand al'Thor

@DavidW Yeah, welcome to main meta :-( Happens a lot when a network-wide bug shows up and several people go independently to post about it.

in The Sphinx's Lair, Jan 15 '17 at 19:29, by Rand al'Thor

@Mithrandir You must have a sad life if main meta is one of your top few sites :-P

TheLethalCarrot

@Randal'Thor I'm safe for a little while yet then, what does it mean when you're in the multiples of ten though?

Rand al'Thor

Multiples of ten k?

It means I haven't given away enough bounties yet.

TheLethalCarrot

Smart answer :)

FuzzyBoots

3:05 PM

arstechnica.com/video/watch/…

Cereal Bot

3:40 PM

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Time

posted on July 29, 2021 by tech

Click here to go see the bonus panel!Hovertext: Space was invented because before space the universe was really cramped. Today's News:

Marvin

0

Q: Is it possible to rebuild a civilisation with 23 individuals?

In The Matrix it's revealed that The One is expected to choose 23 individuals (16 females and 7 male) to "rebuild zion". This allows the cycle to restart and the matrix to continue. However I know that once a species drops below a certain size the gene pool becomes too small and the population's ...

the-matrix

TheLethalCarrot

4:17 PM

@LogicDictates Can you take some time when posting comments? Make sure they're correct/complete for what you want to say first. There's also no harm in adding a second comment rather than deleting and then reposting mostly identical ones. The current behaviour isn't wrong per se but it is "annoying" (for lack of a better word) to give repeat notifications just to see the same comment again with a slight change in it

LogicDictates

4:44 PM

@TheLethalCarrot Sorry, I overlooked the fact that you'd be getting notified each time, since the comments were addressed to another user, but being left beneath your answer.

AncientSwordRage

I've also had it once, but I think the original poster also gets multiple notifications?

HI @Slytherincess !

2

fancy seeing you here!

Napoleon Wilson

@LogicDictates The same would happen to that other user actually. ;-)

I didn't even know Quantum Leap was from Donald Bellisario.

Rand al'Thor

5:15 PM

Now that following posts is a thing, you never know how many people a comment is notifying.

AncientSwordRage

197

Q: The Follow Questions and Answers feature is now live across the Network

We are happy to announce that the previously announced follow question and answer feature is now live across the Network, including Stack Overflow, all Stack Exchange sites, and all Meta sites. (International Stack Overflow sites will have it turned on in a day or two once we have translations al...

discussion announcements follow-post

> After you have followed a post, you will get inbox notifications for all new answers (in the case where you followed a question), comments, edits, and notices.

Marvin

6:44 PM

0

Q: Looking to find a cartoon TV Show from maybe 90´s about alternative realities

I remember the main protagonist was a young boy whom wore a red hat and he could travel between alternative dimensions. Should be from maybe early 90 maybe 95 the latest. Thanks!

soft-sci-fi parallel-universe

AncientSwordRage

6:57 PM

1

Q: Is it possible to rebuild a civilisation with 23 individuals?

In The Matrix Reloaded it's revealed that The One is expected to choose 23 individuals (16 females and 7 male) to "rebuild Zion". This allows the cycle to restart and the Matrix to continue. However I know that once a species drops below a certain size the gene pool becomes too small and the popu...

the-matrix

Is that latest edit ok?

I was waiting for the op to turn up to make the answer on-topic, not the only person who's answered doing the editing

Null

Looks fine to me.

I was hoping the OP would edit, but the question seemed perfectly clear to me from the beginning.

AncientSwordRage

@Null there's a lot more rewording that I think is needed to move the needle away from real world science based answers to in-universe answers

DavidW

1) Title should be edited to match the content (i.e. "the Zion civilisation" instead of "a civilisation").

2) I always thought it was perfectly clearly off-topic too. :D

AncientSwordRage

The fact it's phrases as "<context> is this possible?" Is aiming it towards it being a real world possibility

Especially as the title doesn't say Zion, and that is just given for context of why they want to know

@DavidW same

Null

7:14 PM

@AncientSwordRage Such as?

AncientSwordRage

@Null rather than saying "is this possible" (which to me implies out of universe) it would be better as "how is this possible in the film", or something similar

But a partial edit isn't enough, and a full rewording like that seems to step on the OPs toes too much

I'm still on my way home, so I can't explain better right now, but I hope what I said makes sense, at least in terms of my PoV

Something similar happened on RPG recently. 'helpful' edit→ rollback → comment from OP → full rewording edit

Now I'm not saying we have to do exactly the same but it seemed smooth and painless

Null

It could be phrased better, yes, but as it is now it is merely ambiguous as to whether it is looking for an in-universe or out-of-universe answer. And since the (correct) answer is that real world science does not apply (since there is a source of genetic material which is literally not from the "real world") I see no reason to keep it closed.

AncientSwordRage

I can see that logic, happy for it to be unlocked if you want to do the honours

Null

Eh, I was just going to let the OP make the necessary clarifications.

AncientSwordRage

7:36 PM

@Null Zeiss had already edited it

Null

@AncientSwordRage Yeah, but the OP should still edit it to something along the lines of what Harabeck suggested.

AncientSwordRage

@Null I've just done that

AncientSwordRage

7:57 PM

Because like I said, it's better either unedited or fully edited

SQB

8:43 PM

> "Edit, or edit not. There is no try."

Does anyone feel like writing a "custom 404" magic wand answer?

DavidW

9:10 PM

@SQB Not sure I understand what you mean.

Rand al'Thor

9:32 PM

@DavidW Presumably, an answer to the Community VP's "magic wand" question requesting the return of the custom 404 pages.

DavidW

Ah, okay, that makes sense.

At this point in the day connecting 2 different ideas is a bit of a stretch. :)

Marvin

10:07 PM

0

Q: Isekai Manga where a bullied high school protagonist commits suicide, is transferred to a world where he finds a potion of god

The story goes as: The protagonist is in high school and is thoroughly bullied. He decide to commit suicide and then the whole school or classroom gets transferred to a new world. Later something happens and he gets send to a dungeon and there he finds treasure chest. He finds a potion of god (or...

story-identification magic manga isekai

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The Restaurant at the End of the Univ…