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2:21 AM
1
Q: Title of Mark Twain science fction story with a television

M. A. GoldingWhen I was a child I read a science fiction short story by Mark Twain (died 1910) in which a television was important to the plot, solving a murder, I think. And if my memory serves me correctly it was a sort of television phone. As I remember, when I read it I was young enough to be confused a...

3:12 AM
1
Q: Short story of an alien "anthropologist" observing a far-future but primitive human tribe

ViergachtI read this in a paperback sci-fi anthology in the early nineties, as far as I can recall. It was probably originally published in a magazine. The story is told in the form of extracts from a book, or excerpts of field notes describing a ceremonial dance put on by a specific tribe of humans that ...

0
Q: What is the precise nature of the resurrection plant plague?

AdamantDespite the fact that it produces a state that likely defies the laws of physics, the zombie-like plague in Kingdom obeys some fairly scientific rules based on its vector, the worms that lay their eggs on the resurrection plant: the worms and their victims flee from water and heat, which are leth...

4:02 AM
0
Q: Does anyone know this where manga this from?

リッカThis is the last page of chapter 25 it seems:

 
3 hours later…
6:35 AM
0
Q: What does "this moment" refer to?

Ashley LongHermoine explains to Harry Potter about Time Turner: Hermoine: This is a Time-Turner, Harry. McGonagall gave it to me first term. This is how I've been getting to my lessons all year. Harry Potter: You mean we've gone back in time? Hermoine: Yes. Dumbledore obviously wanted us to return to this ...

7:25 AM
0
Q: I need help finding this animation

Knackles The EnchiladaI dont remember much from this animation but I remeber it being around maybe 17 min and being made maybe in 2012 and featuring some kind of apocalyptic wasteland setting with a scrap metal robot that takes over another light bulb looking robot that's drinking some kind of dark liquid. And near th...

@Marvin another one of these, huh?
Almost feels worth directing them to ELU or ELL...?
7:51 AM
2
Q: Who is this fifth turtle?

Nu'DaqIn an advertisement for a TMNT comic titled From the Ashes, there is a picture of the four turtles I'm familiar with, plus a fifth one wearing a yellow mask and armed with a gauntlet from which four blades emerge- does anyone recognize this new character?

SQB
SQB
8:07 AM
Punctuated by a few quite interesting questions, such as the Buckbeak shoebill one.
@AncientSwordRage the pattern seems to have settled to asking, getting an answer in a comment, deleting. But you as a mod should be able to verify that.
That user only has 2 other deleted posts, one was just not well received and the other was a similar language type question
SQB
SQB
Ah, okay, so it's not really a pattern then.
I happened to catch the other similar one.
It's not the first user to behave in a similar way so you could be getting muddled up too
8:36 AM
@SQB Meh, it's fine. He's not the first one to get very embarrassed by missing something obviously in the text of Harry Potter. I almost deleted that answer too.
 
2 hours later…
10:22 AM
0
Q: Uniqueness of invisibility cloaks

FalconI am currently reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and a question occurred to me. According to the story of the Deathly Hallows, the invisibility cloak is the third one. But in the previous books, we saw that many wizards own an invisibility cloak (like Mundungus, for example). How is ...

 
3 hours later…
1:43 PM
@SQB @AncientSwordRage Ah found the ask question wizard on SO, guess that's sort of what you'd want SQB?
680
Q: The Ask Question Wizard is Live!

Jon ChanI'm really happy to announce that the Ask Question Wizard is now live on Stack Overflow! This is the end of a long arc of experiments that have been happening for over a year to provide structured guidance to newcomers when asking a question, and I'm so excited for everyone in the community to gi...

@TheLethalCarrot yes!
2:11 PM
0
Q: Does Starfleet still rate personnel on ESP?

Robert ColumbiaIn the Star Trek TOS episode Where No Man Has Gone Before (the second episode made), we find out that Starfleet personnel files include a section on extrasensory perception (ESP) that apparently consists of both a quantitative ("esper rating") and narrative summary of the crew member's achievemen...

5
A: Custom 404 pages are gone :-(

Aaron ShekeySorry for the delay. Yesterday got away from me. I've gone ahead and reverted this change for now. It'll go out in the next deploy. I'm going to instead scope these changes to just Stack Overflow. Stack Exchange will still have its mobile view deleted, but will keep the custom images. We were loo...

^ @DavidW @AncientSwordRage @TheLethalCarrot it's mixed news
I saw, at least it's coming back for a bit
@Randal'Thor most of it is reasonable... still reading though
Thanks for the response. I'll be honest, this is mostly bad news, but +1 for at least giving people the chance to take pictures before our fun stuff disappears. I hear you about the technical issues (dark mode, not retina-ready, heavier to download), but I have to disagree on your 1st numbered point. So many sites, even those of bigger companies than SE/SO, have funny/cute 404 pages. If it was such a tonal issue, why have so many companies chosen to do it? I'd say it's rather the opposite: if you run into a 404, well, you haven't found the page you wanted, but at least you get a chuckle. — Rand al'Thor 4 mins ago
well said
2:30 PM
SQB
SQB
@TheLethalCarrot yeah, pretty much.
Oh, it's actually solvable. Nice.
@xkcd I forget if it counts diagonals?
It does.
just figured out it must
I solved it!
2:50 PM
@Randal'Thor *sigh* I mostly agree with your comment, though I think "not retina-ready" is a bit of a red-herring (on their part); most modern browsers can do a decent-enough job scaling images if asked.
I also don't think their precious SVG is so great; the background not aligning to the border makes it look like poorly registered offset printing.
1
Q: What is the Federation representative smoking?

Robert ColumbiaIn Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, the Federation representative on Nimbus III, St. John Talbot, appears to be smoking something. The Memory Alpha article I linked above seems to indicate that this character was intended to be portrayed sort of as a loser, so it makes sense that he has some bad...

3:27 PM
3
Q: What children's show from the 90s had an android that said 'Frosty!' based in a hotel?

AncientSwordRageAll I can remember is: The protagonist is a small child (between 12 and 15 perhaps?) The android is a cleaning robot that became sentient The Boy's parents have lost ownership of the hotel (?) The hotel is now run by a woman who reminds me of Delores Umbridge The android says 'Frosty!' instead o...

1
Q: Time travel show from the 90's featuring kids visiting a diner to go on time travel adventures with the owner

AeronorThe details are from my childhood, so they may be vague, but any help would be appreciated on remembering what show this is. It was live-action, aired in the US, late 80's early 90's, on maybe the PBS channel but I could be wrong. The premise was a man (and I think a male assistant) were scientis...

3:52 PM
-1
Q: Are there any suggestions for books\movies in the Hunter-Pray genre that are in the style of Predator?

ziraI want suggestions for books \ movies with a plot similar to "Predator" that are not in the Predator\Alien universe. Basically, the plot includes a hunter or group of hunters, that hunts a group or single prey, and the prey is escaping \ killing the hunters.

Now that we've (temporarily) got our custom 404 back, I can confirm that, if anything, it looks even better on a dark background. So "dark theme" isn't a great reason to get rid of it either.
Well for us aye
Pshaw, like I care about other sites.
2
4:12 PM
posted on July 30, 2021 by tech

Click here to go see the bonus panel!Hovertext: It's the only way to be sure. Today's News:

 
2 hours later…
5:59 PM
posted on July 30, 2021 by Jack B Nimble

Amazon’s description:  “We’ve found something here, something game-changing…” The explosion at the International Space Station (ISS) forever changed the direction of inventor Tamarind Chase’s life. His life mission was to mine asteroids, but when the accident triggers an expanding debris field it strands the scientists at Moonbase Verity including the friend that o

6:41 PM
14
Q: MSE Feedback post: Feedback on Q3 2021 Community and Public Platform Roadmap

PhilippeReposted from the Stack Overflow Blog Hello everyone – for those who don’t know me yet, I’m Philippe, and I’m the new VP of Community here. Long time listener, first time caller… I’ve been working with online communities since the days of AOL chat rooms, and have held community roles at Wikipedia...

^ @TheLethalCarrot will be pleased to see review queues and new user onboarding on the roadmap :-)
0
Q: Etymology of exclamation marks to denote different versions of characters in online fandom communities

MuzerIn online fandom communities, I've noticed a not-uncommon convention (though I'm not sure it's the prevailing convention; more common seems to be a simple space or a hyphen) of using an exclamation mark to refer to different versions of a character between different adaptations of a work. For ins...

@Randal'Thor looks great
@Marvin @Randal'Thor does lit cover fanwork?
6:57 PM
@Marvin Interesting. It'll probably pick up some close votes, but I think it should be on-topic.
Same
Caveat being if there's a divide in how it's used in/out of SFF we should pick the sff version
@AncientSwordRage I think so, yes, but this feels more on-topic here. Most of these online fandoms are probably SFF-related.
@Randal'Thor I'm cool with it
@Randal'Thor new user on boarding is good and anything to help out those helping the site should be good too… now to read the actual thing :)
7:14 PM
@Marvin Excel, probably.
2
Q: Trying to identify a movie from an image

frostyPintsRob Hi, I'm trying to identify the following movie from a picture.

7:56 PM
@b_jonas I've not read any Excel fanfic...
@AncientSwordRage You should, it's excellent.
@Randal'Thor is that the word on the street
I'm imagining clippy giving advice on fanfic now
...
There’s probably some Death by Power Point fan fiction
@AncientSwordRage "Hi, I see you're trying to ship Harry and Dolores. Would you like some help with that?"
0
Q: Third Rock from the Sun: S2 E22 (Will work for Dick): What music is Nina listening to?

Missy SticeIn Third Rock from the Sun: S2 E22 (Will work for Dick), at around the 18min mark, when Dick barges into her home, Nina is relaxing listening to some kind of Jazzy music. We only hear about 30 seconds. What is the piece? Thanks!

8:08 PM
@TheLethalCarrot there's hits if you Google that phrase
@DavidW noooooo
@DavidW I was thinking of shipping Clippy with some other virtual assistant.
@Randal'Thor takes screenshot I'm filing this under blackmail material
@Randal'Thor Sirippy!
@Randal'Thor Clippy and Cortana
8:31 PM
There we go.
@TheLethalCarrot Clipptana....Cortippy?
SQB
SQB
@DavidW Humbridge?
@TheLethalCarrot There's a band called Death by Stereo, but Death by Power Point sounds pretty badass too.
8:54 PM
@TheLethalCarrot Nah, that's boring and safe. They're basically on the same "side;" it would be like shipping Harry and Ron.
Maybe Clippy and Jarvis. That has potential.
SQB
SQB
9:43 PM
Clippy and EMH.

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