The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Marvin

01:25

0

Q: Pee blood samples?

How blood samples can be tooked from his pee?

death-stranding

Marvin

04:45

0

Q: Why do vampires hiss?

So, my train of thought went a bit like this: Werewolves and Vampires have a "rivalry", similar to cats and dogs, so do they hiss because cats do? Vampires are affiliated with bats; but they don't exactly "hiss", but a humanoid "screeching" would be extreme, so they went for the next best thing?...

history-of vampire

Marvin

06:25

0

Q: Movie involving some kind of sentient blue being

I caught a glimpse of a movie scene playing. In it, there was some kind of blue-colored being talking in a somewhat mechanical voice. It seemed to be having trouble speaking...perhaps due to being in pain. One of the lines it said was "So...many...ideas". There is another character that is turned...

story-identification movie tv

b_jonas

09:08

@Marvin Must be a Hooloovoo.

Feeds

09:20

Darths & Droids: Episode 2070: Resistances Are Not Useless

posted on November 04, 2021

SQB

09:31

@Marvin Like, have you read Goblin Slayer?

@DavidW why use a HashSet at all when it will only contain a single element?

@DavidW which one's that?

AncientSwordRage

@SQB I doubt Marvin has, I k ow I haven't... But I got that 😬

SQB

@Marvin Smurfs?

AncientSwordRage

10:34

@SQB seems unlikely?

@SQB I knew something seemed off with that

SQB

@AncientSwordRage Smurfs, the Gritty Reboot?

AncientSwordRage

@SQB just search by the tag, it's still there I think

@SQB not sure how that compares to my new headcanon that Dr Manhattan is a smurf

SQB

@AncientSwordRage got it. Useless, VtD.

AncientSwordRage

@SQB yup

DavidW

10:51

@SQB Precisely!

Marvin

13:29

-3

Q: What does "say no" refer to?

Horace says to Dumbledore: Horace: All right, the Death Eaters have been trying to recruit me for over a year. Do you know what that's like? You can only say no so many times, so I never stay anywhere more than a week. Say no to what exactly?

harry-potter

Marvin

13:55

0

Q: 1950s short story where the universe is running out of space to store data

The universe is running out of room to store data. They have resorted to using "nudged electrons", IIRC. But the key to the storage of all human knowledge has been lost. Card catalog imagery/metaphor.

story-identification short-stories computers

Cereal Bot

15:30

Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal - Fortune

posted on November 04, 2021 by tech

Click here to go see the bonus panel!Hovertext: To be featured in my forthcoming book, SMBC Yells At Disembodied Concepts. Today's News:

TylerH

That Star Wars viewing order Q&A is kind of a mess. Granted, as currently written it's an opinion-based question. I'm wondering if it should be closed and a canonical like the MCU viewing order question should be used to replace it

AncientSwordRage

@TylerH I think it's useful

the answers where the orders are supported have more votes than the ones that are unsupported

TylerH

We can't exactly edit the existing one to be an objective canonical because almost all of the existing answers miss half or more of the movies

@AncientSwordRage Eh, I think they do a disservice to readers. It's been viewed 1.4 million times. Only registered users (with enough rep) can comment or vote, and the demographic that can do that is highly skewed in favor of that kind of viewing order

The vast majority of readers (especially as time goes on), however, will likely want to watch all the movies

AncientSwordRage

15:45

answers being incomplete do to being out of date is not a unique problem to this question

also those that do deliberately exclude a movie should support the reason why

TylerH

@AncientSwordRage well, it seems hard to justify that when the question is just asking for opinions. It's unfortunate the question was asked in the way it was

AncientSwordRage

how is it different to any other 'watching order' questions we have

TylerH

which is why personally I'm still leaning toward "this whole endeavor is POB and should be closed as such" at the moment (of course I don't have 3k reputation so the best I could do is flag to put it in the CV queue)

@AncientSwordRage Well the other main one I recall (the MCU one) asks for an "official" viewing order

E.g. something that the company/owner says is the 'correct' way

Now that I think about it there may also be one for the Clone Wars TV series since those were reportedly released out of order

My point is if there's no objective metric by which to answer the question, then it just because a popularity contest, which is not really what SE sites are designed for. I know it's kind of a sticky situation and there's not really a satisfactory solution that would please everyone involved. Crotchety old people will be upset with any outcome that includes movies other than 4, 5, and 6, and newer readers will be confused about the exclusion of ~60% of the films from most of the answers.

DavidW

16:17

@TylerH The first three (of, what, 11 now?) doesn't add up to 60%. Unless you're objecting to people also leaving out the Ewok movie...

AncientSwordRage

16:32

@TylerH The stackexchange model doesn't work if you adhere too strictly to objective criteria. There's nothing wrong with a 'good subjective', where the answer is subjective but supported by experience and testable arguments.

"The new films are BAD. Only watch 4, 5 and 6" is bad subjective, it's not backed up by any good arguement

"The new films don't capture the original feeling of films 4, 5, and 6. Only watch those if you want to recreate the original feel of them film" <-- good subjective (I don't like it, but they support the argument)

and maybe if the OP said "I need the order for all the films, don't exclude any" then even though it's 'good subjective', it's a bad answer as it's not fulfilling the askers criteria

the same way as if somebody over on SO said "How do I add 1+2 in javascript" and somebody answers "Use the jQuery.add" it's technically correct, but ti's not a good answer

in fact that's objectively correct if it works as well

tl;dr: don't confuse objective vs subjective with good vs bad.

DavidW

@AncientSwordRage Now I want someone to write an answer that implements addition in Javascript in terms of von Neumann ordinals. :)

2

AncientSwordRage

@DavidW I'm completely lost I'm afraid

DavidW

Basically using Set theory definitions of numbers to do arithmetic. Which is technically possible, but probably as much fun, and as useful, as implementing RandomSort.

Marvin

17:14

0

Q: Why did the United Earth Forces name their hover tank brigade after the Robotech Masters’ home system?

In the Western Robotech composite series, the Army of the Southern Cross was part of the United Earth Forces, the army focused on in the second Robotech saga, The Robotech Masters, which chronicled the Second Robotech War and utilized the Spartas Veritech Hovertank. The Army was originally named ...

robotech

TylerH

@AncientSwordRage I'm not; there are plenty of great Q&As with subjective answers that provide reasoning. Even a couple of the answers on this Q&A do that.

@DavidW There are answers that leave out 7, 8, and 9 as well, and/or Solo and Rogue One. Most also exclude the Holiday Specials (which are arguable anyway since they are TV specials, not cinematic releases). While it might be understandable in many cases that they miss those due to the answers pre-dating some of the movie releases, it's still a problem IMO, and one that will only get worse as more movies get released over time (e.g. Kenobi, who knows what else)

The top answer at least includes all of them except 9, thankfully

DavidW

@TylerH I think most of the answers that leave out the later movies simply predate them.

(And haven't been updated.)

So it's not like they're pretending VII-IX don't exist, they actually didn't exist when the answer was posted.

AncientSwordRage

@DavidW I find this much more likely

DavidW

17:29

@AncientSwordRage TFA was 2015; at least half a dozen of those answers pre-date that (2011-2013), and haven't been updated. (Some of them possibly even pre-date the pre-release publicity.)

TylerH

17:47

@DavidW Sure, I didn't suggest they were intentionally leaving out movies that hadn't been released yet at the time of the answer being posted. But many do leave out prequel movies, and as I already said, older answers missing 7, 8, and/or 9 are problematic because they will never be accurate/useful anymore unless the answer author returns and updates their answer, either to include those movies in their ordering or explain 'nope, I think newer ones should be ignored still'

The one possible exception might be one that foresaw any potential other movies and said 'don't bother watching any except this one movie' but such an answer is so petulant it ought not exist in the first place, frankly

DavidW

That doesn't make them bad answers, just stale.

(Which is a problem that is much worse at SE, now that previously-canonical answers about some toolsets are a decade or more out of date...)

If you can solve the stale answer problem...

TylerH

@DavidW A stale answer is a bad answer

Maybe you're applying some specific, strict definition to 'bad' here though

When I say bad I don't mean "NAA" in terms of "this should be flagged for review/moderator attention"

I mean "this isn't good for some reason, it doesn't answer the question completely or provide any justification, etc."

e.g. it's worth downvoting

DavidW

@TylerH I disagree. I actually did need to find an answer to a Struts 1.3 question a couple of years ago; the information was still there to be found.

TylerH

@DavidW Then it sounds like it wasn't stale

DavidW

Sure it was; for 99.5% of people who moved on from Struts 1.

(It wasn't phrased or labeled as "in Struts 1.x")

TylerH

17:52

OK, but we're not talking about them or about "what's the best way to do something in modern struts"

DavidW

Heh. "Modern struts."

TylerH

Yes, I know, like "modern VBA"

DavidW

:)

TylerH

anyway, the parallel between programming is thin at best because in programming you have constraints based on versions. Here readers aren't constrained to watching only some of the movies... they have the option of watching them all.

Now if the question were "on VHS" then sure, you probably aren't going to find Episodes 7 8 and 9 on a VHS ever :-)

DavidW

Sure, it's probably worth downvoting answers that are hopelessly out of date; when I think "bad answer" I'm thinking more "Vote to Delete" which isn't the right response.

TylerH

17:56

Eh, if they got to negative scores (unlikely, unfortunately) and I had 20k I'd certainly throw a delete vote at most of the answers on that question

maybe not all the ones I downvoted (which was 14 I think)

but most, sure

and that new CW answer just makes absolutely no sense existing

DavidW

The profusion of answers is what makes me sympathetic to your complaint that it's a "bad subjective" question.

But there is a legitimate question in there, and there are a couple of answers that do a decent job of it. They're just a bit lost in the noise.

TylerH

I mean, people are happy to answer any question when it's about a pet subject. This is SciFi.SE and it's a Star Wars viewing order question. You'd be hard-pressed to ask one and not get at least a dozen different opinions :-)

DavidW

@TylerH No argument from me.

Marvin

0

Q: Children's book about a kid traveling out of his body during sleep in New York city

Children's book about a kid traveling out of his body during sleep in New York city while visiting his grandfather. Then meets Babe Ruth, etc.

story-identification books childrens-novel dreams

b_jonas

20:03

They're making a TV series from Wheel of Time?

DavidW

20:16

@b_jonas Hey, welcome to 2020! :D

(Actually IIRC they announced the cast in 2019, so even that is late.)

I think they're already working on a second season.

Marvin

22:14

0

Q: Why didn't Frodo tell the others that Boromir would try to take the One Ring?

In the movie LOTR: The Fellowship of the Ring, I am wondering why Frodo didn't tell Aragorn, or one of the others in the fellowship, that Galadriel had told him that Boromir would try to take the One Ring. I would think that Frodo would want them to know this so that they could keep a constant wa...

tolkiens-legendarium the-lord-of-the-rings the-one-ring the-fellowship-of-the-ring

b_jonas

22:35

@DavidW I see.

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The Restaurant at the End of the Univ…