The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Marvin

21:05

0

Q: Sci-Fi book , possibly late seventies. Humanity in alien caverns

As stated in the title, I'm looking for a book I read mid eighties in the UK.. however I have a feeling it was a few years old when I checked it out of local library, I can't recall the cover or much else in the checklist in this site. The key points I recall are the large number people on a co...

story-identification

b_jonas

21:17

@b_jonas Good, it got unprotected

Marvin

0

Q: How does the *in-universe* Marvel Comics handle sensitive information like secret identities?

I know that Marvel Comics, the company, exists within the Marvel universe, and that they publish authorized biographical comics about the "real" superheroes that live in that universe. But the comics we read in our universe contain a lot of information that's not public knowledge. How do those in...

marvel comics secret-identity

Jenayah

@Alex still haven't been. But note to self, check my neighbor's phone when I'm on a plane

@Alex oh I thought you meant one on SFF

Alex

@Jenayah I have yet to catch anyone using Stack Exchange. So sad.

Jenayah

@Stormblessed edits are rewarding too ;)

Alex

@Jenayah I perhaps should have been clearer.

Jenayah

21:31

@Alex didn't you once tell me you recognize someone from Mi Yodeya?

Alex

@Jenayah There are a couple of people that I've figured out, but not from seeing them in real life using Stack Exchange.

Jenayah

Well how 'bout that: meet me in two years and twenty-one days in front of the 10, Downing Street, London. Deal?

Alex

We already have a meeting scheduled.

Though perhaps not in person.

Buzz

I see people using Stack Exchange in real life all the time, but never SF&F.

Alex

This is going to be a hard one to find.

Not that hard after all:

Sep 12 at 22:02, by Jenayah

@Alex it's an appointment then. Let's say March 17, 2023?

And once I brought that up, I may as well report back now that I have used those functions maybe 5 times in the 3+ months since you enlightened me.

Mithrandir

21:41

I think Alex and I have a higher chance of just meeting accidentally and not recognizing each other :P

Jenayah

Which functions?

Mithrandir

Depending on how often Alex flies out here, that is.

Alex

@Mithrandir You think I would come within 200 miles of you and not be putting forth every effort to discover you?

Buzz

Is this question: scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/202468/… too gruesome?

Mithrandir

@Alex Hang on, checking the length of the country

Alex

21:43

@Jenayah The ones you mentioned right before the linked message.

Involving scrolling tabs and stuff.

@Mithrandir I think I know which part of the country you live in, though.

Mithrandir

@Buzz Nah.

Buzz

It is gross though.

Mithrandir

@Alex So you can narrow it down to about 500 square miles.

Alex

Why 500?

Mithrandir

Pretty sure I've only given enough information for it to be narrowed down to that amount

Unless I'm forgetting something I said.

Alex

21:47

You might be.

Or I might be misremembering.

In any case, beware.

Mithrandir

Eh, I'm probably the only person in those 500 square miles who wears a SE mod cap.

Alex

In public?

Mithrandir

17/7/52

Alex

What's that?

A date?

Your address?

Cap size?

Mithrandir

17 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year

Alex

21:52

Well then your identity can hardly be a secret.

It's not like Stack Exchange is crawling with teenage moderators.

Mithrandir

Mmmmm

I can think of at least four

Alex

Really?

Well we can narrow it down anyway.

You're probably the only one in your country.

Stormblessed

@Mithrandir what country?

Alex

Plus I've seen you before (albeit disguised).

Jenayah

@Alex maybe, but probably there is a couple thousands teenagers in said country

At least

Mithrandir

21:56

@Alex Me, Riker, heather, and, uh, is Doorknob still a teenager?

Alex

@Jenayah But only one with the cap.

Jenayah

:48308040 ?

Mithrandir

Undo is 18, I think

Alex

@Jenayah I responded to you in Hebrew again by accident.

Jenayah

Ok

Buzz

21:58

My Google translate always auto-detects Hebrew as Yiddish, even when the Yiddish makes no sense. I have a hard time believing that they have a larger Yiddish corpus than English.

Alex

That reminds me, I never posted the Yiddish joke I mentioned a while back.

Mithrandir

@Stormblessed I think internationally I'm officially in Syria

Jenayah

@Mithrandir what do you mean, internationally?

Mithrandir

handwaves politics

UN 497 and all that

b_jonas

Happy New Year to guys in the +0100 timezone (Finland, Romania, Israel)!

@Buzz Maybe they don't have translations from Hebrew?

Mithrandir

22:03

Woo

Oh, now I can do those things I pushed off till next year, like washing the dishes

Loong

@b_jonas :-)

Hyvää uutta vuotta!

Buzz

@b_jonas No, if I switch it to Hebrew manually, it knows exactly what things mean.

b_jonas

@Buzz Yeah, that's what I should have asked.

Drat typo. That's the +0100 timezone offset (but still Finland, Romania, Israel).

Marvin

0

Q: Who exactly killed Luke Skywalker's Aunt and Uncle?

I know for a fact that there are a few similar questions like mine but none of them are exactly asking what I am. Now in the first Starwars movie Luke and Obi-Wan come back to Luke's Aunt and Uncle being a couple of fried potato chips. We know for a fact that there dead my question is, Do we real...

star-wars

Buzz

Haven't they seen Troops?

I speak passable Yiddish and can read liturgical Hebrew, but I just cannot parse Yiddish written with Hebrew letters. My brain just refuses to accept it.

Alex

22:11

@Buzz What characters would you read Yiddish in?

Buzz

@Alex Latin/English characters. My great grandfather was president of the Yiddishe Arbiterring in Chicago for many years in the mid-twentieth century, and what documentation they preserved in Yiddish was all transliterated to the Latin alphabet.

Alex

Interesting. I rarely see Yiddish in the Latin alphabet.

Mithrandir

I rarely see Yiddish...

Alex

@Mithrandir Here's some just for you: פון א קשיא שטארב מיר נישט

I hope I got that phrase right.

Mithrandir

My Aramaic is better than my Yiddish, I'm afraid

...somehow I doubt that's such a common thing to say...

Alex

22:17

I don't think there's an Aramaic equivalent.

It's more or less: "From a question/difficulty you don't die."

MacroGuy

hi

Jenayah

Hiya!

Stormblessed

@Mithrandir So you’re in Golan?

Buzz

22:32

In the old days, Yiddish was the common language of a large population of Jews, but the learned also learned to speak Hebrew. Nowadays, fluent Hebrew is commonplace in the Jewish world, but only the learned know authentic Yiddish.

Alex

The learned, and the old-timers.

Buzz

I don't mean to suggest that I am particularly learned. I just picked it up a sort of simplified Yiddish from older relatives, which was made easier by the fact that I learned standard German in high school.

@Alex There is only one person left in my family who grew up in a partially Yiddish speaking household. His parents were native Yiddish speakers, but he's 94.

When my great grandfather died in the 1970s, they couldn't even find a Yiddish-speaking rabbi for his funeral.

Alex

In Chicago?

Buzz

@Alex Yeah. I'm sure there were still Yiddish-speaking rabbis then, but none who had known my great grandfather were still alive/working/available.

Alex

@Buzz Interesting.

Jenayah

22:59

Bonne année ! :)

Buzz

Is that Ladino? :)

Alex

French.

Jenayah

Yep

Marvin

0

Q: Did Malfoy's parents go to azkaban?

What we know from the movies and the books is that Malfoy's parents had assisted Lord Voldemort, we also know that Malfoy's father was a death eater but we do not know whether his mother was though. My question is, after the final book and the war was over did Malfoy's parents go to azkaban for a...

harry-potter

b_jonas

Happy New Year to us (+0100 timezone offset, France, Germany, Poland, Norway, Hungary)!

Alex

23:14

Finally got my Silencium.

Just in time.

Jenayah

Like a certain ship, those things arrive only in the nick of time

Alex

What ship?

Jenayah

23:29

Alex

@Jenayah Does this answer more than one question?

Buzz

I find The Order of the Stick funnier when it's only read intermittently, so I have no idea where the running plot is at. It all just seems totally random.

Marvin

1

Q: Trying to find a Harry potter fanfic

I'm looking for a harry potter fan-fiction that I read a while ago. I can't remember the name and when I try and search up the concepts I still can't find it. Here are some of the things I remember about it: Harry ends up back as an infant at some point after the books but he still has the mind...

story-identification harry-potter fan-fiction

Stormblessed

@Marvin No more fan fiction id

Jenayah

@Alex it answers the ship Question

@Buzz I just read all 1100+ of them in two-three weeks and now I have to wait for one-issue updates and there's a void inside of me

Buzz

23:39

I find the meta post title "How to write a good fan fiction story ID question" pretty oxymoronic.

Mithrandir

A: By not writing one?

That's not entirely fair, though; there are plenty of original works that are worse than some fanfics.

Alex

@Jenayah So it's not your favorite webcomic?

Buzz

That sounds Zen: "The best fan fiction story ID question is the one that is never asked."

Jenayah

@Alex no, OOTS is my second favorite one

Alex

@Jenayah Oh, am I really that dumb?

Jenayah

23:43

No you just didn't remember, it's fine

Alex

Or I never looked at the name.

Jenayah

Maybe

Marvin

0

Q: Does Transformers history still apply in the BumbleBee movie

The newest Transformer movie, BumbleBee recently came out and everybody who's seen it has noticed that the transformers look different than they did in Michael Bay's version of transformers. My question is, does Michael Bay's transformers history still apply in the newest BumbleBee movie?

transformers bumblebee

0

Q: Why couldn't Scotty beam Spock out of the radiation chamber in Wrath of Khan?

Spock sacrificed himself to save the Enterprise at the end of Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan by entering a radiation chamber to re-align the dilithium crystals. Doctor McCoy warned Spock not to enter the chamber. Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott warned him not to...

star-trek spock the-wrath-of-khan

RDFozz

@Marvin From what I've read, it's never been clear if Michael Bay's Transformers history applied in the Michael Bay Transformer movies, from one to the next....

b_jonas

8

Q: How to ask a good (fanfic) Story-ID question?

We seem to have a pretty regular number of story-ID questions specifically focused on finding half-remembered fan-fiction stories. Our top tag is story-identification with over 10,000 questions and we already have an excellent guide to help people answer them in "How to ask a good story-ID ques...

discussion story-identification

Alex

23:57

I asked one fanfiction identification question. And it was able to be answered pretty quickly. So I guess I did a good enough job formulating the question.

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The Restaurant at the End of the Univ…