The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Rand al'Thor

21:02

@Stormblessed I still have a reject button on that one ... don't tempt me ;-)

Also, don't make pointless changes to OP's phrasing like "that" to "which".

@Stormblessed The tag edit was actively bad, the rest merely pointless.

Jenayah

Why are our books and short-stories plural when movie is singular?

2

Stormblessed

How can it be a book and a short story?

Rand al'Thor

@Jenayah "Consistency is the defence of a small mind" -- Beldin.

@Stormblessed A short story is a type of book.

Jenayah

@Randal'Thor Beldin would've liked SFF

Rand al'Thor

You might see "book" and think "novel", but not everyone does.

Stormblessed

21:06

@Randal'Thor but a short-story-book is a novella

Rand al'Thor

Also, if you see what you think is an inconsistency between X and Y, adding a tag for Z doesn't seem to be a good way to resolve it :-/

@Stormblessed No it's not.

Stormblessed

novella "For questions about novellas or short novels"

Rand al'Thor

Yes.

Stormblessed

Short novel == short story book

Rand al'Thor

No.

Stormblessed

21:08

ok

Jenayah

grabs popcorn

Rand al'Thor

A short story is shorter than a novella is shorter than a novel.

A "book" could be any of them, or an anthology or collection or graphic novel or ...

Stormblessed

But what's a novel?

Rand al'Thor

Maybe you should do a bit of research into the terms before attempting to correct them in someone else's post? :-)

Stormblessed

@Jenayah Should we change that?

So a novel is a big book?

And a book is just about anything except a short story?

Got it

Jenayah

21:12

@Stormblessed let's try to trigger @Randal'Thor's pedantry. Do we? :)

Rand al'Thor

@Stormblessed Pedantically a short story probably wouldn't be a book, but in common parlance it might be.

Stormblessed

0

Q: What language do they speak on Detritus?

I recently got the book Skyward by Brandon Sanderson. I've read the first few chapters, and have a question about the world: What language are the characters speaking? I would assume English, as it is such a widely spoken second language, but it takes place in the future. So far, I've seen no me...

skyward

Is this "little research effort" because I asked it right after starting the book and Valorum could answer it with no effort, without reading the book?

Jenayah

it didn't get DVed though

Stormblessed

@Jenayah I got no UVs

Jenayah

plus just because someone is good at using CTRL+F doesn't make a question invalid

Stormblessed

21:20

@Jenayah Does someone hate Alex for some reason?

Oh

That one user who got somewhat mad at him, you mean?

Jenayah

Hate, I dunno, have some animosity towards his/her views on POB, possibly - see latest Meta, and the JMHPRW

Stormblessed

@Jenayah JMPHKJKLJLK?

What's that

Jenayah

Oct 9 '18 at 19:47, by Jenayah

@Alex the July Meta Harry Potter Reopening War.

Oct 9 '18 at 19:47, by Jenayah

but JMHPRW sounds cooler.

Stormblessed

-9

Q: Temporarily accepting an answer to give it more exposure?

Is there anything wrong with accepting an answer solely to place it at the top of the list for a while, with the intention of then unaccepting it? Oftentimes there might be an answer to a question that comes a bit later than a couple of other answers. By the time this answer gets posted, the oth...

discussion accepted-answer up-votes

This "latest meta"?

Jenayah

@Stormblessed Oh, no, that's ehm... Something else... And quite not what it seemed at first, apparently. sleuth around. ;)

Stormblessed

21:23

@Jenayah ??

Jenayah

@Stormblessed nah, this one:

6

Q: Is the Primarily Opinion-Based close reason being overused?

Disclaimers This is a long post. You are forewarned. Everything in this post is only based on harry-potter. For the most part that is the only tag that I spend much time with, so I don't know if anything here carries over to other tags. Though this post is kind of in the form of criticism, I am...

discussion closing-questions primarily-opinion-based

Stormblessed

@Jenayah That one still is positive, but yeah it got DVd like crazy almost

Jenayah

@Stormblessed cough cough something we discussed recently cough cough somewhat sensitive matter cough cough can't really say much more than "sleuth" around :p

Stormblessed

@Jenayah Oh, the ban-related thing?

I'm lost

Jenayah

Yes. That thing ;)

Stormblessed

21:27

Ok

Still mildly lost

Our Meta tag guidance is bad

Jenayah

@Stormblessed no worries, it's not really important. That's not what I was referring to anyway, just that between @Alex's twisted questions and lenghty "this isn't POB/dupe" metas on HP questions some "vocal users" deem garbage, some people seem... perhaps a bit more keen on DVing their questions than usual :)

Stormblessed

Some tag edits pending on Meta for me

scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/449

scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/451

scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/450

(Reached the max pending)

Jenayah

@Stormblessed true, but tbh, I guess people going to meta already have an idea of what's going on, hence the lack of effort put inot the tags there

Truth be told, I think it's more important to fix the main site's tags. (Plus... I'm not sure whether you'll get rep on meta edits, just sayin' ;) )

Mithrandir

(You won't.)

Jenayah

But don't let that retain you from doing Meta wiki edits either of you want to do it

Mithrandir

21:33

It's certainly not a bad thing to do. It's just not top priority. You're welcome to do them, though - but it might take a bit for them to get reviewed.

Jenayah

Want to laugh a bit? Just take a look at what the maximum of reviewed edits is on SFF Meta... scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/review/suggested-edits/stats

@Mithrandir ditto, although like always, posting them is chat is not a problem

Mithrandir

Why am I not surprised that Jason Baker is at the top? :)

Jenayah

nine edits

NINE

Alex

Wow, a whole discussion about me.

Jenayah

Aren't you the special one.

Alex

21:41

@Jenayah For the record, my lengthy Meta post about duplicates has not been posted.

Jenayah

WHAT

There's MORE?!

Alex

Another 15,000 characters.

Jenayah

ouch

Alex

I need an opportunity to post it.

@Jenayah Didn't quite work as planned.

Jenayah

@Alex what were you expecting? (genuine question, no irony there)

Alex

21:47

@Jenayah I don't mind the downvotes.

Jenayah

you were expecting POB close votes?

Alex

Potentially.

Mithrandir

There have been endless debates about duplicates on SFF meta... I still think SFF in general is a little too quick to close as a dupe if it's mentioned at all in the target question.

Jenayah

well the thing is that it's easily answerable from canon

unlike some that you linked in the meta

Alex

@Jenayah I forgot about Google.

Jenayah

21:49

@Alex you... what?

Mithrandir

@Alex *cleans out ear* Come again?

Alex

@Jenayah I didn't think of the fact that someone could just Google it and find the answer right away.

Jenayah

what happened to copy-pasting your own title into Google before hitting "Ask question"?

Alex

@Jenayah No point, because I already knew the answer.

Jenayah

ah, true, you weren't looking for the answer

Marvin

21:52

0

Q: Was "Orphans of the Sky" intended to parallel the Bible?

Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky contains some things that, to me at least, appear to be direct religious commentary / allegory / parody. For instance, the name of "Jordan" being God, and the mention that saying "Jordan" or "Duff" was swearing. The belief of the "Trip" to mean the afterlife. They s...

robert-a-heinlein orphans-of-the-sky

0

Q: Can aluminum block a Rosharan Shardblade

We know from Oathbringer that aluminum can block Nightblood. Does the same hold true for Shardblades from Roshar?

cosmere stormlight-archive

Alex

I thought that some people might vote to close it without researching it first.

It might have happened had someone not posted the answer right away.

Jenayah

What I was about to say...

Alex

In any case, I think it still shows that a question being a wild hypothetical doesn't mean it can't be answered.

Jenayah

It's... not exactly that, since you did pick the one combination that did happen in the books

Alex

That's the point.

Jenayah

21:54

slug vomiting + levicorpus hasn't been done as far as I'm aware and could have been the same question

Alex

Exactly.

Jenayah

yeah but most of these "POB" questions were asking for stuff that didn't happen. This one turns out to have happened. Apples and oranges etc

Alex

As I wrote:

@Valorum 1) How do you know it hasn’t happened? 2) How do you know she didn’t go on a wine-sozzled twitter binge and happen to mention the answer? 3) How do you know that the answer can’t be inferred from existing information about the objects even if this particular manifestation never occurred? — Alex yesterday

Mithrandir

Also, uh, "we don't know" is a perfectly valid answer

Jenayah

@Oak - Sure, but that's the sort of opinion-based garbage we want to avoid. This isn't a forum for discussion, it's a Q&A for definitive evidence-based answers. — Valorum 22 hours ago

Alex

21:57

The point is that close-voters shouldn't be deciding whether something happened or not. That's what an answer should do.

Jenayah

gee man you don't want it, downvote it. VTCing is not what that's for

Alex

VingTC.

Mithrandir

@Jenayah TBH I'm tempted to flag that as not constructive for calling it "garbage"

Jenayah

@Mithrandir you're old... there's no "not constructive" checkbox anymore :P

Mithrandir

...the new one is mapped to not constructive

or whatever, the auto-mod-flag still had "rude/not constructive" last time I saw it :P

Alex

22:02

@Mithrandir This comment is rude or condescending.

That's the current "rude" flag.

Mithrandir

Yeah, I just think of them as "rude" and "not constructive", or "top-level rude" and "lower-level rude"

Alex

Well anything not constructive can technically be "No Longer Needed".

Mithrandir

Yeah, but not constructive does carry some extra penalties.

Jenayah

ah?

Mithrandir

Or, well, enough of the top two flags on a single user within a certain timeframe will raise an automatic mod flag to take a look at the user's comment history.

Jenayah

22:08

ah.

Alex

@Jenayah Have you changed your mind?

Dec 22 '18 at 23:43, by Jenayah

I do imagine Alex being male as well

Jenayah

Well until I get confirmation I'll try to stick with a general "they" or she/he

Not that I want confirmation, just that I'm trying to be generalist here :)

Alex

@Jenayah Just use whatever's easiest (at least for me; can't speak for anyone else).

Jenayah

oh sure but even if it's OK with you I still think it's better to use a general "they", for people who might not know, people who aren't binary etc

Alex

Sure. I'm just saying that I won't be offended by whatever pronouns you use to refer to me, so you don't need to go out of your way for me.

Jenayah

22:15

noted :)

and same

Alex

@Jenayah Well you have been forthcoming with your gender, so it's not relevant. Unless you were lying.

Mithrandir

in Codenames, Jul 14 '18 at 21:17, by Mithrandir

Just don't use "it" and we'll be fine.

Alex

Well considering that she thinks I'm a robot, a bathtub, or the offspring of an elephant, "it" might not be too far off.

Jenayah

@Alex I can't really prove that I'm not lying (or rather, I can technically prove it, but I think that'd be... kinda inappropriate), and I'm used to being referred as "she", but if anyone forgets/doesn't know/wants to use "he" insteadd I won't mind. "It" I'd have a problem with, unless the person using it isn't fluent in English and doesn't realise "it" usually refers to objects/animals

@Alex I don't think the bathtub was my saying, was it? :D

Ah, nevermind. I was indeed the one.

It's "jelly" that I wasn't the originator of :D

Alex

@Jenayah Mithrandir coined it:

Jan 9 at 19:45, by Mithrandir

@Alex You're A Belligerently Tenacious Bathtub

Mithrandir

22:23

*innocent look*

Out of 53 instances of this phrase ^ on the server, I've said 14 of them.

Jenayah

ahah

Marvin

22:39

0

Q: Did the Earth government ever recover or build museums around human spacefaring efforts?

Did the Human governments, or the Federation, ever recover the other Voyager probes, or the various landers sent to Mars in Moon and if they did what did they do to them?

star-trek

Jenayah

There a TV show about the Belfry Witches?! oO

Alex

Anyone else having an issue with not receiving reputation notifications?

Jenayah

@Alex I'm not sure, but it's been some hours since I got an upvote. Try upvoting this one, purely for testing purposes?

(kidding, I'm fishing here :P )

Alex

@Jenayah I can't.

Jenayah

oh, already UVed?

:D

Alex

22:46

Indeed.

Jenayah

Subtle rep-fishing aside, no, I didn't notice anything today

what did you see?

Mithrandir

Haven't noticed any oddness.

Jenayah

"What did you see?" -> of relevance:

TV Theme - Flashforward : Ending Song

►

Alex

@Jenayah The last few days some of my reputation changes have not initiated notifications.

Stormblessed

Reggie is stepping down

Jenayah

22:49

@Stormblessed who?

Mithrandir

@Stormblessed ?

Jenayah

Nintendo guy, says Google?

Stormblessed

@Jenayah yep

@Jenayah me neither

Napoleon Wilson

Straight up now tell me, should I watch The Expanse?

Stormblessed

@NapoleonWilson the jars thing?

*mars

Napoleon Wilson

22:52

I...guess?

Stormblessed

Wrong show

Jenayah

@Jenayah first TV show I ever watched. Was hooked has heck. I got until the end of S1, discovered it had been cancelled. And thus began my long story of watching TV shows that had already been cancelled, or would be cancelled anyways.

Stormblessed

I was thinking of The First, which seemed interesting

Jenayah

oh that reminds me, there's a TV show I wanted to watch , and I've forgotten the title. Probably a matter of seconds/minutes with caht and/or Google though...

Came out 2018, people coming back in time because there'd been an apocalypse or stuff. Stlll looked blue

found it, The Crossing. Has anyone seen it? Is it good?

LOL I Googled the title and Season 2 had been cancelled...

Now my curse expands to TV shows I wanted to watch ahahahah

Quick, someone tell me the name of a show you want cancelled. Maybe if I think about watching it, it will.

Mithrandir

GoT *runs*

Jenayah

22:58

@Mithrandir I think that's the one thing that won't work; see, I started watching it, but dropped it because I was getting incredibly bored by the time I reached season2

and it continued...

@Donald.McLean already forbade me to watch Stranger Things.

Napoleon Wilson

Out of a foreboding impulse?

Jenayah

Oct 4 '18 at 14:24, by Donald.McLean

Also, please do not watch Stranger Things for at least a couple more years.

discussion starting around here... chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/47029195#47029195

Donald.McLean

23:13

@Jenayah You can watch it when the creators decide that it is complete. Perhaps after this summer. We'll have to see.

Jenayah

Okay, I'll trust you to give me the heads up ;D

Mithrandir

*thinking face* When the answers are scored -2 and -5, does the -2 one count as a consensus? :P

Napoleon Wilson

No.

Jenayah

Animals? ;p

Mithrandir

Naturally. It is slightly ridiculous, though.

@Jenayah Yep.

Question scored -3, "nuke it" -2, "keep it" -5.

Jenayah

23:19

2 hours ago, by Rand al'Thor

@Jenayah "Consistency is the defence of a small mind" -- Beldin.

Completely unrelated. Anyone plays Ares Virus here?

Napoleon Wilson

I refuse to answer until you tell me if I ought to watch The Expanse or not.

Jenayah

Haven't seen it.

So? :P

Stormblessed

@Jenayah never heard of it

Jenayah

My Android mobile game of the week...

except one of the bosses isn't hard to beat in practice but it takes tremendous amounts of resources so I'm looking for a way not to farm said resources

Boss' got armor so the only thing that works is poison, but there are only 7 mobs dropping poison bags and they respawn every two days ingame, farming them is a bother

Marvin

0

Q: What My Hero Academia fanficiton is this from?

I remember that, Izuku Midoriya destroys the Pointer Robots in the Practical Entrance Exam, by making them fire on each other, and the Zero Pointer to do the Hero rescue from canon.

story-identification fan-fiction my-hero-academia

Jenayah

23:26

plus farming them tires my bow and mallet so I have to farm wood afterwards to keep farming poison -____-

graphics and story aren't bad so far though

plus that gives me somthing to do on the bus

Napoleon Wilson

Stayin' busy at da bus, eh?

Jenayah

Ares Virus (zombie survival RPG) Trailer

►

yeah

I rotate between free Google Play games :P

Mithrandir

I have about forty short stories downloaded to my phone instead.

Jenayah

that I often uninstall in the same week...

@Mithrandir I prefer to read slouched on a bed :P

Napoleon Wilson

I listen to audiobooks, primarily because driving makes Androiding difficult, and public transport is for...other people.

Jenayah

23:34

For some reason, I never got into audiobooks. I can't imagine listening to a story and doing something else... And if I don't have to do anything while listening, "slouched on my bed" still sounds like a better plan :P

Napoleon Wilson

I wasn't sure it's viable either, but it very much is.

(Driving isn't that taxing to concentration anyway.)

Jenayah

"A story" here meaning stuff with narrated parts. I sometimes find myself switching tabs when watching a series and getting to the boring clichéd dialogue

@NapoleonWilson wouldn't know

Mithrandir

@NapoleonWilson Don't say that near steeler! ;)

Napoleon Wilson

@Mithrandir Why? She's even worse.

Mithrandir

Fair point.

Jenayah

23:38

the squirrell's a girl?

Napoleon Wilson

Very much so, yes.

Mithrandir

(was going for the "she'll worry that you're not concentrating when driving", but... yeah)

Jenayah

alright that will prevent me from making blunders :D

Eels - Flyswatter

►

user14111 makes a good point in the comments, voted to reopen: scifi.stackexchange.com/review/reopen/142262

@TheLethalCarrot Giving someone a million dollars at birth is the real world. Giving everyone a million dollars at birth — assuming a million dollars means what it does now (probably more if the story was written some time ago) — is SF: an imaginary society, probably in the future or another world, probably some kind of utopia/dystopia. Besides, I"ve read a story like that, and by my recollection it was definitely science fiction: set in the future, with future technology, published in a science fiction anthology. — user14111 14 mins ago

Napoleon Wilson

23:53

Doesn't make the question less abysmal, but granted.

Jenayah

Meh if that guy says he remembers it and it's scifi that's good enough for me ahah

Napoleon Wilson

Like I said...

Marvin

2

Q: Old young adult sci fi book about wars fought with robots remotely, allusions to chess

This is a long shot, but it is irritating me somewhat. This is a science fiction book I read about the year 2000. The main premise that I vaguely remember was that humans were now fighting wars with robots by proxy BUT there were still normal humans in the war zones trying to survive. I don't ...

story-identification books young-adult

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The Restaurant at the End of the Univ…