The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

3:13 AM

Why is stuff like this that’s COMPLETELY off-topic put on hold rather than closed? What’s the difference, anyways?

Alex

@Stormblessed On-Hold just means that it's within the first five days of being closed. After five days it will switch to Closed.

> Questions that are edited within five days of being put on hold are automatically added to a reopening queue for community review. Questions that are not reopened within five days will change from [on hold] to [closed].

scifi.stackexchange.com/help/closed-questions

3:45 AM

@Alex can closed be reopened?

Alex

@Stormblessed Yes, but edits won't automatically send it to the reopen queue.

Q: Do hobos exist in the hunger games Or does everyone have a house or shelter to live in?

5:09 AM

0

Are there any homeless people in the hunger games?

the-hunger-games

Q: How did Odysseus get injured on his leg

8:58 AM

0

When I read 'Song of Achilles', the book repeated mentions a wound on Odysseus's leg long before the Trojan war but never really explains how he got it, what is the story behind it?

mythology greek-myth

9:20 AM

Didn't we discuss a couple days ago that Mythology was off topic? scifi.stackexchange.com/q/207839/98028

Valorum left a comment saying he wasn't sure if it was on topic or not, must have deleted it

Might be migrated to Mythology.SE or Lit

It's borderline...

Goodreads does say The Song of Achilles is "Fantasy" for whatever that's worth

OK, so mythology isn't/

But a derivative work based on mythology can be, like the Percy Jackson novels or the Goddess Test series.

If this is a retelling of the story of Iliad presented as fiction, it may be acceptable.

However, do we know if it's even fantasy?

A lot of authors tend to do these retellings in a realistic style....

It could be there's no supernatural elements.

Goodreads states Fantasy as mentioned above and that's usually a close enough benchmark

9:31 AM

Ah, never mind, the book has the gods and stuff.

Well, the way I see it, it's a derivative work written as fiction. This isn't The Passion of the Christ, a dramatized depiction of an event the writer sees as historical.

That's my interpretation from a quick Google but I haven't read it

Whee, SFF t-shirt

(It's a bit large, but whatever.)

Mines already in the wash

That's what you get for having white haired dogs

heh

Q: Why did the nest-builders wanted to prevent the shadows from entering our universe?

9:56 AM

1

In Alastair Reynolds Absolution Gap mankind is ultimately saved by the Nest-builder race. The Nest-builders cooperated once asked, yet were unwilling to offer support before. Dan Silvest send they protagonists via Aura to find the Haldora object and to contact the shadows. It is never directly s...

alastair-reynolds revelation-space

Q: How did Monica know how to operate Carol's "designer"?

10:15 AM

1

In Captain Marvel, we see Monica doing "fashion designing" for her aunt Carol. What's strange is that how does a kid with nil exposure to Kree tech know how to operate the "designer device". It could be said that she was doing random guesswork. But, at a point, Carol says "Let's copy your T-shir...

marvel marvel-cinematic-universe captain-marvel-2019

Babel fish

-3

Q: Hank Pym and Dr Strange

Does Hank Pym know about the abilities of Ancient One or Dr. Strange of Kamar Taj? These two can easily travel through the Quantum realm and trace the original Wasp. Also they have better knowledge about it. If he knew about them, what can the be the reason for not contacting/mentioning them? ...

plot-explanation marvel-cinematic-universe doctor-strange ant-man-and-the-wasp

11:04 AM

I was just thinking about how much I liked the concept of a "prime invincibility" from the Reckoners series.

It's something that I wish more superhero or fantasy stories considered.

The basic concept is that the most meaningful ranking of powers isn't so much how much damage one can do with them, but whether a power lets someone survive mundane damage.

In MCU terms, consider Kilgrave versus Lorelei.

Q: Whom does the „Tochter des Drachen“ kill?

0

This is about Richard Schwartz‘s Askir cycle in German. Appropriate tags are missing. Spoilers ahead. I listened all the 10+ audiobooks (So I might not use the correct spellings) many times in German, but still am totally confused about the „Tochter des Drachen“-Prophesy(TDP). The main Prophesy...

novel

Kilgrave has a wider range on his powers. He can affect men and women both. Lorelei can't affect so many people and, in extreme cases, may need to touch them.

But Lorelei is a fairly powerful Asgardian, and Kilgrave is human.

And that makes a huge difference! Because Lorelei should be almost immune to regular weapons, whereas a sniper bullet would bring down Kilgrave without trouble.

Thus, to an appropriately forewarned enemy, Lorelei would arguably present the greater threat.

Also, there's an antidote to Kilgrave

That too. But that's not the main point I'm getting at.

The point is that being able to withstand damage is really so important.

It's a part of why Hulk is more dangerous than Iron Man, too, despite the latter having flight and much more firepower against soft targets.

So if you are super tough, or incorporeal, or heal from any injury, or so cute no one can attack you, you automatically have a big advantage over the regular human who can shoot asteroids out of their eyeballs or whatever.

11:25 AM

As an individual. But if your only power is that you're indestructible, the best you can hope for is that you outlive your aggressor, if you can't realistically contribute to the fight.

I suppose someone with offensive powers could strap handles to you and use you as a shield

Would Luke Cage have been intimidating if he couldn't pick people up and throw them around? How would he have cleaned up Harlem?

@MattE.Эллен Who ever said that? The point isn't that someone has to have only defensive powers, just that that's the most important thing.

important for what?

@MattE.Эллен Being threat to anyone. If a single bullet or Stab wound can kill you it doesn't matter much what else you can do.

Whereas an unkillable person with mundane weapons is actually extremely threatening.

eh, Dare Devil seemed to do OK

@MattE.Эллен Because of super unrealism.

11:33 AM

fair enough

I kind of was laughing every time someone pulled out an axe instead of a gun or whatever.

And I am not at all a Punisher fan, but when the Punisher just shot him....

That was funny.

:D

With Luke Cage, his strength helps. But the truth is that an athletic person who can't be harmed can beat up twenty people with firearms no problem.

And if he were willing to consider lethal measures, he'd have even more possibilities.

but as soon as he's pinned down, then strung up, he's just an indestructible punching bag

@MattE.Эллен It's not nearly as easy to pin someone down if you can't hurt them as if you can.

And if he would use lethal (or even no so lethal) weapons, he'd have an incredible advantage.

11:38 AM

@Adamant no, but assuming he's still affected by other things, knocking him out with gas is trivial

@MattE.Эллен which just goes to underscore the importance of invulnerability, doesn't it.

@Adamant so if Luke Cage and The Punisher merged...

Then they'd be a lot more interesting to watch than the Punisher himself. :)

@Adamant I agree it's important, just not more important.

@MattE.Эллен It's really important. An invincible person with regular weapons is very difficult to stop. A person of ordinary fragility with incredible firepower is not nearly so hard.

11:45 AM

@Adamant if you can't get near someone to hurt them then the cause is irrelevant. Whether that's firepower or indestructibility

@MattE.Эллен Firepower doesn't prevent you from hurting someone! Not if you have ranged weapons or surprise.

that's why mirage vs guardian in Guild Wars 2, the mirage is favoured

because their firepower overwhelms the defense

Well, I assume that's a video game. In video games, it's unsporting to make someone invincible to regular weapons. So there's usually a lot more balance.

But if we're talking video games, in a game like World of Tanks, something like the Amx 50 B can kill multiple targets at range quickly. But several lower tier tanks will quickly overwhelm it. By contrast, something like the Maus could kill literally hundreds of low tier tanks with its piddly gun before dying.

It all comes down to numbers asymmetry. When there's one of you, and many of your opponents, and you have a time limit to how fast you can take out your opponents, decreasing how much damage your opponents do to you per hit has a higher effect on survival and likelihood of winning than increasing how much damage you do per hit.

but does outliving really count as winning? like could you really say deadpool beats thanos?

I assume thanos isn't immortal

but I don't really know

@MattE.Эллен Well Deadpool and Thanos are both almost unkillable. But you could say that Deadpool would pose a bigger threat to any average human group or possibly individual than Iron Fist, even though Iron Fist hits harder.

Because Iron Fist loses to the first half decent shooter....

12:07 PM

you've almost convinced me, but I need to concentrate on work :D

12:24 PM

@Mithrandir Cool!

@Alex Oh! I didn't know that's how the labels worked.

@Stormblessed There's no difference. When a question is closed, it's called "on hold" for the first week or so, and then it's called "closed". Tomato, tomato.

@Mithrandir What'd you do?

@Randal'Thor there's the "edit sends to reopen queue automatically" difference.

@Stormblessed Is the other tag for the TV series?

@Randal'Thor From the stuff-a-way

12:39 PM

Yeah. scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/…

@Stormblessed There is one question each, and one of them is mine. I'd name them [penguins-of-madagascar-tv-series] and [penguins-of-madagascar-movie] because people might not remember the year numbers, but I don't really care either way.

-year is one of the main standards for things like this

1:46 PM

@Stormblessed Wait, why does the pinned floof from 21 hours ago say "20/3/2019"?

Time travel!

I thought that was @Gallifreyan's department.

But then, so are floofs.

Alright, that calls for an extra daily floof.

Extra daily floof, 2019/03/25: time travelling robot floof

2:17 PM

I guess maybe I don't really understand what "floof" means.

Nice doggie?

Floof = fluff = cute fluffy animal, as far as I understand.

Q: Is there any significance to the Valryian Stone vault door of Qarth?

0

This may seem inconsequential to the immediate plot and story of Game of Thrones, but I was wondering if there is ANY significance to the vault in Qarth having a Valryian Stone door? Is there any history explaining how the door came to be be?

game-of-thrones

2:34 PM

Which extends to cute, non fluffy animal. We've had snake floofs

Actually, we've even have non-cute floofs.

And we even had non-animal floofs.

Stupid T9

lol "non-alcoholic"

40 mins ago, by Jenayah

Alright, that calls for an extra daily floof.

Well, most of our floofs aren't alcoholic

Extra extra daily floof, 25/3/2019: @AncientSwordRage on the booze.

2

It looks like a tiny paw is growing out of its belly

2:38 PM

@Jenayah Maybe it's a marsupial.

Ooooh

^ Is a dog fluffy?

^ Not always.

@AncientSwordRage Good for you :-) Same here.

AncientSwordRage

2:43 PM

@Randal'Thor cheers

clinks non-alcoholic glasses

*raises orange juice*

raises hot chocolate

^ Or this horse, and Leopold on her, they both have a lot of fluff on their head.

commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/… for full photo

Rather like the genre boundaries defining our site scope, there's no hard-and-fast definition of exactly what constitutes a "floof" and what doesn't.

2:59 PM

@Mithrandir You caught me

Stimeblessed?

Stimetravellerblessed

Q: Short story about a man who goes to get his memory erased after falling in love with a girl but getting separated from her

3:18 PM

3

I read this short story years ago about a couple who meet, then are separated. The guy searches for the girl, but never finds her. In the end, to escape the torture of her memory, he goes to a place that erases selected memories, only to see the girl walking out, having just had the procedure her...

story-identification short-stories

2

Q: Book where wolf like aliens attack a human spaceship and leave them stranded on their home world where gravity is twice as strong as Earth's

There was a book that I read 2 years ago but I can’t remember what it was called! It starts with a space vessel leaving a sector of space, I think it was a carrier full of scientists? But while they are out the captain knows of a ship that was lost in the sector they are jumping to. As they reac...

story-identification books

2

Q: Identify a stage play about a VR experience in which participants simulate performing horrific activities

Somewhere between 2015 and 2017, I read an article reviewing a stage play about a futuristic society where they had a realistic VR experience (the impression I got was that it was akin to a Star Trek holodeck). In it, participants were presented with a little girl and were encouraged to rape and ...

story-identification

Slartibartfast

3:31 PM

3

Q: Favorite questions and answers from first quarter of 2019

Please link to your favorite questions and answers which were either asked or answered from January 1st 2019 through March 31st 2019. Your answers will be compiled into a blog post like previous quarterly posts. I will be using DavRob60's queries for a baseline, but I really appreciate people ...

discussion featured blog

@Randal'Thor you gotta trust your gut to know what is or isn't a floof. Of course, if your gut is a floof itself, then it'll be very biased. I suggest taking your gut out to check whether it's a floof gut. But as you don't have a gut to check anymore... Maybe use your brain to appreciate; though if it's a floof brain...

Mmmmh... I think this kind of vicious circle is part of why I shouldn't be allowed in med school.

@Slartibartfast you're freaking LATE

~48 mins

tut tut

3:45 PM

Got a meeting; somebody want to check whether Fuzzy's answer needs trigger content hiding too?

Thanks in advance

The answer looks okay. Nothing in it as specific as the question, likely because most of it is quoted from a review.

Alex

Oct 16 '18 at 22:55, by Alex

We could use some surgeons with a bit of spunk, I think.

4:03 PM

@Alex Or sturgeons.

@Mithrandir Nicola?

@Marvin And it's gone HNQ. Glad I edited pre-emptively.

@Randal'Thor ?

I'm talking about fish, not politicians :P

@Mithrandir In Scotland, it's nearly the same thing.

4:07 PM

Lol

4:57 PM

@DavidW k, thanks for looking!

xkcd

"Some worry that we'll soon have a surplus of search and rescue robots, compared to the number of actual people in situations requiring search and rescue. That's where our other robot project comes in..."

@Jenayah No problem.

Q: Were any of the teachers Harry had for DADA repeat teachers?

5:10 PM

-1

In the Harry Potter universe, the DADA job is portrayed as cursed and each person can only have the job for one year. However, Lupin seems like a really good teacher and I would have expected him to have taught at Hogwarts before. Did he or any of the other teachers Harry had taught before? It do...

harry-potter hogwarts defence-against-the-dark-arts

5:39 PM

Someone please edit this: scifi.stackexchange.com/q/207867/31394

I think there may actually be an on-topic question hiding in there, but it looks so bad right now.

Q: Are these the correct ages of the characters of Devil May Cry?

6:03 PM

0

I've been investigating different interviews and info that the games and other media like anime and manga provide and I got this timeline regarding characters' ages. Does this seem correct? EVA’s MURDER (1982) Dante’s Age: 8 Lady’s Age: 6 Trish’s Age: 0 Lucia’s Age: 0 Nero’s Age: 0 Patty’s Ag...

timeline devil-may-cry

Gallifreyan

6:41 PM

I totally did not just learn the new series of American Gods was aired

I defrosted the corresponding room: chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/57003/…

Q: What did Frodo and Bilbo do in Valinor?

6:59 PM

0

Is there any indication of what Frodo and Bilbo actually did when they were dwelling in Valinor?

tolkiens-legendarium the-lord-of-the-rings hobbits

1

Q: Webcomic About Alien Teenagers Training On Military Space Station

The webcomic involved aliens (who looked kind of like Lombaxes but with clawed feet and no tails) training to be soldiers on a space station which also served as a boarding school. There were other aliens (including ones that looked like giant eyeless velociraptors), but no humans. The "Lombaxes"...

story-identification aliens webcomics

Q: Why are all the doors on Ferenginar (the Ferengi home world) far shorter than the average Ferengi?

7:53 PM

5

I was watching DS9: Family Business when I noticed all the doors on Ferenginar are much shorter than the average Ferengi, causing them to crouch down every time they enter a room. That's gotta be terrible for their backs! I understand that Ferengi are shorter than the average humanoid, but why ...

star-trek star-trek-ds9 ferengi

Q: Does a half-blood or Muggle-born have less skill with magic than a Pureblood?

8:48 PM

0

Draco Malfoy and the rest of his family are purebloods and take immense pride in that. Why are purebloods different from half-bloods or Muggle-borns? Do they have more natural magical talent? Looking just at heredity, it would seem so, but that may not be true for wizards as they are different in...

harry-potter genetics pure-blood

9:16 PM

The rep. was taken away when the user was deleted

I’m curious, was that user deleted by a script @Randal'Thor?

Mithoron

@Stormblessed By script? Only users themselves or mods can delete accounts AFAIK

Q: Are there groups of good Skrulls?

9:42 PM

2

This is a question about the comics - as it relates to the Captain Marvel 2019 movie. My understanding of the Marvel comic history (which is admittedly limited) is that Skrulls are evil conquerors. This is played heavily on throughout the movie as well. So I'm curious if the Skrulls' society ...

marvel marvel-cinematic-universe comics captain-marvel-2019

I'll admit to a fair bit of ignorance of foreign languages; of the 4 I've studied all have been European. Are there foreign languages whose native speakers would have trouble with the concept of a sentence? I've read a number of first/early posts recently that read as, essentially, an unpunctuated (and uncapitalized) stream of consciousness.

I'm afraid I usually just Skip them, and let Someone Else try to figure out what they're saying.

Mithoron

@DavidW :D There, there, you're only just beginning to learn depths of human stupidity ;)

I have a feeling most people don't know even their own language well

On more serious note, many users just don't know English well, and don't care about quality of their posts. :( (Stupidity may still be a factor there ;)

Napoleon Wilson

9:59 PM

@DavidW Respect for foreign cultures in all honours, but...some people are also simply lazy...by every cultural norm. ;-)

Though, capitalization can be more genuinely difficult, I guess.

@NapoleonWilson Yeah, I get that. I just, I don't know, kind of expect most Whovians to at least capitalize "Doctor Who."

Mithoron

:D

But then again, on a phone keyboard that is an extra finger movement, not a chord like on a normal keyboard.

Gallifreyan

10:26 PM

@user2768 I'm not in academia, but my employer in Switzerland wanted my O-level certificates from 1974 (as well as my degree certificate). (If you are not familiar with the British education system, O-levels were the muggle equivalent of OWLs.) — Martin Bonner 7 hours ago

Heh

Q: Post-apocalypse short story search

0

Looking for a short story about a young woman living in a post-Yellowstone caldera eruption environment. She lives with an abusive boyfriend who tolchoks people with a piece of concrete wielded in a sock.

story-identification

Q: Story: Massive black octahedral AI is attacked by a hacker's nanovirus

10:45 PM

0

The story was set in a mid-future Earth (at least 20 years from now, but probably less than 100) with AI and nanotechnology. The most striking element (and the one I thought I could find with Google search) is a massive black octahedral building that houses a major AI. I believe it is described...

story-identification short-stories

Q: Are the runes around the Goblet of Fire meaningful?

11:01 PM

0

I recently visited the Warner Bros. Studios Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter and took notice of a particular piece of artwork from the prop designs of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. It depicted the runes that are inscribed around the rim of the Goblet. I took a photo of the artwork ...

harry-potter props