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We have an explanation for all 3299 xkcd comics, and only 51 (1.5%) are incomplete. Help us finish them!
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| Summer |
 Title text: You should probably get back to shore before spring hits. |
Explanation
Comics and videos often splice footage of the same action during different seasons to show the passage of time. The first two panels imply each panel is a separate instance of Cueball swinging to jump in the lake, stitched together for artistic reasons. The third and fourth panels subvert this, since Cueball wouldn't purposefully jump onto the frozen lake with high momentum during winter. The dialogue reveals all the panels were truly one continuous action, and the seasons just changed in the meantime.
This comic makes a play on the fact that some people comment on how fast it feels like the season of summer has passed too quickly. In this comic, however, multiple seasons pass in the few seconds required for Cueball to swing on a rope swing over the water. When he starts, it's apparently summer because the tree has green leaves. By the time he reaches the middle of the swing, the leaf colors have turned to brown, indicating fall. When he reaches the end of the swing and lets go, there are no leaves on the tree, the ground and branches are covered with snow, and the water has frozen, indicating that winter has arrived.
Megan also observes this while at the shore and does some small talk with Cueball on how abruptly summer has ended. Cueball politely responds, saying that for this time, it seemed "extra quick". Both demeanors from the two are comically unusual, as summer doesn't end faster than a person swinging on a rope.[citation needed]
The title text elaborates on this joke, showing that the entire cycle of seasons has been sped up and that Cueball must hurry back onto land before spring comes, the ice melts, and he plunges into the ice-cold water.
Transcript
- [Cueball, holding a rope swing tied to a tree branch, jumps off the shore of a lake. The tree's leaves are dark green and the grass is light green.]
- [Cueball is still holding the rope in mid-swing, but now the tree's leaves are orange and the grass is brown.]
- [Cueball lets go of the rope as it swings, but now the tree has no leaves and its branches are covered in snow, and the ground is also covered in snow. The lake is now covered in ice.]
- [The scene is just beyond the prior scene, as the edges of the same tree's branches can be seen. Megan is standing on the shore of the lake. Cueball is seated on the ice, with marks indicating that he slid a few yards from where he originally landed.]
- Megan: Summer over already, huh?
- Cueball: It seemed extra quick this year.
This Week's Explanation for Improvement
As part of the Explanation Improvement Project, each week the community selects one older, neglected, or otherwise stagnant explanation to expand and polish together. This week's pick is comic 395: Morning; help us by editing its explanation!
To get involved with the project, you can also nominate an explanation that you think should be improved, or vote on current nominations!
| Morning |
 Title text: I'd press on them to try to unstick them, but I can't reach. Can we try cycling day and night really fast? |
Explanation
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Welcome to This Week's Explanation for Improvement! Anyone is encouraged to help explain comic 395: Morning; click here to get started! If you are new to wiki editing, you can read our editing FAQ for guidance. Here are some suggestions for improving this explanation: .svg){kind=icon} Explain the references to The Matrix to someone who has never heard of the movie.
.svg){kind=icon} Explain the "screen resolution of the world" in first panel. Is there truth to this? What resolution do our eyes actually have?
.svg){kind=icon} Explain the title text, especially "cycling day and night really fast".
.svg){kind=icon} The explanation of LCD screens is too technical.
|
This comic plays on the idea that physical reality might be a simulation running inside a supercomputer. This idea has been explored in popular culture, as mentioned in the comic itself, but the second panel argues the revelation would still be a deeply existential horror if it were true.
The first panel mentions The Matrix, a 1999 action movie where the main character Neo discovers that the world he thought he knew was actually a simulation being run by an army of robots, who keep the human race hypnotized inside the titular simulation. It is perhaps the most famous work of fiction to touch on the theme of reality being a simulation, and an easy cultural touchstone at the time this comic was written (thus Megan's claim "We've all seen" it).
The reveal of her reality being a simulation comes when she sees "dead pixels" in the sky. In LCD screens, especially TFT LCD, a dead pixel is a pixel that does not work properly, usually set permanently as black, or as some other color. LCD screens were a more common standard when this comic was written, but have largely been supplanted by LED screens wherever possible. Megan realizes that the reality is a computer simulation when she sees dead pixels in the sky, indicating that what she sees is an LCD screen. In the last panel of the comic, there are three pixels — two red and one green — that look exactly like actual dead pixels. Note that the trees are not pixelated, meaning that only the sky is a giant LCD screen.
Regarding the question in the first panel, "What resolution is life?" (by which "life" presumably means the "real world" or lived experience, not living biochemistry), the most scientifically meaningful response would involve Planck distance and Planck time, the smallest units of distance and time that time-space can be broken down into. These are the fundamental building blocks of the time-space around us, similar to pixels (picture elements) on a screen, or a bit (one-or-zero) of data. Datum. Data. Humans, of course, cannot perceive changes on that scale - our experience occurs at a much less fine-grained level, with the human eye having a resolution of about 576 megapixels.
The title text refers to common techniques for fixing a dead pixel. One way is to apply pressure and release it, which isn't possible for Megan due to the distance of the sky. Another is to make the area of the screen that the dead pixel is on change colors really quickly, which could happen if the day-night cycle was fast enough, or if the clouds overhead were sped up.
Transcript
- [Megan is standing to one side.]
- We've all seen The Matrix
- We've all joked about "What resolution is life?"
- But it doesn't blunt the shock
- Of waking up one morning
- [Megan looks up from field and sees several colored pixels in the sky.]
- And seeing dead pixels in the sky.
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