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| House Majority |
 Title text: For the first time in history, it will be possible for a Democratic Senator from Kansas to see a programmable automatic digital computer. |
Explanation
This comic was posted the day after the 2026 midterm elections in the United States. This election is notable for one of the largest flips in control of Congress in modern history: before the election Republicans had a narrow 218 to 214 majority over Democrats in the House of Representatives; at the time of this post, Democrats have won 237 seats compared to 147 for Republicans, with many races still waiting to be called. Based on polling, it's expected that the Democratic majority will increase to about 260. In addition, the Democrats also regained control of the Senate, and won many governor races.
Megan's comment that "this is the first time in history that a news website has shown a majority that big" refers to the fact that the last time any party won at least 260 seats in the House was in the very early days of the internet, before national news websites existed. The last time any party held more than 260 in the House was in the session starting in 1991, when Democrats controlled 267 seats; there were a few small newspaper websites starting in 1993, but the New York Times didn't launch their website until 1996. This means that there were no websites showing election result projections in 1990.
It should be noted that Megan's wording specifically excludes the 18 prior occurrences in US history of a House majority that was just as big or bigger than 260 seats (going back as early as 1913 until the aforementioned 1991 session, the all-time biggest being in 1935 with 334 seats under Democratic control), as all those predated the internet era and therefore couldn't been shown on the yet-to-be-created news websites.
This may also be a commentary on the way that the coverage of the elections looks for any 'first' that they can find, such as the first Latina governor of Texas or first openly gay man in the US Senate. This tendency was also noted in 1122: Electoral Precedent
This election also saw a surprising number of long-held Republican Senate seats won by Democrats (seven seats have been confirmed flipped, with one or two more likely). The title text notes that it is the first time a Democratic Senator from Kansas could have seen a computer, since the last such person was George McGill, whose term ended in 1939. This was about two years before the completion of the Zuse Z3, considered by some to be the world's first working programmable, fully-automatic, electromechanical, digital computer, slightly predating the Colossus computer ("the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer") and ENIAC ("the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer"), among other possible candidates for the exact qualification stipulated by the title text.
Transcript
- [Cueball is seated in front of a desk. There's a laptop on the desk, and he's pointing to the screen. Megan is standing behind him.]
- Cueball: It says here they're on track to win about 260 House seats.
- Megan: You know, this is the first time in history that a news website has shown a majority that big.
This Week's Explanation for Improvement
As part of the Explanation Improvement Project, each week the community selects one older, stagnant, or otherwise neglected explanation to expand and polish together. This week's pick is comic 301: Limerick, you can 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!
| Limerick |
 Title text: Fun game: try to post a YouTube comment so stupid that people realize you must be joking. (Hint: this is impossible) |
Explanation
|
Welcome to This Week's Explanation for Improvement! Anyone is encouraged to help explain comic 301: Limerick; 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 title text about idiotic YouTube comments. This was also covered in comic 202: YouTube.
.svg){kind=icon} Why do the upvoted sarcastic comments make Cueball spiteful?
.svg){kind=icon} This comic's number (#301) is a reference to YouTube views getting stuck at 301. Learn what caused this bug and help explain it!
.svg){kind=icon} Make the explanation of a limerick more understandable.
.svg){kind=icon} The reference to Poe's law is interesting, expand on it.
.svg){kind=icon} Slashdot is no longer relevant after almost 20 years. Explain what it was and its eventual downfall (see Slashdot on Wikipedia)
|
A limerick is a well-known type of poem that is usually humorous or bawdy. A limerick is five lines long and has the rhyme scheme AABBA; the first, second, and fifth lines share one rhyme, while the third and fourth lines share another rhyme. Also, the third and fourth lines are usually shorter. Limericks primarily feature anapestic (◡◡–) and/or amphibrachic (◡–◡) trimeters. Almost anyone can instantly recognize a limerick after hearing the first line.[citation needed]
In poetry, a foot is a pattern unit of stressed (–) and unstressed (◡) syllables in a line. A meter measures the amount of feet per line. In this case, an 'anapestic trimeter' is a line of three anapests, where an 'anapest' is a foot that consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.
Slashdot is a venerable techie site. On many sites, the user base can vote comments 'up' or 'down', but at Slashdot only moderators (randomly drawn from the pool of registered users) may up- or downvote comments, and the moderator may select a reason for their up- or downvote. Instead of a simple +1, a comment may be voted +1 (Funny). Similarly, instead of -1, a comment may be voted -1 (Off-topic). +5 is the maximum positive score. A comment rated +5 (Insightful) has been upvoted at least five times, and has a plurality of 'Insightful' votes.
Cueball's limerick says that he does not like Slashdot any more, because his sarcastic comments are being treated as 'insightful' by the very people he's being sarcastic to. A scansion for this poem (in the macron and breve notation) is as follows:
| Line (w/ highlighted stress) | Scansion | Term |
|---|---|---|
| I used to find Slashdot delightful | ◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡ | amphibrachic trimeter |
| but my feelings of late are more spiteful; | ◡◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡ | amphibrachic trimeter with a "pickup" (or brachycatalectic amphibrachic tetrameter scanning as ◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡) |
| my comments sarcastic | ◡–◡ ◡–◡ | amphibrachic dimeter |
| the iconoclastic | ◡–◡ ◡–◡ | amphibrachic dimeter |
| keep modding to plus five (Insightful) | ◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡ | amphibrachic trimeter |
The title text refers to the notoriously awful comments on YouTube, many of which are so idiotic that they're interpreted as jokes.
In both cases, the comic is invoking Poe's Law. Both sites have become so full of extremes that you can no longer mock the extremists without looking like a sincere extremist yourself.
301, the number of this comic, is also a number often associated with YouTube. At the time this comic was published, view counts on YouTube videos would often freeze at 301, as YouTube would switch between view-counting algorithms when the number of views exceeded 300. Therefore, the comic number itself may be a reference to the title text.
Transcript
- [Cueball sits at a computer, typing.]
- Cueball (typing): I used to find Slashdot delightful,
- Cueball (typing): but my feelings of late are more spiteful;
- Cueball (typing): my comments sarcastic
- Cueball (typing): the iconoclastic
- Cueball (typing): keep modding to plus five (Insightful).
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