2963: House Inputs and Outputs

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House Inputs and Outputs

Title text: People think power over ethernet is so great, and yet when I try to do water over ethernet everyone yells at me.

Explanation

This is another comic in a series depicting confusion matrices, similar to 2813: What To Do, 2420: Appliances, and 1890: What to Bring. It is arranged as a table of five columns of conduits to and from a house, by five rows of resources and people, each of which typically enter, exit or both enter and exit the house via at least one of the identified conduits. The table cells have a green background for compatible methods of transit; a red tint is used for the more problematic pairings. Each panel can be read as "[row label] [entering and/or exiting] the house via the [column label]", for example, "Fresh water entering the house via the well".

Explanations of the "House Inputs and Outputs" table cell drawings

	Well	Garage	Power lines	Front door	Septic tank
Fresh water (Input)	The purpose of a well is usually to supply fresh water into the home, primarily for drinking or washing. It may be unnecessary in many places if a reliable water supply network is available.	Long gone are the days of having to clean up after your primary mode of transportation, for most people. A source of water may be useful to clean a vehicle itself, although this would perhaps be more commonly done outside.	Power lines conduct electricity, not water. The two functions are inherently dangerous if carelessly combined. Water can be used to cool high-energy lines, such as fast battery charger cables[1] and cables supplying electric arc furnaces, but not overhead residential power lines.	Many people prefer to control the amount of water they get, and contain it to a controlled area, since the water may damage things inside the house.	Pumping water into a septic tank could cause it to back up, resulting in the unpleasant contents being forced back in to the house. Also, if this were the only supply of water, most people would prefer anything they drink not to contain (or go through pipes that have contained) sewage.
Cars (Input/Output)	Most cars can't fit inside most wells. Storing them in a well is also likely to be inconvenient when you come to need to use them again.	Garages are in fact built for the storage of cars and other similarly-sized vehicles. Placing a car in one will both help protect it from the elements and make it easier to access from inside your own home.	The illustration has the car actually balancing upon the strained wire, a rather difficult 'track' to drive upon, even assuming the cable is strong enough to withstand the forces.	Most cars can’t fit through a typical front door, and are likely to cause damage if forced.	Comedian Garrison Keillor's 2008 More News from Lake Wobegon includes a story where an old septic tank is discovered to actually be a buried car.[2]
Electricity (Input)	Wells are not designed to safely and effectively transfer electrical power to the devices that require it. The water would mostly just conduct the electricity into the surrounding construction.	In the United States, lightning is responsible for causing around 24,600 structure fires annually, resulting in $8 to $10 billion in losses.	Power lines are designed to facilitate the connection of individual homes to the broader local power network. Randall omits the fact that electricity can also be an output; e.g. houses with solar panels regularly export electricity too.	Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod to prevent lightning strike damage to structures.	As Knit Cap observes, septic tanks are not a source of electric power.
People (Input/Output)	Being inside a well is very dangerous for most people.[citation needed] The comic depicts a view from inside a well (as a dark scene, it is drawn red-on-black). The motif resembles poster art for the 2002 horror movie remake The Ring, which involves a girl left to die in a well who becomes a vengeful ghost (see also 396: The Ring).	A person can enter and exit their home through a garage door, provided the garage has an internal door to the rest of the home (as is usually the case for attached garages like the one in the image). Though it is perhaps a fairly common way for such a house's residents to conveniently enter and exit, it isn't generally the best way to welcome or discharge most guests.	Overhead power lines to homes are generally not strong enough to climb, and attempting to do so incurs a very serious risk of electrocution.	The front door of a home is designed for entry and exit of humans and similarly sized items.	In general, people find crawling through waste unpleasant. Also, the septic tank is not connected to the street.
Sewage (Output)	Sewage in drinking water can cause disease. It is/was the main cause for most cholera epidemics, which was clarified by John Snow during 1854 cholera outbreak in London.	Sewage spills are smelly, disgusting and hard to clean. They can destroy carpets, floors, drywall and property value.			A septic tank is an underground chamber through which wastewater flows for basic sewage treatment.

The title text references power over ethernet (PoE), first implemented in the early 2000s, to provide electric power along with data on twisted-pair Ethernet cabling. A welcome development, it removed the need for many separate power supplies. While networked water delivery ("running water") is also a welcome development, doing so over ethernet cables would be extremely problematic, risking several top points of failure, while providing limited amounts of water. However, again, electric vehicle fast charging cables and arc furnace power inputs are sometimes water-cooled.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[A 5x5 grid of squares. The columns are labeled: Well, Garage, Power lines, Front door, Septic tank. Each row's label has an arrow and a basic house icon next to it. The rows are: Fresh water (horizontal arrow towards house), Cars (two-directional horizontal arrow and house), Electricity (horizontal arrow into house), People (two-directional horizontal arrow and house), Sewage (vertical arrow out of bottom of house).]

Well, Fresh water: [green]

[A many-featured house front and cross-sectional subsurface infrastructure, with various aspects that recur throughout most further grid-squares in one or other form. This particular one is distinguished by an arrow indicating movement up through a pipe leading inwards from an adjacent external borehole]

Voice from house: Mmm! Refreshing!

Garage, Fresh water: [red]

[An obliquely off-frontal view of the house, featuring a set of Cueball-like figures directing a hosepipe's stream of water into the open garage-port doorway]

Fwoosh

Power lines, Fresh water: [red]

[A different oblique angle concentrated upon the edge of the house upon which the overhead powerlines connect to, from a pole with transformer box and other wire coming from off-frame; the house wire appears to be dripping liquid]

Front door, Fresh water: [red]

[Normal frontal view of the house, featuring the hosepipe cueballs directing water into the front door]

Voice from house: Stop it!

Fwoosh!

Septic tank, Fresh water: [red]

[Normal frontal view; The subsurface septic tank feature has an arrow leading up from it through the diagonal pipe that connects to the house itself]

Voice from house: Eww.

Well, Cars: [red]

[A view only of a ground pipe/borehole-head; A car seemingly upended and balanced atop on a front corner, being manhandled by Cueball and Megan figures]

Garage, Cars: [green]

[Normal frontal view; Garage door open, car seen parked inside]

Power lines, Cars: [red]

[Two power-line poles, the rightmost with transformer, having cables from off-left, between the poles and off-right; Two cueballs stand on the ground below, looking at a car heavily balanced mid-way along the central stretch of wire]

Front door, Cars: [red]

[Frontal view of house; Front doorway has surrounding damage and a car tightly wedged into it with two figures (Beret Guy and a Cueball) visible through the windows]

Beret Guy, from car: Do you think I scratched the paint?

Septic tank, Cars: [red]

[Frontal view of the house; Within the underground sceptic tank, displacing some of the shallow dark liquid, is a car with two occupants]

Well, Electricity: [red]

[Borehole pipe-head; Cueball holds a laptop with a power lead trailing down into the pipe]

Cueball's laptop: ⚠Low battery

Garage, Electricity: [red]

[Frontal view of house, with lightning strike explosively hitting the area of the garage door]

BOOM

Power lines, Electricity: [green]

[Frontal view of house, arrow leading down the power-cable and several 'electricity' symbols scattered around]

Front door, Electricity: [red]

[Frontal view of house, with lightning strike explosively hitting the area of the front door]

BOOM

Septic tank, Electricity: [red]

[Toilet and cistern, seat raised, with Knit Cap looking at a computer system, set up nearby on the floor, with a power lead draped into the toilet-bowl and (sic) a single 'electricity' symbol indicating power flow]

Knit Cap: Why won't my console turn on?

Well, People: [red (though overwhelmingly black)]

[A mostly black tile with a rough circular outline of sketchy red lines]

Garage, People: [green]

[Frontal view of house; A Cueball exits the open (darkened) garage doorway, waving]

Cueball: Bye!

Power lines, People: [red]

[Oblique side view of house; A Cueball is climbing up the power-line towards the top of the pole]

Cueball: Bye!

Front door, People: [green]

[Frontal view of house; A cueball exits the open front doorway, waving]

Cueball: Bye!

Septic tank, People: [red]

[Frontal view of house; A Cueball crawls into the elbow-deep dark liquid of the subsurface septic tank, emerging from the house-draining pipes]

Cueball: Bye!

Well, Sewage: [red]

[Frontal view of house; Speech-line emerges from the house]

Voice from house: Why do I keep getting sick???

Garage, Sewage: [red]

[Frontal view of house; Garage door is open, revealing Cueball knee-deep in dark liquid]

Cueball: Oh no.

Power lines, Sewage: [red]

[Oblique side view of house; Wide pipe-end emerges from the roof, disgorging a stream of dark liquid out onto the rising power-cable]

Cueball: Eww.

Front door, Sewage: [red]

[Frontal view of house; Front door is open, revealing Cueball knee-deep in dark liquid]

Cueball: Oh no.

Septic tank, Sewage: [green]

[Frontal view of house; Dark liquid drains down drain-pipes into sceptic tank, with an arrow indicating the direction of flow]

Flush

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Discussion

what in the heckoslovakia is panel 16 172.71.147.216 02:18, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I can only assume that it's from the perspective of someone inside the well looking upward toward the outside world. OmniDoom (talk) 02:23, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

It's a reference to The Ring (リング) films and books. This distorted view from the inside of the well is an iconic part of the franchise's imagery, and, in minimal-spoilers form, its appearance suggests that someone has watched the cursed tape and should now expect a visitor to arrive from that well in seven days. (Definitely a red intersection) Scorpion451 (talk) 02:52, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

more at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ring_(franchise) aside holy gosh! I was expecting to link to IMDB for like two or three movies. /aside the trailer at https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0298130/ starts with an a 1950-1990 ish USA telephone ring. It's been a while since I saw it and the ring referring to a telephone not magic ring is starting to sound familiar. SDT

which is too much detail. "Panel 16 refers to a horror film" is not enough info SDT 172.70.134.102 04:06, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

You watched the tape!? --162.158.94.27 07:07, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Having never seen^* The Ring, I now think I understand a lot more about the film. Here was I, always thinking it was an allegory upon the idea of a webring...

^* figure that if seeing "the tape" causes imminent death, then watching "The Ring" might at least cause an annoying rash/the sniffles in the near future... and I have indeed eventually felt an itch or had a runny nose even after seeing references to The Ring. Sometimes within a couple of months!

I mean, is it not a bit of a Spoiler? (Clearly, I don't know how much it might be.) Hmmm... *itch itch* *aaachew!!* 172.69.195.175 13:04, 25 July 2024 (UTC) 172.70.134.100 03:58, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Even if it is a spoiler, which is debatable, the movie is from 2002 and the original story is from 1991. 172.71.151.114 19:07, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I'm assuming that a table would probably be best for this comic, but tbh I don't know how to make one and it's kinda late for me. 162.158.137.212 02:48, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Update: thanks to whoever made the table 141.101.109.192 03:32, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

You're welcome :) I had to look at Wikipedia's tutorial to make it - Blue in real life (talk) 05:55, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

The table parser is incredibly byzantine; good job. 172.70.215.11 07:34, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

As a note, water in power lines is actually a thing for high speed EV chargers - so much power is transferred even the cable need water cooling! Thief (talk) 12:38, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I'll be dammed, I'm the one who made that original statement, the more I know! 172.68.210.23 23:15, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

172.70.162.18 (well, more precisely, the person who made this edit): you managed to make me frantically make two page moves thinking that you had removed the link that I added. See, I created Category:Confusion matrices and added links to that on all the articles with confusion matrices. However, I thought you had reverted my edit when you removed a link to Category:Comics with confusion matrices. So I thought I had created the category under the wrong name compared with what I added and went to move the category, until I realized you had indeed removed a link to a category that isn't used. Two page moves later (because I made a typo in the first move), I realized that the category's name was correct and that someone had earlier linked to a nonexistent category that was not mine. OOPS. —megan talk contribs 13:35, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Hi. I was just trying to submit the following, and got Edit Conflicted about it. Right, then. Obviously it's too late to make my reasoning known (I thought it was an IP who had created the "Charts with Confusion Matrices", or whatever it was, who couldn't have even created the required page, but... well, talk about confusion!) but giving it here anyway...

Removed the category of something to do with "confusion charts", which might be something to do with the appearence as a cross-compare table (akin to a Punnet Square, not quite the same as a Karnaugh Map; probably has some name such as "compatability matrix", but I can't remember or find what that might be). Anyway, apparently "confusion chart/square/matrix/whatever" isn't a term in use that I've been able to find out there in the real world (also, it is probably supposed to guide one away from potential confusion, not cause it), it specifically doesn't have a wikipedia entry (or even a wikiledia redirect to another one by another name) and we don't have that category even if we invented the term ourselves. There are other examples of this form already under Category:Charts, so it's "a thing" that we might want to service with a Category (ideally more "Compatability Matrix" than that other name), but best to create the category and add the comic(s) as members rather than speculatively add spurious non-existent categories then rely on someone else to fulfil them at a later date. Even better to have a quick check to see if everyone agrees to the category title (and need, ...which I would actually tentatively support, in this case, if asked) beforehand.

...just as a note, as I spent quite some time trying to find out if "confusion charts" were a thing (and coming up blank), so maybe this way I haven't wasted my time quite as much as just going away, or instead just offering a laconic apology for getting in the way. 172.69.195.5 13:46, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Ok, me again. It looks like someone found Confusion matrix after all, as a wikipage. I'd actually looked for various "confusion" things but... Perhaps typoed the search when I tried vs. "matrix"..? Maybe. Seems the most logical mistake to have made. So ignore my above objections. Still, I don't like the name ("deconfusion matrix" would be awful, yet better), and I've never known it by that name. Just left making my opinion known, now, however wrong it turns out to have been. About that and the original wrong-way-round of implementing it (by parties unknown; not User:Megan, who it looks like just happened to clash with me in mutually well-meant but oppositely attempted resolutions to the original mess). 172.70.163.121 14:28, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Could someone add the confusion matrix category as a subcategory of the graphs one? I would do it but I have no idea how. 108.162.241.190 17:41, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

it kind of looks like the driver in the car/front door panel is beret guy, assuming the car went front first into the door 172.70.178.9 16:20, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Reminds me a bit of Bumblebee, in the eponymous film, semitransforming to get through the internal door between the attached garage and the living area of the protagonist's (parents') house. 172.70.162.18 20:21, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Is "Randall would get off easy if he were merely to be yelled at." a threat? Is someone trying to anonymously threaten Randall? 172.71.142.15 21:18, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Probably not, but it should be "Most people would suffer consequences sterner than being yelled at when combining water and electricity without appropriate safeguards." However, in the past I have seen overpersonalization of the author to the extent of clearly indicating NPOV violations in these explanations. 172.70.214.150 22:18, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Always makes me shake my head when things that seem perfectly clear to me cause confusion in others. That editor is saying that if Randall tried to transmit water via Ethernet cables he'd likely be in legal trouble. I could imagine jailed for damage to homes, charges for vandalism, etc. So, if Randall ONLY was yelled at he'd be lucky, that would be "getting off easy". After all, to those of us who aren't lawyers or deeply versed in law, this concept is SO out there it's very difficult to think of all the potential legal repercussions to this. :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 05:06, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I thought garages were built for storing boxes of old crap in. For the most part (here in the UK, at least), they are wholly unsuitable for the keeping of cars, due to the steady growth of vehicles, and the relatively static nature of the size of garages.172.70.162.18 11:27, 26 July 2024 (UTC)

I still think there should be an "ethernet" row+column, even if one of the cells is just gonna be POE and another is gonna be that thing where you extend your home ethernet over the wall sockets in your house Vaedez (talk) 22:33, 28 July 2024 (UTC)

Request for a Wikipedian

Could someone please add a [citation needed] tag to Lightning rod#History where it says Franklin was unaware of Prokop Diviš's work? Decades ago when I read a 1950s biography of Franklin, I am pretty sure there were some questions about whether Franklin would likely have been aware of it and similar work which had not been entirely resolved by historians. My ISPs are both IP-rangeblocked so I can't edit enwiki from home or my cell phone internet. 172.69.34.190 17:06, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

Franklin's "Experiments and Observations on Electricity," published in 1751,[3] became widely known and was translated into multiple languages, with practical and accessible explanations of the use of the lightning rod before Diviš's independent work in 1754.[4]

The sentence "His experimental apparatus, known as the "weather machine” predated Benjamim Franklin's more widely recognized experiments." is the one that needs the [citation needed] tag. 172.70.207.9 18:52, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

gotchu fam[5]. Create an account at Starbucks or something. 172.70.210.248 05:03, 27 July 2024 (UTC)

No Friday comic?

My personal theory is that Randall now regrets backing Harris and will now support Jill Stein. What are your outlandish theories as to why there's no Friday comic? 11:06, 27 July 2024

No, the comic was just late by 24 hours. 108.162.242.53 (talk) 12:01, 27 July 2024 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

No TISP?

Back in 2011 Google made an April Fools' joke about getting internet by flushing a wire through the toilet into the sewers.

This, of all XKCD comics, had the perfect opportunity to lampoon it.

[6]

King5327 (talk) 17:43, 4 August 2024 (UTC)