explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1982: Evangelism

2018-04-18T15:12:31Z

108.162.238.53:

I want to know where vi vs. emacs fits on this spectrum.
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.53|108.162.238.53]] 15:12, 18 April 2018 (UTC)

1785: Wifi

2017-01-13T20:04:23Z

108.162.238.53: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1785
| date = January 13, 2017
| title = Wifi
| image = wifi.png
| titletext = Further out to the right, it works correctly, but the reason it works still involves the word 'firmware.'
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Seems good, but could do with more. The ref to TV Problems title text seems far fetched.}}

The graph shows the supposed probability that a guest will be able to connect to the owner's {{w|Wi-Fi}}. The graph starts with people who cannot find the settings, followed by those who can connect. Finally, the large drop in the graph on the right-hand side is explained by "firmware." Firmware is programming which operates a device at the lowest level, typically stored in a {{w|ROM}} or an EEPROM/flash, but sometimes it is transferred from a CPU to a device at system boot time. In most systems this just works but in the case of more geeky operating systems, like GNU/Linux, or more esoteric hardware, it needs to be installed separately. Therefore there is a group of people who know what they are missing but are unable to overcome the issue to connect. The title text indicates that the curve recovers once users are more experienced, and ''can'' overcome said issue. In such case, firmware is the the reason it works because having firmware allows them to connect to the WiFi.

These computer issues have previously appeared in several xkcd comics, notably [[456: Cautionary]], where WiFi problems specifically are mentioned in the title text.

The apparent paradox of people knowing more about a subject also having more problems with it is also explored in [[1760: TV Problems]]; in the title text, the ones who are more likely to die from a skydiving accident are the ones who know the more about skydiving safety, but that is of course not because they cannot make it work, but rather because they make many more dives than regular people, thus increasing the overall risk in spite of their competence.

==Transcript==
:[A line graph with a curve that starts just left of the Y-axis above the middle of the axis. Then it increases slightly and stays almost stable on a long flat plateau before it falls off fast towards the right. Each axis ends in an arrow and has a label to the left of the Y-axis and below the x-axis. Over the curve there are three labels, pointing with one arrow to the two rising and falling parts, and three arrows to the center label above the plateau.]
:Y-axis: Probability houseguest will be able to connect to WiFi
:X-axis: Houseguest tech-savviness
:Left label: Can't find wifi settings
:Center label: Works fine
:Right label: Something involving the word "firmware"

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Computers]]

1783: Emails

2017-01-09T14:26:04Z

108.162.238.53: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1783
| date = January 9, 2017
| title = Emails
| image = emails.png
| titletext = Hey Rob, sorry it took me a while to get back to you! Sure, I'd love to see WALL-E opening weekend! Are you still doing that, or...?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|First draft. Needs more on the explanation.}}
[[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are walking together. Megan asks if Cueball has any New Year's resolutions. New Year's, to most people, is a time for thinking about the year and coming up with resolutions to improve themselves. Cueball replies that he has one. It's to finish reading his backed up emails from 2008, as it appears that he has not read his email in a while, and now he has to fix the mess he's made.

The title text is a reply to an email in which [[Rob]] wished to see the movie {{w|WALL-E}}, a film that came out in 2008, with Cueball during its opening weekend. However, the opening weekend is now far in the past, and yet Cueball doesn't realize it and trails off with "are you still doing that, or...?"

A real (and useful) New Year's resolution would involve trying to answer emails in time (instead of spending time on old emails), which would avoid the mess he's currently in.

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball are walking along.]
:Megan: Did you have any New Year's Resolutions?
:Cueball: Gonna finally finish dealing with those emails from 2008.
:Caption: As my email backlog approaches 10 years, I'm starting to have doubts about my approach.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:New Year]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

1776: Reindeer

2016-12-23T15:35:36Z

108.162.238.53: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1776
| date = December 23, 2016
| title = Reindeer
| image = reindeer.png
| titletext = And then in a twinkling, a sound gave me pause / From the roof came the scratching of eight tarsal claws.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Needs lots more stuff.}}
Black Hat is at it again, by replacing the eight reindeer of Santa's sleigh with a single spider-legged reindeer. He considers this "more authentic" because Santa Claus is based in part on Odin, the chief god of Norse mythology. On the pagan holiday of Yule, Odin was said to ride his eight legged horse, {{w|Sleipnir}}, across the land. Children would leave one of their boots out and fill it with hay for Sleipnir to eat, then Odin would refill the boot with gifts. This obviously presages the Christmas tradition of hanging stockings by the chimney.

The intuitive interpretation of a horse with eight legs is probably making the body longer to make an additional set of normal equine legs fit in. Such a creature could be made to look natural. Black Hat's interpretation is to change the type of legs in order to fit all eight legs in there. Many people do think of spiders when they think of "eight legs." But the result of this is to make a chimera (Greek word for any animal with body parts from two or more different animals), and a terrifying one at that. Black Hat plays upon the very common arachnophobia, or fear of spiders. A slightly more terrifying creature (to some) would be if he had used octopus tentacles instead of spider legs, but we do not call those "legs."

The title text is a parody of two lines from the poem "'Twas the Night Before Christmas", "And then, in a twinkling, I heard on the roof / the prancing and pawing of each little hoof."

==Transcript==
Black Hat: In earlier Norse myths, the eight reindeer were actually one steed with eight ''legs''.

Black Hat: So I think this is more authentic.

Boy: AAAAAA!

{{comic discussion}}

1776: Reindeer

2016-12-23T15:31:57Z

108.162.238.53: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 1776
| date = December 23, 2016
| title = Reindeer
| image = reindeer.png
| titletext = And then in a twinkling, a sound gave me pause / From the roof came the scratching of eight tarsal claws.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Needs lots more stuff.}}
Black Hat is at it again, by replacing the eight reindeer of Santa's sleigh with a single spider-legged reindeer. He considers this "more authentic" because Santa Claus is based in part on Odin, the chief god of Norse mythology. On the pagan holiday of Yule, Odin was said to ride his eight legged horse, {{w|Sleipnir}}, across the land. Children would leave one of their boots out and fill it with hay for Sleipnir to eat, then Odin would refill the boot with gifts. This obviously presages the Christmas tradition of hanging stockings by the chimney.

The intuitive interpretation of a horse with eight legs is probably making the body longer to make an additional set of normal equine legs fit in. Such a creature could be made to look natural. Black Hat's interpretation is to change the type of legs in order to fit all eight legs in there. Many people do think of spiders when they think of "eight legs." But the result of this is to make a chimera (Greek word for any animal with body parts from two or more different animals), and a terrifying one at that. Black Hat plays upon the very common arachnophobia, or fear of spiders. A slightly more terrifying creature (to some) would be if he had used octopus tentacles instead of spider legs, but we do not call those "legs."

==Transcript==
Black Hat: In earlier Norse myths, the eight reindeer were actually one steed with eight ''legs''.

Black Hat: So I think this is more authentic.

Boy: AAAAAA!

{{comic discussion}}

1774: Adjective Foods

2016-12-19T22:12:50Z

108.162.238.53: /* Foods that are probably in each container */

{{comic
| number = 1774
| date = December 19, 2016
| title = Adjective Foods
| image = adjective_foods.png
| titletext = Contains 100% of your recommended daily allowance!
}}

==Explanation==

This comic shows one of [[Randall]]’s goals in life – creating foods with ‘adjective-only’ names, where common phrases such as “Glazed Donuts” or “Lite Beer” would be replaced with “Glazed” or “Lite”. This is a jab at food market buzzwords, which usually rely on adjectives and words that bring up certain feelings based on how the food is ‘supposed to be’. An example of this is something like ‘lean and tender beef’. It is also semi-difficult to determine the actual contents just by adjectives.

The title text furthers this by taking the phrase ‘recommended daily allowance of XXX’, and removing the ‘of XXX’ part. This may have been an attempt at furthering the joke by making it vague enough to be meaningless or it could be a jab at the cost of high adjective count food.

This joke is very similar to [[1060|comic 1060, Crowdsourcing]], in that Randall is doing nothing, and trying to make it look like he is doing something.

===Foods that are probably in each container===
Some foods are unknown, and they all could use details such as what adjectives are typically associated with that food and what they mean.
{| class="wikitable"
!Container
!Type of food
|-
|“… bespoke cage-free” bag
|Cereal or wheat
|-
|“… glazed flambé” box
|Some type of meat
|-
|“… Kosher Grade A” box
|Eggs
|-
|“… extra sharp” box
|Cheese
|-
|“… Lite original flavor” can
|Beer
|}

==Transcript==

:[An arrangement of labeled foodstuffs, from left to right and top to bottom:]
:Premium Stone-ground ''Bespoke'', Cage-free
:''Gourmet'' Fire-roasted Glazed ''flambé''
:Organic All-natural Locally-sourced Artisanal, Kosher, Grade A
:''Craft Barrel-aged Smoked'' Authentic Homemade Sun-dried Whole Extra Sharp
:Low-calorie ''Lite'' Original Flavor
:[Caption:] I'm trying to trick supermarkets into carrying my new line of adjective-only foods.

==Trivia==

* The word “artisanal” was originally misspelled as “artisenal”.
** The wrong spelling is found [https://web.archive.org/web/20161219163201/http://xkcd.com/1774/ here].

{{comic discussion}}

1774: Adjective Foods

2016-12-19T22:10:20Z

108.162.238.53: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 1774
| date = December 19, 2016
| title = Adjective Foods
| image = adjective_foods.png
| titletext = Contains 100% of your recommended daily allowance!
}}

==Explanation==

This comic shows one of [[Randall]]’s goals in life – creating foods with ‘adjective-only’ names, where common phrases such as “Glazed Donuts” or “Lite Beer” would be replaced with “Glazed” or “Lite”. This is a jab at food market buzzwords, which usually rely on adjectives and words that bring up certain feelings based on how the food is ‘supposed to be’. An example of this is something like ‘lean and tender beef’. It is also semi-difficult to determine the actual contents just by adjectives.

The title text furthers this by taking the phrase ‘recommended daily allowance of XXX’, and removing the ‘of XXX’ part. This may have been an attempt at furthering the joke by making it vague enough to be meaningless or it could be a jab at the cost of high adjective count food.

This joke is very similar to [[1060|comic 1060, Crowdsourcing]], in that Randall is doing nothing, and trying to make it look like he is doing something.

===Foods that are probably in each container===
{{incomplete|Some foods are unknown, and they all could use details such as what adjectives are typically associated with that food and what they mean.}}
{| class="wikitable"
!Container
!Type of food
|-
|“… bespoke cage-free” bag
|Cereal or wheat
|-
|“… glazed flambé” box
|some type of meat
|-
|“… Kosher Grade A” box
|Eggs
|-
|“… extra sharp” box
|cheese
|-
|“… Lite original flavor” can
|beer
|}

==Transcript==

:[An arrangement of labeled foodstuffs, from left to right and top to bottom:]
:Premium Stone-ground ''Bespoke'', Cage-free
:''Gourmet'' Fire-roasted Glazed ''flambé''
:Organic All-natural Locally-sourced Artisanal, Kosher, Grade A
:''Craft Barrel-aged Smoked'' Authentic Homemade Sun-dried Whole Extra Sharp
:Low-calorie ''Lite'' Original Flavor
:[Caption:] I'm trying to trick supermarkets into carrying my new line of adjective-only foods.

==Trivia==

* The word “artisanal” was originally misspelled as “artisenal”.
** The wrong spelling is found [https://web.archive.org/web/20161219163201/http://xkcd.com/1774/ here].

{{comic discussion}}