explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2070: Trig Identities

2018-11-09T23:35:44Z

141.101.96.209:

I am confused by the insect line. This seems to be true only if s=t.
[[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.209|141.101.96.209]] 19:03, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

:That one and the `cas` aren't making any sense to me. [[User:GreatBigDot|GreatBigDot]] ([[User talk:GreatBigDot|talk]]) 20:02, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
::Oh, the casinus is much important to... What was it? --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:15, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
::cas is realtively easy... it is cos(theta)=a/c -> cs(theta)=ao/c -> cas(theta)=o/c; when you realise that the top one isn't zero but o it clicks [[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.209|141.101.96.209]] 23:35, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

:I think insect is.. a bug.. ;) [[User:Smerriman|Smerriman]] ([[User talk:Smerriman|talk]]) 20:18, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Is Enchant at target a magic:the gathering reference? [[User:AncientSwordRage|AncientSwordRage]] ([[User talk:AncientSwordRage|talk]]) 20:55, 9 November 2018 (UTC)
:I think it is a Magic: The Gathering reference. Although it is phrased oddly. You'd think it would be "at target enchantment", rather than "target at enchantment". --[[User:Dryhamm|Dryhamm]] ([[User talk:Dryhamm|talk]]) 21:04, 9 November 2018 (UTC)

Talk:2070: Trig Identities

2018-11-09T19:03:17Z

141.101.96.209:

Talk:2032: Word Puzzles

2018-08-14T02:03:40Z

141.101.96.209:

;Is it a real word puzzle?
Who wants to labouriously check if he's double-bluffed and used an actual word puzzle for this comic? :D [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.181|162.158.154.181]] 17:45, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

"Jeopardy" is misspelled in the description. Can someone who is logged in please fix?
Many of the "clue" words can also be rearranged, anagram-wise, to form new words, e.g., parts ≈ strap. {{unsigned ip|162.158.74.243}}

Most words have 2, 3, 4 or 5 characters. I do not believe, it is a simple crossword puzzle, otherwise he would not fool people. Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.110.4|172.68.110.4]] 18:17, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

;Some thoughts:
*Cueball is messing with Megan and not presenting an answer what the "reminiscent of Jeopardy answers" would imply.
*{{w|Lance Ito}} is a judge well known for the O. J. Simpson murder case.
*{{w|Brian Eno}} is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer, writer, and visual artist. Read the Wiki article to learn more.
*No idea what "Ohio's AirAsia Arena" could imply.
--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 18:37, 13 August 2018 (UTC)
::Almost all the words in the alt-text / title-text are open to multiple pronunciations from a phonetic standpoint. Often they're placed next to a word containing the same sound with a different spelling, or the same spelling with a different sound.
::Once again Randall is creeping me out with this, as yesterday I complained about the spelling of "tear" with a comment including this line:
::tire tier tear tear tare tar ... teer?
::Randall so often does comics that feel intimately in touch with what I'm doing or saying the day before that it's almost spooky. If I weren't an outlier in so ''many'' scatter plots I might almost begin to feel "ordinary".
::[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 22:35, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

;Moved from the explanation (discussion goes here)
The kind of puzzle that Megan thinks she is solving is called a "Cryptic", which has markedly different rules than ordinary crosswords. If Cueball's statement had been "Part of this aria is an Indian garment" the answer would have been "sari", because a part of the phrase "this aria" is the sequence "sari", which in turn is an Indian garment. Cueball's actual statement contains quite a few familiar cryptic puzzle triggers. The word "composed" can be a hint of a preceding or following anagram, in this case of "this aria" or of "by Brian" or of even longer adjacent strings. Although "opera star" could be a famous singer, say "Caruso", it might also be the name of an opera followed by the name of an astronomical star. "Au pair" could be any of its ordinary meanings, say "nanny", but might also be "earrings" (because AU is the chemical symbol for gold, and a gold pair could be earrings). The word "start" is often a hint to take just the beginning of a word, so "the start" would be "t", or "start of his" would be "h" or "hi". The New York Times runs a cryptic crossword as its "second Sunday puzzle" every other month or so, and there are other regular cryptic crossword venues. In case you are interested, there are various guides on the web for solving cryptics, such as this one at The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/puzzclue.htm. (-- John?)
:This sounds like the most correct explanation to me so far, much moreso than the strictly crossword-based interpretation. I think this ''should'' be in the explanation.
:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 22:44, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

Although Randall says he is messing with us, the fact that he is so much cleverer than any of the rest of us means that Cueball's statement might even be a legitimate cryptic clue. --John [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.214|108.162.219.214]] 18:40, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

If anyone has an account on https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/, that community might be able to figure out if it's a legit puzzle. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.142.64|162.158.142.64]] 20:59, 13 August 2018 (UTC)

I just asked at puzzling.stackexchange: https://puzzling.stackexchange.com/questions/69502/is-this-a-puzzle-if-so-what-is-the-solution. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.209|141.101.96.209]] 02:03, 14 August 2018 (UTC)

Talk:861: Wisdom Teeth

2018-03-22T17:32:09Z

141.101.96.209: Comment added

Why should all three parts of the anesthetic have to wear off? It seems like Randall would probably not write "Everything ok" if he could feel the procedure. [[Special:Contributions/75.69.96.225|75.69.96.225]] 02:10, 5 March 2013 (UTC)

^ Agreed, it is most likely the anæsthetic and paralytic wore off, leaving the analgesic. So, he was awake, but "Everything [was] ok", because he was not feeling pain. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.14|108.162.216.14]] 15:39, 14 September 2014 (UTC)

I Gotta get my wisdom teeth removed asap! ~~JFreund

Could this be a reference to superflat mode?[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.84|108.162.216.84]] 22:31, 14 June 2014 (UTC)

^ No, this was during beta 1.2 when there were no modes. ~iFinity

Related? http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=846 [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.176|108.162.238.176]] 21:22, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

I think that the guy was crazy but if this was before super flat, it could have possibly have been a model used in the mode. {{unsigned|Otis}}

The phrase "Due to the inhibitory effects of painkillers" is flat-out wrong (pun intended). Opioids don't cause that kind of behaviour, and even if they did in some people, this wouldn't be due to their inhibitory effects on pain (they in fact exert a stimulatory effect on the mu-opioid receptor and more or less an happy and easy-going, while sleepy, state of mind). This is more a reflection of the personality of Cueball being exposed by his drunken-like state, if anything. I edited the sentence by replacing this with "While intoxicated with painkillers" ~~ A concerned M.D.

Could the title text be a reference to ''Memento''? --[[User:Nick818|Nick818]] ([[User talk:Nick818|talk]]) 21:59, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

In Minecraft: Playstation 4 version, there is a option to do a flat world like that in comic.

1882: Color Models

2017-08-29T11:27:12Z

141.101.96.209: /* Explanation */ a abstract → an abstract

{{comic
| number = 1882
| date = August 28, 2017
| title = Color Models
| image = color_models.png
| titletext = What if what *I* see as blue, *you* see as a slightly different blue because you're using Chrome instead of Firefox and despite a decade of messing with profiles we STILL can't get this right somehow.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Randall is describing how his level of understanding of colors has changed by age. The chart starts with two tracks of understanding color.

In grade school he learned about the primary colors, and the very simple model of colors, as shown in the left track. Mixing of color solids, as in painting (or finger painting being probably the earliest exposure to color mixing), is intuitive for a child. The process is subtractive, and the more colors you mix the darker and closer to black you get. Color is seen by the eyes when light bounces off the solid colors and becomes light of different wavelengths that the eye can then see. However at this level, things just "look" like different colors without understanding light's role.

The right track is mixing of color light, as in prisms and light waves, where mixing colors is additive and the more you mix the lighter and closer to white you get. But this is without a real understanding of light bouncing off surfaces, and is limited to an understanding of different colors of light and how they mix. The first exposure in grade school is usually by shining white light through a prism to separate it into the different visible colors.

The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process opponent color model] connects these two models, by explaining how different wavelengths of light are absorbed by different rods and cones in the eyes.

The "complex multidimensional gamut" mentions two more models: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space CIE 1931] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space L*a*b*]. These are more detailed models based on the opponent color model, which precisely define how a particular color maps to the different channels that our eyes see.

However, understanding how the eye sees color ''still'' isn't enough, because not every device can display all the colors your eye can see. Your laptop might have a different [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut color gamut] than your phone, and if you printed the page out, you might see yet another color. To handle this issue, web browsers use "color profiles", so that an image can be tagged with the color space it uses and the browser can handle it appropriately. Unfortunately, browsers do this inconsistently and not very well. The title text expands on this joke, implying that the reason for the "unknowable" answer above is that everyone's browser shows colors slightly differently.

The "hyperdimensional four-sided quantum Klein manifold" is probably a joke. A "Klein manifold" is a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle Klein bottle]. Randall is here projecting an "abstract multidimensional gamut" onto an even more complicated surface, presumably in order to eliminate the errors in color rendering caused by previous attempts to eliminate the errors in color rendering. The Klein bottle has to be projected into 4-D space for this to work, as it would otherwise intersect with itself. This seems to actually be "a thing" in that you could do it, but not a "thing" in that nobody has done it. A "Klein Quantum" is a kind of bicycle.

Eventually it appears Randall has given up, hoping he won't have to deal with the difficulty in describing and understanding the concept of colors.

The title text indicates that, despite the complexity and thoroughness of color models, the most common software on Earth can't get it right.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Needs arrows like a flowchart}}

:Evolution of my understanding of color over time:

:Grade school
:|
:| "Color" is...
:| ...three primary colors mixed together
:| ...a rainbow, and each color is a wavelength
:| ...unknowable ("maybe what ''I'' see as blue, ''you'' see as...")
:| ...three-ish primary colors mixed together (RGB/RYB/CMYK)
:| ...a mix of infinite wavelengths filtered through three eye pigments
:| [something about the opponent color model]
:| ...an abstract multidimensional gamut (CIE 1931, L*a*b*, etc)
:| ...an abstract multidimensional gamut filtered through inconsistently-implemented device color profiles
:| ...a hyperdimensional four-sided quantum Klein manifold? Is that a thing?
:| ...hopefully somebody else's problem.
:|
:Now

{{comic discussion}}

1882: Color Models

2017-08-29T11:26:15Z

141.101.96.209: /* Explanation */ Klein bottle wiki link added

{{comic
| number = 1882
| date = August 28, 2017
| title = Color Models
| image = color_models.png
| titletext = What if what *I* see as blue, *you* see as a slightly different blue because you're using Chrome instead of Firefox and despite a decade of messing with profiles we STILL can't get this right somehow.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Randall is describing how his level of understanding of colors has changed by age. The chart starts with two tracks of understanding color.

In grade school he learned about the primary colors, and the very simple model of colors, as shown in the left track. Mixing of color solids, as in painting (or finger painting being probably the earliest exposure to color mixing), is intuitive for a child. The process is subtractive, and the more colors you mix the darker and closer to black you get. Color is seen by the eyes when light bounces off the solid colors and becomes light of different wavelengths that the eye can then see. However at this level, things just "look" like different colors without understanding light's role.

The right track is mixing of color light, as in prisms and light waves, where mixing colors is additive and the more you mix the lighter and closer to white you get. But this is without a real understanding of light bouncing off surfaces, and is limited to an understanding of different colors of light and how they mix. The first exposure in grade school is usually by shining white light through a prism to separate it into the different visible colors.

The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opponent_process opponent color model] connects these two models, by explaining how different wavelengths of light are absorbed by different rods and cones in the eyes.

The "complex multidimensional gamut" mentions two more models: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIE_1931_color_space CIE 1931] and [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lab_color_space L*a*b*]. These are more detailed models based on the opponent color model, which precisely define how a particular color maps to the different channels that our eyes see.

However, understanding how the eye sees color ''still'' isn't enough, because not every device can display all the colors your eye can see. Your laptop might have a different [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamut color gamut] than your phone, and if you printed the page out, you might see yet another color. To handle this issue, web browsers use "color profiles", so that an image can be tagged with the color space it uses and the browser can handle it appropriately. Unfortunately, browsers do this inconsistently and not very well. The title text expands on this joke, implying that the reason for the "unknowable" answer above is that everyone's browser shows colors slightly differently.

The "hyperdimensional four-sided quantum Klein manifold" is probably a joke. A "Klein manifold" is a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klein_bottle Klein bottle]. Randall is here projecting a "abstract multidimensional gamut" onto an even more complicated surface, presumably in order to eliminate the errors in color rendering caused by previous attempts to eliminate the errors in color rendering. The Klein bottle has to be projected into 4-D space for this to work, as it would otherwise intersect with itself. This seems to actually be "a thing" in that you could do it, but not a "thing" in that nobody has done it. A "Klein Quantum" is a kind of bicycle.

Eventually it appears Randall has given up, hoping he won't have to deal with the difficulty in describing and understanding the concept of colors.

The title text indicates that, despite the complexity and thoroughness of color models, the most common software on Earth can't get it right.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Needs arrows like a flowchart}}

:Evolution of my understanding of color over time:

:Grade school
:|
:| "Color" is...
:| ...three primary colors mixed together
:| ...a rainbow, and each color is a wavelength
:| ...unknowable ("maybe what ''I'' see as blue, ''you'' see as...")
:| ...three-ish primary colors mixed together (RGB/RYB/CMYK)
:| ...a mix of infinite wavelengths filtered through three eye pigments
:| [something about the opponent color model]
:| ...an abstract multidimensional gamut (CIE 1931, L*a*b*, etc)
:| ...an abstract multidimensional gamut filtered through inconsistently-implemented device color profiles
:| ...a hyperdimensional four-sided quantum Klein manifold? Is that a thing?
:| ...hopefully somebody else's problem.
:|
:Now

{{comic discussion}}