explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Disappearing Sunday Update

2025-04-24T17:10:58Z

141.101.98.177: /* Explanation */ Two typos? Added character and missing character.

{{comic
| date = August 4, 2019
| title = Disappearing Sunday Update
| image = disappearing_sunday_update.png
| titletext = This comic won't exist in the archives. NOTHING IS REAL.
| ldomain = web.archive.org/web/20190804230254/https://www
| lappend =
| extra = yes
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Use coherent sentences instead of 1-sentence paragraphs.}}The comic is a special Disappearing comic that was placed between the Friday comic [[2184: Unpopular Opinions]] but before the normal Monday comic update, which became [[2185: Cumulonimbus]].

It was, of course, released on [[:Category:Sunday comics|a Sunday]] (August 4th), becoming only the fifth comic to be released on a Sunday.

It is the first comic that was fully deleted from the xkcd archives, as it was replaced by the normal Monday update, leaving no trails on xkcd, but lots of trails in many other sites, like this one and in the [http://web.archive.org/web/20190804230254/https://www.xkcd.com/#/ Internet Archive] of the {{w|Wayback Machine}}. Also the [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/disappearing_sunday_update.png image] (and its [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/disappearing_sunday_update_2x.png 2x version]) was still on the xkcd image server after it had disappeared.

The entire comic is an advertisement for [[Randall|Randall's]] upcoming book "[[How To]]".

The entire comic was a link directly to https://xkcd.com/how-to/. This link was also mentioned in the text of the comic. But as Randall has never learned how to make a different part of an image into a different link, his [[Blag]], the other link mentioned in the text, was not linked from the comic. The link to this is https://blog.xkcd.com/. When this comic was released the top blog post was the one about the ''How To'' book.

The first part of the comic, the advertisement, included a drawing of the cover, two sets of pages, showing the open book, and a sampling of the table of contents of the book. The full table of contest can be found in the Blag post mentioned above.

The second part of the comic, the joke, shows Randall (as [[Cueball]]) at the bottom where he in advance apologized for the various bots, that automatically catalog xkcd comics, which might break because of this special comic. See more under [[#Unusual Means|Unusual Means]].

This ''Explain xkcd'' website is one example of such a page, where the bot that creates new pages, was assigning the comic a number of 2185 despite the comic not having a designated number at the time it was released.

The comic even broke the xkcd site itself as the previously released Friday comic, [[2184: Unpopular Opinions]], then had a next button that linked to comic 2185, which did not exist at time of release! So using that button from comic 2184 displayed a [[404]] error. Later this was fixed by giving this comic the number 2185, although only temporarily, see the [[#Trivia|Trivia]] section. At this time it was thus also included in the archive, see below regarding the title text.

In the title text it is stated that: ''This comic won't exist in the archives. NOTHING IS REAL.''. However, as shown in the [[#Trivia|Trivia]] section, Randall had so many problems with his plans for this comic, that he ended up making it a normal numbered comic and thus also put it into the archives, ensuring that the title text's statement was not real. But when the normal Monday comic was released it was removed from the xkcd site, and the archive. But then so was this title text, so for most of the time it was available, it was not true!

One of the bot methods mentioned may be in reference to the then-recent comic [[2180: Spreadsheets]], where [[Cueball]] debates making a real program to do a task, or to use a Google spreadsheet instead.

Two weeks later he released a permanent comic with a reference to one of the chapters in his book with [[2190: Serena Versus the Drones]].

===Unusual Means===
Randall notes that ''if you read xkcd through unusual means... ... I hope this ephemeral ghost comic doesn't break them too badly''.

Between the dots he suggested different methods of reading xkcd, other than on the {{xkcd}} home page. These methods get progressively sillier (many still need explanations). Here is a list:

; Apps
: The Android app [https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.tap.easy_xkcd easyxkcd] was broken by this comic when used in offline mode, as reported [https://github.com/tom-anders/Easy_xkcd/issues/162 here].
: An iOS app called xkcd: Open-Source is broken by this comic, permanently assigning the comic number 2185 to this comic, and not replacing it with the *actual* 2185 comic. Because of that, this comic can be viewed in the app, but the real 2185 isn’t viewable.
; Custom screen-scraping systems
: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_scraping#Screen_scraping
; Google Reader clones
: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Reader Google Reader] was an RSS/Atom aggregator that Google discontinued in 2013. Enthusiasts created a full-featured work-alike replacement, called [https://theoldreader.com/ The Old Reader.]
; Twitter bots
: Scripts that automatically post content to a designated [https://twitter.com/ Twitter] account.
; BASH scripts
: A popular Unix shell; one might, say, write a script in it to run on one's personal Unix machine, checking for a new xkcd comic and displaying it somewhere.
; Gopher portals
: [https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol/ Gopher] was a method of surfing the Internet that predated the Web (by about five months) and was vastly more popular (for about three years).
; Lynx-based ASCII art browsers
: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynx_%28web_browser%29 Lynx] is a text-based Web browser. It can launch external programs to view images, but Randall is suggesting that instead a Lynx variant might convert images to [https://www.asciiart.eu/ ASCII art], which renders images using the 94 visible ASCII keyboard characters.
; Third-party Second Life feeds
: [https://secondlife.com/ Second Life] is a virtual world that opened in 2002 and has [http://www.gridsurvey.com/charts/historicalconcurrency.png averaged about 40,000 simultaneous users for the past five years].
; RFC 2549
: An RFC is a proposal for how to run the Internet. [https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2549 RFC 2549] is about transmitting data using carrier pigeons (this was one of the earliest [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_Fools%27_Day April Fools' Day] RFCs).
; Massive Google docs sheets
: See #[[2180]].

Another unusual method is [[unixkcd]].

==Transcript==
:[Heading:]
:~Special Disappearing Sunday comic~

:[Below the header to the right are the following text:]
:I'm posting this ephemeral Sunday update to let you know that I wrote a book! It's a guide to solving everyday problems in terrible ways using science.
:It comes out next month, and it's available for preorder now.

:[Below this text is an arrow to an image of the book to the left. The arrow comes from this text:]
:The cover looks like this

:[The book is shown to the left as a black rectangle with large blue text and smaller white text. On the book cover, in white drawings, are seen Ponytail with a ladder and either Black or White Hat (hard to say on black background). Both are looking up on Cueball who is floating in the air with a quadcopter beneath either leg, trying to plug in an electric light bulb in a naked lamp hanging down near him. It seems he has already removed the broken light bulb, as he has one in both hands. And now he tries to put in the new one. He could have let Ponytail use the ladder...]
:[The header in blue above it all:] How To.
:[Sub header in white to the left of Cueball:] Absurd Scientific Answers to Common Real-world Problems
:[Author name in blue below the drawing:] Randall Munroe
:[Sub header to this below in white:] Creator of xkcd
:[Sub header to this below in white:] Author of ''what if?'' and ''Thing Explainer''

:[Below the text with the arrow to the book is the following text with an arrow pointing down to an image of two pages in the open book, shown to the right:]
:And the inside looks like this.

:[To the left of the open book are the following text:]
:Chapters include:
:'''How to charge your phone'''
:'''How to throw a pool party'''
:'''How to move'''
:'''How to build a lava moat'''
:'''How to ski'''

:[The open book to the right has almost only unreadable text. The left page shows a drawing of car in front of a trailer which is loaded with about 15 of boxes in four layers. Two stick figures are standing between the car and the trailer, talking with each other. The trailer is not attached to the car. There are some lines of text beneath the drawing and then what appears to be a chapter heading. It probably says something as "How to move", as this is mentioned as a chapter in the text to the left of these pages, but there one of two more unreadable words at the end of that heading. Beneath that the rest of the page is text and at the bottom there seems to be a footnote. The right page shows a house that seems to be floating a couple of meters above the ground, two arrows pointing up to the bottom of the house on either side. A stick figure stands to the left of the house which float at the figures head height. There is text beneath this drawing. Beneath that there is another drawing of a house towed on a truck, which speeds up a steep hill and jumps over a cliff to get to the other side. Seems like it will work. The speed of the truck seems to be very high as indicated by two curly lines indicating exhaust from the truck. It becomes three small clouds further behind the moving house. There is a footnote beneath the drawing. The driver of the truck yells as the truck jumps. This can actually be read:]
:Driver: ''Woooooo''

:[Beneath the above text and pages are another image of the open book with two other pages. This time to the left. This time there is text to the right.]

:[These book pages are also mainly unreadable. At the top of the left page is a drawing of what could be a lake. Two people seems to be standing out in the water, only heads showing above the water. A sign is standing on the brink, is may say "Sorry"? Behind the lake is some mountains in the background. Beneath the drawing is some text of, then a smaller diagram like drawing which may show some black clouds above and below a line in the middle of this drawing. One of the clouds are beneath a curly bracket which are beneath the line. The curly bracket lies down and has the same length as the cloud. Beneath this drawing is more text and then a third drawing at the bottom. Here is shown a cross section of the lake. At the left side of the lake the water is shallow and a stick figure is standing in the water on the bottom, head above water with its arms held up in the air. It is directing its attention to the four stick figure standing on the brink to the left looking at the figure in the water. To the right the lake becomes more than three times as deep. Clouds are above the lake, one large just right of the stick figure and one smaller further right. At the right edge the lakes edge is vertical. On the brink is what may be a diving board protruding over the lake. Something is lying on top of the board. And above is what seems to be another cloud. To the right of the lake is a pile of earth with what appears to be a large black Nuclear bomb (with the nuclear icon on it) stuck with its tip in the pile. On the right page is a line coming down from the top, which then turns to the right ending in an arrow. There is a line of text above the horizontal part of the line. The arrow points to a large heading in two rows. (See below). Beneath the heading are a few lines of text. Then a drawing of a torn map (like an old treasure map whit a X at the end of a trail marked with dots. Mountains indicated with small "^" and coast line is visible. There seems to be text beneath the X. There are text beneath the drawing. Beneath that are a header with a line beneath it, and then text beneath the line.]
:How to Dig a Hole

:[To the right of these pages are the following text:]
:You can learn more and preorder it at '''xkcd.com/how-to'''
:And read an excerpt at '''blog.xkcd.com'''

:[Beneath all this Randall (drawn as Cueball) is telling about the problem this disappearing comic may cause:]
:Randall: If you read xkcd through unusual means, including apps, custom screen-scraping systems, Google reader clones, Twitter bots, bash scripts, gopher portals, lynx-based ASCII art browsers, third-party Second Life feeds, RFC 2549, or massive google docs sheets full of =IMPORTHTML() and =IMAGE() formulas, I hope this ephemeral ghost comic doesn't break them too badly.
:Randall: It will disappear with the normal Monday update.
:Randall: (At least, I think it will. I've never tried this before. So I'm honestly not sure what the server will do.)

==Trivia==
*This August 4th 2019 [[:Category:Sunday comics|Sunday comic]] was first posted on the front page without any number relating to it. Thus breaking the next comic button on xkcd.
**Since it was scheduled to be deleted on Monday August 5th 2019, when the next comic arrives on xkcd, it was not supposed to have a number or be in the archive. But seems like this caused too many problems for the xkcd site it self (not just for all the other sites Randall jokes about).
**So later it was given the next number in the comic list (2185) and was also included in the archive for the duration of its stay on the xkcd front page.
**It was later removed from the archive and 2185 was assigned to the Monday comic [[2185: Cumulonimbus]].
*Here are some pictures documenting that the comic at some point between release and the next comics release worked like a normal comic with number 2185 as shown in the web address at the top.
*[[File:Disappearing Sunday Update with number 2185.png|750px]]
*It was also part of the archive with the release date showing correctly when hovering over the title:
*[[File:Archive with Disappearing Sunday Update and date.png]]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Extra comics]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Randall Munroe]] 
[[Category:Book promotion]]
[[Category:How To]]
[[Category:Comics with color]] 
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]
[[Category:Deleted comics]]
[[Category:Footnotes]]

2510: Modern Tools

2021-09-02T09:47:22Z

141.101.98.177:

{{comic
| number = 2510
| date = September 1, 2021
| title = Modern Tools
| image = modern_tools.png
| titletext = I tried to train an AI to repair my Python environment but it kept giving up and deleting itself.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by MODERN TOOLS THAT HAS NOW DELETED THEMSELVES - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[[Cueball]] tells [[White Hat]] how he has trained a {{w|artificial neural network|neural net}} to generate mostly valid {{w|Make_(software)#Makefile|Makefiles}}.

This is the file type that the {{w|Make (software)|Make}} searches for. In software development, Make is a build automation tool that automatically builds executable programs and libraries from source code by reading files called Makefiles which specify how to derive the target program. (See [[2173: Trained a Neural Net]]).

Then Cueball continues to tell that he next will train it to distinguish between Bash and Zsh.

{{w|Bash (Unix shell)|Bash}} and {{w|Z_shell|Zsh}} are two {{w|Command-line_interface|command line interfaces}} for {{w|Unix-like}} OSes. The way to execute commands is almost identical, making detecting a script that contains a mixed syntax nearly impossible. This was previously referenced in [[1678: Recent Searches]].

A human-designed 'random Makefile'-maker might have been written with this explicit choice amongst the earlier decisions in the generation process, but an AI might be assumed to have started (many, many generations ago) with something close to utter nonsense and painstakingly reached the stage of (mostly!) valid files along the way. Some might say that the differentiation functionality would have been better at another point in the lengthy process.

On top of that, the current (mostly valid) results may even be {{w|Polyglot (computing)|polyglot}} and/or {{w|Agnostic (data)|shell-agnostic}}. Dependant upon the {{w|Fitness function|fitness tests}} in use, many other {{w|List of command-line interpreters|$SHELL}}-choices and Makefile styles may have been coevolved as valid (if rarer) subgenus of outputs, such as a ''command.com''-based makefile.

In the caption it states that Cueball is using modern tools to make ancient technology, as opposed to other people who use ancient tools and UIs ({{w|User interface}}) to develop Modern Tools.

In the title text Randall states that he tried to train an AI ({{w|Artificial intelligence}}) to repair his {{w|Python (programming language)|Python}} environment. But the AI kept giving up and deleting itself. The joke is that the AI was so intelligent that it was either so appalled by the task, or found it impossible to fix the environment that it committed a form of suicide. [[Python]] has been a recurring subject as has [[:Category:Programming|Programming]] and [[:Category:Artificial Intelligence|Artificial Intelligence]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting on an office chair at his desk typing on his laptop. White Hat is standing behind the desk looking at Cueball.]
:Cueball: Okay, I've got this neural net generating mostly valid makefiles.
:Cueball: Next I'm going to train it to distinguish between Bash and Zsh...

:[Caption below the panel:]
:People often use ancient tools and UIs to develop modern cutting-edge technology, but I do it the other way around.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]]

Talk:1769: Never Seen Star Wars

2016-12-09T15:21:48Z

141.101.98.177:

Star Wars, pronounced Star Wors, was a very successful sci-fi action adventure movie from the 70s. Due to the success of the film, a sequel was made and is generally considered better than the first. The two movies are so iconic that someone who has not seen one or both of them would be considered unusual. Other sequals have been made, keeping the fanbase of the material constantly hoping for a 3rd movie that is on par with the firat two. Sadly, no such conclusion to the trilogy has arrived. Instead, each attempted sequel(more than half a dozen now) has been not much more than a 90 minute insult to the good taste and intelligence of the fans. This continued abuse of the star wars fanbase has prompted many former fans of the series to forgo watching recent releases, and to disavow ever seeing the original work in the first place. It appears that some of the cast of xkcd be doing likewise.{{unsigned ip|172.68.79.83}}
:DAFUQ?? Seriously, just no...{{unsigned ip|108.162.242.98}}
:The prequels were horrificly bad, but Episode VI was about as good as the original two, and Episode VII is actually better. Also, not including the first two movies, there are 5 sequals/prequals (6 if you include the unreleased Rogue One). That's not over 6. Also, everyone seems to agree that the 3 prequals are the only bad ones in the series (yet). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.2.60|162.158.2.60]] 10:10, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
::Some people found the Ewoks annoying. [[User:Jkshapiro|Jkshapiro]] ([[User talk:Jkshapiro|talk]]) 13:37, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

My first time providing an explanation and transcript! For once I'm early enough, understand the joke, AND had time! LOL! Be kind... :)

(Hey, if I had an account would I still have to do those damned Captchas?) - NiceGuy1 [[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.227|162.158.126.227]] 06:54, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
:I assume your account would have to be autoconfirmed. That means its having over a certain "age" and over a certain edit count. I think the age is a couple of days and the edit threshold is fifteen, though this wiki may have those values configured differently. <span style="background:#0064de;font-size:12px;padding:4px 12px;border-radius:8px;">[[User talk:AgentMuffin|<span style="color:#f0faff;">~AgentMuffin</span>]]</span>

You mean it is not a reference to the BBC Radio 4 show. As an experience I will give XKCD 9/10. {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.183}}
: It is the go-to example of a film that 'everyone' has seen. Added a not to this effect, although I feel it could be better phrased. Surprised TVTropes doesn't have a page on this. [[User:Luckykaa|Luckykaa]] ([[User talk:Luckykaa|talk]]) 12:34, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
:: Fan Myopia is the assumption that a work you like is more popular than it is.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.177|141.101.98.177]] 15:21, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

--

I added a few speculations about the number of people who actually have seen the movies (or one of them). If someone find a decent reference feel free to edit that. I also noticed one word play, not sure if it should be explained or not, but probably. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.89|141.101.80.89]] 09:44, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
:The issue with the numbers is that making them worldwide seems to miss the point and ends up being rather misleading. After all, any third world country is likely to have roughly 0 viewers, which brings the statistics down. It has been my impression that the feeling that everybody has seen Star Wars is a very North American thing, especially in America. And the cast of XKCD generally seem to reside in America. Of the billion people estimated viewers, I suspect a FAR higher percentage of them are North American than the precentage of North Americans to the world population (in other words, North America is over-represented in that billion). In the end, the assumption that everybody you encounter while in North America has seen them is actually a fairly reasonably assumption, while a percentage of 15% makes it sound like it's not. Also, there's the implied qualifier of opportunity. Cueball could easily have chosen to watch the films at some point, while there are many people worldwide for whom it has never been an option. And this comic is more about choosing not to, exercising their default option as it were. :) - NiceGuy1 [[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.227|162.158.126.227]] 04:06, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
::The author above did mention that distinction but didn't supply any numbers so I took that part out. If we can get a good estimate of the proportion of Americans who have watched the movies then yes, let's use that. [[User:Jkshapiro|Jkshapiro]] ([[User talk:Jkshapiro|talk]]) 13:37, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Is there any canonical evidence Vader didn't eat Jedi though? In the prequel films, he only kills Jedi off-screen. In A New Hope, when he kills Obi-Wan, Obi-Wan disappears. Maybe he just went hungry that day. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.143|141.101.98.143]] 11:38, 7 December 2016 (UTC)
:Isn't there at least one scene in the prequel trilogy of Anakin eating something? Along with that, Vader has to have his helmet on outside his meditation chamber (evidenced by Luke saying Vader will die if Luke takes his helmet off in RotJ). It would be logical that Vader gets his nutrition intravenously or in a smoothie/drink form that he can ingest through his helmet, and Jedi are notoriously hard to turn into a smoothie. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.40|108.162.238.40]]
::Jedi don't have to be the only part of his diet, and we don't know when in Vader's life he starts eating Jedi. Vader presumably drags them back to the meditation chamber when he wants to feast properly. He appears to have the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W9ZMb0GOqfo teeth] to do it. Maybe when he's too desperate for Jedi flesh, he blends Jedi corpses using either mechanical or force means. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.143|141.101.98.143]] 19:10, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

--
I think that the explanation should point out that the author differently form cueball is actually a huge fan of the saga with a vast knowlage of the SW lore including obscure expanded universe publications [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.184|141.101.98.184]] 16:01, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

--
It's missing any comment on the "superpower" bit. I'm not sure where to add it and kind of rushed now, so I just leave this note to maybe prod someone else... [[User:MAP|MAP]] ([[User talk:MAP|talk]]) 16:30, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

I think it's time for a Star Wars remake. Like start with the first movie (ep iv). Maybe I'm wrong but I think young people nowadays don't enjoy sci-fi/action movies without a lot of CG. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.218|162.158.91.218]] 06:38, 8 December 2016 (UTC)
: Disney did that already, and called it ''Episode VII''. Unless you consider "reboot" to be separate from "remake" for some reason. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.58.226|162.158.58.226]] 18:44, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

As a fan dear god I hope the idea to remake the originals does not catch on. The re-releases were bad enough.

He's updated it with the lines added to the first pannel. [[User:Halfhat|Halfhat]] ([[User talk:Halfhat|talk]]) 14:33, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

I used to be like Cueball. And then I ''grew the hell up'' and realized that avoiding good movies is the least normal thing of all[[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.72|162.158.255.72]] 21:57, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Template:w

2015-04-06T02:18:50Z

141.101.98.177: Reverting to Revision as of 01:59, 5 March 2013 by Davidy22

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A template to make a link to wikipedia.

==Usage==
*<nowiki>{{w}}</nowiki> by itself links to the wikipedia page for the page you use the template on
**{{w}}
*<nowiki>{{w|Page}}</nowiki> links to the wikipedia article on "Page"
**{{w|Page}}
*<nowiki>{{w|Page|Display}}</nowiki> prints "Display" which links to the wikipedia article on "Page"
**{{w|Page|Display}}

[[Category:Templates]]
</noinclude>

Talk:925: Cell Phones

2014-11-22T10:20:41Z

141.101.98.177:

On first read I thought the joke is that the cell phone graph shape (somewhat) closely mimics the shape of the cancer graph, including the part where it begins to level off - implying that one linearly correlates with the other, with a 20 year delay (a typical time it takes for cancer to manifest, except in this case it's backwards). ultramage 14:17, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

That and the fact the graph is out by a scale factor of 1000 is always a fun way to screw over how the statistics look.{{unsigned ip|82.16.27.115}}

Nah b', it's 2000.{{unsigned ip|76.67.97.246}}

::The real problem with the graph is that it makes it look like cancer rates have increased from near-zero levels to way higher since 1970, until you actually read the Y axis and see that it's gone from about 400 (per 100,000) to about 475. This is an increase of only 18.75%, as opposed to the visual appearance of a 300% increase. Hats off to Black Hat!! [[Special:Contributions/108.28.72.186|108.28.72.186]] 01:18, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I thought the laptop joke was that some people believe not to put it on your lap because it messes with your reproductive organs! ~JFreund
:But you know now you are wrong, correct? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.223|108.162.219.223]] 06:59, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
:If your laptop starts messing with your reproductive organs, you may want to either tell an adult, or stop taking drugs (or possibly take more drugs). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.218|108.162.237.218]] 06:45, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I originally thought that the graph was supposed to show that an increase in cellphone use caused a decrease in cancer. I'm not sure why Randell didn't go with that conclusion, as it seems way more obvious to make when you look at tha graph, and it's humorously the opposite of what people are saying. Still very silly, of course :p [[User:Maplestrip|Maplestrip]] ([[User talk:Maplestrip|talk]]) 08:37, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Why does the title text explanation refer to panel 2? From what I can see the title text either refers to a) you should not hold your laptop by its screen as it may damage it (in panel 2) or b) you should not not rest your laptop on your lap as it may overheat and damage you (in panel 4). I think a) makes more sense since the comic refers to how black hat "holds" the laptop, but I can also see that b) references the subject of the comic. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.177|141.101.98.177]] 10:19, 22 November 2014 (UTC)

Talk:925: Cell Phones

2014-11-22T10:19:48Z

141.101.98.177:

On first read I thought the joke is that the cell phone graph shape (somewhat) closely mimics the shape of the cancer graph, including the part where it begins to level off - implying that one linearly correlates with the other, with a 20 year delay (a typical time it takes for cancer to manifest, except in this case it's backwards). ultramage 14:17, 22 December 2012 (UTC)

That and the fact the graph is out by a scale factor of 1000 is always a fun way to screw over how the statistics look.{{unsigned ip|82.16.27.115}}

Nah b', it's 2000.{{unsigned ip|76.67.97.246}}

::The real problem with the graph is that it makes it look like cancer rates have increased from near-zero levels to way higher since 1970, until you actually read the Y axis and see that it's gone from about 400 (per 100,000) to about 475. This is an increase of only 18.75%, as opposed to the visual appearance of a 300% increase. Hats off to Black Hat!! [[Special:Contributions/108.28.72.186|108.28.72.186]] 01:18, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

I thought the laptop joke was that some people believe not to put it on your lap because it messes with your reproductive organs! ~JFreund
:But you know now you are wrong, correct? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.223|108.162.219.223]] 06:59, 21 January 2014 (UTC)
:If your laptop starts messing with your reproductive organs, you may want to either tell an adult, or stop taking drugs (or possibly take more drugs). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.218|108.162.237.218]] 06:45, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

I originally thought that the graph was supposed to show that an increase in cellphone use caused a decrease in cancer. I'm not sure why Randell didn't go with that conclusion, as it seems way more obvious to make when you look at tha graph, and it's humorously the opposite of what people are saying. Still very silly, of course :p [[User:Maplestrip|Maplestrip]] ([[User talk:Maplestrip|talk]]) 08:37, 31 October 2014 (UTC)

Why does the title text explanation refer to panel 2? From what I can see the title text either refers to a) you should not hold your laptop by its screen as it may damage it (in panel 2) or b) you should not not rest your laptop on your lap as it may overheat and damage you (in panel 4). I think a) makes more sense the comic refers to how black hat "holds" the laptop, but I can also see that b) references the subject of the comic. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.177|141.101.98.177]] 10:19, 22 November 2014 (UTC)