explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2490: Pre-Pandemic Ketchup

2021-07-17T19:35:18Z

162.158.107.233:

is this cueball or randall? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.235|173.245.54.235]] 15:47, 16 July 2021 (UTC)Bumpf
:It's Randall writing pandemic comics (which aren't nearly as funny or quirky as some of his earlier work). I wouldn't mind it so much if he somehow included the more nerdy/geeky aspects (like maybe something to do with the genome, or with computer science, etc.). [[Special:Contributions/172.68.143.4|127.0.0.1]] 16:34, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
::What's with the weird signature? If you really want to be localhost, I don't think there's anything to stop you registering 127․0․0․1 as a username, but manually entering a signature with a link to the wrong contributions page is a little weird. [[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 10:39, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

i don't get it. ketchup keeps basically forever. i'd consider a bottle from early 2020 practically fresh. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.182|162.158.92.182]] 19:58, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
: I don' think the issue is "freshness", but that Cueball panic bought a "new" or "strange" brand, that they no longer are interested in trying or eating. Compare to the title text "discard the last weird food item". [[Special:Contributions/172.70.98.2|172.70.98.2]] 20:53, 16 July 2021 (UTC)
: Ketchup keeps basically forever when refrigerated. Not everybody does that (though I do). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.222|108.162.245.222]] 07:31, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I even have pre-apprenticeship sugar sprinkles. And I'm currently in my third job. [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 21:48, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

My reading of it is that they ''once'' might have bought that brand (maybe regularly, maybe as a 'try it and see'), and yet for some reason (perhaps through a combination of other people panic buying in the early days, later on just rushing in and out of stores with what is truly wanted, any online/curb-pickup options being more limited or just less compulsive buying without lingering by those oh-so-attractive "end of shelf" consumer-trap displays) it was not bought again as various degrees of lockdowns hit. (It also seems not to have suffered the fate of "we haven't had a proper shop in days, how about if we combine our last tin of soup with those cornflakes and further drench it with whatever random sauces we can find?" first-world-problem desparation. Maybe it was just ''too'' far back in the cupboard, crushed behind the tons of panic-bought toiletroll/etc?). Whatever the full implications of its existence, there's clearly no nostalgia for it. Or a new favourite has been adopted after discovering it as a promoted item by the online shopping site, and this older and less exciting ketchup just aint gonna cut the mustard any more? ...but there's a lot of "if"s and "or"s and "maybe"s in my interpretation, and I have no confidence I'm consistently, or even partially, interpretting it as it was intended to be. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.152|141.101.98.152]] 22:03, 16 July 2021 (UTC)

Is it worth mentioning that this appears to be the very kitchen from 2178: Expiration Date High Score? [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 02:18, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
:Not the same kitchen - upper cabinet has shelves here (vs. door there). Lower cabinet has door and drawer that stick out (vs. just a drawer pull in High Score). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.139|172.69.63.139]] 19:02, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Covid-19 post-desease side affect is change of taste. Certainly things with Sauer taste like pickles and ketchup will teste totally different than before covid-19 illnesses. Typical before you liked them a lot, and now they taste totally different and awful. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.54.225|172.69.54.225]] 11:36, 17 July 2021 (UTC)
: Your taste is [[326: Effect an Effect|affect]]<nowiki>ed</nowiki> post-Covid? I didn't know taste had the ability to display emotions. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.233|162.158.107.233]] 19:35, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

I wonder if this cartoon is also a play on catch up? There are many things which have been postponed or slowed down by the pandemic response. For instance, medical procedures (elective surgeries, cancer screening, routine immunizations, dental cleanings) delayed because providers were busy or from fear of exposure, also large gatherings (e.g., weddings). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.62.9|172.69.62.9]] 19:13, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

606: Cutting Edge

2021-07-12T20:39:47Z

162.158.107.233:

{{comic
| number = 606
| date = July 6, 2009
| title = Cutting Edge
| image = cutting_edge.png
| titletext = I remember trying to log in to the original Command and Conquer servers a year or two back and feeling like I was knocking on the boarded-up gates of a ghost town.
}}

==Explanation==

''{{w|Half-Life 2}}'' is a computer game, specifically a {{w|first-person shooter}}, released in 2004. In the above comic, [[Cueball]] plays the game in 2009 since newer games usually require more recent and powerful computers which are more costly. However, even a very weak computer developed in 2009 will comfortably run a 2004 game as the technologies are much more likely to "match up". Newer games simply require more CPU power, more RAM and pricier graphics add-ons.

Additionally, the price for an older game is considerably less than those of the more recent variety. Even the price of a once-new, highly anticipated {{w|Video game industry#Economics|AAA}} game is almost definitely guaranteed to have fallen due to the presence of newer games and the relative maturity of the present game. Most of the expected sales of a game happen near the release. A game would not be deemed that lucrative after 5 years, prompting a price drop to justify its sales or even printing. Sometimes, a game will be released with several, if not all, expansion packs at a fraction of the price of purchasing them all separately during the initial release.

However, the downside to Cueball's strategy is that your gaming knowledge will be five years out of date. In a subculture that moves as fast as video games, it's almost impossible for Cueball to embarrass himself harder.

On the last panel, "The cake is a lie" and "This was a triumph" are references to ''{{w|Portal (video game)|Portal}}'', a video game released in late 200'''7'''. The cake references originate from the promises of cake that {{w|GLaDOS}}, a character in the game, makes to the player. Exploring the levels reveals several hiding places that seem to have been used, in one of which the player can find the words "The cake is a lie" repeatedly scrawled on the wall. As predicted, ''Portal'' was indeed considered old-fashioned by early 2013, with the developers themselves stating they were sick and tired of the endlessly parroted jokes. Both ''Portal'' and ''Half-Life 2'' were released by the same company, {{w|Valve Corporation|Valve}}, and ''{{w|Portal 2}}'' was released in 2011.

The song "{{w|Still Alive}}", which the lyric "This was a triumph" comes from, was previously referenced in [[375: Pod Bay Doors]], and later referenced in [[1141: Two Years]].

The title text also points to another flaw in this strategy: multi-player gaming requires other players, so if you play a game five years after everybody else, there's nobody else to play with. It's even worse with online gaming, as the company hosting the online server may have shut it down a long time ago.

==Transcript==
:[Megan is standing. Cueball sits at a computer.]
:Megan: Where've you been all week?
:Cueball: Playing Half-Life 2!
:Megan: ...that came out in 2004.

:Cueball: I get games on a five-year lag. That way, I never have to buy a high-end system, but get the same steadily-advancing gaming experience as people who do - and at a fraction of the price.

:Cueball: There are no downsides!
:Megan: I can think of ''one''...

:[Early 2013.]
:Cueball: Guys!
:Cueball: The cake is a lie!
:[Musical notes surround an italic line, suggesting Cueball is singing.]
:Cueball: ''This was a triumph.''
:Cueball: The cake is a lie!
:Megan and a Friend: ''Sigh''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Video games]]

2485: Nightmare Code

2021-07-06T17:27:35Z

162.158.107.233: /* Alphabet comes from Greek not Phoenician alphabet. */

{{comic
| number = 2485
| date = July 5, 2021
| title = Nightmare Code
| image = nightmare_code.png
| titletext = Charsets even used to be known as 'alpha-bets' before that word's obvious negative associations caused it to die out.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SCARY ONGOING NANOBOT SWARM, for real human behaviors are so useful! Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic is another in a [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] related to the {{w|2019–20 coronavirus outbreak|2020 pandemic}} of the {{w|coronavirus}} {{w|SARS-CoV-2}}, which causes {{w|COVID-19}}.

It is the (far) future and, due to the mists of time, humans seem to have generally forgotten the Greek language. Its writing system survives in the public consciousness only as a means of assigning names to nightmarish phenomena.

A person using futuristic technology is giving a presentation or lecture. The content of his projected screen includes the first four letters of the Greek alphabet, which he refers to as the Nightmare Code. The presenter expects that the list is familiar to his audience, but that it is novel information to them that it used to have a purpose other than providing arbitrary names to hurricanes, virus variants, and nanobot swarms.

Hurricanes and tropical storms are {{w|Tropical_cyclone_naming|named}} once they have sustained wind speeds of 33 knots (61 km/h; 38 mph) or more. The names for these storms go from A-W each year (each letter has a name randomly chosen from a predefined list), with {{w|Tropical_cyclone_naming|21 names allocated each yearly period}}. When the 21 names are exhausted, Greek letters were once used to continue naming storms as needed, although the World Meteorological Organization decided not to use Greek letters when naming storms from 2021 onward. Perhaps in this vision of the future, the naming lists have given way to using the Greek alphabet exclusively.

Virus variants may also be {{w|Variants_of_SARS-CoV-2|given names}} once they are deemed sufficiently nightmarish. At the time of this writing, eleven variants of {{w|SARS-CoV-2}} have been labeled with Greek letters. Previously, variants were named informally for the region in which they were identified (as were many viruses themselves), but this practice has ceased due to risks of discrimination and the {{w|perverse incentive}} of countries to suppress health information for the sake of saving face. A place may become (in)famously known as the origin of a disease by such a name, even if it originated elsewhere; an example is {{w|Spanish flu}}, which was actually first observed in Kansas, USA. Nowadays vague names such as 'bird flu' or partly-informed geographic names tend to be better referenced by their {{w|hemagglutinin}} and {{w|neuraminidase}} subtypes, such as "H1N1" and "H9N2". The more technical coronavirus identification system uses a term such as "lineage B.1.617.2", whose awkwardness makes it unlikely to replace better-known names such as the "Kent variant" or "Indian variant".

Another set of historic nightmares the audience clearly knows about, which are still in our own future, are nanobot swarms, presumably nanoengineering failures and/or deliberate misuses of nanotechnology of the {{w|Gray goo}} type. Significant recurring or sequential events have seemingly earned the need to differentiate their outbreaks, and Greek letters have been used to do this. One may even be tempted to speculate that the futuristic figure and his presentation equipment float in space because the Earth has been rendered uninhabitable as a result of one or more of said nanotechnology disasters.

The cultural forgetfulness about the neutral basis of the old letters, after perhaps who-knows-what nanobot disasters that may have scoured the Earth clean of all things Greek, has led to no other common use for them ''except'' for their use in identifying far too many crises. The words themselves thus are instantly associated to bad times for almost everyone.

The title text indicates that future people stopped using the term "alphabet" (which derives from the first two elements of the Greek alphabet) due to negative associations of the word "alpha" which caused the word Alphabet to fall out of casual use in the future. It is now called Charset, for character sets.

==Transcript==
:[A Cueball-like person is giving a presentation while wearing futuristic gear, including a visor with an antenna rising from it, a backpack-like appliance of some kind, and a futuristic pointer. The audience is not pictured. The presenter is floating rather than standing. The presentation is projected from a small device near the bottom of the frame, and the appearance of the presentation suggests it is a hologram. The content of the slide shows the names of the first four letters of the Greek alphabet:]
:Alpha
:Beta
:Gamma
:Delta

:Presenter: We all know the '''''Nightmare Code''''', used to assign neutral names to scary ongoing lists, such as hurricanes, virus variants, and nanobot swarms.
:Presenter: But did you know it actually originated as the letters of an ancient Earth language?

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]]
[[Category:Hurricanes]]
[[Category:Biology]]

2480: No, The Other One

2021-06-23T20:36:05Z

162.158.107.233: /* Explanation */ basic joke explanation

{{comic
| number = 2480
| date = June 23, 2021
| title = No, The Other One
| image = no_the_other_one.png
| titletext = Key West, Virginia is not to be confused with Key, West Virginia.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SIMILIARLY NAMED PLACE. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic is a joke about the number of places (specifically in the US) that share the name of a different, more famous place.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Maps]]