explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1690: Time-Tracking Software

2024-04-30T17:07:20Z

172.68.253.143:

I don't know how to interpret the "This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it." on the List of sexually active popes wiki page.
[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.224|141.101.104.224]] 10:19, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
:They're asking you to become a pope, and be sexually active. Then you can get arrested, and do a helicopter prison escape to start the 'List of helicopter prison escapes involving sexually active popes.' {{unsigned ip|162.158.26.140}}
:It's because we can't know for sure if every single pope is secretly sexually active or if it's just limited to the ones caught red-handed. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.5|141.101.98.5]] 11:35, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
:Another interpretation: seduce the pope. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.85.99|162.158.85.99]] 15:39, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
::It can also be interpreted as to CONVICT pope of sexual activity. While the "became pope" and "seduce the pope" are funnier, convicting popes may be easier, as you are not limited to current and future ones, but can convict already dead popes after-the-fact by finding new evidence. Or forging some. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 16:49, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Those ''estimated'' percentages have a strangely high degree of precision, I'd think limiting them to whole number percentages would do. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.58|141.101.98.58]] 11:48, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Replacing lightsabers in Star Wars movies may be a reference to this amusing video of the sword fight in The Princess Bride where swords are replaced with light sabers.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYVQooRSlzg {{unsigned ip|173.245.52.69}}

The Jack and Diane remix with one line repeated may be a reference to svantana's brilliant re-do of a Human League number: http://svantana.bandcamp.com/track/you-were-workin-as-a-waitress-in-a-cocktail-bar [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.109|108.162.245.109]] 13:31, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
:This is the greatest thing in the history of all remixes. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.49|173.245.54.49]] 03:01, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
:That was the stupidest thing that I have ever exposed my ears to, and I loved every second of it.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.102|108.162.216.102]] 20:14, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

Look what {{w|List of helicopter prison escapes involving sexually active popes|some loser tried to actually make}}, to no one's surprise..... [[User:Schiffy|Schiffy]] ([[User_talk:Schiffy|Speak to me]]|[[Special:Contributions/Schiffy|What I've done]]) 17:07, 6 June 2016 (UTC)
:Anyone took a copy before the page was deleted? {{unsigned ip|108.162.229.49}}
::I just took a look on the Wayback Machine, and unfortunately the first and only archive is after the deletion. If anyone knows of any other archive websites....-[[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.69|108.162.215.69]] 05:30, 7 June 2016 (UTC)
::From Google cache - [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:NIJDh4TsExwJ:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_helicopter_prison_escapes_involving_sexually_active_popes+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us List of helicopter prison escapes involving sexually active popes]--[[User:Attempt15|Attempt15]] ([[User talk:Attempt15|talk]]) 18:22, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

Notice that the last successful helicopter prison escape was exactly two years ago.. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.86.35|162.158.86.35]] 06:49, 7 June 2016 (UTC)

One thing that this comic brings to the table is that the managing effort to increase productivity usually has a significant (and many times negative) impact on productivity itself. In this graphic, the installation took him nearly 25% of his time. He'd be significantly more productive if he wasn't using any time tracking software at all.
[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.115|141.101.98.115]] 14:58, 8 June 2016 (UTC) duartix

:I agree that losing productivity on time tracking software is more likely than actually getting some productivity advantage from it. If the things you are doing needs to be done, finding out how long they took won't help. If they are useless, you don't need to find out how much time they take to prove that. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 16:49, 20 June 2016 (UTC)

Why has no one yet done a Jack and Diane remix as proposed here?
Update 2021, someone has: https://twitter.com/tommcgovern27/status/1360368299121532930

[https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2024-04/venice-awaits-for-pope-francis1.html On April 27, 2024 pope Francis visited Venice.] And he actually arrived and departed by helicopter in the yard of a women's prison. He probably did not have sex with any of the prisoners, and did not help any of them to escape, but the event reminded me of the "List of helicopter prison escapes involving sexually active popes" immediately, so I just wanted to share it here. --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.253.143|172.68.253.143]] 17:07, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

2911: Greenland Size

2024-03-26T19:06:09Z

172.68.253.143: add italics from the original (here as upright since the whole quote is in italic)

{{comic
| number = 2911
| date = March 25, 2024
| title = Greenland Size
| image = greenland_size_2x.png
| imagesize = 262x304px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The Mercator projection drastically distorts the size of almost every area of land except a small ring around the North and South Poles.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a GREEN LAND FOR ANTS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Because the Earth is {{w|Empirical evidence for the spherical shape of Earth|curved}}, all flat maps have some distortion. (A common comparison is flattening an orange peel, which cannot be done without tearing and wrinkling it.) Different {{w|map projection}}s can distort different {{w|Map projection#Metric properties of maps|metric properties}}, such as distances, areas, and angles, while leaving others intact. It can be desirable to preserve different metrics in different applications.

The {{w|Mercator projection}}, depicted in the comic, prioritizes depicting correct angles. This allows for easy course planning at sea, and makes shapes fairly accurate. In exchange, Mercator is often criticized for distorting size: distances near the poles look larger than the same distance near the {{w|equator}}. A common complaint is that {{w|Greenland}} appears as big on the map as {{w|Africa}}, when Africa actually has 14 times as much area as Greenland. When these size distortions are presented out of context, they can create bias and misconceptions about different places.

[[Cueball]]'s dialogue leads the reader to expect this complaint. However, instead of comparing ''relative'' sizes of two landmasses within the map, [[Cueball]] compares the ''absolute'' sizes of the depiction of Greenland and the actual Greenland. On a typical world map, Greenland might be centimeters or inches across. Judging from the human characters, the mapped Greenland in this comic might be 10 cm across. In real life, Greenland is about 650 miles or 1,050 km across from east to west ([//britannica.com/place/Greenland source]). Cueball deems this difference misleading, presenting it as a failure of this specific map or projection.

Of course, this is absurd. The purpose of any map is to present information much more compactly so that it is easy to read and interpret. Any actual-size world map would have to be the size of the Earth's surface, in which case it would have few uses. In addition, if a map includes a {{w|Scale (map)|scale}}, it is easy to use the ratio to calculate the actual size of the places depicted.

The title text is about the fact that a horizontal line on a worldwide Mercator projection corresponds to a line of latitude. Most lines of latitude are thousands of miles (kilometers) long, but they become smaller and smaller approaching the poles, and in fact there ''is'' a line of latitude in a small-diameter circle around each pole whose length would equal the width of the map that Cueball is looking at. If Cueball's map were 1 m wide, then this line of latitude would be at 89.999998568° N or S - that is, the line of latitude there would be one circle for each of the poles with a circumference of 1 m.

A map at a scale of 1:1 was discussed in {{w|Lewis Carroll}}'s "{{w|Sylvie and Bruno Concluded}}":

<blockquote>
''"What a useful thing a pocket-map is!" I remarked.'' 
''"That's another thing we've learned from ''your'' Nation," said Mein Herr, "map-making. But we've carried it much further than ''you''. What do you consider the ''largest'' map that would be really useful?"'' 
''"About six inches to the mile."'' 
''"Only ''six inches''!" exclaimed Mein Herr. "We very soon got to six ''yards'' to the mile. Then we tried a ''hundred'' yards to the mile. And then came the grandest idea of all! We actually made a map of the country, on the scale of ''a mile to the mile''!"'' 
''"Have you used it much?" I enquired.'' 
''"It has never been spread out, yet," said Mein Herr: "the farmers objected: they said it would cover the whole country, and shut out the sunlight! So we now use the country itself, as its own map, and I assure you it does nearly as well."''
</blockquote>

The same idea was expanded in {{w|Jorge Luis Borges}}'s "{{w|On Exactitude in Science}}".

Mercator projections have been mentioned previously in [[977: Map Projections]], [[2082: Mercator Projection]], and [[2613: Bad Map Projection: Madagascator]].

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

:[Cueball and White Hat are looking at a world map on the wall showing a Mercator projection, with Cueball gesturing with his hand towards the map.]
:Cueball: This map is really misleading about the size of Greenland.
:Cueball: It's actually '''''much''''' bigger than that - it's hundreds of miles across.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Maps]]
[[Category:Geography]]

Talk:2897: Light Leap Years

2024-02-21T18:23:23Z

172.68.253.143:

Not that it effects the joke, but the Gregorian calendar has 97 leap years per 400 year cycle. I was surprised that I was surprised by that. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.115|162.158.63.115]] 16:23, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

"...never been a papal starship..." - If this upsets you, read Hyperion! [[Special:Contributions/172.71.142.67|172.71.142.67]] 17:12, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

"Note: Lightsecond was chosen instead of the more familiar lightyear to make sure that layouts computed during leap years would be unambiguously identical to those computed during non-leap years." (from https://drafts.csswg.org/css-egg-1/#astro-units) --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.253.143|172.68.253.143]] 18:23, 21 February 2024 (UTC)