explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2752: Salt Dome

2023-03-22T16:01:00Z

172.69.134.36: reply

Made a guess. [[User:No Idea If There's A Character Limit LMAO|By me.]] ([[User talk:No Idea If There's A Character Limit LMAO|talk]]) 22:39, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Odd that Beret Guy’s not the one doing it. We’ve seen White Hat act a normal extra character before, but having Beret Guy in a comic not doing anything strange feels wrong. [[User:Intara|Intara]] ([[User talk:Intara|talk]]) 04:09, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
: Agree. [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 08:37, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
:: I have just mentioned this in the explanation and compared Cueball's power with Beret Guys strange powers. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:39, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
:: My reading of it is that Beret Guy does strange things because he doesn't truly understand how things work (the way that scientific consensus understands, c.f. Vacuum Energy). This geologist is doing a strange thing because he is ''just so good'' at the regular science he knows. Success through hypercompetancy, not hypernaïvity, in modulating pressure-waves (like a phased-array transmitter?) from the four chair-leg points sent through ''theoretically'' knowable layers of floor and bedrock.
:: It's a stretch, but given the changes needed to put Beret Guy into protagonist position (it'd be just "don't ask this guy...", not a geologist) then I think it's a perfectly valid compositional choice on behalf of Randall. (Who can do as he likes, without my trying to be apologist for him, but I'll explain my conclusions anyway.) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.64|172.71.178.64]] 10:28, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

The text mentions the UK Salt reserve, used to prevent black ice on roads. I assume that US states that get sufficient snowfall also maintain reserves of salt and grit to keep their roads open. Or does it simply get too cold for ice to be of any use? {{unsigned|Arachrah}}
: Yes, states and municipalities in the US definitely maintain reserves of salt for use in treating roads during winter weather. Such reserves are commonly stored in dome-shaped structures (often seen near highway interchanges), which I assume is part of the allusion in the title text. I don't believe this statement in the current explanation is completely accurate: "Ordinary salt is also available in abundance throughout the U.S. so there is no need for any kind of salt reserves, strategic or otherwise." This may be true at a Federal level, but having grown up in the northeastern U.S., I recall hearing of some of the smaller municipalities running low on/out of salt during especially harsh winters. [[User:CarLuva|CarLuva]] ([[User talk:CarLuva|talk]]) 14:25, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
:: Agreed and fixed. Can you find a photograph of such dome structures? I've lived in areas dependent on road salting most of my life without ever having any idea what the stockpiles look like. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.71|172.69.22.71]] 14:40, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
::: Much better, thanks! A quick Google image search for "[https://www.google.com/search?q=road+salt+dome&tbm=isch road salt dome]" yields plenty of photos of them. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.82.16|172.71.82.16]] 16:01, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
:::: Given that selection of images, I question the link specifically to "monolithic dome" in the explanation (and the hatnote on The Other Wiki's "salt dome" page) - many of those photos are clearly of structures assembled from multiple parts; some appear to be [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gridshell gridshells], others possibly fabricated as a set of tall of segments. - [[User:IMSoP|IMSoP]] ([[User talk:IMSoP|talk]]) 17:20, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

::::Woah, my cousin told me those were for alfalfa and silage. Huh! [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.36|172.69.134.36]] 16:01, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

: Covered salt piles are relatively new. Prior to 2000, or there abouts, salt was stored uncovered piled on bare earth. Some would be lost due to rain and runoff. But salt was cheaper than salt barns. However excess salt causes environmental problems and storage losses were unnecessary. There was some gnashing of teeth when regulations mandated covered salt barns. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.222.129|172.71.222.129]] 04:03, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

Hmmm, I also see a somewhat indecent connotation between passing the salt and passing a kidney stone, in particular that the salt in the picture is being extruded through an orifice in the ground... -- [[Special:Contributions/172.68.138.179|172.68.138.179]] 09:55, 21 March 2023 (UTC)

Maybe Beret guy lended his powers to a geologist.[[Special:Contributions/172.68.51.204|172.68.51.204]]

It was Toph tier XD haha, get it? Toph! [[Special:Contributions/162.158.94.21|162.158.94.21]] 05:29, 22 March 2023 (UTC)

1482: NowPlaying

2023-03-21T03:27:03Z

172.69.134.36: Reverted: I'm not advertising Discord.

<noinclude>:<small>''The correct title of this page is '''1482: #NowPlaying'''. It appears incorrectly here because of {{w|mw:Manual:Page title|technical restrictions}}.''</small></noinclude>
{{comic
| number = 1482
| date = February 4, 2015
| title = #NowPlaying
| image = nowplaying.png
| titletext = If you click on the post, it takes you to search results for the note on various online music stores.
}}

==Explanation==
There are a variety of applications that post a user's music-listening habits on their preferred social network (Probably Discord as shown in this comic). In this comic, [[Randall]] takes that notion to its extreme, envisioning a program that does this note-by-note, rather than just song-by-song (This program is hard to implement in reality, as most of the music files shared online are wave tables <code>.mp3</code>, and it may be difficult to extract notes from them). As songs play several dozen notes a minute (and some songs, many more), this would lead to the flooding of friends' notification streams. In the example, the software is sharing the notes that Brian is listening to; and his friends Mike and Caitlin are getting annoyed with the number of posts they are receiving.

There are typically many hundreds of notes in any song. Any song with more than a single line of music contains multiple different {{w|Note|notes}} whose names according to the English convention are communicated here. All but the slowest songs will require reporting dozens to hundreds of notes every minute (a single {{w|glissando}} may cover a dozen or more notes in less than a second), meaning that anyone who can see your stream of posts will be [[Literally|literally]] inundated by posts from the service. Even if you could keep up with the speed of the posted notes that someone is listening to, the similarity in {{w|Phrase (music)|phrases}} in many songs (especially pop songs, e.g. [http://youtu.be/JdxkVQy7QLM Pachelbel's Rant]) means that many different songs may include the same sequence of notes, though possibly in different {{w|Octave|octaves}} or at different speeds. The so-called "Black MIDI" music files would contain thousands, or even millions of notes (a notable example being "Pi" by TSMB2 on YouTube{{actual citation needed}} with 3 million notes in total: an average of about 16000 notes per second), and this may annoy Mike and Caitlin even more - probably by crashing their Discord client with too many notifications.{{citation needed}}

The comic's title alludes to the fact that you can "play a song" but can also "play a note." It may also allude to the visual similarities between the hash/pound/{{w|number sign}} (#) and the {{w|Sharp (music)|sharp sign}} (♯). ''C sharp'', above Mike's comment, is the only note not given by a single letter (after the correction - see [[#Trivia|Trivia]]).

The title text continues the joke of this new musical service: ''If you click on the post, it takes you to search results for the note on various online music store.'' Since many songs in similar {{w|Key (music)|keys}} contain at least some of the notes posted, you would be given a list of a large part of the music you can buy in any on-line music stores. Of course this is at least as useless as being told which note someone is listening to.

The notes appear to be the beginning of ''{{w|I'll Be There for You (The Rembrandts song)|I'll Be There For You}}'' by {{w|The Rembrandts}}, the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-9kPks0IfE title music] of the TV series "{{w|Friends}}". This could be an internal reference to the idea that it "notifies" (converts into musical notes) your "friends" of the notes (a {{w|Pun|play on words}}).

Or we've been [[356: Nerd Sniping|nerd sniped]].

==Transcript==
:[A social network news feed with user images for each of the three different contributors. The top of the first post is partly obscured, and for the last post only half of the first line is visible.]

:''[Partially Visible]'' '''Brian''' is now listening to: E
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: A
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: B
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: D
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: C sharp
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Mike''' What the hell
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: B
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: A
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Caitlin''' Can someone call him?
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: A
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: E
:Today • 3:29 PM

:''[Partially Visible]'' '''Brian''' is now listening to: A

:My new social music service notifies your friends about what notes you're listening to.

==Trivia==
*In the [[Media:OriginalNowPlaying.png|original]] comic there were a few errors/mistakes that were corrected later the same day:
**One of the messages was out of order. The instance where "Brian is now listening to A" above Caitlin's post was {{w|timestamp}}ed at 3:29, but the next two posts were timestamped at 3:28. Now this timestamp has been corrected to 3:28 so only the last timestamp reads 3:29, the rest 3:28.
**The first partially visible "note" post was "{{w|E major}}". This is not a single note but rather a chord or {{w|major scale|scale}}. The "major" was removed from the comic so it now reads simply "E".

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Social networking]]
[[Category:Music]]

1482: NowPlaying

2023-03-21T00:53:12Z

172.69.134.36: Discord

<noinclude>:<small>''The correct title of this page is '''1482: #NowPlaying'''. It appears incorrectly here because of {{w|mw:Manual:Page title|technical restrictions}}.''</small></noinclude>
{{comic
| number = 1482
| date = February 4, 2015
| title = #NowPlaying
| image = nowplaying.png
| titletext = If you click on the post, it takes you to search results for the note on various online music stores.
}}

==Explanation==
There are a variety of applications that post a user's music-listening habits on their preferred social network (Probably Discord as shown in this comic). In this comic, [[Randall]] takes that notion to its extreme, envisioning a program that does this note-by-note, rather than just song-by-song (This program is hard to implement in reality, as most of the music files shared online are wave tables <code>.mp3</code>, and it may be difficult to extract notes from them). As songs play several dozen notes a minute (and some songs, many more), this would lead to the flooding of friends' notification streams. In the example, the software is sharing the notes that Brian is listening to; and his friends Mike and Caitlin are getting annoyed with the number of posts they are receiving.

There are typically many hundreds of notes in any song. Any song with more than a single line of music contains multiple different {{w|Note|notes}} whose names according to the English convention are communicated here. All but the slowest songs will require reporting dozens to hundreds of notes every minute (a single {{w|glissando}} may cover a dozen or more notes in less than a second), meaning that anyone who can see your stream of posts will be [[Literally|literally]] inundated by posts from the service. Even if you could keep up with the speed of the posted notes that someone is listening to, the similarity in {{w|Phrase (music)|phrases}} in many songs (especially pop songs, e.g. [http://youtu.be/JdxkVQy7QLM Pachelbel's Rant]) means that many different songs may include the same sequence of notes, though possibly in different {{w|Octave|octaves}} or at different speeds. The so-called "Black MIDI" music files would contain thousands, or even millions of notes (a notable example being "Pi" by TSMB2 on YouTube{{actual citation needed}} with 3 million notes in total: an average of about 10000 notes per second), and this may annoy Mike and Caitlin even more - probably by crashing their Discord client with too many notifications.{{citation needed}}

The comic's title alludes to the fact that you can "play a song" but can also "play a note." It may also allude to the visual similarities between the hash/pound/{{w|number sign}} (#) and the {{w|Sharp (music)|sharp sign}} (♯). ''C sharp'', above Mike's comment, is the only note not given by a single letter (after the correction - see [[#Trivia|Trivia]]).

The title text continues the joke of this new musical service: ''If you click on the post, it takes you to search results for the note on various online music store.'' Since many songs in similar {{w|Key (music)|keys}} contain at least some of the notes posted, you would be given a list of a large part of the music you can buy in any on-line music stores. Of course this is at least as useless as being told which note someone is listening to.

The notes appear to be the beginning of ''{{w|I'll Be There for You (The Rembrandts song)|I'll Be There For You}}'' by {{w|The Rembrandts}}, the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-9kPks0IfE title music] of the TV series "{{w|Friends}}". This could be an internal reference to the idea that it "notifies" (converts into musical notes) your "friends" of the notes (a {{w|Pun|play on words}}).

Or we've been [[356: Nerd Sniping|nerd sniped]].

==Transcript==
:[A social network news feed with user images for each of the three different contributors. The top of the first post is partly obscured, and for the last post only half of the first line is visible.]

:''[Partially Visible]'' '''Brian''' is now listening to: E
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: A
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: B
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: D
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: C sharp
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Mike''' What the hell
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: B
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: A
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Caitlin''' Can someone call him?
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: A
:Today • 3:28 PM

:'''Brian''' is now listening to: E
:Today • 3:29 PM

:''[Partially Visible]'' '''Brian''' is now listening to: A

:My new social music service notifies your friends about what notes you're listening to.

==Trivia==
*In the [[Media:OriginalNowPlaying.png|original]] comic there were a few errors/mistakes that were corrected later the same day:
**One of the messages was out of order. The instance where "Brian is now listening to A" above Caitlin's post was {{w|timestamp}}ed at 3:29, but the next two posts were timestamped at 3:28. Now this timestamp has been corrected to 3:28 so only the last timestamp reads 3:29, the rest 3:28.
**The first partially visible "note" post was "{{w|E major}}". This is not a single note but rather a chord or {{w|major scale|scale}}. The "major" was removed from the comic so it now reads simply "E".

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Social networking]]
[[Category:Music]]