explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2895: Treasure Chests

2024-02-19T09:27:08Z

172.69.194.202: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2895
| date = February 16, 2024
| title = Treasure Chests
| image = treasure_chests_2x.png
| imagesize = 287x488px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = [earlier] "Your vintage-style handmade chest business is struggling. But I have a plan."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a- YOU KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN! - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic features [[Black Hat]] proposing a way to create significant business for a "lawn care company", for which the comic narrator has an attachment (perhaps owner or employee), albeit in an extremely unethical and possibly illegal manner which is very much congruent with Black Hat's character of being a '[[classhole]]'.

The first step of his plan is to create the conditions for a large number of lawns all over a certain town to be dug out, via a motivation of a large potential reward for digging up a lawn (in this case, a chest with $1,000 in the form of small silver and gold coins). Masking the effort, by waiting a year to let time obscure any obvious signs of disturbed earth and digging, introduces a large element of chance when everyone is finally informed of the concept. The subsequent digging up of many lawns, almost all unrelated to the original three with actual chests in, entices significant participation in Black Hat's scheme by everyone with firm-to-vague ideas of which lawns they might be, and whereabouts to dig within them, having filmed the burials in such a way that the subsequently posted videos are tantalizingly open to many interpretations as to where they actually were.

It is also possible that it leaves time for one or more chests to have been discovered prior to the 'start' of the deliberate competition to find them. So long as all three weren't (publicly) discovered, it leaves open the possibility that those competing to find the 'unfound' chests will continue with their efforts to find what is now unfindable, prolonging the exercise beyond the point at which all chests could be known to be discovered and that there are no more chances to gain their riches. Indeed, there is nothing to stop Black Hat from simply digging the chests back up once the videos have been filmed, so that there is nothing to find, prolonging the search indefinitely, and he is not out $3000.

However it pans out, this will create a demand for the services of "our lawn care company" as treasure-hunters feverishly work to gain wealth and/or fame, in the process damaging lawns all over town; their own or (with or without permission) those of others. It may create the craze for children to randomly attack neighbors' lawns (before or after their parents' ones), at least until they're effectively curfewed for the trouble, but is a large enough prize to attract teenagers and adults into such (possibly night-time) forays, all with the hope and expectation of a significant cash reward.

The many homeowners who soon find themselves with ruined lawns would then proceed to contact Black Hat's lawn care company in order to fix the broken lawns, thus making Black Hat's business lots of money. For the initial expenditure of $3000 (plus the cost of the containers, and other trivial overheads), a need for significant remediation work will be generated. According to the caption below the panel, the proposal set out by Black Hat turns out to be VERY profitable and EXTREMELY effective. It would be cheaper than most other forms of effective advertisement, such as {{w|Flyer (pamphlet)#Distribution and use|mass-flyering the catchment area}} or buying advertising time/space in traditional media, whilst being much more penetrating and focused than any but the most sophisticated (and expensive) forms of online advertising. As long as the 'competition' isn't actually linked to the lawn-care businesss, it also has the advantage that it can create a near maximum potential demand for the service without risking {{w|media fatigue}} and perhaps aversion to the product being advertised. There is no indication that this will be <em>ever</em> be promoted as the company's very own competition, which would probably actively drive the numerous victims of the scheme to find (or found!) rival businesses, not to mention risk the instigation of claims for recompense through civil liability.

As of the time of posting, [https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/silver-price/ silver prices] were roughly $23 per ounce / $8 per cm^3, and [https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/gold-price/ gold prices] were roughly $2000 per ounce / $1250 per cm^3, which means that any chest holding gold or silver coins would either be fairly small or very empty. Accounting for space between coins, a $1000 chest entirely containing silver coins would be only be filled between 1/8-1/4 liter / 1/2-1 cup, whereas $1000 would only constitute a single medium/large gold coin or a few small ones.

The title text shows how Black Hat, before sharing his proposal in this comic, saw a struggling business that made vintage-style handmade chests and found it to be a very useful addition to his plan and presumably sought out their cooperation, likely with the promise of profits that would be made in Black Hat's scheme. By already obtaining the chests (possibly unsold stock, donated or bought below ticket price), this reduces the expense to the 'prize money' and perhaps the hire of the equipment to dig the holes (which the lawn-care business might also care to donate). The original business might profit from the increased publicity/demand for their product, much as with the lawn-care, or have been promised a proportion of the commission that Black Hat will take from the lawn company. Or, knowing Black Hat, he has convinced the chest company that he can make money with a single chest, uses that as a prop to convince the lawn company that they can make money from holes, possibly then to convince someone else that they can make money from a further stage in this {{tvtropes|ChainOfDeals|chain of deals}}. At each point being paid for the pleasure (and keeping the accumulated proceeds), leaving arbitrary amounts of disruption in his wake.

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

:[Black Hat is holding a treasure chest in one hand and pointing with a stick to a poster that features a shovel at the top, three circled X's below it, and five question marks around them.]
:Black Hat: First, I'll fill three of these chests with $1,000 each in small silver and gold coins, and take videos of them being buried in unidentified lawns around town.
:Black Hat: Next year, I post the videos.
:Black Hat: Then we sit back and let the local kids do the rest.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:The proposal for creating business for our lawn care company was unorthodox but ''extremely'' effective.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]

Talk:2891: Log Cabin

2024-02-13T12:59:31Z

172.69.194.202:

:: "''The odd part about it is the bottom right corner, which appears to be infinitely recursive copies..''"
The whole right side is the left side, shrunk and recursed. Each iteration rotated 90 degrees. The 'shrink' is about 1.616 by my squint, a lot like a "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio Golden Ratio]" LOGarithmic spiral, as NickM says. [[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 19:49, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

::This is a LOGarithmic spiral [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.103|172.70.210.103]] 19:52, 7 February 2024 (UTC)NickM

:: It is precisely the golden ratio, assuming the left side is a square [[User:Terdragontra|Terdragontra]] ([[User talk:Terdragontra|talk]]) 22:09, 7 February 2024 (UTC)`

:: Note how the spiral cuts the smaller bedrooms wardrobe in half, intersects the two doorframes of the rooms leading off the master bedroom, the toilet and the sink. [https://xkcd.com/1488/ The majesty of the spiral! 🌀] [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.189|172.69.79.189]] 11:20, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Assuming a standard 36" wide front door, then the next "front" door would be 22.27 inches, then 13.78 inches, then 8.53 inches, at which point I doubt the inspector could squeeze through it, though I guess they could still take a peek inside the next recursion. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.34.58|172.68.34.58]] 20:57, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

:: That's enough for the inspector to verify that the plans are *not* up to code; you can't get a wheelchair into the right-hand side of the house. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.189|172.69.79.189]] 11:16, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Infinite bedrooms, infinite baths, close to schools and shopping. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.48|172.69.247.48]] 21:00, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
::Government: Your property tax comes up to infinite dollars. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.26.160|172.71.26.160]] 21:45, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
:: In some jurisdictions bedrooms need to have at least one externally facing window. Under this rule there are infinite rooms with beds, but only 8 bedrooms. [[User:Thaledison|Erin Anne]] ([[User talk:Thaledison|talk]]) 17:07, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

Interesting comparison with the archetypal "labyrinth". It's actually a fractal version that only avoids being unicursal-with-no-dead-ends due to the off-living-room private spaces being quite trivial offshoots. Which arguably makes it ''fairly'' classical in nature. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.114|172.70.90.114]] 21:18, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Should there be a mention that due to the limitations of the image format, it only actually achieves eight iterations? Which makes sense given that construction materials also have limits, and is still enough that the inspectors might be a bit confused if they don't pay close enough attention. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.60.216|172.69.60.216]] 23:21, 7 February 2024 (UTC)

Write it [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2891:_Log_Cabin&diff=prev&oldid=334498 how you want], I just wanted to avoid calling a room with no bath (but a shower) as a "bathroom", especially when I was mentioning a 'bathroom' with an actual bath in it so soon after. Not that there's a completely unambiguous term for the room with the toilet/lavatory/whatever in it. (For reference, for me it's "the toilet", despite that also being the porceline item itself, and even that is derived from a hairdressing cloth, through a string of euphemisms. But knew that wouldn't be accepted by the wider readership.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.26|172.70.85.26]] 01:49, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
:In the USA, any room with a toilet and sink is typically called a "bathroom" whether or not there is a literal bath within. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.131.3|172.70.131.3]] 09:33, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
::Don't think it's particularly a US/UK thing - it's pretty commonly called a 'bathroom' in the UK too. I think the point of the editor above was the potential for confusion between the ''two'' 'bathrooms', and how to avoid it.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.243|172.69.43.243]] 09:44, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
::It's my experience in the US that real-estate parlance counts a full bathroom as toilet, sink, and tub / shower. It counts a half-bathroom as a toilet and sink only. A house with 1 full bath and two half-baths would generically be considered 3 bathrooms but not listed that way. I don't know what they would call a standalone tub or shower, if any such thing is ever constructed unless it is adjacent to an outdoor swimming pool. [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 01:37, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
::Could you not just call it lavatory? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.58.81|172.69.58.81]] 00:07, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
:Using a language that allows to say "S***house" in a nice way (praised be the diminutive!) helps in such cases...[[User:Tier666|Tier666]] ([[User talk:Tier666|talk]]) 10:15, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
::There is a {{wiktionary|Thesaurus:bathroom|truly astounding range of terms}}, in English alone, (and I can think of several not included there, even discounting the rather localised overly-vulgar ''or'' overly-polite ones). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.221|172.70.90.221]] 11:38, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
Are there any non-Euclidean geometries in which you could fit this house without having to shrink the rooms or the people? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.3.44|172.68.3.44]] 16:42, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
:The logarithmic scaling should be compatible with [[wikipedia:Hyperbolic_geometry|hyperbolic geometry]]. However, the distance metric changes continuously in such a geometry. Here you'd probably need something like a discrete mapping that maps the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, etc. iteration of the outer cabin layout to its proper scaling and rotation. (I vaguely know the concepts but can't do it properly) [[User:Transgalactic|Transgalactic]] ([[User talk:Transgalactic|talk]]) 09:21, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
::If we're committed to discontinuities (at least in undifferentiatable senses), we can just treat the floorplans as separately just traditional Euclidean but the main doors between 'levels' as a wormhole/portal. Moreover, one which could satisfy the rescaling requirement, (the 'door frame' outward is at the same metric of width/height as the inward one; ''as well as'' the inward one of one layer out, which is not experienced as a funnel). In a connected-voxel manner (as one might render it in virtual terms), every level of square-property has the exact same internal consistency.
::Save for the windows, which are additional portals limited only to the primary property (present on three walls, all but the 'inward exit' direction), secondary/tertiary ones (two walls, having both lost the 'entry wall' externality that faces their predecessor property) and quaternary (one windowed wall, now enclosed by the prime-property). All these windows similarly portal to the zeroth-level exterior (irregularly spaced, but 'proper-sized'), and of course whilst the 'obscured walls' (including all from quinary-level and beyond) could be not denied windows by being portaled to some surrogate external wall (infinite, necessarily!), in this example they are not.
::This renders the plans shown as 'wrong' (door widths are scaled differently at both inward and outward locations, with a single square sub-property, and such windows as exist from sub-levels (all nine window-outers on the external south-wall should be the same size as the nine inner windows from the primary square's outward-walls, not just the two and the door which are the direct identical ones).
::Thus rescaling issues as one traverses doors (or windows) go away. It does leave dissimilar distances inside and out (speed-of-light communications out of a Level 4 window and into a Level 1 one could be faster than any 'direct' through-wall one, if allowed, and of course diffracted propogation only via door-portals would be slower), but we're already talking of [https://wiki.lspace.org/Empirical_Crescent wormholing between/across domains], so our only real issue is how/if ''arbitrary'' knocking-through of holes through walls can be allowed (once the building is somehow BS Johnsoned into existence, perhaps at some point necessitating at least a countable infinity of builders/decorators). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.105|141.101.98.105]] 10:45, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

One way to build this would be with robotics that alter the structure as the visitor moves, like a holodeck. This could give the perception of the visitor shrinking forever, and the robotics wouldn’t let them leave until they rewalked their entry path. Another way would be to just make the rooms get too tiny to enter and hide the missing ones around a corner. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.6|162.158.166.6]] 16:58, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
:I'm sure it could be done with the Gallifreyan technology that produced the TARDIS. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 17:39, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
:: Indeed: [https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/tardis/images/d/d2/The_Monk_cannot_get_into_his_TARDIS.JPG] {{unsigned|Jgharston|12:45, 13 February 2024}}
:maybe somebody will 3d print a tiny one some day. i websearched but didn’t even get any hits for “robotic maze moving walls” ! this is surprising to me in this decade. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.142.15|172.71.142.15]]

Has anyone else thought of a cabin log? The horror story kind, with a spiraling captain? [[User:Transgalactic|Transgalactic]] ([[User talk:Transgalactic|talk]]) 09:21, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

336: Priorities

2024-02-09T17:31:16Z

172.69.194.202: /* Transcript */ It seemed silly to mention the student twice in the same scene, and letting dialogue establish that student's <whatever> is report-card related, as one has to assume the teacher's book is homework-related.

{{comic
| number = 336
| date = October 31, 2007
| title = Priorities
| image = priorities.png
| titletext = You should start giving out 'E's so I can spell FACADE or DEFACED.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic, [[Cueball]] is a student, who apparently didn't turn in his homework assignment repeatedly, for which he gets a warning from his Cueball-like teacher.

In some schools in the United States, a student's grades are determined mainly using letters for quick reference. In most schools, the letter grades are given as follows:

::A — 100%–90%
::B — 89%–80%
::C — 79%–70%
::D — 69%–60%
::F — 59%–0%

Traditionally, these schools send '{{w|report card}}s' in which the student's current grading of the semester or even the entirety of the class the student is taking is denoted using these letters, for example:

::English — A
::Mathematics — D
::Science — B
::Social Studies — B
::World Building — C

The student may have noted that, if he aims for certain scoring (for example: altering the quality of his homework or even sending out his homework only at the times needed for his grades to reach a certain level), he could make the report card spell every letter grade in alphabetical order. Deriving from the previous example, the student would aim for the following report card:

::English — A
::Mathematics — B
::Science — C
::Social Studies — D
::World Building — F

Interestingly, since in some schools even a 0% grade would produce the required 'F' grade, the student does not need to work at all (not even turn in any school assignments) to get the required 'F' grade, this leading to the situation presented in the comic above. Rather than a letter upon a continuum (as it might be assumed if 'E' were not skipped) it is generally accepted that 'F' actually stands for 'Failed' and covers any situation where insufficient credit was gained to obtain any other letter-grade. There are some schools, though, where turning in nothing would result in the class being marked "incomplete" or "inc" instead of having a grade shown at all.

The title text references that, not only can the grades in the report card inadvertently spell out certain words (for example: 'CAB' or 'FAD'), but also that the letter grade system denoted omits the letter 'E' in standard letter grading. The reason for the missing "E" is complex and explained in [http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2010/08/e_is_for_fail.html this Slate article]. However, this is not universal in the United States: Ohio State University, for example, uses 'E' for failing.

==Transcript==
:[A teacher, holding a book, is talking to a student, sitting at a desk and holding a document of his own.]
:Teacher: If you don't turn in at least one homework assignment, you'll fail this class.
:Student: Yeah. But if I can fail this class, the grades on my report card will be in alphabetical order!

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Language]]

Talk:2888: US Survey Foot

2024-02-01T12:10:22Z

172.69.194.202: /* UK & Ireland Survey Foot */

Breaking news- the comic just got changed to 8,000.016[[User:TenGolf MathHacker|TenGolf MathHacker]] ([[User talk:TenGolf MathHacker|talk]]) 17:28, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
:As it should ... I did the math, and the difference between the two measurements over 8000 miles comes out to be 25.7249999 meters – which works out to be 0.0159842 of a mile. This is, of course, why it appears that the team and Black Hat are on the shores of the same pond, with only the boulder(?) preventing the team from being able to see Black Hat. [[User:RAGBRAIvet|RAGBRAIvet]] ([[User talk:RAGBRAIvet|talk]]) 10:25, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

== UK & Ireland Survey Foot ==

Until the British Ordnance Survey adopted the metre
they used a foot of 0.304 800 749 1 metres.
: So US Miles, UK Miles, and "International" "Imperial" Miles are all different?[[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.202|172.69.194.202]] 12:10, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

There are (or used to be) states that specify U.S. survey measure for various things. Others that specify the international definition. Still others that just leave it undefined. Seems normal.

Although it IS a small difference, the survey grid in the U.S. and thus the property lines for a large portion of the U.S. are done with the older definition and a few reference longi- and latitudes. That could make property lines suddenly shift, so the U.S. survey foot may never fully die. I even made sure it's in my app accurately.

[[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.236|162.158.159.236]] 19:39, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Someone should mention who NIST is (National Institute of Standards and Technology). I'm only familiar with them because of their work with information systems.
:And maybe something about the absurdity of NIST having "SEAL Team"-like agents that can capture someone violating their standard. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 07:20, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

No Ingenuity tribute comic? :/ [[Special:Contributions/162.158.102.64|162.158.102.64]] 21:07, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
:Perhaps he couldn't make his original attempt fly? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.170|172.69.43.170]] 21:24, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I love XKCD, but it isn't often they make me laugh out loud. The sheer absurdity of this, and that Randall picked up on it did. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.144.147|172.68.144.147]] 21:05, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

I measured the 2 feet that I have readily available. None of them come close to either the International or US Survey foot. And most worrying, the difference between them is significantly more than 610nm.... [[Special:Contributions/172.71.99.49|172.71.99.49]] 11:19, 1 February 2024 (UTC)

2882: Net Rotations

2024-01-22T18:59:02Z

172.69.194.202:

{{comic
| number = 2882
| date = January 17, 2024
| title = Net Rotations
| image = net_rotations_2x.png
| imagesize = 318x477px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = For decades I've been working off the accumulated rotation from one long afternoon on a merry-go-round when I was eight.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a VERY DIZZY ROBOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This is another one of [[Randall|Randall's]] [[:Category: Tips|Tips]], this time a Spacetime health tip.

This comic may refer to a thing that some people with {{w|OCD}} do, which is to spin around to get rid of "net rotations," hence the title of this comic. [[Cueball]] (perhaps representing [[Randall]]?) takes this one step beyond the typical person with OCD - he calculates the net rotations each day and spins around at the end of the day to cancel this out. In this case, he would be spinning left 17 rotations to return to zero.

The offered reason for the necessity to do this is a physics joke: the reference to spacetime and to one's "worldline" has to do with relativity and the {{w|Einstein-Cartan theory}}, which is an extension of Einstein's general relativity. The theory suggests a coupling between the intrinsic spin of elementary particles (fermions) and the torsion of spacetime, and this comic appears to humorously extrapolate this idea to even supermolecular structures like a human, telling readers to "cancel out your accumulated turns at the end of each day to avoid worldline torsion", where in reality, it is highly unlikely the spin on such a large scale would cause any torsion in anyone's worldline, or their path traced by a particle or observer in spacetime.

A mobile device with position and orientation sensing might be able to keep track of one's net rotations, eliminating the need for calculations. One would need only to do one's spinning while monitoring the device to see when it returned to zero.

The caption suggests that this is healthy and necessary/highly recommended to do this. However, most people don’t, and most people are still ok.{{Citation needed}} In fact, xkcd's own characters are perfectly ok with [[162: Angular Momentum|accumulating net rotations]] and [[2679: Quantified Self|similar topological excesses]].

Possibly a reference to the 1966 novel, [//archive.org/details/revolvingboy0000frie The Revolving Boy] by {{w|Gertrude Friedberg}} whose protagonist suffered from being out of correct positioning depending on the number of turns he was forced to make in his everyday life.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is rotating around himself with only one foot on the ground, the other leg raised and bend above the ground and with his arms crossed in front of his chest. There are five circular curves around Cueball from head to legs to indicate this rotary motion. He rotates in front of a whiteboard. On the left of the board there are two vertical helix-like curves going from near the top to the bottom. They are crossing over each other at five points, the first four crossings close to the top, and then one near the bottom. Next to this there are ten rows of illegible scribbles, then a line, then another row of scribbles then a line and at the bottom a row of scribbles which is circled in. There is a large thought bubble above Cueball to indicate that he is thinking to himself while rotating in front of his calculations on the whiteboard.]
:Cueball (thinking): ...and three lefts for going down the stairwell at work, two rights from cloverleaf interchanges, minus one for the Earth's rotation...
:Cueball (thinking): Okay, that's a net of 17 right.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Spacetime health tip: Remember to cancel out your accumulated turns at the end of each day to avoid worldline torsion.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Tips]]

2883: Astronaut Guests

2024-01-22T18:58:26Z

172.69.194.202:

{{comic
| number = 2883
| date = January 19, 2024
| title = Astronaut Guests
| image = astronaut guests 2x.png
| imagesize = 331x391px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = They didn't bring us a gift, but considering the kinetic energy of a bottle of wine at orbital speed, that's probably for the best.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by ELEVEN RUSSIAN ASTRONAUTS OVER YOUR HEAD RIGHT NOW PREPARING FOR NUCLEAR WAR AGAINST USA - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic, [[Cueball]], [[Megan]], [[Ponytail]], and [[Hairbun]] can all be seen eating dinner together. Presumably, Ponytail and Hairbun were invited over for dinner, as, to impress them, [[Cueball]] misleadingly claims that they previously "had six {{w|astronaut}}s over for dinner." Normally, this would be interpreted as the astronauts being friends with the hosts (which confers social prestige), going inside their house, and eating. As it turns out, the astronauts only briefly passed overhead while in {{w|orbit}}, and, by chance, this happened during dinnertime. This is a pun on the word "over", as the personnel of the {{w|International Space Station}} are overhead when it passes above you; yet they did not go "over ''to'' someone's house" in the sense that English speakers would usually assume.

Cueball may also be considering the property lines to extend up indefinitely (just like in "What If?" article "{{what if|161|Star Ownership}}"), causing the astronauts to [[1475: Technically|technically]] be at their house despite being hundreds of miles away, vertically.

The astronauts in question were presumably occupying the International Space Station, which has an orbital period of between 90 and 93 minutes (depending on its altitude) or 5400 to 5580 seconds.[https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/Tools/orbitTutorial.htm] If the astronauts were "over" for 7½ milliseconds, that would be somewhere between 1.34x10⁻⁶ and 1.39x10⁻⁶ of an orbit. Earth's circumference (at the equator) being approximately 40,000 kilometres (24,850 miles), the station was apparently "over" for a ground distance of between 53.9 m and 55.7 m (177 to 183 feet). That would imply quite a large property, but may also consider the astronauts' locations within the ISS, which is 109 m (356 feet) long. (The effect of [[1276: Angular Size|angular size]] is small in this case because the ISS's elevation is small compared to the radius of the Earth. The route traced by the ISS in orbit is only slightly larger than its projection at ground level.)

The caption makes Cueball's statement even less impressive, alleging that statements like it are correct in many places. This would make it uninterest as a {{w|coincidence}}. It can only happen for latitudes of less than 51.64° north or south, which is as far as the orbital inclination of the ISS takes it, leaving almost 21.6% of the Earth's surface never directly 'covered. Nonetheless, these areas of the globe are, overall, significantly more sparsely populated than those that are 'covered, meaning that the claim could be made in much more than 88.4% of places, assuming that by 'places' we mean 'properties where people are likely to be having dinner'.

The title text suggests that Cueball didn't want a gift (a bottle of wine) from the astronauts. The kinetic energy of a 1.2 kg (full) bottle of wine travelling at the linear velocity of the International Space Station (8000 m/s) is on the order of [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1%2F2*%288km%2Fs%29%5E2*1.2kg 40 megajoules]. For comparison, the kinetic energy of a fully loaded semi-truck (max legal weight 80,000 pounds or ~36 tonnes) at 70mph (110km/h; a typical highway speed limit for passenger cars) is around [https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=1%2F2*%28110km%2Fh%29%5E2*80000+pounds 17 megajoules]. A bottle with more than double the kinetic energy of that would be hard to keep on the table, and would likely do damage to people or things that tried to keep it there. {{Citation needed}}

This comic was posted the same day as the American release of a film set on the ISS (conveniently named ''{{w|I.S.S. (film)|I.S.S.}}'').

==Transcript==
:[Cueball, Megan, Ponytail, and Hairbun are eating around a table. Cueball is leaning on the back of his chair and has his palm out.]
:Cueball: We don't have houseguests often, but we once had six astronauts over for dinner.
:Hairbun: Oh, wow!
:Cueball (muttering): <small>''…for 7½ milliseconds in mid-August 2012.''</small>

:[Caption below the panel:]
: If you spend enough time looking at orbital records and property lines, you can make this claim in a lot of places.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category: Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category: Space]]