explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2460: Vaccinated

2021-05-08T00:19:00Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */ ce

{{comic
| number = 2460
| date = May 7, 2021
| title = Vaccinated
| image = vaccinated.png
| titletext = I built a model that combines local case rates and vaccination stats to estimate when it's reasonable to attend various types of party, but I forgot to include anything about where to find them.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a VACCINATION STATS MODEL. 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|ongoing pandemic}} of the {{w|coronavirus}} {{w|SARS-CoV-2}}, which causes {{w|COVID-19}}, specifically regarding the {{w|Covid-19 vaccine}}.

Hooray, [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]] are finally fully vaccinated! This means that they are now able to socialize within society, as they are unafraid of being infected by COVID or spreading COVID to others.

However, the punchline lies in that fact that Cueball and Ponytail have never been good with [[:Category:Social interactions|social interactions]], and are still unsure of how to do this.

The title text continues with this theme, as Cueball (or Ponytail?) is good at building mathematical models to know when it is safe to attend parties (and other large gatherings), but the issue remains that he is not commonly invited to these events, or are socially awkward when attending them.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball, holding a phone, stands next to Megan.]
:Cueball: It's official: we're fully vaccinated.
:Megan: It doesn't feel real.

:[Cueball and Megan continue standing, Cueball without his phone]
:Cueball: I can't wait to hang out with friends again.
:Megan: ''Seriously.''

:[Neither speaks in the next panel (frameless), looking outwards]

:[They look back at each other and continue the conversation]
:Cueball: So, uh...how do we...
:Megan: I was hoping '''''you''''' knew.
:Cueball: I'm realizing now, I was hazy on this '''''before''''' the pandemic.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:COVID-19 vaccine]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]

2460: Vaccinated

2021-05-08T00:18:35Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */ ce

{{comic
| number = 2460
| date = May 7, 2021
| title = Vaccinated
| image = vaccinated.png
| titletext = I built a model that combines local case rates and vaccination stats to estimate when it's reasonable to attend various types of party, but I forgot to include anything about where to find them.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a VACCINATION STATS MODEL. 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}}, specifically regarding the {{w|Covid-19 vaccine}}.

Hooray, [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]] are finally fully vaccinated! This means that they are now able to socialize within society, as they are unafraid of being infected by COVID or spreading COVID to others.

However, the punchline lies in that fact that Cueball and Ponytail have never been good with [[:Category:Social interactions|social interactions]], and are still unsure of how to do this.

The title text continues with this theme, as Cueball (or Ponytail?) is good at building mathematical models to know when it is safe to attend parties (and other large gatherings), but the issue remains that he is not commonly invited to these events, or are socially awkward when attending them.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball, holding a phone, stands next to Megan.]
:Cueball: It's official: we're fully vaccinated.
:Megan: It doesn't feel real.

:[Cueball and Megan continue standing, Cueball without his phone]
:Cueball: I can't wait to hang out with friends again.
:Megan: ''Seriously.''

:[Neither speaks in the next panel (frameless), looking outwards]

:[They look back at each other and continue the conversation]
:Cueball: So, uh...how do we...
:Megan: I was hoping '''''you''''' knew.
:Cueball: I'm realizing now, I was hazy on this '''''before''''' the pandemic.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:COVID-19 vaccine]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]

2460: Vaccinated

2021-05-08T00:17:53Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */ brief

{{comic
| number = 2460
| date = May 7, 2021
| title = Vaccinated
| image = vaccinated.png
| titletext = I built a model that combines local case rates and vaccination stats to estimate when it's reasonable to attend various types of party, but I forgot to include anything about where to find them.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a VACCINATION STATS MODEL. 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}}, specifically regarding the {{w|Covid-19 vaccine}}.

Hooray, [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]] are finally fully vaccinated! This means that they are now able to socialize within society, as they are unafraid of being infected by COVID or spreading COVID to others.

However, the punchline lies in that fact that Cueball and Ponytail have never been good with [[:Category:Social interactions|social interactions]], and are still unsure of how to do this.

The title text continues with this theme, as Cueball (or Ponytail?) is good at building mathematical models to know when it is safe to attend parties (and other large gatherings), but the issue remains that he is not commonly invited to these events, or are socially awkward when attending them.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball, holding a phone, stands next to Megan.]
:Cueball: It's official: We're fully vaccinated.
:Megan: It doesn't feel real.

:[Cueball and Megan continue standing, Cueball without his phone]
:Cueball: I can't wait to hang out with friends again.
:Megan: ''Seriously.''

:[Neither speaks in the next panel (frameless), looking outwards]

:[They look back at each other and continue the conversation]
:Cueball: So, uh...how do we...
:Megan: I was hoping '''''you''''' knew.
:Cueball: I'm realizing now, I was hazy on this '''''before''''' the pandemic.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:COVID-19 vaccine]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]

2460: Vaccinated

2021-05-08T00:13:53Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */ ce

2460: Vaccinated

2021-05-08T00:13:33Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */ ce

2459: March 2020

2021-05-06T11:57:05Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2459
| date = May 5, 2021
| title = March 2020
| image = march_2020.png
| titletext = "I've traveled here from the year 2020 to bring you this vaccine!"
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a TIME TRAVELING VACCINE. 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}}, specifically regarding the [[:Category:COVID-19 vaccine candidate|COVID-19 vaccine candidate]].

This comic shows 15 calendars and [[Cueball]] next to them. The first three months on the calendar are January, February and March 2020. It would be expected that the months would increase in order, but the calendar month stays at March 2020 until the final panel of the comic, where it switches to May 2021, the month this comic was released, indicating that Cueball is "stuck" in March 2020 for more than a year. The COVID-19 pandemic reached the United States in March 2020 and Cueball (probably representing [[Randall]]) may feel that he has been unable to move on with life, or that time was at a standstill until he was fully vaccinated. Seems likely that Randall was past the two weeks after his final vaccination when this comic came out. He has made several comics centered around that of being fully vaccinated in the weeks up to this comic. Specifically [[2450: Post Vaccine Candidate Social Scheduling]] and [[2454: Fully Vaccinated]] in April.

In the penultimate 2 panels, Cueball is shown getting his two doses of the vaccine candidate, with [[Ponytail]] and [[Hairy]] administering the vaccine candidate. Also these two panels are in March 2020, but in reality they are most likely in March 2021 and April 2021, as there are typically 3-6 weeks between first and second dose depending on the type of vaccinecandidate. In the final panel, the calendar has switched to the current month, May 2021, showing that Cueball can now resume life after getting vaccinated, and most likely having passed the two weeks after final shot mark.

The title text refers to films, such as 12 Monkeys, in which someone travels to the future with a sample from the past. It could be based on initial production of COVID vaccine in 2020 or a reference to films in which an earlier "original" version of a virus is necessary to produce a viable vaccine. Mass rollouts of COVID vaccine candidate ramped up significantly starting early in 2021 and are mostly still not universally available to all adult age-groups; or, if they are, this may be straining supply capacity.

Interestingly, there are only 15 panels, so if the 'normal' months increased in sync, it would "only" be March 2021, not May 2021. This may refer to the [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7641621/ strange distortion of time during the COVID-19 pandemic]. Clearly 17 panels would have made more sense when counting months, but the point here is that time has been at a standstill the last 14 moths from March 2020 to April 2021; how many panels represents those 14 month (14, 12 or 10) is not important. Using 15 panels, makes the first 3 and the last 3 stand out from the 9 in the middle, which makes sense from the flow of the comic.

The title text is also a reference to comic [[630: Time Travel]] which begins with "I have traveled here from the year...", although this has been with the same speed as anyone else has traveled, one second each second.

==Transcript==
:[In a 3 row by 5 column grid of panels, 15 monthly wall calendars are shown. All calendars have a large header with month and year given on two lines. Below this is a black border with 7 white lines, for each day of the week, and below that 5 rows with 7 columns, making all calendars the same, with 35 spaces. Nothing is shown in these grids. Next to each of these calendars are Cueball show. In the first 12 panels, Cueball is standing next to the calendar, in only slightly different poses. The text on the calendars only change in the top row, then it stays the same for the next nine panels:]
:Calendar: January 2020
:Calendar: February 2020
:Calendar: March 2020
:Calendar: March 2020
:Calendar: March 2020
:Calendar: March 2020
:Calendar: March 2020
:Calendar: March 2020
:Calendar: March 2020
:Calendar: March 2020
:Calendar: March 2020
:Calendar: March 2020

:[In the bottom rows first panel the calendar is, as always. to the left, but now Cueball is wearing a mask and sitting on a chair leaning a bit to the left while he is being vaccinated by a masked Ponytail to his right. She is plugin the needle in to his left arm. To the right is a tall but small table with the cup from which she has drawn the vaccine standing next to the lid of the cup.]
:Calendar: March 2020

:[The bottom rows second panel is similar to the previous with Cueball wearing a mask and sitting on a chair leaning a bit to the left while he is being vaccinated. Although this time by a masked Hairy, standing to his right. Hairy is also plugin the needle in to his left arm. To the right is a different small table, with only one leg. On it is a cup from which Hairy has drawn the vaccine. Also some other black things are lying on the table, maybe other syringes for administrating the vaccine.]
:Calendar: March 2020

:[In the final panel Cueball again stands next to the calendar, but finally the text has changed.]
:Calendar: May 2021

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:COVID-19 vaccine]]
[[Category:Calendar]]
[[Category:Time travel]]
[[Category:Comics featuring face masks]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]

2459: March 2020

2021-05-06T04:59:53Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */ fix

Talk:2458: Bubble Wrap

2021-05-05T06:48:05Z

172.69.34.148: formatting

In another 25 years, unpopped bubble wrap will be the only source of pure air left in the world. [[User:RAGBRAIvet|RAGBRAIvet]] ([[User talk:RAGBRAIvet|talk]]) 04:42, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

:In 25 ''thousand'' years, scientists will use bubble wrap to see what the air what like today, in a similar fashion to how we use ice core samples to look at the atmosphere from thousands of years ago. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.74|108.162.249.74]] 04:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
::mmm, air time capsule. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.204|162.158.63.204]] 13:55, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

WD-40 is not a lubricant. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.244|172.68.65.244]] 05:16, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
: You're right, but in the time it took for you to post the comment, you could have just fixed it. [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 07:21, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
:: Are you sure? Its not ''lube'' despite its penetrating powers, I'll concede to that. But why wouldn't it be a lubricant? Its an oil based product, I need more context. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.170.142|172.69.170.142]] 07:29, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
::: You're right, that since it's oil based it can and sometimes is used as a short term lubricant. However it is not advisable to use it (or other penetrating oils) that way. They generally evaporate too quickly to be used long term. You'd have to constantly reapply it to moving parts. [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 09:27, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
:: WD-40 actually _removes_ any existing oil. Its major ingredient, which is also responsible for the smell, is Kerosene. That is also the active ingredient in _Liquid Wrench_, which frees up stuck parts. That's probably why many people mistake it for a lubricant. When the Kerosene evaporates, it leaves behind a waxy coating (isoparrafins). Its design purpose is to waterproof. The wax, if over-applied, can also treat squeaky hinges, which is another reason people confuse it with some kind of oil.
:: So, it contains a *penetrating solvent*, which is oil in the sense of lamp oil, but not the sense of oil for lubrication. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.148|172.69.34.148]] 06:47, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Could the comic be some sort of mocking people who taste all weird stuff from wine? Or basically anyone who has a distinguished taste on [wine, whiskey, tobacco, cheese etc]? [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 08:59, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I relegated the "sound of popping bubblewrap" out of being the single explicit reason why people like doing it, although obviously different people have different needs (up to and including annoying ''other'' people by the noise they create, as perhaps the primary reason to pop the bubbles when given the opportunity), but it's a complex issue. [https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/Why-Do-People-Like-Bubble-Wrap-So-Much There's various explanations out there], and I know I get ''more'' frustrated when I have to try harder to pop 'pop resisting' stuff, even with the same end sound, or can be satisfied with pin-pricking with something sharp to 'doodle' a pop-pattern (and/or flood-fill a methodical 'wasteland' of poppedness) even if it gives nothing more than a faint 'snick'/hiss sound whilst doing it.

...but, no, I've never thought of sniffing it. I suppose I always imagined it was inflated with compressed gasses, like "packaged in a protective atmosphere", for foodstuffs, even though this now sounds ridiculously over-engineered to waste fractionated atmosphere or chemically-evolved gas rather than just blow in (filtered) atmosphere, or even just letting the plastic layers settle down over the original ambient airgap when fusing the 'bubble edges' down between them - however they actually do it.

And then there's the old chestnut about using helium-filled bubble-wrap to reduce/nullify (charged by weight) shipping costs! Note, though, that it's commonly suggested, if you search around, and then commonly refuted by (among other things) the economics of buying enough helium-filled packaging to make any postage-rate change. I suppose you could invest in equipment to split water (powered by solar power) and try infusing it into a standard air-pocket wrapping (could that break even, eventually?), though shipping companies might well consider the Hindenbubblewrap strays outside their standard handling processes so no longer benefits from the sought after lightness-discount. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.146|141.101.98.146]] 09:45, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I think that some times bubble wrap is made with out air and then sent out and inflated where it is needed.

Bubble wrap is usually made of LDPE, polyethylene. This polymer is quite permeable for many chemicals, especially more lipophilic ones. WD-40 "smell" definitely wouldn't stay in a bubble for long and neither would most components of diesel exhaust. I think the comparison between bubble wrap and ice cores is thus too far fetched since bulk ice provides _much_ better isolation than an LDPE foil. But I am not sure if Randall is aware that all three smells rely on a quite esoteric view and wouldn't work even in theory.

Would it be appropriate to add to "one could detect unique odors present in the factory" a reference to the movie "Fly Me to the Saitama" where the hero (Rei Asami) proves his Tokyo-ness by identifying some Tokyo districts from the air contained in glass bottles? Thank you [[User:Dhalber|Dhalber]] ([[User talk:Dhalber|talk]]) 17:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Uhh, I live in a warehouse district, & I'm not sure what survey of air in industrial zones was the basis for the current description for this comic, but the statement "In reality, the air inside most factories is much like the air anywhere else" definitely needs a big citation next to it; or I'll be happy to call bullshit. Even a brand new ultra-modern factory begins to smell like the things in it, after just a few months of operation.

Also, regarding the smell of WD-40 & diesel fumes: I can easily believe that solvents in WD-40 would penetrate polyethylene plastics... but bubble wrap ''does'' often smell like WD-40 & diesel exhaust, for whatever reason.
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 22:03, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Talk:2458: Bubble Wrap

2021-05-05T06:47:11Z

172.69.34.148:

In another 25 years, unpopped bubble wrap will be the only source of pure air left in the world. [[User:RAGBRAIvet|RAGBRAIvet]] ([[User talk:RAGBRAIvet|talk]]) 04:42, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

:In 25 ''thousand'' years, scientists will use bubble wrap to see what the air what like today, in a similar fashion to how we use ice core samples to look at the atmosphere from thousands of years ago. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.74|108.162.249.74]] 04:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
::mmm, air time capsule. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.204|162.158.63.204]] 13:55, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

WD-40 is not a lubricant. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.244|172.68.65.244]] 05:16, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
: You're right, but in the time it took for you to post the comment, you could have just fixed it. [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 07:21, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
:: Are you sure? Its not ''lube'' despite its penetrating powers, I'll concede to that. But why wouldn't it be a lubricant? Its an oil based product, I need more context. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.170.142|172.69.170.142]] 07:29, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
::: You're right, that since it's oil based it can and sometimes is used as a short term lubricant. However it is not advisable to use it (or other penetrating oils) that way. They generally evaporate too quickly to be used long term. You'd have to constantly reapply it to moving parts. [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 09:27, 4 May 2021 (UTC)
:: WD-40 actually _removes_ any existing oil. Its major ingredient, which is also responsible for the smell, is Kerosene. That is also the active ingredient in _Liquid Wrench_, which frees up stuck parts. That's probably why many people mistake it for a lubricant. When the Kerosene evaporates, it leaves behind a waxy coating (isoparrafins). Its design purpose is to waterproof. The wax, if over-applied, can also treat squeaky hinges, which is another reason people confuse it with some kind of oil.
So, it contains a *penetrating solvent*, which is oil in the sense of lamp oil, but not the sense of oil for lubrication. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.148|172.69.34.148]] 06:47, 5 May 2021 (UTC)

Could the comic be some sort of mocking people who taste all weird stuff from wine? Or basically anyone who has a distinguished taste on [wine, whiskey, tobacco, cheese etc]? [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 08:59, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I relegated the "sound of popping bubblewrap" out of being the single explicit reason why people like doing it, although obviously different people have different needs (up to and including annoying ''other'' people by the noise they create, as perhaps the primary reason to pop the bubbles when given the opportunity), but it's a complex issue. [https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/Why-Do-People-Like-Bubble-Wrap-So-Much There's various explanations out there], and I know I get ''more'' frustrated when I have to try harder to pop 'pop resisting' stuff, even with the same end sound, or can be satisfied with pin-pricking with something sharp to 'doodle' a pop-pattern (and/or flood-fill a methodical 'wasteland' of poppedness) even if it gives nothing more than a faint 'snick'/hiss sound whilst doing it.

...but, no, I've never thought of sniffing it. I suppose I always imagined it was inflated with compressed gasses, like "packaged in a protective atmosphere", for foodstuffs, even though this now sounds ridiculously over-engineered to waste fractionated atmosphere or chemically-evolved gas rather than just blow in (filtered) atmosphere, or even just letting the plastic layers settle down over the original ambient airgap when fusing the 'bubble edges' down between them - however they actually do it.

And then there's the old chestnut about using helium-filled bubble-wrap to reduce/nullify (charged by weight) shipping costs! Note, though, that it's commonly suggested, if you search around, and then commonly refuted by (among other things) the economics of buying enough helium-filled packaging to make any postage-rate change. I suppose you could invest in equipment to split water (powered by solar power) and try infusing it into a standard air-pocket wrapping (could that break even, eventually?), though shipping companies might well consider the Hindenbubblewrap strays outside their standard handling processes so no longer benefits from the sought after lightness-discount. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.146|141.101.98.146]] 09:45, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

I think that some times bubble wrap is made with out air and then sent out and inflated where it is needed.

Bubble wrap is usually made of LDPE, polyethylene. This polymer is quite permeable for many chemicals, especially more lipophilic ones. WD-40 "smell" definitely wouldn't stay in a bubble for long and neither would most components of diesel exhaust. I think the comparison between bubble wrap and ice cores is thus too far fetched since bulk ice provides _much_ better isolation than an LDPE foil. But I am not sure if Randall is aware that all three smells rely on a quite esoteric view and wouldn't work even in theory.

Would it be appropriate to add to "one could detect unique odors present in the factory" a reference to the movie "Fly Me to the Saitama" where the hero (Rei Asami) proves his Tokyo-ness by identifying some Tokyo districts from the air contained in glass bottles? Thank you [[User:Dhalber|Dhalber]] ([[User talk:Dhalber|talk]]) 17:54, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

Uhh, I live in a warehouse district, & I'm not sure what survey of air in industrial zones was the basis for the current description for this comic, but the statement "In reality, the air inside most factories is much like the air anywhere else" definitely needs a big citation next to it; or I'll be happy to call bullshit. Even a brand new ultra-modern factory begins to smell like the things in it, after just a few months of operation.

Also, regarding the smell of WD-40 & diesel fumes: I can easily believe that solvents in WD-40 would penetrate polyethylene plastics... but bubble wrap ''does'' often smell like WD-40 & diesel exhaust, for whatever reason.
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 22:03, 4 May 2021 (UTC)

2456: Types of Scientific Paper

2021-04-29T21:44:01Z

172.69.34.148: why better constants are important

{{comic
| number = 2456
| date = April 28, 2021
| title = Types of Scientific Paper
| image = types_of_scientific_paper.png
| titletext = Others include "We've incrementally improved the estimate of this coefficient," "Maybe all these categories are wrong," and "We found a way to make student volunteers worse at tasks."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a RESEARCH DEPARTMENT ON A LUNCHBREAK. The explanation is one line of text and a table, the table's third row has empty cells, and the whole thing is generally in need of a little polish. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, Randall describes categories of scientific papers with somewhat humorous generalized titles.

==Table of papers==
{| class="wikitable"
|+Breakdown of Papers
|-
!Paper Title
!Explanation
!Article Description
|-
!scope=row|We put a camera somewhere new
|This may involve miniaturisation or other improvements of imaging sensors, power supply, transmission or retention of data, environmental hardening and (possibly) recovery afterwards. Photographs and videos can be especially helpful in understanding what is or was going on, especially for the layman, than more limited signal traces.

Cameras have been inserted into ''every'' obvious bodily orifice (including swallowed, to be later excreted), placed in habitats to monitor wildlife, attached to wildlife to monitor habitats, sent into volcanic craters/ocean trenches/high altitudes/nuclear reactors, launched into space and sent past/round/onto several of the solar-system's more interesting bodies. This makes the "somewhere new" claim intriguing, possibly even comparable to 'clickbait'. This could also be generalized even more by replacing "camera" with "sensor", and then going to debate the newly derived sensor data.
|Includes a large figure, likely an image captured with the camera.
|-
!scope=row|Hey, I found a trove of old records! They don't turn out to be particularly useful, but still, cool!
|Rather than starting with the aim of investigating some question, and finding some way of answering it by uncovering evidence, sometimes a writer may have stumbled upon a cache of historic documents that they then feel compelled to justify the resulting 'WikiWalk' they may have found themselves sucked into. The author may be far more excited about this than any future reader. This could also be a paper by a historian who found out ancient records which could be useful.
|Small figure may show the most interesting fragment of the records.
|-
!scope=row|My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it
|This title refers to the occasional rivalries between scientists within a field, which can push them to seek proof that they, and not their colleague, are correct. It reflects a tone of smug self-satisfaction.
|
|-
!scope=row|The immune system is at it again
|The human immune system is notoriously complex, and there are countless papers in medical fields just describing its strangeness. While it is best known for preventing and battling infections, in auto-immune disease, it can also turn against the body that it is supposed to protect. Moreover it can overreact, for instance in allergic reactions or in a potentially lethal {{w|cytokine storm}} known to occur in certain viral infections, including {{w|Influenza}} and {{w|COVID-19}}. The title may convey exasperation with the amorphous nature of their study subject.
|
|-
!scope=row|We figured out how to make this exotic material, so email us if you need some
|Researchers often attempt to create materials despite there not being any demand, predicting that in the future their material will be game-changing without any actual applications. These researchers have created such a material, and are offering to produce it for anyone who needs it. It is couched in terms of having created an answer for which there was not yet any proper question.
This may be also referring to the discovering/creating of elements and subatomic particles. The statement if you wish to buy it is humorous in these cases because they will decay too quickly to be purchased.
|
|-
!scope=row|What are fish even doing down there
|Deep sea marine biology regularly discovers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7QXdlSBGGY strange lifeforms] in unexpected places, and theories explaining deep sea ecosystems are regularly confounded by new data.

Scientists may also bump into marine organisms when looking for something else. For example, one planned underwater neutrino detector [https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44938 picked up bioluminescence instead].

Whichever way, the title probably reflects a totally unexpected result that is possibly too cross-disciplinary to be properly comprehended as an actual scientific advance by the authors. However, a proper study of the species could very well be an important paper.
|This paper does not appear to have any headers, implying a longer, free-flowing format.
|-
!scope=row|This task I had to do anyway turned out to be hard enough for its own paper
|There is a huge variety in the complexity and importance of subjects studied in scientific papers, and often some supposedly easy task will be sufficiently complicated as to merit its own paper. For example, a scientist may have discovered a better way of finding out if a substance is X or Y while studying something else.

The author may be glad to have been able to turn mundane 'housekeeping' activities, that don't normally do much to enhance academic reputations, into an actual opportunity to be cite-worthy.
|
|-
!scope=row|Hey, at least we showed that this method can produce results! That's not nothing, right?
|One of the struggles of the scientific method is that many experiments will not produce the results scientists desired or expected. Negative or conflicting results of well-conducted research are as important as positive or dramatic ones, but are often ignored in favor of more novel findings. As a result, some journals are established specifically for negative results, reducing the bias towards only positive claims that may actually be outliers or anomalies.

In this case, the authors may otherwise have worked on their problem and been left with no citable proof of their efforts. The title perhaps reflects an attempt to present this as 'success' of a different kind, rather than a submission to such a null/negative-results platform. This may be similar to the above type of paper too.
|
|-
!scope=row|Check out this weird thing one of us saw while out for a walk
|This paper may be imagined as an opportunistic publication. A department or team has seen itself low down on the local 'league table' for academic output. A brainstorming session for a way of rectifying this led to desperately seizing upon the first idle comment made (in lieu of any better sounding ideas) that can somehow be shoehorned into their respective subject area, and is now being presented similar to "this one weird thing" clickbait titles that almost always oversell their content.

This also works in the context of entomology. Insects have the most species of any class of animals [https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/bugnos by a wide margin], but due to their small size, they're not easily seen. As a result, new species are constantly being discovered in places as innocuous as [https://wildlife.org/video-entomologists-discover-30-new-species-in-la-backyards/ someone's backyard.]
|Includes several large figures, likely close-up photographs of the weird thing. There are no headers, as the paper may have little background or methodology, just observations.
|-
!scope=row|We are 500 scientists and here's what we've been up to for the last 10 years
| Some papers summarize the work of big research teams, like those working on the [https://repositorio.uc.cl/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11534/13948/Observation%20of%20a%20new%20particle%20in%20the%20search%20for%20the%20Standard%20Model%20Higgs%20boson%20with%20the%20ATLAS%20detector%20at%20the%20LHC.pdf Higgs Boson] (list of authors starts at page 17 and goes to page 26 with foot notes about authors to page 29, and a dedication in the header would suggest that more than one other contributor ''died'' over the course of the research, which would be rather unusual for a smaller project) or LIGO. Since the discoveries which are made are a team effort, probably outlasting many of the individual tenures involved, the papers have many authors listed.
A credit for participation may not mean any particularly great contribution by each individual, but being left out (even for one summer's secondment, seven years before any results could be recorded) would be taken as a slight, and an opportunity missed to be 'citable' in the future.
|A huge portion of the page is taken up by the presumably 500 authors' names, above the main horizontal bar.
|-
!scope=row|Some thoughts on how everyone else is bad at research
|Similar to the "my colleague is wrong" paper, but in this case applied to far greater swathes of the community by the author(s) of this (possibly unfocussed) tract. Usually a "systematic review", the words 'some thoughts' might indicate a meta-approach with no original research - and possibly a passive-aggressive style of assessment.
|No header sections, possibly because these particular thoughts are in the form of an essay or letter without an accompanying investigation.
|-
!scope=row|We scanned some undergraduates
|Initial research is often done at universities, so when human subjects are required, recruiting undergraduate students is a common, easy, and inexpensive way to gather enough people to conduct studies or experiments. This is extremely common in psychological or sociological studies, but can involve more medical (but non-invasive) 'scans', from simple eyeball-tracking to full-body MRI. This practice is often criticized, as it introduces a selection bias, which makes the results difficult to generalize to the entire population, (university students in a given country not being a representative sample of human beings as a whole). Nonetheless, easy accessibility makes these students a source of data for many academic papers. The low-key approach to the title (concentrating blandly upon the method with no references to results) may indicate that the results obtained are very trivial and no great developments were even made in implementation. Alternately, this is a truly ground-breaking paper obscured entirely by the lead author's over-narrow professional focus and avoidance of any hype.
|
|-
!scope=row|We've incrementally improved the estimate of this coefficient
|Often scientific research, e.g. in cosmology or physics, will work with an assumed constant value that is known to be only an 'educated guess' of the actual definite value, or an inclusive range. However accurate/certain this is, further experimentation or observation may further narrow down the uncertainty involved to a statistically significant degree. An improvement to one of these constants also improves the accuracy of every single calculation that uses it.

Even if these improvements may seem trivial to those outside the discipline (e.g. narrowing down a seemingly esoteric value from 99.99% certainty to 99.995% certainty), they are probably understood as significant achievements by those aware of the effort needed to obtain such diminishing returns, and the authors are probably very excited to have done what they did.

Another possible interpretation of this title is that it refers not to cosmological constants but to an exponent in algorithmic complexity, for example the [https://arxiv.org/abs/1401.7714 2014 paper] that proved that the complexity of matrix multiplication is at most n^2.3728639 in place of the previous upper bound n^2.3729.
|rowspan="3"|(Only referenced in Title Text)
|-
!scope=row|Maybe all these categories are wrong
|In some field that relies heavily upon classification (e.g. phylogenetic biology, or the Standard Model in physics) sometimes observations arise that cast doubt on the previously established ideas. It seems that this may have happened here, hopefully with a suggestion of how to reimagine the situation.

The article may have been written with with a sense of euphoria (the chance to present a paradigm shift in thinking, to rewrite the textbooks) or pessimism (it demonstrates only the failings in current thinking, without any obvious solution).

Alternatively, it may be a reference to the categories of papers that this comic proposes.
|-
!scope=row|We found a way to make student volunteers worse at tasks
|Possibly a psychology experiment, and maybe not even the result expected. In general, the repetition of an activity will induce greater skill/capacity in a tested individual. By accident or design, the study group in this instance has induced the opposite correlation. (There ''are'', however, some studies that explicitly look at how e.g. lack of sleep reduces productivity.)

Exactly what emotion the title reflects might depend upon whether the worsening was an intended result, or even how the team were able to refocuss and seize upon the adverse outcomes.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Could need description of each paper}}
:[Heading:]
:Types of Scientific Paper

:[An array of 4 rows with 3 scientific papers each, is shown. The first page of each is shown, but only the papers titles are legible. Black lines for headings, several lines for paragraphs of text and white rectangles indicating figures are used to make each paper look different. Titles are as follows:]
:We put a camera somewhere new
:Hey, I found a trove of old records! They don't turn out to be particularly useful, but still, cool!
:My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it
:The immune system is at it again
:We figured out how to make this exotic material, so email us if you need some
:What are fish even doing down there
:This task I had to do anyway turned out to be hard enough for its own paper
:Hey, at least we showed that this method can produce results! That's not nothing, right?
:Check out this weird thing one of us saw while out for a walk
:We are 500 scientists and here's what we've been up to for the last 10 years
:Some thoughts on how everyone else is bad at research
:We scanned some undergraduates

==Trivia==
*Originally, this comic's title text misspelled "volunteers" as "volunters".
**This could have been intentional (''we'' might be the volunteers)
**But it was not as it was quickly corrected.
*Another comic, [[2012: Thorough Analysis]], similarly categorizes or mocks research papers.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Research Papers]]
[[Category:Science]]

2456: Types of Scientific Paper

2021-04-29T14:08:07Z

172.69.34.148: /* Table of papers */

{{comic
| number = 2456
| date = April 28, 2021
| title = Types of Scientific Paper
| image = types_of_scientific_paper.png
| titletext = Others include "We've incrementally improved the estimate of this coefficient," "Maybe all these categories are wrong," and "We found a way to make student volunteers worse at tasks."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a RESEARCH DEPARTMENT ON A LUNCHBREAK. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, Randall describes categories of scientific papers with somewhat humorous generalized titles.

==Table of papers==
{| class="wikitable"
|+Breakdown of Papers
|-
!Paper Title
!Explanation
!Article Description
|-
!scope=row|We put a camera somewhere new
|This may involve miniaturisation or other improvements of imaging sensors, power supply, transmission or retention of data, environmental hardening and (possibly) recovery afterwards. Photographs and videos can be especially helpful in understanding what is or was going on, especially for the layman, than more limited signal traces.

Cameras have been inserted into ''every'' obvious bodily orifice (including swallowed, to be later excreted), placed in habitats to monitor wildlife, attached to wildlife to monitor habitats, sent into volcanic craters/ocean trenches/high altitudes/nuclear reactors, launched into space and sent past/round/onto several of the solar-system's more interesting bodies. This makes the "somewhere new" claim intriguing, possibly even comparable to 'clickbait'. This could also be generalized even more by replacing "camera" with "sensor", and then going to debate the newly derived sensor data.
|Includes a large figure, likely an image captured with the camera.
|-
!scope=row|Hey, I found a trove of old records! They don't turn out to be particularly useful, but still, cool!
|Rather than starting with the aim of investigating some question, and finding some way of answering it by uncovering evidence, sometimes a writer may have stumbled upon a cache of historic documents that they then feel compelled to justify the resulting 'WikiWalk' they may have found themselves sucked into. The author may be far more excited about this than any future reader. This could also be a paper by a historian who found out ancient records which could be useful.
|Small figure may show the most interesting fragment of the records.
|-
!scope=row|My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it
|This title refers to the occasional rivalries between scientists within a field, which can push them to seek proof that they, and not their colleague, are correct. It reflects a tone of smug self-satisfaction.
|Note the lack of headers, suggesting an argument more than an explanation of data
|-
!scope=row|The immune system is at it again
|The human immune system is notoriously complex, and there are countless papers in medical fields just describing its strangeness. While it is best known for preventing and battling infections, in auto-immune disease, it can also turn against the body that it is supposed to protect. Moreover it can overreact, for instance in allergic reactions or in a potentially lethal {{w|cytokine storm}} known to occur in certain viral infections, including {{w|Influenza}} and {{w|COVID-19}}. The title may convey exasperation with the amorphous nature of their study subject.
|
|-
!scope=row|We figured out how to make this exotic material, so email us if you need some
|Researchers often attempt to create materials despite there not being any demand, predicting that in the future their material will be game-changing without any actual applications. These researchers have created such a material, and are offering to produce it for anyone who needs it. It is couched in terms of having created an answer for which there was not yet any proper question.
|
|-
!scope=row|What are fish even doing down there
|Deep sea marine biology regularly discovers [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7QXdlSBGGY strange lifeforms] in unexpected places, and theories explaining deep sea ecosystems are regularly confounded by new data.

Scientists may also bump into marine organisms when looking for something else. For example, one planned underwater neutrino detector [https://www.nature.com/articles/srep44938 picked up bioluminescence instead].

Whichever way, the title probably reflects a totally unexpected result that is possibly too cross-disciplinary to be properly comprehended as an actual scientific advance by the authors. However, a proper study of the species could very well be an important paper.
|This paper does not appear to have any headers, implying a longer, free-flowing format.
|-
!scope=row|This task I had to do anyway turned out to be hard enough for its own paper
|There is a huge variety in the complexity and importance of subjects studied in scientific papers, and often some supposedly easy task will be sufficiently complicated as to merit its own paper. For example, a scientist may have discovered a better way of finding out if a substance is X or Y while studying something else.

The author may be glad to have been able to turn mundane 'housekeeping' activities, that don't normally do much to enhance academic reputations, into an actual opportunity to be cite-worthy.
|
|-
!scope=row|Hey, at least we showed that this method can produce results! That's not nothing, right?
|One of the struggles of the scientific method is that many experiments will not produce the results scientists desired or expected. Negative or conflicting results of well-conducted research are as important as positive or dramatic ones, but are often ignored in favor of more novel findings. As a result, some journals are established specifically for negative results, reducing the bias towards only positive claims that may actually be outliers or anomalies.

In this case, the authors may otherwise have worked on their problem and been left with no citable proof of their efforts. The title perhaps reflects an attempt to present this as 'success' of a different kind, rather than a submission to such a null/negative-results platform. This may be similar to the above type of paper too.
|
|-
!scope=row|Check out this weird thing one of us saw while out for a walk
|This paper may be imagined as an opportunistic publication. A department or team has seen itself low down on the local 'league table' for academic output. A brainstorming session for a way of rectifying this led to desperately seizing upon the first idle comment made (in lieu of any better sounding ideas) that can somehow be shoehorned into their respective subject area, and is now being presented similar to "this one weird thing" clickbait titles that almost always oversell their content.

This also works in the context of entomology. Insects have the most species of any class of animals [https://www.si.edu/spotlight/buginfo/bugnos by a wide margin], but due to their small size, they're not easily seen. As a result, new species are constantly being discovered in places as innocuous as [https://wildlife.org/video-entomologists-discover-30-new-species-in-la-backyards/ someone's backyard.]
|Includes several large figures, likely close-up photographs of the weird thing. There are no headers, as the paper may have little background or methodology, just observations.
|-
!scope=row|We are 500 scientists and here's what we've been up to for the last 10 years
| Some papers summarize the work of big research teams, like those working on the [https://repositorio.uc.cl/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11534/13948/Observation%20of%20a%20new%20particle%20in%20the%20search%20for%20the%20Standard%20Model%20Higgs%20boson%20with%20the%20ATLAS%20detector%20at%20the%20LHC.pdf Higgs Boson] (list of authors starts at page 17 and goes to page 26 with foot notes about authors to page 29, and a dedication in the header would suggest that more than one other contributor ''died'' over the course of the research, which would be rather unusual for a smaller project) or LIGO. Since the discoveries which are made are a team effort, probably outlasting many of the individual tenures involved, the papers have many authors listed.
A credit for participation may not mean any particularly great contribution by each individual, but being left out (even for one summer's secondment, seven years before any results could be recorded) would be taken as a slight, and an opportunity missed to be 'citable' in the future.
|A huge portion of the page is taken up by the presumably 500 authors' names, above the main horizontal bar.
|-
!scope=row|Some thoughts on how everyone else is bad at research
|Similar to the "my colleague is wrong" paper, but in this case applied to far greater swathes of the community by the author(s) of this (possibly unfocussed) tract. Usually a "systematic review", the words 'some thoughts' might indicate a meta-approach with no original research - and possibly a passive-aggressive style of assessment.
|No header sections, possibly because these particular thoughts are in the form of an essay or letter without an accompanying investigation.
|-
!scope=row|We scanned some undergraduates
|Some initial research, especially that on a low budget, may recruit students at the same institution as easily available test-subjects. Quite often these are psychological or sociological studies, but can involve more medical (but non-invasive) 'scans', from simple eyeball-tracking to full-body MRI. The low-key approach to the title (concentrating blandly upon the method, compared to some of the more 'clickbait' titles above) may indicate that the results obtained are very trivial and no great developments were even made in implementation. Alternately, this is a truly ground-breaking paper obscured entirely by the lead author's over-narrow professional focus and avoidance of any hype.

When misread as "scammed", this paper can also refer to numerous famous psychological studies done before the establishment of certain ethical rules, such as the Milgram experiment.
|
|-
!scope=row|We've incrementally improved the estimate of this coefficient
|Often scientific research, e.g. in cosmology or physics, will work with an assumed constant value that is known to be only an 'educated guess' of the actual definite value, or an inclusive range. However accurate/certain this is, further experimentation or observation may further narrow down the uncertainty involved to a statistically significant degree.

Even if these improvements may seem trivial to those outside the discipline (e.g. narrowing down a seemingly esoteric value from 99.99% certainty to 99.995% certainty), they are probably understood as significant achievements by those aware of the effort needed to obtain such diminishing returns, and the authors are probably very excited to have done what they did.
|rowspan="3"|(Only referenced in Title Text)
|-
!scope=row|Maybe all these categories are wrong
|In some field that relies heavily upon classification (e.g. phylogenetic biology, or the Standard Model in physics) sometimes observations arise that cast doubt on the previously established ideas. It seems that this may have happened here, hopefully with a suggestion of how to reimagine the situation.

The article may have been written with with a sense of euphoria (the chance to present a paradigm shift in thinking, to rewrite the textbooks) or pessimism (it demonstrates only the failings in current thinking, without any obvious solution).

Alternatively, it may be a reference to the categories of papers that this comic proposes.
|-
!scope=row|We found a way to make student volunteers worse at tasks
|Possibly a psychology experiment, and maybe not even the result expected. In general, the repetition of an activity will induce greater skill/capacity in a tested individual. By accident or design, the study group in this instance has induced the opposite correlation. (There ''are'', however, some studies that explicitly look at how e.g. lack of sleep reduces productivity.)

Exactly what emotion the title reflects might depend upon whether the worsening was an intended result, or even how the team were able to refocuss and seize upon the adverse outcomes.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Could need description of each paper}}
:[Heading:]
:Types of Scientific Paper

:[An array of 4 rows with 3 scientific papers each, is shown. The first page of each is shown, but only the papers titles are legible. Black lines for headings, several lines for paragraphs of text and white rectangles indicating figures are used to make each paper look different. Titles are as follows:]
:We put a camera somewhere new
:Hey, I found a trove of old records! They don't turn out to be particularly useful, but still, cool!
:My colleague is wrong and I can finally prove it
:The immune system is at it again
:We figured out how to make this exotic material, so email us if you need some
:What are fish even doing down there
:This task I had to do anyway turned out to be hard enough for its own paper
:Hey, at least we showed that this method can produce results! That's not nothing, right?
:Check out this weird thing one of us saw while out for a walk
:We are 500 scientists and here's what we've been up to for the last 10 years
:Some thoughts on how everyone else is bad at research
:We scanned some undergraduates

==Trivia==
*Originally, this comic's title text misspelled "volunteers" as "volunters".
**This could have been intentional (''we'' might be the volunteers)
**But it was not as it was quickly corrected.
*Another comic, [[2012: Thorough Analysis]], similarly categorizes or mocks research papers.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Research Papers]]
[[Category:Science]]

Talk:2431: Leap Year 2021

2021-03-02T19:51:04Z

172.69.34.148:

It's amazing how quickly some of us got to edit this. I hope I didn't cause too much edit-conflict confusion just by my changing the date value. Honestly just checked, before turning in, to find two (so far) other edits follow so quickly after... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.152|141.101.98.152]] 02:03, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Sorry,I did not see anything when I started
:I wouldn't expect you to (the first Categories adder, yes?), until you perhaps tried to save. But that's what being shown edit-conflicts is important for. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.244|141.101.98.244]] 03:02, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

If someone actually did this, how many years would it take for the calendar to line back up again where it started? 365? [[User:Captain Video|Captain Video]] ([[User talk:Captain Video|talk]]) 02:20, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
: 365 years plus (around) 33% more because every fourth year (except every hundredth, except except every 400th) is already ''expected'' to have a 29th, so you'd not be able to shift the year that year and have to do those days after the first 365 mostly-shifted consecutive years - with the necessary overflow days ''still'' being only to be done for 3/4(ish) of the next 91ish years, leaving maybe 23 more years to be shifted. But 24 years would only allow 18 shifts, so 6 more years than that ''probably'' would use 5 years. And one year may be absorbed already, or left over. So 365+91+23+6. Ish. Because it'd depend exactly which year you start as to which non-expandable years occur within the strict (0.75)+(0.25*0.75)+(0.25*0.25*0.75)+... series. But that's the likely area of the answer, off the top of my head. Around 485 years, give or take. Unless I've made a big error! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.244|141.101.98.244]] 03:02, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
::A quick evaluation of the geometric progression (a/1-r = 365/(1-1/4)) gives an answer of 486.666... This means it would take at least 487 years to come past full circle (488 on a leap year) if not for the pesky 400-year rule. Given where the date lies, there can be either one or two per cycle; thus, we find a minimum of 488 years and a maximum of 490. If we started this current year, on a non-leap year with no round 400 in the next 87 years, it would take the minimum amount, 488 years, to cycle through 489 revolutions of the Earth around the Sun. Happy Leap Year, my friends! [[User:BlackHat|BlackHat]] ([[User talk:BlackHat|talk]]) 03:52, 2 March 2021 (UTC)
::It's a bit messier, but the rough calculation was indeed close. I did a quick Excel calculation (well, OpenOffice Calc, but essentially the same - easiest thing at hand without Perl-diving). Actual 'next synchronised' period is 482-484 (solar) years, in an intruiging but not surprising pattern. Prior to 2000's unusual leap-day (but not too early to miss encompassing the one in 2400) it is 484 actual years (483 uniformly 'enhanced' ones) - but if you start in the period of any year leading up to a LD (I was running of 28th of February baselines, but any time from March 1st the prior year would count) you get the 485th year meshed too. (These periods contain two quatrocentenial LDs. And obviously ''starting'' with a 'normal' leap-year means the very next year is just as accurate, before it gets shifted the year after.)
::2001 until the late 2010s it's one set of 483 years to three of 484 (one of each has two synchronised years, 484th and 485th, because of adjacent starts landing on the same end), having just one century LD within. As you get close to 2020 you get a further non-LD century in (2020+480_and_change is 2500+) and 482 and/or 483 actual-years. "And/or" because only every second 482 ends on run-up to a LD so that the 483rd meshes as well, the 483s are not meshed correctly to do the same.
::The cycle ''beyond'' that is individually roaming through the same 482 to 484 range (and a number of end-point adjacents) but as it plays hopscotch through and around the centennial patterns it adopts an off-rhythm variation that doesn't even really make simple sense at the millenial level, as you might imagine. It might make an interesting artistic 'regularly purturbed noise' at even longer sample-sizes, though. Hack it into a graphical format, maybe, various possible options according to taste. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.193|141.101.99.193]] 08:22, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Can someone make a [[:Category:Calendar]] that is a subcategory of [[:Category:Time]]? I feel like there are several comics that could fit, e.g. [[994: Advent Calendar]], [[1140: Calendar of Meaningful Dates]], [[1930: Calendar Facts]], [[1073: Weekend]], [[1061: EST]], etc. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.210|162.158.255.210]] 02:39, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

Sweden tried something like this in the early 18th century. When switching from Julian to Gregorian calendar, some bright spark decided to do it gradually, by removing all leap days between 1700 and 1740. The leap day of 1700 was skipped (It was a leap day in the Julian calendar, but not the Gregorian), but due to war and other things they 'forgot' to annul the leap days of 1704 and 1708. In 1712 it was decided to revert to Gregorian calendar, by adding a double leap day, resulting in the only known occurrence of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_non-standard_dates#February_30 February 30]. From 1700 to 1712 Sweden was out of sync with both the Gregorian and Julian calendars, resulting in quite a lot of confusion. For example, Carl Linnaeus birthday can be given as May 12, 13 or 23, depending on what calendar is used. [[User:Popup|Popup]] ([[User talk:Popup|talk]]) 07:22, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I disagree with the explanation of the title text. I understood it to be spoken by Black Hat to reinforce his disregard of people who might suffer in the future since he lives firmly in the present, one day at a time, as it were. [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 12:54, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

My take on the title text was just a reference to the common statement (esp. as people get older), "I've lived in <city/state/etc.> for my whole life and I'm not about to move now." [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.222|172.68.65.222]] 15:39, 2 March 2021 (UTC)Pat

I don't see why the explanation is incomplete. Can someone please tell me why so I can fix it? [[User:Quillathe Siannodel|Quillathe Siannodel]] ([[User talk:Quillathe Siannodel|talk]]) 17:17, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

I think the title text is black hat using "living in the present" as a justification for causing unnecessary problems in the future. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.148|172.69.34.148]] 19:51, 2 March 2021 (UTC)

2428: Mars Landing Video

2021-02-22T19:18:33Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2428
| date = February 22, 2021
| title = Mars Landing Video
| image = mars_landing_video.png
| titletext = The best part of crashing a Mars briefing is you can get in a full 11 minutes of questions before they can start to respond.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE WORST SKYCRANE. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic plays on the fact that if there is only one of something that one thing is the most/least in that set by lack of comparison. as there is only one full speed video of a mars landing that makes the video the worst one.

This comic was published shortly before a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYQwuYZbA6o NASA press conference] that showed, as mentioned in the comic, the first ever full-speed video of a Mars landing.

Cueball bursting into the conference via skycrane is ironic because that is also how ''Perseverance'' was lowered to the surface.

The title text refers to the 11-minute communications delay between Mars and Earth at the time of the rover's landing.

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

[Hairbun, standing on a circular stage in front of a podium]

We're excited to share the first ever full-speed video of a mars landing.

[Off-screen character, crashing through the roof on a skycrane]

Doesn't that mean it's also the ''worst'' ever full-speed video of a mars landing?

Do you expect that record to stand forever, or is NASA working on a worse one?

[Bottom text]

NASA tried to ban me from their press briefings, but ironically their security was totally unprepared to deal with a skycrane.

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:2423: Project Orion

2021-02-16T21:57:38Z

172.69.34.148: Reference XKCD 1412

If you read xkcd long enough, the comics always tend toward being about conversations tending toward something. (Okay, that’s not true; there’s one other comic like this and it was a conversation tending toward being about species tending toward being built like crabs. Still funny to think about, though.) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.244|108.162.215.244]] 01:09, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
:All xkcd comics eventually become conversations about conversations. [[User:Captain Video|Captain Video]] ([[User talk:Captain Video|talk]]) 01:15, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
Just wanted to point out that "dusty plasma fission fragment rockets" is a [[856:_Trochee_Fixation|series of trochees]].[[Special:Contributions/162.158.183.117|162.158.183.117]] 05:45, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
: TIL trochee means something different for English than for Greek, Latin, Hungarian etc. [[User:Torzsmokus|Torzsmokus]] ([[User talk:Torzsmokus|talk]]) 08:35, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
:: This also means that the first four words can be [[1412:_Teenage_Mutant_Ninja_Turtles|sung to the tune of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]] [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.148|172.69.34.148]] 21:57, 16 February 2021 (UTC)

The current explanation mentions other examples of topics, specialists from different fields apparently tend to converge on. Can anyone confirm whether those are actually true, or at least commonly known stereotypes? I've never heard of any such claim. The claim being, that all conversations converge on these topics, not the topics themselves. [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 13:35, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

Now I understand a bit better what may have influenced some plot elements of Neal Stephenson's book Anathem.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.62.220|172.69.62.220]] 15:28, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
:More specifically? It's not striking a chord for me. All Sci-Fi conversations eventually come around to multiverse phenomena? [[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 20:12, 11 February 2021 (UTC)
::Well, there definitely was an Orionesque system. With the pre-detection theorising by the core characters ''possibly'' being juxtaposed with more mundane gardening information within the Math/enclave. (Must re-read it!) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.55.104|172.69.55.104]] 21:06, 11 February 2021 (UTC)

== I don't think that modern engineering can make project Orion safe. ==

While modern engineering can perhaps make some forms of nuclear propulsion safe(ish) and I think that stuff like nuclear thermal rockets could be great in some roles, I don't think that we are close to being able to detonate nukes in Earths atmosphere safely. Safely enough for the people on the rocket, maybe, but not for the people eating their atomic dust. Like the plans for that giant hypersonic nuclear ramjet, it's awesome, and would likely work, but I don't see a way to clean up the emissions to anything like acceptable levels.

[[User:BlakeFelix|BlakeFelix]] ([[User talk:BlakeFelix|talk]]) 16:02, 13 February 2021 (UTC)

Talk:2425: mRNA Vaccine

2021-02-15T23:13:13Z

172.69.34.148: jan dodonna?

Well, RIP Cueball-on-Leia's-fake-Death-Star. [[User:Bubblegum|bubblegum]]-[[User_talk:Bubblegum|talk]]|[[Special:Contributions/Bubblegum|contribs]] 22:11, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

Is the "Hairy" guy with a beard [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Jan_Dodonna]? Or I guess it could just be a generic person. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.148|172.69.34.148]] 23:13, 15 February 2021 (UTC)

2425: mRNA Vaccine

2021-02-15T23:10:55Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */ category

{{comic
| number = 2425
| date = February 15, 2021
| title = mRNA Vaccine
| image = mrna_vaccine.png
| titletext = To ensure lasting immunity, doctors recommend destroying a second Death Star some time after the first.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a THERMAL EXHAUST PORT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This is another analogy to how {{w|mRNA vaccines}} tend to work; essentially creating an inactive analog of the virus to give the immune system knowledge of it so it's prepared to stave off the real thing. The resulting comic is related to Cueball's question to the person vaccinating him: "Why would my body attack something it made itself?"

The 2nd panel is a reference to ''{{w|Star Wars (film)|Star Wars}}'' (Episode IV). The Rebel Alliance has retrieved the {{w|Death Star}} plans. The Death Star is a space station the size of a small moon, which has the power to destroy planets. However, in this panel, the "Death Star plans" are used to build a Death Star, in contrast to the film, where the plans are used to find a weakness in the enemy Death Star and destroy it. The ensuing panels mention that people are sent to build the Death Star, according to the plans that Princess Leia provided.

After the Death Star has been built, it is positioned near a planet/moon, referencing the end of ''Star Wars'', when the Death Star is orbiting {{w|Yavin IV}}. Like in the film, the Rebels mobilize to destroy the Death Star because it looks like an enemy battle station, however, the Death Star operators are confused, because Leia (a member of the Rebels) had ordered the construction of the space station. The Rebels initially attack the surface of the space station before finding a "thermal exhaust port". The mentions of "proton torpedoes" and a "thermal exhaust port" reference the weapons and target used to destroy the Death Star. Cueball notices these things as "side effects" from the vaccine and he lies down and rests. After the Death Star is destroyed, he is feeling better.

Later on, Cueball (who has been vaccinated) approaches White Hat, who is coughing. His body once again destroys another Death Star, this time led by the enemy, {{w|Darth Vader}}, who gives a quote from ''Star Wars''. They already know the weakness, the "thermal exhaust port", and quickly destroy the space station. This shows that his body is able to destroy "foreign" invaders (Death Stars), after learning their weakness and destroying the invaders that his body created itself.

The title text mentions that the two COVID-19 vaccines as of the date of publication (the {{w|Pfizer–BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine|Pfizer-BioNTech one}} and the {{w|Moderna COVID-19 vaccine|Moderna one}}) require [[2422: Vaccine Ordering|2 doses of vaccine]], thus destroying 2 Death Stars.

Vaccination was also explained, xkcd-style, in [[2406: Viral Vector Immunity]]. References to the ''[[:Category:Star Wars|Star Wars]]'' franchise are a recurring theme on xkcd.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball seated in a doctor's office getting (what seems to be) the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Both he and the doctor are wearing masks; the doctor is also wearing a scrub cap.]
:Doctor: The vaccine contains mRNA instructions for making the virus spike protein.
:Cueball: Weird, so the vaccine is just blueprints?
:Doctor: Yup! Your body reads the mRNA, makes the proteins, and then has an immune reaction to them.
:Cueball: Why would my body attack something it made itself?
:Doctor: Well...

:[Princess Leia and Hairy in frame.]
:Leia: Here are the Death Star plans.
:Hairy: Thank you, Princess.

:[Hairy, Ponytail, and White Hat in frame.]
:Hairy: These blueprints are from Princess Leia.
:Ponytail: Ugh, she's always giving us projects.

:[Ponytail and Cueball in frame.]
:Ponytail: Here, take these blueprints to your construction crew.
:Cueball: Affirmative. What is it?
:Ponytail: No idea. Something the Princess wants.
:Cueball: Copy that.

:[A view from outside of the Death Star. The panel heading reads "Soon..."]
:Voice from Death Star: Hi, Commander? Construction crew B here.

:[A view from inside the Death Star, with the Earth visible through two adjacent windows. Cueball is standing at some kind of control/communications panel.]
:Cueball: We finished building the Princess's big metal orb thing.

:[A view from outside the Death Star again, with the curve of the Earth in the foreground.]
:Voice from Death Star: Do you know if she wants us to park it somewhere, or—
:Voices from Earth: '''''AAAAAA!!!'''''

:[A view from the Earth's surface with the Death Star in the sky. 3 Cueballs, Princess Leia, and Ponytail are on the Earth's surface.]
:Voice from Death Star: ...Is everything ok?
:Cueball 1: '''''AAAAAAA!'''''
:Cueball 2: ''Imperial battle station!!!''
:Ponytail & Cueball 3: ''AAAAAAAAAA''
:Offscreen voice: ''Red Alert Red Alert''

:[Another view from the Earth's surface.]

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

''(currently being written by [[User:Zowayix]]; this notice is trying to avoid duplicate work. Posted at 11:09 PM UTC; feel free to ignore this message if more than an hour old)''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring face masks]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:Star Wars]]
[[Category:Biology]]

2425: mRNA Vaccine

2021-02-15T23:08:20Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */ title text

2425: mRNA Vaccine

2021-02-15T23:03:19Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */ ce

2425: mRNA Vaccine

2021-02-15T23:01:15Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */

2425: mRNA Vaccine

2021-02-15T22:53:51Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */ ce

2425: mRNA Vaccine

2021-02-15T22:49:06Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */ fix

2425: mRNA Vaccine

2021-02-15T22:48:01Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */ clarify

2425: mRNA Vaccine

2021-02-15T22:44:52Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */ category

2425: mRNA Vaccine

2021-02-15T22:44:00Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */ better

Talk:1425: Tasks

2021-02-06T16:33:26Z

172.69.34.148:

the source of title text maybe is Szeliski, ''Computer Vision: Algorithms and Applications'' (2010), p. 10. --[[User:Valepert|valepert]] ([[User talk:Valepert|talk]]) 06:59, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

[http://www.wired.com/2012/06/google-x-neural-network/ Google’s Artificial Brain Learns to Find Cat Videos] might be useful as a description of the problem [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.219|108.162.250.219]] 08:34, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

:Sorry for editing your comment but external links have different syntax that internal links so it wasn't working. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 11:21, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Nice Superman joke there, Pudder! --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.49|141.101.99.49]] 10:26, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
:It had been removed in an edit, so I shoehorned in back in :P --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 12:25, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
Isn't there an xkcd where the estimate of 5 years of work is equivalent to "might take forever?" [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 13:16, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
:I'm pretty sure you're refering to 678. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.132|173.245.52.132]] 15:00, 25 September 2014 (UTC)

The link in the description is to a document by {{w|Seymour Papert}} and the [http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Summer_Vision_Project.html?id=qOh7NwAACAAJ book] on the project is also by Papert. Is there any contemporary evidence that it was actually Minsky who assigned the project? I think he just got interested in it later. 14:17, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

[http://xkcd.com/678/ 678: Researcher Translation] is probably what you're thinking of, Rtanenbaum. [[User:Ndgeek|Ndgeek]] ([[User talk:Ndgeek|talk]]) 17:44, 24 September 2014 (UTC)

Is it possible that Randall's selection of bird rather than another naturally occurring object is a subtle reference to the Birdsnap app (http://engineering.columbia.edu/it-crow-or-raven-new-birdsnap-app-will-tell-you-0) which has solved some of the aspects of this problem? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.137|173.245.48.137]] 22:02, 27 September 2014 (UTC)

Hopefully I can add that this also seems to make reference to the U.S. Forest Service intention to make everyone have a permit to take pics, etc., in national parks. https://www.yahoo.com/travel/dont-take-that-picture-the-u-s-forest-service-might-98484656432.html {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.21}}

Post the picture to an online forum, say it's a bird, if it's not everyone will correct you as per http://xkcd.com/386/, so scrape forum and if there's a lot of attention it's not a bird, if there isn't much attention it probably is a bird. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.78|141.101.99.78]] 23:06, 3 October 2014 (UTC)

A dev team at Flickr took this comic as a challenge, and set up a PoC at http://parkorbird.flickr.com/ (that seems to work fairly well). --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.135|108.162.210.135]] 20:08, 20 October 2014 (UTC)
:I was duly impressed. It doesn't recognize big bird very well, though. ;) [[User:Suspender guy|Suspender guy]] ([[User talk:Suspender guy|talk]]) 20:26, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

A 'picture of a bird' from a CS perspective is a reverse engineering problem. The picture is a 2 dimensional rendering of a 3-dimensional world and a 'bird' is a 3-dimensional object. It takes years for the mind of a newborn human to be able to recognize a majority of objects based on their 'first look' at a stereoscopic (two-eyes) image presented by their visual cortex. The software equivalency of this would be to create a 3 dimensional representation of objects and create a linear-algebra algorithm that can define the statistical probability that any given shape is within a certain degree of exclusion a matrix representation of the target shape (area) of the 3 dimensional object (bird) based on distance (using spacial reconstruction). It's not impossible, it's just really really hard. - nerd answer {{unsigned ip|173.245.54.166}}
:To be honest I don't think it is impossible to replicate any function of human intelligence and mental capacity on a computer system. It just requires sufficient processing ability, appropriate hardware, and of course, an understanding of how humans do it in the first place. -Pennpenn [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.162|108.162.250.162]] 03:29, 17 September 2015 (UTC)

Or just give Google a little less than two years, and they'll make [https://cloud.google.com/vision/ Google Cloud Vision API] for you [[User:Gpk|Gpk]] ([[User talk:Gpk|talk]]) 20:39, 13 June 2016 (UTC)

I read somewhere that when you ask CS/IT specialist for a probable ETA for solving an interesting problem, you need to multiply the given time to the ETA by 4 and take the next larger unit (a minute becomes 4 hours, an hour becomes 4 days etc.). Can't find the source of that though. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.70.229|141.101.70.229]] 15:47, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

== GIS being "easy" ==

All these years later, I still struggle with the classification of "are we in a national park" as "easy"..

It 'only' requires a functioning GPS-system. A military super-project, whose [https://nation.time.com/2012/05/21/how-much-does-gps-cost/ initial setup cost 12 billion], still costs ~2 million a day, and whose principles of operation depend on [https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/20230/does-gps-use-general-relativity both special '''and''' general relativity] for correctness.
And that's ''before'' we add the record-keeping and (internet?)logistics involved with providing each phone an accurate GIS-database. The OpenStreetMap (most likely free/gratis source of this type of data, for a cheap app) is a massive undertaking!

(sarcasm on) GIS-lookup sure is easy! Only took a minor Manhattan-project, a literal Einstein, and an army of internet volunteers to solve!(sarcasm off)

(I'm leaving out mobile internet access while in said National Parks (Telecom operators are among the wealthiest companies in the world, and those phone-towers-disguised-like-trees don't come cheap...), because the App would probably be shipped with a hardcoded park-database, not do live queries.)

-- Jules @ [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.77|162.158.91.77]] 08:13, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

:This is about implementation of something existing, not inventing it from scratch. The use of the word "app" implies, that this comic is happening in the smartphone area, so GPS on phones should be a regular thing. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 09:57, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

:: "app" sets the real-world context, but the punchline is about the comparative hardness '''in CS'''.
:: For the pragmatic app-developer, "previously solved" equals "easy"; for a doctorate in computational theory, it doesn't :-)
:: -- Jules @ [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.77|162.158.91.77]] 12:16, 18 May 2020 (UTC)
:::That might be true, but this comic is definitely about developing an app, so it doesn't matter if GPS involves complicated hard- and software setups outside of the app or not. And unless you focus on the theoretical work also for a computer scientist, it is easy to use established GPS methods. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 12:45, 18 May 2020 (UTC)

now deep learning is common you not need research team and five years anymore

2421: Tower of Babel

2021-02-05T22:54:41Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 2421
| date = February 5, 2021
| title = Tower of Babel
| image = tower_of_babel.png
| titletext = Soon, linguists will be wandering around everywhere, saying things like "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" and "more people have been to Russia than I have," and speech will become unintelligible.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a COLORLESS GREEN IDEA. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The story of the {{w|Tower of Babel}} is the Biblical explanation for the existence of different languages in the world. In the story, humans want to build a tower reaching the sky. This angers God and prompts him to sabotage the project. He does this by "confounding their speech" (commonly interpreted as giving everyone their own language) so that they cannot understand each other and cannot complete the project.

In this retelling, however, the tower is actually finished. God is happy to receive the human visitors, and offers them a reward.

The party that ascends to the top of the tower consists of Cueball, Megan and a third figure who might be linguist Gretchen McCulloch, previously seen in [[2381: The True Name of the Bear]]. When Gretchen expresses her love of words, God offers to create a panoply of languages. Megan immediately sees the problems with this, but Gretchen is enthusiastic. In the original story of the Tower of Babel, the different human languages are framed as a punishment by God for working together to build the tower; here, they're presented as a satisfying additional challenge.

The title text presents two meaningless English-language phrases that illustrate the language's ability to convey confusing or paradoxical information. "{{w|Colorless green ideas sleep furiously}}", coined by linguist {{w|Noam Chomsky}} in 1957, is an example of a sentence that is structurally correct but contains paradoxes and meaningless comparisons: something cannot be both colorless AND green (see {{w|Invisible Pink Unicorn}}), ideas do not sleep, and sleeping is not generally done furiously. That said, the sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is so well known in linguistics that a competition to make the sentence meaningful was held in 1985 and {{w|Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously#Attempts_at_meaningful_interpretations|attracted a number of entrants}}. "More people have been to Russia than I have" is a well-known example of {{w|comparative illusion}}.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:(Cueball, Gretchen McCulloch and Megan are standing at the base of the Tower of Babel)
:Cueball: The Tower of Babel is complete!
:Megan: Let's go meet God!
:(Cueball, Gretchen McCulloch and Megan are now standing at the top of the Tower of Babel)
:Cueball: Hi God!
:God: Wow, nice tower!
:God: You did a great job! I'm so proud!
:Megan: Thanks!
:God: I'm going to give you a reward.
:God: What do you like about the world?
:Gretchen McCulloch: Hmm. Words are really cool
:Megan: No, wait-
:God: Great! I'm going to give you lots of languages to study, each with its own phonology, word ordering, morphosyntactic alignment...
:Gretchen McCulloch: YESSSSSS!
:Megan: We should not have brought a linguist.
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

2421: Tower of Babel

2021-02-05T22:54:11Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 2421
| date = February 5, 2021
| title = Tower of Babel
| image = tower_of_babel.png
| titletext = Soon, linguists will be wandering around everywhere, saying things like "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" and "more people have been to Russia than I have," and speech will become unintelligible.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a COLORLESS GREEN IDEA. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The story of the {{w|Tower of Babel}} is the Biblical explanation for the existence of different languages in the world. In the story, humans want to build a tower reaching the sky. This angers God and prompts him to sabotage the project. He does this by "confounding their speech" (commonly interpreted as giving everyone their own language) so that they cannot understand each other and cannot complete the project.

In this retelling, however, the tower is actually finished. God is happy to receive the human visitors, and offers them a reward.

The party that ascends to the top of the tower consists of Cueball, Megan and a third figure who might be linguist Gretchen McCulloch, previously seen in [[2381: The True Name of the Bear]]. When Gretchen expresses her love of words, God offers to create a panoply of languages. Megan immediately sees the problems with this, but Gretchen is enthusiastic. In the original story of the Tower of Babel, the different human languages are framed as a punishment by God for working together to build the tower; here, they're presented as a satisfying additional challenge.

The title text presents two meaningless English-language phrases that illustrate the language's ability to convey confusing or paradoxical information. "{{w|Colorless green ideas sleep furiously}}", coined by linguist {{w|Noam Chomsky}} in 1957, is an example of a sentence that is structurally correct but contains paradoxes and meaningless comparisons: something cannot be both colorless AND green (see {{w|Invisible Pink Unicorn}}), ideas do not sleep, and sleeping is not generally done furiously. That said, the sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is so well known in linguistics that a competition to make the sentence meaningful was held in 1985 and {{w|Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously#Attempts_at_meaningful_interpretations|attracted a number of entrants}}. "More people have been to Russia than I have" is a well-known example of {{w|comparative illusion}}.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:(Cueball, Gretchen McCulloch and Megan are standing at the base of the Tower of Babel)
:Cueball: The Tower of Babel is complete!
:Megan: Let's go meet God!
:(Cueball, Gretchen McCulloch and Megan are now standing at the top of the Tower of Babel)
:Cueball: Hi God!
:God: Wow, nice tower!
:God: You did a great job! I'm so proud!
:Megan: Thanks!
:God: I'm going to give you a reward.
:God: What do you like about the world?
:Gretchen McCulloch: Hmm. Words are really cool
:Megan: No, wait-
:God: Great! I'm going to give you lots of languages to study, each with its own phonology, :word ordering, morphosyntactic alignment...
:Gretchen McCulloch: YESSSSSS!
:Megan: We should not have brought a linguist.
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

2421: Tower of Babel

2021-02-05T22:53:29Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 2421
| date = February 5, 2021
| title = Tower of Babel
| image = tower_of_babel.png
| titletext = Soon, linguists will be wandering around everywhere, saying things like "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" and "more people have been to Russia than I have," and speech will become unintelligible.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a COLORLESS GREEN IDEA. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The story of the {{w|Tower of Babel}} is the Biblical explanation for the existence of different languages in the world. In the story, humans want to build a tower reaching the sky. This angers God and prompts him to sabotage the project. He does this by "confounding their speech" (commonly interpreted as giving everyone their own language) so that they cannot understand each other and cannot complete the project.

In this retelling, however, the tower is actually finished. God is happy to receive the human visitors, and offers them a reward.

The party that ascends to the top of the tower consists of Cueball, Megan and a third figure who might be linguist Gretchen McCulloch, previously seen in [[2381: The True Name of the Bear]]. When Gretchen expresses her love of words, God offers to create a panoply of languages. Megan immediately sees the problems with this, but Gretchen is enthusiastic. In the original story of the Tower of Babel, the different human languages are framed as a punishment by God for working together to build the tower; here, they're presented as a satisfying additional challenge.

The title text presents two meaningless English-language phrases that illustrate the language's ability to convey confusing or paradoxical information. "{{w|Colorless green ideas sleep furiously}}", coined by linguist {{w|Noam Chomsky}} in 1957, is an example of a sentence that is structurally correct but contains paradoxes and meaningless comparisons: something cannot be both colorless AND green (see {{w|Invisible Pink Unicorn}}), ideas do not sleep, and sleeping is not generally done furiously. That said, the sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is so well known in linguistics that a competition to make the sentence meaningful was held in 1985 and {{w|Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously#Attempts_at_meaningful_interpretations|attracted a number of entrants}}. "More people have been to Russia than I have" is a well-known example of {{w|comparative illusion}}.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:(Cueball, Gretchen McCulloch and Megan are standing at the base of the Tower of Babel)
:Cueball: The Tower of Babel is complete!
:Megan: Let's go meet God!
:(Cueball, Gretchen McCulloch and Megan are now standing at the top of the Tower of Babel)
:Cueball: Hi God!
:God:Wow, nice tower!
:God:You did a great job! I'm so proud!
:Megan:Thanks!
:God:I'm going to give you a reward.
:God What do you like about the world?
:Gretchen McCulloch:Hmm. Words are really cool
:Megan:No, wait-
:God:Great! I'm going to give you lots of languages to study, each with its own phonology, :word ordering, morphosyntactic alignment...
:Gretchen McCulloch: YESSSSSS!
:Megan:We should not have brought a linguist.
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

2421: Tower of Babel

2021-02-05T22:52:48Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 2421
| date = February 5, 2021
| title = Tower of Babel
| image = tower_of_babel.png
| titletext = Soon, linguists will be wandering around everywhere, saying things like "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" and "more people have been to Russia than I have," and speech will become unintelligible.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a COLORLESS GREEN IDEA. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The story of the {{w|Tower of Babel}} is the Biblical explanation for the existence of different languages in the world. In the story, humans want to build a tower reaching the sky. This angers God and prompts him to sabotage the project. He does this by "confounding their speech" (commonly interpreted as giving everyone their own language) so that they cannot understand each other and cannot complete the project.

In this retelling, however, the tower is actually finished. God is happy to receive the human visitors, and offers them a reward.

The party that ascends to the top of the tower consists of Cueball, Megan and a third figure who might be linguist Gretchen McCulloch, previously seen in [[2381: The True Name of the Bear]]. When Gretchen expresses her love of words, God offers to create a panoply of languages. Megan immediately sees the problems with this, but Gretchen is enthusiastic. In the original story of the Tower of Babel, the different human languages are framed as a punishment by God for working together to build the tower; here, they're presented as a satisfying additional challenge.

The title text presents two meaningless English-language phrases that illustrate the language's ability to convey confusing or paradoxical information. "{{w|Colorless green ideas sleep furiously}}", coined by linguist {{w|Noam Chomsky}} in 1957, is an example of a sentence that is structurally correct but contains paradoxes and meaningless comparisons: something cannot be both colorless AND green (see {{w|Invisible Pink Unicorn}}), ideas do not sleep, and sleeping is not generally done furiously. That said, the sentence "colorless green ideas sleep furiously" is so well known in linguistics that a competition to make the sentence meaningful was held in 1985 and {{w|Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_furiously#Attempts_at_meaningful_interpretations|attracted a number of entrants}}. "More people have been to Russia than I have" is a well-known example of {{w|comparative illusion}}.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:(Cueball, Gretchen McCulloch and Megan are standing at the base of the tower of Babel)
:Cueball: The tower of Babel is complete!
:Megan: Let's go meet God!
:(Cueball, Gretchen McCulloch and Megan are now standing at the top of the tower of Babel)
:Cueball: Hi God!
:God:Wow, nice tower!
:God:You did a great job! I'm so proud!
:Megan:Thanks!
:God:I'm going to give you a reward.
:God What do you like about the world?
:Gretchen McCulloch:Hmm. Words are really cool
:Megan:No, wait-
:God:Great! I;m going to give you lots of languages to study, each with its own phonology, :word ordering, morphosyntactic alignment...
:Gretchen McCulloch: YESSSSSS!
:Megan:We should not have brought a linguist.
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

2418: Metacarcinization

2021-01-29T18:32:27Z

172.69.34.148:

{{comic
| number = 2418
| date = January 29, 2021
| title = Metacarcinization
| image = metacarcinization.png
| titletext = Scientists still don't know how marine biologists manage to so consistently bring up whalefall ecosystems, when relevant conversational openings are so few and far between.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a HEAVILY OPTIMIZED CRAB. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{w|Carcinization}} is also discussed in [[2314: Carcinization]]

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
White Hat: Have you seen this video of a crow sledding on a roof?

Cueball: Yeah! It's always cool to see animals using tools

Cueball: Like how sea otters use rocks to open crab shells

Cueball: Hey, did you know the "crab" body plan has evolved multiple times?

Caption: Regardless of the starting topic, any conversation with me eventually converges to carcinzation
{{comic discussion}}

271: Powers of One

2021-01-27T21:36:55Z

172.69.34.148: Added to "Illustrations of scale" category

{{comic
| number = 271
| date = June 1, 2007
| title = Powers of One
| image = powers_of_one.png
| titletext = It's kinda Zen when you think about it, if you don't think too hard.
}}

==Explanation==
This is a parody of the short documentary {{w|Powers of Ten (film)|"Powers of 10,"}} which can be found [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fKBhvDjuy0 here].

As in the documentary, the comic features a man and a woman having a picnic on a blanket. In the documentary, the apparent distance from the scene, and thus the zoom level, gradually changes by a factor of ten every ten seconds (hence the name "Powers of 10": 1, 10, 100, ...). In the comic, powers of one are used. Since all powers of 1 are 1, the image doesn't change at all, showing a series of identical images.

The title text refers to the {{w|Zen}} meditation ({{w|zazen}}), in which the meditator is supposed to suspend all judgmental thinking and let thoughts pass by without eliciting them consciously and without getting involved in them.

==Transcript==
:Powers of One
:A mind-expanding look at our world
:[A sequence, presumably continuing endlessly in both directions, of identical images of a couple lying on a chequered blanket, with a picnic basket, on grass. Each image has a rule at the bottom giving measurements in meters, with the scale in terms of 1 to a particular power. The powers visible are the -1st (part), 0th-2nd, and 3rd (part).]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Illustrations of scale]]

1122: Electoral Precedent

2021-01-27T10:37:53Z

172.69.34.148: /* Table of Broken Precedents */

{{comic
| number = 1122
| date = October 17, 2012
| title = Electoral Precedent
| image = electoral_precedent.png
| titletext = No white guy who's been mentioned on Twitter has gone on to win.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a TIME TRAVELER. Please explain and flesh out each broken precedent. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

During election season in U.S. presidential elections — and especially in election night coverage — it is common for the media to make comments like the ones set out in the first panel of this comic. [[Randall Munroe|Randall]] is demonstrating the problem with making such statements, many of which simply come down to coincidence.

After the first panel the next 56 panels in this comic refer to each one of the {{w|United States presidential election#Electoral college results|56 presidential elections}} in U.S. history before {{w|Barack Obama|Obama's}} re-election in 2012. The panels depict a pre-election commentator noting a quality or condition that has never occurred to a candidate until one of the candidates in that election broke the streak. In other words, one can always find at least one unique thing about a candidate who has gone on to win (or in some cases, lose) or the circumstances under which they won (or lost) that is unique from all previous winners (or losers). It's worth noting that some of these 'firsts' were truly precedent-setting (such as the first incumbent losing, the first president to win a third term, the first Catholic president, etc.), but the fact that they hadn't happened was no assurance that there wouldn't be a first time. As the years pass on, these 'streaks' become more and more nested and complicated, and then brought by Randall to the point of absurdity by pointing out very trivial things, such as "No Democratic {{w|incumbent}} without combat experience has ever beaten someone whose first name is worth more in {{w|Scrabble}}" (1996).

The flaw made by pundits while reporting such streaks is that there will always be ''something'' that has never happened before in an election, and they purport to suggest that these things are related to the candidate's win or loss. Randall considers this a logical flaw. A common one is, as noted in several panels, candidates can't win without winning certain states. The question, however, is one of {{w|Correlation does not imply causation|cause or effect}}.

Given that there have only been 56 elections, there are always going to be things that haven't happened before. If you go out looking for them, you're sure to find some. There is no magic about why these events haven't happened. In most cases, it is merely a coincidence.

In the last two panels, two more statements like the previous are given. They were both true before the {{w|United States presidential election, 2012|election in 2012}} on November the 6th. The comic came out in the middle of the campaign on October the 17th. The statements were constructed so that the first predicts that Obama can't win over {{w|Mitt Romney}}, and the second that he cannot lose. As Obama won the election he thus ended the streak ''Democratic incumbents never beat taller challengers'' whereas the other streak is still valid.

The title text refers to the fact that {{w|Twitter}} was founded in 2006. Obama won in 2008, so at the time of the comic it was true that no white male person mentioned on Twitter had ever gone on to win the presidency; although certainly some former presidents, all of whom were white males, have subsequently been mentioned on Twitter. This streak was broken in the next election year when Donald Trump won the 2016 election.

During these last four weeks before the election, Randall posted no fewer than four comics related to this election. The others are: [[1127: Congress]], [[1130: Poll Watching]] and [[1131: Math]].

In 2020, Randall posted an update to this comic: [[2383: Electoral Precedent 2020]].

===Table of Broken Precedents===

''Please have someone else validate your row, as to make sure the table is accurate''

{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5 class="wikitable"
|-
! Year !! Broken Precedent !! Explanation !! Validity
|-
| 1788
| No one has been elected president before. ...But Washington was.
| Discounting the Articles of Confederation and its {{w|President of the Continental Congress|president}}, Washington is the first president of the US.
| True
|-
| 1792
| No incumbent has ever been reelected. ...Until Washington.
| Washington is the first person who had a second term. He was unopposed so there was no challenger.
| True
|-
| 1796
| No one without false teeth has become president. ...But Adams did.
| Washington had false teeth, made of human teeth and other materials. His successor Adams, despite having tooth decay, refused to wear false teeth.
| True
|-
| 1800
| No challenger has beaten an incumbent. ...But Jefferson did.
| Adams is the first president not to have a second term, due to signing the unpopular {{w|Alien and Sedition acts}}. He was defeated by the challenger, Jefferson.
| True
|-
| 1804
| No incumbent has beaten a challenger. ...Until Jefferson.
| The 2 previous incumbents were Washington, who was unopposed, and Adams, who lost as an incumbent (to Jefferson).
| True
|-
| 1808
| No congressman has ever become president. ...Until Madison.
| While George Washington served in the House of Burgesses, Madison served as congressman for Virginia's 5th district from 1789 to 1793 and the 15th District from 1793 to 1797 in the U. S. Congress.
| True
|-
| 1812
| No one can win without New York. ...But Madison did.
| While it is true New York voted against Madison but he still won, New York did not vote for Washington due to an [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1788%E2%80%9389_United_States_presidential_election#New_York's_lack_of_Electors internal dispute].
| False
|-
| 1816
| No candidate who doesn't wear a wig can get elected. ...Until Monroe was.
| Despite popular misconception, Washington did not wear a wig, but in fact powdered his hair white.
| False
|-
| 1820
| No one who wears pants instead of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culottes breeches] can be reelected. ...But Monroe was.
| The first 5 presidents, including Monroe, all wore breeches.
|
|-
| 1824
| No one has ever won without a popular majority. ...J.Q. Adams did.
| Jackson won the plurality of the popular vote and Electoral College. But as it was a four way election, he did not achieve a majority - so the vote went to Congress, who elected John Quincy Adams.
| True
|-
| 1828
| Only people from Massachusetts and Virginia can win. ...Until Jackson did.
| Jackson was from South Carolina, while all previous presidents were from Massachusetts or Virginia.
| True
|-
| 1832
| The only presidents who get reelected are Virginians. ...Until Jackson.
| Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were the only re-elected presidents at that time, and they were all Virginians.
| True
|-
| 1836
| New Yorkers always lose. ...Until Van Buren.
| Martin Van Buren is the first president from the state of New York.
| True
|-
|1840
| No one over 65 has won the presidency. ...Until Harrison did.
| He was 68 and the first over 65, and died of pneumonia 31 days after giving the longest inauguration to date.
| True
|-
|1844
| No one who's lost his home state has won. ...But Polk did.
| Assuming "home state" refers to the state of residence, Polk is the first, losing Tennessee to Clay but took 15 of the 26 states including New York. However, if you count it as state of birth, Jackson and Harrison already did.
| True
|-
|1848
| As goes Mississippi, so goes the nation. ...Until 1848.
| Prior to 1848, every candidate who had won the state of Mississippi had won the election, with the only exception being the 1824 election, where John Quincy Adams was elected by Congress, due to no one winning the Electoral College. In 1848, Lewis Cass won the state of Mississippi, but lost the election to Zachary Taylor.
| True
|-
|1852
|New England Democrats can't win. ...Until Pierce did.
|Pierce is the first candidate from the Democratic Party from New England, specifically New Hampshire, and he won the election of 1852.
| True
|-
|1856
| No one can become president without getting married. ...Until Buchanan did.
| While other presidents were widowers, Buchanan was the first unmarried president, being a life long bachelor.
| True
|-
|1860
| No one over 6'3" can get elected. ...Until Lincoln.
| Lincoln was the first president over 6'3" president, at 6'4" tall, making him the tallest president to date.
| True
|-
|1864
|No one with a beard has been reelected. ...But Lincoln was.
|Lincoln was the first U.S. president to have a beard.
|
|-
|1868
|No one can be president if their parents are alive. ...Until Grant.
|The veracity depends on if BOTH parents have to be alive, or if any parents are alive. If either parent can be alive, then Washington's mother, Mary Ball Washington, died four months after he became president. If both have to be alive, Grant was indeed the first president to have both parents alive when assuming office.
|
|-
|1872
|No one with a beard has been reelected in peacetime. ...Until Grant was.
|Grant was the second U.S. president (behind Lincoln) to be reelected with a beard, but only Grant was reelected during peacetime.
|
|-
|1876
|No one can win a majority of the popular vote and still lose. ...Tilden did.
|Samuel Tilden won a majority of the popular vote, with 51%, but lost in the electoral college in a {{w|1876 United States presidential election|contested election}}, resolved by the {{w|Compromise of 1877}}. (During the election of 1824, Jackson won the popular vote but did not win more than half of it, a majority)
| True
|-
|1880
|As goes California, so goes the nation. ...Until it went Hancock.
|Since being a state in 1850, the winner of California had won the election - until 1880 when Winfield Hancock won California but lost the election to James Garfield.
|
|-
|1884
|Candidates named "James" can't lose. ...Until James Blaine.
|James Blaine was the first major candidate with the first name "James" to lose an election, losing to Grover Cleveland.
|
|-
|1888
|No sitting president has been beaten since the Civil War. ...Cleveland was.
|Grover Cleveland was the first president since the end of the Civil War to be defeated by a challenger, losing to Benjamin Harrison. Andrew Johnson was not chosen as the Democratic candidate in 1868. Ulysses S. Grant served 2 terms and did not run for a 3rd term. Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester A. Arthur (who became president after the assassination of James Garfield) did not seek reelection after their first term.
|
|-
|1892
|No former president has been elected. ...Until Cleveland.
|Cleveland was the first (and thus far only) president to serve 2 non-consecutive terms, winning the presidential election in 1884, losing in 1888, and winning in 1892.
|
|-
|1896
|Tall Midwesterners are unbeatable. ...Bryan wasn't.
|William Jennings Bryan lost the 1896 election to William McKinley. Bryan's measurements have been lost to history, but contemporary historians described him as "a tall, slender, handsome fellow".
|
|-
|1900
|No Republican shorter than 5'8" has been reelected. ...Until McKinley was.
|At the time, McKinley was only the 3rd Republican who was reelected (behind Lincoln and Grant). And he was the shortest of them all, at 5'7" tall.
|
|-
|1904
|No one under 45 has been elected. ...Roosevelt was.
|At the start of his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest president, taking office at the age of 42 when McKinley died in 1901. However, he was not elected President until 1904, by which time he was no longer under 45.
|False
|-
|1908
|No Republican who hasn't served in the military has won. ...Until Taft.
|Taft was the first Republican to win an election and not serve in the military - Lincoln served during the Black Hawk War; Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and McKinley served in the Civil War; and Theodore Roosevelt served in the Spanish-American War.
|
|-
|1912
|After Lincoln beat the Democrats while sporting a beard with no mustache, the only Democrats who can win have a mustache with no beard. ...Wilson had neither.
|From Lincoln's presidency to Wilson's, only one Democrat won- Grover Cleveland, who had a mustache but no beard.
|
|-
|1916
|No Democrat has won while losing West Virginia. ...Wilson did.
|Since its statehood in 1863, Wilson is the first Democrat to lose West Virginia, but win the national election.
|
|-
|1920
|No incumbent senator has won. ...Until Harding.
|Harding was the first sitting Senator to become President - he resigned his position as Senator to become President.
|
|-
|1924
|No one with two Cs in their name has become president. ...Until Calvin Coolidge.
|'''C'''alvin '''C'''oolidge was the first with "two C's in his name". Presidents with "one C" in their names prior to Coolidge were John Quin'''c'''y Adams, Andrew Ja'''c'''kson, Za'''c'''hary Taylor, Franklin Pier'''c'''e, James Bu'''c'''hanan, Abraham Lin'''c'''oln, '''C'''hester A. Arthur, Grover '''C'''leveland and William M'''c'''kinley.
|
|-
|1928
|No one who got ten million votes has lost. ...Until Al Smith.
|Smith was the first candidate to get more than 10 million votes and lose. He received over 15 million votes, but lost to Herbert Hoover, who received 21.4 million votes, and won the electoral college, 444-87.
|
|-
|1932
|No Democrat has won since women secured the right to vote. ...Until FDR did.
|FDR was the first Democrat to win since 1919 when women secured the right to vote.
|
|-
|1936
|No President's been reelected with double-digit unemployment. ...Until FDR was.
|FDR was reelected during the Great Depression when unemployment peaked at 22-25%.
|
|-
|1940
|No one has won a third term. ...Until FDR did.
|FDR is the first and only president to be elected for 4 terms due to his popularity/policies. This is now made impossible by the {{w|Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution|22nd amendment}}, which limits a president to 2 elected terms.
|
|-
|1944
|No Democrat has won during wartime. ...Until FDR did.
|The United States has engaged in many minor wars near-constantly since its formation, although it being "wartime" in the country for many of these is debatable. Martin Van Buren won during the Second Seminole War, Franklin Pierce won during the Cayuse war and Apache war, James Buchanan won during Bleeding Kansas, the Third Seminole War, the Yakima War, and the Second Opium War, Grover Cleveland won during the Garza Revolution, and Woodrow Wilson won during the Border War, the Occupation of Nicaragua, the Occupation of Haiti, and the Occupation of the Dominican Republic.
|
|-
|1948
|Democrats can't win without Alabama. ...Truman did.
|Although technically true, the Democrat party did not appear on the ballot in Alabama in 1948, making it impossible for them to have won under any circumstances. It's also worth noting that Alabama had consistently voted Democrat in every election since Alabama's formation as a state except for 1864, when it was in the confederate states, and in 1868 and 1872, where Ulysses S. Grant would win both times. A democrat would not lose a popular vote in Alabama while appearing on the ballot until 1968, and would not win an election while losing the vote in Alabama until 1992.
|
|-
|1952
|No Republican has won without winning the House or Senate. ...Eisenhower did.
|
|
|-
|1956
|No one can beat the same nominee a second time in a leap year rematch. ...Until Eisenhower.
|The phrase "leap year" excludes the elections of 1800 and 1900, which were not leap years in the U.S. or most other countries (although they were leap years in Russia, which was still using the Julian calendar).
|
|-
|1960
|Catholics can't win. ...Kennedy beat Nixon.
|The only other Catholic to be nominated until 1960 was Democrat Alfred E. Smith in 1928.
|
|-
|1964
|Every Republican who's taken Louisiana has won. ...Until Goldwater.
|
|
|-
|1968
|No Republican vice president has risen to the Presidency through an election. ...Until Nixon.
|Theodore Roosevelt, the winner of the 1904 election, was a Republican former Vice President, but he had already risen to the Presidency in 1901 when McKinley died in office.
|
|-
|1972
|Quakers can't win twice. ...Until Nixon did.
|The only Quaker president before Nixon was Herbert Hoover. Hoover only served one term.
|
|-
|1976
|No one who lost New Mexico has won. ...But Carter did.
|
|
|-
|1980
|No one has been elected President after a divorce. ...Until Reagan was.
|Reagan was the first divorced President.
|
|-
|1984
|No left-handed president has been reelected. ...Until Reagan was.
|Reagan is one of 8 left-handed presidents (as of 2020). None of the 4 left-handed presidents prior to Reagan was reelected (James Garfield was assassinated in his first year in office and Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Gerald Ford only served one full term each).
|
|-
|1988
|No one with two middle names has become president. ...Until "Herbert Walker".
|George H. W. Bush is the first and to date only president with 2 middle names.
|
|-
|1992
|No Democrat has won without a majority of the Catholic vote. ...Until Clinton did.
|
|
|-
|1996
|No Dem. incumbent without combat experience has beaten someone whose first name is worth more in Scrabble. ...Until Bill beat Bob.
|
|
|-
|2000
|No Republican has won without Vermont. ...Until Bush did.
|
|
|-
|2004
|No Republican without combat experience has beaten someone two inches taller. ...Until Bush did.
|
|
|-
|2008
|No Democrat can win without Missouri. ...Until Obama did.
|
|
|-
|2012?
|Democratic incumbents never beat taller challengers.
|Barack Obama is 6' 1" (185 cm), and Mitt Romney is 6' 2" (188 cm). When Obama won, it broke the streak.
|...Until Obama.
|-
|2012?
|No nominee whose first name contains a "K" has lost.
|This apparently refers only to major party nominees, as many third party and other nominees with a first name containing "K" have lost, such as {{w|Frank T. Johns}} of the Socialist Labor Party of America. Major party nominees with a "K" have won, such as Democrats Franklin Pierce, Franklin Roosevelt, and Barack Obama. If Romney had won, it would have broken the streak with respect to major party nominees, although not the streak as stated, which had already been broken with respect to all nominees.
|
|-
|Title text
|No white guy who's been mentioned on Twitter has gone on to win.
|Twitter was founded in 2006; Barack Obama was the first president elected since its founding, and although he had been mentioned on Twitter prior to his election, he is not a white male and so did not break the streak. The streak was broken in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected.
|...Until Trump.
|}

==Transcript==
:The problem with statements like
:"No <party> candidate has won the election without <state>"
:Or
:"No president has been reelected under <circumstances>"

:[Each statement below has its own panel. The year is in a caption, the precedent is stated by a standing Cueball in the main panel, and the president who broke it is below the panel.]
:1788... No one has been elected president before. ...But Washington was.
:1792... No incumbent has ever been reelected. ...Until Washington.
:1796... No one without false teeth has become president. ...But Adams did.
:1800... No challenger has beaten an incumbent. ...But Jefferson did.
:1804... No incumbent has beaten a challenger. ...Until Jefferson.
:1808... No congressman has ever become president. ...Until Madison.
:1812... No one can win without New York. ...But Madison did.
:1816... No candidate who doesn't wear a wig can get elected. ...Until Monroe was.
:1820... No one who wears pants instead of breeches can be reelected. ...But Monroe was.
:1824... No one has ever won without a popular majority. ...J.Q. Adams did.
:1828... Only people from Massachusetts and Virginia can win. ...Until Jackson did.
:1832... The only presidents who get reelected are Virginians. ...Until Jackson.
:1836... New Yorkers always lose. ...Until Van Buren.
:1840... No one over 65 has won the presidency. ...Until Harrison did.
:1844... No one who's lost his home state has won. ...But Polk did.
:1848... As goes Mississippi, so goes the nation. ...Until 1848.
:1852... New England Democrats can't win. ...Until Pierce did.
:1856... No one can become president without getting married. ...Until Buchanan did.
:1860... No one over 6'3" can get elected. ...Until Lincoln.
:1864... No one with a beard has been reelected. ...But Lincoln was.
:1868... No one can be president if their parents are alive. ...Until Grant.
:1872... No one with a beard has been reelected in peacetime. ...Until Grant was.
:1876... No one can win a majority of the popular vote and still lose. ...Tilden did.
:1880... As goes California, so goes the nation. ...Until it went Hancock.
:1884... Candidates named "James" can't lose. ...Until James Blaine.
:1888... No sitting president has been beaten since the Civil War. ...Cleveland was.
:1892... No former president has been elected. ...Until Cleveland.
:1896... Tall Midwesterners are unbeatable. ...Bryan wasn't.
:1900... No Republican shorter than 5'8" has been reelected. ...Until McKinley was.
:1904... No one under 45 has been elected. ...Roosevelt did.
:1908... No Republican who hasn't served in the military has won. ...Until Taft.
:[The precedent takes up the entire panel this year. Consequently, there is no Cueball.] 1912... After Lincoln beat the Democrats while sporting a beard with no mustache, the only Democrats who can win have a mustache with no beard. ...Wilson had neither.
:1916... No Democrat has won while losing West Virginia. ...Wilson did.
:1920... No incumbent senator has won. ...Until Harding.
:1924... No one with two Cs in their name has become president. ...Until Calvin Coolidge.
:1928... No one who got ten million votes has lost. ...Until Al Smith.
:1932... No Democrat has won since women secured the right to vote. ...Until FDR did.
:1936... No president's been reelected with double-digit unemployment. ...Until FDR was.
:1940... No one has won a third term. ...Until FDR did.
:1944... No Democrat has won during wartime. ...Until FDR did.
:1948... Democrats can't win without Alabama. ...Truman did.
:1952... No Republican has won without winning the House or Senate. ...Eisenhower did.
:1956... No one can beat the same nominee a second time in a leap year rematch. ...Until Eisenhower.
:1960... Catholics can't win. ...Until Kennedy.
:1964... Every Republican who's taken Louisiana has won. ...Until Goldwater.
:[The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1968... No Republican vice president has risen to the Presidency through an election. ...Until Nixon.
:[The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1972... Quakers can't win twice. ...Until Nixon did.
:1976... No one who lost New Mexico has won. ...But Carter did.
:1980... No one has been elected president after a divorce. ...Until Reagan was.
:1984... No left-handed president has been reelected. ...Until Reagan was.
:[The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1988... No one with two middle names has become president. ...Until "Herbert Walker".
:[The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1992... No Democrat has won without a majority of the Catholic vote. ...Until Clinton did.
:[The precedent takes up the entire panel this year. Consequently, there is no Cueball.] 1996... No Dem. incumbent without combat experience has beaten someone whose first name is worth more in Scrabble. ...Until Bill beat Bob.
:2000... No Republican has won without Vermont. ...Until Bush did.
:[The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 2004... No Republican without combat experience has beaten someone two inches taller ...Until Bush did.
:2008... No Democrat can win without Missouri. ...Until Obama did.
:[This year has two panels.] 2012... [Panel one] Democratic incumbents never beat taller challengers. [Panel two] No nominee whose first name contains a "K" has lost. [Text under panels] Which streak will break?

==Trivia/Errors==
* There was an error in the original 1800 panel of the comic, as Jefferson (not Adams) was the first challenger to beat an incumbent, when Jefferson beat then-president Adams in 1800. This was later corrected.

* The first president with a wig was technically Washington, who did not wear a wig, but in fact powdered his hair white.

* Although Theodore Roosevelt became the first president under age 45 and was later elected president, he was not elected before the age of 45.

* Also, one of the statements of a streak for the 2012 elections can be considered wrong: in 1952, the Republican candidate/running mate Eisenhower/Nixon defeated the Democratic alliterative ticket Stevenson/Sparkman (in what can only be described as a landslide). The comic has been changed, and now reads "Democratic incumbents never beat taller challengers" as the streak which would have the Republican ticket as the winners.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Statistics]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Elections]]
[[Category:Comics featuring John F. Kennedy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring politicians]]

1122: Electoral Precedent

2021-01-27T10:33:53Z

172.69.34.148: /* Table of Broken Precedents */

{{comic
| number = 1122
| date = October 17, 2012
| title = Electoral Precedent
| image = electoral_precedent.png
| titletext = No white guy who's been mentioned on Twitter has gone on to win.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a TIME TRAVELER. Please explain and flesh out each broken precedent. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

During election season in U.S. presidential elections — and especially in election night coverage — it is common for the media to make comments like the ones set out in the first panel of this comic. [[Randall Munroe|Randall]] is demonstrating the problem with making such statements, many of which simply come down to coincidence.

After the first panel the next 56 panels in this comic refer to each one of the {{w|United States presidential election#Electoral college results|56 presidential elections}} in U.S. history before {{w|Barack Obama|Obama's}} re-election in 2012. The panels depict a pre-election commentator noting a quality or condition that has never occurred to a candidate until one of the candidates in that election broke the streak. In other words, one can always find at least one unique thing about a candidate who has gone on to win (or in some cases, lose) or the circumstances under which they won (or lost) that is unique from all previous winners (or losers). It's worth noting that some of these 'firsts' were truly precedent-setting (such as the first incumbent losing, the first president to win a third term, the first Catholic president, etc.), but the fact that they hadn't happened was no assurance that there wouldn't be a first time. As the years pass on, these 'streaks' become more and more nested and complicated, and then brought by Randall to the point of absurdity by pointing out very trivial things, such as "No Democratic {{w|incumbent}} without combat experience has ever beaten someone whose first name is worth more in {{w|Scrabble}}" (1996).

The flaw made by pundits while reporting such streaks is that there will always be ''something'' that has never happened before in an election, and they purport to suggest that these things are related to the candidate's win or loss. Randall considers this a logical flaw. A common one is, as noted in several panels, candidates can't win without winning certain states. The question, however, is one of {{w|Correlation does not imply causation|cause or effect}}.

Given that there have only been 56 elections, there are always going to be things that haven't happened before. If you go out looking for them, you're sure to find some. There is no magic about why these events haven't happened. In most cases, it is merely a coincidence.

In the last two panels, two more statements like the previous are given. They were both true before the {{w|United States presidential election, 2012|election in 2012}} on November the 6th. The comic came out in the middle of the campaign on October the 17th. The statements were constructed so that the first predicts that Obama can't win over {{w|Mitt Romney}}, and the second that he cannot lose. As Obama won the election he thus ended the streak ''Democratic incumbents never beat taller challengers'' whereas the other streak is still valid.

The title text refers to the fact that {{w|Twitter}} was founded in 2006. Obama won in 2008, so at the time of the comic it was true that no white male person mentioned on Twitter had ever gone on to win the presidency; although certainly some former presidents, all of whom were white males, have subsequently been mentioned on Twitter. This streak was broken in the next election year when Donald Trump won the 2016 election.

During these last four weeks before the election, Randall posted no fewer than four comics related to this election. The others are: [[1127: Congress]], [[1130: Poll Watching]] and [[1131: Math]].

In 2020, Randall posted an update to this comic: [[2383: Electoral Precedent 2020]].

===Table of Broken Precedents===

''Please have someone else validate your row, as to make sure the table is accurate''

{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5 class="wikitable"
|-
! Year !! Broken Precedent !! Explanation !! Validity
|-
| 1788
| No one has been elected president before. ...But Washington was.
| Discounting the Articles of Confederation and its {{w|President of the Continental Congress|president}}, Washington is the first president of the US.
| True
|-
| 1792
| No incumbent has ever been reelected. ...Until Washington.
| Washington is the first person who had a second term. He was unopposed so there was no challenger.
| True
|-
| 1796
| No one without false teeth has become president. ...But Adams did.
| Washington had false teeth, made of human teeth and other materials. His successor Adams, despite having tooth decay, refused to wear false teeth.
| True
|-
| 1800
| No challenger has beaten an incumbent. ...But Jefferson did.
| Adams is the first president not to have a second term, due to signing the unpopular {{w|Alien and Sedition acts}}. He was defeated by the challenger, Jefferson.
| True
|-
| 1804
| No incumbent has beaten a challenger. ...Until Jefferson.
| The 2 previous incumbents were Washington, who was unopposed, and Adams, who lost as an incumbent (to Jefferson).
| True
|-
| 1808
| No congressman has ever become president. ...Until Madison.
| While George Washington served in the House of Burgesses, Madison served as congressman for Virginia's 5th district from 1789 to 1793 and the 15th District from 1793 to 1797 in the U. S. Congress.
| True
|-
| 1812
| No one can win without New York. ...But Madison did.
| While it is true New York voted against Madison but he still won, New York did not vote for Washington due to an [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1788%E2%80%9389_United_States_presidential_election#New_York's_lack_of_Electors internal dispute].
| False
|-
| 1816
| No candidate who doesn't wear a wig can get elected. ...Until Monroe was.
| Despite popular misconception, Washington did not wear a wig, but in fact powdered his hair white.
| False
|-
| 1820
| No one who wears pants instead of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culottes breeches] can be reelected. ...But Monroe was.
| The first 5 presidents, including Monroe, all wore breeches.
|
|-
| 1824
| No one has ever won without a popular majority. ...J.Q. Adams did.
| Jackson won the plurality of the popular vote and Electoral College. But as it was a four way election, he did not achieve a majority - so the vote went to Congress, who elected John Quincy Adams.
| True
|-
| 1828
| Only people from Massachusetts and Virginia can win. ...Until Jackson did.
| Jackson was from South Carolina, while all previous presidents were from Massachusetts or Virginia.
| True
|-
| 1832
| The only presidents who get reelected are Virginians. ...Until Jackson.
| Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe were the only re-elected presidents at that time, and they were all Virginians.
| True
|-
| 1836
| New Yorkers always lose. ...Until Van Buren.
| Martin Van Buren is the first president from the state of New York.
| True
|-
|1840
| No one over 65 has won the presidency. ...Until Harrison did.
| He was 68 and the first over 65, and died of pneumonia 31 days after giving the longest inauguration to date.
| True
|-
|1844
| No one who's lost his home state has won. ...But Polk did.
| Assuming "home state" refers to the state of residence, Polk is the first, losing Tennessee to Clay but took 15 of the 26 states including New York. However, if you count it as state of birth, Jackson and Harrison already did.
| True
|-
|1848
| As goes Mississippi, so goes the nation. ...Until 1848.
| Prior to 1848, every candidate who had won the state of Mississippi had won the election, with the only exception being the 1824 election, where John Quincy Adams was elected by Congress, due to no one winning the Electoral College. In 1848, Lewis Cass won the state of Mississippi, but lost the election to Zachary Taylor.
| True
|-
|1852
|New England Democrats can't win. ...Until Pierce did.
|Pierce is the first candidate from the Democratic Party from New England, specifically New Hampshire, and he won the election of 1852.
| True
|-
|1856
| No one can become president without getting married. ...Until Buchanan did.
| While other presidents were widowers, Buchanan was the first unmarried president, being a life long bachelor.
| True
|-
|1860
| No one over 6'3" can get elected. ...Until Lincoln.
| Lincoln was the first president over 6'3" president, at 6'4" tall, making him the tallest president to date.
| True
|-
|1864
|No one with a beard has been reelected. ...But Lincoln was.
|Lincoln was the first U.S. president to have a beard.
|
|-
|1868
|No one can be president if their parents are alive. ...Until Grant.
|The veracity depends on if BOTH parents have to be alive, or if any parents are alive. If either parent can be alive, then Washington's mother, Mary Ball Washington, died four months after he became president. If both have to be alive, Grant was indeed the first president to have both parents alive when assuming office.
|
|-
|1872
|No one with a beard has been reelected in peacetime. ...Until Grant was.
|Grant was the second U.S. president (behind Lincoln) to be reelected with a beard, but only Grant was reelected during peacetime.
|
|-
|1876
|No one can win a majority of the popular vote and still lose. ...Tilden did.
|Samuel Tilden won a majority of the popular vote, with 51%, but lost in the electoral college in a {{w|1876 United States presidential election|contested election}}, resolved by the {{w|Compromise of 1877}}. (During the election of 1824, Jackson won the popular vote but did not win more than half of it, a majority)
| True
|-
|1880
|As goes California, so goes the nation. ...Until it went Hancock.
|Since being a state in 1850, the winner of California had won the election - until 1880 when Winfield Hancock won California but lost the election to James Garfield.
|
|-
|1884
|Candidates named "James" can't lose. ...Until James Blaine.
|James Blaine was the first major candidate with the first name "James" to lose an election, losing to Grover Cleveland.
|
|-
|1888
|No sitting president has been beaten since the Civil War. ...Cleveland was.
|Grover Cleveland was the first president since the end of the Civil War to be defeated by a challenger, losing to Benjamin Harrison. Andrew Johnson was not chosen as the Democratic candidate in 1868. Ulysses S. Grant served 2 terms and did not run for a 3rd term. Rutherford B. Hayes and Chester A. Arthur (who became president after the assassination of James Garfield) did not seek reelection after their first term.
|
|-
|1892
|No former president has been elected. ...Until Cleveland.
|Cleveland was the first (and thus far only) president to serve 2 non-consecutive terms, winning the presidential election in 1884, losing in 1888, and winning in 1892.
|
|-
|1896
|Tall Midwesterners are unbeatable. ...Bryan wasn't.
|William Jennings Bryan lost the 1896 election to William McKinley. Bryan's measurements have been lost to history, but contemporary historians described him as "a tall, slender, handsome fellow".
|
|-
|1900
|No Republican shorter than 5'8" has been reelected. ...Until McKinley was.
|At the time, McKinley was only the 3rd Republican who was reelected (behind Lincoln and Grant). And he was the shortest of them all, at 5'7" tall.
|
|-
|1904
|No one under 45 has been elected. ...Roosevelt was.
|At the start of his presidency, Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest president, taking office at the age of 42 when McKinley died in 1901. However, he was not elected President until 1904, by which time he was no longer under 45.
|False
|-
|1908
|No Republican who hasn't served in the military has won. ...Until Taft.
|Taft was the first Republican to win an election and not serve in the military - Lincoln served during the Black Hawk War; Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and McKinley served in the Civil War; and Theodore Roosevelt served in the Spanish-American War.
|
|-
|1912
|After Lincoln beat the Democrats while sporting a beard with no mustache, the only Democrats who can win have a mustache with no beard. ...Wilson had neither.
|From Lincoln's presidency to Wilson's, only one Democrat won- Grover Cleveland, who had a mustache but no beard.
|
|-
|1916
|No Democrat has won while losing West Virginia. ...Wilson did.
|Since its statehood in 1863, Wilson is the first Democrat to lose West Virginia, but win the national election.
|
|-
|1920
|No incumbent senator has won. ...Until Harding.
|Harding was the first sitting Senator to become President - he resigned his position as Senator to become President.
|
|-
|1924
|No one with two Cs in their name has become president. ...Until Calvin Coolidge.
|'''C'''alvin '''C'''oolidge was the first with "two C's in his name". Presidents with "one C" in their names prior to Coolidge were John Quin'''c'''y Adams, Andrew Ja'''c'''kson, Za'''c'''hary Taylor, Franklin Pier'''c'''e, James Bu'''c'''hanan, Abraham Lin'''c'''oln, '''C'''hester A. Arthur, Grover '''C'''leveland and William M'''c'''kinley.
|
|-
|1928
|No one who got ten million votes has lost. ...Until Al Smith.
|Smith was the first candidate to get more than 10 million votes and lose. He received over 15 million votes, but lost to Herbert Hoover, who received 21.4 million votes, and won the electoral college, 444-87.
|
|-
|1932
|No Democrat has won since women secured the right to vote. ...Until FDR did.
|FDR was the first Democrat to win since 1919 when women secured the right to vote.
|
|-
|1936
|No President's been reelected with double-digit unemployment. ...Until FDR was.
|FDR was reelected during the Great Depression when unemployment peaked at 22-25%.
|
|-
|1940
|No one has won a third term. ...Until FDR did.
|FDR is the first and only president to be elected for 4 terms due to his popularity/policies. This is now made impossible by the {{w|Twenty-second Amendment to the United States Constitution|22nd amendment}}, which limits a president to 2 elected terms.
|
|-
|1944
|No Democrat has won during wartime. ...Until FDR did.
|The United States has engaged in many minor wars near-constantly since its formation, although it being "wartime" in the country for many of these is debatable. Martin Van Buren won during the Second Seminole War, Franklin Pierce won during the Cayuse war and Apache war, James Buchanan won during Bleeding Kansas, the Third Seminole War, the Yakima War, and the Second Opium War, Grover Cleveland won during the Garza Revolution, and Woodrow Wilson won during the Border War, the Occupation of Nicaragua, the Occupation of Haiti, and the Occupation of the Dominican Republic.
|
|-
|1948
|Democrats can't win without Alabama. ...Truman did.
|Although technically true, the Democrat party did not appear on the ballot in Alabama in 1948, making it impossible for them to have won under any circumstances. It's also worth noting that Alabama had consistently voted Democrat in every election since Alabama's formation as a state except for 1864, when it was in the confederate states, and in 1868 and 1872, where Ulysses S. Grant would win both times. A democrat would not lose a popular vote in Alabama while appearing on the ballot until 1968, and would not win an election while losing the vote in Alabama until 1992.
|
|-
|1952
|No Republican has won without winning the House or Senate. ...Eisenhower did.
|
|
|-
|1956
|No one can beat the same nominee a second time in a leap year rematch. ...Until Eisenhower.
|The phrase "leap year" excludes the elections of 1800 and 1900, which were not leap years in the U.S. or most other countries (although they were leap years in Russia, which was still using the Julian calendar).
|
|-
|1960
|Catholics can't win. ...Kennedy beat Nixon.
|
|
|-
|1964
|Every Republican who's taken Louisiana has won. ...Until Goldwater.
|
|
|-
|1968
|No Republican vice president has risen to the Presidency through an election. ...Until Nixon.
|Theodore Roosevelt, the winner of the 1904 election, was a Republican former Vice President, but he had already risen to the Presidency in 1901 when McKinley died in office.
|
|-
|1972
|Quakers can't win twice. ...Until Nixon did.
|The only Quaker president before Nixon was Herbert Hoover. Hoover only served one term.
|
|-
|1976
|No one who lost New Mexico has won. ...But Carter did.
|
|
|-
|1980
|No one has been elected President after a divorce. ...Until Reagan was.
|Reagan was the first divorced President.
|
|-
|1984
|No left-handed president has been reelected. ...Until Reagan was.
|Reagan is one of 8 left-handed presidents (as of 2020). None of the 4 left-handed presidents prior to Reagan was reelected (James Garfield was assassinated in his first year in office and Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman, and Gerald Ford only served one full term each).
|
|-
|1988
|No one with two middle names has become president. ...Until "Herbert Walker".
|George H. W. Bush is the first and to date only president with 2 middle names.
|
|-
|1992
|No Democrat has won without a majority of the Catholic vote. ...Until Clinton did.
|
|
|-
|1996
|No Dem. incumbent without combat experience has beaten someone whose first name is worth more in Scrabble. ...Until Bill beat Bob.
|
|
|-
|2000
|No Republican has won without Vermont. ...Until Bush did.
|
|
|-
|2004
|No Republican without combat experience has beaten someone two inches taller. ...Until Bush did.
|
|
|-
|2008
|No Democrat can win without Missouri. ...Until Obama did.
|
|
|-
|2012?
|Democratic incumbents never beat taller challengers.
|Barack Obama is 6' 1" (185 cm), and Mitt Romney is 6' 2" (188 cm). When Obama won, it broke the streak.
|...Until Obama.
|-
|2012?
|No nominee whose first name contains a "K" has lost.
|This apparently refers only to major party nominees, as many third party and other nominees with a first name containing "K" have lost, such as {{w|Frank T. Johns}} of the Socialist Labor Party of America. Major party nominees with a "K" have won, such as Democrats Franklin Pierce, Franklin Roosevelt, and Barack Obama. If Romney had won, it would have broken the streak with respect to major party nominees, although not the streak as stated, which had already been broken with respect to all nominees.
|
|-
|Title text
|No white guy who's been mentioned on Twitter has gone on to win.
|Twitter was founded in 2006; Barack Obama was the first president elected since its founding, and although he had been mentioned on Twitter prior to his election, he is not a white male and so did not break the streak. The streak was broken in 2016 when Donald Trump was elected.
|...Until Trump.
|}

==Transcript==
:The problem with statements like
:"No <party> candidate has won the election without <state>"
:Or
:"No president has been reelected under <circumstances>"

:[Each statement below has its own panel. The year is in a caption, the precedent is stated by a standing Cueball in the main panel, and the president who broke it is below the panel.]
:1788... No one has been elected president before. ...But Washington was.
:1792... No incumbent has ever been reelected. ...Until Washington.
:1796... No one without false teeth has become president. ...But Adams did.
:1800... No challenger has beaten an incumbent. ...But Jefferson did.
:1804... No incumbent has beaten a challenger. ...Until Jefferson.
:1808... No congressman has ever become president. ...Until Madison.
:1812... No one can win without New York. ...But Madison did.
:1816... No candidate who doesn't wear a wig can get elected. ...Until Monroe was.
:1820... No one who wears pants instead of breeches can be reelected. ...But Monroe was.
:1824... No one has ever won without a popular majority. ...J.Q. Adams did.
:1828... Only people from Massachusetts and Virginia can win. ...Until Jackson did.
:1832... The only presidents who get reelected are Virginians. ...Until Jackson.
:1836... New Yorkers always lose. ...Until Van Buren.
:1840... No one over 65 has won the presidency. ...Until Harrison did.
:1844... No one who's lost his home state has won. ...But Polk did.
:1848... As goes Mississippi, so goes the nation. ...Until 1848.
:1852... New England Democrats can't win. ...Until Pierce did.
:1856... No one can become president without getting married. ...Until Buchanan did.
:1860... No one over 6'3" can get elected. ...Until Lincoln.
:1864... No one with a beard has been reelected. ...But Lincoln was.
:1868... No one can be president if their parents are alive. ...Until Grant.
:1872... No one with a beard has been reelected in peacetime. ...Until Grant was.
:1876... No one can win a majority of the popular vote and still lose. ...Tilden did.
:1880... As goes California, so goes the nation. ...Until it went Hancock.
:1884... Candidates named "James" can't lose. ...Until James Blaine.
:1888... No sitting president has been beaten since the Civil War. ...Cleveland was.
:1892... No former president has been elected. ...Until Cleveland.
:1896... Tall Midwesterners are unbeatable. ...Bryan wasn't.
:1900... No Republican shorter than 5'8" has been reelected. ...Until McKinley was.
:1904... No one under 45 has been elected. ...Roosevelt did.
:1908... No Republican who hasn't served in the military has won. ...Until Taft.
:[The precedent takes up the entire panel this year. Consequently, there is no Cueball.] 1912... After Lincoln beat the Democrats while sporting a beard with no mustache, the only Democrats who can win have a mustache with no beard. ...Wilson had neither.
:1916... No Democrat has won while losing West Virginia. ...Wilson did.
:1920... No incumbent senator has won. ...Until Harding.
:1924... No one with two Cs in their name has become president. ...Until Calvin Coolidge.
:1928... No one who got ten million votes has lost. ...Until Al Smith.
:1932... No Democrat has won since women secured the right to vote. ...Until FDR did.
:1936... No president's been reelected with double-digit unemployment. ...Until FDR was.
:1940... No one has won a third term. ...Until FDR did.
:1944... No Democrat has won during wartime. ...Until FDR did.
:1948... Democrats can't win without Alabama. ...Truman did.
:1952... No Republican has won without winning the House or Senate. ...Eisenhower did.
:1956... No one can beat the same nominee a second time in a leap year rematch. ...Until Eisenhower.
:1960... Catholics can't win. ...Until Kennedy.
:1964... Every Republican who's taken Louisiana has won. ...Until Goldwater.
:[The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1968... No Republican vice president has risen to the Presidency through an election. ...Until Nixon.
:[The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1972... Quakers can't win twice. ...Until Nixon did.
:1976... No one who lost New Mexico has won. ...But Carter did.
:1980... No one has been elected president after a divorce. ...Until Reagan was.
:1984... No left-handed president has been reelected. ...Until Reagan was.
:[The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1988... No one with two middle names has become president. ...Until "Herbert Walker".
:[The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 1992... No Democrat has won without a majority of the Catholic vote. ...Until Clinton did.
:[The precedent takes up the entire panel this year. Consequently, there is no Cueball.] 1996... No Dem. incumbent without combat experience has beaten someone whose first name is worth more in Scrabble. ...Until Bill beat Bob.
:2000... No Republican has won without Vermont. ...Until Bush did.
:[The panel is zoomed in on Cueball's head in this frame.] 2004... No Republican without combat experience has beaten someone two inches taller ...Until Bush did.
:2008... No Democrat can win without Missouri. ...Until Obama did.
:[This year has two panels.] 2012... [Panel one] Democratic incumbents never beat taller challengers. [Panel two] No nominee whose first name contains a "K" has lost. [Text under panels] Which streak will break?

==Trivia/Errors==
* There was an error in the original 1800 panel of the comic, as Jefferson (not Adams) was the first challenger to beat an incumbent, when Jefferson beat then-president Adams in 1800. This was later corrected.

* The first president with a wig was technically Washington, who did not wear a wig, but in fact powdered his hair white.

* Although Theodore Roosevelt became the first president under age 45 and was later elected president, he was not elected before the age of 45.

* Also, one of the statements of a streak for the 2012 elections can be considered wrong: in 1952, the Republican candidate/running mate Eisenhower/Nixon defeated the Democratic alliterative ticket Stevenson/Sparkman (in what can only be described as a landslide). The comic has been changed, and now reads "Democratic incumbents never beat taller challengers" as the streak which would have the Republican ticket as the winners.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Statistics]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Elections]]
[[Category:Comics featuring John F. Kennedy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring politicians]]

2407: Depth and Breadth

2021-01-05T21:51:18Z

172.69.34.148:

{{comic
| number = 2407
| date = January 4, 2021
| title = Depth and Breadth
| image = depth_and_breadth2.png
| titletext = A death-first search is when you lose your keys and travel to the depths of hell to find them, and then if they're not there you start checking your coat pockets.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a LOAF OF DEATH. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{w|Tree (data structure)|Tree structure}}s are one of the most common data structures used in computer science. The common ways of enumerating items arranged in a tree is either {{w|Depth-first search|depth-first}}, or {{w|Breadth-first search|breadth-first}}, which are depicted accurately in the comic. Randall humorously combines the words, to produce "brepth-first", "deadth-first", "bread-first", and "death-first" search algorithms.

Depth-first search explores down the full branches of the tree before exploring the higher levels of the tree. The "opposite" of this is breadth-first search, which explores each level of the tree at a time. This type of tree structure was already discussed as inefficient for human needs in [[761: DFS]].

In the "brepth-first" algorithm, a depth-first and a breadth-first search are hybridized where the left-most node is visited more frequently than the right node, but the right node is still visited. This might be good for exploring data that is loosely but not strictly weighted to the left, or where data in deeper nodes needs some time to be loaded before it can be used. As implied by [[761: DFS]], this might be the best algorithm for a human to employ, where one can be just as knowledgeable as needs be in just enough topics to hold conversation or be quick to act in case of danger during a date. Informed search algorithms like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm A* search], [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beam_search Beam search] and other [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best-first_search Best-first search] algorithms show this type of behavior by expanding the most ''promising'' node in the current set (under some appropriate metrics).

The nature of the "deadth-first" algorithm is unclear and inefficient, since it searches the same nodes multiple times before moving to an entirely different region of the tree. It might be useful in a context where examining nodes has some probability of returning a noisy or incorrect result, such as searching for small objects that may be overlooked.

The bread-first search is taken literally. Bread is searched for first. Since the computer user now has already met their want to find bread, the computer has no reason to explore the tree at all.{{Citation needed}}

The title text introduces a "death-first" search, in which the user explores what it is like to be dead, before considering anything else. Specifically, the title text refers to hell, which calls to mind the adventures of Dante Alighieri in {{w|Inferno (Dante)| his ''Inferno''}}, and is a less likely place for keys to be left than one's coat pockets {{Citation needed}}. In 2021 (the year this comic was published) there are celebrations for the 700th anniversary of Dante's Death. Celebrations are expected to take place among the living only, and not in Hell.{{Citation needed}} A much more pleasant death-first algorithm might be to skip hell and purgatory and search heaven first, perhaps multiple times (which in itself would be a use of the deadth-first approach).

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

:[Five panels, each containing identical copies of what is approximately a balanced binary tree, greyed out in the background. The tree has a height of 3 and 15 nodes.]
:[In all five panels, a black twisty arrow in the foreground indicates the order in which nodes are traversed. The arrow does not complete the entire traversal but cuts off at a point. Backtracking is indicated with a dotted line.]
:[In the descriptions below, node 1 is the root, nodes 2 and 3 are its child nodes, nodes 4 and 5 are 2's child nodes, nodes 6 and 7 are 3's child nodes, nodes 8 and 9 are 4's child nodes, and so on up to node 15.]
:[Backtracking is omitted from the descriptions below, as they increased confusion when read.]

:Depth-first search
:[The arrow visits nodes 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 5, 10, 11.]

:Breadth-first search
:[The arrow visits nodes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7[''sic''], 6, 8.]

:Brepth-first search
:[The arrow visits nodes 1, 2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 3, 6, 10, 11.]

:Deadth-first search
:[The arrow visits nodes 1, 2, 4, 4, 2, 4, 3, 6, 12, 13, 12.]

:Bread-first search
:[The arrow starts at node 1, then leaves the tree off to the right to point to a loaf labeled "Bread".]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Food]]

Talk:761: DFS

2021-01-05T20:58:54Z

172.69.34.148: I wonder if the 'lightning strike' possibility was meant as a reference to a couple who made the news a few years ago when they survived a lightning strike by holding hands... ~~~~

I'm curious about the half-cut-off options in each panel. The first looks like '[something] eating contest,' the second looks like 'tracheal [something],' and the third looks like 'coral snake.' [[User:Alanbbent|Alanbbent]] ([[User talk:Alanbbent|talk]]) 23:49, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
:I think you may be right about the snake, but the others I am not so sure. However, I can't help out with better suggestions... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.58|108.162.219.58]] 23:53, 23 January 2014 (UTC)
:I think the eating contest one says "bee eating contest".[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.185|141.101.98.185]] 07:43, 17 November 2014 (UTC)
:For what it's worth, I was reading "bee dating contest". [[Special:Contributions/141.101.103.210|141.101.103.210]] 21:19, 10 September 2015 (UTC)
:I saw "bee dating context" [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.20|173.245.54.20]] 02:23, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Inland Taipan, also known as the Fierce Snake. Dude, wikipedia might tell you this one is shy, but its still a taipan - don't be going and getting relaxed around taipans. If its in Australia and its a snake, its a fair bet you don't want touch it. [[User:Plm-qaz snr|Plm-qaz snr]] ([[User talk:Plm-qaz snr|talk]]) 12:43, 13 August 2014 (UTC) [Australia]

Ironically, I've never seen any xkcd character quite as dressed as Hairy in this strip... [[User:Mumiemonstret|Mumiemonstret]] ([[User talk:Mumiemonstret|talk]]) 14:09, 3 November 2014 (UTC)

Megan isn't "wearing nothing at all"! She is wearing a purse, which in fashion is also accessory. And that is practical for a date. {{unsigned ip|162.158.91.219}}

Simple addition:
first frame says 'BFF dating control'? {{unsigned ip|172.68.34.22}}
:I don't think so.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 16:16, 16 June 2017 (UTC)

Several suggestions for the last entry visible:
*BFF Rating Contest
*Off Dating Content
*Off Dating Context
Chemikerhero --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.11|198.41.242.11]] 18:30, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

To me it said "BFF Dating Contest". It kind of sounds like it makes sense - a contest each person dates the BFF(s) of the other person? Lol. [[User:Numbermaniac|Numbermaniac]] ([[User talk:Numbermaniac|talk]]) 04:16, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

I wonder if the 'lightning strike' possibility was meant as a reference to a couple who made the news a few years ago when they survived a lightning strike by holding hands... [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.148|172.69.34.148]] 20:58, 5 January 2021 (UTC)

2406: Viral Vector Immunity

2021-01-01T23:27:12Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */ cat

{{comic
| number = 2406
| date = January 1, 2021
| title = Viral Vector Immunity
| image = viral_vector_immunity.png
| titletext = We've secretly replaced this customer's instant coffee with our patented substitute. Let's see what she ... uh oh, I think she spotted us through the window. Now she's getting something from the closet ... oh jeez, she has a sword! Run!!
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SENTIENT WOODEN HORSE. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The comic attempts to explain a virus vector vaccine, and one way it can fail, using the story of the {{w|Trojan Horse}} as an analogy.

A vaccine is a way to familiarize a host's immune system with a pathogen without actually causing the host to fall ill. There are many types of vaccines that have been developed, all of which are ways to present a significant segment of a molecular structure to the host body, so that the immune system recognizes the pathogen and mounts an immune response faster when a real infection happens.

A viral vector vaccine uses a modified virus, different from the pathogen being immunized against, as a carrier to deliver a molecular payload into the host body. This modified virus is called the vector because it is the method of delivery of the molecular piece of the pathogen. If the recipient has a strong immune response to the vector itself, the immunization may be less effective. It is to some degree a dice roll, with regard to whether some recipients will already be immune to a protein in a vector.

For example, a modified (to be harmless) cold virus can be used to deliver an (harmless) outer segment of another virus into the body. The ability of the vector virus to sneak into the host body and inject itself into the cell's reproductive system is used to trick the body into producing numerous copies of the recognizable piece of the other virus. That way the immune system recognizes the molecular segment of the other virus without actually being infected with that virus, which tends to significantly decrease recognition time after a real infection, leading to a less severe infection speeding up recovery.

The comic represents this idea with the Trojan horse being the (in this case) harmless vector virus, carrying, contrary to the traditional story, a beneficial payload into the cell.

In the comic the warriors recognize the shape of the delivery vehicle (the Trojan horse) as being similar to an animal that trampled one of their own earlier and therefore refuse it entry. An amusing point here is that they are not as such surprised at the arrival of a wooden vehicle at their doorstep, rather that its shape resembling an animal they have found threatening before, which is similar to how simple in its judgements the immune system can be.

The title text is a further riff on this theme, playing on an advertising campaign for freeze dried coffee. In the advertisements a narrator would claim to have secretly replaced fresh brewed coffee with that made from freeze dried to see if subjects could tell the difference. The contents of the coffee cup being the payload and the narrator the virus vector.

==Transcript==
:[A large wooden horse statue on wheels stands before a city wall, upon which are standing several warriors who are shouting and brandishing spears.]
:Warrior 1: Look! It's a statue of that horrible animal that trampled Steve!
:Warrior 2: Burn it!
:Warrior 3: Smash it!
:Warrior 4: Push it into the gorge!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:How vaccine failure due to viral vector immunity works
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:Biology]]

1939: 2016 Election Map

2020-12-27T03:45:43Z

172.69.34.148: /* Table */ added links

{{comic
| number = 1939
| date = January 8, 2018
| title = 2016 Election Map
| image = 2016_election_map.png
| titletext = I like the idea of cartograms (distorted population maps), but I feel like in practice they often end up being the worst of both worlds—not great for showing geography OR counting people. And on top of that, they have all the problems of a chloro... chorophl... chloropet... map with areas colored in.
}}

*A [https://xkcd.com/1939/large/ larger version] of this image can be found by clicking the image at xkcd.com - the comic's page can also be accessed by clicking on the comic number above.

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Wikilinks could be added to the data on the counting table.}}

The United States elects its president not directly by popular vote but by an Electoral College composed of a number of electors, partially proportional to population, from each state. Presently, a "winner-take-all" system is used in most states: the winner of the popular vote in each state receives all of the electoral votes for that state. Though, strictly speaking, the electors are not required to cast their ballots according to this system, many states impose penalties on them if they don't. Technically, the popular vote in each state is to elect a slate of electors who in turn elect the President. Many Republicans tend to claim that Trump had a strong victory, and show maps filled with large, red counties. These maps look even redder than the state maps, so they make it look like Trump won a large nationwide victory. However, as Randall points, out, those maps are misleading, and using them to promote your candidate is a bit disingenuous.

The news media commonly use maps to represent the progress or results of the election. Because of this winner-take-all system, states won by the Democratic candidate are typically portrayed in one color (blue is currently in wide use), and states won by the Republican candidate in another (currently red). In recent years, this distinction has gone far beyond electoral maps, and states are often referred to as "blue" or "red" by their political leaning in many contexts.

Randall seems to be making a point on the shortcomings of both maps, by showing how different the actual vote was from the red and blue choropleth maps. He mentions how strange cartograms look, and by creating this map he hopes that it will convey the actual vote by geography well, while keeping the normal geographic boundaries.

The title text repeatedly attempts and fails to spell the term {{w|choropleth map}}, a map that uses shading or colors to show information about a geographic area, such as a 'normal' election map that shows districts/states colored to the party that won them. In geography classes, "choropleth" is known as a chronically misspelled and mispronounced word. This is because the "choro" syllable sounds very similar to the Greek prefix "chloro", meaning "green in color" or "containing chlorine". The similar "pl" consonant cluster in the second syllable adds to this, resulting in {{w|Metathesis (linguistics)|metathesis}}. A choropleth map has many shortcomings. For example, many large Western states have small populations and thus don't make much difference to the electoral vote count, but look like a broad swath of red or blue on the map. The map overall can have the appearance of being very red or very blue, suggesting to the eye an overwhelming victory, when in fact the election can be extremely close. Donald Trump has [http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/heres-the-electoral-map-president-trump-gave-reporters.html repeatedly] [https://twitter.com/TreyYingst/status/862669407868391424/photo/1 emphasized] how red the map appears, especially when broken down by county, even though he actually lost the popular vote. In a speech on June 21, 2017, he said, "And those maps, those electoral maps, they were all red. Beautiful red."

In this cartoon, [[Randall]] seems to be pointing out the shortcomings of the choropleth map (or perhaps this overall red-state/blue-state mentality). His map shows more clearly the small impact of the low-population states, as well as how combination of the winner-take-all system with the typical election maps fails to show the sometimes large number of opposition votes in a given state. This map also combines all third-party or independent candidate into one type of marker (green), making it clear that a substantial number of votes went to these candidates.
A {{w|cartogram}}, also referenced in the title text, is a map that changes the size, and sometimes shape, of a region based on population or some other metric. Like a choropleth, these maps also have many shortcomings, the most obvious being the distortion required for the maps to work sometimes making it difficult to tell what and where the region actually is. Many versions of cartograms use squares to represent each region, with the size of the square corresponding to the metric measured. Often, it's easier to find specific places on these square maps.

A similar map was actually used during the 2016 election [https://ig.ft.com/us-elections/results by the Financial Times] ([https://www.ft.com/content/3685bf9e-a4cc-11e6-8b69-02899e8bd9d1 discussed here]). It made similar use of colorless states for geographic information and color in proportion to population for electoral information. However, the FT map is based on the electoral college, not the popular vote. It in turn is similar to a 2013 map used [https://www.theguardian.com/world/datablog/interactive/2013/sep/06/australian-election-results-map by The Guardian] for the 2013 Australian election ([https://www.theguardian.com/world/datablog/2013/sep/06/better-election-results-map discussed here]). Other compromise maps of geographic and electoral information exist, such as maps of geographically accurate but re-scaled states: a 2016 election example [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:ElectorScaledUS2016.svg is here], indirectly inspired by [https://www.vox.com/2015/8/19/9178979/united-states-population a similar vox.com map].

Shortly after the election Randall made [[Sad_comics|several comics]] that could indicate his emotions regarding the result, but references to the election have become fewer and farther apart.

With a stick figure representing 250,000 votes, Trump would have exactly 251.918544 stick figures and Clinton would have exactly 263.37844 stick figures according to the [https://splinternews.com/here-is-the-final-popular-vote-count-of-the-2016-electi-1793864349 final results]. The map shows 252 Trump stick figures and 264 Clinton stick figures, meaning Randall used ceiling rounding instead of conventional rounding, which would have shown Clinton with one fewer stick figure.

===Table===
{| class = "wikitable sortable"
!State
!Red
!Blue
!Green
!Total
|-
| {{w|Alabama}} || align="right"| 5 || align="right"| 3 || align="right"| || align="right"| 8
|-
| {{w|Alaska}} || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| || align="right"| 1
|-
| {{w|Arizona}} || align="right"| 5 || align="right"| 4 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 10
|-
| {{w|Arkansas}} || align="right"| 3 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| || align="right"| 5
|-
| {{w|California}} || align="right"| 18 || align="right"| 35 || align="right"| 5 || align="right"| 58
|-
| {{w|Colorado}} || align="right"| 4 || align="right"| 5 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 10
|-
| {{w|Connecticut}} || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| 3 || align="right"| || align="right"| 5
|-
| {{w|Delaware}} || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 3 || align="right"| || align="right"| 4
|-
| {{w|Florida}} || align="right"| 19 || align="right"| 18 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 38
|-
| {{w|Georgia (U.S. state|Georgia}} || align="right"| 8 || align="right"| 7 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 16
|-
| {{w|Hawaii}} || align="right"| || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| 1
|-
| {{w|Idaho}} || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| 3
|-
| {{w|Illinois}} || align="right"| 9 || align="right"| 13 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 23
|-
| {{w|Indiana}} || align="right"| 6 || align="right"| 4 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 11
|-
| {{w|Iowa}} || align="right"| 3 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| || align="right"| 5
|-
| {{w|Kansas}} || align="right"| 3 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| || align="right"| 5
|-
| {{w|Kentucky}} || align="right"| 5 || align="right"| 3 || align="right"| || align="right"| 8
|-
| {{w|Louisiana}} || align="right"| 5 || align="right"| 3 || align="right"| || align="right"| 8
|-
| {{w|Maine}} || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| || align="right"| 3
|-
| {{w|Maryland}} || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| 6 || align="right"| || align="right"| 8
|-
| {{w|Massachusetts}} || align="right"| 4 || align="right"| 7 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 12
|-
| {{w|Michigan}} || align="right"| 9 || align="right"| 8 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 18
|-
| {{w|Minnesota}} || align="right"| 5 || align="right"| 6 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 12
|-
| {{w|Mississippi}} || align="right"| 3 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| || align="right"| 5
|-
| {{w|Missouri}} || align="right"| 6 || align="right"| 4 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 11
|-
| {{w|Montana}} || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| 2
|-
| {{w|Nebraska}} || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| 3
|-
| {{w|Nevada}} || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| || align="right"| 4
|-
| {{w|New Hampshire}} || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| 2
|-
| {{w|New Jersey}} || align="right"| 6 || align="right"| 9 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 16
|-
| {{w|New Mexico}} || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| || align="right"| 3
|-
| {{w|New York (state)|New York}} || align="right"| 12 || align="right"| 20 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| 34
|-
| {{w|North Carolina}} || align="right"| 10 || align="right"| 9 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 20
|-
| {{w|North Dakota}} || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| || align="right"| 1
|-
| {{w|Ohio}} || align="right"| 11 || align="right"| 9 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 21
|-
| {{w|Oklahoma}} || align="right"| 4 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| || align="right"| 6
|-
| {{w|Oregon}} || align="right"| 3 || align="right"| 4 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 8
|-
| {{w|Pennsylvania}} || align="right"| 12 || align="right"| 11 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 24
|-
| {{w|Rhode Island}} || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| || align="right"| 3
|-
| {{w|South Carolina}} || align="right"| 5 || align="right"| 3 || align="right"| || align="right"| 8
|-
| {{w|South Dakota}} || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| || align="right"| 1
|-
| {{w|Tennessee}} || align="right"| 6 || align="right"| 4 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 11
|-
| {{w|Texas}} || align="right"| 19 || align="right"| 16 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| 37
|-
| {{w|Utah}} || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 4
|-
| {{w|Vermont}} || align="right"| || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| 1
|-
| {{w|Virginia}} || align="right"| 7 || align="right"| 8 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 16
|-
| {{w|Washington (state)|Washington}} || align="right"| 5 || align="right"| 7 || align="right"| 2 || align="right"| 14
|-
| {{w|Washington DC}} || align="right"| || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| 1
|-
| {{w|West Virginia}} || align="right"| 4 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| 5
|-
| {{w|Wisconsin}} || align="right"| 6 || align="right"| 5 || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| 12
|-
| {{w|Wyoming}} || align="right"| 1 || align="right"| || align="right"| || align="right"| 1
|-class="sortbottom"
! Total || align="right"| 252 || align="right"| 264 || align="right"| 30 || align="right"| 546
|}

==Transcript==
:[A map of the United States, with Hawaii and Alaska offset, is shown. Across the states red, blue and green Cueball like stick figure are scattered about, much more on each coast, and very few in the central parts, especially in the mid west. There are about the same amount of red and blue stick figures. There are not many green, but they are represented almost in any state with more than 10 stick figures. Above the map there is a large bold title. Below that there is a legend description explaining the red, blue and green Cueball stick figure with labels of who they represent next to them. Below this, in light gray text, are two lines of explanation of how the map was created:]
:<big>'''2016 Election Map'''</big>
:Each figure represents 250,000 votes
:[Red stick figure:] Trump
:[Blue stick figure:] Clinton
:[Green stick figure:] Other
:Based on 2016 election results
:Votes are distributed by states as accurately as possible while keeping national totals correct.
:Location within each state is approximate.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Maps]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Elections]]

2371: Election Screen Time

2020-10-14T00:11:43Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2371
| date = October 12, 2020
| title = Election Screen Time
| image = election_screen_time.png
| titletext = Feels like I picked a bad year to try to start having a healthy relationship with political news.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by A SCREEN TIME REPORT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Cueball has an app on his phone which informs him of the time spent using it for various purposes. These are typically used to monitor one's own, or maybe one's teenage child's, (over)use of games, social media apps, general browsers, etc and highlight any surprising issues. It is unclear whether this is: a specific analyser, that somehow identifies just this narrow subset of uses; a more general app, currently filtered to give information on just these two politics-related interactions via some complex heuristic method; or he actually does nothing ''but'' these two classifiable things, on this particular device.

Whichever is the case, it is currently displaying and comparing just two curiously detailed statistics - the time used staying informed about politics, the time he has spent reading election updates - and nothing else. The total time recorded would be a large slice of someone's typical day, if the report is for the last 24 hours, but is overwhelmingly dominated by one of the activities whatever the duration covered.

The comic reflects that most people spend a lot of time consuming news speculating about who will win the upcoming election, even though reading these "updates" will have no impact on the election because people are unlikely to change their minds because of them. People spend very little time researching information that will allow them to make informed decisions about voting, which is an important civic duty. In addition, a recent article in the Atlantic says that "[https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/10/reading-too-much-political-news-bad-happiness/616651/ Reading Too Much Political News Is Bad for Your Well-Being]".

The title text suggests regret about the time spent consuming political news, possibly reflecting the sentiment that the {{w|2020 United States presidential election}} has been especially divisive with little productive dialogue.

Randall has also mentioned "screen time apps" in [[2223: Screen Time]]. Randall has previously remarked on poor time allocation in [[1445: Efficiency]], in which he admits that he reduces his overall efficiency by spending too much time figuring out which approach to a problem was more efficient.

In [[2282: Coronavirus Worries]], he indicated that worrying about other people's actions is much less healthy (although unfortunately more common) than looking after your own health.

==Transcript==

[Cueball is looking at his phone screen time report. The screen appears above his head]

Screen Time Report
:Staying informed about politics like a good civic-minded person
:.. 26m
 
:Reading election updates that won't affect your actions in any way but slightly improve your knowledge about what's going to happen in a few weeks
:................................................. 9h14m

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Elections]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Phones]]

2370: Prediction

2020-10-09T22:02:54Z

172.69.34.148: /* Starting explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2370
| date = October 9, 2020
| title = Prediction
| image = prediction.png
| titletext = You'd think it'd be easy to just bet money against these people, but you have to consider the probability of them paying up.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic is about misunderstanding chances. Sometimes, people will round to 0%, 50%, or 100% when considering odds.

In the last panel, it is shown that [[Cueball]] anticipated this, so he plays pre-recorded audio of his prediction for the conversation.

The title text says that these people are gullible enough to the point that they would accept a disadvantageous bet. However, it also says that they might not actually go through with the bet if they lose.

==Transcript==
Cueball: Event A is more likely than Event B.

[White Hat touches chin thoughtfully]

White Hat: So you're saying that Event A will happen.

Cueball: No, Event B could also happen.

White Hat: So you're saying it's 50/50.

Cueball: No, it's definitely not 50/50.

[Cueball produces a phone]

White Hat: Sounds like you have no idea what will happen.

Cueball: And yet I knew exactly how this conversation would go. Here, listen:

<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>

Phone: ''Then you'll say, "So it's 50/50"''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Math]]

Talk:223: Valentine's Day

2020-06-29T05:12:48Z

172.69.34.148:

I though the titletext joke was Randall wanting to *personally* subvert heteronormativity with Joey Comeau[[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.148|172.69.34.148]] 05:12, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Should we remove the "incomplete" tag? I don't see how this could be improved or fleshed out any more. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.166|108.162.237.166]] 13:56, 16 May 2015 (UTC)

I removed the "incomplete" tag because the reason for it was stated as "References to previous comics?", and the explanation includes reference(s) to other comics. [[User:Caeleste Alarum|Caeleste Alarum]] ([[User talk:Caeleste Alarum|talk]])

If Saint Valentine's Day makes love more complicated for you, then either you or your mate has made a bad choice. Or both. — [[User:Kazvorpal|Kazvorpal]] ([[User talk:Kazvorpal|talk]]) 04:18, 21 October 2019 (UTC)

2324: Old Days 2

2020-06-25T01:13:08Z

172.69.34.148: /* Transcript */ category

{{comic
| number = 2324
| date = June 24, 2020
| title = Old Days 2
| image = old_days_2.png
| titletext = The git vehicle fleet eventually pivoted to selling ice cream, but some holdovers remain. If you flag down an ice cream truck and hand the driver a floppy disk, a few hours later you'll get an invite to a git repo.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a GIT VAN. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A sequel to [[1755: Old Days]], in this comic, a (young) [[Cueball]] is learning about the early days of the Internet from an (old) [[Hairbun]]. Most of her description is laughably fanciful but Cueball reacts with amazed belief. So either this is an alternate universe, or else Hairbun is wickedly pulling the leg of a naive Cueball.

The claims:

* The cloud was smaller and called a "Mainframe".
**This is false even accepting the premise that Hairbun is describing the early internet, and not instead how computing was before the internet. There was no cloud for remote storage in the early internet. Yes, there were multiple mainframe computers connected together.
* It was on the state landline.
** This is probably meant to astonish Cueball, who in this context may associate landlines (i.e. hard wired telephone connections) with an imagined stone age technology, and which nobody today uses for anything at all. And of course even in the age of all landlines, there was never such a thing as The state landline, imagined as an immense shared party line to which the governor would have priority access for making calls.
* No memory protection; call around to ask whether anyone else using it; Bill Gates would lie and say he was; Microsoft early foothold.
**Hoo hah.
* "GIT" was a van that circled gathering tapes to copy.
**Well no. However, there really is a Git, it is a version control system for managing computer source code, and it allows multiple developers to contribute to a project, typically from remote locations. So in a metaphorical sense a truck collecting and distributing programs could be considered an early Git. But no.
* Blow an air horn to request that the truck pull over; that's where "Pull Request" came from.
** Well, a pull request is a real thing, but it's not blowing an air horn. It's an administrative request from a user of a Git system to "pull" the user's private modifications of the shared project into the mainline version.
* Before terminals we all used punch cards, which were originally developed to control looms.
** This statement is completely true, punch card driven looms date back to 1745. Charles Babbage used them around 1830 to control his Analytical Engine, and Herman Hollerith adopted them for tabulating the 1890 USA census.
* Early mainframes would produce a sweater each time you ran your code.
** OK, sure, why not. This is the origin of the ugly Christmas sweater contest.

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

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Computers]]

2324: Old Days 2

2020-06-25T01:12:20Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */ more

2324: Old Days 2

2020-06-25T01:10:25Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */ number

{{comic
| number = 2324
| date = June 24, 2020
| title = Old Days 2
| image = old_days_2.png
| titletext = The git vehicle fleet eventually pivoted to selling ice cream, but some holdovers remain. If you flag down an ice cream truck and hand the driver a floppy disk, a few hours later you'll get an invite to a git repo.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a GIT VAN. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A sequel to [[1755: Old Days]], in this comic [[Hairbun]] describes the olden days of the internet to [[Cueball]]. Most of her description is laughably fanciful but Cueball reacts with amazed belief. So either this is an alternate universe, or else Hairbun is wickedly pulling the leg of a naive Cueball.

The claims:

* The cloud was smaller and called a "Mainframe".
**This is false even accepting the premise that Hairbun is describing the early internet, and not instead how computing was before the internet. There was no cloud for remote storage in the early internet. Yes, there were multiple mainframe computers connected together.
* It was on the state landline.
** This is probably meant to astonish Cueball, who in this context may associate landlines (i.e. hard wired telephone connections) with an imagined stone age technology, and which nobody today uses for anything at all. And of course even in the age of all landlines, there was never such a thing as The state landline, imagined as an immense shared party line to which the governor would have priority access for making calls.
* No memory protection; call around to ask whether anyone else using it; Bill Gates would lie and say he was; Microsoft early foothold.
**Hoo hah.
* "GIT" was a van that circled gathering tapes to copy.
**Well no. However, there really is a Git, it is a version control system for managing computer source code, and it allows multiple developers to contribute to a project, typically from remote locations. So in a metaphorical sense a truck collecting and distributing programs could be considered an early Git. But no.
* Blow an air horn to request that the truck pull over; that's where "Pull Request" came from.
** Well, a pull request is a real thing, but it's not blowing an air horn. It's an administrative request from a user of a Git system to "pull" the user's private modifications of the shared project into the mainline version.
* Before terminals we all used punch cards, which were originally developed to control looms.
** This statement is completely true, punch card driven looms date back to 1745. Charles Babbage used them around 1830 to control his Analytical Engine, and Herman Hollerith adopted them for tabulating the 1890 USA census.
* Early mainframes would produce a sweater each time you ran your code.
** OK, sure, why not. This is the origin of the ugly Christmas sweater contest.

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

{{comic discussion}}

2324: Old Days 2

2020-06-25T01:09:43Z

172.69.34.148: /* Explanation */ sequel

{{comic
| number = 2324
| date = June 24, 2020
| title = Old Days 2
| image = old_days_2.png
| titletext = The git vehicle fleet eventually pivoted to selling ice cream, but some holdovers remain. If you flag down an ice cream truck and hand the driver a floppy disk, a few hours later you'll get an invite to a git repo.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a GIT VAN. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A sequel to [[Old Days]], in this comic [[Hairbun]] describes the olden days of the internet to [[Cueball]]. Most of her description is laughably fanciful but Cueball reacts with amazed belief. So either this is an alternate universe, or else Hairbun is wickedly pulling the leg of a naive Cueball.

The claims:

* The cloud was smaller and called a "Mainframe".
**This is false even accepting the premise that Hairbun is describing the early internet, and not instead how computing was before the internet. There was no cloud for remote storage in the early internet. Yes, there were multiple mainframe computers connected together.
* It was on the state landline.
** This is probably meant to astonish Cueball, who in this context may associate landlines (i.e. hard wired telephone connections) with an imagined stone age technology, and which nobody today uses for anything at all. And of course even in the age of all landlines, there was never such a thing as The state landline, imagined as an immense shared party line to which the governor would have priority access for making calls.
* No memory protection; call around to ask whether anyone else using it; Bill Gates would lie and say he was; Microsoft early foothold.
**Hoo hah.
* "GIT" was a van that circled gathering tapes to copy.
**Well no. However, there really is a Git, it is a version control system for managing computer source code, and it allows multiple developers to contribute to a project, typically from remote locations. So in a metaphorical sense a truck collecting and distributing programs could be considered an early Git. But no.
* Blow an air horn to request that the truck pull over; that's where "Pull Request" came from.
** Well, a pull request is a real thing, but it's not blowing an air horn. It's an administrative request from a user of a Git system to "pull" the user's private modifications of the shared project into the mainline version.
* Before terminals we all used punch cards, which were originally developed to control looms.
** This statement is completely true, punch card driven looms date back to 1745. Charles Babbage used them around 1830 to control his Analytical Engine, and Herman Hollerith adopted them for tabulating the 1890 USA census.
* Early mainframes would produce a sweater each time you ran your code.
** OK, sure, why not. This is the origin of the ugly Christmas sweater contest.

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

{{comic discussion}}

2324: Old Days 2

2020-06-25T01:06:31Z

172.69.34.148: Wed

{{comic
| number = 2324
| date = June 24, 2020
| title = Old Days 2
| image = old_days_2.png
| titletext = The git vehicle fleet eventually pivoted to selling ice cream, but some holdovers remain. If you flag down an ice cream truck and hand the driver a floppy disk, a few hours later you'll get an invite to a git repo.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a GIT VAN. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic Hairbun describes the olden days of the internet to Cueball. Most of her description is laughably fanciful but Cueball reacts with amazed belief. So either this is an alternate universe, or else Hairbun is wickedly pulling the leg of a naive Cueball.

The claims:

* The cloud was smaller and called a "Mainframe".
**This is false even accepting the premise that Hairbun is describing the early internet, and not instead how computing was before the internet. There was no cloud for remote storage in the early internet. Yes, there were multiple mainframe computers connected together.
* It was on the state landline.
** This is probably meant to astonish Cueball, who in this context may associate landlines (i.e. hard wired telephone connections) with an imagined stone age technology, and which nobody today uses for anything at all. And of course even in the age of all landlines, there was never such a thing as The state landline, imagined as an immense shared party line to which the governor would have priority access for making calls.
* No memory protection; call around to ask whether anyone else using it; Bill Gates would lie and say he was; Microsoft early foothold.
**Hoo hah.
* "GIT" was a van that circled gathering tapes to copy.
**Well no. However, there really is a Git, it is a version control system for managing computer source code, and it allows multiple developers to contribute to a project, typically from remote locations. So in a metaphorical sense a truck collecting and distributing programs could be considered an early Git. But no.
* Blow an air horn to request that the truck pull over; that's where "Pull Request" came from.
** Well, a pull request is a real thing, but it's not blowing an air horn. It's an administrative request from a user of a Git system to "pull" the user's private modifications of the shared project into the mainline version.
* Before terminals we all used punch cards, which were originally developed to control looms.
** This statement is completely true, punch card driven looms date back to 1745. Charles Babbage used them around 1830 to control his Analytical Engine, and Herman Hollerith adopted them for tabulating the 1890 USA census.
* Early mainframes would produce a sweater each time you ran your code.
** OK, sure, why not. This is the origin of the ugly Christmas sweater contest.

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

{{comic discussion}}

2121: Light Pollution

2020-05-26T15:43:02Z

172.69.34.148: Mentioned further reference to the D&D lore of crystal spheres, as if there weren't enough possible sources already.

{{comic
| number = 2121
| date = March 8, 2019
| title = Light Pollution
| image = light_pollution.png
| titletext = It's so sad how almost no one alive today can remember seeing the galactic rainbow, the insanity nebula, or the skull and glowing eyes of the Destroyer of Sagittarius.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic shows how {{w|Light pollution|light pollution}} in cities affect what you can see from the night sky. The first three panels show realistic examples of what you could see from the sky inside a large city, in the suburbs and far away from light pollution. These panels roughly correlate on the {{w|Bortle Scale}} to 8-9 (city), 5-6 (suburbs) and 2-3 (remote area).

The last panel contrasts these for comedic effect with fake things in the sky that are not actually present in the night sky.{{Citation needed}} The "Ships of the Sky King" may be a reference to an elven legend in {{w|J. R. R. Tolkien}}'s works, in which several elven ships sail tangentially off the planet of Middle Earth and into the sky. This story was previously mentioned in [[1255: Columbus]]. "{{w|Celestial spheres|Crystal spheres}}" is an ancient theory about the heavens and what it was that held up the stars, before it was commonly accepted that space could be made of hard vacuum and celestial bodies held there by laws of inertia and gravity and vast distances. The spheres are nested inside each other concentrically. Randall proposes they are held by {{w|latticework}} like that which supports the Eiffel Tower, and that the lattice structure could be seen long ago when the sky was much darker. It is also a possible reference to the science fiction short-story "{{w|The_Crystal_Spheres|The Crystal Spheres}}" by David Brin, where the solar system is surrounded by hard crystal spheres that have to be broken before leaving as an explanation of the Fermi Paradox. Furthermore, in the lore of Dungeons & Dragons, the solar system is also enclosed in a massive crystal sphere, with other solar systems in similar solar systems, separated by "the flow".

Although all crystals do have a {{w|Crystal structure|crystal lattice}}, as in the [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crystal meaning 3] of the word "crystal" in Merriam-Webster (a body that [...] has a regularly repeating internal arrangement of its atoms and often external plane faces), these lattices are sub-microscopic and would be invisible in the sky. Additionally, crystal structure was not yet known at the time that the celestial spheres theory was popular.

In consensus reality, the sky does contain many invisible objects that can observe us and/or provide major structures of our society, such as satellites, {{w|Mesosphere#Exploration_and_uses|nearcraft}}, and drones, but these are usually invisible due to size and distance more than brightness.

The title text starts off sounding like a legitimate statement about light pollution. It is common to remark that the vast majority of people never see things in the night sky that were commonly seen by our ancestors every night prior to industrialization, such as the {{w|Milky Way}} or now-obscure phenomena such as {{w|Zodiacal light}}, {{w|Airglow}} or {{w|Gegenschein}}. The title text then further adds to the humor of the last panel by describing non-existent features, which could be references to {{w|H. P. Lovecraft}} as he often refers to beasts the possible size that “The Destroyer of Sagittarius” would have to be ({{w|Sagittarius (constellation)|Sagittarius}} is one of the constellations of the zodiac and {{w|Sagittarius A*}} a black hole at the center of the {{w|Milky Way}} inside of that constellation.). He also often speaks of insanity and color, connecting the two.

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

:[Four views of the night sky are shown among each other. The text on top reads:]
:'''Light Pollution and the Disappearing Night Sky'''

:[The first view shows only a few bright stars visible on a fairly light gray-brownish background. The inline text on the left top is:]
:High Light Pollution
:(Cities)

:[On the second view more stars are visible and some faint blurry white clouds on a dark-gray background are visible.]
:Moderate Light Pollution
:(Suburbs)

:[A lot of stars, even partly colored, and a clear image of many clouds on a dark background are shown.]
:Low Light Pollution
:(Very remote areas)

:[The last image shows the same region as above but with even more exposed stars and clouds, the colors are also more explicit. A faint lattice of triangles overlaying the image to its full extent and three ghastly silhouettes of sail-ships are shown embedded in clouds. The text on the top left reads:]
:No Light Pollution
:(How the sky should look)
:[Four arrows are pointing to some triangles:]
:Lattice of the crystal spheres
:[Three arrows are indicating the sail-ships:]
:Ships of the Sky King

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]