explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2221: Emulation

2023-07-18T12:11:58Z

172.70.86.26: /* Explanation */ Removing apostrophes where neither possessive nor contractive. Moving an apostrophe where it *is* a (plural-)possessive.

{{comic
| number = 2221
| date = October 28, 2019
| title = Emulation
| image = emulation.png
| titletext = I laugh at the software as if I'm 100% confident that it's 2019.
}}

==Explanation==
Here [[Cueball]] is speaking with a fictitious example of artificially intelligent software similar to the type popularized in the 1980s when {{w|personal computers}} had just become mainstream. Although modern computing platforms might still be backwards-compatible with {{w|8-bit era}} software, it is more likely that the old applications will need to be run within an {{w|emulator}} that can simulate the necessary hardware components required by the application.

In this case the "8-bit AI" is having a conversation with Cueball as it carries out tasks common to the era, specifically asking the user to insert a {{w|floppy disk}} into drive "A:" (A: traditionally being the first floppy drive on IBM-compatible PCs). At the time internal storage like a {{w|hard disk}} was an expensive luxury item and most applications were stored on removable media. An application that could not fit on a single floppy disk would be programmed to prompt the user to insert successive floppies which held the required data. However, the speed at which data could be loaded from such devices was {{w|List_of_interface_bit_rates#Storage|very slow}}, requiring anywhere from ten seconds to ten minutes to load a level or an advanced dialog box. Sometimes the software would even incorporate feedback mechanisms like loading screens to let the user know the program was proceeding as intended and had not crashed.

When software operating under an emulator such as {{w|DOSBox}} makes a request to access disc storage, the emulator will often map the command to a file or file system on the enveloping computing environment which can now contain hundreds or thousands of gigabytes of storage. Depending on the configuration, this may require a user action to complete the virtual operation (Cueball's click). The speed of modern hardware allows the data to be transferred at speeds several orders of magnitude higher than what was possible in the past. The 8-bit AI notices this and makes a comment about the transfer speed. Software may indeed have sometimes been designed to track the accessible rate of data, to give a rough estimate of the total loading time (or know how long it may need to animate a "while you are waiting..." display) no matter what the speed of the hardware is. This becomes less important once splash-screens or "spinnng cursors" aren't (usually) expected to stay on screen for many minutes without any obvious signs of practical completion.

Here we begin to see the consequences of emulation upon the anthropomorphized software application. Because the emulator is constructing the application's entire reality, the 8-bit AI has no reason to believe it is anywhere other than a 1980s' computing platform for which it was designed. While the application does notice the abnormally fast load time, Cueball decides to not [https://knowyourphrase.com/burst-your-bubble burst his anthropomorphized program's bubble] and responds that the file loaded quickly because of a new floppy disk from {{w|Memorex}}, which was a well-known manufacturer of premium magnetic recording media in the 1980s. Memorex was also known for a famous [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhfugTnXJV4 series] of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZyFcJcZiaU commercials] with the tagline, "Is it live? Or is it Memorex?"—tying into the comic's theme of unawareness that something is being digitally duplicated.

To compound the problem, computers of the era often lacked a {{w|real-time clock}} or would have an inability to {{w|Year 2000 problem|process dates beyond 1999}}, and therefore the software application in this comic still believes that it is running at the time of its creation - the 1980s. To this end the program casually asks how President Reagan is doing, as {{w|Ronald Reagan}} was the President of the United States from 1981-1989 when early PCs were on the rise. He died in 2004, 15 years before the publication of the comic. This is why Cueball seems slightly uncomfortable with [[222: Small Talk|noncommittally]] telling the software Reagan is "fine."

In the title text, Cueball references the {{w|Simulation hypothesis|living in a simulation}} trope, mentioning that it is not fully clear that he is actually living in 2019. This has been a theme in science fiction such as {{w|The Matrix}}, which has been [[:Category:The Matrix|referenced several times]] in xkcd. That we are living in a simulation was also the subject of the comic [[505: A Bunch of Rocks]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball sits in an office chair at a desk typing on a laptop computer. The computers response to his typing is shown emanating from a starburst on the screen with zigzag lines between different sentences.]
:Laptop: Loading... please insert disk into drive A:
:Cueball: *click* There you go.
:Laptop: Thank you. Wow, this disk is incredibly fast!
:Cueball: Yeah, uh, it's the new model from Memorex.
:Laptop: Amazing. And how is President Reagan?
:Cueball: He's... He's fine.

:[Caption under the panel]
:I feel weird using old software that doesn't know it's being emulated.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ronald Reagan]]

Talk:2798: Room Temperature

2023-07-07T13:31:59Z

172.70.86.26:

Isn't there actually quite a lot of funding available for uncontrolled hot fusion? https://www.icanw.org/squandered_2021_global_nuclear_weapons_spending_report ;) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.38.32|162.158.38.32]] 23:29, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Note that '''controlled''' hot fusion (e. g. a functioning Tokamak) would also be really valuable. [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 02:17, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Someone explain why superconductors are a big deal

Arguably the temperature has to change for a semiconductor to work. For it to work at room temperature alone would be pure magic.

:While I agree that a semiconductor that does not heat up in operation (IE stays at room temp) would be revolutionary, the way Cueball describes that they work "while sitting right here on the table" suggests they are "Room Temperature Semiconductors" in the sense that they can operate while immersed in a room temperature environment not necessarily that they themselves stay room temperature. Akin to the contrast between current superconductors that need to be blisteringly cold before they super-conduct and the hypothetical "room temperature superconductors" that could simply be strung through the air like present day power lines.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.174.223|172.70.174.223]] 14:04, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

A note about the fusion connection. In recent years, there have been breakthroughs in high temperature superconductors, which theoretically would allow to build controlled hot fusion reactors at a much smaller scale (because they can create much higher magnetic fields). There are seveal private companies that attempt to do that, most notably CFS with their [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC_(tokamak) SPARC Tokamak]. I think this is what is being referenced here. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.160.54|172.71.160.54]] 08:16, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
:Maybe you could add that yourself? I wrote the current explanation but actually have no expertise in that area, and also I'm not sure how to incorporate that into the current flow of the explanation. [[User:Rebekka|Rebekka]] ([[User talk:Rebekka|talk]]) 09:01, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

:I assumed the title text (which says "demonstrates" and not "produces" uncontrolled fusion) - could be as simple as a device proving the sun is a fusion reaction --[[User:Nico|Nico]] ([[User talk:Nico|talk]]) 11:49, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

::It could also be that he does have a device that produces uncontrolled hot fusion, and they won't fund it because the government does not negotiate with terrorists. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.40|172.69.247.40]] 11:56, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

As I understand it, "cold fusion" doesn't necessarily mean room temperature. That would actually be quite useless. Cold fusion could mean anything from "doesn't need millions of degrees" to "cool enough to directly hook up to boilers to power steam turbines" (and potentially a lower pressure requirement). The "room temperature" thing is mostly due to bad "science" and frauds (though it is still questionable if higher temperature cold fusion can be a thing, too). It's easier to cheaply make an alleged "cold fusion device" if you don't have to heat it up to or contain it at up to several thousand degrees. [[User:627235|627235]] ([[User talk:627235|talk]]) 11:23, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
:I took that phrasing directly from wikipedia, but you appear to be right. I did some further reading and apparently there are working methods of cold fusion (most notably {{w|Muon-catalyzed fusion}}) which are very different from the badly-performed experiments that gave cold fusion a bad name. But the difference is, reputable cold fusion still requires vast amounts of energy, just not as heat, while disreputable cold fusion is claimed to perform nuclear fusion basically for free (commonly by doing an electrolysis of palladium in heavy water). I'll try to incorporate that, but it would be great if someone with actual expertise would chime in and do their own edits.[[User:Rebekka|Rebekka]] ([[User talk:Rebekka|talk]]) 12:33, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
::I don't claim any great expertise, but I was already (when I wasn't being edit-conflicted) adding little bits such as the "meeting at 'room temperature' speculation" whereby a nigh-on perpetual room-temperature process (albeit with 'hot products') ''could'' be the Holy Grail (or {{w|DeLorean time machine#Mr. Fusion|"Mr Fusion"}}) of future cheap and manageable (and somehow not weaponisable/fail-deadly) table-top-scale fusion devices. Of course, this is is at least twenty-minutes-into-the-future stuff (deLoreans aside!) and may or may not ever become realistic. Perhaps less likely than the "flying cars and jetpacks" (or hover-boards!), of common imagination. But ''perhaps'' we might sometime get something the size (and surface heat, beyond the layers of necessary insulation and shielding for temperatures, fusion products and magnetic flux) of a household gas boiler. Probably not even that, in which case it could be justneighbourhood "{{w|Cogeneration|CHP}}"s to add managed resilience across the power-grids. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.230|172.70.90.230]] 13:43, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
Do we really need "citation needed" that uncontrolled hot fusion is dangerous? Really? Because anyone who doesn't understand this is not going to understand "room temperature superconductors", probably not uses of any superconductors. Like ever. Oh wait! I'm sure this discussion statement has a [[citation needed]]{{cn}}!!! {{unsigned|Cuvtixo|01:56, 7 July 2023}}
:It's a ''joke''... albeit one that I think is somewhat overused. Currently 817 out of 2798 articles include it, just under 30%. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 04:36, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
::Oh good. I tend to think that it should be maybe, as a ball-park figure, no more than one in four articles that has the {{template|Citation needed}} (in order to keep it special, not shoehorned in ''everywhere''...), and it's almost down that. (It must also be on the absolute blinding obvious and perhaps even tautoligicous to the point of being a tautological tautology, of course. ''And'' funny. If it aint funny, it has no purpose.)
::Though bear in mind that some articles have multiple occurances, so the use-count is probably higher as a proportion. And I'd have to check to see if the count counts the common redirects (thus aliases) of "citation needed", "Citation Needed", "cn" and "fact", at the very least, which might get used accidentally or because they're easier to type.
::But, remember, if anybody wants an ''actual'' {{template|Citation needed}}, there's always {{template|Actual citation needed}}. And, naturally, if you see one of ''those'' then you ''are'' truly invited to confirm/deny or just more accurately word the 'fact' so labeled - if you are in a position to do so.
::Here endeth the lesson. We now return you to your regularly-scheduled program... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.213|172.70.91.213]] 05:02, 7 July 2023 (UTC)
::: I don't think that blindingly-obviousness is the right test - rather it should be that imagining that it were untrue results in a humorously absurd scenario. There are plenty of blindingly obvious statements that don't meet that test, and there are some less immediately obvious ones that do (in fact, these are often the more effective uses of the CN tag).[[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.26|172.70.86.26]] 13:31, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Now here I thought the device to demonstrate uncontrolled hot fusion was a pair of binoculars to observe the sun and stars. [[User:Jamcdonald|Jamcdonald]] ([[User talk:Jamcdonald|talk]]) 06:10, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I usually prefer controlled hot fusion with gravitational confinement. We are already using one such power plant. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.90|162.158.62.90]] 13:21, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Talk:383: Helping

2023-07-05T17:06:54Z

172.70.86.26: Hard to know if this was User:Jerome, as not properly signed or even logged in.

Most depressing XKCD ever? [[Special:Contributions/71.201.53.130|71.201.53.130]] 14:24, 22 August 2013 (UTC)
:Every time when I see this comic I'm close before some tear drops running out of my eyes ;( --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:42, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Waitwaitwait. So the guy was in the building all along, witnessing the suicide/self-harm, and he failed to stop a woman from apparently successfully knocking herself out? 16:19, 24 May 2014 (UTC) {{unsigned ip|141.101.88.205}}

I thought Cueball was choking her![[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.169|108.162.238.169]]

So did I!!

I thought maybe it was about Randall's wife. Just like some of the comics feature her implicitly, I thought maybe this one did. {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.20}}

I think the explanation is a bit off. Sometimes getting someone into a hospital is helping. I've had to call 911 to get friends help. Things usually got bad for a while after that. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.124|108.162.216.124]] 21:46, 26 April 2015 (UTC)

The first time I saw this one, it was some 2 or 3 days after I had to call the police for a friend who was attempting suicide. It hit way, way too close to home, to the point where I wanted to cry. I ended up just getting up right then and going for a long walk in the woods to clear my head. 7:24, 2 July 2015 (UTC) {{unsigned ip|173.59.1.79}}

To 108.162.216.20, he married in 2011... this comic was made in 2008. Unfortunately, we may never know who he is referring to. {{unsigned ip|141.101.84.114}}

Am I the only one who feels that the point is he tried to talk to someone to cheer them up, but the woman was so distraught by what cueball said, it lead to self harm? {{unsigned ip|107.136.89.38}}
:I think the text is rather confusing: If you take responsibility for somebody's sadness, as in "I'm sorry. This was my fault." it may help. But saying "I made you feel this good" seems like bragging and does not help. But she was apparently already sad, so, yeah, kinda confused. Isn't that what explainxkcd is for? [[User:Jacky720|That's right, Jacky720 just signed this]] ([[User talk:Jacky720|talk]] | [[Special:Contributions/Jacky720|contribs]]) 22:52, 24 June 2017 (UTC)

When you care for someone, especially a significant other, your natural instinct as a decent human being is to provide help and support when they are in distress or upset. But with issues like depression, tendencies toward self-harm, or even general anxiety, your attempt to help provides no benefit or much more likely makes things worse. You being so close to that person makes it that much harder for them to be helped by you, and it often isn't your place to assume the role of therapist or counselor no matter how much you want to. No matter how much you think that person should be happy, you can't assume responsibility for it and no amount of convincing or reassuring is going to help that. When things get really bad, professional medical help and distance are the only thing that will keep that person safe. I cry when I read this. I've sat and held the hand of a close friend while he was handcuffed by campus police for his own safety and was escorted to a hospital for treatment. It takes a long time to heal that divide - and its the most frustrating thing in the world to know the best thing you can do is step away for a while. If you ever feel the need to comfort a spouse, a child, a friend who is so overwhelmed with existence that they aren't sure they want to live anymore, you'll understand this panel. {{unsigned ip|172.68.141.172}}

First time I read this comic, I didnt think much of it.
Rereading it years later, after I lived with a loved one struggling with depression, made me cry so much. It is exactly what I feel.

Does anyone else feel like the comic is actually saying that sometimes, bad things will happen no matter whether or not you try to help?

Okay, this almost happened to my classmate's friend like around 3 month plus ago, she was struggling with a case of suicide due to depression. When I see this, it reminds me of her friend a lot, and I wonder how is her friend doing. This is actually quite a tear-jerker if you are having a depression or your loved ones having it. Please, get some form of help if you need it...Boeing-787lover 10:08, 26 June 2018 (UTC)

A few of the people writing comments here seem to have concluded that the Cueball somehow made things more difficult for Megan. I don't see any indication of that. Just that he attempted to help or comfort her and that it wasn't sufficient. [[User:Mcherm|Mcherm]] ([[User talk:Mcherm|talk]]) 13:32, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

This one is just what it feels like when you can't do anything but put someone into psychiatric care, or stand by and watch it happen. You can try to help, but then you'll realize that nothing you can do is helping. It sucks. Nothing's going to prepare you for it. If you've been there, you won't forget it. [[User:Singlelinelabyrinth|Singlelinelabyrinth]] ([[User talk:Singlelinelabyrinth|talk]]) 14:45, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I have a different interpretation altogether : Cueball hesitates to help. One path is, he does, and Meghan wipe tears off her eyes. One path is, he doesn't, and Meghan harms herself. ([[User:Jerome]]) {{unsigned ip|162.158.22.10|08:58, 5 July 2023}}

2796: Real Estate Analysis

2023-07-04T11:45:03Z

172.70.86.26: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2796
| date = June 30, 2023
| title = Real Estate Analysis
| image = real_estate_analysis_2x.png
| imagesize = 474x458px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Mars does get a good score on 'noise levels' and 'scenic views,' but the school district ranking isn't great; the only teacher--the Perseverance rover--is too busy with rock samples to teach more than the occasional weekend class.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by an EASILY IMPRESSED URBANIST - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic shows a chart ranking locations in our solar system (the eight currently recognised planets and Earth's own moon) along two scales: their walkability and their proximity to shops. As this is a "real estate analysis", this comic mocks real life "real estate analyses" for people who are looking for a new home. Walkability measures the ease of walking as a form of transportation in an area (often related to how urban that area is), and is measured by metrics like the 100-point walk score, with higher numbers representing easier and safer walking. Proximity to commercial shops and eating establishments can likewise be a factor for potential residents looking for a convenient living environment. While no units are provided, proximity can be defined as a number that increases with decreasing distance.

Earth is rated as highly walkable, probably because humans can walk on much of its surface without immediate & continuous existential need for environmental survival gear (so far), and due to the gravity on its surface. Earth also rates high on the "proximity to shops and restaurants" scale because its surface hosts all commercial establishments known to humans; most of businesses are within a few building stories of the surface, though some "shops" on airplanes are up to several kilometers above it.

All other locations are rated as completely unwalkable, and remote from any shops or restaurants. The next closest body, the Moon, typically around 384,400 km away from Earth, is about five orders of magnitude further from shops and restaurants than anywhere on Earth. (A dozen people have actually walked ''on'' the Moon, [https://sei-engagement.pubpub.org/pub/nmjeoom7/release/8 more or less], but none have actually walked ''to'' the Moon, or to wherever else they may want to go from there.) Venus is 108 million km away while Uranus is 2.9 billion, so all these bodies' clustering near the origin on the proximity scale masks a large difference in accessibility. The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn are assessed marginally higher walkability scores than the solid Mercury (where temperatures are extreme, but do briefly pass through the range survivable for humans as the planet rotates); maybe their less-hostile (and, in the case of Ganymede and Titan, physically larger) moons are taken into account here.

Based on Earth's high score on both metrics, Randall makes the claim "I get why this place is so popular". Most humans would agree with Earth being preferable (no human is known to have permanently inhabited any celestial body besides Earth[https://www.planetary.org/worlds/pale-blue-dot]), but would be more concerned with local differences in livability.

Walkability scores on websites such as https://www.walkscore.com/ take into account proximity to restaurants, groceries, and shopping (among other factors, such as proximity to parks, schools, and culture and entertainment venues), so it would be fairly unusual for a location to score high on walkability but low on proximity to shops and restaurants, or vice versa.

The alt text comments that Mars did score high on the 'noise levels' and 'scenic views' scores. Generally, lower noise levels help maintain a calm and relaxed lifestyle, and are therefore a desirable quality for real estate. Due to it having a thinner atmosphere and (almost) zero sources of manmade noise, Mars is very quiet (though [https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/the-fact-and-fiction-of-martian-dust-storms not entirely silent]. However, this extreme lack of noise may turn out to be detrimental to human wellbeing. Access to scenic areas is also generally seen as a positive when assessing property, and the large, barren scenery of Mars has been abundantly documented by the several rovers sent to its surface, resulting in widespread fascination with its serene landscapes (though the ever-present dust, and the need to deal with it, will mar the serenity). Again, though, the sheer emptiness of the landscape might turn out to be a negative rather than a positive.

It then states the 'school district' ranking (proximity to a good schooling system, which is also desirable, especially to families) is rather poor on account of there being only one available teacher - the rover ''Perseverance'' - and it being too busy with its rock samples. ''Perseverance'' is (at the time of this comic's publication) a still-active Mars rover whose main purpose is to examine minerals from Mars' surface and scan them for signs compatible with ancient life: while it could hypothetically serve as a teacher (using its memory banks as teaching material, for instance), doing so would greatly interfere with its main mission if done regularly.

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

:[A graph is shown. Both axes have a label with an arrow and 10 visible ticks.]
:Y-axis: Walkability score
:X-axis: Proximity to shops and restaurants
:[Labels of multiple dots at around (0, 0), clockwise:]
:Mars, The Moon, Mercury, Venus, Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter
:[Label of a dot at roughly (9.5, 9.5):]
:Earth

:[Caption below the panel:]
:After doing a real estate analysis, I get why this place is so popular.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Mars rovers]]

Talk:2682: Easy Or Hard

2022-10-11T18:10:23Z

172.70.86.26:

For other people not in US: active ingredient of Tylenol is {{w|Paracetamol}}. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 12:51, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

"Now paleontologists have pinpointed during what time of year that millions of years event happened, all thanks to new fossil evidence" (from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okOnVovooeM SciShow]) It is probably what's referenced in the "What time of year did the cretaceous impact happen?" [[User:Ppete pete|Pete Ratchatakul]] ([[User talk:Ppete pete|talk]]) 13:36, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Paper cited in the title text: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360674587_Derivation_of_a_governing_rule_in_triboelectric_charging_and_series_from_thermoelectricity
[[User:Victor|Victor]] ([[User talk:Victor|talk]]) 13:39, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
:AKA https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.023131 [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.49|172.70.210.49]] 14:17, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Papers related to the time of the year of the impact:

"... reveal that the impact occurred during boreal Spring/Summer, shortly after the spawning season for fish and most continental taxa." - [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03232-9 Seasonal calibration of the end-cretaceous Chicxulub impact event]

"Here, by studying fishes that died on the day the Mesozoic era ended, we demonstrate that the impact that caused the Cretaceous–Palaeogene mass extinction took place during boreal spring." - [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04446-1 The Mesozoic terminated in boreal spring]

[[User:Ppete pete|Pete Ratchatakul]] ([[User talk:Ppete pete|talk]]) 13:46, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Isn't mechanisms of Tylenol well known?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4912877/
:No - that's still a fairly new theory and it isn't fully accepted yet, or confirmed that there isn't anything else going on. It's been an area of controversy for a long time - when I graduated it was still thought it was a cox-3 inhibitor and that wasn't that long ago. (I'm a pharmacist.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 12:07, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I can't vouch for the long-period accuracy of the software that I just used (nor have I cross-checked with any other list or interactive app), but my quick research shows that on 31st March 1889 (dignitaries were officially taken to the top of the Eiffel Tower), Mars was in Pisces, and that in-between then and 6th May (the public got to do the same) it had drifted through Aries (IIRC, forgot to note that explicitly!) and into Taurus, where it was still on 26th May (the lifts opened, and the journey didn't have to be by the stairs!). Although you would have been unlikely to get a good view of Mars as it was quite close to conjunction with the Sun, getting well past Mercury's furthest extent. (In mid-June, it was practically on top of (or over but behind, as it were) the Sun, out of sight for all practical purposes.) I'm sure someone can do a more thorough check than myself, before we set this down properly/succinctly, but it was the first thing I thought of checking for myself. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.245|172.70.90.245]] 15:56, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Top right reminds of [[2501: Average Familiarity]]: I guess that for many people relativity and quantum mechanics might fall in the middle right cell, not the top right. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.3.238|172.69.3.238]] 16:07, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
:I agree. It takes some familiarity with physics to realize that reconciling them is hard. Lay people may not understand these things at all, but they might assume that they're known well enough by scientists that this is at worst a hard problem. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 16:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Isn't there a category for these types of grids? There should be, he does lots of them. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 16:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I got 2.125*10^-17 m/s^2, or 3.18*10^-18 N, for the gravitational force/acceleration from the Eiffel Tower on a baseball on Fenway Park. Someone might want to check my calculations, though.--[[User:Account|Account]] ([[User talk:Account|talk]]) 23:42, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
: How did you get those numbers? I was trying to figure it out (for shits and giggles), but I got a different number. What equations/calculations did you use? --[[Special:Contributions/72.138.76.186|72.138.76.186]] 14:04, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
: It occurred to me that the Boston to Paris gravity question might not be quite as easy as it seems, since the relevant distance would be not “as the crow flies,” but more “as the mega-gopher digs.” (I think?) [[User:Miamiclay|Miamiclay]] ([[User talk:Miamiclay|talk]]) 21:11, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
:: I already edited it away from the (implied) suggestion of Great Circle distance (as a trivial understanding of 'distance between', and probably what most searches for a value would turn up). But using latitude, longitude and radius (local, +altitude if you're into the detail) from a sufficiently accurate geophysical model (at least an oblate spheroid) as spherical coordinates leads quickly to true-ish straight-line length. And probably doesn't need to be sigbificantly further adjusted by the small dimple in spacetime that the Earth puts there, or even the fringe distortions of other tide-inducing (and therefore variable) gravitational bodies.
:: You might even get away with a mere spherical model (and altitude is surely less significant a factor than the difference between that and the spheroid), for a given necessary accuracy level. But I thought that was too much to explain, so left it a bit vaguer. But if further edits are needed, feel free! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.49|172.70.85.49]] 08:27, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

I can attest to the anesthesia one... Near the beginning of Covid I had to get my foot amputated, something they obviously would knock you out for. However, it was felt that it would be risky in light of Covid so they wouldn't, instead numbing me with a needle to the spine (as I understand it, same idea as the epidural women might get while giving birth). So I was awake and feeling nothing while getting a body part cut off me (both times, I had to get cut twice due to the first cut getting infected). Just shows how delicate even an anesthesiologist's understanding is. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:03, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Is it actually a bigger medical mystery how Tylenol works than how general anesthesia works? I figure the latter has had more research dollars spent on it, at the very least. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.65|172.70.178.65]] 21:17, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Calculating how much does the Eiffel Tower's gravity deflect baseballs in Boston is easy, but direct observation is insanely hard. [[User:Lamty101|Lamty101]] ([[User talk:Lamty101|talk]]) 02:09, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
:But just to observe the force, one only needs a {{w|Torsion_spring#Torsion_balance|torsion balance}} and some means of entirely relocating the tower to an equidistant point on the Earth's surface but on a plane at right-angles to that of the original vector (for comparative purposes)... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.26|172.70.86.26]] 08:53, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Why is the transcript marked as incomplete? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.238.143|172.70.238.143]]
:: Missing title text? New poster/editor didn't know/bother to remove the tag? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.51|108.162.241.51]] 15:19, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
::: If it has title text it is ''over''complete and TT details would need to be removed from it. Title text is already given verbatim. The Transcript is there to support access to screen-reading/text-searching of information only otherwise available in graphical form, and therefore does not do anything useful by providing the TT (and could be so eadily made to give a ''different'' TT). That's my general understanding of the evolved 'policy' on this, anyway. If it changes, I'd suggest that a <nowiki>{{Template}}</nowiki> be inserted below the initially empty Transcript (and above the Discussion insertion) that grabs the <nowiki>{{comic}}</nowiki> field of title text, on the calling page (or optionally another, by numeric parameter, if that would be ever useful) and repeats it verbatim. But, that aside...
::: If someone has an idea that they have now truly completed the Transcript, they can remove that tag. If someone else believes there are no further worthwhile improvements, they can remove that tag. But someone else might make it 'better', ''anyway'', two minutes or ten years later. And rather than worry about detagging the very latest comic (or even the prior couple, from within the last two) ASAP, I'd personally think about looking at anything untouched for a while from the older comics. And either tweaking (but leaving the tag a little longer for others to review, finishing the job a few days later if no further issues) or finalising as complete rather than polish the turd/gild the lilly.
::: But I know some people have blitzed all Incomplete tags, and many others clearly consider it not so clear cut and leave them in order to give the benefit of the uncertainty. – Between all our crowd-edits, there seems to be a fairly reasonable concensus, although vanishing Incompletes rarely get replaced by others who disagree but can't themselves (properly) Complete them so it probably biases towards more premature Completing. Which doesn't freeze it, and if the community-accepted 'transcript formatting' hasn't even been done yet it can still be done. (Perhaps the only time I'd reinsert the Incompleteness tag while "finishing" it.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.26|172.70.86.26]] 18:09, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2682: Easy Or Hard

2022-10-11T18:09:32Z

172.70.86.26:

For other people not in US: active ingredient of Tylenol is {{w|Paracetamol}}. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 12:51, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

"Now paleontologists have pinpointed during what time of year that millions of years event happened, all thanks to new fossil evidence" (from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okOnVovooeM SciShow]) It is probably what's referenced in the "What time of year did the cretaceous impact happen?" [[User:Ppete pete|Pete Ratchatakul]] ([[User talk:Ppete pete|talk]]) 13:36, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Paper cited in the title text: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360674587_Derivation_of_a_governing_rule_in_triboelectric_charging_and_series_from_thermoelectricity
[[User:Victor|Victor]] ([[User talk:Victor|talk]]) 13:39, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
:AKA https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.023131 [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.49|172.70.210.49]] 14:17, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Papers related to the time of the year of the impact:

"... reveal that the impact occurred during boreal Spring/Summer, shortly after the spawning season for fish and most continental taxa." - [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03232-9 Seasonal calibration of the end-cretaceous Chicxulub impact event]

"Here, by studying fishes that died on the day the Mesozoic era ended, we demonstrate that the impact that caused the Cretaceous–Palaeogene mass extinction took place during boreal spring." - [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04446-1 The Mesozoic terminated in boreal spring]

[[User:Ppete pete|Pete Ratchatakul]] ([[User talk:Ppete pete|talk]]) 13:46, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Isn't mechanisms of Tylenol well known?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4912877/
:No - that's still a fairly new theory and it isn't fully accepted yet, or confirmed that there isn't anything else going on. It's been an area of controversy for a long time - when I graduated it was still thought it was a cox-3 inhibitor and that wasn't that long ago. (I'm a pharmacist.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 12:07, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I can't vouch for the long-period accuracy of the software that I just used (nor have I cross-checked with any other list or interactive app), but my quick research shows that on 31st March 1889 (dignitaries were officially taken to the top of the Eiffel Tower), Mars was in Pisces, and that in-between then and 6th May (the public got to do the same) it had drifted through Aries (IIRC, forgot to note that explicitly!) and into Taurus, where it was still on 26th May (the lifts opened, and the journey didn't have to be by the stairs!). Although you would have been unlikely to get a good view of Mars as it was quite close to conjunction with the Sun, getting well past Mercury's furthest extent. (In mid-June, it was practically on top of (or over but behind, as it were) the Sun, out of sight for all practical purposes.) I'm sure someone can do a more thorough check than myself, before we set this down properly/succinctly, but it was the first thing I thought of checking for myself. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.245|172.70.90.245]] 15:56, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Top right reminds of [[2501: Average Familiarity]]: I guess that for many people relativity and quantum mechanics might fall in the middle right cell, not the top right. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.3.238|172.69.3.238]] 16:07, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
:I agree. It takes some familiarity with physics to realize that reconciling them is hard. Lay people may not understand these things at all, but they might assume that they're known well enough by scientists that this is at worst a hard problem. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 16:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Isn't there a category for these types of grids? There should be, he does lots of them. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 16:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I got 2.125*10^-17 m/s^2, or 3.18*10^-18 N, for the gravitational force/acceleration from the Eiffel Tower on a baseball on Fenway Park. Someone might want to check my calculations, though.--[[User:Account|Account]] ([[User talk:Account|talk]]) 23:42, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
: How did you get those numbers? I was trying to figure it out (for shits and giggles), but I got a different number. What equations/calculations did you use? --[[Special:Contributions/72.138.76.186|72.138.76.186]] 14:04, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
: It occurred to me that the Boston to Paris gravity question might not be quite as easy as it seems, since the relevant distance would be not “as the crow flies,” but more “as the mega-gopher digs.” (I think?) [[User:Miamiclay|Miamiclay]] ([[User talk:Miamiclay|talk]]) 21:11, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
:: I already edited it away from the (implied) suggestion of Great Circle distance (as a trivial understanding of 'distance between', and probably what most searches for a value would turn up). But using latitude, longitude and radius (local, +altitude if you're into the detail) from a sufficiently accurate geophysical model (at least an oblate spheroid) as spherical coordinates leads quickly to true-ish straight-line length. And probably doesn't need to be sigbificantly further adjusted by the small dimple in spacetime that the Earth puts there, or even the fringe distortions of other tide-inducing (and therefore variable) gravitational bodies.
:: You might even get away with a mere spherical model (and altitude is surely less significant a factor than the difference between that and the spheroid), for a given necessary accuracy level. But I thought that was too much to explain, so left it a bit vaguer. But if further edits are needed, feel free! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.49|172.70.85.49]] 08:27, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

I can attest to the anesthesia one... Near the beginning of Covid I had to get my foot amputated, something they obviously would knock you out for. However, it was felt that it would be risky in light of Covid so they wouldn't, instead numbing me with a needle to the spine (as I understand it, same idea as the epidural women might get while giving birth). So I was awake and feeling nothing while getting a body part cut off me (both times, I had to get cut twice due to the first cut getting infected). Just shows how delicate even an anesthesiologist's understanding is. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:03, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Is it actually a bigger medical mystery how Tylenol works than how general anesthesia works? I figure the latter has had more research dollars spent on it, at the very least. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.65|172.70.178.65]] 21:17, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Calculating how much does the Eiffel Tower's gravity deflect baseballs in Boston is easy, but direct observation is insanely hard. [[User:Lamty101|Lamty101]] ([[User talk:Lamty101|talk]]) 02:09, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
:But just to observe the force, one only needs a {{w|Torsion_spring#Torsion_balance|torsion balance}} and some means of entirely relocating the tower to an equidistant point on the Earth's surface but on a plane at right-angles to that of the original vector (for comparative purposes)... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.26|172.70.86.26]] 08:53, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Why is the transcript marked as incomplete? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.238.143|172.70.238.143]]
:: Missing title text? New poster/editor didn't know/bother to remove the tag? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.51|108.162.241.51]] 15:19, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
::: If it has title text it is ''over''complete and TT details would need to be removed from it. Title text is already given verbatim. The Transcript is there to support access to screen-reading/text-searching of information only otherwise available in graphical form, and therefore does not do anything useful by providing the TT (and could be so eadily made to give a ''different'' TT). That's my general understanding of the evolved 'policy' on this, anyway. If it changes, I'd suggest that a <nowiki>{{Template}}</nowiki> be inserted below the initially empty Template (and above the Discussion insertion) that grabs the <nowiki>{{comic}}</nowiki> field of title text, on the calling page (or optionally another, by numeric parameter, if that would be ever useful) and repeats it verbatim. But, that aside...
::: If someone has an idea that they have now truly completed the Transcript, they can remove that tag. If someone else believes there are no further worthwhile improvements, they can remove that tag. But someone else might make it 'better', ''anyway'', two minutes or ten years later. And rather than worry about detagging the very latest comic (or even the prior couple, from within the last two) ASAP, I'd personally think about looking at anything untouched for a while from the older comics. And either tweaking (but leaving the tag a little longer for others to review, finishing the job a few days later if no further issues) or finalising as complete rather than polish the turd/gild the lilly.
::: But I know some people have blitzed all Incomplete tags, and many others clearly consider it not so clear cut and leave them in order to give the benefit of the uncertainty. – Between all our crowd-edits, there seems to be a fairly reasonable concensus, although vanishing Incompletes rarely get replaced by others who disagree but can't themselves (properly) Complete them so it probably biases towards more premature Completing. Which doesn't freeze it, and if the community-accepted 'transcript formatting' hasn't even been done yet it can still be done. (Perhaps the only time I'd reinsert the Incompleteness tag while "finishing" it.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.26|172.70.86.26]] 18:09, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2682: Easy Or Hard

2022-10-11T08:53:42Z

172.70.86.26:

For other people not in US: active ingredient of Tylenol is {{w|Paracetamol}}. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 12:51, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

"Now paleontologists have pinpointed during what time of year that millions of years event happened, all thanks to new fossil evidence" (from [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okOnVovooeM SciShow]) It is probably what's referenced in the "What time of year did the cretaceous impact happen?" [[User:Ppete pete|Pete Ratchatakul]] ([[User talk:Ppete pete|talk]]) 13:36, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Paper cited in the title text: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/360674587_Derivation_of_a_governing_rule_in_triboelectric_charging_and_series_from_thermoelectricity
[[User:Victor|Victor]] ([[User talk:Victor|talk]]) 13:39, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
:AKA https://journals.aps.org/prresearch/pdf/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.4.023131 [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.49|172.70.210.49]] 14:17, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Papers related to the time of the year of the impact:

"... reveal that the impact occurred during boreal Spring/Summer, shortly after the spawning season for fish and most continental taxa." - [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-03232-9 Seasonal calibration of the end-cretaceous Chicxulub impact event]

"Here, by studying fishes that died on the day the Mesozoic era ended, we demonstrate that the impact that caused the Cretaceous–Palaeogene mass extinction took place during boreal spring." - [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04446-1 The Mesozoic terminated in boreal spring]

[[User:Ppete pete|Pete Ratchatakul]] ([[User talk:Ppete pete|talk]]) 13:46, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Isn't mechanisms of Tylenol well known?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4912877/
:No - that's still a fairly new theory and it isn't fully accepted yet, or confirmed that there isn't anything else going on. It's been an area of controversy for a long time - when I graduated it was still thought it was a cox-3 inhibitor and that wasn't that long ago. (I'm a pharmacist.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 12:07, 9 October 2022 (UTC)

I can't vouch for the long-period accuracy of the software that I just used (nor have I cross-checked with any other list or interactive app), but my quick research shows that on 31st March 1889 (dignitaries were officially taken to the top of the Eiffel Tower), Mars was in Pisces, and that in-between then and 6th May (the public got to do the same) it had drifted through Aries (IIRC, forgot to note that explicitly!) and into Taurus, where it was still on 26th May (the lifts opened, and the journey didn't have to be by the stairs!). Although you would have been unlikely to get a good view of Mars as it was quite close to conjunction with the Sun, getting well past Mercury's furthest extent. (In mid-June, it was practically on top of (or over but behind, as it were) the Sun, out of sight for all practical purposes.) I'm sure someone can do a more thorough check than myself, before we set this down properly/succinctly, but it was the first thing I thought of checking for myself. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.245|172.70.90.245]] 15:56, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Top right reminds of [[2501: Average Familiarity]]: I guess that for many people relativity and quantum mechanics might fall in the middle right cell, not the top right. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.3.238|172.69.3.238]] 16:07, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
:I agree. It takes some familiarity with physics to realize that reconciling them is hard. Lay people may not understand these things at all, but they might assume that they're known well enough by scientists that this is at worst a hard problem. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 16:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Isn't there a category for these types of grids? There should be, he does lots of them. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 16:28, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

I got 2.125*10^-17 m/s^2, or 3.18*10^-18 N, for the gravitational force/acceleration from the Eiffel Tower on a baseball on Fenway Park. Someone might want to check my calculations, though.--[[User:Account|Account]] ([[User talk:Account|talk]]) 23:42, 7 October 2022 (UTC)
: It occurred to me that the Boston to Paris gravity question might not be quite as easy as it seems, since the relevant distance would be not “as the crow flies,” but more “as the mega-gopher digs.” (I think?) [[User:Miamiclay|Miamiclay]] ([[User talk:Miamiclay|talk]]) 21:11, 9 October 2022 (UTC)
:: I already edited it away from the (implied) suggestion of Great Circle distance (as a trivial understanding of 'distance between', and probably what most searches for a value would turn up). But using latitude, longitude and radius (local, +altitude if you're into the detail) from a sufficiently accurate geophysical model (at least an oblate spheroid) as spherical coordinates leads quickly to true-ish straight-line length. And probably doesn't need to be sigbificantly further adjusted by the small dimple in spacetime that the Earth puts there, or even the fringe distortions of other tide-inducing (and therefore variable) gravitational bodies.
:: You might even get away with a mere spherical model (and altitude is surely less significant a factor than the difference between that and the spheroid), for a given necessary accuracy level. But I thought that was too much to explain, so left it a bit vaguer. But if further edits are needed, feel free! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.49|172.70.85.49]] 08:27, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

I can attest to the anesthesia one... Near the beginning of Covid I had to get my foot amputated, something they obviously would knock you out for. However, it was felt that it would be risky in light of Covid so they wouldn't, instead numbing me with a needle to the spine (as I understand it, same idea as the epidural women might get while giving birth). So I was awake and feeling nothing while getting a body part cut off me (both times, I had to get cut twice due to the first cut getting infected). Just shows how delicate even an anesthesiologist's understanding is. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:03, 8 October 2022 (UTC)

Is it actually a bigger medical mystery how Tylenol works than how general anesthesia works? I figure the latter has had more research dollars spent on it, at the very least. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.65|172.70.178.65]] 21:17, 10 October 2022 (UTC)

Calculating how much does the Eiffel Tower's gravity deflect baseballs in Boston is easy, but direct observation is insanely hard. [[User:Lamty101|Lamty101]] ([[User talk:Lamty101|talk]]) 02:09, 11 October 2022 (UTC)
:But just to observe the force, one only needs a {{w|Torsion_spring#Torsion_balance|torsion balance}} and some means of entirely relocating the tower to an equidistant point on the Earth's surface but on a plane at right-angles to that of the original vector (for comparative purposes)... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.26|172.70.86.26]] 08:53, 11 October 2022 (UTC)

950: Mystery Solved

2022-10-10T08:46:36Z

172.70.86.26: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 950
| date = September 12, 2011
| title = Mystery Solved
| image = mystery_solved.png
| titletext = The Roanoke Lost Colonists founded Roanoke, the Franklin Expedition reached the Pacific in 2009 when the Northwest Passage opened, and Jimmy Hoffa currently heads the Teamsters Union--he just started going by 'James'.
}}

==Explanation==
In this comic, aviation pioneer {{w|Amelia Earhart|Amelia Earhart's}} plane comes back to land after it went missing in 1937. It was presumed that Earhart was dead and that her plane went down into the ocean at some point during her journey, although various alternate theories have arisen since then, with no clear answer to the mystery. However, this comic proposes a much simpler explanation: there was no disappearance, it just took her 74 years to fly around the Earth. This explanation is simple, but impossible.

Earhart seems to think the person she is talking with is stupid for not comprehending such a simple answer, but in fact her explanation raises a multitude of other questions. Among them:
* How did it take so long for her to land? (She answers that the world is big, but it isn't so big that it takes 74 years to fly around it, even with 1937 technology. Earhart had already completed the majority of her journey before disappearing, and had only to cross the Pacific Ocean -- with stops in Howland Island and Hawaii -- before returning to her point of origin in Oakland, California. Had her flight succeeded, she could have completed it within three days of when she was last seen.)
* How did she survive that long, apparently without aging?
* Why didn't her plane fall apart (as even one year of continuous flight would have induced considerable depreciation (wear and tear) on many of the plane's mechanical components, and Amelia Earhart could not have repaired the plane while flying it) or run out of fuel?
* Why didn't anyone else see her on her journey or at least detect her with radar?
* Why doesn't she know that a flight shouldn't take 74 years?

Another possibility is that she did not just fly around the earth, but flew very fast (near {{w|light speed}}) for 74 objective years to return {{w|Twin paradox|without having aged much}}. However, this would not explain why she thinks it is a long trip around the earth, and it raises the additional questions of how she would accomplish this feat in a {{w|Lockheed Model 10 Electra|twin-engine monoplane}} and how no one else noticed any signs of her plane traveling near light speed, such as a 74-year-long sonic boom.

Earhart's disappearance gave birth to many conspiracy theories. One of these, which was explored in the TV series [http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Voyager Star Trek: Voyager], involves [http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/The_37%27s_(episode) her being abducted] to another [http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Delta_Quadrant part of the galaxy], where she was left in cryogenic stasis until found by the Voyager crew. Something similar could be the case here, having Earhart frozen by aliens until 2011.

The title text lists a few more deceptively mundane answers to long-unsolved mysteries that at first seem to dispel the questions with boring logic, but in fact raise more questions than they answer. The first is the lost colonists of {{w|Roanoke Colony|Roanoke}}, who were one of the first groups to come to North America, but then suddenly disappeared, leaving their colony untouched. The comic suggests that they simply left to found {{w|Roanoke, Virginia}}. Like all the other explanations in this comic, this doesn't explain how this simple solution became lost to public knowledge. It also doesn't explain why they abandoned their original colony, or how they made it to Roanoke, Virginia, which is more than 300 miles away, or where they were between when their colony was found abandoned in 1590 and when the future Roanoke, Virginia, was established over 200 years later, in the nineteenth century.

The second mystery in the title text, the {{w|Franklin's lost expedition|Franklin Expedition}}, was a British voyage in 1845 to study the {{w|Northwest Passage}} that also disappeared, somewhere in northern Canada. The text suggests that the expedition wasn't lost; it was still exploring and eventually found its way to the Pacific Ocean in 2009. This is impossible, because the men on the expedition would be long dead. As a side note, both of the Franklin Expedition ships were eventually found wrecked in the years after this comic was published: [http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/franklin-expedition-ship-pieces-believed-discovered-in-arctic-1.2759925 one in 2014], and [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/12/hms-terror-wreck-found-arctic-nearly-170-years-northwest-passage-attempt the other in 2016].

The final mystery is {{w|Jimmy Hoffa}}, the famous {{w|International Brotherhood of Teamsters|Teamsters Union}} leader who went missing in 1975 and declared dead in 1982 (possibly murdered). The comic says Jimmy simply opted to switch to the more formal version of his name; again, this raises the question of how such a thing would be possible without anyone noticing. The current head of the Teamsters is in fact named {{w|James P. Hoffa|James Hoffa}} (he is Jimmy Hoffa's son and goes by "James P. Hoffa" professionally); the comic could be implying that the senior Hoffa is not only alive but actually impersonating his own son, which would raise the question of why the supposed "son" doesn't look suspiciously older than he claims to be.

==Transcript==
:[A twin prop airplane flies high overhead.]
:Off-screen person: What's that airplane?

:[The plane has landed (shown in gray in the background), and the pilot, wearing an aviator hat and goggles, is walking towards the crowd waving.]
:Off-screen person: Holy crap— Is that Amelia Earhart?

:[A close up of Amelia Earhart waving.]
:Amelia: Hey everyone! My flight was a success!
:Off-screen person: But... Where were you!?

:[A wide view of Amelia, she stops waving.]
:Amelia: I flew around the world!
:Off-screen person: But you disappeared in 1937!

:[A close up of Amelia Earhart.]
:Amelia: Right, to fly around the world.
:Off-screen person: It's 2011!
:Amelia: The world is big. It's a long flight.

:[A wide view of Amelia]
:Off-screen person:
::But you...
::It's not...
::I -
:Amelia: Can I talk to someone smarter?

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Amelia Earhart]]
[[Category:Aviation]]

Talk:2679: Quantified Self

2022-10-01T02:28:50Z

172.70.86.26: Less obvious missing close-paren.

This could also be a call back to the Billy Path comics run in Family Circus. I don't have time today to add that research though. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.59|172.70.214.59]] 16:00, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

Here is an explanation of what it is about
https://www.reddit.com/r/OCD/comments/1ve309/invisible_thread_attached_to_my_back_am_i_the/ {{unsigned|Florian F|18:11, 30 September 2022‎}}
:I was going to guess sorting Google Maps Directions by sustainability announced this past Wednesday. https://blog.google/products/search/new-ways-to-make-more-sustainable-choices/ [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.17|172.69.134.17]] 18:53, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
::How is this comic about optimizing for sustainability?
:I think you're way off. I don't see any hint that it's about OCD. If it's similar to the condition you referenced, it's just a coincidence. The whole thing needs to be started from scratch. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.105|108.162.221.105]] 20:41, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
:That is why this site exists. To explain things you don't see. I don't think many people are familiar with this compulsion about an imaginary string retracing your path in space, but when you are, it is spot on. [[User:Florian F|Florian F]] ([[User talk:Florian F|talk]]) 23:09, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

GOOMHR! - Although for me it was the opposite aim. I've had periods of time when I wouldn't even like (if I noticed, I wasn't like OCD or anything[1]!!!) to make a return journey that meant I even crossed the road at a different point and thus passed under a different telegraph wire between a different set of adjacent poles, on the presumption that if I were to 'retract my path' then it would be irrevocably looped around at least one telegraph poles. (But normal lamp-posts were Ok... the path-'string' could just pass over and around the top and continue to retract. And it could pass above/below anything movable like cars, people, etc.) My ideal would be to be topologically contracted to zero length. Nut I wasn't actually obsessed by it, just... sometimes noticed when I was forced to do something that would cause such 'problems' and might deliberately ensure that any such loop was fully reversed (in strict reverse order to any such transit adding them in) ''if at all possible''. Of course, once it was spoilt by one end of the journey being held by a loop, the rest didn't matter so much. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.71|162.158.34.71]] 18:21, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
:''[1] Not even CDO, which is like OCD but ordered alphabetically!''
:: I definitely am also someone who always played it your way, the reverse XKCD. My cats play it straight though, running into the house, through, and out a different entrance repeatedly one day, then the other way the day after. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.210.45|172.68.210.45]] 19:35, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

; Red string of Fate
The drawing looks like the red thread connecting people in chinese mythology.
-[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.188|162.158.91.188]] 18:21, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

What happens to the string if you crawl under a car which then drives off?[[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.141|172.70.134.141]] 20:05, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
:You probably would only count objects that were stationary after you passed them.[[User:Anonymouscript|Anonymouscript]] ([[User talk:Anonymouscript|talk]]) 21:10, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
::If it can conceivably move over your 'thread', then it isn't a 'tangling loop'. You have to allow for any degree of mysterious topological optimisation that can magically unhook itself from anything that can be unhooked from, no matter {{w|Alexander horned sphere|how much work it has to do to do so}}, and if that has to include choosing just the right time (with perfect prescience, where necessary!) to allow it to untangle wherever/whenever possible. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.205|162.158.34.205]] 21:25, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
:::That doesn't make sense, taken to the extreme, since all things will turn to dust eventually.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.42|162.158.107.42]] 21:47, 30 September 2022 (UTC)
::::Within the period of your concern (e.g. per daily routine), I would presume. That gantry over the road will be (partially, perhaps in stages) dissasembled for maintenance at some point, if not outright taken down, allowing an arbitrarily future-sensitive thread to not be caught up in it any more. Tachyonic thread-behaviour could happily unwrap around the time ''before'' the gantry (or bridges, or arch) were built, and as for the house... Before completion or after the next F5 tornado, the 4D constraints are far less (a line snagged permanently in a 4D 'passage' suggests something a bit more interesting, given a closed door doesn't 'snag' in 3D, only the use of two different doorways, with or without actual doors). But limiting it to a daily assesment bookends the whole 4D construct with a virtual lintel over (and under, in the ''t''-dimension) any potential gap for thread-movement that might be considered a way to be optimising to minimal necessary set of straight-line distances... Well, unless you learn the gantry was only assembled that morning, or that it had sufficient Ship Of Theseus-style repairs during the day, or a truck hit it by the end of the day... then it still acts as a looped-snagger
::::The car is trivial, in comparison, as we ''know'' it drives away in the posited scenario (and within the duration of the scenario). Even if our mental thread-pull does not allow us to tug it under the firmly ground-planted tyres, by reducing to periods of instaniousness as the 'trapped' thread is then rolled over (and even more tightly trapped, without violating the 'through solid matter' issue) you reach a point where it is now rolled ''off'' of (no longer underneath the car at all) so you can consider it untrapped. Unlike any thread that was threaded in through the driver's side door but out again through the passenger-side one, which traps loops completely (except for convertables, of course, or if Black Hat subsequently does a more width-wise [[562: Parking|version of the "cut'n'shut", with or without the "shut" bit]].
::::But that's just my interpretation. Thread-line obsessions probably come in various flavours and twists (can a thread-line knot about itself? And, insofar as the car example, is it basically forced to stay 'loose' but looped under the car as it drives, at least until enough of the car's wheels lose contact with the ground due to excessive speed over a humped bridge or even speedbump?) and I can't speak for all of them, but my reasonable (FCVO 'reasonable') assessment suggests that there are get outs ''and'' constraints that might be more universal than not. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.48|172.70.91.48]] 01:47, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

{{cot|When it was all about the OCD}}
This is about a type of OCD where some people feel like they have an imaginary string connecting them to where they come from. As they move around, that string gets entangled and they feel the urge to untangle it. When they enter a car, they feel the need to exit the car from the same door, or else the string will be trapped as forever passing through the car. When they enter a building, they feel they need to exit using the same doorway(s), to avoid entangling the string in the building.

Some cases, like turning around a lamp post are OK because you can imagine removing the loop over the top of the lamp post, such that it is not really entangled.

There may not be an official clinical name for this variety of OCD, but one suggested one is the "imaginary path-string".

Randall treats this OCD like a new measure to add to one's quantified self. The quantified self normally refers to the collection of measurements about your activity, like the number of steps you walk in a day, or monitoring your weight, blood pressure or calories intake. Here, Cueball measures his OCD, i.e. how long this imaginary string has become at the end of the day, after mentally untangling the string as much as possible with valid changes, like moving it around objects, but never through solid matter.

Unlike most people with this OCD, who feel the urge to minimize it, Randall/Cueball takes the opposite stance and actually prefers to maximize the (optimally minimal) length of that imaginary string.

The alt text tells about all the things that become useful adjuncts to this way of thinking and measuring, such as passing (one way) through any tube, tunnel or frame made of solid material that could thus capture the imaginary string and help to keep its ultimate distance as lengthy as possible. All of these situations are dreaded by the people with the more traditional version of OCD.
{{cob}}
...because someone [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2679:_Quantified_Self&diff=295745&oldid=295744 ''just deleted it''], and didn't even appear to attempt to replace it with anything useful themselves. (It did need a lot of editing, but not sure it is totally inapplicable, given the demonstrated familiarity with the basic concept by Randall's target audience...) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.205|162.158.34.205]] 21:25, 30 September 2022 (UTC)

;Comics with color, red-line subset
As [[:Category:Comics with color]] doesn't have a currently extant Talk-page to it, mentioning it here (although not sure if this one counts, as much, for my suggestion). Many CwC examples are basically "monochrome with added red" ([[2639: Periodic Table Changes|'corrections' to periodic tables]], e.g.) that are distinct from "having lines of various colours" (like [[657: Movie Narrative Charts|multidata plottings]]), which are in turn distinctive from [[2598: Graphic Designers|floodfilled]] or [[1024: Error Code|brushstroked]] multihue images. A simple(ish) algorithm could autoclassify all images with any non-greyscale pixels in them, but (from a human perspective, which is [[1530: Keyboard Mash|definitely my kind of perspective]]!) I think that we could sub-split CwC candidates into something like "(Monochrome) Comics with added red lines", and the rest. Doubtless some are going to be edge-cases (is this one technically a red-line one? Probably, but it's not really the same as a 'correction/annotation' red-lined comic), but such subcategorisation might still be broadly useful. - Just a wild idea, that you could perhaps safely ignore. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.117|172.70.90.117]] 02:25, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

2678: Wing Lift

2022-09-30T11:46:05Z

172.70.86.26: /* Explanation */ Grammar (though maybe still a better wording needed such that it is not read as "Often, three reasons are given...") Often, the reason given is one or other of these three?

{{comic
| number = 2678
| date = September 28, 2022
| title = Wing Lift
| image = wing_lift_2x.png
| imagesize = 679x358px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Once the air from the top passes below the plane of the wing and catches sight of the spooky skulls, it panics, which is the cause of turbulent vortices.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SPOOKED OUT BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Wings can produce {{w|Lift (force)|lift}},<ref name="Prandtl & Tietjens (1952)">Tietjens, Oskar Karl Gustav; [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Prandtl Prandtl, Ludwig] (1957). [https://books.google.com/books?id=4KtFcuCZ3VsC&pg=PR1 ''Fundamentals of Hydro- and Aeromechanics'']. Courier Corporation. ISBN 978-0-486-60374-2</ref> i.e. an upwards force with which an aircraft is held in the air.

Three reasons are often given as to why airplane wings produce lift:
* {{w|Bernoulli's principle}} (which is the most frequently cited)
* The airplane wing is angled up at the front so that air hits the bottom and is pushed downwards (The ski effect or {{w|Newton's sine-square law of air resistance}}).
* {{w|Coandă effect}} (The top is curved, so air going over the wing must curve downwards in order to avoid creating a vacuum above the back of the wing, and by Newton's third law, this results in an upwards force on the wing.)
The comic references all three of these reasons. Airflow splitting references Bernoulli's principle, while the air at the bottom being scared and fleeing downwards is similar to the actual effect, which is caused by air hitting the angled bottom of the wing. The air going over the top curving down references the Coandă effect, although the comic claims that this effect is instead caused by the top-air noticing the bottom-air fleeing downward and goes down to investigate why the bottom-air is fleeing. The mention of Newton's third law is indeed correct, even if the movement of the air is for the wrong reasons. In the title text, it additionally suggests that the top-flow also end up glimpsing the printed skulls, causing it to also chaotically flee, generating a wing's classic turbulent wake.

Randall previously dealt with explanations of wing lift in [[803: Airfoil]].

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

[Caption at the top of the panel:] How a wing produces lift

[A diagram of the cross-section of a plane wing. It is large and rounded on the left end and flat on the bottom while the top curves down to meet it at a sharp point. There are many small arrows indicating the flow of wind, as well as captions.]

[The arrows come from the left of the panel, point towards the wing, and then half begin to go over and half begin to go under. A caption in the middle of this flow reads:] Airflow splits around the top and bottom of the wing

[A circle underneath the diagram is connected to an arrow which points to the underside of the wing. A repeating pattern of small black (simplified) skulls fills the circle and arrow. The caption to the right of this is:] Spooky skulls microprinted on the bottom of the wing frighten the air, which flees away downward

[The arrows begin to curve downwards after this caption, and are joined by the top arrows which have also begun to curve downward. In these arrows is a caption:] Top air goes to see what's wrong

[Both streams of arrows have joined and are pointing to the bottom right of the panel. In front of them is a caption:] By Newton's third law, downward deflection of air pushes wing upward

{{comic discussion}}

[[category:Engineering]]
[[category:Physics]]
[[category:Aviation]]

Talk:2678: Wing Lift

2022-09-29T15:31:52Z

172.70.86.26:

"The plane of the wing" - looks like Randall messed up on the title text [[User:InfoManiac|InfoManiac]] ([[User talk:InfoManiac|talk]]) 05:52, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
:Or maybe not: It's the plane of the wing of the plane! [[Special:Contributions/172.68.51.160|172.68.51.160]] 07:21, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
: Yeah, I also don't think that this is a mistake. The word "plane" is not used as the device that can fly but as the description for the (bottom) surface of the wing. One word for two totally unrelated things. I removed the trivia-part. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plane_(geometry) vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airplane [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 09:23, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

If you want to know how a wing really produces lift, it's complicated, and the best reference on the net for that is [http://www.av8n.com/how/ See How It Flies]. [[User:B jonas|B jonas]] ([[User talk:B jonas|talk]]) 09:39, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
:There's also a [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/no-one-can-explain-why-planes-stay-in-the-air/ Scientific American] article from a couple of years ago that says there's no scientific concensus. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 13:13, 29 September 2022 (UTC)
:It's quite simple really - without wings, people wouldn't believe the plane would fly - the wings create faith, and faith lifts the plane.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.125|162.158.159.125]] 15:15, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Could the spooky skulls be an inderect reference to quantum spooky action? Not sure how that would apply to lift, though.
:I assumed this was in reference to recurrent discussions of the use of 'golf ball' dimpling in anything related to aerodynamics. AFAIK this is entirely theoretical/experimental as far as use in aircraft wings, but I imagine it's something that crops up a lot in semi-informed lay conversations on the subject. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.26|172.70.86.26]] 15:31, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

This, following "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate", suggests to me that Randall is in the middle of a private pilot training course and reflecting on its lessons. BTDT. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.38.237|172.70.38.237]] 14:32, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

it says 3 main reasons and then lists 2?? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.20|172.69.68.20]] 15:13, 29 September 2022 (UTC)Bumpf

2676: Historical Dates

2022-09-24T11:31:54Z

172.70.86.26: /* Explanation */ add link explaining this

{{comic
| number = 2676
| date = September 23, 2022
| title = Historical Dates
| image = historical_dates_2x.png
| imagesize = 305x438px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Evidence suggests the 1899 transactions occurred as part of a global event centered around a deity associated with the lotus flower.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a CONFUSED HISTORIAN - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The default "creation date" of many operating systems and software is Jan 1st, 1970. Which leads to a lot of files wrongly reporting that they were created on this date. This comes from dates being stored as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time Unix timestamps], which are defined as the number of seconds since Jan 1st, 1970, 0:00, so a timestamp value of 0 (the default value of integers in most systems) equates to this date.

Similarly, Dec 30th, 1899 comes from a [https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/ spreadsheet date compatibility issue] between Excel and Lotus 123 (referenced in the title text)

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

:[Blondie is talking, while pointing to a hologram, representing a timeline with two dates: 1899 and 1970]
:Historical records show millions of business transactions occurred on Dec 30th, 1899.

:This economic activity sparked the digital age, culminating in a "data festival" on Jan 1st, 1970, when many early digital files were created.

:[Caption under the panel:]
:It's going to be weird when historians forget why some dates show up a lot.

{{comic discussion}}

2426: Animal Songs

2022-09-22T19:35:10Z

172.70.86.26: Yeah, but no. Begone.

{{comic
| number = 2426
| date = February 17, 2021
| title = Animal Songs
| image = animal_songs.png
| titletext = Dr. Fauci is not permitted to have a cat, because as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, his petting one would be considered giving aid and comfort to an allergen.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is another in a [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] related to the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}.

Jokes about professionals not being so professional in private have been presented before, for example in [[2401: Conjunction]] and [[1463: Altitude]].

{{w|Dr. Anthony Fauci}} is the Director of the {{w|National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases}} who was largely responsible for informing the public in the United States on how to avoid spreading {{w|SARS-CoV-2}} in the beginning of the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}. He was recently awarded a one million dollar prize for his recent work. This may be the press conference he is going to. The comic shows him singing a silly made-up song to his pet fish as he goes about his daily routine - a counterintuitively childlike (albeit delightful and relatable) habit for an authority figure who normally presents himself to the public in a professional and prosaic "grown-up" manner. Incidentally, this characterization of Dr. Fauci doesn't seem to be far from the truth: Fauci's daughter Jenny is [https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2007/09/28/anthony-fauci/ quoted in the Washington Post] as saying of her father: "He's a goofball[...] He works hard and he does his thing, but he comes home and he's singing opera in the kitchen and dancing around."

In [[231: Cat Proximity]], it's presented as 'normal' for people to make inane statements and use {{w|baby talk}} near {{w|cat|cats}}, but here, Dr. Fauci is singing to his fish. The title text explains that, as he is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, he is forbidden from owning a pet cat, because petting the cat would be "giving aid and comfort" to an allergen, which is (a reference to) one definition of {{w|Treason laws in the United States|treason under the United States Constitution}}. The “allergen” refers to the hypothetical cat—some people are {{w|Allergy to cats|allergic to cats}}.

==Transcript==
:[A man with a bit of hair, later shown to represent Dr. Fauci, is putting on a white lab coat as he walks past his fish tank. The tank, on a small table, has one small fish in it, looking at him. Inside the tank there is also a seaweed-like plant and a small castle and an even smaller pyramid. Seven music notes, 4 double and 3 single notes, are scattered about Fauci's speech which is written with lower case letters (normal capitalization) as opposed to normal xkcd text with all small caps.]
:Dr. Fauci: ♫ ''Putting on my doctor coat'' ♫

:[Dr. Fauci is buttoning the coat. He is now standing to the right of the fish tank. The fish has turned towards him and has moved to the end of the tank near him. He still sings with the same letter type and six music notes, 3 double and 3 single notes, are scattered around the text.]
:Dr. Fauci: ♫ ''It's the coat I wear'' ♫

:[Dr. Fauci is back to the left of the fish tank, looking at himself in a mirror, and touching his face. There is a small shelf with three items on the wall beneath the mirror. The fish has swam back to its original position turned towards him. He is still singing, with one double and one triple note on either side of his lyrics. An off-panel voice addresses him from the right, and he replies. These exchanges are written in normal xkcd small caps style.]
:Dr. Fauci: ♫ ''so they know how good a doctor I am'' ♫
:Off-panel voice: Dr. Fauci? The press conference is in five.
:Dr. Fauci: Be right there!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:It's nice to think about how serious and important people probably ''also'' absentmindedly sing made-up songs to pets.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]

Talk:156: Commented

2022-09-21T12:21:50Z

172.70.86.26:

The issue date on this comic isn't filled. Can someone fix that by adding the correct issue date? [[User:Rikthoff|Rikthoff]] ([[User talk:Rikthoff|talk]]) 17:17, 3 August 2012 (EDT)

In the first two panels, it looks like he's flicking the guy off. It's not until the third panel that we actually see the subversion. I'm reasonably certain that this is intentional. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.117|108.162.238.117]] 02:34, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

In QtCreator, comments are dark blue. [[User:Kaa-ching|Kaa-ching]] ([[User talk:Kaa-ching|talk]]) 08:32, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm surprised that no-one has picked up on the fact that the text that is being commented out is multiple lines, but there is only one double slash, therefore only one of the lines can be commented out. For both to be commented, you'd need /* ... */ --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.218|141.101.99.218]] 09:03, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
:No, it's a single line that's wrapped. The double slash works fine in that circumstance, in real code. — [[User:Kazvorpal|Kazvorpal]] ([[User talk:Kazvorpal|talk]]) 04:34, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

:My thoughts about this is the slashes (fingers) are physical objects so therefor travel through time with the speaker. so this is effectively commenting out each word one by one as the sentence is spoken. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.10|141.101.99.10]] 11:36, 21 September 2022 (UTC)
::I think the prior comment has it. While 'life' may wrap the spoken line (in our POV, how it fits into the given comic-frame), it was not spoken (like the line may be typed) with a verbal linefeed-equivalent, and so the in-universe markup is applicable to the end.
::The //s don't seem to apply retrospectively upon the initial words* and no reason to assume persistant upon arbitrary appearance of future words.
::* - Some possibility that it works only from the POV of the symbol-caster, as seen in the final frame. Whilstsoever he positions the 'marks' in his own personal field-of-view, he gets a Head-Up-Display (which may normally display him supratitles, even without hue-changes?) altered accordingly, invisible to anyone not him, or viewing 'from-out-of-universe over-the-shoulder' like we do here.
::But I could understand any number of rival visualisation tropes applying here, consistant with the one brief example we see depicted. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.26|172.70.86.26]] 12:21, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

The title text may also be a reference to the "Your milage may vary." commonly found in the fine print in car commercials. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.19|108.162.216.19]] 22:28, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I believe he's commenting out Cueball entirely, thus ignoring him and therefore any and all statements he may make. Notice in the last panel that it's not Cueball's question alone that is color-coded, but Cueball as well. {{unsigned ip|108.162.238.8}}

I also interpreted it as Black Hat explicitly painting his fingers green in order to utilize the comment power of the double slashes as opposed to them turning green due to the gesture.[[User:Flewk|Flewk]] ([[User talk:Flewk|talk]]) 10:52, 25 December 2015 (UTC)
:So how did he then paint Cueball green? I think it is how Black Hat sees Cueball, i.e. he doesn't. [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:09, 10 May 2016 (UTC)

Comments don't silence, they just switch the mode from 'interaction required' to metadata, which may even persist. Or...Black Hat may consider it a 'favor' to give Cueball's life color... [[User:Elvenivle|Elvenivle]] ([[User talk:Elvenivle|talk]])

# I use python, so this is a comment. But, it's still possible to do with fingers! [[User:SilverMagpie|SilverMagpie]] ([[User talk:SilverMagpie|talk]]) 04:10, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
::This is not python so your comment looks different here. And please NEVER edit former comments done by other people! --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 15:37, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Talk:787: Orbiter

2022-09-21T05:39:40Z

172.70.86.26: ...having fallen back to "themself", later, seemed like a slip to be so definite about not-Frank.

So, I suppose a flight to the Diaoyu islands is out of the question then. '''[[User:Davidy22|{{Color|#707|David}}y²²]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 02:25, 24 April 2013 (UTC)

: did you mean: Senkaku Islands? --[[User:Quicksilver|Quicksilver]] ([[User talk:Quicksilver|talk]]) 01:11, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

I feel like this explanation page is completely neglecting to explain the joke, which is situational humor in which Cueball, to avoid a workplace conflict between two people who feel strongly about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, eliminates the discussion before it happens by rescheduling the check-in to what he thinks is a place which has no territorial disputes. Frank then decides to be a butt and bring up the old Texas dispute. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.203|108.162.238.203]] 16:56, 1 May 2014 (UTC)

May be a deeper joke here. When the space shuttle Columbia crashed, it was over Palestine, Texas.
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.207|108.162.246.207]] 02:37, 15 September 2014 (UTC)

The given lat-long for Oklahoma doesn't appear to actually relate to Greer County. I have very little knowledge of Texas vs Oklahoma turf wars, do some Texans believe all/most of Oklahoma should be within Texas? --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 10:33, 16 October 2014 (UTC)

For what it's worth, the coordinates fall within Seminole Nation territory. I wanted to make a joke about "occupied Muscogee Nation" in reference to McGirt v. Oklahoma, but 96.6W is a few miles too far west. If only it was 96.4W... --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.182.116|172.68.182.116]] 00:51, 28 November 2020 (UTC)

This comic aged like honey. Honey is naturally antimicrobial. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.42.50|172.69.42.50]] 01:56, 22 May 2021 (UTC)

I don't think it is "probably based on the wrong assumption that the inclination cannot be higher than the latitude of the launch site;" Randall should know better than that. It's probably based on drawing a great circle through Israel and Oklahoma and noting that the inclination of that plane is greater than 57 degrees, and forgetting to account for the 12 degrees or so of rotation the earth will experience while the orbiter in en-route. That seems an easier mistake for someone who knows a bit about orbital mechanics to make, and it's more consistent with the alt-text mentioning the Outer Banks, which is where the shuttle would be dropping rocket bits on an ascent to a ~60 degree orbit.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.173|172.69.79.173]] 01:43, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

While the page is highlighted by the above exit, I've neutralised the undue assumption that Frank originally piped up in favour of Israel. Very probably "Israel person" is just over in the same direction (limited options for showing separate voices in a crowded room, very slightly different elevation of emination) and doesn't themself have any strong concern over Texan(ish) territory like Frank does. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.6|141.101.99.6]] 05:36, 21 September 2022 (UTC)

2673: Cursed mRNA Cocktail

2022-09-17T10:07:01Z

172.70.86.26: /* Explanation */ Assume meant to highlight the "or"ness of the final "and"ed ingredient item. Clarify the amino acid (nb. Not "glutamine")

{{comic
| number = 2673
| date = September 16, 2022
| title = Cursed mRNA Cocktail
| image = cursed_mrna_cocktail_2x.png
| imagesize = 331x513px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Serve one each to guests whose last cursed cocktail was more than 2 months ago.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a VACCINE DRINKER. Do NOT drink the mRNA Cocktail. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Approximately two dozenth in [[:Category:Comics featuring cursed items|the "cursed" series]], this comic describes a process to approximate the molecular composition of certain {{w|mRNA}}-based vaccines in drinkable form. It contains the variety and relative concentrations of the simple molecular constituents found within the injectable mixture. i.e. mostly water, some sugar, lipids, proteins and either an {{w|Glutamic acid|amino acid}} salt ''or'' biological and genetic material, and the other constituents of {{w|mayonnaise}}.

Like much of what we eat or drink, the stomach and intestines will neutralise much of the complexity of either the vaccines or this ersatz replica of them, reducing them to simpler proteins of some slight nutritional value. For the vaccine to work, it has been designed to be injected into the body e.g. {{w|intramuscular}}ly to bypass the hostile environment of the human digestive system. While there are similar vaccines administered as a nasal spray, the fragility of mRNA in the human digestive system has curtailed the search for ingestible analogs. [[Randall]]'s replacement mixture '''might provoke generally unwise physiological reactions.''' While very few people would find such a mixture palatable, it is likely nontoxic, and contains water, proteins and calories, all important if elementary nutritional components. Because it doesn't contain a complete spectrum of essential amino acids, vitamins, and minerals,{{Actual citation needed}} you can't live on it alone.

The instruction to serve in {{w|shot glasses}} is a play on words as "shot" can mean {{w|Injection (medicine)|injection}} in medicine. (U.K.: {{wiktionary|jab#Noun|jab}}; Scotland: {{wiktionary|jag#Noun|jag}}). One {{w|Jigger (bartending)|jigger}} is only 0.19 of a cup, so the recipe serves up to five. This comic coincided with the widespread availability of the bivalent COVID [https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-authorizes-moderna-pfizer-biontech-bivalent-covid-19-vaccines-use vaccines in the US.]

The title text suggests the mixture can be served as a "booster" to a prior dose or serving after an initial treatment. There is much study of vaccine efficacy relative to the timing of subsequent doses. Too little time between makes the new dose not necessarily cause the immune system to react in the way that it should; however most pairs of distinct vaccines work well if delivered on the same day.{{Actual citation needed}} The comic recommends not redosing within two months of the last attempt.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:Ever wondered what it would be like to drink the new COVID booster?
:This recipe approximately recreates the taste and nutritional profile!
:''(Note: does not protect against COVID.)''

:[The following two testimonies are displayed in spiky bubbles.]
:"...What? Eww." -CDC spokesperson
:"Please stop." -Dr. Anthony Fauci

:Ingredients
:2 cups water
:3 tbsp mayonnaise
:¼ tsp MSG or nutritional yeast
:1 tbsp sugar

:Directions
:Pour 1 cup of water into a blender. Add the mayonnaise and MSG. Blend until smooth.
:Pour the other cup of water into a glass. Add the sugar and 1 tsp of the mixture from the blender. Stir well.
:Serve in shot glasses.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Comics featuring cursed items]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Food]]

2673: Cursed mRNA Cocktail

2022-09-16T19:48:03Z

172.70.86.26: /* Explanation */

1650: Baby

2022-09-14T15:46:16Z

172.70.86.26: /* Table */ Not "the last two suggestions". They're the sole two suggestions made as to how the introductory element is somehow organised.

{{comic
| number = 1650
| date = March 2, 2016
| title = Baby
| image = baby.png
| titletext = Does it get taller first and then widen, or does it reach full width before getting taller, or alternate, or what?
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] (possibly representing [[Randall]]) is uncomfortable about talking with couples who present their baby to him (here represented by [[Megan]] and another Cueball-like guy holding a baby in a blanket). Because he never knows what to say, he has many strange thoughts and/or reasonable questions, that shouldn't be mentioned in front of happy parents showing off their precious baby for the first time. See [[#Table|the table]] below for his thoughts.

Cueball's thoughts of what he didn't say includes the awkward ''You sure did make that'', the plain strange ''What brand is it?'', and interesting musing about science, which has nothing to do with this baby, ''So do they learn words...'', and even rating someone's baby: ''★★★★☆ Great baby''! Some of the thoughts are quite true, like ''It doesn't really look like you since you're not a baby.''

In the end he manages to make a comment about how cool the baby is, and immediately regrets this, as he just realized he has squandered the chance to say something meaningful and instead has come out with something quite inane.

In the title text he continues his thoughts again, going in the scientific direction with a question regarding how a child grows. Does it get tall first and then put on weight? (i.e. widen). This is a valid question which has no general answer. (See more in the table below). But he is not sure, as he also wonders if instead the child will reach full width before getting taller or alternate stages.

Randall was 31 at the time of the release of this comic. As far as this page and Wikipedia informs, at the time of writing, he has no children, although he is married. However, given his age, it is highly likely that many of his friends are having babies during these years, so he will probably often get into the depicted situation. Therefore, it is highly likely that the comic is based on his own experience, ''possibly'' with an added degree of comic exageration, and that it is indeed Randall depicted as the thinking Cueball.

Having problems with small talk is a recurring theme in xkcd (see [[222: Small Talk]]), even something as simple as talking about the weather can be a problem (see [[1324: Weather]]). This comic is the third in less than a month were Cueball has issues with this; the first two were [[1640: Super Bowl Context]] and [[1643: Degrees]].

There has previously been a "plural" version of this comic called [[441: Babies]], here Cueball also manages to say something better left unsaid, even if it was about his own baby.

===Table===
*In the table is a list of all the different sentences Cueball can think of or actually speaks in this comic:
{| class="wikitable"
|-
|+ Cueballs thoughts, including final statement and the title text.
|-
! scope="col" | Sentence
! scope="col" | Explanation
|-
| Wow, it's getting so big! Unlike most babies, which stay the same size forever.
| The first part of the sentence is quite a normal response, if it is not the first time the person sees the baby. But the second part can be interpreted as sarcastic, as newborn babies are supposed to grow fast, and it would be strange/bad if the baby had not grown considerably if it had been some months since last time. This also shows how inane the normal statement is, though people often feel inclined to say it anyway.
|-
| Hi! I'm talking to a baby!
| People often talk to the baby, rather than the parents. This makes no sense for Cueball, as the baby doesn't understand him. Should he mention this?
|-
| What brand is it?
| Typically a question one would ask about a new car, article of clothing, electronics, or other inanimate object, not a baby. Alternatively, the "{{w|brand}}" could also figuratively refer to the baby's sex. Usually it may be OK to ask what sex the baby is, though the normal question would be ''Is it a boy or a girl.''
|-
| Wow, definitely much smaller than a regular person!
| As all babies are... Typically a real response would be ''Wow, they are so small''. Possibly also a reference (in a complimentary sense) to, e.g., a compact vehicle vs. a normal-sized one, or how modern computers are/tend to be tinier (comparatively) than their predecessors, all other things equal.
|-
| You sure did make that.
| A typical comment would be ''he sure looks like you''. (See the comment that it doesn't look like you.) Such a sentence basically means you can see that it is clear that these two people did in fact make this baby. But making a baby requires sex, so when he puts it like that he actually refers to the sex part, which may be uncomfortable for many people.
|-
| ★★★★☆ Great baby.
| It is custom to praise parents for their lovely baby, but do not ever rate it with stars! In [[1608: Hoverboard]] Megan [http://xkcd.com/1608/1019:-1073+s.png rates a sea], something also not usually done. At least Cueball gave the baby more stars than Megan gave the sea.
|-
| It doesn't really look like you since you're not a baby.
| A common comment is ''He totally looks like you''. What people mean is that they can see features in the face (he has his father's nose but his mother's eyes). But of course given that the parents are adults they of course no longer look like a baby. Often it could be speculated that people just say this because they wish to see the similarities and to please the parents (hopefully).
|-
| So do they learn words one at a time alphabetically or can you pick the order or what?
| Here Cueball displays interest in the process of learning to speak a language as a baby. Very interesting subject, but since this is a very small baby, not something first time parents would have thought about yet. Learning one word at a time seems reasonable, but the two suggestions that they learn alphabetically or in a specific order the parents choose is plain silly.
|-
| I hope it does a good job.
| A baby actually does nothing that can be described as a ''job'', so this statement is not meaningful.
If it were about the future of the baby, it would be a socially very inadequate comment to care only about the possible usefulness of the baby, than to anticipate the joy of the parents about the child's person.
Alternatively, Cueball could mean ''does a good job of making the parents feel happy/fulfilled/meaningful'' in other words fulfill the reason the couple decided to have the baby in the first place. If he was talking about the job a baby could have, he might have been thinking about the baby's education,
|-
| Wow, that's a really cool baby!
| This is what Cueball actually ends up saying. He thinks immediately that this was a silly thing to say and thinks ''Dammit'' (see title text of this comic: [[559: No Pun Intended]]).
|-
| Title text: Does it get taller first and then widen, or does it reach full width before getting taller, or alternate, or what?
| It is not possible to generalize about how {{w|Child_development#Physical_growth|children grow}}, but of course it doesn't reach full width before getting taller! But it's mostly true that kids do alternate between putting on weight and using that weight to get taller. So they might get chubbier during a period of time, but then suddenly they will lose the fat as they grow taller and become thin again. If they don't eat much, they may stay small. If you feed them a diet with lots of sugar, they may stay fat even during growth spurts. But not necessarily, as each kid is different. The question is thus very interesting, but again not something to discuss as an anecdote the first time you have the chance to comment on a newborn baby.
|}

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is standing in front of a family consisting a Cueball-like guy holding a newborn baby, with spiky hair, in a blanket and Megan. Cueball is thinking lots of thoughts about what to say to the couple upon seeing their baby for the first time. There is thus a huge thinking bubble in the top of the panel above the characters. Everything in this bubble has been crossed out like taking a pencil and drawing lines on top of the text, but it can still be read. After using all this time thinking, Cueball finally decides what to say, only to immediately regret this as can be seen in a small thought bubble below his spoken line, which is between the huge and the small bubble.]
:Cueball (thoughts that are crossed out):
::<s>Wow, it's getting so big! Unlike most babies, which stay the same size forever.
::Hi! I'm talking to a baby!
::What brand is it?
::Wow, definitely much smaller than a regular person!
::You sure did make that.
::★★★★☆ Great baby.
::It doesn't really look like you since you're not a baby.
::So do they learn words one at a time alphabetically or can you pick the order or what?
::I hope it does a good job.</s>
:Cueball: Wow, that's a really cool baby!
:Cueball (thinking): ''Dammit.''

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I can never figure out what to say about babies.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring babies]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Baby 2]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]

Talk:1256: Questions

2022-09-09T15:33:36Z

172.70.86.26:

Another reason Poseidon is angry with Odysseus - early in the Odyssey, Odysseus blinds a cyclops who happens to be Poseidon's son.

Why did I just type the following in, when doubtless someone else has already done this..?
...a former great post just went to the main page.
They probably need error-checking/rearranging/something. And feel free to delete this entire comment if it becomes superfluous. [[Special:Contributions/178.104.103.140|178.104.103.140]] 10:19, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
:Just copied your comment into the transcript area. [[Special:Contributions/72.246.0.10|72.246.0.10]] 13:12, 26 August 2013 (UTC)
::I did delete it here, just because it's copied to the main page. Thanks for your great work!--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:18, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Although I appreciate the LOTR reference, is this really the intent? What is Randall's wife's name? Delete if this is a bridge too far into personal life. --[[Special:Contributions/131.70.204.120|131.70.204.120]] 16:29, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

I answered [http://jlandl.blogspot.se/2013/08/answers-from-top-of-my-head.html all the questions], for my amusement. Feel free to use any answers you deem appropriate or accurate enough for the wiki. [[Special:Contributions/213.66.207.152|213.66.207.152]] 20:06, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm confused that answers are being presented in different formats. Is the hyperlinked transcript a temporary state before answers are transferred to the table? Or is the transcript just a cleaner and more desirable alternative?{{unsigned ip|98.166.43.28}}

All answers here: http://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/1l3na7/questions/cbvigrd -- (Some signature that looks like spamlink)

Today's XKCD is good but it looks like the omitted the first Google suggestion when you begin to type "Why does " Go to google and begin to search that... Dont' see it in today's comic. {{unsigned|Glitch}}
:Google's suggestions can vary from user to user. At its most benign, this can be location based. For example, in Seattle, when I type "washington", I get suggestions related to Washington state and not the District of Columbia. At its most sinister, these suggestions can be based on what Google perceives your political beliefs to be. Try typing "gun" into Google. Did you get "gun show" or "gun control?" (Another thing that looks like a spamlink) --[[User:Rael|Rael]] ([[User talk:Rael|talk]]) 14:00, 28 August 2013 (UTC)
::How odd. I got gunbroker, and then as soon as I typed space, I got gun control as well. [[Special:Contributions/97.87.12.114|97.87.12.114]]
::: WHY do people complain about this? As long as you're going to get into a debate, in an open minded manner, and are going to critically evaluate the strength of arguments presented (regardless of source), then your starting inclinations shouldn't matter!

::: Moreover, the general internet user is only searching for zeitgeist terms so they know what websites to quote on a Facebook status, so that they can pat themselves on the back. Repeat for next topic.

::: Personalised results keep you comfy in your happy bubble.

::: In any case, the "fix" is simple. Enable do-not track requests, private browsing, or connect through proxies (Given the IPv4 saturation, most people are likely configured to have dynamic IP addresses anyway). If you're concerned about geographical location based filtering, just switch the domain name that you search on! [[Special:Contributions/220.224.246.97|220.224.246.97]]

Why doesn't Queen Anne count as a "woman who reigned as queen in her own right"? --[[User:Nick Douglas|Nick Douglas]] ([[User talk:Nick Douglas|talk]]) 21:50, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

:If I'm not mistaken, Queen Anne was queen dowager acting as a regent, rather than being queen in her own right. [[User:Sailorleo|Sailorleo]] ([[User talk:Sailorleo|talk]]) 03:54, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

:: You are mistaken. (Perhaps you're getting mixed Anne up with Mary II.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.37|141.101.99.37]] 20:31, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

----
Today's Comic was brought to you by the grep "why"''!'' [[Special:Contributions/98.195.202.130|98.195.202.130]] 18:24, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

It seems that Randall is confused about the meaning of life. All the questions he asked begin with why. I like what happens when you type "where is"... I got "where is chuck norris". --[[Special:Contributions/97.87.12.114|97.87.12.114]] 11:41, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The term "King Consort" may not have been used in the UK, but i believe it was used before in pre Act of Unification England. When Mary Tudor married Philip II of Spain, he was accepted by Parliament and the court as King of England, but was not granted any power. It may not have been elevated to an official title yet, but he was king consort. [[User:Dr Pepper|Dr Pepper]] ([[User talk:Dr Pepper|talk]]) Dr Pepper

My question is "Why do we need to answer all the questions, when the answers have nothing to do with the comic?". The answers are fun and interesting, but they should be in the trivia section. The comic is explained well without them. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.217.125|108.162.217.125]] 21:36, 8 August 2014 (UTC)
:Maybe because this is a wiki and, as such, ALL information must be present. I'm not certain whether the answers help explain the comic but, as it is, I'm not entirely sure of Randall's objective with this one. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.148|108.162.219.148]] 04:20, 2 November 2014 (UTC)
:: The purpose of this page is to EXPLAIN the comic. If you don't know what the comic is about you probably should not be trying to EXPLAIN the comic, and you probably should not comment as well. The purpose of this comic is to demonstrate in a visually interesting way the questions that we, users of the internet, ask. But without this EXPLAINATION it is fairly obvious that finding the answers to these questions do nothing to EXPLAIN the comic, especially since the answers do not give the readers any further understanding into the comic. Adding random information to a page does not EXPLAIN anything. Wiki does not mean “ALL information must be present”. Adding unnecessary information DISTRACTS from the EXPLAINATION and confuses readers, this impairs the ability of this wiki to EXPLAIN the comic. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.209|108.162.216.209]] 21:44, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

The dinosaur ghost question was duplicated in the answer boxes so I deleted the extra one. Also been filling out a ton of fields.[[User:4jonah|4jonah]] ([[User talk:4jonah|talk]]) 01:35, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Why is there an incomplete tag? What questions are unanswered? [[User:Djbrasier|Djbrasier]] ([[User talk:Djbrasier|talk]]) 19:10, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

I answered the last 2 remaining questions in section six. Can this be closed now?[[User:4jonah|4jonah]] ([[User talk:4jonah|talk]]) 21:00, 23 March 2015 (UTC)

Under "Why is outer space so cold?" it says "space is not cold", but then for "Why is there ice in space?" it begins with "space is cold".
This is somewhat confusing. Please clarify. Is space cold or isn't it? {{unsigned ip|162.158.255.120}}

No idea how to edit the actual article, but it might be worth mentioning that the succession laws of the UK are no longer male-preference, and are now absolute cognatic primogenture/ absolute primogeniture. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.107|141.101.106.107]] 12:45, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Something's fishy. One question has the answer "Space is Cold." and another has the answer "Space is not cold." [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.92|108.162.212.92]] 00:24, 11 September 2016 (UTC)

Using a search filter, "why" appears 301 times, to date. [[User:QATEKLYXM|Klyxm]] ([[User talk:QATEKLYXM|talk]]) 3:56, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Just a random guy passing through. For the question "Why are there psychics?" the example answer seems very confusing. Perhaps someone thought the word was "physics" instead of "psychics"? (Timestamp 20:14 21 March 2019)

Histamines are not injected into the skin in a spider's saliva. 1. It's injecting venom, not saliva. 2. Histamines are generated by the body as part of its immune response. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.63.69|172.69.63.69]] 15:19, 7 April 2019 (UTC)

I fully intended to reintegrate any useful changes from [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1256:_Questions&diff=294535&oldid=294532 this edit] into my own, independent and edit-conflicted, edit (that obviously took longer to go through) that I pushed in over the top so that I at least could then look at what I may also then re-alter. Once I had worked out the differences. But I cannot do it immediately, and I notice it took a different slant to my own attempt to further update so I beg your indulgance while I juggle the diffs, in a local copy, for maybe an hour or two. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.26|172.70.86.26]] 15:33, 9 September 2022 (UTC)