explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2396: Wonder Woman 1984

2024-08-14T06:05:10Z

172.71.210.83:

Is it really "common" as the explanation reads, to block "all news media" to avoid spoilers? Wouldn't most people just block the relevant keywords, or perhaps movie review sites and channels in particular? Blocking the entirety of news sources is rather absurd, in a fitting way for xkcd, but not a realistic way for real-world people to behave, as the explanation currently implies it is.
[[User:PotatoGod|PotatoGod]] ([[User talk:PotatoGod|talk]]) 02:22, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

:You are going to need two websites to answer your question. [https://skn.noip.me/pdp11/pdp11.html First, the PDP-11 emulator,] and also, [https://bellard.org/jslinux/vm.html?cpu=riscv64&url=fedora29-riscv-xwin.cfg&graphic=1&mem=256 Fedora in jslinux.] Good luck! [[Special:Contributions/172.68.133.14|172.68.133.14]] 05:21, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
:: I don't understand. Are you referring to something [[User:PotatoGod|PotatoGod]] did? Or is it a suggestion for recreating the 1984 Internet experience? [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 07:07, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

:I'd also guess that you'd block, lets say imdb or rotten tomatoes. Maybe even social media, but going to a regular news site would normaly be fine. Unlike for example on a sports event. (Let's say, an american person is not able to follow the super bowl, or someone else not following the Football worldcup finals, and they want to review it the next day in the afternoon...) - To be honest: Me, being born in 1990, I'd also would have expected drive in cinemas to be a thing in the 1980s. Alternatively it also seems possible, that they are a central plot point or something similar to the movie, so that THAT is the reason why it is a promotion. This of course would again be a spoiler in itself. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 06:21, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
:Maybe Ponytail's making an assumption like you are, but her assumption is based on the date in the title, as that seems to be the only thing she knows about the film in the strip. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.210.83|172.71.210.83]] 06:05, 14 August 2024 (UTC)

:I think that there is a lot of excess in this "spoiler avoidance" thing, this urge to have a "fresh experience". --[[User: Tolueno|Tolueno]] ([[User talk:Tolueno|talk]]) 14:25, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

:I'm not sure how to block keywords on news ... I would probably stop visiting news sites if I really wanted to avoid spoilers. It wouldn't be absurd if I did that for, say, week. I might even stop visiting comics which might post something related. However, avoiding anything related to covid would be much harder, even not counting I got something about it as an SMS. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 00:47, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

Is this referring to the 2020 election or to the 1984 election, which might be a plot point in the film? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.79.137|162.158.79.137]] 16:40, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
:I thought it was the 1984 election at first, but 2020 makes more sense. Blocking news sites wouldn't get rid of history. It's not until you read the title text that you get the idea that she's also oblivious about previous decades, although how that came about is unclear. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 18:48, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
:: I guess it is {{tvtropes|LampshadeHanging | lampshade hanging}} on the fact that advertising for a 1984 film with drive in cinemas is a bit off. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 06:12, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
:::I suppose the obvious closest thing to a retro-1984 reference to Drive-In Cinemas is the ''1985'' film Back To The Future that itself harks back to 1955, maybe slightly before the upswing of popularity... Though they don't actually feature in that film (cinema does, even 3d glasses), so it's a poor comparison. ;) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.132|141.101.98.132]] 16:24, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

I clicked on on link and managed to go from this page to Prop 8 in 6 clicks, I passed through startrek, I invite you to find your own way there. [[User:Infestedlie|Infestedlie]] ([[User talk:Infestedlie|talk]]) 02:39, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
::What is “Prop 8”? I tried a Google search and all I got for results was about some kind of ballot initiative in California way back in 2008 about same-sex marriage.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.62.249|172.69.62.249]] 06:56, 11 December 2020 (UTC)

::That is exactly what it is, which is why it surprised me so much [[User:Infestedlie|Infestedlie]] ([[User talk:Infestedlie|talk]]) 15:31, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
:Which link did you start on? Wonder Woman 1984 on Wikipedia? It took me 3: Warner Bros -> California -> Prop 8 --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 07:52, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

Need an explanation of "pogs" - online sources indicate it was a 1990s thing, and Elvis was last on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1957. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.108|198.41.238.108]] 20:50, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

2727: Runtime

2023-01-23T08:11:20Z

172.71.210.83: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2727
| date = January 20, 2023
| title = Runtime
| image = runtime_2x.png
| imagesize = 399x389px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = At least there's a general understanding all around that Doctor Who is its own thing.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE XKCD CINEMATIC UNIVERSE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The comic presents two separate conversations, which boil down to the same premise and yet differing conclusions. In one, a particular TV show is being watched, in the other a film franchise.

While it is finding its feet, a new season of a television show (perhaps commissioned, on the back of some perceived interest in the story it will tell, for a dozen or so episodes of around 50 minutes - i.e. about ten hours) is not necessarily going to get everything right in the writing style, the slant it puts on the subject matter, the cast of characters or other production values. Or at least not for mass appeal to the everyman, for whom [[Cueball]] is the archetypal representative. Nevertheless, many series ''do'' get further seasons and greatly improve. [[White Hat]] (the optimist, and clearly won over by the production) is on the way to successfully convincing Cueball to view a particular series, or perhaps to continue to watch it after becoming jaded by its early failure to live up to its hype. It sounds reasonable to Cueball, just from his friend's recommendation, to get over the hump and appreciate it "when it gets good".

A series of films, however, are seemingly a different matter. By substituting 10+ hours of filmed-for-television with something more cinematic, the prospect of getting over the exact same scale of 'hump' in a long-running set of sequels (eight films at a not unreasonable average length of 85 minutes each would ''also'' require a bit more than ten hours of commitment), is not at all enticing.

The real reason for this difference is that a television series that gets good can be expected to run for at least five seasons, whereas nine movies is already quit long for a movie series. Sitting through eight bad movies in order to understand two or three good ones is not a worthwhile tradeoff.

The mention of “after the first 8 movies” might be a reference to the long-running Fast and the Furious franchise, which now has 9 movies (plus a couple of spin-offs) at the time of this comic’s publication. The more recent movies are well-reviewed (rated “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes), even though the first four were widely panned by critics. Someone like Randall, who may have ignored the franchise when it first came out in 2001, may be wondering if he should watch the more recent ones that critics generally like; and, if so, does he need to catch up on the initial movies first?

The title text talks of the long-running British TV series that is {{w|Doctor Who}}. The original Doctor Who, running from 1963-1989 was typically low budget, for its time and locality, though initially considered cutting edge in many ways. Compared to more modern classics, and especially Hollywood sci-fi, it would be noticably not as good. The revived series (2005-present) has a much higher production budget and is typically much more aligned to modern viewers, who may wilfully ignore or not even know of the older episodes. Someone just starting to watching Doctor Who sequentially from the ''very'' first season (broadcast in 1963) would have to watch hundreds of episodes (26 'seasons', by some counts) before the series "gets good" to modern eyes, if the {{tvtropes|GrowingTheBeard|"good" point}} is the 2005 series revival, or even quite a few to reach any given key point in the original run. Thus Doctor Who is considered to be its own thing, and unlike other shows where the fans recommend you suffer through a poor first season to enjoy improvement in subsequent seasons, {{w|Whovians}} might recommend potential new fans to begin with the 2005 reboot (technically the 27th season), which was produced to appeal to all new-comers without even necessarily any cultural knowledge of what had been broadcast up until the long hiatus a decade and a half before.

There is also the wrinkle that anyone wishing to start with the original run would be out of luck, seeing as many early episodes - before the late-70s - were {{w|Doctor Who missing episodes|lost forever}}. ([https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/MissingEpisode/DoctorWho TV Tropes link]).
The BBC didn't see any value in keeping them as they couldn't rerun them, so random episodes would be disposed of or recycled for various reasons, and those episodes are gone, making many stories incomplete. Some have been recovered through discovering some fan having recorded them (in fact, the ''audio'' for every single episode has been preserved) but most lost episodes remain lost.

It is vague about Randall's precise opinion, but even the most dedicated fan would acknowledge that it has had a varying quality/charm/consistency/etc, according to one's personal tastes for such things. Comparing the original run (pre-Millenium, featuring seven key actors sequentially taking on the title role, and another for a standalone TV-movie) with the revived series (continuing the pattern with a further seven title-actors, and the eighth already announced), and any number of 'show-runners' (producers, main writers, etc) is one possible point of contention, probably more suited to British viewers. Possibly, in Randall's case, it is just the (perceived) ups and downs in the more recent era, which has been more consistently screened in the US.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Two situations are depicted between White Hat and Cueball.]
:[Situation 1:]
:White Hat: You should keep watching! After the first season it gets really good.
:Cueball: Oh yeah, I've heard that!
:[Situation 2:]
:White Hat: You should keep watching! After the first 8 movies, they get really good.
:Cueball: Haha, what? I'm not going to sit through '''''eight''''' bad movies!
:[Caption below the panel:]
:It's weird how it's way more normal and socially acceptable to suggest someone spend 10-15 hours watching something when it's TV rather than movies.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Doctor Who]]

2723: Outdated Periodic Table

2023-01-15T01:05:24Z

172.71.210.83: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2723
| date = January 11, 2023
| title = Outdated Periodic Table
| image = outdated_periodic_table_2x.png
| imagesize = 360x350px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Researchers claim to have synthesized six additional elements in the second row, temporarily named 'pentium' through 'unnilium'.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by BERYLLIUM-BASED LIFE - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic shows figure 6.14 from a science text book, which displays ''The periodic table of the elements'', but with only the first four elements ({{w|hydrogen}}, {{w|helium}}, {{w|lithium}} and {{w|beryllium}}) shown. [[Randall]] claims, in the caption, that you can use the layout of an included {{w|periodic table}} to date a publication based upon the elements present or missing. In this case, his book was somehow published just half an hour after the {{w|Big Bang}}, at which time those four elements were the only ones present. The joke here is that he has conflated elements being absent from the periodic table because they have not yet been discovered, with them being absent because they do not yet exist.

From about 10 seconds until about 20 minutes after the Big Bang, the phase that is known as the {{w|Big Bang nucleosynthesis}} occurred. At that time, hydrogen ions (single protons) provided for helium in abundance and traces of lithium. Some berylium-7 was also formed, which is an unstable {{w|Isotopes of beryllium|isotope}}, and with a half life of 53 days, an appreciable amount of what had been created would still be there several months after the Big Bang, and certainly most of what was created would be there half an hour after.

The conclusion is that Randall's science book was published when those four elements were the only ones in existence, and before the point where practically all the beryllium had decayed. After that point, only the three first would be present, until star formation began and started the process of {{w|Stellar nucleosynthesis}}.

Of course no life as we know it could exist until long after stellar nucleosynthesis had created all the other elements needed to support {{w|carbon-based life}}. And no life, as we could even imagine, would be able to exist for the first 370,000 years after Big Bang as atoms (in a form that could eventually form molecules) could not exist until the {{w|Recombination (cosmology)|recombination}} phase of the universe, due to the high energy of {{w|cosmic background radiation}}. Carbon-based textbooks could not exist either.

Even now, many {{w|Chemical elements|elements}} do not occur naturally on Earth and have to be {{w|Synthetic element|synthesized}} to be practically studied, or deduced from what was seen during their often short lives. Others were always very hard to detect, collect enough in pure form or purify enough to properly discover them. Until these elements were discovered, one way or another, they were not included in the periodic table. Various versions of the periodic table had left spaces for these {{w|Mendeleev's predicted elements|expected elements}}, but these gaps have now all been filled, and all recent modifications have been either additions to the end of the prior version of the table or changes of {{w|List of chemical element naming controversies|the names given}} to recent additions.

The Periodic Table has been under continuous revision since its invention by Dimitri Mendeleev in 1869. As printed scientific textbooks do not update themselves after being published, dating a publication by its Periodic Table is therefore possible, though in order to make the attempt one would need to know when various elements were discovered, isolated and named; when the {{w|Chemical_symbol#Symbols_and_names_not_currently_used|symbols}} for particular elements were adopted and changed; when various elements were moved to different Groups; and when the Periods used in the tables were revised due to advances in knowledge of atomic structure. Determining the age of the work by checking which elements are present could be done, but would be less accurate.

The title text refers to how yet-undiscovered elements are given a {{w|systematic element name}} as a temporary name, until a more permanent name is decided upon. The names are based upon a standard group of Greek and Latin roots (depicting the decimal digits used to 'spell out' an element's unique {{w|atomic number}}, i.e., the number of protons) and adding an "-ium" at the end. The claim in the title text is that, in the textbook with the figure, researchers claim they have synthesized six additional elements in the second row, temporarily named 'pentium' (atomic number "5") through to 'unnilium' ("one zero", or "10"), just as element "118" was provisionally called "ununoctium". At the time of release of this comic, element 118 is currently the last confirmed element and has been officially called {{w|oganesson}}. The title text of [[2639: Periodic Table Changes]], the previous comic to draw a periodic table, also refers to this.

Element number five is, in our time and reality, actually well known as {{w|boron}}. (Its 'provisional' name of {{w|Pentium}} was also used for a series of microprocessors launched by Intel in the 1990s.) "Unnilium", element number 10, is {{w|neon}}, a member of the group of {{w|noble gas}}es, which (along with fellow group member helium) was discovered only at the very end of the 19th century. Despite helium being one of the first elements to exist, and still one of the most common in the universe (roughly 24%, by mass, with hydrogen being around 75% and every other element combined being the remainder), it did not appear in the earliest periodic tables. It was only first detected from afar, as a constituent of the Sun, about thirty years before it was finally physically discovered in an actual lab here on Earth. (This is likely because helium is both inert and light.) It is also possible that neon's provisional name in 'early science' might have been something more along the lines of "decium", all else being equal.

Since life could not have existed at the time this book should have been published, the idea of researchers synthesizing elements, or indeed the existence of books or even researchers, is of course just part of the joke.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Subheading]: Figure 6.14
:[Title]: The periodic table of the elements

:[The following four rectangles featuring the large element abbreviation, with the full element name written below, in a typical periodic table style]
:[Top row, far left]: H Hydrogen
:[Top row, far right, detached from any other box]: He Helium
:[Bottom row, attached directly below the "H" box]: Li Lithium
:[Bottom row, attached directly to the right of "Li"]: Be Beryllium

:[Caption below the panel]:
:You can spot an outdated science textbook by checking the bottom of the periodic table for missing elements. For example, mine was published half an hour after the Big Bang.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Chemistry]]
[[Category:Cosmology]]
[[Category:Science]]