explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2291: New Sports System

2020-04-13T18:48:32Z

188.114.111.125: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2291
| date = April 8, 2020
| title = New Sports System
| image = new_sports_system.png
| titletext = Under my system, boxing and football suffered, pair figure skating still worked but had to adapt by dropping some moves, and pro wrestling was actually completely unaffected.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a VIRTUAL BALL. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic is the 16th comic in a row (not counting the [[2288: Collector's Edition|April Fools' comic]]) in a [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] related to the {{w|2019–20 coronavirus outbreak|2020 pandemic}} of the {{w|coronavirus}} {{w|SARS-CoV-2}}, which causes {{w|COVID-19}}.

As communities have been ordered to stay indoors to avoid spreading the virus, this has also affected sports leagues around the world, with many of them suspending their seasons, or cancelling them outright. (see {{w|Impact of the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic on sports|this Wikipedia article}} for a full list of sports or sporting events impacted) Some leagues have instead promoted e-sports, such as the [https://www.latimes.com/sports/clippers/story/2020-04-06/patrick-beverley-favorite-to-win-nba-2k-players-tournament NBA holding an ''NBA 2K20'' tournament between active NBA players].

[[Randall]], in this comic, proposes an obviously bad "new sports system" of "virtual sports", in which players play with a virtual ball in separate arenas, and are guided by online viewers. This obviously proves to be challenging, as the ball is virtual but the players are not wearing any virtual reality or augmented reality headsets, and thus they do not know how to interact with it properly. Playing in separate arenas would solve the problem of spreading the virus, as the players do not have any direct interactions with each other.

This would be a similar system to {{w|Twitch Plays Pokémon}}, in which Twitch viewers "play" Pokémon video games in a crowdsourced manner. There are also many games that are intentionally constructed so that some players must accomplish a goal they cannot see or with incomplete information, while they are guided by other players. These include common team-building exercises (often involving blindfolds), and the bomb-disposal themed puzzle game {{w|Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes}}.

The NBA is also planning a similar idea, holding a {{w|Variations_of_basketball#H-O-R-S-E| Horse}} tournament among [https://www.nba.com/article/2020/04/09/nba-air-horse-challenge-espn NBA and WNBA players], which works better than the version of basketball shown in this comic because players don't need to interact with the same ball.

In the title text, Randall claims that boxing and football (unclear if American football or association football) proved to be difficult, with {{w|Pair skating|pairs figure skating}} still possible as long as figures like {{w|Figure_skating_lifts|elevations}} are removed, and {{w|professional wrestling}} being unaffected. Boxing and any types of football would be impossible to play in these situations; on top of the difficulty of trying to play without knowing where the other players are located, these sports are predicated on contact; a boxer cannot get a knockout without being able to touch the other players, and football players cannot block or tackle even if they mime catching the ball. Pairs figure skating would be possible, excepting "throwing" moves or "lifts", as typically pairs figure skaters skate in unison, replicating the same moves.

Humorously, Randall claims that professional wrestling will be unaffected by his new system. This is in reference to the "open secret" that the matches have predetermined outcomes and are more "entertainment" than actual competition, with much of the 'forced' movement of one competitor being aided or even guided by the 'victim' rather than the 'aggressor' in semi-improvised feats of coordinated athleticism.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Single wide frame representing a basketball court with a basketball goal at each end. There are seven players running around the court, with a virtual ball in the bottom right corner (indicated by being drawn as a dashed circle). Nine off-screen voices of "online viewers" are yelling instructions to the players. A caption is below the frame running nearly the full width of the frame.]

:Viewer One: No!
:Viewer Two: It's on the–
:Viewer Three: Look out!
:[A player with thick hair and a goatee is "air-shooting" into the left-hand basket.]
:Viewer Four: No!
:[A player with thick hair is running to the right.]
:Viewer Five: He's right there. Don’t run into–
:[A player with no hair is air-dribbling to the right.]
:Viewer Six: Riiight!
:Viewer Seven: Go left!
:Viewer Eight: Left!
:[A player with thick hair and a full beard is facing left and jumping, hands raised to intercept a ball.]
:[A player with no hair is facing left and crouching, reaching for a ball.]
:[A player is making an alley-oop motion towards the right-hand basket.]
:Viewer Nine: Stop dunking and find the ball!
:[The virtual ball is slowly moving right, unseen by the players]
:[A player is hanging on the rim of the basket, making a dunking motion.]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:No one liked my new sports system, in which each player is in a separate arena sharing a single virtual ball that they can't see while online viewers yell instructions, but it was fun to watch while it lasted.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:Sport]]
[[Category:Basketball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]

390: Nightmares

2016-11-15T13:05:45Z

188.114.111.125: /* Trivia */ Removed " And three of these first four leap days all fell on a Friday." since it's simply not true (the three so far have been F-W-M in that order).

{{comic
| number = 390
| date = February 29, 2008
| title = Nightmares
| image = nightmares.png
| titletext = Well, *I* think I'm real. Look at me. Look at my face. Cut me and I'll bleed. What more do you want? Please don't go.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic shows [[Cueball]]'s plight with {{w|nightmare}}s. Since he's gotten used to normal nightmares, his subconscious has begun giving him dreams where he sees his loved ones imploring him to not wake up, lest they perish, as they only exist in his dream.

The title text continues this, with [[Megan]] claiming that she is really real, and begging Cueball to stay with her.

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the panel:]
:When I got used to the regular nightmares, my subconscious got creative.

:[Megan is standing with her hand on Cueball's shoulder.]
:Megan: Please don't wake up. I don't want to die.

==Trivia==
*This is the first comic posted on a Leap Day ({{w|February 29}}), which fell on a Friday in 2008.
**It was the first leap year after xkcd began in 2005.
**The two next years with leap day also had an xkcd release:
**[[1023: Late-Night PBS]] was released on a Wednesday in 2012.
***Interestingly enough this also has a theme about strange dreams.
**The third leap day after xkcd began again fell on a Friday in 2016 and [[1649: Pipelines]] was released then.
**If the current M-W-F schedule continues, the next such comic will not happen before 2036 when the leap day once more falls on a Friday.
**Interesting to note that the first three leap years after xkcd began (in just over 10 years) all fell on a release day, then followed by a break of 20 years.
{{comic discussion}}

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

345: 1337: Part 5

2016-11-14T16:16:50Z

188.114.111.125: /* Explanation */ corrected a few typos

{{comic
| number = 345
| date = November 16, 2007
| title = 1337: Part 5
| image = 1337_part_5.png
| titletext = This digital music thing will probably reach its endgame sometime in the next decade or so. These are very exciting times.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Missing great explanation of Stallman proposal to join GNU and what about his encourage sharing in the public mind? Defacing websites?}}
This is the fifth and last part of five in the "[[:Category:1337|1337]]" series. The title 1337 is "L-eet", or "elite", using the {{w|Leet}} alphabet.

All comics in the series:
*[[341: 1337: Part 1]]
*[[342: 1337: Part 2]]
*[[343: 1337: Part 3]]
*[[344: 1337: Part 4]]
*[[345: 1337: Part 5]]
This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.
The comic is narrated by [[Cueball]] as seen in part 2 comic, but that Cueball is not shown here, but still he is part of this comic series, and thus also this comic, as he narrates the epilogue.

{{w|Richard Stallman}} is the ardent defender of freedom and believer in {{w|copyleft}}, he also founded the {{w|GNU Project}}. (He is not really a sword fighter but is always depicted with swords when [[:Category:Comics featuring Richard Stallman|featured in xkcd]], which is in this series and in [[225: Open Source]]).

In the previous part he came to the rescue of [[Mrs. Roberts]] and her Daughter [[Elaine Roberts]]. Stallman and Elaine quickly overpower the two enemies with black bowler hats that represent the {{w|Motion Picture Association of America}}, (MPAA) and the {{w|Recording Industry Association of America}} (RIAA) use the {{w|Digital Millenium Copyright Act}} who had found out about the Roberts hacking.

Just when the two men have been defeated Elaine asks how Stallman knew they where in trouble and he tells it was his friend that told him about it. The friend enters by climbing down a rope from the sky with red cape and goggles. It turns out it is {{w|Cory Doctorow}}, a blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the weblog {{w|Boing Boing}}. He is an activist in favor of liberalizing copyright laws and a proponent of the {{w|Creative Commons}} organization. He does not really travel around in a balloon or (usually) wear a red cape, but [[Randall]] introduced this idea in [[239: Blagofaire]] and has continued it in later [[:Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow|comics featuring Cory Doctorow]]. So he in climbing down from his ballon.

He uses the balloon to construct the {{w|Blogosphere}}, which is a name used to refer to all blogs on the Internet, many of which frequently link to and refer to other blogs. Here, the Stallman character talks about it as though Cory Doctorow actually constructs it and Cory Doctorow talks about it as if it were a portion of the atmosphere 20 km up over the tag clods...

Blogs often label posts with keywords, known as tags. A {{w|tag cloud}} is a way of displaying the tags on a site where the more common tags appear in larger type than less-common ones. It has no relationship to actual water vapor clouds in the sky, but in the comic, the Doctorow character suggests that tag clouds are actually in the air, below the new blogosphere.

At this point we see that Mrs. Roberts still sits programming while this fight and discussion takes place. Her son [[Little Bobby Tables]] comes and tells her he is hungry, but mommy does not have time when she is coding, and tells him that he ate yesterday, so what's the problem. It seems that he is still a kid, even though it must have been some years since the young Elaine left and grew up. But she may still be a very young adult, in which case her little brother could still be lower than his mom.

Stallman gives Elaine a proposal to join {{w|GNU}} as a coder. But she is not ready yet as she wished to take down the industry of MPPA and RIAA as ''Music doesn't need these assholes.'' In the meantime Cory Doctorow throws the bowler hat guys out and asks them never to "darken our comment threads again".

Stallman is against her idea of going for straight war with the industry, and suggest she helps encourage sharing in the public mind. And then Doctorow chimes in with a suggestion that she has the ability to build a better {{w|P2P}} systems. To which she asks if they mean straight up piracy? And this leads up to the punch line of the pun, when Doctorow says she would make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts!

Peer-to-peer (often abbreviated P2P) system is a network system where tasks are partitioned between participants with equal privileges, in contrast with the client-server model, where the client makes requests and the server provides service. A common example of a peer-to-peer system is the BitTorrent file-sharing protocol, which is often (mis)used for distribution of pirated software and media.

The {{w|Dread Pirate Roberts}} is a fictional character from the book and movie {{w|The Princess Bride}}. Roberts is the most feared pirate on the seas. But, "Dread Pirate Roberts" is merely a title that has been passed down as previous "Roberts" have gained enough money (from piracy) to retire comfortably. Westley, one of the main characters from The Princess Bride, becomes the Dread Pirate after being taken prisoner by the preceding Pirate Roberts. It is anyone's guess whether the entire 5-comic story, starting from the choice of Mrs. Roberts' name, began as just a lead-up to this one joke. At the end of the movie, Inigo Montoya has won the vengeance he has sought all his life, and expresses to Westley that he doesn't know what to do next. Westley suggests Montoya succeed him as Roberts, saying, "Have you ever considered piracy? You'd make a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts." Cory Doctorow's line in the comic therefore mimics that line from the movie.

{{w|Silk Road (marketplace)|Silk Road}} was an online black market designed to allow criminals to trade in drugs, guns and other illegal items, run by a person also using the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts. However, this black market did not exist until four years after this comic was published.

In the epilogue several items of interest is revealed about the Roberts later life.

Elaine shared her ideas with {{w|Bram Cohen}} who went on from that to found {{w|BitTorrent}}, a distributed method of downloading files. People can and do use BitTorrent both for lawful file downloads and also for sharing media files unlawfully. Its distributed nature, where someone does not download a file from just one other computer but rather in many pieces from many other computers with the same file, makes it more difficult for record and movie industry groups to police, and therefore a person with Elaine's motivations might be interested in helping design such a system.

Mrs. Roberts developed for {{w|Ubuntu}} which is probably the most well known distribution of GNU/{{w|Linux}}. A GNU/Linux distribution (often referred to simply as "Linux") is any operating system that is based on GNU software and the Linux {{w|kernel}}.

She also went after any website (defacing them) that made {{w|Your Mom|''Your'' mom}} joke about her daughter. This is a [[:Category:Your Mom|recurring theme]] on xkcd.

Finally a bit more info is given on how Elaine continues her fight, joins communities, help with codes etc. And then sometimes she streams her music live on a IP address, and if you happen to find one of these with a streaming audio player you can hear her rock out (a reference to her music career mentioned at the end of the third part).

The final phrase "Happy Hacking" often accompanies an autograph from Richard Stallman.

==Transcript==
:[The two men in black bowler hats (RIAA and MPAA agents as known from the previous comic) with their katana swords are attacked by Elaine Robert with her folding knife and Richard Stallman with his own two katana swords. Elaine kicks the RIAA man to the left in the back of his leg, while Stallman jumps over the MPAA man to the right, flying high over him from right to left in a flying maneuver hitting his sword while hanging parallel to the ground above the man.]
:Elaine: Thanks, Stallman!
:Richard Stallman: 'Tis my pleasure.

:[Elaine stands to the left with her knife in one hand having folded it down again. Richard Stallman stands between the two men with bowler hats who are now lying on the floor on either side of him each with one of Stallman's sword pointing at their throat. Stallman has both arms fulle stretched towards them as he looks straight out of the panel. The left (RIAA) man lies flat on his back his hat and katana sword lying behind him. The right (MPAA) man is sitting on his knee leaning as far back as he can, since the sword is almost touching his skin on his throat. He wears his hat, but the sword lies behind him, out of reach, even though he is leaning back on one hand close to it. To the far right a rope comes down from the top of the panel falling down on the ground so a section of it stretches even farther right in the picture. Down this rope comes a man with googles and a red cape, which is black on the inside. This is Cory Doctorow. He holds on to the rope with two hands one over one just under his head.]
:Elaine: So, wait - how did you know we were in trouble?
:Richard Stallman: My friend here was tracking these thugs from his balloon.
:Richard Stallman: He called me and I thought I'd stop by
:Cory Doctorow: -Hi!
:Cory Doctorow: -Cory Doctorow - It's a pleasure to meet you.

:[Elaine has shifted the knife to the other hand. Richard Stallman has moved to the left of the RIAA man, so both bowler hat men are between him and Cory Doctorow. Stallman still points his sword in their direction, but they are lowered. The RIAA man closest to him, has picked up his hat in one hand and reaches for his sword with the other hand. The MPAA man now lies on his back, one arm up leaning on the other. His sword is gone. It does not seem like Doctorow could have taken it. Behind him Doctorow has reached the ground, the rope hangs behind him. He points left.]
:Elaine: Balloon?
:Richard Stallman: Aye. They're up there constructing something called a "Blogosphere."
:Cory Doctorow: Yup! It's twenty kilometers up, just above the tag clouds.

:[The scene is contracted, so to the left Mrs. Roberts at her desk with her chair and laptop becomes visible (from the previous comic). This witout the other people have moved closer. She still types as her son Lille Bobby Tables enters and lifts a hand in his mothers direction. He is drawn as a child version of Cueball. Elaine has put the knife away, and looks at Richard Stallman who now stand straight looking at her, with the swords crossed in front of his legs. Behind him just right of the rope hanging down, Cory Doctorow lift one of the bowler hat guys up by the throat while looking right and talking to him. The other bowler hat guy has left the panel. The one he holds has his hat but no sword.]
:Little Bobby Tables: Mom, I'm hungry.
:Mrs. Roberts: Hush! I'm coding. You ate yesterday.
:Richard Stallman: You know, Roberts, GNU could use a good coder like you. Ever thought of joining us?
:Elaine: Maybe someday. Right now I've got an industry to take down.
:Elaine: Music doesn't need these assholes.
:Cory Doctorow: Begone! And never darken our comment threads again!

:[Zoom in on Elaine, Richard Stallman and Cory Doctorow. She stand straight looking at Stallman who faces towards her swords now on his back crossed. Doctorow is also facing her and holds out both arms towards her. The rope is now outside the panel as are both bowler hat men.]
:Richard Stallman: Well, you won't fix the industry with random exploits. You need to encourage sharing in the public mind.
:Doctorow: Hey; With your music and coding backgrounds, you should get into building better P2P systems.

:[The final panel is only a third of the length of the previous panel. The three are still in the panel but they have moved and are also drawn somewhat smaller. Elaine still faces them right, but now Cory Doctorow is in front of Richard Stallman swords as before. All have their arms down.]
:Elaine: What? Straight-up piracy?
:Cory Doctorow: Sure- have you ever considered it? You'd make a wonderful dread pirate, Roberts

:[To the right of the final panel is a two column epilogue narrated by Cueball as seen in part 2. It is split in three paragraphs and a "signature". The caption above is centered over the two columns]
:<big><u>Epilogue</u></big>
:Cueball (narrating): Elaine shared her ideas with Bram Cohen, who went on to develop BitTorrent.
:Cueball (narrating): Mrs. Roberts spends her time developing for Ubuntu, and defacing the websites of people who make "your mom" jokes to her daughter.
:Cueball (narrating): Elaine still stalks the net. She joins communities, contributes code or comments, and moves on. And if, late at night, you point a streaming audio player at the right IP at the right time - you can hear her rock out.
:Cueball (narrating): ~Happy Hacking.~

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:1337|05]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|1337]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Elaine Roberts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Richard Stallman]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] 
[[Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Mrs. Roberts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Little Bobby Tables]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Your Mom]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Music]]

1758: Astrophysics

2016-11-14T09:11:35Z

188.114.111.125: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1758
| date = November 11, 2016
| title = Astrophysics
| image = astrophysics.png
| titletext = DEPARTMENT OF NEUROSCIENCE / Motto: "If I hear the phrase 'mirror neurons' I swear to God I will flip this table."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Are there other theories than MOND and the new paper? Seems like there must have been many examples to get such a motto? It would make general relativity more complicated is not good evidence of MOND not being a good model}}

The theory of gravity produced by {{w|general relativity}} is generally very accurate—it predicts the orbits of planets precisely, even details like the {{w|Two-body problem in general relativity#Anomalous precession of Mercury|precession of Mercury}} which Newton couldn't fully explain. However, the predictions for the behavior of galaxies are wrong—{{w|Galaxy rotation curve|the galaxies seem to spin at the wrong rates}}.

The standard explanation is that there is something else filling these galaxies, which has mass (and therefore exerts a gravitational pull) but which can't be seen with current telescopes. This is called {{w|dark matter}}, and most astrophysicists believe it exists—either in the form of {{w|Massive compact halo object|an unknown type of star that is too dim to see}}, or {{w|Weakly interacting massive particles|an undiscovered subatomic particle}}.

However, an alternative theory which gets proposed regularly is {{w|modified Newtonian dynamics}} (MOND). In MOND, gravity doesn't simply follow the {{w|inverse square law}} but has more complicated behavior. Usually, the extra behavior is either to say that gravitational force can be affected by the acceleration of the particle, or that it goes from inverse-square to just inverse at large distances. It "sounds good" because it's relatively simple—it just changes our understanding of Newton's law of gravitation, rather than requiring entirely new forms of matter or unknown stars to exist—and because it has some nice side-effects, such as explaining why there seems to be a limit on the density of galaxies.

Unfortunately, as the sign says, MOND doesn't fit all the scientific data. One famous counterexample is the {{w|Bullet Cluster}}—two colliding galaxy clusters that are ripping through each other, and from which the mass distribution can be inferred through gravitational lensing. The collision, and the differing ways that ordinary and dark matter interact, have separated the dark matter from ordinary matter to a certain extent, which can be seen in the mass distribution. Another counterexample is MOND's incompatibility with observations of the motion of galaxies in galaxy clusters. Even if MOND ''is'' correct in some way, we still need dark matter to explain the Bullet Cluster. More generally, MOND isn't compatible with general relativity—which has a huge amount of experimental data in its favour—and a MOND-compatible general relativity would be very complicated and ugly.

The specific impetus for this comic may be [https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.02269 this] recent publication by {{w|Erik Verlinde}} (see popular description of the paper [http://phys.org/news/2016-11-theory-gravity-dark.html here]). It was released on-line three days before the release of this comic. Verlinde's theory ({{w|entropic gravity}}) isn't MOND—rather, it's derived from {{w|thermodynamics}} and {{w|quantum information theory}}—but it has a lot in common with it. The paper got a lot of "This will prove Einstein wrong" coverage (see [[1206: Einstein]]), even though it's just a {{w|pre-print}} and hasn't been peer-reviewed or experimentally verified yet. Verlinde's theory also doesn't match the data—[http://motls.blogspot.de/2010/01/erik-verlinde-why-gravity-cant-be.html it disagrees with experimental results showing how particles interact with gravity].

Apparently, whoever put up this sign was getting tired of news agencies stating that dark matter has been "disproven".

The title text lists the text on a similar sign standing outside the Department of {{w|Neuroscience}}. Their motto is "If I hear the phrase 'mirror neurons' I swear to God I will flip this table." {{w|Mirror neurons}} are brain cells which trigger when watching someone else do something. Experiments claim to have found mirror neurons in humans and other apes, and there are theories that make mirror neurons the foundation of learning, empathy, language and consciousness itself. However, {{w|mirror neurons#Doubts concerning mirror neurons|the evidence for mirror neurons is still patchy}}, and even if they exist, it's very simplistic to try to attribute so much of human behavior to a single type of relatively simple cell. In light of this, the motto of the neuroscientists at the department may reflect their frustration and even rage, over what they see as a common misperception.
[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/flipping-tables Flipping tables] is a common depiction for expressing extreme outrage. It is used also as a pun because mirrors flip the image in front of them.

A similar story of a paper questioning science and leading to press coverage was mentioned two days before the release of this comic on the YouTube channel Space Time from PBS Digital Studios in their newest video with the title [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UNLgPIiWAg Did Dark Energy Just Disappear?]. This was based on the press coverage of the paper [http://www.nature.com/articles/srep35596 Marginal evidence for cosmic acceleration from Type Ia supernovae]. The conclusion in the video is that dark energy is still the best explanation. Note this is about the existence of dark energy rather than dark matter. The two are not related!

Science papers with results that supposedly disprove solidly founded theories have been the subject before in [[955: Neutrinos]].

==Transcript==
:[A sign on two posts, in the grass in front of a building with windows and double doors, a window on each door, and bars facing outwards. There is a cement walk leading to the doors. On the sign is the text:]
:<big>'''Department of Astrophysics'''</big>
:'''Motto:'''
:''Yes, everybody has already had the idea, "Maybe there's no dark matter—Gravity just works differently on large scales!" It sounds good but doesn't really fit the data.''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Science]]

Talk:256: Online Communities

2016-11-05T07:49:52Z

188.114.111.125:

I'm gonna try and put together some sort of explanation at all for this one. A couple of things I could use help on in terms of location if people want to chip in: series of tubes within myspace; the Icy North; the islands bounded by the Ocean of Subculture, Sea of Memes, and P2P Shoals; and the location of some of the tiny islands around the map (e.g. why is the Lonely Island near friendster, Google's Volcano Fortress off the IRC Isles, etc.). Thanks in advance!! [[User:Amurfalcon|Amurfalcon]] ([[User talk:Amurfalcon|talk]]) 20:30, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
:I've found Googling some of the more obscure things and half-readable things helps a lot. It's how I got Xu Jinglei. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.219|141.101.99.219]] 17:03, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

;bay of trolls

Might this be a reference to bay of pigs? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.135|173.245.48.135]] 03:58, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
:Possibly, but, well, it'd be rather speculative to include it, and there's [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3APrefixIndex&prefix=Bay+of&namespace=0 lots] of other "Bay of X" places, e.g. Bay of Fundy. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.235|141.101.99.235]] 05:46, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

; Map of the Internet

I don't know if or how much this art was inspired by this comic, but if you like 256 you'll love the [http://jaysimons.deviantart.com Map of the Internet]. ''— [[User:Tbc|tbc]] ([[User talk:Tbc|talk]]) 16:14, 6 January 2015 (UTC)''

"World of Warcraft ... based on a previously-existing RPG series" i'm not sure about this statement. The first thing that most people think about would be Warcraft but that's not an RPG series (they are strategy games) unless we are considering it so for the minimal RPG elements in Warcraft 3. Perhaps it's referencing an other series (maybe Diablo) or I'm missing something and since i'm far from an expert in either WOW or xkcd i'll let someone else decide if it should be changed (a possible minimal change would be changing "RPG series" to either "game series" or "video game series"). [[Special:Contributions/188.114.111.125|188.114.111.125]] 07:49, 5 November 2016 (UTC)