explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

1820: Security Advice

2025-10-22T22:21:09Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1820
| date = April 5, 2017
| title = Security Advice
| image = security_advice.png
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| titletext = Never give your password or bank account number to anyone who doesn't have a blue check mark next to their name.
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
This is another one of [[Randall|Randall's]] [[:Category:Tips|Tips]], this time a list of security tips.

The comic depicts a conversation between [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]], discussing the fact that giving people security advice in the past has failed to improve their internet security, and in some cases even made things worse. One such example is telling people to create complicated passwords containing numbers and symbols, which not only made the passwords harder to remember (leading people to create huge security risks by [https://arstechnica.com/security/2015/04/hacked-french-network-exposed-its-own-passwords-during-tv-interview/ leaving post-it notes with their passwords on their computer monitor]), but did not actually make those passwords harder to crack (see [[936: Password Strength]]).

As a result, Cueball suggests using {{w|reverse psychology}} and give out bad advice instead, in hopes of achieving a positive effect. The last panel contains a list with 13 security tips, which are parodies of actual security tips. The title text is just one more tip. See [[#Security tips|table]] below for explanations for all 14 tips.

; Print out this list and keep it in your bank safe deposit box (header)
: This is a standard recommendation for documents that must be kept secure because they are irreplaceable and/or contain sensitive information. However this list itself is easily replaceable and the contents will be well-known, so storing it in a safe place is totally unnecessary. Putting it in a {{w|safe deposit box}} would even be counterproductive since the list can only serve its purpose as a ready reminder if it's easily accessible to everyone. So when people fail to follow this tip, they may end up keeping it in a place where they have easy access to the tips so they may also fail to follow all the others.

; Don't click links to websites
: The usual tip is "Don't click on ''suspicious'' website links" or "Don't click any links in suspicious emails". The comic's variation instead tells users not to click on any links to any websites, which essentially stops them from using the World Wide Web altogether. So this tip is not really helping, as the opposite of this would be to click on all links. [https://www.sketchywebsite.net This is an example website that showcases an extreme example of what ''could'' (probably wouldn't (this is not advice)) happen if you clicked on a suspicious link.]

; Use prime numbers in your password
: It is usually recommended that one uses numbers in one's password, to increase its entropy, making it harder to find with a {{w|Brute-force attack|brute force}} attack. In contrast the comic suggests using {{w|prime numbers}} in one's password. Large prime numbers are an essential part of modern cryptography and security systems, when used in algorithms that are computed by machines. They don't have any effect when used by humans in passwords, except for maybe making it harder to remember. In addition, if people were to regularly use prime numbers in their passwords, it would actually make passwords ''easier'' to guess, as it would substantially reduce the number of possible passwords people may choose from.

; Change your password manager monthly
: It is often recommended to change passwords on a regular basis and to use a {{w|password manager}}. Password managers are programs which can help users create, store, and change their passwords easily and securely. Changing password managers monthly would involve copying all stored passwords from one manager to another, which would be quite impractical and has no security benefit.

; Hold your breath while crossing the border
: At some border crossings, government agents may search computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices. The usual advice for such situations ranges from asserting your rights to resetting all devices and deleting all data prior to crossing a border. Holding one's breath can potentially prevent inhaling germs or poisons in some situations, though useless in the context of computer security. These two topics mixed in the same advice won't achieve anything, but if you hold your breath for too long you could pass out when crossing, or look stressed/suspicious and invite even more scrutiny. This could also be a reference to the superstition of holding one's breath when passing a graveyard, or similarly to the movie ''{{w|Spirited Away}}'', where the main character is instructed to hold her breath while crossing the bridge that acts as the border between the human and spirit world. In any case, holding one's breath while browsing the Internet would have no useful effect, supernatural or otherwise.

; Install a secure font
: A real tip might be "Install a secure browser" especially when many people used {{w|Internet Explorer 6}}. Secure fonts do exist and are designed to make checks difficult to alter, but using one on a computer would not help one's internet security. May also refer to Google Chrome [https://www.proofpoint.com/us/threat-insight/post/EITest-Nabbing-Chrome-Users-Chrome-Font-Social-Engineering-Scheme "Install missing font"] malware.

; Use a 2-factor smoke detector
: {{w|Multi-factor authentication|Two factor authentication}} describes the practice of using two different identification factors (such as a password and a code from a secure token) to authenticate the user. A two factor smoke detector presumably uses two or more factors to identify ''smoke'' (such as {{w|Smoke_detector#Ionization|ionization}} and {{w|Smoke_detector#Photoelectric|photoelectric}}). Such devices [https://alarmspecs.com actually exist], but, while improving the user's general safety, they do nothing to improve their internet security. A month before this comic the newest [[:Category:xkcd Phones|xkcd Phone]], [[1809: xkcd Phone 5]], was released with a 28-factor authentication.


; Change your maiden name regularly
: A {{w|maiden name}} is the family name that a woman has at birth. (The gender-neutral term is "birth name" or "birth surname"; it is unclear whether this "advice" is meant to apply only to women.) Security experts frequently criticize the concept of security questions like "what is your mother's maiden name?", on the basis that they can often be deduced from publicly available information. In the sense that it refers to a historical fact, a maiden name cannot be changed retroactively, although in the sense that it refers to the last name on one's birth certificate, in some narrow cases this ''can'' be amended. For instance, when someone is {{w|adoption|adopted}} and takes their adoptive parent's last name, in many jurisdictions a {{w|legal fiction}} holds that they have had that last name since birth, and governments will issue new birth certificates to that effect. However, it is unlikely for anyone to be able to amend the surname on their birth certificate more than once, and impossible to do so "regularly".

: A real tip for dealing with security questions is to enter false data.

; Put strange USB drives in a bag of rice overnight
: The usual security tip is "Don't plug strange {{w|USB flash drive|USB drives}} into your computer," because sometimes attackers leave USB devices with malicious programs lying around, hoping that people will plug them into target computers out of curiosity. This tip states that you should "put USB drives in a bag of rice overnight" which is a common technique for drying out water-damaged devices, due to rice's absorbent qualities. This would not clean the drive of viruses, and unless the drive was wet (perhaps because you found it outside due to it being called "strange") it would not do anything. In [[1598: Salvage]], another attempt is made to salvage something unconventional with rice, and here it is shown that Randall considers the rice drying of a wet mobile is a myth, so this is yet another jab at the idea.

; Use special characters like & and %
: You can use special characters to increase the entropy/strength of your password, though as described in [[936: Password Strength]], that often leads to passwords that are hard to remember but not particularly strong. The password context is missing here, and in everyday situations the characters & and % are not special. These two characters are often disallowed in passwords because of their relevance to {{w|SQL}} (a common database query language). If these characters were used in a password, a badly written security system using SQL could have severe bugs (and security vulnerabilities) similar to the security flaw in [[327: Exploits of a Mom]].

; Only read content published through Tor.com
: {{w|tor (anonymity network)|Tor}} is a software solution to provide anonymity on the web for its users. The website [https://tor.com Tor.com] is the website of fantasy and sci-fi book publisher {{w|Tor Books}}, which has no relation to the Tor-network. In January 2024, the website was renamed to [https://reactormag.com/ Reactormag.com].

; Use a burner's phone
: A play on using a {{w|Prepay mobile phone|burner phone}} (a cheap/disposable cell phone like those purchased at 7-11, often used for drug deals or other activity one might not want traced), and using the cell phone of a burner, i.e. a person who habitually uses marijuana (or, less likely, a person who goes to the {{w|Burning Man|Burning Man festival}}).

; Get an SSL certificate and store it in a safe place
: {{w|Transport Layer Security|SSL/TLS}} is a protocol for securing connections on the internet. To check if someone is who they claim to be, you can check the individual's {{w|Public key certificate|certificate}}. Such a certificate has to be public; storing it in a safe place makes the certificate useless. You have to store the private key that matches the certificate in a safe place, else someone could steal the identity.

; If a border guard asks to examine your laptop, you have a legal right to challenge them to a chess game for your soul.
: This tip is a reference to the common trope {{tvtropes|ChessWithDeath|Chess with Death}}, in which a mortal challenges a god to a game or challenge, often for their life. This version of the trope traces back to {{w|Ingmar Bergman|Ingmar Bergman's}} film {{w|The Seventh Seal}}, in which the protagonist {{w|The Seventh Seal#Synopsis|challenges Death}} to a game of chess. But instead of avoiding death, this tip suggests you have the right to do the same to get out of handing your devices over to a border guard. (This trope is also featured in [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/393 393: Ultimate Game]).

: Extrapolating from context clues, the real advice may have been that one has a legal right under the Fourth Amendment to be secure from unreasonable search and seizures. This, however, falls under the [https://security.ucop.edu/resources/traveling-with-electronic-devices/border-search.html#q1 border search exception], rendering it pointless.

; Never give your password or bank account number to anyone who doesn't have a blue check mark next to their name. (title text)
: The usual security tip here is ''"only trust Twitter accounts claiming to be legitimate if they have a blue check mark next to their name"'', which means that the account is verified as legitimate. This tip suggests only giving your ''password'' to verified accounts, although you shouldn't give your password to ''any'' account. Twitter Verification would be revisited in [[1914: Twitter Verification]].

: Twitter blue check marks have become even less reliable since Twitter's purchase by [[Elon Musk]] in October 2022, as Twitter has been loosening their verification policies and for a brief time, [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/nov/10/twitter-blue-verification-parody-impersonation allowed anyone who paid to have a verified checkmark]. At time of writing (2023-04-11) Twitter has [https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000000*/https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/about-twitter-verified-accounts some verification checks], but still less than when this comic was written, making this even worse advice.

: It also refers to problems especially visible in the US banking system, where there is very little security for direct account drafts, and because of that it is advised there to keep the account number as secret as possible. In contrast, in Europe giving your account number to someone is one of the most common ways to get paid.

: A related tip might be "Never give your password or bank details to a website that doesn't have a padlock icon next to the URL". In most modern browsers, if you access a secure website, there will be a padlock icon in the browser indicating you've connected to a secure website using {{w|HTTPS|Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure}}. It doesn't provide that it is not malicious site, and that is secure to enter. So this tip treats the verified account icon the same way you might treat a secure website icon.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is listening to Ponytail who holds her hands out in front of her.]
:Ponytail: We've been trying for decades to give people good security advice.
:Ponytail: But in retrospect, lots of the tips actually made things worse.

:[Cueball takes his hand to his chin as Ponytail takes her arms down.]
:Cueball: Maybe we should try to give ''bad'' advice?
:Ponytail: I guess it's worth a shot.

:[Below these two panel is one large and long panel with a long list with 13 tips. The underlined heading and the bracket below it are centered above the bullet list below.]
:<big>Security tips</big>
:(Print out this list and keep it in your bank safe deposit box.)
* Don't click links to websites
* Use prime numbers in your password
* Change your password manager monthly
* Hold your breath while crossing the border
* Install a secure font
* Use a 2-factor smoke detector
* Change your maiden name regularly
* Put strange USB drives in a bag of rice overnight
* Use special characters like & and %
* Only read content published through tor.com
* Use a burner's phone
* Get an SSL certificate and store it in a safe place
* If a border guard asks to examine your laptop, you have a legal right to challenge them to a chess game for your soul.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Chess]]
[[Category:Computer security]]
[[Category:Tips]]
[[Category:Computers]]

1812: Onboarding

2025-10-22T22:19:35Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1812
| date = March 17, 2017
| title = Onboarding
| image = onboarding.png
| titletext = 'So we just have a steady flow of metal piling up in our server room? Isn't that a problem?' 'Yeah, you should bring that up at our next bismuth meeting.'
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
This is another one of [[Beret Guy|Beret Guy's]] mysterious [[:Category:Beret Guy's Business|businesses]], in which he shows new employee [[Ponytail]] around the building in which the company resides. The process of showing a new employee around the business and starting to get them introduced to people and systems and procedures is often referred to as "{{w|onboarding}}" - hence the title of the comic.

=== Existential Welcome ===

The first panel starts out as a typical welcoming of the new employee to a small indie business. Very quickly, however, Beret Guy's explanation jumps to an existential viewpoint. Very rarely do conversations or introductions involve discussing the eventual fate of our bodies, and certainly not in a professional light as in this comic. Beret Guy, however, has no problem with discussing death and decay as just part of his business. This seemingly contradicts the title text in [[1493: Meeting]], where it is claimed that employees of the company can not physically die. However, this could be a new company he has started since then. Alternatively, this is a literal statement, perhaps related to the cursed Wi-Fi mentioned later in the comic.

=== Bikeshare ===

In the second panel, Beret Guy shows Ponytail the free bikeshare system this business apparently has in place. {{w|Bicycle-sharing system|Bikesharing}} is a system in which many users share one or more bikes among themselves. Typically the bikes belong to some of the members of the group who are allowing them to be used by other members who may not have one, but Beret Guy calmly remarks that this system will only exist "until whoever owns those bikes finds out", implying that they were not donated or shared by any member of the group, but are being used without permission or the knowledge of the true owner of the bikes. This is, thus, not actually a bikeshare, and would be more properly described as theft.

=== Printer ===

In the third panel, Beret Guy shows Ponytail that the laserjet is over there '''and''' the printer is over there, thus indicating that the ''laserjet'' is not a printer. This is a bit disconcerting, since the {{w|HP LaserJet}} is in fact a common brand of {{w|laser printer}}, suggesting that his laserjet may be some rather more exotic device, such as a {{w|Laser propulsion|laser-propelled}} {{w|jet aircraft}}. In any case, however, the printer is not available, as it's been printing an infinite-scroll web page since 2013.

An [[wikt:infinite scroll|infinite-scrolling web page]] is a web page that, as the name implies, seems to have no end. This style of webpage typically has no definite pages or sections, but instead continues to feed data to the screen as the user scrolls. One such example is [http://endless.horse endless.horse], a webpage that features an infinitely tall horse. In reality, trying to print one of these would only print the current section the user was viewing, and even if it was somehow able to infinitely print, the operator could theoretically cancel the operation at any time. Presumably, this continuous printing serves some useful purpose, e.g. prints latest news, because someone would have to be refilling the paper for the printer to have kept running this long; it would have run out of paper long ago otherwise. Mistaken print jobs are sometimes notoriously difficult to stop due to many levels of buffering (application, printer driver, OS spooler, print server, printer device) and lapses in job control software.

Infinite scrolling (in the sense of an annoying UI design style for browsing large but finite documents) was previously covered in [[1309: Infinite Scrolling]]. A similar separation of the phrase "laserjet printer" has been explored in [[1681: Laser Products]].

=== Infrastructure Buzzwords ===

In the fourth panel, Beret Guy makes three more remarks.

'''Restrooms are all-digital—no pipes.''' While many technology standards nowadays are entirely digital, one's restroom is one of the things that most definitely should not be.{{Citation needed}} A restroom without pipes would have no way to bring water in and transfer wastes away, and would most certainly be at the very least an unpleasant encounter. (It's implied that the waste is being transferred digitally, although this is [[1293: Job Interview|obviously impossible]].) This could also be a pun joking with the fact that a common (in the past and reappearing recently) technology in sound amplifiers is the use of tubes, but nowadays most sound amplifiers are all-digital. So a "latest technology" restroom cannot have pipes (synonym of tubes) and has to be all-digital.

'''The Wi-Fi is very fast, but cursed.''' Fast Wi-Fi is certainly desirable, but in this case, he claims it is also cursed. Whether the curse is a side-effect of the fast Wi-Fi or totally unrelated is left unsaid, as well as what the curse is. This could possibly be a joke relating to American slang: all technology can behave inexplicably from time to time, and Wi-Fi is notorious for randomly losing connection -- this is often exaggerated and called "cursed". Knowing Beret Guy, though, [[2376: Curbside|it's probably literal]], perhaps purchased from one of the "[[1772: Startup Opportunity|mysterious shops that sell you magical items, and then it turns out they're cursed"]].

'''Our server room is carbon-neutral but produces bismuth constantly.''' Normally, {{w|carbon neutrality|carbon-neutral}} would mean that it is designed to be environmentally friendly by reducing and offsetting its carbon emissions enough that it has no net effect on the environment. The term is a little bit confusing because the meaning is of course carbon-dioxide-neutral. Instead of producing carbon-dioxide as a side-effect of its power usage, Beret Guy's server room produces the element {{w|Bismuth|bismuth}}, which is absurd. Bismuth is used as lead replacement in some {{w|solder}}s. While this replacement is often used because of the toxicity of {{w|lead}}, in this case it refers to an IBM mainframe computer where the Bi58Sn42 alloy is used because of its low temperature soldering characteristics. Therefore, producing excess bismuth in the server room would destroy all the electric connections.

One way the server room might produce bismuth is a {{w|Lead-cooled fast reactor|compact nuclear reactor}} which can both make the server room carbon-neutral ''and'' leak bismuth (by creating it in the reactor). This being Beret Guy, another possibility is that bismuth simply appears in that room as the server operates, because he didn't want it to create carbon emissions and so it had to emit something else.

=== Lin-Manuel Miranda ===

In the last two panels, Beret Guy explains that Ponytail will be working on the infrastructure, which is apparently maintained by {{w|Lin-Manuel Miranda}}. He is among other things a songwriter but certainly not an engineer or anyone qualified to be responsible for an entire infrastructure.{{citation needed}} Ponytail knows about his songs and thus surprised asks if he is also an engineer. (This echoes [[1665: City Talk Pages]], which includes a train station designed by {{w|Andrew Lloyd Webber}}, a composer best known for writing ''{{w|The Phantom of the Opera}}'').

It is worth noting that Beret Guy actually acknowledges the mistake here, claiming the mistake "cost a fortune." This is unusual for Beret Guy, as he has of yet failed to acknowledge or recognize the oddity of every other aspect of his mysterious business, many of which are certainly stranger than this. However, he doesn't seem to mind this at all and does not wish to fire him. Instead he plans on fixing the mistake by hiring a real network engineer, Ponytail, to do the work alongside Miranda. Because, as Beret Guy continues to explain, the bright side of having Lin-Manuel Miranda in his business overshadows the lost fortune. Apparently Lin-Manuel Miranda is really nice and he makes {{w|karaoke}} nights fun, a clear reference to his engaging stage presence and vocal skills.

Off screen, Lin-Manuel Miranda is heard singing "{{w|How Far I'll Go}}", which is a song that he composed for the Disney movie ''{{w|Moana (2016 film)|Moana}}''. It was nominated for an {{w|Academy Awards|Oscar}} for {{w|Academy Award for Best Original Song|Best Original Song}} in the {{w|89th Academy Awards|2017 show}} just a few weeks prior to this comic.

=== Title Text ===

The title text mentions the potential dangers of having your server room constantly produce bismuth, but only as a prelude to a bismuth/business pun. Because of the earlier carbon reference, it could also be a parallel to the difficulty in convincing businesses to become more energy efficient and reduce greenhouse gas emissions despite the urgency, as [[Randall]] has [[:Category:Climate change|often referred]] to in xkcd with [[1732: Earth Temperature Timeline]].

The fact that the business has meetings to discuss the bismuth, but apparently no one has ever mentioned at one of these meetings that the bismuth may be a problem, is strange. It is unclear what participants in these meetings ordinarily say about the bismuth.

==Transcript==
:[Beret Guy shakes hands with Ponytail in front of a building while he points at the two large double doors under an unreadable sign.]
:Beret Guy: Hi! Welcome to the team!
:Beret Guy: We do business here and we'll turn into dirt later.

:[Beret Guy and Ponytail walk by three bikes.]
:Beret Guy: This is our main campus.
:Beret Guy: We have a free bikeshare system, at least until whoever owns those bikes finds out.

:[Beret Guy points forward as they walk on.]
:Beret Guy: The LaserJet is over there, and the printer is over there.
:Beret Guy: You can't use it right now; it's been printing an infinite-scroll webpage since 2013.

:[Zoom in on their heads.]
:Beret Guy: Restrooms are all-digital - no pipes.
:Beret Guy: The WiFi is very fast, but cursed.
:Beret Guy: Our server room is carbon-neutral but produces bismuth constantly.

:[Beret Guy has turned towards an off-panel Ponytail holding a hand out towards her.]
:Beret Guy: You'll be working on our infrastructure, which is currently maintained by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

:[Zoom out to both facing each other. From the right singing is heard from off-panel, as indicated with two musical notes.]
:Ponytail: ...The songwriter? Is he also an engineer?
:Beret Guy: Nope, huge misunderstanding on our part. Cost a fortune. But he's really nice and it makes karaoke nights fun.
:Lin-Manuel Miranda (off-panel): ''How far I'll gooo''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]] 
[[Category:Beret Guy's Business]]
[[Category:Strange powers of Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Puns]]
[[Category:Songs]]
[[Category:Climate change]]
[[Category:Comics with cursed items]]
[[Category:Disney]]
[[Category:Movies]]

1803: Location Reviews

2025-10-22T22:18:11Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1803
| date = February 24, 2017
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| title = Location Reviews
| image = location_reviews.png
| titletext = Google and Yelp keep deleting my scathing reviews of the Mariana Trench, the Chernobyl reactor core, the jet stream, and the equator.
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
Many online advertising services and social media networks (such as {{w|Google}} and {{w|Yelp}} (both mentioned in the title text) and {{w|Facebook}}) allow users to leave reviews of stores, businesses, and locations. For various reasons these sites often find themselves with pages dedicated to, as [[Randall]] puts it, "places that really don't need reviews" such as government buildings, construction sites, and even entire [https://www.cntraveler.com/story/google-maps-reviews-of-entire-continents-are-bizarre-and-hilarious continents].

Randall is poking fun at this phenomenon by inventing possible reviews for the (fictional) location ''Canyon River Nuclear Launch Facility'', depicted with a {{w|Google Map|Google Maps}}-styled map page along with a series of so-called reviews. (There does exist a {{w|Canyon River (Ontario)|Canyon River}} located in {{w|Ontario}}/{{w|Canada}} and one in {{w|Washington (state)|Washington}}/USA (the latter is a significant tributary to the {{w|Satsop River}}). Canada does not maintain nuclear weapons since 1984, so such a launch site would be located in Washington).

See explanations for the [[#Trivia|11 visible]] (out of 22) reviews in the [[#Reviews|table below]]. Of course those responsible for such a facility with {{w|nuclear missiles}} would not like the attention they would be getting in this way, especially not when one of the comments mentions a hole in the fence... Although this comic makes a joke about reviews it has chosen a very dangerous facility to joke about.

In the title text Randall mentions that both Google and Yelp keep deleting his scathing reviews of several locations like the above. The questions is if they would have done it if they had not been so harsh... While Canyon River Nuclear Launch Facility appears not to exist, the places/phenomena he lists in the title text certainly do, and are places that you either cannot or would not normally visit as destinations. Here below each "location" is explained. That the deletion of such reviews is real has been proven by this comic, as [[#Trivia|it also happened]] for those that (of course) posted these reviews on Google maps as a response to this comic.

{{w|Mariana Trench}} is the deepest area of the world's oceans, about 10,994 meters (36,070 ft) deep, located between Japan and Australia. The pressure in the Mariana Trench is about 1,086 bars, more than 1,000 times the standard atmospheric pressure of about 1 bar at sea level. Despite this enormous pressure some organisms {{w|Mariana_Trench#Life|live in the Mariana Trench}}. Humans can reach the ground only by special deep-sea submarines, like Jacques Piccard did in 1960 with the {{w|Bathyscaphe Trieste}}. See reviews for the Mariana Trench at [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Mariana+Trench/@17.75,142.4978113,17z/data=!4m7!3m6!1s0x67328f3cd57de715:0x1bbe64e7a21aa7fc!8m2!3d17.75!4d142.5!9m1!1b1?hl=en Google Maps] and [https://www.facebook.com/pages/Marianengraben/108402422518280 Facebook].

The {{w|Chernobyl}} reactor core is the most dangerous part of the {{w|Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant}}. It is located in the North of Ukraine. In the reactor No. 4 there was a nuclear disaster that happened on 26 April 1986. It caused devastating damage and massive radioactive contamination. There is still a {{w|Chernobyl Exclusion Zone}} 30 kilometers around the power plant. See reviews for the Chernobyl power plant at [https://www.google.com/maps/place/Chernobyl+Nuclear+Plant/@51.3852262,30.1003411,15z/data=!4m14!1m6!3m5!1s0x472a7d09e1ec5ef3:0x6b27a13ab968d17c!2sChernobyl+Nuclear+Plant!8m2!3d51.3889447!4d30.0988421!3m6!1s0x472a7d09e1ec5ef3:0x6b27a13ab968d17c!8m2!3d51.3889447!4d30.0988421!9m1!1b1?hl=en Google Maps] and [https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kernkraftwerk-Tschernobyl/118179298239715?rf=116556918391753 Facebook].

{{w|Jet stream}}s are a meteorologic phenomenon about 9 to 16 kilometers above the ground. A stream consists of air currents with speeds from 92 km/h (50 kn; 57 mph) to over 398 km/h (215 kn; 247 mph). Such jet streams are routinely used for reducing fuel usage for long distance plane travels. As it is a ribbon rather than a point, it could not have a single point on the map. Also, the jet stream fluctuates north and south; so even if it could be pinpointed, the location would be constantly changing.

The {{w|equator}} is, as with the jet streams, not a singular place but a circumference around the Earth. Reviewing the equator as a singular location is rather pointless ([[No Pun Intended|no pun intended]]), though there is a whole range of specific (and interesting) locations around the equator, with countries with {{w|tropical rainforest climate}}, which many people from European and North American countries struggle with. That said, most of the equator goes over water.

===Reviews===
In the table the rating is given with the review. After that an explanation both of the rating and of the review is given. Notice that any or all of the reviews could be sarcastic or "trolling", as is fairly typical on the internet, especially for reviews given for such a location as this one. This table assumes all the reviews are played straight.
{| class="wikitable"
! Rating
! Review
! Explanation
|-
| ★★★★★ || Greatest country on earth || A patriotic review (5/5), though one providing no information on the actual nuclear site. This comment is such as would come from an extremely patriotic person, who believes that the United States is the greatest country on Earth, and therefore is pleased that the country is being protected by nuclear weapons.
|-
| ★★☆☆☆ || Looks cool but you can't get in || This reviewer, although initially positive, attempts to highlight what they perceive as a major flaw with the site: namely, that it is off-limits to unauthorized personnel and heavily guarded, so it's impossible to actually go inside (thus only 2/5 stars). This is typical of a nuclear facility,{{Citation needed}} but this kind of review could also be seen for a fancy restaurant that needs very early pre-booking.
|-
| ★☆☆☆☆ || What is this store || Reviewer really, really has no idea what this facility actually is, mistaking it for a store, and thus giving it only 1 star.
|-
| ★★★★☆ || My cousin worked here || If true, this review is a serious security risk (e.g. kidnapping the reviewer to extort information from his cousin). The comment may also just be a way for the reviewer to pretend he knows someone who works in the higher levels of the government. Usually this kind of comment together with a four star rating is to signal that you know more about the location than a regular reviewer does. Of course, you could then also be perceived as partial.
|-
| ★★☆☆☆ || Waitstaff heavily armed and very rude || This review mistakes the facility's security guards for a restaurant's waitstaff. Since the guards are protecting some of the most dangerous weapons in existence, and would not let unknown outsiders into the facility, it follows that they would be heavily armed, and quite rude to those who sought entry without proper permission. Moreover, nuclear weapons are generally not food-safe.{{Citation needed}} Thus they earn the place only 2 stars.
|-
| ★☆☆☆☆ || Stop doing chemtrails || This reviewer believes in the {{w|chemtrail conspiracy theory}} and is urging the government to cease spreading the chemtrails. Believing this place has something to do with chemtrail spraying of course leads to only one star. This conspiracy was earlier mentioned both in [[966: Jet Fuel]] and [[1677: Contrails]], and later in [[2654: Chemtrails]]
|-
| ★☆☆☆☆ || This place is a symptom of the {{w|military-industrial complex}} strangling our democracy and...(read full review-1184 words) || A slightly tongue-in-cheek reference to essays against 'The Military-Industrial Complex' and how they are often copy-pasted by people who don't really understand them in inappropriate places. Or just to people who write rants far longer than anything that most people would ever read, except those who already agree with the writer. Of course such an activist would only give one star.
|-
| ★★★★☆ || Anyone else notice the hole in the west fence? || The adventurer's travel guide to government installations... Posting a comment like this would (at best) bring the hole to the attention of the site staff to be repaired and (at worst) bring the writer unwelcome attention from the authorities for publicizing a security vulnerability at a missile site. This might also be a reference to {{w|Richard Feynman}}'s account of finding and using a hole in the fence surrounding the {{w|Los Alamos, New Mexico|Los Alamos}} facility during the {{w|Manhattan Project}}. Using the hole to get in, this reviewer had an excellent time and gives 4/5 stars.
|-
| ★★★★★ || Whoa, missiles! || The writer is impressed and apparently surprised to discover that the site has missiles. Seems like the reviewer just loves anything to do with missiles and hands out five stars. This may also be a reference to the "Whoa, technology!" meme, which originated when YandereDev, a Youtuber best known for his work on the infamous {{w|Yandere Simulator}}, uttered the phrase in one of his videos.
|-
| ★★★☆☆ || Good idea but confusing web site. How do I preorder? || This reviewer thinks that one can order a nuclear missile launch here, but can't find a preorder form on the website. He loves the idea but since he cannot find out how to order there are only 3/5 stars. In reality, the decision to launch nuclear missiles often rests with the heads of state or government, and outside persons are not allowed to control them.{{Citation needed}}
|-
| ★☆☆☆☆ || Please don't launch these || A plea to the facility owners not to launch the nuclear missiles, due to their deleterious effects on human life.
|}

==Transcript==
:[Inside the main panel there is a frame with a Google location map with the typical red pin stuck in the center of the map inside a large gray region of the map. A river goes from the north through the gray region and out to the west. East and south of the river some roads and other items are shown, several of them also outside the gray region. The red pin is stuck next to a corner in one of the roads.]

:[Below the map is the name of the location at the red pin, and below that there are three lines of unreadable text:]
:<big>Canyon River Nuclear Launch Facility</big>

:[Below that there is broken line with text in the break, and below that follows 11 reviews with yellow stars to the left. The stars are either just outlines or colored completely, with the left one always being filled:]
:Reviews (22)
:[5 of 5 stars filled] Greatest country on earth
:[2 of 5 stars filled] Looks cool but you can't get in
:[1 of 5 stars filled] What is this store
:[4 of 5 stars filled] My cousin worked here
:[2 of 5 stars filled] Waitstaff heavily armed and very rude
:[1 of 5 stars filled] Stop doing chemtrails
:[1 of 5 stars filled] This place is a symptom of the military-industrial complex strangling our democracy and...(read full review-1184 words)
:[4 of 5 stars filled] Anyone else notice the hole in the west fence?
:[5 of 5 stars filled] Whoa, missiles!
:[3 of 5 stars filled] Good idea but confusing web site. How do I preorder?
:[1 of 5 stars filled] Please don't launch these

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I love finding reviews of places that really don't need to have reviews.

==Trivia==
* Only 11 of the 22 reviews posted are shown. For those 11 the average star rating is 2.6/5 stars. All five possible ratings are represented at least once.
* For a few days after the release of this comic the Google Search results for "[https://www.google.com/search?q=canyon+river+nuclear+launch+facility Canyon River Nuclear Launch Facility]" briefly showed the facility was located at 43.428445, -101.124018 in {{w|List_of_townships_in_South_Dakota#B|Blackpipe Township}}, {{w|Mellette County, South Dakota}} and it included the reviews shown in the comic and more.
** Randall's statement about Google deleting these kinds of reviews turned out to be true as they were quickly deleted, but not before someone made [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/8/8a/1803_Location_Reviews_for_Canyon_River_Nuclear_Launch_Facility.PNG this screenshot] of one of the other reviews.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Google Maps]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theory]]
[[Category:Online reviews]]
[[Category:Nuclear weapons]]

1793: Soda Sugar Comparisons

2025-10-22T22:16:39Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1793
| date = February 1, 2017
| title = Soda Sugar Comparisons
| image = soda_sugar_comparisons.png
| titletext = The key is portion control, which is why I've switched to eating smaller cans of frosting instead of full bottles.
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
This comic is one of the rare incidences where the title is actually written at the top of the comic. It is also a rare example where an old comic, [[1035: Cadbury Eggs]], is directly referenced, and even at such a prominent place, albeit in a faded down gray font.

In the comic, [[Randall]] compares {{w|Soft drink|soda's}} {{w|sugar}} content to different types of sugary food (see [[#Trivia|trivia]]).

The first two panels compare the sugar content of a 20 {{w|Fluid ounce|oz}} bottle of soda (i.e. 591 mL, thus almost like a half liter bottle) to three {{w|Cadbury egg|Cadbury eggs}} or one {{w|Snickers bar}} if it had the length of the bottle (9 inches or about 23 cm; most actual Snickers bars are only 4 inches or 10 cm, though the company does manufacture various "king" sizes).

In the next row, Randall compares one bottle of soda each day of a week (seven bottles) to a bottle of {{w|Icing_(food)|cake frosting}}.

Continuing the estimations in the third row, Randall states that one soda a day for six months will provide the same amount of sugar as four {{w|Gallon#The_US_liquid_gallon|gallons}} of {{w|Skittles (confectionery)|Skittles}} (15.1 liters).

Finally, Randall compares three years' worth of daily sodas contains as much sugar as a {{w|Convenience store|convenience store's}} 20-foot (6.1 m) long [http://www.discountshelving.com/images/storetype/convenience/Right-Way-Gondola-Check-Out.jpg candy counter].

The reference to Cadbury Eggs is of course the topic of the referenced comic [[1035: Cadbury Eggs]], which has the same comparison between soda's sugar content and Cadbury Eggs, as well as comparing a number of other substances to the eggs. So that comic goes the other way around.

In the title text, it is stated that the key is portion control, which sounds normal until it is revealed that the portion control is actually for frosting instead of soda. Eating frosting out of cans is also referenced in the title text of [[418: Stove Ownership]].

Of interest in this case is that the American Heart Association [http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/circulationaha/120/11/1011.full.pdf recommends] less than 20-36 grams per day for a sedentary lifestyle (7.5 to 9 MJ per day).

===Data===
{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5 class="wikitable"
! Number of 20-oz bottles !! Equivalent sugar content (Coca-Cola) !! Candy portion !! Approximate sugar content
|-
| 1 || 65 grams || 3 (US) Crème Eggs 1 9-inch Snickers bar (approx. equivalent to roughly 2 [https://www.snickers.com/nutritional-info standard Snickers bars]) || 60 grams 54 grams
|-
| 7 || 455 grams || 1 20-oz bottle frosting || 360 grams ([http://calorielab.com/brands/betty-crocker-decorating-icing/106/2003516 Betty Crocker decorating icing]) 780 grams ([http://calorielab.com/brands/betty-crocker-fluffy-white-frosting/106/2003671 Betty Crocker Fluffy White Frosting])
|-
| 180 || 11,700 grams || 4 gallons of Skittles || 12,000 grams (assuming Skittles are molten/ground) 8,500 grams (assuming [http://mathworld.wolfram.com/EllipsoidPacking.html realistic ellipsoid packing])
|-
| 1095 || 71,175 grams || A 20-foot candy counter (the illustration shows four tiers of boxes) || 125,000 grams (assuming 4 tiers of full boxes of Mars bars [https://www.amazon.com/Mars-Bar-58-Pack-48/dp/B003TCOJY4 10 inches wide]) 62,500 grams (assuming 50% of shelf space is given over to gum and other non-edible products)
|}

==Transcript==
:[Above the four rows of two panels with captions above them are the following title and note:]
:<big>Soda Sugar Comparisons</big>
:See also xkcd.com/1035

:[Above the two columns of panels are the following captions for the left and right column:]
:In terms of sugar, drinking this much soda...
:...is equivalent to eating this:

:[In the first rows left panel there is a drawing of a bottle with a screw cap and label. The content in the bottle is gray, as is the cap. The air above the liquid in the bottle beneath the cap as well as the label are light gray and the label is empty of text. The following text is written on three lines left of the bottle next to the label:]
:One 20oz soda bottle (e.g. Coca Cola)

:[In the opposite first row right panel there are two drawings. First three gray eggs are placed in a small pyramid. A thin line goes down the lang axis of the eggs. Text on two lines is below the eggs. Next to the eggs is a long gray bar standing up. It has wiggly lines for giving its surface features along its entire length. Two lines at the top and bottom are used to measured the length with two arrows pointing to either line, which are then going to the text next to the bar which are thus in between the arrows, taking up five lines.]
:3 Cadbury eggs...
:...Or a Snickers bar the length of the bottle.

:[In the second rows left panel seven soda bottles are drawn like the one in the first panel (as are all later bottles). They are standing close to each other. Along the bottom of all the bottles is the following text:]
:One soda per day for a week

:[In the opposite second row right panel there is a drawing of a bottle with light gray content being poured out of the open bottle down in to a small pile next to the screw cap lying below the open bottle. The content is obviously not liquid but rather oozing frosting being dumped out of the bottle not ending up in a puddle but in a taller structure with jagged edges. A bit of the oozing material hangs far out of the bottle without dropping. Also the light gray content in the bottle is uneven with darker and brighter patches. Below and left of the screw cap and pile of goo there are two lines of text:]
:One bottle of cake frosting

:[In the thirds rows left panel a soda bottle is drawn next to two rows of three full month calendar pages, which takes up the same height as the bottle. A text below the pages takes up two lines.]||
:One soda per day for six months

:[In the opposite third row right panel there drawings of four large transparent plastic milk jugs filled to the brim with something that is a mixture between gray and white in small clumps. Two of the jugs are in front of the other two, and covers all but the top of the one between them and half of the last which extends right of the other two. Leaning up against the rightmost jug is a dark gray pack of candy with the candy name written in white on the open pack, and more unreadable white text is at the top of the pack. Next to the pack lies five candy pieces, three in front and two to the right. These candy pieces are dark gray (three) or light gray (two). There is a line of text beneath the jugs:]
:Label: Skittles
:Four gallons of Skittles

:[In the fourth and final rows left panel one soda bottles is next to three rectangles on top of each other with a year given in each. Beneath the drawing there is a text over two lines:]
:2017
:2018
:2019
:One soda per day for three years

:[In the opposite fourth row right panel there is a drawings of a convenience store counter with three cashiers behind it at their cash register with payment terminal close by each of them as well. From left to right they are Ponytail, Cueball and Megan. the cash registers are to the left for all of them, with terminal next to it for Ponytail and on the other side for the other two. Between the two outer and the middle cashier, there are two signs on high poles with unreadable text. One is close to Ponytail the other is in the middle of the other two. Beside Cueball there is an additional flat thing which could be a candy weight. To Megan's right there is a square thing on top of which something sticks up in several layers. It could be a box of Kleenex. On four rows of shelves under the disc various items are closely stacked, so they cannot be separate from one another. It in though possible from white rows with prices to see that there are four rows. Underneath this drawing there is a text in two lines:]
:A convenience store's entire 20-foot candy counter

==Trivia==
*Soda is a common [http://popvssoda.com term] for carbonated sweet soft drink used predominantly by speakers in the Northeastern United States, California, and the areas surrounding Milwaukee and St. Louis
**A similar term ([https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodavand Sodavand], meaning Soda water) is also used in Denmark.
{{comic discussion}}

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

1784: Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize

2025-10-22T22:15:19Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1784
| date = January 11, 2017
| title = Bad Map Projection: Liquid Resize
| image = bad_map_projection_liquid_resize.png
| titletext = This map preserves the shapes of Tissot's indicatrices pretty well, as long as you draw them in before running the resize.
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
This is the first comic in the series of [[:Category:Bad Map Projections|Bad Map Projections]] presenting Bad map projection #107: The Liquid Resize. This turned into a series when [[1799: Bad Map Projection: Time Zones]] (#79), was released just a bit more than a month after this one.

There is no perfect way to draw a map of the world on a flat piece of paper. Each one will introduce a different type of distortion, and the best projection for a given situation is sometimes disputed. [[Randall]] previously explored 12 different projections in [[977: Map Projections]], and expressed his disdain for some types he sees as less efficient but whose users feel superior. None of them are truly perfect as any 2D map projection will always distort in a way the spherical reality, and a map projection that is useful for one aspect (like navigation, geographical shapes and masses visualization, etc.) will not be so for all the others. Local maps of smaller areas can be quite accurate, but the idea of both these map projection comics is to map the entire globe on a flat surface.

There are many other projections than the 12 from the previous map projection comic, and Randall seems to have listed at least 358 under the label "Bad Map Projections." The ''Liquid Resize'' map projection is not only useless for most map applications -- as the size, shape, and position of most countries are very distorted -- but its creation includes two steps which are outright counterproductive.

First, this method needs another map projection as its starting point, thus compounding the problems right off the bat.

Second, the map uses [https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/using/content-aware-scaling.html Photoshop's content aware resizing tool], a very questionable choice.{{citation needed}} The content aware resizing tool resizes images by identifying what it thinks are important details and preserving these, while shrinking or stretching less detailed areas. For example, [http://knowyourmeme.com/photos/710073-content-aware-scaling when used on a face], the algorithm detects that the eyes and mouth are important details and tries to keep these in place, while stretching the skin around it. When applied to a map, this means that areas with lots of countries - and therefore lots of detail - such as Europe, West Africa, the Eastern Mediterranean and Central America/the Caribbean are relatively unchanged, while big countries like India, China and the US are very warped. The choices that the resizing tool makes are also dependent on the exact visual features of the original map, such as the choice of not having any topography or infrastructure drawn on, or not including a latitude/longitude grid, so what areas are deemed as unimportant is even more arbitrary than it would be on, say, a photographic picture of the Earth.

[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/content-aware-scaling Bad content aware scaling] is already a meme. This projection does do a good job, however, of making almost every country clearly visible and indicating which countries are neighbors. Using a Photoshop tool for a task it is not intended for was also used in [[1685: Patch]] where a GNU patch tool was replaced with Adobe Photoshop's patch tool to compile code.

South America would fit into Africa almost as it did in the era of the super-continent {{w|Pangaea}}, but the shape of Brazil is morphed around in preserving the island nation {{w|São Tomé and Principe}}.

{{w|Tissot's indicatrices}} are equally sized small circles overlaid on a globe to show the distortion of a particular map projection; if the map distortion distorts the shapes or areas of countries, it will do the same to the circles. The title text suggests that the shapes of Tissot's indicatrices would be pretty well preserved by the Liquid Resize transformation, 'as long as you draw them in before running the resize'. This is a joke. "Drawing them in before running the resize" means that a different projection would be generated (probably preserving the indicatrices themselves), making the use of the indicatrices meaningless, sort of like cheating. In fact by drawing them small enough there will be no resizing at all.

It is unknown if Randall would include common map projections like those in [[977: Map Projections]] among his "Bad Map Projections". It would be reasonable to do so, since all 2D projections of the surface of a 3D sphere will be bad in certain respects. The next comic's projections ''Time Zones'' has #79, and could be concluded as being less bad than this one, which also seems realistic as that map has a slighly more reasonably use case than this one.

==Transcript==
:[Caption at the top of the panel:]
:Bad map projection #107:
:<big>The <big>Liquid Resize</big></big>
:A political map compressed using Photoshop's content-aware resizing algorithm to cut down on unused blank space

:[Below the caption there is a map of the world divided and colored by political boundaries, with outlines around each continent in black and around each country in dark gray. Antarctica is colored in light gray, bodies of water in white, and countries in pale shades of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple. The map is heavily distorted, with Africa in the center and the other continents curving around it, approximating the bounds of a square with rounded corners. The oceans have been removed but also huge countries like the US, Australia, Brazil, Russia and especially India and Argentina have been heavily distorted while areas in the center with many smaller countries like Africa and Europe is almost unchanged.]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Bad Map Projections]]

1779: 2017

2025-10-22T22:14:41Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

<noinclude>{{distinguish|2017: Stargazing 2}}</noinclude>
{{comic
| number = 1779
| date = December 30, 2016
| title = 2017
| image = 2017.png
| titletext = Things are looking good for the eclipse--Nate Silver says Earth will almost definitely still have a moon in August.
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
In this [[:Category:New Year|New Year comic]], [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] share some of their (or [[Randall|Randall's]]) thoughts about the ending 2016 and the new year 2017 (hence the title). 2016 was a year which many people eagerly awaited the end of because of its increased turmoil (terrorist attacks, controversial political events in numerous countries including the election of [[Donald Trump]] for president in the United States and the United Kingdom {{w|2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum|voting for Brexit}}) as well as the deaths of an unusually large number of well-known and beloved celebrities (several of these died in the first few days after Christmas).

Instead of simply condemning 2016 as a terrible year and expecting 2017 to be significantly better, Megan observes that much of what made 2016 bad is the effect that it will have upon future years rather than the actual events themselves (for instance, a divisive {{w|United States presidential election, 2016|U.S. presidential election}} has caused significant controversy in 2016, but President Donald Trump actually took office and began to affect the world as President in 2017). Megan specifically states that ''2016 was bad was because of the things it sent us into 2017 without.'' As it is known that Randall is a {{w|Hillary Clinton}} supporter (as shown in the [[1756: I'm With Her]] comic), an additional reading of that line could be that we are headed into 2017 "without" a Hillary Clinton presidency. It can also refer to the many {{w|2016#Deaths|dead celebrities}} passing in 2016, (at least three famous musicians/actors so recent that they died after Christmas Eve), as we would be without all of them in 2017.

Cueball claims that they should still have hope for the future, but Megan states that people had claimed that many of the bad things that did happen in 2016, could not happen (for instance Trump and Brexit). And as these things did happen, she foresees even worse events occurring in 2017, that we did not even think would be possible.

However, Randall also offers a glimpse of hope in the last few panels when Cueball observes that, just as all of the bad things in 2016 were unexpected, good things in 2017 that are unexpected could also happen, which should make us less sure what good may come of 2017. As such, he argues that we should hold on to our hope even though things seem difficult right now.

As the conversation unfolds, Megan and Cueball encounter an uprooted tree and cross it like a balance beam. This is a visual metaphor; the dead tree represents the end of the old year, while the crossing represents the transition into the new year. This is similar to the magical toboggan from {{w|Calvin and Hobbes}} that serves as a metaphor for their conversations, mentioned in [[529: Sledding Discussion]] and [[409: Electric Skateboard (Double Comic)]]. Or Randall just included this because he thinks using trees as balance beams is fun.

In the last panel Cueball mentioned that 2017 will also have a cool {{w|solar eclipse|eclipse}}, going through the central parts of North America. This may also serve as a reminder that the Earth continues to spin on despite all of the human turmoil going on on its surface. This is literally true, as the eclipse Randall is excited about is caused by the orbits of three celestial bodies lining up just right (the Sun, the Earth, and the Moon).

Cueball then also notes that 2017 is a {{w|prime number}} and states that prime-numbered years (prime years) have always been good to him. He thus illustrates the positive attitude that people can choose to take in order to see all that which is good and to spread a little bit more cheerfulness, and Megan is ready to take this positive view, although she may not totally buy in to it. This could also be a pun referencing the saying "being in his prime years".

It should be noted that Cueball is working with a relatively small sample size. If Cueball is roughly the same age as Randall Munroe, prime-numbered years he was alive in would include 1987, 1993, 1997, 1999, 2003, and 2011. Prime years are always uneven, and therefore never feature US presidential elections, or the Olympic Games (although if the COVID pandemic had occured four years prior, the "2016 Olympics" ''might'' have also actually occured in a prime-numbered year, just as the 2020 Tokyo games were delayed and held in the year 2021, itself only the semiprime of 43x47).

The title text is a reference to [[Nate Silver]] who is well-known (in the United States) as an election polling analyst on {{w|FiveThirtyEight}}. His model allowed for a higher chance that Donald Trump would win the presidency compared to other similar models — though the fact that he still favored a Clinton win may be contributing to getting humor from the idea that he may be "wrong" again, and the Moon could possibly vanish in 2017, making the year definitely worse than 2016. (Earth and Moon are so close in the space order of things, that any event affecting Moon orbit seriously will almost certainly end our civilization too.) This is accentuated by the qualifier "almost definitely", which is of humorously low confidence for presenting a fact as certain as the Moon not somehow disappearing within the next year.

In the background of the first few panels of this comic, we see a fallen tree, but a sapling growing in its place. This may be a subtle message by Randall that there is still hope, and that things will be alright in the end.

Randall previously mentioned his excitement for the {{w|Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017|2017 eclipse}} exactly three years earlier in [[1302: Year in Review]], where Megan complains about not having seen an aurora during 2013, and she really hopes they don't cancel the 2017 eclipse. So this comic is the second time Randall has expressed concern that he will miss the eclipse. Leading up to and after the eclipse Randall released six more comics on the subject: [[1868: Eclipse Flights]], [[1876: Eclipse Searches]], [[1877: Eclipse Science]], [[1878: Earth Orbital Diagram]], [[1879: Eclipse Birds]], and [[1880: Eclipse Review]].

There have been three previous New Year's comics with only the year used as the title: [[998: 2012]] in 2012, [[1311: 2014]] in 2014 and [[1624: 2016]] in 2016. This is the first odd-numbered year (and thus of course the first prime year) using only the new year as the title.

===Things in 2016 that could be described as bad===
Obviously, anything in this list is controversial so the section title is {{w|Hedge (linguistics)|hedged}}. Also, this was written in 2024, so everything seems not so bad compared to 2020, when the {{w|COVID-19}} pandemic hit.
* The World Health Organization announced an outbreak of the Zika virus.
* An earthquake of magnitude 6.6 struck southern Taiwan, killing 117 people.
* North Korea launched a reconnaissance satellite that was condemned internationally as a long-range ballistic missile test.
* Suicide bombing attacks at Brussels' Zaventem airport and Maalbeek metro station kill 35 people and injure 300 more.
* A 7.8 earthquake struck northwestern Ecuador killing 676 people and injuring over 6,000.
* EgyptAir Flight 804 crashes into the Mediterranean Sea en route from Paris to Cairo, killing all 66 people on board.
* Gorilla Harambe was shot and killed at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden in an incident involving a child leading to a global meme.
* A gunman claiming allegiance to the Islamic State opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, killing 49 people and injuring 53 others.
* The United Kingdom voted in a referendum to leave the European Union.
* 86 people were killed and more than 400 others injured in a truck attack in Nice, France, during Bastille Day celebrations.
* In Turkey, an unsuccessful coup against resulted in the deaths of at least 240 people.
* A 6.2 earthquake hit central Italy, killing 299 people.
* The government of North Korea conducted its fifth and reportedly biggest nuclear test.
* Global CO2 levels exceeded 400 ppm at the time of year normally associated with minimum levels.
* U.S. intelligence agencies publicly accused the Russian government of using computer hacking to interfere with the U.S. election process.
* The Washington Post released a videotape showing candidate Donald Trump privately bragging about sexual improprieties.
* WikiLeaks released thousands of private emails from inside the political campaign of candidate Hillary Clinton.
* Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States. (Let's not start on this; at least some people consider it bad)
* LaMia Flight 2933 crashed into a mountain, killing 71 of the 77 people on board.
* A Tupolev Tu-154 jetliner crashed into the Black Sea shortly after taking off. All 92 people on board were killed.
* The term ghost kitchen is coined to describe deceptive alternate names for restaurants on food delivery apps to garner more orders.

===Things in 2017 that could be described as good===
A disclaimer that not everyone will consider all of these things as positive.
* Millions of people worldwide join the Women's March becoming the largest single-day protest in American history.
* An annular solar eclipse was visible from Pacific, Chile, Argentina, Atlantic, Africa.
* Nintendo released the Switch worldwide.
* The Eurovision Song Contest took place in Kyiv, Ukraine.
* Montenegro joined NATO as the 29th member.
* The 2017 World Expo opened in Astana, Kazakhstan.
* The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was voted for by 122 states.
* The first observation of a collision of two neutron stars occurred with both gravitational and electromagnetic waves from the event detected.
* The Great American Eclipse was visible within across the entire contiguous United States of America.
* The International Olympic Committee awarded Paris and Los Angeles the right to host the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics, respectively.
* Cassini–Huygens ended its 13-year mission by plunging into Saturn, becoming the first spacecraft to enter the planet's atmosphere.
* A new species of orangutan was identified, becoming the third known species of orangutan and the first great ape discovered in almost a century.
* A paper was published recognizing a high-velocity asteroid as originating from outside the Solar System, the first known interstellar object.
* The Walt Disney Company announced that it would acquire most of 21st Century Fox.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan walking outdoors]
:Cueball: Can't wait for this stupid year to be over.

:[The two approach a fallen tree]
:Megan: I can. This year made the future scarier. So much of why 2016 was bad was because of the things it sent us into 2017 without.

:[Megan has hopped up onto the tree trunk and begins to walk along it]
:Cueball: You gotta have hope, though.
:Megan: You say that, but you also said all this awful stuff couldn't happen, and it did. You're as clueless as the rest of us.

:[Cueball also walks along the tree trunk as Megan stops and turns to look at him]
:Cueball: Well, if we're wrong about which bad things can happen, it's got to make us at least a ''little'' less sure about which good things can't.

:[Closeup of Megan hopping down from the tree]
:Megan: I guess.

:[A distant shot of Megan and Cueball walking along again]
:Cueball: Plus, 2017 has a cool eclipse in it.
:Megan: Ooh, yeah!
:Cueball: And it's prime. Prime years have always been good for me.
:Megan: Sure, I'll take it.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:New Year]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
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1759: British Map

2025-10-22T22:11:58Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1759
| date = November 14, 2016
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| title = British Map
| image = british_map.png
| titletext = West Norsussex is east of East Norwessex, but they're both far north of Middlesex and West Norwex.
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
This comic is a joke similar to [https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8&safe=active&ssui=on#q=how%20americans%20see%20the%20world&safe=active&ssui=on "How Americans see the world"] showing how the average American has opinions on the world, often including jokes such as a lack of {{w|Africa}}, etc. This has been used before in [[850: World According to Americans]]. The map also plays with the joke by noting it has been labeled by [[Randall Munroe|a specific American]] rather than "Americans".

Many areas of the UK are most familiar to foreigners thanks to their depiction in various fantasy novels and TV series. This map labels some of these, as well as including many silly names that simply sound like real British towns to an American ear. A protractor is shown off the coast of the {{w|Mull of Kintyre}} in reference to the "{{w|Mull of Kintyre test}}" - according to urban legend, the angle of the Mull defines the maximum allowed erectness for a man on films and home video releases in the UK.

Randall previously posted [https://blog.xkcd.com/2015/11/24/a-puzzle-for-the-uk/ a map of Great Britain] on his blog as part of the promotion for his book ''[[What If? (book)|What If?]]''. This map is from a very similar position and appears to have been traced from the same source, although there are some slight differences. Both maps include a sketch of {{w|Lake Windermere}} with boats on it, and both have the locations of London, Oxford and Cambridge labeled (the blog map also shows Edinburgh and Bristol - in this comic, these are labelled Eavestroughs and Minas Tirith). Both also contain references to {{w|Stonehenge}} and {{w|Watership Down}}.

Note that in British English, the correct spelling of “labeled” is ‘labelled’.

The title text plays around with the concept of the compass directions and how numerous regions (such as South "Sussex" and West "Wessex") incorporate such literal names in their description. Randall is creating similar sounding names which are nonsense-ish ("Norsussex" would be the region of the Northern-Southern Saxons), and placing them in relation to each other in ways which would be geographically implausible, similar to this [http://www.netfunny.com/rhf/jokes/92q3/xx19.html old joke about Boston]. However, in Germany there exists the region called ''Westphalia'' (''Westfalen''), and the eastern part of it is often referred to as ''East-Westphalia'' (''{{w|Ostwestfalen}}''), which sounds somewhat ridiculous. Part of the joke in the title text could be the fact that while three of the locations are fictional, {{w|Middlesex}} does actually exist.

{| border =1 width=100% cellpadding=5 class="wikitable sortable"
!Label on the map !! Explanation !! Actual location !! Notes
|-
| Helcaraxë
|| The "[http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Helcarax%C3%AB Grinding Ice]", an area of {{w|Middle-Earth}}. Like Helcaraxë, northern Scotland is cold, mountainous and in many areas inhospitable.
|| The {{w|Grampian}} region
||
|-
| Blick
|| Possibly referencing {{w|Wick, Caithness}}, one of the northernmost towns in Great Britain. The real Wick is substantially further north, off the edge of the map.
||Near {{w|Rhynie, Aberdeenshire}}
|| This is the name of a goblin in the movie "Legend" starring Tim Curry. Could also reference the art supply store, Blick Art Materials.
|-
| Everdeen
|| {{w|Katniss Everdeen}} is the heroine of ''{{w|The Hunger Games}}'' series of novels and films.
|| {{w|Aberdeen}}
|| In colloquial Scots, its pronunciation is very similar to "Everdeen."
|-
| Highlands
|| {{w|Scottish Highlands|No joke}}.
|| {{w|Scottish Lowlands}}
|| Maybe deliberate trolling - Scots have strong feelings about where the Highland-Lowland border is.
|-
| Norther Sea
|| Pun on the {{w|North Sea}} - i.e. a sea that is further north (or 'norther') than the North Sea.
|| {{w|Sea of the Hebrides}}
||
|-
| Loch Lomond
|| {{w|Loch Lomond|No joke}}.
|| Loch Lomond
|| Loch Lomond is the largest lake in Great Britain, and the third largest lake in the UK. It is the subject of a well-known {{w|The_Bonnie_Banks_o%27_Loch_Lomond|traditional song}}, and was referenced in the "beaming" (teleporter) bit in the movie Spaceballs by the Scotty expy 'Snotty'. It also houses a distillery producing a whisky appreciated by Captain Haddock in ''{{w|The Adventures of Tintin}}''. Thanks to the {{w|Loch Ness Monster|monster}}, {{w|Loch Ness}} is by far the most famous Scottish loch, so naming the second most famous subverts expectations.
|-
| Fjordham
|| {{w|Fjords}} are glacial valleys. "-ham" is a common English placename suffix from Old English, related to the modern {{w|Hamlet (place)|hamlet}} ''or'' another root, such as that relating to river meadows, but [http://keithbriggs.info/EPN_maps/ham.pdf not so common] in the more obviously glacier-carved areas such as this area in Scotland. There are several villages (in England) named {{w|Fordham}}.
|| Near {{w|Oban}} on the {{w|Firth of Lorn}}
|| The Scottish word "Firth" is related to "Fjord", although Lorn is not a fjord in the strict scientific sense - it was formed along the {{w|Great Glen Fault}} by tectonics, rather than glaciers.
|-
| Glassdoor
|| {{w|Glassdoor}} is a website where employees can review their employers.
|| {{w|Stirling}}
|| Although it's shown near Stirling, the reference seems to be to {{w|Glasgow}}.
|-
| Eavestroughs
|| A dialectal word for {{w|rain gutter}}
|| {{w|Edinburgh}}
||
|-
| Seasedge
|| Procan's realm in ''Dungeons & Dragons''. "Sea sedge" is also one of many common names used for ''{{w|Acorus calamus}}'', the calamus or sweet flag.
|| Somewhere near the Scotland-England border
||
|-
| Chough
|| A {{w|Chough|species of bird in the crow family}}.
|| The {{w|Scottish Borders}}
||
|-
| Meowth
|| [https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Meowth_(Pok%C3%A9mon) Meowth] is a Normal-type Pokémon that resembles a cat. The name may allude to the Irish village of {{w|Howth}}.
|| {{w|Ayr}}
||
|-
| Glutenfree
|| {{w|Gluten-free}} food lacks the protein {{w|gluten}}. This allows {{w|coeliac disease}} sufferers to enjoy it, but has also become a dietary fad in itself.
|| {{w|Cairnryan}}, {{w|Dumfries and Galloway}}
||
|-
| Blighton
|| A mashup of {{w|Brighton}} and {{w|Blighty}} Or a reference to {{w|Enid Blyton}}, a noted UK children’s author.
|| The {{w|Scottish Borders}}
|| The real Brighton is much further south, on the south coast.
|-
| North Sea
|| {{w|North Sea|No joke}}.
|| North Sea
||
|-
| Eyemouth
|| {{w|Eyemouth|No joke}}.
|| near {{w|Newcastle-upon-Tyne}}
|| The real Eyemouth is further north, where "Seasedge" is marked on the map.
|-
| Earhand
|| A pun on Eyemouth.
|| {{w|Carlisle}}
||
|-
| Hairskull
|| A pun on Eyemouth.
|| {{w|Teesside}}
||
|-
| Belfast DeVoe
|| {{w|Belfast}}, capital of Northern Ireland, mashed up with the rock band {{w|Bell Biv DeVoe}}.
|| {{w|Belfast}}
||
|-
| Lakebottom
|| The {{w|Lake District}}. "-bottom" is a common placename across Northern England, and refers to a town in a valley.
|| {{w|Lake District}}
|| Below Lakebottom is a sketch of a lake with yachts on it. This is illustrative and doesn't correspond to any of the actual lakes which would be barely visible on this map. There are 16 'lakes' in the Lake District, but only one ({{w|Bassenthwaite Lake}}) actually has 'lake' in its name.
|-
| Braintree
|| {{w|Braintree, Essex|Not a joke}}.
|| {{w|North Yorkshire}}
|| The real Braintree is much further south, near where "Paulblart" is on the map. Also a possible reference to the [https://www.braintreepayments.com Braintree] online payments platform (widely advertised on podcasts), or a stop at the end of the Red Line in Boston.
|-
| Skinflower
|| A pun on Braintree.
|| {{w|Yorkshire Dales}}
||
|-
| Bjork
|| {{w|Björk}} is an Icelandic singer.
|| {{w|East Riding of Yorkshire}}
|| The reference is presumably to York (historically known as Jórvík), although it's a bit too far east.
|-
| Weedle
|| [https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Weedle_(Pok%C3%A9mon) Weedle] is a Bug/Poison-type Pokémon that resembles a caterpillar.
|| {{w|Forest of Bowland}}
|| In the original Pokémon Red and Blue games Weedle is most notably found in '{{w|Viridian Forest}}' which - like the real-life Forest of Bowland - is known for its diverse wildlife.
|-
| Eeugh
|| An expression of disgust.
|| {{w|Kingston-upon-Hull}} (generally just "Hull")
|| Pronounced 'ull by locals.
|-
| Crewneck
|| A shirt with a {{w|Crewneck|simple round collar}}.
|| {{w|Blackpool}}
|| There is a town called {{w|Crewe}} somewhat further south than shown in Cheshire.
|-
| Paisley
|| {{w|Paisley, Renfrewshire|No joke}}. It sounds funny to Americans because it's associated with {{w|Paisley (design)|paisley}} fabric, a Persian-style print invented in the town. Possibly a pun on {{w|Parsley|parsley}}, a herb.
|| {{w|Burnley}}
|| The real Paisley is in Scotland, near Glasgow.
|-
| Basil
|| Also {{w|Basil|a herb}}, and {{w|Basil Fawlty|one of the most famous British TV characters}}.
|| {{w|Scunthorpe}}
||
|-
| Aidenn
|| An apparent pun on the {{w|Scouse}} accent: {{w|h-dropping}} and {{w|th-stopping}} mean the common "hey, then" would be pronounced "ai denn".
|| {{w|Merseyside}}
||
|-
| Hillfolk
|| {{w|Hillfolk}} is an RPG. "-hill" (referring to, well, a hill) is common in British placenames, and "-folk" (referring to a tribe or culture) is seen in ''Suffolk'' and ''Norfolk''. Possibly also a reference to {{w|Hobbits}}, a race of little people that live under hills in The Lord of the Rings.
|| {{w|Manchester}}
|| Manchester's name does in fact reference hills: it means "castle on the {{w|breast-shaped hill}}"
|-
| Waterdown
|| To "water something down" is to weaken it. "-down" is common in British placenames and refers to {{w|Downland|chalk hills}}. Possibly a contraction from the book and movie: Watership Down.
|| Near {{w|Grimsby}}
||
|-
| Dubstep
|| {{w|Dubstep}} is a genre of electronic music with a heavy bass line.
|| {{w|Dublin}}
|| Dublin is the only non-UK settlement in the map, and one of two on the island of Ireland.
|-
| Borough-upon-Mappe
|| By being recorded here, this is literally a borough upon a map. The "-upon-" is a common element of placenames for towns on rivers, although there's no River Mappe. Possibly referencing the fact that the town is on a "mappe" (map)?
|| {{w|Lincolnshire Wolds}}
||
|-
| Fhqwhgads
|| "[http://www.hrwiki.org/wiki/Fhqwhgads Fhqwhgads]" is a joke from the internet web cartoon ''Homestar Runner'', originating from the Strong Bad Email "i love you". In the cartoon, Strong Bad reads an email that was signed only with a random keyboard mash of characters, which he shortens to "Fhqwhgads," a name that became a running gag on the cartoon. Fhqwhgads was previously mentioned in [[1571: Car Model Names]].
|| {{w|Wrexham}}
|| This is near the Welsh border; Welsh names often look like a mish-mash of consonants to English speakers ignorant of Welsh orthography; within a few miles of Wrexham are towns like {{w|Yr Wyddgrug}} ("Mold" in English), {{w|Cefn-y-bedd}}, {{w|Gwernymynydd}} and {{w|Llanarmon Dyffryn Ceiriog}}.
|-
| Cadbury
|| {{w|Cadbury}} is a British chocolate company.
|| Near {{w|Boston, Lincolnshire}}
|| Cadbury actually built a town for its workers... but it's called {{w|Bournville}}. There are several towns called {{w|Cadbury_(disambiguation)#Places|Cadbury}} in the UK (where the Cadbury family presumably got its name), but none are near here.
|-
| Cabinetry
|| The art of making {{w|cabinets}}.
|| Near {{w|Oswestry}}
||Several towns in the English Midlands have names ending in -try, including Oswestry. "Cabinetry" could be a pun on {{w|Coventry}}, which lies further to the east.
|-
| The Shire
|| {{w|Shire (Middle-earth)|The Shire}} is home to the {{w|Hobbits}} in {{w|Middle-Earth}}.
|| {{w|Midlands}}
|| Tolkien drew inspiration for the Shire from the {{w|West Midlands (region)|West Midlands}}, although Tolkien was from the southern part of the Midlands (roughly where Dampshire is on the map).
An internet posting titled [http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/revocation.asp "A Letter to the U.S" after the 2016 Presidential Election"], falsely attributed to John Cleese, could also have been inspiration for this map. It in particular says: "3. You should learn to distinguish English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney, upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier). Scottish dramas such as 'Taggart' will no longer be broadcast with subtitles.You must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is "Devon." If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become "shires" e.g. Texasshire Floridashire, Louisianashire."
|-
| Landmouth
|| Literal description.
|| {{w|The Wash}}
||
|-
| Brandon
|| {{w|Brandon#United Kingdom|Not a joke}}.
|| {{w|The Fens}}
|| There are several Brandons in the UK, the nearest being where "Keebler" is on the map. The area shown is borderline-uninhabitable, as it is marshland and lies mostly below sea-level. Only a few farms and isolated hamlets exist here.
|-
| Hamwich
|| A ham sandwich. Both "-ham" and "-wich" are common generic placenames. The village called simply "Ham" and the other called "Sandwich" are fairly close to each other, with a famous roadsign that points to "Ham Sandwich" between them. The bread-slices-and-filling foodstuff is named for the 4th Earl of Sandwich, and hence ultimately from the town of the same name.
|| {{w|Norwich}}
|| Likely to be coincidence but the "Cheese Hamwich" is a breaded cheese and turkey food product sold by {{w|Bernard Matthews Ltd}} whose food processing facility is based not far from this map location.
|-
| West Norsussex
|| Mash-up of {{w|West Sussex}} ("South Saxons") with the obsolete {{w|Wessex}} ("West Saxons") and never extant {{w|Norsex}} ("North Saxons").
|| {{w|Midlands}}
||
|-
| Redsox
|| The {{w|Boston Red Sox}} are a baseball team.
|| {{w|The Fens}}
|| The Boston Red Sox play at Fenway Park. The map location is not far from the British {{w|Boston, Lincolnshire|Boston}}
|-
| Keebler
|| {{w|Keebler}} is an American cookie manufacturer best known for their elf mascots.
|| {{w|Elveden}}
|| The name of this village in Thetford Forest means "valley of the elves".
|-
| Bloughshire
|| Most British counties have "-shire" in their name. Originally it meant they were administered by a {{w|sheriff}}. However, they are usually no longer known by those names in Wales.
|| {{w|Powys}}
||
|-
| Lionsgate
|| {{w|Lionsgate|A film studio}}.
|| {{w|Leicester}}
|| The word/suffix "-gate" in placenames often refer to {{w|Harrogate|ancient streets or roads}}, or possibly such a way through a gap that is natural (e.g. {{w|Ramsgate}}'s cliffs) or in a city wall (which can thus be sealed, or 'gated'). There are no obvious inspirations for Lionsgate in that part of the country &emdash; ''Ram''sgate, in particular, is at the extreme eastern end of the southern edge of the UK.
|-
| Kingsbottom
|| Another "-bottom". A possible reference to {{w|King's Landing}}, the capital of the Seven Kingdoms of {{w|Westeros}} and one of its districts Fleabottom.
|| {{w|Suffolk Coast National Nature Reserve|Suffolk Coast}}
|| Possibly named for the town of {{w|King's Lynn}}, also located in East Anglia but close to its north coast.
|-
| Aberforth
|| {{w|Aberforth Dumbledore}} is {{w|Albus Dumbledore}}'s brother in the ''Harry Potter'' series. The name is sometimes translated as "from the river", but without any etymological references. "Aber" is Welsh for a "river mouth" or estuary, and is widespread in Wales, and occasionally found due to Celtic influence in other parts of the UK (such as {{w|Aberdeen}}).
|| {{w|Aberystwyth}}
|| {{w|Aberporth}} ("Mouth [of the] port" - the Welsh equivalent of the English name Portsmouth) is a real town located a little further southwest along the Welsh coast. {{w|Forth}} may be a reference to the {{w|Firth of Forth}} in Scotland, where "Firth" means estuary or fjord, and "Forth" is thought to mean "the open air". Aberforth would literally mean "the mouth of the river Forth", which is the location of {{w|Edinburgh}} in Scotland. Alternatively, "forth" in Welsh could be a soft mutated form of the Welsh name "{{w|Borth}}" (the name of a town - but not a river - a little further north along the coast), which is itself a soft mutated form of the word "porth" meaning port.
|-
| South Norwessex
|| Another mash-up of {{w|Sussex}} ("South Saxons") with the obsolete {{w|Wessex}} ("West Saxons") and never extant {{w|Norsex}} ("North Saxons"). Also southwest of West Norsussex.
|| {{w|Birmingham}}
||
|-
| Dryford
|| Would refer to a river crossing without water. "{{w|Ford (crossing)|-ford}}" is a common placename element.
|| {{w|Shropshire Hills}}
||
|-
| Frampton
|| There are many {{w|Frampton}}s in the UK. It means "town on the river Frome" - and there are also several {{w|River Frome}}s. The name is famous thanks to rock musician {{w|Peter Frampton}}.
|| {{w|Bury St Edmunds}}
||see also "Southframpton".
|-
| Cambridge
|| {{w|Cambridge|No joke}}.
|| {{w|Cambridge}}
|| Cambridge and Oxford, the two most prestigious university towns, are correctly marked. Together, they form {{w|Oxbridge}}.
|-
| Kingsfriend
|| Possibly a joke about the royal patronage given to certain towns - for instance, {{w|Bognor Regis}} and {{w|Royal Wootton Bassett}}. Also {{w|Knighton, Powys|Knighton}} (a King's friend?) is very close to this locale, and so is {{w|Kington, Herefordshire|Kington}}.
|| Near the England-Wales border
||
|-
| Cair Paravel
|| {{w|Cair Paravel}} is the castle where the ruler of {{w|Narnia}} lives in the ''Narnia'' series.
|| {{w|Dedham Vale}}
||
|-
| Camelot
|| {{w|Camelot}} was (in legend) {{w|King Arthur}}'s court.
|| Near the England-Wales border
|| The King Arthur myth did in fact originate in the Welsh culture. However, most sites associated with Camelot, such as {{w|Winchester}}, {{w|Glastonbury}} and {{w|Cadbury Castle}}, are in England.
|-
| Nothingham
|| A pun on {{w|Nottingham}}, famous for {{w|Sherwood Forest}}, the legendary home of {{w|Robin Hood}}.
|| Near {{w|Northampton}}
||
|-
| Cumberbatch
|| A surname, best known as that of actor {{w|Benedict Cumberbatch}}.
|| {{w|Harlow}}
|| The surname of {{w|Jean Harlow|a famous actress}} is replaced with that of a famous actor.
|-
| Dampshire
|| A pun on the county of {{w|Hampshire}}. Generically a joking reference to any county, particularly of the {{w|West Country}}, to imply it is particularly prone to rain.
|| Gloucestershire
||
|-
| The CW
|| {{w|The CW|An American TV channel}}.
|| {{w|Pembrokeshire}}
|| Presumably the placement is a reference to Welsh words such as "cwm" which use W as a vowel.
|-
| Whaling
|| The practice of hunting whales. May be a reference to other -ing towns like {{w|Reading, Berkshire|Reading}} (which is actually pronounced "redding", not "reeding"), and also to its location in Wales.
|| {{w|Merthyr Tydfil}}
||
|-
| Paulblart
|| ''{{w|Paul Blart: Mall Cop}}'' is a 2009 comedy film starring Kevin James.
|| Near {{w|Chelmsford}}
|| Possibly a humorous contrast with Cumberbatch above, a highbrow British classical actor followed by a lowbrow American movie character.
|-
| Oxford
|| {{w|Oxford|No joke}}.
|| {{w|Oxford}}
|| See Cambridge. Surprisingly, Randall made no attempt to troll readers by switching the locations of Cambridge and Oxford. Or he did, but ironically from the wrong 'correct' assumption!
|-
| Moorhen
|| The {{w|moorhen}} is a waterfowl.
|| {{w|Gower Peninsula}}
|| Possibly punning on nearby {{w|Swansea}}.
|-
| Cardigan
|| {{w|Cardigan, Ceredigion|No joke}} - it seems funny to Americans because of the {{w|Cardigan (sweater)|knitted sweater}} popularised by the {{w|James Brudenell, 7th Earl of Cardigan|Earl of Cardigan}}.
|| {{w|Newport, Wales}}
|| The actual Cardigan is on the west coast. The name may be punning on the city of {{w|Cardiff}}, capital of Wales, which is further south-west.
|-
| BBC Channel 4
|| A composite of {{w|Channel 4}} and the {{w|BBC}} (UK TV operators) confusing the meaning of TV channel with a geographic channel. There ''is'' a {{w|BBC Four}} (digital TV channel) ''and'' a {{w|BBC Radio 4}} (FM and digital radio) with an {{w|BBC Radio 4 Extra|adoptive daughter-station}} (digital only, originally called BBC7), but none of these are ever really called "BBC Channel 4" by locals, and it is hard to say what detail 'an American' might ''think'' they'd know.
|| {{w|Bristol Channel}}
||
|-
| London
|| By virtue of being the capital and largest city, as well as a famous {{w|world city}}, London is one of the few cities in Britain that anyone, no matter how ignorant of British geography, can manage to name correctly.
|| London
|| It is not unknown for foreigners ''and'' British alike (even some residents of London) to assume that London has a more central location in England (such as {{w|Midlands|'The Midlands'}}) or {{w|Britannia Inferior|even further towards the north}}. Randall seems to be more knowledgable than this.
|-
| GMT
|| A reference to {{w|Greenwich Mean Time}}. Shown on the map near the London bourough of Greenwich through which the GMT meridian passes.
|| {{w|Greenwich}} (roughly)
||
|-
| Corbyn
|| A reference to the leader (at the time of publication) of the UK {{w|Labour Party (UK)|Labour Party}} {{w|Jeremy Corbyn}}.
|| {{w|The Cotswolds}}
|| May be a confusion with the town of {{w|Corby}} although it is not near the location shown.
|-
| Tems-upon-Thames
|| A joke about the counter-intuitive pronunciation of {{w|Thames}}.
|| {{w|Rochester}}
||
|-
| Minas Tirith
|| {{w|Minas Tirith}} is the capital of Gondor in ''Lord of the Rings'' and is built on the side of a mountain.
|| {{w|Bristol}}
|| Clifton Village, in Bristol, is built on the side of the Avon Gorge so could be compared to {{w|Minas Tirith}}. Nearby {{w|Cheddar Gorge}} is famous for its steep cliffs that resemble the landscape from Lord of the Rings.
|-
| Hogsmeade
|| {{w|Hogsmeade}} is the nearest village to Hogwarts in the ''Harry Potter'' books.
|| {{w|Dover}}
|| The fictional Hogsmeade was in Scotland. Randall shows the {{w|Channel Tunnel}} running from there, a possible reference to Hogsmeade's secret connections to Hogwarts.
|-
| Tubemap
|| The {{w|Tube Map}} is the map of the {{w|London Underground}}, widely considered a masterpiece of design.
|| {{w|Outer London}}
||
|-
| Cambnewton
|| {{w|Cam Newton}} is quarterback for the {{w|Carolina Panthers}}. "Cam-" is common for placenames on any of the several British rivers called "{{w|Cam River|Cam}}", while "Newton" means "new town". Also possibly a pun on Camden Town, a touristic district in North London, although not its actual location on the map.
|| {{w|West Country}}
||
|-
| Efrafa
|| Efrafa is a rabbit warren in the story ''{{w|Watership Down}}''.
|| {{w|Chidden}}
|| According to the story, the warren is located roughly here - the real {{w|Watership Down, Hampshire|Watership Down}} is in Hampshire.
|-
| Chansey
|| [https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Chansey_(Pok%C3%A9mon) Chansey] is a Normal-type Pokémon that carries an egg in a pouch. "-sey" is a common suffix meaning "island".
|| {{w|Dungeness (headland|Dungeness}}
||
|-
| Oughghough
|| Playing on common place name elements, "oughghough" has no clear pronunciation under the rules of English. It could be "Uff-guff", "Oo-gow", "Uh-guh" or any combination of these sounds. The name looks similar to the real {{w|Loughborough}} ("Luff-bruh")
|| {{w|Barnstaple}}
|| Legend has it that Loughborough was once pronounced 'Loogabarooga' by a visiting Australian.
|-
| Sundial
|| A {{w|sundial}} is a clock using a shadow to tell the time.
|| {{w|Wiltshire}}
|| The location roughly corresponds with {{w|Stonehenge}}, an ancient stone circle that was likely used to track the sun (though as a ritual calendar, rather than a clock).
|-
| Dobby
|| {{w|Magical_creatures_in_Harry_Potter#Dobby|Dobby}} is a character in {{w|Harry Potter}}.
|| {{w|Southampton}}
|| Similar to {{w|Derby}}.
|-
| Lower Bottom
|| Another -bottom. Also a redundancy, as the "bottom" is the lowest place by definition.
|| {{w|Devon}}
||
|-
| Southframpton
|| A confusion with {{w|Southampton}} which is nearby the location shown. The use of the postfix "frampton" is a reference to the "Frampton" elsewhere on the map, just as Southampton is distinguished from {{w|Northampton}}.
|| {{w|Milford on Sea}}
|| Frampton happens to be a common surname in the area.
|-
| Blandford
|| {{w|Blandford|No joke}}.
|| {{w|Cornwall}}
|| The real Blandford is a bit further east, in Dorset, roughly under the m in 'Southframpton'.
|-
| Menthol
|| {{w|Menthol}} is a chemical with minty taste that produces a cooling sensation, and is used in mints and flavoured cigarettes.
|| {{w|Eastbourne}}
|| Possibly a reference to Methil in Fife (but possibly not).
|-
| West Sea
|| Literal description.
|| {{w|Atlantic Ocean}}
|| Historically, this was the name for the ocean off the UK's west coast. According to the {{w|Shipping Forecast#Region names|list of sea areas}} used in the UK's {{w|Shipping Forecast}}, that region of sea is called "Lundy".
|-
| Tarp
|| Tarp, short for {{w|tarpaulin}}, is a waterproof sheet for storage and weather protection.
|| {{w|Teignmouth}}
||
|-
| Longbit
|| Literal description.
|| {{w|Cornwall}}
||
|}

==Transcript==

:[A black-and-white map of Great Britain. The detail on the map is minimal, showing mainly the outlines of the land, chevrons representing otherwise sparse areas of high hills or mountains, and points representing cities. The only other features are a small drawing of a protractor south of one peninsula, a lake with two small sailboats on the west side of the largest landmass, and a short dashed line in the southeast connecting the main landmass to another section of land across water. The caption in the upper-right states in large letters "A BRITISH MAP," then in smaller letters underneath, "LABELED BY AN AMERICAN." Most of the map's area is covered by labels for various features, which are listed below.]

<nowiki>
[In Scotland, from north to south:]
Helcaraxë
Blick
Everdeen
Norther Sea (to the west)
Highlands
Loch Lomond
Fjordham
Glassdoor
Eavestroughs
Seasedge
Meowth
Chough
Blighton
Glutenfree

[In England, from north to south:]
Eyemouth
Earhand
Hairskull
Lakebottom
Braintree
Skinflower
Weedle
Bjork
Crewneck
Paisley
Eeugh
Aidenn
Basil
Hillfolk
Waterdown
Borough-Upon-Mappe
Cadbury
Landmouth (to the East)
The Shire
West Norsussex
Redsox
Hamwich
Lionsgate
Keebler
South Norwessex
Kingsbottom
Cambridge
Frampton
Nothingham
Cair Paravel
Dampshire
Cumberbatch
Oxford
Paulblart
Corbyn
London
GMT
BBC Channel 4 (to the West)
Minas Tirith
Tems-Upon-Thames
Tubemap
Hogsmeade
Cambnewton
Oughghough
Efrafa
Chansey
Sundial
Lower Bottom
Dobby
Menthol
West Sea (to the West)
Blandford
Southframpton
Tarp
Longbit

[In Wales, from north to south:]
Fhqwhgads
Cabinetry
Bloughshire
Aberforth
Dryford
Kingsfriend
Camelot
The CW
Whaling
Moorhen
Cardigan

[In Northern Ireland:]
Belfast Devoe

[In the Republic of Ireland:]
Dubstep
</nowiki>

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Maps]]
[[Category:Harry Potter]]
[[Category:Chronicles of Narnia]]
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Pokémon]]

1757: November 2016

2025-10-22T22:11:04Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1757
| date = November 9, 2016
| title = November 2016
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = november_2016.png
| titletext = Once you've done this, make a note of how old they were. Then, when their age reaches double that, show them this chart again.
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
This is yet another comic designed to [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|make people feel old]], following soon after the last one [[1745: Record Scratch]].

The comic takes the form of a table of ages between 16 and 41, and next to each, a list of things that originated approximately half that age ago. Thus, by mentioning those things to a person of that age, that person becomes aware that those things have now been around for the majority of their life. People tend to underestimate how long ago things happened, so the revelation will usually come as a shock and make them realize that things they think of as new and modern are actually a lot older than they thought. This, in turn, will make them feel old.

For example, if talking to a 24-year-old, the relevant sentence would be:
:"Did you know that {{w|Facebook}} has been around for the majority of your life?"

To a 24-year old, Facebook likely still seems like a new innovation, so they may be shocked to discover that it has been around for more than half their life.

The joke at the end is that the guide isn't necessary for people over 41, since they ''already'' feel old, and are more than capable of providing any number of demonstrative examples.

It should be noted that the guide is only current for the time it was published, which is why it is billed as the "November 2016 Guide to Making People Feel Old". This is because the examples given in the table are relative to a person's age ''at that time''. However, the title text sneakily suggests a way to get an additional use out of the guide: by noting down the person's age at the time you show them the guide, and then showing it to them again when they are double that age, they will realize that more than half a lifetime has elapsed since the last time they viewed this comic, and will thus feel old again.

==Table for the guide==
{| class = "wikitable"
! Age
! Birth year
! Date of occurrences
! Occurrences
! Explanation
! Half age
! Years ago
|-
| 16
| 2000
| April 29, 2008
| ''{{w|Grand Theft Auto IV}}''
| Popular video game published by {{w|Rockstar Games}}; the 11th title in the ''{{w|Grand Theft Auto}}'' series. The games are often rated as Mature (and thus aimed at adults) and this entrance should not really affect 16 year olds, who may have tried the game now, but should not have played the game when they were only 8 years old.
| 8
| 8.5
|-
| 17
| 1999
| May 2007
| {{w|Rickrolling}}
| A prank and internet meme involving an unexpected appearance of the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "{{w|Never Gonna Give You Up}}", a bait and switch which has been [[:Category:Rickrolling|referred to often]] in xkcd. Since this was aimed at people who knew the song (from 1987) and were online (mainly young adults in 2007), this entry should not really affect 17 year olds who are unlikely to have been rickrolled when they were only 8.5 years old.
| 8.5
| 9.5
|-
| 18
| 1998
| April 13, 2007
| ''{{w|Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters}}''
| American Flash animated surreal comedy film based on the {{w|Adult Swim}} animated series ''{{w|Aqua Teen Hunger Force}}''. This seems to be a joke, as both this movie and the one it was based on are for adults, and the people this targets would only have been 9 when it was released, and probably won't recognize the reference. The joke will fail, because they will not feel old. Very few people have ever heard of this movie, which is probably part of the joke.
| 9
| 9.6
|-
| 19
| 1997
| November 19, 2006
| The {{w|Nintendo Wii}}
| 2006 is the time when the Nintendo Wii was released, with the Wii dominating 2006-2012. Ten year olds were likely to play Wii, and thus as 20 year olds remember and be surprised at how long it is since the first time, and feel old. This is the first entry that might actually work.
| 9.5
| 10.0
|-
| 20
| 1996
| March 2006
| {{w|Twitter}}
| 2006 was a big year. Twitter was created. There were probably only a few 10-11 year olds that used Twitter in the first year of its release, and thus not many twenty year old people today would have been active on Twitter at the very beginning. This will only make that minority of people feel old.
| 10
| 10.7
|-
| 21
| 1995
| November 22, 2005 (Xbox 360), September 30, 2005 (xkcd)
| The {{w|Xbox 360}}, {{w|xkcd}}
| 2005 saw the creation of the Xbox 360, another successful console. [[Randall]] also decided to throw in a 'reference joke', referring to the fact that xkcd was also created in 2005 where the [[:Category:First day on LiveJournal|first 13 comics]] where released on [[LiveJournal]] on September 30, 2005. As a callback, he has two x words in the same sentence, referring to [[1750: Life Goals]]. The same two words were both in that comic. (Average release date for the two was October 25, 2005). The Xbox will work on the twenty-one year old, for the same reason the Wii above would work. xkcd would not, because it is not directed at pre-teens. They would not have any feelings towards the comic. It is included to make faithful xkcd readers feel old. "Is it really more than 10 years ago I read it first..." (and also for the self-reference).
| 10.5
| 11.0
|-
| 22
| 1994
| 2005 (no specific date)
| {{w|Chuck Norris Facts}}
| Satirical factoids about martial artist and actor {{w|Chuck Norris}} began to appear on the Internet in early 2005. To begin with, they where not centered on Norris, instead focusing {{w|Vin Diesel}}. This makes it difficult to put a precise date on their appearance than "During the year 2005." Chuck Norris has {{w|Chuck_Norris_facts#Norris.27_response|replied to these factoids}} more than once, but the first time was in December 2006, almost two years after the {{w|meme}}s began appearing. The "facts" are mainly based on his series {{w|Walker, Texas Ranger}}, which ran from 1993-2001. Since the series ended when the twenty-two-year-old of today was 7, they were not the target group for the crazy Chuck Norris Facts. It seems unlikely that this entry would work.
| 11
| 11.5
|-
| 23
| 1993
| January 25, 2004
| {{w|Opportunity (rover)|Opportunity}}'s Mars Exploration
| {{w|Opportunity (rover)|Opportunity}} is a {{w|Mars rover}} that landed on Mars on January 25, 2004. Mars Rovers are a [[:Category:Mars rovers|recurring subject]] on xkcd. Even people who were not interested in science were very aware of Opportunity's voyage--it was covered in every type of news medium for a long time.
| 11.5
| 12.8
|-
| 24
| 1992
| February 4, 2004
| {{w|Facebook}}
| Facebook is a social networking service created in 2004 as a competitor to {{w|Myspace}}. It grew quickly to become the #1 social networking service. Since kids under thirteen are not allowed on Facebook, twenty-four-year-olds could not have signed up at the time of its foundation. When it was opened up for anyone in 2006, they would have been fourteen, but that would then only have been 10 years ago. However, today everyone knows about Facebook (and many preteens created accounts by lying about their ages), and to learn that it has existed for half of your life may make you feel old even if you didn't sign up immediately.
| 12
| 12.8
|-
| 25
| 1991
| April 1, 2004 (Gmail), July 9, 2003 (''Pirates of the Caribbean'')
| {{w|Gmail}}, ''{{w|Pirates of the Caribbean (film series)|Pirates of the Caribbean}}''
| Gmail is an email service created by Google. It was originally invitation-only (until 2007), and not marketed to kids, so it is unlikely that many thirteen year olds would have been using it in 2004; however, it has since been opened to anyone, and a lot of 25 year olds use it today. The first movie in the ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' franchise, {{w|Curse of the Black Pearl}}, debuted in 2003. Three more movies followed before the release of this comic (average date is November 4, 2003). The movie was rated PG-13 and would likely have been a hit among 12-13 year old kids, so this would make many people born in 1991 feel old.
| 12.5
| 13.0
|-
| 26
| 1990
| January 7, 2003
| {{w|In da Club}}
| Rap song by {{w|50 Cent}}. The song was a #1 hit on multiple charts and in multiple countries. It is very likely that people who were thirteen at its release would have been aware of it, even if they were not "clubbing" themselves yet.
| 13
| 13.8
|-
| 27
| 1989
| September 20, 2002
| ''{{w|Firefly (TV series)|Firefly}}''
| ''Firefly'' is a space western drama TV series created by {{w|Joss Whedon}}, that became a cult classic. This may be Randall's favorite TV series, and it has been [[:Category:Firefly|referenced often]] in xkcd.
| 13.5
| 14.1
|-
| 28
| 1988
| October 7, 2001
| The {{w|War in Afghanistan}}
| The United States of America invaded Afghanistan shortly after the {{w|September 11 attacks}} (popularly known as 9/11), in an effort to eliminate the terrorist group {{w|al-Qaeda}}. Almost anyone who was 14 in 2001 would have been aware of the war.
| 14
| 15.1
|-
| 29
| 1987
| October 23, 2001
| The {{w|iPod}}
| The iPod was a music playing device created by {{w|Apple Inc.}} in 2001. This would probably make lots of 29 year-olds feel old. 14-15 year old kids were likely to have had (or wished they had) an iPod.
| 14.5
| 15.0
|-
| 30
| 1986
| May 18, 2001 (''Shrek''), January 15, 2001 (Wikipedia)
| ''{{w|Shrek}}'', {{w|Wikipedia}}
| ''Shrek'' is a popular parody film about fairy tales. It quickly gained a cult following and became a mega-hit, earning it three sequels and a franchise. It was a big hit popular for ages. Fifteen-year-olds were likely to know and love the movie, so they would probably feel old as 30-year-olds realizing it came out half their life ago.

Wikipedia is a an online encyclopedia created in 2001, which anyone can edit. (It is massively linked to from [[explain xkcd]] which has a [[:Category:Wikipedia|Wikipedia category]] for comics like this that reference the website directly). (Average date is March 17, 2001). It is questionable how many kids used Wikipedia during the year it launched. Of course, realizing that before Wikipedia, you had to use a paper encyclopedia may still make a 30 year old feel old.
| 15
| 15.8
|-
| 31
| 1985
| July 14, 2000
| Those X-Men movies
| The {{w|X-Men (film series)|X-Men}} film series, probably only referring to the first trilogy (''{{w|X-Men (film)|X-Men}}'' (July 14, 2000), ''{{w|X2 (film)|X2}}'' (May 2, 2003), ''{{w|X-Men: The Last Stand}}'' (May 26, 2006) - us release dates). The release date refers to the first of these three movies. Presumably Randall is counting the series as existing from the time of the first release. 15-16 year old kids are likely to have loved ''X-Men'', and feel old when they realize it came out half their life ago.
| 15.5
| 16.3
|-
| 32
| 1984
| February 4, 2000
| ''{{w|The Sims}}''
| ''The Sims'' is a simulation video game created by Maxis in 2000 in which you build homes, cities, and families. It was an immediate success upon launch. It seems likely that many people would have played The Sims, and thus many 32 year old people would feel old. This was the one that Randall could have used on himself to feel old. He turned 32 a few weeks before the release of this comic.
| 16
| 16.8
|-
| 33
| 1983
| October 19, 1998
| Autotuned hit songs
| 1998 was when non-audio-professionals became aware of {{w|Auto-Tune|autotuning}} songs. {{w|Cher|Cher's}} song ''{{w|Believe (Cher song)|Believe}}'', released October 19, 1998 {{w|Auto-Tune#In_popular_music|may be the first time}} that most people really noticed autotuning. This is the only entry where there seems to be more than one year between the age of the thing and the half age of the person. However, it is also one of the entries where specific dating is difficult. Because the dates are not specific, it is difficult to judge how it would affect 33 year old people. Autotuning has been a standard for years, so it may make one feel old to know it has around for half your life.
| 16.5
| '''18.1'''
|-
| 34
| 1982
| May 19, 1999
| The {{w|Star Wars Prequels}}
| The Star Wars prequel trilogy (''{{w|Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace}}'' (May 19, 1999), ''{{w|Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones}}'' (May 16, 2002), ''{{w|Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith}}'' (May 19, 2005), us release dates). The {{w|Star Wars}} universe is most likely the [[:Category:Star Wars|most referenced]] movie universe in xkcd. The release date refers to the first of these three movies, because even only taking the first two movies, the average would only be 16 years ago, less than half the age of a 34 year old. These movies were awaited eagerly by many 17 year old kids, so they would remember the release well and feel very old.
| 17
| 17.5
|-
| 35
| 1981
| March 31, 1999
| ''{{w|The Matrix}}''
| Action film created by {{w|The Wachowskis}} (formerly known, at the time of ''The Matrix'', as The Wachowski Brothers). Two more films followed, although they were widely regarded as inferior to the first (by for instance by Randall as seen in [[566: Matrix Revisited]]). ''The Matrix'' was something new and is likely to have influenced 17-18 year old kids, so this entry would likely to produce feelings of age.
| 17.5
| 17.6
|-
| 36
| 1980
| September 28, 1998
| {{w|Pokémon Red & Blue}}
| A popular video game franchise in the {{w|Pokémon}} series, a series [[:Category:Pokémon|often referenced]] in xkcd. The game was first released in Japan in 1996, but not in North America until 1998. It seems likely that many people interested in playing computer games would have played Pokémon games. and in particular this one, which was released when the target group was 18 years old. And now that's half their life ago, perhaps making them feel old.
| 18
| 18.1
|-
| 37
| 1979
| August 29, 1997 (Netflix), June 26, 1997 (Harry Potter), September 15, 1997 (Google)
| {{w|Netflix}}, {{w|Harry Potter}}, {{w|Google}}
| All three are still major things 19 years later. "Harry Potter" refers to the original publishing date of ''{{w|Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone}}''. Google refers to the date that the Google domain name was registered. (Average date is 03-07-1997). Harry Potter is widely read, but at the time of its release it was probably not at first taken up by those of 18-19 year old. That may have first come later, maybe with the release of the {{w|Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (film)|first movies}} in 2001, four years later. This may not be the best example for this age group. Also using Google and Netflix just when they where launched may also not have been so popular among 18-19 year olds in 1997. Still, all three things are big, and to realize that they have been around for half of a life may still make someone feel old.
| 18.5
| 19.4
|-
| 38
| 1978
| May 11, 1997
| Deep Blue's Victory
| {{w|Deep Blue (chess computer)|Deep Blue}} was a {{w|chess computer}}, who defeated {{w|Garry Kasparov}}, the reigning chess champion, in a match in 1997. It was the first chess computer to defeat a world champion under tournament conditions. Randall has a great interest in {{w|chess}} and it is a [[:Category:Chess|recurrent subject]] on xkcd. Unless a 38 year old is interested in chess, they may not even know what Deep Blue is, let alone have any impression of long ago the victory occurred. Chess players and computer nerds (both of whom are very likely to be xkcd fans) would certainly be aware of this particular day.
| 19
| 19.5
|-
| 39
| 1977
| September 13, 1996
| {{w|Murder of Tupac Shakur|Tupac's Death}}
| {{w|Tupac Shakur}} was an American rapper, record producer, and actor. He was fatally shot in a drive-by shooting in 1996. Eight of his albums are certified platinum (five released after his death), and he has been ranked as one of the greatest artists of all time. (Rolling Stone ranked him 86/100). It seems likely that many 39 year olds would feel old realizing that 2Pac has been dead for half of their lives.
| 19.5
| 20.2
|-
| 40
| 1976
| December 31, 1995
| The [http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1995/12/31 last ''Calvin and Hobbes'' strip]
| ''{{w|Calvin and Hobbes}}'' is a comic strip by {{w|Bill Watterson}} that ran from November 18, 1985 to December 31, 1995. It is a [[:Category:Calvin and Hobbes|recurring subject]] on xkcd . This comic had a lot of fans among people that are 40 today. Even those who didn't read it during its run may have discovered it later. Even those who didn't notice the ending at the time, might still feel old realizing it was so long ago.
| 20
| 20.9
|-
| 41
| 1975
| November 22, 1995
| ''{{w|Toy Story}}''
| The {{w|Pixar}} animated film ''Toy Story'' was the first feature length digitally-animated film to be released theatrically (and also Pixar's first feature film). Given that this was the first film of its kind, many 20-21 year olds would have seen it. For xkcd fans, such movies might be a big thing. For anyone who saw this movie (and the sequels) this could cause feelings of age. Side note: 41 year olds might actually feel young when reading this comic in November 2016, because they are the last people to still be expected to feel young before Randall deliberately destroys the feeling.
| 20.5
| 21.0
|-
| >41
| Before 1975
| N/A
| [Don't worry, they've got this covered]
| This joke is that people who are legitimately old already feel old. This could also be a reference to the number 42, 42 being the "{{w|Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything}}" in the {{w|Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy}}. He has referenced this number more than once before, for instance in [[1213: Combination Vision Test]] and in the [[1608#Messages_in_Play_Area|messages in the ''Play Area'']] of [[1608: Hoverboard]]. Showing people 42 years or more old this table will make them feel old, when they look for their age and find this. Also, it may disappoint older readers of xkcd, as they do not to get their own humorous half-your-life entry. (See the opposite effect mentioned for the 41 years old above).
| >20.5
| N/A
|}

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the panel:]
:The November 2016
:Guide to making people
:'''feel old'''
:
:[A chart with a list of items to be put into the two first lines above the chart. First there are a line using the first column, then there are two lines using the second column. Below those lines are the two columns with underlined captions above. Between the columns are a long line connecting the two.]
:If they're [age], you say:
:<big>"Did you know</big> [thing] <big>has been around for the majority of your life?"</big>
:
:;Age
::Thing
:
:;16
::Grand Theft Auto IV
:
:;17
::Rickrolling
:
:;18
::''Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters''
:
:;19
::The Nintendo Wii
:
:;20
::Twitter
:
:;21
::The Xbox 360, xkcd
:
:;22
::Chuck Norris Facts
:
:;23
::Opportunity's Mars Exploration
:
:;24
::Facebook
:
:;25
::Gmail, ''Pirates of the Caribbean''
:
:;26
::In da Club
:
:;27
::''Firefly''
:
:;28
::The War in Afghanistan
:
:;29
::The iPod
:
:;30
::''Shrek'', Wikipedia
:
:;31
::Those X-Men movies
:
:;32
::''The Sims''
:
:;33
::Autotuned hit songs

:;34
::The ''Star Wars'' prequels
:
:;35
::''The Matrix''
:
:;36
::''Pokémon Red&Blue''
:
:;37
::Netflix, ''Harry Potter'', Google
:
:;38
::Deep Blue's Victory
:
:;39
::Tupac's Death
:
:;40
::The last ''Calvin and Hobbes'' strip
:
:;41
::''Toy Story''
:
:;>41
::[Don't worry, they've got this covered]

==Trivia==
* The comic [[891: Movie Ages]], released 5 years earlier, used a very similar technique to make people feel old, by giving the number of years that had elapsed since landmark movies were released. Some of those movies (''Toy Story'', ''The Matrix'', ''Shrek'') also appear in this comic. That same comic also ended with a similar punchline, by ending the chart at 35 (with people over 35 considered as "too old" for the chart). It is possible that Randall's increasing of the limit to 41 reflects his own increasing age; perhaps he no longer thinks people at 36 are too old to try to make them feel old.
* Other comics with date-based titles include:
** Month-day format: [[656: October 30th]], [[680: December 25th]]
** Month in the name: [[1595: 30 Days Hath September]]
** A single year: [[998: 2012]], [[1311: 2014]], [[1624: 2016]], [[1779: 2017]]
** The comic [[1898: October 2017]], released almost a year later, uses the same title format as this comic, and is also about making people feel old.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics to make one feel old]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Pokémon]]
[[Category:Rickrolling]]
[[Category:Social networking]]
[[Category:Mars rovers]]
[[Category:Firefly]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Star Wars]]
[[Category:Chess]]
[[Category:Songs]]
[[Category:Calvin and Hobbes]]
[[Category:Harry Potter]]
[[Category:The Matrix]]

1756: I'm With Her

2025-10-22T22:10:29Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1756
| date = November 7, 2016
| title = I'm With Her
| image = im_with_her.png
| titletext = We can do this.
}}
==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
In this serious, ''no joke'', comic released the day before the {{w|2016 United States presidential election}} (which was more contentious than most, due in part to many people finding both candidates unusually distasteful), [[Randall]] urged his American viewership to vote, and showed his {{w|Political endorsement|endorsement}} for {{w|Hillary Clinton}}, the {{w|US Democratic Party|Democratic}} nominee in the election. She was up against the {{w|US Republican Party|Republican}} nominee [[Donald Trump]], who ended up winning. For the sake of completeness, it should be mentioned that there were also nominees from other parties, including {{w|Green Party of the United States|Green Party}} nominee {{w|Jill Stein}}, and {{w|Libertarian Party (United States)|Libertarian}} nominee {{w|Gary Johnson}}. Neither hoped to garner enough votes to become president, but there was a chance {{w|spoiler candidate|they could affect the result}} in some states (no third-party candidate has ''won'' a state since {{w|United States presidential election, 1968|1968}}, and it did not occur this time either: the closest any came in 2016 was independent candidate {{w|Evan McMullin}} in Utah.)

It was the second time Randall referred to this election, the first being [[1748: Future Archaeology]] three weeks before the election, but here it was just a wish to know the result using time travel (of course he did not learn the result back then…).

The "H" with an arrow was {{w|Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, 2016|Clinton's campaign}} logo, and '''I'm with her''' an official slogan that was widely used by her supporters, hence the title. Randall then lists tips to help you cast your vote ([[#How to help|see table below]]) suggesting a personal investment in the election. Clinton herself may be represented by [[Blondie]] sitting on top of the H looking out at the reader as the only of the 11 characters. The only type of joke in the comic is the chosen characters. Two with weapons flank the left and right side looking out ready to defend against Trump: [[Ponytail]] with an emp gun (that she also wielded in [[322: Pix Plz]] for melting computers of persons who make snide remarks at women, clearly a reference to {{w|Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations|allegations of Donald Trump's sexual harassment of women}} in general and especially to his ''grab them by the pussy'' {{w|Donald Trump and Billy Bush recording|comment}}) and [[Cueball]] with his sword (from [[303: Compiling]]). See more details in the [[#Character gallery|character gallery]] below.

This is the first time Randall has used a comic to directly support a presidential campaign, although he did [https://blog.xkcd.com/2008/01/28/obama/ endorse] {{w|Barack Obama}} in 2008 on his [[Blag]]. At that time, Randall wrote that he was troubled by Hillary Clinton's "basic lack of integrity", which is interesting considering he later endorsed her. He wrote later that it was very controversial when he endorsed Obama, but that it was not the most [[388: Fuck Grapefruit#Controversy|controversial comic he had published]] at that time. This comic might take that prize now, given that this was one of the most discussed elections up to its time. This is particularly noteworthy outside the US—for example, some European leaders openly opposed Trump, while others supported him. There were also reports of Russian hackers attempting to influence the election.

Randall's support for Hillary Clinton may have been due in part to Donald Trump {{w|Donald Trump#Healthcare.2C education and environment|being a prominent}} {{w|climate change denier}}. Randall has published comics opposing climate change denial such as this: [[1732: Earth Temperature Timeline]], published less than two months before the election, as well as several other [[:Category:Climate change|comics on climate change]]. Also, Trump beating Clinton made Randall's [[1313: Regex Golf|regex that matches the last names of elected US presidents but not their opponents]] impossible to update. All the information on the bottom half of the comic includes sites, numbers, info, etc., current as of 2016, that are intended to help US voters to vote, regardless of whom they vote for. Including this information can assist voters who don't understand the process, don't feel that it's worth it, or feel intimidated or threatened. In general, these sites and numbers were likely included to help boost voter turnout.

The title text, "We can do this", refers to Randall's desire to unite Democratic voters and elect Hillary Clinton to the White House instead of Trump. One can [https://www.lookhuman.com/design/86542-hillary-clinton-we-can-do-it/tshirt buy T-shirts] with the famed "{{w|We Can Do It!}}" logo from the Rosie the Riveter wartime poster, but with Hillary Clinton in the famed position. Both resemble the former president {{w|Barack Obama}}'s campaign slogan {{w|Barack Obama 2008 presidential campaign#Slogan|Yes We Can}} and German Chancellor {{w|Angela Merkel}}'s "[https://www.dict.cc/?s=Wir+schaffen+das+%5BAngela+Merkel%5D Wir schaffen das]" (We can do this) refrain during the Syrian War refugees influx the year earlier—like Clinton, Merkel was fighting against {{w|Pegida|a populist nativist movement}} that wanted to close the country's borders. Although the title text wasn't originally meant as a joke, we in the future, aware of the election results, can extract humor from it in the form of {{w|Irony#Dramatic irony|dramatic irony.}}

===How to help===
The list of things that can help is all about getting people to vote. While Randall is likely to have wanted to boost voter turnout regardless of political leanings, it's clear from his endorsement of Clinton that he believed increased turnout would have helped her win the race. There is general evidence that certain more heavily Democratic-leaning demographics are less likely to vote, and in this election in particular, the various political issues that had been raised against Hillary (such as the {{w|Federal Bureau of Investigation|FBI's}} public disclosures of its investigation into her use of a private email server) were shown to have reduced enthusiasm among Democrats. But all these issues aside, both Republicans and Democrats alike agree on encouraging everyone to vote, and Randall is likely to have agreed with that sentiment as well.

Here is Randall's list of suggestions for how to help Hillary Clinton win the election:
{|class="wikitable"
!Suggestion
!Tip
!Explanation
|-
|Vote
|[https://iwillvote.com/ iwillvote.com]
|A site to look up polling locations, ID requirements, etc.
|-
|Get a ride to the polls:
|[http://www.drive2vote.org/ drive2vote.org]
|For voters in Douglas and Sarpy County, Nebraska, who needed a ride to the polls from {{w|Warren Buffett}} or his friends.
|-
|If you're having problems voting
|[http://www.866ourvote.org/ 866-OUR-VOTE]
|Racism or other biases on the part of people running polling places is a real issue for minorities. Though it is illegal, people may lie or deny rights to would-be-voters who they believe will not vote for the candidate they agree with. In some instances, voters may require backup from someone with legal understanding to get to vote, which is a service this phone number provides. Since Donald Trump has suggested that unofficial {{w|poll watchers}} should patrol voting stations—which has been described as potential [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/05/election-day-violence-donald-trump-poll-watchers voter intimidation]—this has been an especially widely discussed topic in this election. The phone number written out as numbers is 866-687-8683.
|-
|Experimental social turnout project
|[http://www.civicinnovation.com/ civicinnovation.com] App Store: VoteWithMe
|An app which "gives you a list of the top 10 highest-impact potential voters in your address book to get in touch with -- based on the likelihood that they support progressive candidates, and that they live in states with the most competitive races". This app is for Android and iOS, with the App Store ID as "VoteWithMe". The "VoteWithMe" app is created by Civic Innovation Works and "uses publicly available voter records to predict which of your contacts are likely to support Democratic candidates, but might not have a plan to vote", as it says on its [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/votewithme/id1170104517/ App Store Page].
|-
|Reminder:
|If you're in line when the polls close, they have to let you vote.
|This is correct, as is printed on most election pamphlets as part of the ''Voters' Bill of Rights'', as well as being cited on numerous sources online (e.g. [http://votersedge.kqed.org/en/ca/ballot/election/area/42/section/voting-info?id=statewide-42-ca#section-my-rights-as-a-voter here].) Being turned down for trying to vote after the polling place is officially closed (if you were already in line ''when'' the polls closed) might be an instance where you want to use the phone number mentioned above.
|}

===Character gallery===
The comic shows a gallery of 11 xkcd characters including all the main characters from xkcd (except [[Hairy]]), which stand united behind Randall and Clinton despite their lack of agreement in many other comics.

From left to right on the left side of the H are 
*[[Ponytail]] with a ray gun that she wielded in [[322: Pix Plz]] (wherein she was named Joanna), for the purposes melting computers of persons whom make snide remarks at women. Possibly a reference to {{w|Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations|Donald Trump's alleged sexual harassment of women}}.
*[[Black Hat]], who was the one introducing Joanna/Ponytail in the mentioned comic
*[[Danish]], Black Hat's girlfriend setting up a kite, although it could be Megan, but she is also shown later with her regular shorter hair. However, it has mainly been Megan in comics with kites, like [[235: Kite]] and [[1614: Kites]]. Kites are a [[:Category:Kites|recurring theme]] on xkcd.
*[[White Hat]] looking at the kite.
On top of the H are
*[[Blondie]], (looking out at us, maybe representing Clinton herself)
*[[Megan]], (next to Cueball)
*[[Cueball]], (forming the standard couple in xkcd with Megan)
*[[Hairbun]] with glasses (so specifically not the one from the previous comic [[1755: Old Days]], but rather like in [[1637: Salt Mine]]).
On the right side of the H are
*Hairbun without glasses holding her hand out towards a cute squirrel. This could be a reference to [[635: Locke and Demosthenes]], where the squirrel is poisoned.
*[[Beret Guy]] holding a squirrel out towards Hairbun without glasses. The first time squirrels were mentioned was actually when Beret Guy found them in a tree in [[167: Nihilism]] and since then they have become a [[:Category:Squirrels|recurring theme]] on xkcd and a similar squirrel can for instance be seen in [[1503: Squirrel Plan]].
*[[:Category:Multiple Cueballs|Another Cueball]] standing on an office chair wielding a sword as in [[303: Compiling]]. Interestingly enough the previous comic [[1755: Old Days]] was about Cueball asking Hairbun about {{w|compiling}} in the old days. Seems realistic that Randall has this comic ready for this Monday before the election for some time, and when finding this 9-yeared version of Cueball in the old comics, he may have gotten inspired to make a comic about compiling in the old days.)

Note that the two characters at either side of the comic wield weapons pointing out, defending the other nine. Those next to the characters with weapons are doing recreational things like kiting and admiring adorable squirrels, both of which are recurring subjects in xkcd.

==Transcript==
:[Inset: Eleven characters are drawn around a huge H with a rightwards arrow as the horizontal bar connecting the two vertical towers. Ponytail stands on the left with a raygun looking leftwards. Behind her is Black Hat who looks at a girl that might be Danish or Megan (but with longer hair than Megan typically has). She is flying a kite above the first two characters. Behind her and looking up at the kite is White Hat. The H is right behind him, and on top of the left tower sits Blondie looking straight out at the reader with her legs dangling over the edge and her arms resting on her knees. On the arrow sits Megan leaning against the left tower, also dangling her legs over the edge and arms resting on her knees. Cueball stands to her right by the right tower. On top of the right tower sits Hairbun with glasses looking straight right with her legs dangling over the edge one arm resting on a knee and leaning back on the other arm. On the right side of the H is Hairbun without glasses holding a handout towards the squirrel which Beret Guy is holding out in both arms towards her. Another Cueball stands on an office chair on the right brandishing a sword looking rightwards. He keeps his balance by holding his other arm out behind him.
:Caption]
: <big><big>I'm with her.</big></big>

:[Centred]
:<big>How to help</big>
:Vote―iwillvote.com
:Get a ride to the polls―drive2vote.org
:If you're having problems voting―866-OUR-VOTE
:Experimental social turnout project―civicinnovation.com App Store: VoteWithMe
:<big>Reminder:</big>
:If you're in line when the polls close, they have to let you vote.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Danish]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Jill]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring politicians]] 
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Elections]]
[[Category:Kites]]
[[Category:Squirrels]]

1748: Future Archaeology

2025-10-22T22:09:47Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1748
| date = October 19, 2016
| title = Future Archaeology
| image = future_archaeology.png
| titletext = "The only link we've found between the two documents is that a fragment of the Noah one mentions Aaron's brother Moses parting an ocean. Is that right?" "... yes. Yes, exactly."
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
The comic is a direct continuation of the previous comic [[1747: Spider Paleontology]] about a {{w|time travel|time-traveling}} energy Sphere who came back from the future to see [[:Category:Spiders|spiders]]. Since [[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] now have access to the Sphere from the future, they ask if it knows who will win the election. This is a reference to the {{w|2016 United States presidential election}}, which pitted the ''very'' controversial [[Donald Trump]] against former United States First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State {{w|Hillary Clinton}}, who was also involved in several {{w|Hillary_Clinton_email_controversy|controversies}}. This comic was released about three weeks before election day. (The election was the subject of the comic released the day before the election [[1756: I'm With Her]], in which [[Randall]] endorsed Clinton directly.)

Sadly for Megan and Cueball, the sphere has come back from so far into the future that even spiders have gone extinct. (Whether humans also have is unclear, see [[1747: Spider Paleontology]]). The Sphere makes this clear by stating that its civilization hardly knows anything about our era, and they know little about our history and culture. (And by the way it only came back for the spiders, anyway). The idea is that history is filtered in similar fashion to fossils. What is contemporaneously important, like a {{w|spider web|spider's web}}, {{w|Feathered dinosaur|dinosaur feathers}} (see previous comic), or the United States presidential election may not survive. The Sphere tells them that only two written accounts have been reconstructed (note that they are not found in their entirety). And they do not know whether they even represent real events or myths. One of the two is indeed a myth, as it is about a man building a boat to survive a great flood. Megan recognizes this as being about {{w|Noah}} and his famous {{w|Noah's Ark|Ark}} from the {{w|Genesis flood narrative}}, as Cueball refers to. The other is a reference to a popular pop song.

The joke is that, in the future, the 2000 {{w|Aaron Carter}} hip hop song "{{w|That's How I Beat Shaq}}" ([http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/aaroncarter/thatshowibeatshaq.html lyrics] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfhhWA9GF0M video]) is considered as valuable a historical document when researching humans as parts of the {{w|Bible}}. While secular historians consider the story of the Flood to be mythical, they still use it to infer facts about the early history of the Middle East, simply because there are a fairly small number of texts surviving from that era. "That's How I Beat Shaq" is, likewise, a fictional story including some true elements; it's just that as long as there are abundant sources documenting life in the year 2000, there's no reason to consult the song in any historical context. Yet it is the latter story that the time traveler assumes to be a clearly religious one, while seeing the former as a relatively straightforward survival story. A further layer of humor is that "That's How I Beat Shaq" is an archetypal {{w|David and Goliath}} story—the story of David and Goliath of course being a Biblical one as well.

In fact, the Spheres civilization believes Shaq ({{w|Shaquille O'Neal}}, a 2.16 m (7 ft 1 in) tall professional basketball player) to be a god, who was then defeated by Aaron, a 14-year-old (and rather small kid) at the time of the release of his single in 2001. He beats Shaq on the basketball court one on one. Megan comments that the pop song may have been mangled by the {{w|Aeon|eons}}.

The title text expands on the joke by letting the Sphere explain that the only connection they have found between their two historical documents is via the biblical story of {{w|Moses}}. As Moses is one of God's chosen prophets and leaders, like Noah and {{w|Abraham}} before him, these two stories appear close together in the Bible, though not close together chronologically, and it would be likely that their document with the Flood story also has some parts about Moses. Moses had an older biological brother named {{w|Aaron}} and the Sphere's civilization has hastily concluded that Moses' brother and Aaron Carter are the same. According to the Bible, God {{w|parting of the Red Sea|parted the Sea of Reeds (commonly mistranslated as Red Sea)}} for Moses and the {{w|Israelites}}. This is often referred to, either erroneously or out of simplification, as Moses having parted the Red Sea. Along with Noah's Flood, this is one of the two major times in the Bible that God effects grand change on a body or bodies of water.

This comic was published the day after the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|152|Flood Death Valley}}'', thus referring indirectly to a new possible flood history. It was the first what if? post in almost three months, the longest break between two post during 2016 (and third longest of all time at the time of its release), and it thus seems reasonable that there should be some kind of connection between that and this comic. A later comic ([[1750: Life Goals]]) also referenced this what if? post more or less directly. In this comic, Randall managed to combine no less than four of his favorite recurring subjects with [[:Category:Time travel|time travel]], [[:Category:Spiders|spiders]], [[:Category:Politics|politics]] and [[:Category:Religion|religion]].

==Transcript==
:[The Sphere, a time-traveler depicted as a solid floating black energy sphere surrounded by six outwardly-curved segments (first seen in the previous comic), is floating in front of Megan and Cueball who is walking after it towards the right part of the panel. The Sphere looks like this in all panels, but in the zoom in from panel two more details can be seen. A voice emanates from the Sphere.]
:Megan: Since you're from the future, do you know who wins the election?
:Sphere: Haven't the faintest idea. Hardly any text has been recovered from your era, so we know little about your history and culture.
:Sphere: We're mostly here for the spiders, anyway. 

:[A close-up of the Sphere, still depicted as a black sphere, but not perfectly round at this zoom level and also clearly with some white dots in the dark area. It is still surrounded by six narrow rays with irregular dots between the rays.]
:Sphere: There are only two written accounts we've reconstructed.
:Sphere: We don't know whether they describe real events or myths.

:[The Sphere is now on the left side of Megan and Cueball who has stopped walking and has turned to look at the Sphere.]
:Sphere: One is a story about a man who built a boat to survive a great flood.
:Megan: Oh yeah. Noah.
:Cueball: We do like our flood narratives.

:[The Sphere has drifted further away from Megan and Cueball.]
:Sphere: The other is an account of how a man named Aaron Carter defeated a god named Shaq.
:Megan: That one may have been mangled a bit by the eons.

==Trivia==
Both [[1747: Spider Paleontology]] and this comic have a title composed of a noun followed by a field of research.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]] 
[[Category:Time travel]]
[[Category:Spiders]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:Basketball]] 
[[Category:Songs]] 
[[Category:Time-Traveling Sphere]]

1747: Spider Paleontology

2025-10-22T22:09:14Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1747
| date = October 17, 2016
| title = Spider Paleontology
| image = spider_paleontology.png
| titletext = Whenever you see a video of birds doing something weird, remember: Birds are a small subset of dinosaurs, so the weirdness of birds is a small subset of the weirdness of dinosaurs.
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
This comic was followed by [[1748: Future Archaeology]]. A {{w|time travel|time-traveler}} that looks like a floating black energy sphere visits the present day from the far future. [[:Category:Spiders|Spiders]] are the Sphere civilization's current craze, just as {{w|dinosaurs}} are currently the craze of humanity. The [[:Category:Jurassic Park|Jurassic Park]] media franchise began with the {{w|Jurassic Park (film)|first film}} in 1993 and the year before the release of this comic in 2016, the fourth movie {{w|Jurassic World}} were released with at least {{w|Jurassic_Park#Fifth_film_.282018.29|one more film}} in development. We also have {{w|Dinosaur World (theme parks)|theme parks}} and kids dressing up as dinosaurs.

The time-traveler arrives in the presence of [[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] and tells them who it is and why it is here, to see spiders which they learned about through {{w|fossils}}. Megan points it towards a spider sitting in its web; the Sphere is awestruck to see the object of its obsession in the living flesh, but seeing it sitting in it's web, the Sphere asks why it has been caught. Megan realizes that because it only knows about spiders from fossils, it could come as a big surprise that the spiders sit in their webs like this. {{w|Spider web|Spider silk}} does in fact {{w|Spider#Fossil_record|fossilize in amber}} (and most fossils of spiders are also found in {{w|amber}} because the soft body of a spider does not easily {{w|petrify}}). The reason we know that silk threads in amber are the spider's web is because we can compare fossils with the spiders of today. If not for the fact that we knew about spiders' webs in advance, it would be hard to say if we would have made the connection from the amber fossils. The Sphere is thus surprised to see the spider in a web since they had not understood any possible hint of spider webs in the fossil records, from which the Sphere's civilization gathered all their knowledge of spiders. Spiders have been on Earth at {{w|Spider#Evolution|least for 380 million years}} and are still thriving and more than 40,000 species are known.

With our current knowledge, we know that webs are an essential part of a spider's life. Making sense of a spider's life is practically impossible without including their webs. However, the future-people have done just that until now; discovering how wrong they are is bound to become an intense experience for them. It should be noted that there have been multiple present-day discoveries of fossilized spiders' webs preserved in amber - however, since fossils forming like this is a rare event, it is quite possible that none would have been found (or rediscovered our own current stock) by the future-people.

Megan immediately connects the fact that the Sphere did not know about spider webs to our current understanding of dinosaurs: If a future civilization thinks they understand spiders based on fossils, while missing something as essential as their web, what is the human civilization missing about dinosaurs? Cueball quickly catches on, and Megan asks if they can borrow the time-machine to experience their own revelations about dinosaurs just like the revelation the Sphere has just had about spiders.

The title text calls back to one of [[Randall|Randall's]] favorite facts (see [[1211: Birds and Dinosaurs]]) - that {{w|birds}} are technically part of the {{w|clade}} ''Dinosauria''. Birds do lots of weird stuff - like [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eakKfY5aHmY starlings flocking], [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7QZnwKqopo the dances of birds of paradise], [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjE0Kdfos4Y lyrebird mimicry] or [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ii_w8og8RXg petrels puking stomach oil]. Randall says that for every time a bird does something weird then it is likely that dinosaurs would have had equally strange behaviors, and birds are only a small subset of all dinosaurs. So there would have been even more strange behaviors among the dinosaurs than among the present days birds. It is, however, basically impossible to tell from the fossil record. All we know is that dinosaurs had features such as display feathers (like on a {{w|Peafowl}} (a descendant of dinosaurs)), {{w|neck frill|neck frills}}, and crests (like on the {{w|Dimetrodon}}, which lived before the dinosaur with which it is not related) which likely played a role in mating and territorial shows.

It is unclear what the Sphere is. Since it states that what they know about spiders comes from fossils on our planet, it seems likely that the Sphere is neither human nor from our planet. So most likely they are a space traveling species and not human. The appearance as a sphere may either be an indication that they did not travel in person but rather only look out at the past through the energy sphere, or it may be that these aliens are actually spheres, floating as energized objects in space. In that case this is an actual alien floating in front of Megan and Cueball. It seems like the Sphere's civilization already had the spider craze before they invented time travel, and they decided to use time travel the first time to go back to see real spiders on Earth. This also tells us that they are from so far into the future that there are no spiders left. Of course with climate changes etc. going on, that may not necessarily be too far into the future. As long as the human race (or knowledge of spiders) has also disappeared from Earth. But since the Sphere itself tells us that it comes from a distant future, the setting is not related to how fast humans and spiders becomes extinct. As is seen in the next follow up comic, there is very little left of our current civilization, and no records of spiders and their webs.

This is the second comic with special mentioning of a science related directly to spiders, the first being [[1135: Arachnoneurology]].

In this comic Randall manages to combine no less than three of his favorite recurring subjects with [[:Category:Time travel|time travel]], [[:Category:Spiders|spiders]] and, of course, [[:Category:Dinosaurs|dinosaurs]].

==Transcript==
:[The Sphere, a time-traveler depicted as a solid floating black energy sphere surrounded by six outwardly-curved segments) seems to have materialized in front of Megan and Cueball who is in the right part of the panel facing left towards it. The Sphere looks like this except in the zoom in from panel two. A voice emanates from the Sphere.]
:Sphere: I'm here from the distant future!
:Megan: Cool! What for?
:Sphere: ''Spiders!''

:[A close-up of the Sphere, still depicted as a black sphere, but not perfectly round at this zoom level and also clearly with some white dots in the dark area. It is also now surrounded by seven (rather than six) narrow rays with irregular dots between the rays. Megan answers it from off-panel.]
:Sphere: We've learned about your planet's spiders from fossils.
:Sphere: There's a whole spider craze. We have spider theme parks, spider movies, spider costumes...
:Sphere: Such beautiful animals!
:Megan (off-panel): I guess...

:[Same setting as in the first panel but Megan is pointing left past the Sphere.]
:Sphere: Now we've got time travel, so I'm here to see one for myself!
:Megan: Sure! There's one over there!

:[The Sphere floats over a leafless branch sticking out of the ground. A spider web is strung between the left border of the panel (four spokes) and the branch (three spokes). A spider (almost as large as the Sphere) sits in the center of the web. Megan answers it from off-panel.]
:Sphere: ''Woowwww!''
:Sphere: What's that giant net it's caught in?
:Megan (off-panel): You mean its web?
:Sphere: Its what?

:[Same setting as in the first panel.]
:Megan: Oh, right, fossils. So you wouldn't know about...

:[In a frame-less panel only Megan is shown facing left while she ponders. Beat panel.]
:Megan: ...

:[Again a scene similar to the first.]
:Megan: Oh my God. Dinosaurs must have been ''so weird''.
:Cueball: Holy crap, yeah.
:Megan: Listen, can we borrow your time machine?

==Trivia==
Both [[1748: Future Archaeology]] and this comic have a title composed of a noun followed by a field of research.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Time travel]]
[[Category:Spiders]]
[[Category:Dinosaurs]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Time-Traveling Sphere]]

1738: Moon Shapes

2025-10-22T22:07:57Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1738
| date = September 26, 2016
| title = Moon Shapes
| image = moon_shapes.png
| titletext = Whenever I see a picture of the moon where the points go more than halfway around, I assume it's being eclipsed by one of those Independence Day ships and interpret the rest of the image in light of that.
}}
{{TOC}}
==Explanation==
The Earth's {{w|Moon}}, being the most prominent object in the night sky (most of the time), is a frequent subject of art; particularly art depicting a nighttime scene. Unfortunately, the Moon often appears in works of art in ways that are very dramatic and would not be realistically possible. It may be done out of ignorance, or knowingly by taking {{w|artistic license}}. As someone interested in and who has worked in astronomy, this likely bothers [[Randall]].

The Moon is well known to have "{{w|lunar phase|phases}}" describing what portion of the visible surface of the Moon is illuminated by sunlight and highly visible, and what portion is dark, and generally only slightly visible when the Moon appears while the Sun is also up. These phases progress between "New" (when the surface facing the Earth is completely dark) and "Full" (when the surface facing the Earth is completely illuminated, appearing as a full disk as viewed from Earth). Mid-way between those extreme phases is a "Quarter" Moon, when exactly one-half of the surface facing Earth is completely dark - at this point the Moon is a quarter of the way in its cycle from the New Moon, either one quarter of the way into it ("First" Quarter) or a quarter of the way from completing it ("Last" Quarter).

Because the Moon is approximately spherical, its illuminated side appears as "crescent" in shape as it progresses from New to First Quarter phase. As it progresses from First Quarter to Full phase, observers on Earth see a Waxing "[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gibbous Gibbous] Moon (which just means that the dark portion has formed a crescent). One can imagine this like a globe on which you draw a straight line from the north pole to the south pole down the center of the side facing you (appearing to create two semi-circles); upon rotating the globe, the line would become rounded as it moved away creating a crescent on the side the line was moved towards. Because of the geometry involved, a line connecting the two points (horns) of a Crescent Moon (or of the darkened crescent inverse of a Gibbous Moon) must be a diameter of the Moon (i.e. it must pass through the center of the circle).

The deliberate misidentification of a Waxing Gibbous Moon ("waxing" means going from new to full; that is increasing in illuminated area) as a "wax gibbon" (a Southeast Asian ape made of a nonpolar solid) is a source of humor in this comic. This is probably a reference to H.P. Lovecraft, who had several of his stories take place under "a gibbous moon" for dramatic effect, or even more likely a reference to the {{w|Discworld}} by {{w|Terry Pratchett}}, often referenced in xkcd (as in [[1498: Terry Pratchett]]). In the witch series the Gibbous Moon is mentioned several times as the most magic, rather than the more often used Crescent or Full Moon.

Further, because the light portion of the Moon is illuminated by sunlight (whether or not the Moon is in the sky at the same time as the Sun), the light side of the Moon will always be facing towards the Sun. If the Moon is in the night sky, the Sun must be somewhere "below" the horizon on the other side of the Earth. Thus, at night, the light portion of the Moon must always be on the half of the Moon that faces the horizon (there are points during the daytime when the orientation can go the other way); however, because of the [https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~amyers/MoonPaper20June.pdf moon tilt illusion] it is possible for the light portion of the Moon to appear to point up. The [https://www.academia.edu/7848972/THE_MOON_TILT_ILLUSION moon tilt illusion] is generally not as severe and may only last a few hours after sunset.

All this relies upon the 'direction' of the Moon's curve (the direction in which the lit part bulges) pointing towards the Sun, which the observer may or may not see but could also infer the direction of if they have a good idea of what the local time is (before or after midnight) and/or what general orbital track the Sun and Moon are taking across the sky (the ecliptic, a track which may appear curved against the night sky and horizon). By knowing either, clearly observing the Moon can be useful in determining the other and aid in night-time navigation/time-keeping, as the amount of crescentness also indicates how close below the horizon a recently set (or soon to rise) Sun will be, for any given position of the Moon itself. Not depicted here, but commonly seen in illustrations, is a crescent Moon 'facing' by its concave indent (often styled with sharply jutting chin and forehead) the Sun, when the rounded bulge of the lit hemisphere should be the one directed at its solar lightsource. When the Moon is too full to note even a gibbous assymetry, this is because the Sun is (more or less) ''exactly'' opposite the Moon, from the earthly observer's point of view. If the Moon has just risen, the Sun will have (or, if the Moon is not quite full, perhaps very soon will) set at the other side of the horizon (its relative position depending upon latitude and season); if the Moon is full and close to setting, the Sun is similarly close to rising; if the Moon is at its highest point and seems to be at its fullest, the Sun is at its lowest (below and behind the observer, and it is close to astronomical midnight — thus, similarly, a Moon should also not be depicted as full, or significantly gibbous, when ''next'' to a storybook Sun.

It is worth noting that while the Moon's dark portion blends imperceptibly with the dark night sky, it is still a solid body. Therefore, it would be impossible to see more distant objects such as stars "through" the dark portion of the Moon's circumference. This is most dramatically exemplified by a {{w|solar eclipse}} during which the Moon passes in front of the Sun and is therefore completely dark (the Sun is lighting only the far side), but the Moon's circumference still blocks a circular portion of the Sun's light. Therefore, if we were to see any lights in the part of the sky the dark side of the Moon blocks, they would need to be from sources between us and the Moon's surface, such as a nuclear war on the Moon.

This comic lists some of some common mistakes. In some cases, a depiction may be unrealistic in multiple ways - for example, the {{w|Flag of Tunisia}} has both unrealistic horns and a star visible between the horns, while {{w|File:Moon tarot charles6.jpg|the Charles VI tarot}} shows a Moon with over-long horns pointing towards the horizon.

In the title text, Randall is referring to the movie {{w|Independence Day (1996 film)|''Independence Day''}} and how one of the alien's ships (in the movie) 'eclipses' part of the Moon. He says that if the points go halfway or longer around the Moon, then he imagines it's caused by an alien ship and interprets the entire piece of art in that context (i.e. aliens are about to attack those shepherds!).

==Table of Moon shapes==
{| class="wikitable"
!#
!Image
!Shape
!Rating
!Text
!Explanation
!Examples
|-
!1
| [[File:moon1.jpg]]|| Full moon || Normal || rowspan="3" | "Full" or "Quarter" or "Harvest" or "Wax Gibbon" or whatever || Reality. The full moon cannot really be drawn incorrectly, and will look like this whenever it is up at night.
|-
!2
|[[File:moon2.jpg]]|| Gibbous moon || Normal || Reality, as in this is how one of the moon's phases looks on a normal basis.
|-
!3
|[[File:moon4a.jpg]]|| Crescent moon with horns away from horizon || Normal || Reality, as in this is how one of the moon's phases looks on a normal basis.
|-
!4
|[[File:moon3.jpg]]|| Crescent moon with horns towards horizon || Not normal || Not possible at night || This can only happen when the sun is above the horizon. Since a crescent moon means that the Sun and the Moon are relatively close in the sky, the Moon would not be visible with a naked eye, its light completely outshone by the sunlight. Randall comments that this is possible only during the daytime, marking it wrong as the background would not be black. According to this [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_phase#/media/File:Moon_phases_en.jpg image] on Wikipedia's article on {{w|lunar phase}} "Phases of the Moon, as seen looking southward from the {{w|northern hemisphere}}. The {{w|southern hemisphere}} will see each phase rotated through 180°". This might seem to indicate that shape #3, which is visible in for instance USA where Randall lives should be seen like #4 in the southern part of South America, also at night! However, because the light portion of the moon is illuminated by sunlight (whether or not the moon is in the sky at the same time as the sun), the light side of the moon will always be facing towards the sun. If the moon is in the night sky, the sun must be somewhere "below" the horizon on the other side of the Earth. Thus, at night, the light portion of the moon must always be on the half of the moon that faces the horizon; However, in the case of twilight after sunset and shortly after (like the example painting), due to the [https://www.academia.edu/7848972/THE_MOON_TILT_ILLUSION moon tilt][https://www.seas.upenn.edu/~amyers/MoonPaper20June.pdf illusion] the bright side of the moon may appear to point up relative to an observer on the ground (although not to the extent show in the comic). But as the text from Randall points out there can be times during daytime when the orientation can go the other way. But then the background should not be black. Originally Randall wrote a different (wrong) sentence here and then corrected to the one currently explained, see [[#Trivia|trivia]] below.|| Van Gogh, {{w|File:Van Gogh - Passeio ao Crepúsculo.jpg|Landscape with Couple Walking and Crescent Moon}}
|-
!5
|[[File:moon5a.jpg]]|| Wide crescent-like moon where the horns don't connect through a diameter || Not normal|| rowspan="2" | Only possible during a lunar eclipse (#1 only, dubious) or a solar eclipse (bright part is the Sun) || This is only possible during a partial solar eclipse or the start of an annular eclipse (in which cases the lit portion is not the moon, but the sun), or else if the Earth is casting its partial shadow on the Moon, a penumbral lunar eclipse. Randall labels the lunar eclipse "dubious", since the shadow during penumbral eclipse would be much lighter than shown here, in fact barely visible as a slight darkening of the Moon's surface. The Earth's shadow, being very large, would also likely cast a less-rounded edge than depicted here. ||
|-
!6
|[[File:moon6.jpg]]|| Narrow crescent-like moon where the points don't connect through a diameter || Not normal || This situation is even harder to create than the previous one - unlike the previous example, here the diameter of the entire shadow is clear, and is too small for the Earth's shadow in a lunar eclipse. A huge ''Independence Day'' spaceship (as per the Title text) might be the right size. It does however resemble a partial {{w|annular eclipse}} if you imagine that the black area is the moon covering up the white sun. || {{w|File:AlcoholicBluesCoverVonTilze.jpg|Alcoholic Blues}}. Van Gogh, {{w|File:Van Gogh - Starry Night - Google Art Project.jpg|Starry Night}} but turned the other way.
|-
!7
|[[File:moon7.jpg]]|| Crescent moon blocking stars|| Normal || Looks OK || Reality (as in image 3) with stars shown around the moon, but not any inside the sphere of the sky that would be blocked by the dark (but still present) side of the moon. (See [[#Trivia|trivia]] below though). ||
|-
!8
|[[File:moon8.jpg]]|| Crescent moon with stars between horns || Not normal || There's either a hole in the Moon or a nuclear war on its surface || Many people (including artists) seem to forget that the dark portion of the moon is still a solid object that we cannot see through.[https://imgur.com/S30fuOj][https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/a7/7d/4a/a77d4ae9e3549e36edd350246d33700c.jpg] If stars are visible, there are either one or more holes in the moon, or the light-source is actually on the moon, such as nuclear explosions. As the {{w|Star and Crescent}}, the image is sometimes considered a symbol of Islam, although it's relatively recent and there's no traditional basis for putting the star ''between'' the horns - as originally used on the Flag of Turkey, the star appears in a realistic position. The flags of Algeria, Tunisia and some other countries show the star in the dark part of the moon. In the first Edwin Blashfield, {{w|File:Edwin Blashfield - Spring Scattering Stars.jpg|Spring Scattering Stars}} a God is standing on the moon throwing stars down, but then these stars are actually in front of the moon and are good. Nothing in the image suggest that stars can be seen through the dark part of the moon. Also, the {{w|DreamWorks Animation}} logo shows no stars. Although both show persons sitting on the seal, this is thus also clearly not an effort to make it look real. But in neither case stars can be seen in the moon. This is also the case for the live [https://youtu.be/xPpy8mYHQps?t=11 DreamWorks logo from movies]. Here there are stars in the background, but they are not inside the moon as [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/f/f5/1738_Moon_Shapes_DreamWorks_logo_With_Moon_Circle.PNG can be seen here]. || An example can be found in the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/2/26/1738_Moon_Shapes_Mole_Car_Moon_With_Stars_Inside.png image on the last page] of [https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-mole-got-his-car/dp/B0000CKRB4 How mole got his car] with the {{w|Mole (Zdeněk Miler character)|Mole}} from the cartoon series by {{w|Zdeněk Miler}}. This is not just showing the stars inside from the last shape, but also the type of moon shown in the sixth image.
|}

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the panel:]
:'''Interpreting the shape of the moon in art'''
:[The left part of the panel shows a two-column chart is shown with labels above the columns. The left side shows the moons shape as white on a black square. These types of moons could be seen in certain art pieces. The right side saying whether this is normal or not as indicated with a green check mark or a red X. Right of the second column there are explanations of why the specific type of moon is marked as it is and what it could be called or how it could be possible even with the red X. The upper three moons have one common explanation as indicated with a bracket that covers all three with the text on the middle part of the bracket. Similarly moon five and six also have a bracket and only one explanation.]
:Shape Normal?

:[Shape #1-3 shows a white circle (full moon), a more than half full moon (Gibbon) and a thin seal at the bottom right of the square.]
:<big>✓</big>
:<big>✓</big> "Full" or "Quarter" or "Harvest" or "Wax Gibbon" or whatever
:<big>✓</big>

:[Shape #4 same as #3 but with the seal in the upper part of the square.]
:<big>X</big> Not possible at night

:[Shape #5-6 shows a full moon with a circular section taken out of the right side and a seal that goes almost all the way around the circumference of the moon with almost a full circle taken out of the top left part of the moon.]
:<big>X</big>
:<big>X</big> Only possible during a lunar eclipse (#1 only, dubious) or a solar eclipse (bright part is the Sun)

:[Shape #7 same as #3 but with the seal a little smaller and more to the top and less to the left. Around the moon there are several starts represented with 29 small white dots. In the center of the black square there is a black circle, coinciding with the outer rim of the seal. Within this circle (the dark side of the moon) there are no stars!]
:<big>✓</big> Looks OK

:[Shape #8 same as #7 but apart from the 29 small white dots from before there are now also 6 more dots inside the dark circle with no stars in #7.]
:<big>X</big> There's either a hole in the Moon or a nuclear war on its surface.

==Trivia==
* In the [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/b/b9/20160928005719%21moon_shapes.png original version of the comic], the text for the fourth moon shape said "Only possible during a solar eclipse". The following day, [[Randall]] changed it to "Not possible at night". The [[Header text|header text]] for this comic was also changed to "Thank you to Phil Plait for the correction on #4!"

* The image of the crescent moon blocking the stars is slightly wrong because there are still lights on the surface of the moon. Here is a version of the moon showing its theoretical shape:
:[[File:moon7a.jpg]]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Fiction]] 
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Nuclear weapons]]
[[Category:Solar eclipses]]
[[Category:Comics edited after their publication]]

1735: Fashion Police and Grammar Police

2025-10-22T22:07:10Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1735
| date = September 19, 2016
| title = Fashion Police and Grammar Police
| image = fashion_police_and_grammar_police.png
| titletext = <nowiki>* Mad about jorts</nowiki>
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
In this comic, two groups of angry protesters are presented and labeled. They are ''most likely'' drawn side by side not because they're protesting in the same place, but to compare their similarities.

The left group represents the '''Fashion Police''' with [[Cueball]] holding a sign implying that {{w|Crocs}} are prohibited by showing Crocs shoe/sandal in a circle with a strike through it. Crocs are {{w|Clog|clogs}} made of foam. Crocs (and their imitators) have become fairly popular due to their low price, comfort, and ease of use, but are broadly considered {{w|Crocs#Fashion| unfashionable to wear in public}}. It is not the first time [[Randall]] mocks a special type of shoes, as previously, in [[1065: Shoes]], Randall was after shoes that ''has those creepy individual toes'' like {{w|Vibram FiveFingers}}. They will also never be a hit with the Fashion Police.{{Citation needed}}

The right group represents the '''Grammar Police''' with another Cueball holding a sign with the three homophones {{wiktionary|their|Their}} (belonging to them), {{wiktionary|they're|They're}} ("they are", contracted), and {{wiktionary|there|There}} (a location). These words are frequently confused for one another, due to their common usage and identical pronunciation, with one spelling then being used in a context meant for a different one and potentially provoking the Grammar Police to quickly intervene. See the [https://twitter.com/_grammar_ Grammar Police on Twitter] and {{w|Grammar Police|Linguistic prescription}}.

The two groups look similar, standing in similar poses, with Cueball holding a sign and [[Megan]] in the front line in both. Each group also has one member brandishing a sword, indicating the exaggerated level of intensity they feel about their respective causes.

Both types of people will correct, criticize, denigrate or mock those who fail to conform to their criteria for what is "correct". Fashion police oppose people wearing clothing that's mismatched, out of style/{{w|fashion}}, or simply "ugly" to them. Grammar police are "sticklers" for {{w|grammar}} rules and have an immediate negative reaction when someone uses non-standard grammar in a sentence. These two groups are generally seen as socially separate, and their goals appear very distinct, but the comic explains how the two groups are actually very similar. This is demonstrated by listing eight characteristics, plus one in the title text, common to both groups. See explanation in the [[#Table of individual items|table below]].

In the caption below the comic Randall notes that he had just realized that these are literally the same people because they both exhibit the listed traits.

It seems like a safe assumption that there are more grammar pedants (see title text of [[1652: Conditionals]]) than fashion police people who read xkcd, and it also would seem likely that many xkcd readers would dislike the Fashion Police. This comic may, therefore, be intended to point out to grammar pedants that their behavior is functionally similar to that of other people who they dislike. Ponytail also represented the grammar police in [[1576: I Could Care Less]], where Megan puts her in place after she polices her sentence; this thus shows what Randall thinks about such police work and supports the above assumption. In 1576: I Could Care Less, "literally" was also used in the title text.

Randall is, with regards to language, definitely one of those that can belong in this group: ''To seem cool and casual, pretend to ignore them while understanding them very well.''

The title is a ninth point to add to the list, with the asterisk in front representing one more bullet. See the last entry in the [[#Table of individual items|table below]] for more.

==Table of individual items==
{| class="wikitable"
|+Explanation of individual items in the list
!list item
!Explanation
|-
|Judgemental and Smug || Both groups tend to feel very comfortable in their own mastery of their particular field, and are frequently condescending to those who either lack their expertise, or are uninterested in meeting their standards.
|-
|Angry about something deeply arbitrary || Both grammar and fashion are, essentially, made-up human constructs.
|-
| Strong opinions backed by style guides || Grammar has ''{{w|The Elements of Style}}'', fashion has fashion magazines.
|-
| Appreciate that the way that you are interpreted is your responsibility || Whether or not you're interested in fashion or 'proper' grammar, how you dress and speak will impact how others perceive you, and often how they treat you. Whether this is fair or not, it is a reality, and each person is responsible for how they present themselves.
|-
| Understand that there's no way to "opt out" of sending messages by how you present yourself, and attempts to do so send strong messages of their own || As above, our dress and speech will be taken by others as sending messages about ourselves. Trying to ignore the rules of either grammar or fashion is, itself, a message, as it presents to the world that we refuse to live by this set of rules. Whether or not we're trying to convey that message, it is what will come across.
|-
|To seem cool and casual, pretend to ignore them while understanding them very well || People who appear to not understand the rules of either grammar or fashion will often be seen as ignorant or low-class. On the other hand, deliberately ignoring rules of either when it's clear that you've mastered them comes across as casual, since it's clear that you're choosing to play with the rules, rather than simply not knowing them.
|-
|Vindictive about things that are often uncomfortably transparent proxies for race or social class || This is probably the most impactful observation. Rules around fashion and grammar, being arbitrary, are generally set by the most powerful classes in any society, which often run along racial lines as well. As a result, the "proper" way to dress or speak generally remains associated with those classes. This association can be pragmatic, such as "fashionable" clothing being more expensive and hard for poor people to acquire, or it may simply be cultural, as 'proper' grammar is whatever's spoken in wealthy neighborhoods and schools, while language variants associated with poor people and minority groups is bluntly denounced as 'wrong', even if it has a fully consistent internal grammar. Similarly, fashions that are associated with poor and non-white social groups are broadly considered to be inappropriate, even if the reasons are arbitrary. As a result, such things become signifiers by which one can present oneself as being part of a social class. In America, it would be socially unacceptable to reject a job applicant because they grew up poor, and illegal to do so because of their race. However, rejecting an applicant for using 'improper' grammar, or for not wearing the right clothing or hairstyle, is standard practice. Randall identifies this fact as "uncomfortably transparent".

To be clear, it doesn't make one racist to dislike another's, or a group's, fashion choices or grammatical habits/rules.
|-
| Fun to cheer on until one of them disagrees with you|| As with any arbitrary set of rules, those that we're in agreement and comfortable with are easy to promote, and we may enjoy taking part in the condemnation of others. But that suddenly changes when we find ourselves on the outside, condemned for our own use of language or how we dress. At that point, the flaws of such groups become much harder to ignore.
|-
| Mad about jorts (Title text) || "{{w|Shorts#Jorts|Jorts}}" is a {{w|portmanteau}} for a pair of jeans that are made into shorts.

The fashion police would be mad about jorts for being unfashionable.

The grammar police would be mad about the word 'jorts' being an inappropriate portmanteau of jeans and shorts, and also for the fact that the sentence could be misinterpreted as if someone likes jorts, as in being "mad about" something in a positive way.

{{w|Sentence_clause_structure#Incomplete_sentence|Also a fragment}}, with no subject (properly it would be "I am mad about jorts" or "They are mad about jorts"). Randall has [[:Category:Portmanteau|often used]] portmanteaus as part of his jokes.

It is also possible that the Grammar police are indeed "mad about Jorts" in the positive sense, i.e Grammar Police love Jorts.
|}

==Transcript==
:[Beneath two headings to the left and right are shown two aggressive-looking groups of people with only the four people in the front clearly shown for each group. Behind them five other people can be seen, but they are drawn in grey and are only partially shown behind the first four, and legs from all five in each group can be seen along with some of their heads.]
:Left: Fashion Police
[From left to right, Hairy is holding one fist up to the left, Megan has her arms while crossed facing forward, a Cueball is holding a pole sign above his head with both hands facing a little to the left, displaying a single croc with a line through it and a circle around it, and another Cueball is holding a large stick to the right at head level. The person behind the rightmost Cueball has one fist raised, though not as high as Hairy.]
:Right: Grammar Police
[From left to right, Megan is holding both fists above her head to the left, a Cueball is holding a sign much like the Cueball in the Fashion Police, although he is facing to the right and his sign has "Their", "They're", and "There" written on top of each other, Ponytail has one fist raised, facing left, and a bald man wearing glasses is holding a sword in his left hand facing right while his right palm is raised face up.]

:[Below the two groups are eight points with bullets:]
:*Judgemental and smug
:*Angry about something deeply arbitrary
:*Strong opinions backed by style guides
:*Appreciate that the way that you are interpreted ''is'' your responsibility
:*Understand that there's no way to "opt out" of sending messages by how you present yourself, and attempts to do so send strong messages of their own
:*To seem cool and casual, pretend to ignore them while understanding them very well
:*Vindictive about things that are often uncomfortably transparent proxies for race or social class
:*Fun to cheer on until one of them disagrees with you

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I just realized these are literally the same people

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Portmanteau]]
[[Category:Pedantic]]

1731: Wrong

2025-10-22T22:04:38Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1731
| date = September 9, 2016
| title = Wrong
| image = wrong.png
| titletext = Hang on, I just remembered another thing I'm right about. See...
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
All matter that we encounter in everyday life is normal matter and not {{w|antimatter}}. Atoms, while once when they were named believed to be the smallest unit of matter, are now known to be made up of {{w|protons}}, {{w|neutrons}} and {{w|electrons}}. Protons and neutrons are in turn made up of {{w|quarks}}, which are fundamental particles (meaning not made of other particles). Quarks come in six different "{{w|Flavour (particle physics)|flavours}}" (up, down, top, bottom, charm, and strange), with protons and neutrons being made of up and down quarks. Each flavour also has a corresponding {{w|antiparticle}}, an antiquark, which would make up antiprotons and antineutrons.

[[White Hat]] and [[Megan]] appear to be discussing the topics of antimatter and subatomic particles. White Hat makes the assertion that we (referring to people and objects) are made partially of antimatter, because, as he claims, a proton (one of the particles which make up all matter) is made of two quarks and an antiquark. In fact, protons are made up of two up quarks and a down quark, which are all not antiquarks. He is likely making the mistake of mixing up the "up" and "down" flavours of quarks (which can be seen as complementary flavours of quarks) and mistaking them to be mutual antiparticles. He continues to elaborate on his idea by mentioning neutrons, which are made of two down quarks and an up quark.

When Megan (accurately) doubts his claim, White Hat takes out his smartphone to look it up, in order to show Megan that he is correct. However, upon researching online, he realizes that he was, in fact, '''wrong''' (hence the title of the comic). Not wanting to admit being incorrect or yield his position in the discussion, he convinces himself that he wasn't actually wrong, as depicted by his mentally erasing the realization that he was wrong. Instead, he completely changes the topic to try and re-frame it so that he is not wrong. In this case, he circles back and criticizes the entire scientific concept of "particles", which can be seen as an attempt at a {{w|straw man}} on his part. Presumably, he will go on to explain how humans are not made of particles and quarks, but of waves.

It is rather common to be unwilling to admit fault (the whole topic of this comic) and to instead try to maintain an air of infallibility and intelligence. Some people are just too prideful to admit that they are inherently fallible. White Hat is one of those people, as depicted in several of his earlier appearances (see [[#Trivia|trivia section]]). [[Randall]] uses this comic to criticize people who are unable to put aside their ego and re-assess what they know in the face of empirical data. Such thinking flies directly against scientific rigor (adding an extra layer of irony to the situation, since White Hat and Megan are discussing a ''scientific'' topic). This method had already been called ''wrong'' in [[803: Airfoil]].

White Hat's new topic, where he can be right, includes the {{w|quantum field theory}}, a very complicated field, which it is likely one Megan is not well versed in (inferred by the fact that she was not quite sure about the anti-quarks). So he may be raising the topic because he believes she will not understand it sufficiently to refute his correctness. Megan, however, recognizes exactly what he is trying to do, and can only sigh in response to his failed efforts. In the QFT, particles are often described as {{w|Resonance (particle physics)|resonances}} or {{w|excited state|excited states}} of the underlying physical field, in the same way as photons may be thought of as excitations in the electromagnetic field; in this way White Hat appears to be dismissing his earlier errors by implying that particles are merely an effect of something more complex, of which he can demonstrate his knowledge. Furthermore, in quantum field theory quarks do not exist in the conventional sense.

In the title text, White Hat just remembers another thing he's right about. This demonstrates even more clearly that he is not interested in a discussion on the merits of a topic, but instead is seeking only recognition and validation for being right. This bears some similarity to [[386: Duty Calls]], in which [[Cueball]] stays up late correcting someone on the Internet, and [[2051: Bad Opinions]], where Cueball actively seeks out people with bad opinions for him to correct.

White Hat may have incorrectly remembered that, while the valence quarks in a proton are all matter, quantum field theory says that protons also contain an indefinite number of "virtual" anti-quarks, quarks, and gluons. See this video ''[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LraNu_78sCwv What are Quarks?]'' about this. His final comment could be referring to the ontological debate over whether virtual particles are in some sense real or only an artefact of perturbation theory. Alternatively, he may have been confused by the fact that negatively charged quarks contribute negatively to baryon number. <nowiki></nowiki>

==Transcript==
:[White Hat is walking beside Megan, index finger extended]
:White Hat: Really, we're all made of antimatter. A proton consists of two quarks and an antiquark.
:Megan: ...I don't think that's right.

:[White Hat stops to take out his smartphone tapping on it. Megan stops and turns towards him.]
:White Hat: Sure it is. Neutrons are, too.
:Megan: Do you mean "up" and "down" quarks? I think antiquarks are a different thing.
:White Hat: No, let me show you...
:Tap
:Tap

:[Zooming in on White Hat's head, while he is holding his phone up looking at it. He is thinking as shown with a bubbly thought bubble.]
:White Hat (thinking): I'm...wrong?

:[White Hat has lowered the phone. He is still thinking the same but the text has been scribbled out.]
:White Hat (thinking): I'm...wrong?

:[White Hat purges the thought from his mind]
:White Hat (thinking): ...

:[Similar setting as in the first panel, but in a full row wide panel, and White Hat is still holding his smartphone]
:White Hat: Really, the whole idea of "particles" is inaccurate. These are abstractions arising from quantum field theory, but what most people don't realize is...
:Megan: *Sigh*

==Trivia==
*This comic could be seen as a follow up to [[1605: DNA]]. Going back through the last White Hat appearances it turns out that DNA, 13 White Hat comics back, is actually the last where White Hat has been the fall guy. For instance he has the opposite role in [[1640: Super Bowl Context]], and he is not "the stupid guy" in the comics between that and this one, but often just another guy than Cueball. Further back in [[1255: Columbus]] he was again the fall guy, and again it reminds a bit about this comic. Actually Megan even begins that comic with a *sigh* like she finished this one.
*Quarks are also referenced in [[1418: Horse]], [[1621: Fixion]] and the first time they were mentioned, in [[474: Turn-On]], all six flavors were also mentioned.
*Antimatter is also referenced in [[683: Science Montage]], [[826: Guest Week: Zach Weiner (SMBC)]] and [[1621: Fixion]] as well as being the subject of the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' article ''{{what if|114|Antimatter}}''. It was also mentioned in another ''what if?'': ''{{what if|79|Lake Tea}}''.
*A similar thought process where earlier thoughts are scribbled out was used by Cueball in [[1650: Baby]], but for different reasons.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Smartphones]]

1717: Pyramid Honey

2025-10-22T22:02:59Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1717
| date = August 8, 2016
| title = Pyramid Honey
| image = pyramid_honey.png
| titletext = They CLAIM honey was found in the chambers under the pyramids, but this conspiracy goes all the way to the TOP, where the GIANT EYE is!
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
Bee {{w|honey}} is a food item with natural antimicrobial properties. It can remain unspoiled for a person's entire lifetime, making it practically nonperishable for ordinary consumers. It is frequently claimed that archaeologists have found jars of honey that have been well-preserved for thousands of years in ancient tombs, often those found in {{w|Egyptian pyramids}}, hence the title ''Pyramid Honey''. The claims are generally assertions that may point to other similar assertions as supporting evidence but do not provide specific details, such as the identity of the actual tombs where such jars have been found, or the names of the archaeologists who have affirmed finding such jars. Repeated encounters with the assertion lead some people to claim that honey's shelf life is "infinite", which is a much stronger claim which would not necessarily be supported by the assertion even assuming it is true.

In the comic, [[Cueball]] tells [[Megan]] about an article in ''{{w|Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian Magazine}}'' (presumably [http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-science-behind-honeys-eternal-shelf-life-1218690/ this one]) that claims honey has an infinite shelf life. The article links to a book that makes the assertion of such findings but does not provide factual support of the findings. Megan thinks the source for this article, and others that covered the subject, is wrong and wants to refute them all. She tells Cueball ''Believe it or not'' which [[Black Hat]] hears and he immediately states that he believes her, and is convinced without hearing any arguments from Megan. He then decides to begin a Facebook page so he can ''tell the Internet'' without giving Megan a chance to explain any further.

"A hill to die on" is a phrase from {{w|Ernest Hemingway|Ernest Hemingway's}} 1940 novel "{{w|For Whom the Bell Tolls}}", about an American who volunteers in the 1936-1939 {{w|Spanish Civil War}} to fight {{w|fascism}}, who ends up wounded and alone, about to ambush the enemy to give his comrades a chance to escape; "a weird hill to die on" would thus mean a weird cause, if not a just one, to fight for to the bitter end. This expression is also the subject of [[2247: Weird Hill]]. Black Hat asserts that he needs such a cause because the "real" weird hills are too far from his house, humorously implying he would be equally satisfied with a literal weird hill.

Black Hat's actions are clearly premature since he has not heard any evidence to back up the claim and does not understand the nuances of Megan's position. Cueball states that it could have gone better, whereas Megan seems to be resigned to it, perhaps as it notionally supports her (aborted) argument and it's at least a short-term 'win' that she won't fuss over the details of.

Presumably, the best Black Hat can do would be to parrot what he has heard from Megan, without any understanding or critical thinking on his part. Due to his lack of understanding, he may even interject his own ideas (ones Megan never believed nor stated) into his posts. These are all consistent with him calling himself "pyramid honey truther". The word ''truther'' refers to people who reject established facts and instead choose to believe in conspiracies, like people who claim {{w|Moon landing conspiracy theories|the moon landings never happened}}, or {{w|9/11 Truth movement|believe the US government is behind}} the {{w|9/11 attacks}}. While a few conspiracy theories turn out to be true, most are easily proved to be fake, but this does not stop people from believing in them anyway, just like the two mentioned here, which are not easily dismissed by believers. This turns Megan, who likely has a reasonable and well-justified position, unwillingly into the source of conspiracy theories.

Alternatively, he only does this to troll Megan (and Cueball), and everyone else that reads his Facebook page, just because he knows they will get annoyed. And also to state that this is an unimportant subject (a weird hill to die on) to make such a fuss over. No one would wish to eat that honey, anyway, having been abandoned to time for that long.{{Citation needed}} He may see this as a completely uninteresting subject and thus makes fun of Megan with his statements. This would also be more in line with his usual behavior.

It is also possible that Black Hat is simply mocking conspiracy theorists' obsessions with factually incorrect ideas, comparably to what may be the case in [[Secretary: Part 3]].

The title text refers to the {{w|Eye of Providence}}, a symbol of an eye at the top of a pyramid, found on US currency and often associated with conspiracy theories of the {{w|Illuminati}}. Black Hat again refers to the pyramid honey found under the pyramids and calls it a ''conspiracy that goes all the way to the top''. This usually means that the politicians (or the government agencies) ruling the country know about it, but keep it a secret from the public. But in this case, he mixes up terms and says it goes to the top of the pyramid (from the bottom), to where the giant eye is. As promised he also writes four words in all capital letters, shouting out the TRUTH!

This comic is likely a satire of the stereotypical internet mindset and plays up the frequent confusion between legitimate scientific skepticism, where unsupported claims are rejected, and conspiracy-theory faux-skepticism, where legitimate evidence is rejected because it does not support a specific viewpoint.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are talking.]
:Cueball: Apparently honey has an infinite shelf life. They just found jars of it in the pyramids, still good.
:Megan: You know, I've heard that, and I don't think it's true.

:[Black hat enters.]
:Cueball: Really? Smithsonian magazine confirmed it.
:Megan: Believe it or not, I think their source is wrong.
:Black Hat: '''''I believe you.'''''

:[Megan has turned to Black Hat raising her hands.]
:Megan: See I read about the archaeologists who-
:Black Hat: I'm convinced. Gonna go to tell the internet.

:[Black Hat moved closer to Megan and Cueball.]
:Megan: Wait, are you sure? Let me explain why I-
:Black Hat: Don't need it. I've heard enough.

:[Zoom-in on Black Hat's head.]
:Black Hat: I've been looking for a weird hill to die on, and all the real ones are too far from my house.
:Black Hat: So this is mine. I'm now a pyramid honey truther.

:[Zoom back out. Black Hat starts walking left, pointing a finger up. Cueball and Megan turn to look after him.]
:Black Hat: Time to start a Facebook group and post a bunch of all-caps comments everywhere.
:Cueball: This could have gone better.
:Megan: Oh well.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theory]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Science]]

1714: Volcano Types

2025-10-22T22:02:09Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1714
| date = August 1, 2016
| title = Volcano Types
| image = volcano_types.png
| titletext = It's hard living somewhere with antlions, because every time you find one of their traps, you feel compelled to spend all day constructing a tiny model of Jabba's sail barge next to it.
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
This comic presents a table of 12 different types of volcano. Split into 3 rows, the first 4 are authentic types of volcano; while the remaining 8 are parodies, one not even trying to represent a volcano but shows a real animal in its inverted trap cone.

Volcanoes have featured in many xkcd comics, [[media:1608 Entire Volcano plateau zoom out_extra.png|most prominently]] in the left part of the world (the Lord of the Rings section) of [[1608: Hoverboard]]. This comic's volcano looks like it could soon turn into a Somma volcano.

===Real volcanoes===
*{{w|Cinder cone}}: small, steep-sided volcano formed of {{w|scoria}} and ash.
*{{w|Shield volcano}}: wide, rounded volcano formed of solidified lava flow.
*{{w|Stratovolcano}}: large volcano formed of layers (strata) from multiple eruptions.
*{{w|Somma volcano}}: new volcanic cone in the middle of an old collapsed volcanic crater.

===Joke volcanoes===
[[File:2019-04-23, Sentinel-2B L1C (40711566883).jpg|thumb|right|The central caldera of Krakatoa is surrounded by the older remains of a larger caldera, much like the "Metasomma volcano."]]
*Metasomma volcano: nested layers of somma volcanos i.e. a whole set of new volcanoes (three in this situation) formed inside of old ones. "Meta" is a prefix that often denotes recursion. (Although this is a joke volcano, metasomma volcanoes do actually exist in real life, with one example being the {{w|Krakatoa}} group in Indonesia.)
*{{w|Waffle cone}}: type of pastry that ice cream is served in, related to volcano cones only insofar as they are the same shape, but typically the waffle cones are turned the other way up to keep the ice cream inside. If the tip of the waffle cone is not filled with solid chocolate or similar, then the contents may very well melt and run out the bottom like the smoke coming out at the very tip of the Waffle cone volcano.
*Science fair cone: common elementary science experiment that is often used as a project for science fairs. A structure is built to resemble a model volcano and is filled with a mix of baking soda, vinegar, and sometimes food coloring. The reaction between baking soda and vinegar quickly produces a large amount of carbon dioxide, creating a foam that overflows and mimics a volcanic eruption. In this picture, there are people running away from the volcano that are much smaller than it. This is likely a reference to [[1611: Baking Soda and Vinegar]], either the scale-model people on the first volcano, or real people running from the baking soda supervolcano (in this case two [[Cueball]]-like guys and [[Megan]]).
*Doot cone: This may likely be a reference to the meme of the [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/skull-trumpet skull-trumpet] where the trumpet playing skull [https://www.reddit.com/r/OutOfTheLoop/comments/39xnk2/what_is_this_doot_thing_with_the_skeletons/cs7jdsa produces the sound Doot] as a large part of the meme. Doot is also a fart sound; a doot cone could be just ejecting farts instead of lava.
**There has been some discussion about if this is likely, with someone referencing the [https://www.amazon.com/Florida-DOT-Approved-Traffic-Cone/dp/B009RUTKZA DOT cones], traffic cones approved by DOT or the {{w|Department of transportation}} in the US.
**Also there have been mention of ''{{w|Dot-com}}'' coming close to ''Doot cone''. The {{w|Dot-com bubble}} could be said to burst, just like this volcano bursts/erupts.
*{{w|Antlion}}: An antlion is the larva of an insect known as the lacewing, and is commonly called a doodlebug. These insects dig pits in the sand to use as traps; when a bug comes along and falls in, the sand collapses and falls on the bug, making it very difficult to escape. The antlion then eats the unsuspecting prey. The joke here is that an antlion trap is a cone dug into the earth, the inverse of a volcano cone rising out of the earth. It may also be a reference to {{w|Formica Leo}}, a small volcanic crater in the Reunion island named after the antlion.
*Inverse Volcano: as the name implies, a regular volcano but reversed. A real volcano consists of solid rock on the outside, magma on the inside and spewing lava from the top. This one is made of lava with rocks erupting out of it.
*Ghost Vent: cone with ghosts coming out of it.
*Pedant's Bane: the joke is that people sometimes confuse magma and lava, which are different names for the same heated liquid rock. Magma becomes lava when it emerges from a volcano. The Pedant's Bane volcano is therefore impossible by definition, but if it were possible, then a {{w|pedant}} would have met their [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bane#Etymology_1 bane] (i.e. their downfall), because when they corrected someone's description of this volcano, the pedant would actually be wrong. Alternatively, the illustration itself could be Pedant's Bane because a pedant would be lured into pointing out how wrong it is. This is a direct reference to the pedant in [[1405: Meteor]].

The title text refers to a famous scene in ''{{w|Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi}}'' where {{w|Jabba the Hutt}} intends to feed {{w|Luke Skywalker}} to the {{w|Sarlacc|sarlacc}}, an underground creature that builds a huge funnel trap similar to that of an antlion. [[wikia:c:starwars:Khetanna|Jabba's distinctive sail barge]] features prominently in that scene, and when Randall comes upon an antlion he can't help himself starting to build a scale model next to the antlion's inverted cone. Given how small antlions are, this will be very difficult to do, see for instance [[878: Model Rail]].

==Transcript==
:[Twelve drawings in four rows of different "volcano" types, the first four real, and some not even volcanoes of any sort, real or fake. Below each panel is a caption with the name of the drawn volcano. Some of the volcanoes have labels or sound written inside the panel. Each of the volcanoes has a baseline for the ground going straight a short distance over the bottom of each panel. All 11 volcanoes lie on top of this line, but some show the inside of the volcano going further into the ground.]

:[Standard cone shaped volcano, with straight sides sloping up to a triangular shape, but with the tip of the cone cut off to form the central jagged edged crater. White smoke rises straight up and then drifts to the left forming three separate clouds.]
:Cinder Cone

:[Flat rounded shaped volcano, as a part of a circle. There is not a real crater visible but from the center a thin plume of smoke rises up, drift drifts to the left and forms a small white cloud.]
:Shield Volcano

:[This is the largest volcano. The tip of this volcano is similar to the first volcano, but with more uneven slopes and a bit smaller. The tip is clearly separated from the bottom section by a thin jagged line, and below the sides of the volcano decreases their slope, so they are less steep than the tip. Black smoke rises straight up from the crater and then drifts to the left in four thin lines.]
:Stratovolcano

:[A wide volcano spans the entire panel, with a large central crater, with a bottom baseline far above the ground level. Just left of the middle of this crater is a standard smaller volcano cone, very similar to the shape of the tip in the previous panel. Even the smoke from this cones small crater is similar to the previous panels.]
:Somma Volcano

:[The central part of this volcano is the same shape as the previous panel. This could be a zoom out, revealing that the large crater, is at the center on an even larger crater, which again is at the center of a crater that spans the panel. A plume of black smoke rises from the centeral cones crater, and drifts left as five white clouds.]
:Metasomma Volcano

:[A perfect cone-shape, triangular and steep, with checkered ice cone waffle texture, even with a line indicating where the waffle has been a folded. It looks like a road up the volcano. Black smoke drift up from the sharp tip, no crater, and drifts left forming a small cloud separated from the rest of the smoke lines.]
:Waffle Cone

:[Standard cone as in the first, but zoomed in so it fills the panel from left to right. The volcano's top has been cut much further down leaving a wide crater from which lava is pouring down the sides in large rivers of different width and length. To the left one long river has almost reached the ground. Cueball is running down the left side, and Megan is running after another Cueball with his arms up on the right side. There is a label with an arrow pointing to the lava:]
:Label: Baking soda and vinegar
:Science Fair Cone

:[Standard cone like the previous, but with more jagged sloped and crater. This volcano erupts with a large explosion with fire and smoke coming out in all directions above the crater. A large sound is written above the explosion:]
:Sound. <big>'''Doooooot'''</big>
:Doot Cone

:[This is not a volcano, but the inverse, a cone down into the ground, the ground level no above the center of the panel. The slope down into this cone hole is straight, the ground above is more jagged. At the bottom of the hole sits a small animal with six legs and an open mouth piece sticking up out of the hole. Its fat body is hidden under the ground along with its legs.]
:Antlion

:[Standard volcano cone like the previous volcano. It erupts and the central part shows how the erupting material comes up from below ground level (below the line at the bottom in which the cone it self stands). The erupting material is white rocks on black background. At the top several rocks is blown out of the crater top. The sides of the volcano is filled with blobs small and large, and stones rolling down the sides. There are two labels, each with two arrows. The first labels arrows points to the side of the volcano, the second labels arrows points to the erupting material inside and outside the volcano:]
:First label: Lava
:Second label: Solid rocks
:Inverse Volcano

:[Standard cone like the doot cone, with a crater that bends down in the middle. From this crater eight white ghosts with two black eyes are rising, like the smoke, drifting left. The highest ghost is just reaching the edge at the top left of the panel. The lowest ghost is still inside the crater with its wavy lower parts.]
:Ghost Vent

:[A standard cone like the doot cone. At the top there is lave over the outer edges, some of it running down the side. The inside of the volcano has been drawn like in the inverse volcano, so it is clear that the magma inside the volcano comes up from below ground level (below the line at the bottom in which the cone it self stands). There are two labels that contradicts the description above. The top label outside the volcano points to the lava with an arrow, and the bottom label inside the volcano points to the magma:]
:Top label: Magma
:Bottom label: Lava
:Pedant's Bane

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Volcanoes]]
[[Category:Food]] 
[[Category:Animals]] 
[[Category:Star Wars]]

[[Category:Pedantic]]
[[Category:Ghosts]]

1707: xkcd Phone 4

2025-10-22T21:59:54Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1707
| date = July 15, 2016
| title = xkcd Phone 4
| image = xkcd_phone_4.png
| titletext = The SpaceX system carefully guides falling phones down to the surface, a process which the phones increasingly often survive without exploding.
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
This is the fourth entry in the ongoing [[:Category:xkcd Phones|xkcd Phone series]], and once again, the comic plays with many standard tech buzzwords to create a phone that sounds impressive but would actually be very impractical. The previous comic in the series [[1549: xkcd Phone 3]] was released just over a year before this one and the next [[1809: xkcd Phone 5]] was released almost 8 months later.

The tagline of the phone is a reference to the tenth version of Apple's operating system for its {{w|Macintosh computer}}. It was named {{w|OS X}} and was intended to be read as "oh ess ten", but [[Steve Jobs]] was irritated that everyone else preferred "oh ess ecks". This phrase is labeled with trademark and copyright symbols, as if someone desires it to be the product's {{w|tagline}} but has poor understanding of relevant laws. In particular, "<big>{{w|™}}</big>" is a symbol for {{w|unregistered trademark}}s while "<big>{{w|®}}</big>" is a symbol for {{w|registered trademark}}s. If the phrase were an unregistered trademark, the owner would be prohibited from using "<big>{{w|®}}</big>".

From the top, going clockwise:

; 18,000 μAh (micro-Ampere hours) nickel-lithium-iron battery (non-rechargeable)

: Phone battery capacity is measured in {{w|ampere-hour}}s (which, thanks to {{w|dimensional analysis}}, is just an unusual way of denoting electric charge; one ampere-hour is 3600 Coulombs). Usually, the capacity is quoted in milliampere-hours (one-thousandth, or 10-3, of an ampere hour); however, this one is quoted in ''micro''ampere-hours (one-millionth, or 10-6, of an ampere-hour), presumably as a marketing ploy to give a more impressive-looking number. Quoted in more standard terms, this phone's battery capacity is 18 mAh. In comparison, an iPhone 6+ has a battery capacity of 2,750 mAh. This phone's battery is dreadful (under a typical current draw of 0.1A, it would power the phone for about 11 minutes). There is nothing normally called a "nickel-lithium-iron battery" — rather, this seems to be a [[739|malamanteau]] of the experimental {{w|nickel–lithium battery}} and the common {{w|lithium ion battery}} (which does not contain any iron) or the lithium-iron-phosphate battery, often called lithium-iron, but more often called the LiFePO battery. The {{w|nickel–iron battery}} may contain {{w|lithium hydroxide}}, but it's ''terrible'' for most applications. Worse, this battery is non-rechargeable, meaning that it would have to be replaced to use the phone again after it is exhausted (every 11 minutes, at that!). The [[xkcd Phone 3]] was powered by two {{w|AA battery|AA batteries}} (not included), which have an energy capacity roughly 100 times larger.

; Subwoofer

: A {{w|subwoofer}} is a large bass speaker, which this is not.{{Citation needed}} Some phones do have high-quality speakers for playing music, but these are not placed right next to the earpiece — this would be a surefire way to deafen your users. When put next to Dog Whistle, this is probably a pun, since both relate to dogs; the English onomatopoeia for the sound a dog makes is "Woof".

; "Dog whistle"

: A {{w|dog whistle}} is a high-pitched whistle that humans cannot hear, but dogs can. In speaker terminology, a bass speaker is called a {{w|woofer}} because it could reproduce the low pitch of a dog bark. A treble speaker is a {{w|tweeter}}; if this "whistle" is actually a speaker, it might be termed a ''supertweeter''. The scare quotes may be a reference to "{{w|dog-whistle politics}}", in which certain phrases have a particular meaning to a segment of the audience that passes unnoticed by the rest. This allows a candidate to surreptitiously signal agreement with that group, without alienating the rest of the audience, among whom the ideas might be unpopular if plainly stated. The [[xkcd Phone 2]] contained a "dog noticer".

; Non-porous, washable

: On the one hand, it's rare for a phone to be made of porous materials.{{Citation needed}} On the other, there are legitimately waterproof phones that seal the speakers and ports with rubber. The [[xkcd Phone 2]] was also washable (though only once).

; ''WebMD'' partnership<nowiki>:</nowiki> cough-activated feature reads aloud a random diagnosis for "coughing"

: {{w|WebMD}} is a website to help people diagnose themselves. For the vast majority of people, a cough just means an irritated throat or maybe a cold, but selecting randomly from all WebMD diagnoses gives some much more ominous — if very unlikely — ones, including {{w|ricin}} poisoning, {{w|plague}}, {{w|lung cancer}} and {{w|radiation poisoning}}.

; Wings

: These {{w|wings}} resemble the ones found on {{w|sanitary towel}}s (usually called "pads", making this a possible iPad pun) which attach the pad to the {{w|gusset}} and keep it in place between the woman's legs during her period ({{w|Menstruation}} cycle). If actually functional as {{w|aerodynamic}} wings, they would likely come into play when the "SpaceX" impact protection feature becomes engaged and would likely make holding the phone awkward if rigid. The [[xkcd Phone 3]] had a similarly positioned wristband.

; Beveled bezel

: The ''bezel'' is the ring around the edge of watches and screens. This one's {{w|bevel}}ed, which means it's cut at an angle.

; Bezeled bevel

: Punning on the above. Doesn't make much sense but could mean that it features a beveled edge which is surrounded by a bezel.

; Seedless

: Fruit such as grapes can be "seedless", which means that they're grown from a special {{w|cultivar}} that doesn't grow seeds in the normal way. Making a phone seedless probably won't do anything, but {{w|Random seed|it might hurt}} its {{w|random number generator}} (or make it better if proper alternative to PRNG is introduced). Alternatively, this might be a dig at Apple's iPhone. There are [https://farmingbase.com/why-are-some-apples-seedless/ seedless apples]. The [[xkcd Phone 3]] was boneless.

; Water resistant down to 30 meters and below 50

: {{w|Water resistance}} is often measured in terms of how deep an object can be submerged, since pressure increases with depth. In this case, the phone can be submerged to almost any depth, but there's an odd lacuna between 30 meters and 50 meters. It also plays with the confusion in describing depths greater than 50m as "below 50". Alternatively, this might indicate the phone must remain dry above 50 meters altitude, or that it is not water resistant between 30 and 50 meters but is waterproof otherwise. The [[xkcd Phone]] and [[XKCD Phone 3]] could drown. The latter was otherwise waterproof. [[xkcd Phone 2]] was only waterproof internally. A similarly absurd range was used in [[870: Advertising]]: "Up to 15% or more!".

; Turing-complete

: A computer is {{w|Turing completeness|Turing complete}} if it can perform all the operations needed to simulate a {{w|Turing machine}}. All modern computers are usually described as Turing complete, which would make this not very impressive, but no computer can ever be Turing complete in the truest sense (since they can only ever have a finite amount of memory) — if the xkcd Phone 4 is truly a universal computer, it's ''very'' impressive indeed.

; Gregorian/Julian calendar date switch

: The {{w|Julian calendar}} is the predecessor to the modern {{w|Gregorian calendar}} — the difference is that the two calendars calculate leap years differently. The current difference between the calendars is 13 days, which will remain unchanged until February 2100. The Julian calendar is still used occasionally — mainly by Eastern Orthodox Christians — but it's not something so vital that it needs a hardwired switch on the front of the phone. This may be a play on the ability to switch the time display between a 12-hour clock and a 24-hour clock. It could also be playing with the ability to switch between Daylight Savings Time and Standard or change time zones.

; ''SpaceX'' impact protection<nowiki>:</nowiki> when dropped, phone lands on barge

: The rocket company {{w|SpaceX}}, at the time that this comic was released, had recently trialed a {{w|SpaceX reusable launch system development program|reusable rocket stage}} which, after separating from the launch vehicle, lands on a {{w|Autonomous spaceport drone ship|drone barge}} to be reused. Making a phone land on the nearest barge when dropped would make it very difficult to recover, although the 11-minute battery time there might be a chance to get it even if you can't catch it.

; Parallel port

: A {{w|parallel port}} is a type of interface which transfers high-volume simultaneous data. It was often used to connect printers and other devices to computers but was generally considered obsolete by the time smartphones began to appear on the market and would be very bulky and slow compared to the USB ports generally used in phones. It was commonly found together with {{w|serial port}}s, which are used for low-volume sequential data such as [[485: Depth|mouse]] [[1110: Click and Drag|movements]]. Here it is paired with a serial interface for analog data with parallel outputs for several people.

; 12 headphone jacks

: Headphone jacks are circular ports in a phone that allow audio to be played through headphones connected to the jack. There were [http://www.businessinsider.com.au/apple-headphone-jack-iphone-side-effects-2016-7#/#smaller-headphone-makers-would-be-at-a-disadvantage-4 constant rumors] that Apple's next iPhone would not have any headphone jacks (which eventually proved true for the iPhone 7 announcement two months after this comic). Also, [http://www.google.com Google] was developing a module for the now cancelled [https://atap.google.com/ara/ Project Ara] (archive [https://web.archive.org/web/20160716080118/https://atap.google.com/ara/ here]), a modular smartphone. This module allows the device to have [http://www.overclock3d.net/news/audio/sennheiser_shows_audio_module_concepts_for_project_ara/1 Four headphone jacks], which would allow audio to be shared among 4 people, each occupying one port. The xkcd phone takes this too far when they install a whopping TWELVE of them, which is completely overkill because almost nobody needs to connect to 12 headphones at once. 12 headphones will also drain the battery, like the wireless discharging in the [[XKCD Phone 3]], because playing audio through 24 speakers, two for each pair of headphones, is very power-consuming.

; Onboard cloud

: The "cloud" is a catch-all term for the use of remote computers to store data, providing a backup if all local copies are lost and allowing the data to be accessed from a broad network. An "onboard cloud" would thus be a contradiction in terms and appears to be a marketing ploy to use the "cloud" buzzword to describe the device's onboard storage capacity.

; New BrightGloTM display incorporates genetically spliced jellyfish protein (should have used the glowing genes, not the stinging ones)

: {{w|Aequorea victoria}} is a species of jellyfish that contains {{w|green fluorescent protein}}, a gene that is bioluminescent and gives off light. This protein was supposed to be used to light the phone's screen. Unfortunately, the developers messed up, and accidentally took the [http://bmcgenomics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12864-015-1568-3 stinging kind], which means that touching the phone screen will be as painful as a jellyfish sting i.e. very painful.

; ✓ Certified

: The phone is just certified in general and doesn't specify what part of the phone has been certified. It might be a reference to [[1096: Clinically Studied Ingredient]], in which buzzwords such as "studied" and are intended to make a given product sound more legitimate.

; Software-defined

: {{w|Software-defined radio}}s are quite popular in some areas, meaning the radio hardware is quite universal and can be adapted to different radio protocols just by changing software. SDR would actually be quite a nice feature for a cellphone. Of course, it doesn't specify if it's the radio that is software defined.

; Exposed ductwork

: A phone shouldn't even have ductwork, unless it has a very sophisticated cooling system, but this could supply air to the dog whistle. Exposed ductwork is a trademark of {{w|Bowellism|Bowellist}} architecture such as the {{w|Lloyd's Building}} in London and the {{w|Pompidou Centre}} in Paris. Exposed ductwork is also considered a crucial flaw in a death star. May also refer to a transparent window in the side of the phone allowing the user to see the circuitry inside, similar to computer cases with transparent side panels popular among DIY computing enthusiasts.

; Voice interaction<nowiki>:</nowiki> {{w|Siri (software)|Siri}}, {{w|Cortana (software)|Cortana}}, {{w|Google Now}} and {{w|Amazon Echo|Alexa}} respond simultaneously

: These are all {{w|intelligent personal assistant software}} (from Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon respectively) and all do the same thing: control your phone and answer questions using speech recognition. Having all four talks at once would mean you'd have a total cacophony while gaining nothing. The [[xkcd Phone 3]] could have Siri ("or whoever it was [they] put in here") included.

The title text pokes fun at the number of SpaceX rockets that [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3wZRdg-Tmo crashed and exploded] before they got the landing gear right.

==Transcript==
:[An image of a smartphone featuring wings is shown. Clockwise from the top left the labels read:]
:18,000 μAh nickel-lithium-iron battery (non-rechargeable)
:Subwoofer
:"Dog whistle"
:Non-porous, washable
:''WebMD'' partnership: Cough-activated feature reads aloud a random diagnosis for "coughing"
:Wings
:Beveled bezel
:Bezeled bevel
:Seedless
:Water resistant down to 30 meters and below 50
:Turing-complete
:Gregorian/Julian calendar switch
:''SpaceX'' impact protection: When dropped, phone lands on barge
:Parallel port
:12 headphone jacks
:Onboard cloud
:New BrightGloTM display incorporates genetically spliced jellyfish protein (should have used the glowing genes, not the stinging ones)
:✓ Certified
:Software-defined
:Exposed ductwork
:Voice interaction: Siri, Cortana, Google Now and Alexa respond simultaneously

:[Below the phone:]
:Introducing
:<big><big>The xkcd Phone 4</big></big>
:Did you know "4" is "IV" in Roman numerals?®©™

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:xkcd Phones]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|xkcd Phones]]
[[Category:Animals]] 
[[Category:Virtual Assistants]]
[[Category: Calendar]]

1692: Man Page

2025-10-22T21:57:51Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1692
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| date = June 10, 2016
| title = Man Page
| image = man_page.png
| titletext = For even more info, see blarbl(2)(3) and birb(3ahhaha I'm kidding, just Google it like a normal person.
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
This comic shows a {{w|Unix}} manual page, i.e. a ''{{w|man page}}'' (hence the title), for a fictional program called "[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blerp blerp]". Unix man pages are meant to provide a brief reference on the usage of a command, not extended explanations with tutorials as may be found in many hardcopy product manuals. Unfortunately, some Unix commands tend to be very bloated and include lots of optional behavior that is often irrelevant to the original intent of the command and can be done much more easily using shell features like piping and redirection, and thus the manpage grows to explain all of the features. This example exaggerates the obscurity and terseness found in many man pages, making fun of the typical style of the genre.

It follows the prescribed format for a man page, with the following sections:
*Command Name: self-explanatory
*Synopsis: a synopsis of the valid command line formats
*Description: a summary of the purpose and operation of the command
*Options: detailed description of all the available command line arguments
*See Also: references to other man pages with relevance
*Bug Reports: contact details for the support group (if any)
*Copyright: details of the ownership and rights status of the man page (not the program)

For comic effect, most of this particular man page is not meaningful, and sometimes doesn't obey the expected syntax.

The Synopsis section is supposed to be in a {{w|Regular Expression|regex}}-like language called {{w|Wirth Syntax Notation}}, with structures like

*{<list of valid alternatives>}, e.g. blerp {A,B,C}
*[<optional element>], e.g. blerp [-o [<output file>]]
*<something>... meaning repeat <something> as many times as you need

But the two Synopsis lines given do not have valid Wirth syntax; they randomly mix objects and syntactic characters, and the brackets and braces are not properly nested or paired.

The Description section provides an unhelpful summary that could apply to almost any Unix command. Processing input files (or output of other commands in a pipeline) is a generic function for Unix shell tools, as is specifying their behaviour with command line arguments, environment variables and flags. The text leaves to the reader's imagination what the program actually ''does'', and what behavior the various options modify, which gives maximum scope for humorous possibilities.

The options are in conventional alphabetical order, except that lower case is placed before upper case, and an em-dash is inserted between b and c.

{{w|Command-line_interface#Command-line_option|Command-line options}}, also known as flags, are typed after the program's name to change how the program runs. For example, a user of ''blerp'' might type:

<code>blerp -a -d -t -p "AVIGNON"</code>

According to the man page, this would run blerp in attack mode, piping its output to DEBUG.EXE, with tumble dry, and the true Pope set to "AVIGNON". In most cases, any number of flags can be used in any order, and flags can be followed by argument (such as "AVIGNON" in this example).

For a walkthrough of all possible flags see the '''[[#Table of flags|table of flags]]''' below.

Below the flags there is a ''see also'' list with other ludicrous program names (blirb, [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blarb blarb] and [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Blorp blorp]), each followed by a number in parentheses. This is a common way to refer to a command in Unix environments, where the number denotes the documentation section the program is found in. This serves to disambiguate man pages with the same name, in this instance those for the blerp command (section 1, "General commands") and the blerp() C library function (section 3, "C library functions").

It is unknown which section the man page in this comic resides in. It looks like it could be in section 1, "General commands", which would make it self-referential. Section numbers only go up to 8, so blarb(51) is not a valid section number. The last blorp(501)(c)(3) is not a valid section number either, it is however a slightly covert reference to {{w|501(c)_organization#501.28c.29.283.29|501(c)(3)}} which is an organization that is {{w|Tax exemption|tax-exempt}}.

Then follows a bug report site. www.inaturalist.org is a site working to extend biological research, and the exact address given, http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera, points to the same page as http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/Hemiptera. {{w|Hemiptera}} is the order classifying ''true bugs'', making it a good place to report any biological bugs discovered while running a program (Like the bees found without using -b.) Insects got into some early computers, causing them to malfunction, and hence computer malfunctions are often called "bugs".

Finally there is a "{{w|copyright}}" line which references several variously open-source content licenses, which is a recurring theme on xkcd (see [[225: Open Source]]). For instance, GPL references {{w|GNU General Public License}} and the (2) and (3+) refers to {{w|GNU_General_Public_License#Version_2|GPL 2}} and {{w|GNU_General_Public_License#Version_3|GPL 3 or higher}}. ''CC'' refers to {{w|creative commons}} where ''BY'' is the {{w|Creative_Commons_license#Types_of_licenses|type of license}}, ''5.0'' refers to the attribution and ''RV 41.0'' refers to revision 41.0. However there were no higher attribution than [https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode 4.0] at the time of this comic's release. xkcd is released under [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/ CC BY-NC 2.5] as can be seen at the bottom of the {{xkcd}}  homepage. A few comics have been released under the [[:Category:CC-BY-SA comics|CC-BY-SA license]] or [http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/ 3.0]. BSD refers to {{w|BSD licenses}}, another [[:Category:BSD|recurring theme]] in xkcd. "Like Gecko" is a reference to a web browser user-agent string; modern user-agent strings include a [http://webaim.org/blog/user-agent-string-history/ lot of text designed] to allow browsers to masquerade as different browsers/renderers, and "(like Gecko)" is the standard text for a browser that wants to be treated as if it were {{w|Gecko (software)|Gecko}} while admitting, if you look closely, that it isn't really Gecko. This copyright line, which includes a lot of mashed-together text that might appear to match any of several different licenses, resembles a {{w|user agent}} string.

"Or best offer" is usually seen on a notice of a private sale, where it proclaims the intent to be flexible on asking price in the hope of expediting the sale, with a suggestion that the seller will sell to the highest bidder even if the offer is nowhere near the asking price. In the context of the comic, it suggest that the rights for the program are available for purchase by anyone who makes the "best" offer. Since the other licenses listed would allow free usage without incurring any royalty charge, it would be pointless to buy the rights to this program. It is possible to revoke the other licenses though. Perhaps the program's creator is suggesting the rights could be given to someone making him a different sort of offer, perhaps romantic or sexual?

In the title text there is a list with even more info, again with silly names like [http://blarbl.blogspot.dk/ blarbl] and [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=birb birb]. Again there are section numbers. While writing about birb, and without bothering to [[859: (|close the brackets]] around (3), the writer breaks off to laugh at the reader, telling them that he is kidding and suggesting that they ''just Google it like a normal person''. To fix the fact that the writer didn’t close the parenthesis: ). The implication is that anyone trying to pick through a man page to find out what a program does is going the long way round, when it's much simpler to get Google to tell you.

Man pages were part of the subject of [[293: RTFM]], [[912: Manual Override]] and [[1343: Manuals]] and were mentioned in [[434: xkcd Goes to the Airport]] and [[456: Cautionary]].

===Table of flags===
*There are 28 'defined' flags.
**Only these five letters are not used: l, m, w, x, z.
**j and k are used together as jk.
**The following seven capital letters are used: D, I, O, R, S, U, V.
***That makes it one capital letter for every lower case letter that is not used by itself.
**Finally the em dash "—" is used as the only non-letter character. Also the only that breaks the strict alphabetical sorting of the list, with lower case before upper case letters.
**As well as the general expansion of flag-use 'definitions', -f is explicitly featured in the first usage example of the Synopsis. See below.
**Additionally, either "-{}" or "- {}" is featured in the Synopsis's second usage example. This could indicate a flag of further type (an ill-defined set of further possibilities or ''literally'' a curly-bracket pair) or else specifies STDIN as a possible file input (and ''then'' ill-defined/curly-bracketted continuations of the parameter-listing).
{| class="wikitable"
!Flag!!Description!!Explanation
|-
| -a||ATTACK MODE||This sounds like a command for a robot or something similar. Strange for a command line program. Possibly this is designed to break something? Sounds as if you have to ''really'' know what you're doing to use this option. Could also be a reference to Yu-Gi-Oh or other similar games where a card can be played in "Attack Mode".
|-
| -b||SUPPRESS BEES||Nonsensical option. This is a word play, meaning either to suppress {{w|Bee|Bees}} (the insects) or the letter '''B'''. A possible implication is that running the program without this flag would somehow result in the user being attacked by bees. This is also a possible {{w|Discworld}} reference, as the ''{{W|Hex_(Discworld)#Structure_and_technology|long-term storage}}'' of the only recurring computer in the series, ''{{w|Hex (Discworld)|Hex}}'', is composed of a beehive. (Note that the actual computer runs on ants.) Another explanation is that there will be smoke (perhaps {{w|magic smoke}}?), which is used by beekeepers to suppress bees.
|-
| -—||FLAGS USE EM DASHES||Command line options (flags) typically use {{w|Hyphen|hyphens}} (short horizontal lines largely used within words). {{w|Dash#Em_dash|Em dashes}} (longer, with the same length as the letter "m") can't always be easily typed into a command line interface, so by invoking ''blerp'' with this flag you are intentionally making things difficult for yourself.

This may be a play on how a lot of commands accept both single-dash options, like -h for help, as well as double-dash options like --help also for help. In word processors, a double-dash (--) is often replaced with the longer em dash (—), making them kind of synonymous.

Also implies a paradox where if flags were to use em dashes, this flag would be invalid.
|-
| -c||COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS||Most likely not useful, but the only function of ''blerp'' whose behaviour is at all well defined, although there is no indication whether it would count duplicate flags or only distinct ones.
|-
| -d||PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE||{{w|DEBUG.EXE}} is the old 16-bit debugger that came with MS-DOS. On a Unix system it is much more likely that one would use the {{w|GNU Debugger}} (GDB). A debugger is usually called by calling the debugger with the program (or script) to be debugged as parameter.
{{w|Pipeline (Unix)|Piping}} in Unix means that the output of one program serves as input for another program.
|-
| -D||DEPRECATED||Many programs contain legacy options to avoid breaking scripts that use them. While the option should still work, the documentation is changed to say "deprecated" to discourage further use. Eventually such options usually get removed. (However, given the nature of this comic, it's likely that -D has always stood for "deprecated".)
|-
| -e||EXECUTE SOMETHING||Vague. Also a possible pun on a kill-switch.
|-
| -f||FUN MODE||Strange and slightly ominous, given some of the other options. How does the program know what the user would consider fun? Perhaps ''blerp'' is sentient, and has its own concept of "fun". See under -O.
The presence of an -f and then "FLAGS" in the usage Synopsis suggests that this flag can be used to flag that ''subsequent'' command flags are explicitly under the FUN MODE context, but with nothing to prevent -f (also?) being a standalone flag in the general ARGS (argument options, including flag parameters) ''or'' being further included in such a FUN MODE's hierarchical list of flags. This is just a further ambiguity to the Synopsis format, where it is often explicitly expanded into separate interpretations where the program has a complex but defined-in expectation of how to deal with such varied parsing possibilities.
|-
| -g||USE GOOGLE||As an actual program flag, a bit hackjob-ish, but it is possible it is telling the user to use Google to find out what this tag does. Or, the program might actually use Google functionality (e.g. a code library online) or even simply the search mask to achieve the filtering it is supposed to do. The fact that this is optional suggests that there is also a 'native' implementation that does not use Google.
Possible reference to the title text, which could mean that the title text is telling the user to use this flag.
|-
| -h||CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS||The {{w|Halting problem}} is the problem of determining, from a description of an arbitrary computer program and an input, whether the program will finish running or continue to run forever. {{w|Alan Turing}} proved in 1936 that a general algorithm to solve the halting problem for all possible program-input pairs cannot exist. Halting problem also featured in the comic [[1266: Halting Problem]].

Many Unix and Linux commands reserve -h for help, so using it for a different function is non-standard. The ''shutdown'' command is a real example of an exception: it uses -h to cause the computer to halt.
|-
| -i||IGNORE CASE (LOWER)||Usually, ignoring case means that a program will run without differentiating between upper- and lowercase. This flag suggests that blerp will run ignoring all the lowercase characters completely, or ignoring all the uppercase characters with the next flag "-I". Alternatively it will ignore the case of all lower case characters, but not upper case ones. Or perhaps this option makes the program ignore the case of flags like -i and -I...
|-
| -I||IGNORE CASE (UPPER)||See above. Also possible that all text is converted to upper case, or that upper-case requirements only are ignored.
|-
| -jk||KIDDING||A common acronym for [http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=jk Just Kidding], not usually a program flag! Also note that standard behavior of Unix command line options is that a single "-" can be followed by multiple one-letter options, making -jk equivalent to -j -k. Perhaps this is a reference to the -WhatIf flag provided by many programs written in {{w|powershell}}. Some UNIX programs do offer a "simulation mode" before important, irreversible operations, such as the "-n" switch of mke2fs.
|-
| -n||BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED||Who would ever knowingly run a program, knowing that {{w|Nondeterministic programming|its behaviour was non-deterministic or random}}? Doing such a thing seems potentially sinister. (Possible debug/unstable feature flag.)
|-
| -o||OVERWRITE||Standard program flag, usually meaning that the program will overwrite a file rather than make a new one when data is output. But the text does not indicate ''what'' the program will overwrite, it could be anything. May work strangely with -d.
|-
| -O||OPPOSITE DAY||Strange flag, a reference to {{w|Opposite Day}}. Perhaps indicates that it would make all other flags have the opposite effects as usual. If so, a lot of strange things would happen, especially with -b, -e, -f, -jk, -O, -S, and -y. On the other hand, it may simply indicate that absent flags are treated as if they were present and vice versa.
|-
| -p||SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"||This refers to a {{w|Western_Schism|historical schism}} in the {{w|Catholic Church}}. In the 14th century, the Pope briefly ruled from Avignon, France, instead of Rome. After the Papacy was returned to Rome in 1377, the Church split (the so-called Western Schism) as not everyone accepted the move or the authority of the Pope who ordered it. This flag apparently allows the user to select a preferred Pope. A possible feature request for ''blerp'' would be to allow "PISA". It is the second time this week that Popes have been mentioned, last time was two comics before in [[1690: Time-Tracking Software]] regarding the Pope's sexual activity.
|-
| -q||QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD||In most cases, a program will output basic information to the console, and running it in quiet mode will make it run without outputting anything. Blerp, on the other hand, apparently outputs information through audio, and the quiet flag causes it to run like a normal program. "STDOUT" is short for "standard output".
|-
| -r||RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS||Pointless and possibly damaging. Presumably the randomization takes the form of any flag randomly causing the behavior of another. This would perhaps be similar in effect to the -n flag.
|-
| -R||RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>||The star (*) symbol is often used as a wildcard to match any string of characters. "<nowiki>http://*</nowiki>" suggests that blerp will be run recursively on every (unsecured) webpage on the internet. Programming requirements that might make this a valid thing to want to do are ominous.
|-
| -s||FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY||A {{w|symbolic link}} is a filesystem feature that allows the creation of "fake" files which when accessed redirect to another file path. Many commands offer an option to follow filesystem links and operate on the actual file rather than the fake pointer; this option however seems to suggest that it will only politely pretend to do so.
|-
| -S||STEALTH MODE||Similar to -a, in that it sounds more like an option for some kind of robot. In this mode it appears the program will attempt to make sneaky changes without drawing any attention to itself.
|-
| -t||TUMBLE DRY||Perhaps useful for a program that runs on a clothes dryer. Refers to [https://img1.etsystatic.com/000/0/5254504/il_570xN.184726893.jpg directions like these]. Many clothing items are marked "do not tumble dry" in the care instructions, but this would be extremely difficult to make relevant to a program. Given the other flags, this may be less nonsensical than it would first appear. This flag could also be a reference to the dry-run flags that are sometimes available to make command line tools do a simulation run without making any actual modifications to the system.
|-
| -u||UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL||{{w|ANSEL}} is an obscure character encoding introduced in 1985. It extends ASCII by adding 63 new characters, including 29 combining diacritics. Since most hardware in the 1980s could not handle combining diacritics, it was never popular. Using ANSEL as a default would be strange, as most terminals will not know how to decode it, and will provide incorrect characters for anything beyond ASCII. By comparison, UTF-8 is a standard text encoding supported by almost all modern systems. The problem with using different modes (where the original was also UTF-8) is shown in the title text of [[1683: Digital Data]].
|-
| -U||UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)||Update usually refers to replacing an old software with a newer version. The default here suggests posting a status update to Facebook, sourcing an update from Facebook, or updating Facebook itself.
|-
| -v||VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}||Almost standard flag, in ordinary programs the opposite of -q - instead of silencing output, it generates more, usually to help with debugging. For ''blerp'', this flag gets replaced with a command that prints the contents of all files in the filesystem tree. However, it will never complete, as certain device files never end (/dev/urandom contains random bytes). In any case, the "find" command is missing <code>\;</code> and will not run, instead complaining <code>find: missing argument to `-exec'</code> .
|-
| -V||SET VERSION NUMBER||Many programs will have a flag to view their version number. This flag ''changes'' the version number instead. Version number should only be changed when the program is updated (because it's used for distinguishing which edition of a program you have), so manually changing the version number like this is strange and potentially damaging.
|-
| -y||YIKES||{{Wiktionary|yikes}} is an interjection which can express fear or empathy with unpleasant or undesirable circumstances. It is unclear how this would influence the program.
|}

==Transcript==
:[A terminal screen; the background is black and the text is white.]
<div style="background-color:black;color:white;white-space:pre-wrap;font-family:monospace;padding: 0 2em;max-width:50em;">
;NAME
:blerp
;SYNOPSIS
:blerp {[ OPTION | ARGS ]...[ ARGS ... -f [FLAGS] ...}
:blerp {... DIRECTORY ... URL | BLERP} OPTIONS ] -{}
;DESCRIPTION
:blerp FILTERS LOCAL OR REMOTE FILES OR RESOURCES USING PATTERNS DEFINED BY ARGUMENTS AND ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES. THIS BEHAVIOR CAN BE ALTERED BY VARIOUS FLAGS.
;OPTIONS
:-a ATTACK MODE
:-b SUPPRESS BEES
:-— FLAGS USE EM DASHES
:-c COUNT NUMBER OF ARGUMENTS
:-d PIPES OUTPUT TO DEBUG.EXE
:-D DEPRECATED
:-e EXECUTE SOMETHING
:-f FUN MODE
:-g USE GOOGLE
:-h CHECK WHETHER INPUT HALTS
:-i IGNORE CASE (LOWER)
:-I IGNORE CASE (UPPER)
:-jk KIDDING
:-n BEHAVIOR NOT DEFINED
:-o OVERWRITE
:-O OPPOSITE DAY
:-p SET TRUE POPE; ACCEPTS "ROME" OR "AVIGNON"
:-q QUIET MODE; OUTPUT IS PRINTED TO STDOUT INSTEAD OF BEING SPOKEN ALOUD
:-r RANDOMIZE ARGUMENTS
:-R RUN RECURSIVELY ON <nowiki>http://*</nowiki>
:-s FOLLOW SYMBOLIC LINKS SYMBOLICALLY
:-S STEALTH MODE
:-t TUMBLE DRY
:-u UTF-8 MODE; OTHERWISE DEFAULTS TO ANSEL
:-U UPDATE (DEFAULT: FACEBOOK)
:-v VERBOSE; ALIAS TO find / -exec cat {}
:-V SET VERSION NUMBER
:-y YIKES
;SEE ALSO
:blerp(1), blerp(3), blirb(8), blarb(51) blorp(501)(c)(3)
;BUG REPORTS
:<nowiki>http://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/47744-Hemiptera</nowiki>
;COPYRIGHT
:GPL(2)(3+) CC-BY/5.0 RV 41.0 LIKE GECKO/BSD 4(2) OR BEST OFFER
</div>

==Trivia==
Actual UNIX manpages exist on some systems which are written in a similar, nonsensical style to these.
Manual pages distributed for the ''<n>fun'' sections describe similarly humorous "commands" with unusual options.
On some systems, these manual pages are available in funny-manpages or asr-manpages packages.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:BSD]]
[[Category:Bees]]
[[Category:Man pages]]
[[Category:Scientific research]]
[[Category:Unicode]]

1665: City Talk Pages

2025-10-22T21:53:28Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1665
| date = April 8, 2016
| title = City Talk Pages
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = city talk pages.png
| titletext = I don't think the Lakeshore Air Crash Museum really belongs under 'Tourist Attractions.' It's not a museum--it's just an area near the Lake Festival Laser Show where a lot of planes have crashed.
}}
==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
The comic makes fun of Wikipedia talk pages. On Wikipedia, every article has a place to discuss the content of the page, called a "{{w|Help:Using talk pages|talk page}}". This comic presents the table-of-contents of the talk page of an article about a city, showing all headers and subheaders used by Wikipedia editors to organize discussions by topic. Unusually, many subsection headers are used to react directly to previous subsections (i.e. "Not how Wikipedia works"; "Also bleak"). While some of the topics are normal for a talk page (e.g. "Origin of city's name"; "Discuss: New picture") others are increasingly absurd. The topics discussed suggest that the city has many problems and is a bad place to live in or visit.

The topics show a common problem at Wikipedia's talk pages: People often use them as a place to talk about the ''subject'' of the article, but it is for talking about the ''article'' itself. Someone near the top of the talk page is suggesting a better name for the city.

The article repeatedly refers to "the murders", suggesting that the city might be well-known for them. It seems that the editors cannot agree on how notable "the murders" are. "Not that notable" refers to Wikipedia's general criteria for including information in articles. "Notable" is technically incorrect, as Wikipedia's {{w|Notability on Wikipedia|Notability}} guideline only applies to whether an article can be written on a larger subject. "{{w|WP:UNDUE|Undue weight}}" is the appropriate guideline for article content. Material which is not noteworthy should be removed; however, different editors often disagree about what is notable, which may result in text being inserted and then removed (an "edit war"). Someone creates a section on how "all cities have murders." While true, most cities would not have a series of them so well-known that when someone talks about "the murders" any reader could be expected to know what they are talking about, making this sound like an attempt to make the city sound nicer than it is. "I think the murderer is reverting my edits" suggests the murders are being committed by ''one person'' who is influencing how they are shown on Wikipedia - perhaps trying to prevent Wikipedia from publishing evidence of them or possibly publicise them by adding ''more'' information about them. This raises the possibility that the discussion of the murder visible in the infobox picture may have been ''initiated by the murderer''.

The {{w|WP:Infobox|infobox}} is a short fact sheet that many articles in the (English) Wikipedia have; it generally includes the main image illustrating the subject of the article. The question of which picture is best for the prominent infobox can cause arguments, as it is preferred to be high-quality, accurate, and pretty. It seems that the people who are editing the article are getting desperate to find a non-bleak picture of the city. When a non-bleak picture is added, it turns out to be from the 2016 Disney film ''{{w|Zootopia}}'' (e.g. The fictional city which is the setting and title of the film has a distinctive [http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/4/43/Zootopia_City_Full.jpg look] which is far from bleak, but is not a picture of the city.), which is also known as ''Zootropolis'' in some European countries and ''Zoomania'' in Germany.

It is discovered that the photograph of the city has a murder in it. Instead of forwarding the picture to law enforcement, someone uses the image editing software Photoshop to erase the murder so the picture might be less objectionable. It appears that murders are so common in the city that any random photograph of the city has a chance of showing a murder, to the point where a second photo proposed as a replacement for the infobox picture is found to show ''another'' murder.

{{w|Voltaire}} was a French Enlightenment writer. As a prominent and very opinionated intellectual, [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire#Misattributed he gets a lot of quotes falsely attributed to him]; most famously, he did not actually say "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (that was {{w|Evelyn Beatrice Hall}}). Restaurants {{w|Restaurant#Modern format|as they are understood today}} only developed near the end of Voltaire's life in the 18th century, and Voltaire is not known for writing about food establishments.

The city apparently is a mining town and there have been multiple mining disasters. An editor is complaining that this section is too long, but another editor points out that this is because there have been so many mining disasters that a large section is needed to cover the topic. It is absurd to attribute local mining disasters to the city being "bad at mining," mainly because such disasters are significant tragedies for the worker communities in which they occur.

"1982 Secession" refers to Key West, Florida symbolically seceding from the United States in 1982 to form the {{w|Conch Republic}}, a {{w|micronation}}. Presumably the city discussed in the article did something similar, or the user posting this is confused and trying to discuss the article for Key West.

A known problem on Wikipedia is "{{w|WP:COATRACK|coatracking}}", where people use articles to promote topics that are not strictly the subject of the article (perhaps by writing far more about them than is necessary, when they could just be mentioned in passing). Here, it emerges that someone used this article to express a completely irrelevant and weirdly dubious opinion on condom use.

{{w|Andrew Lloyd Webber}} is an English composer famous for writing ''The {{w|Phantom Of The Opera}}''. Webber is also known for writing the music for ''{{w|Starlight Express}}'', a rock opera about anthropomorphized trains, which is probably another factor in the train station joke. Meanwhile, {{w|Frank Lloyd Wright}}, who shares his middle name and last initial, was an American architect, who designed more than 1,000 structures. As it turns out it was the composer who was responsible for the train station. Another editor announces that they're putting a mention of a collapse of the station roof (presumably recently), the implication being that Andrew is a lot better at composing than architectural engineering.

In the title text, it emerges that the Lakeside Festival's eponymous Laser Show is so impressive that it has caused a number of aeroplanes to crash. This refers to the dangerous behavior of deliberately aiming laser pointers at aircrafts, as they can be distracting or even blinding to the pilots, putting the flight at risk. The article has been promoting a location as the "Lakeshore Air Crash Museum", despite it having no such official status, and seems to just be the local scene of multiple accidents resulting from the recklessly recurring laser hazards.

==Examples==
*{{w|Talk:Key West, Florida#What's with the Chicken photo}}: ''If there is a reason like Key West likes to raise chickens, or rather it's people do it should be noted in the article otherwise it the photos serves no purpose[.]''
*{{w|Talk:Rio de Janeiro#Oh, there's no crime in Rio?}}: ''What PR group promoting tourism to Rio has done an insanely good job of preventing this page from having any mention of Rio's horrendous constant warfare in the favelas[?] The truth hurts sometimes, but it's better than denial.''
*{{w|Talk:Kirkcaldy/Archive 1#Derivation of the name}}: ''More likely, it seems to me, is that the name derives entirely from pre-Gaelic sources (e.g. Pictish and/or Brythonic) and is more likely to come from something like "caer" (fort, camp) + "caled" + "dynion" - or, indeed, "caledonii" - where the latter elements mean either "hard men" or "Caledonians"[.]''
*{{w|Talk:Isfahan#Requested move}}: ''Isfahan → Esfahan — The Esfahan pronounce is correcter.''
*{{w|Talk:Chattanooga, Tennessee#Crime}}: ''Besides, it's doubtful Chattanooga didn't have gangs until the summer of 2003.''
*{{w|Talk:Muara Bungo#Recent Editing Events}}: ''Please do not flag this page for deletion.''
*{{w|Talk:Arvada, Colorado#"Police scandal" section is libelous, biased and does not have proper attributes, making it one man's opinion}}: ''Please show us in Attribution 17 where it says that "several members of the Arvada police" were convicted of "previous criminal conduct." Please show us in Attribution 17 where it says that it cost the city "close to half a million dollars defending the criminal actions of one police officer alone ... " If you do not have an attribution, it is only YOUR OPINION.''
*{{w|Talk:Sutton-in-Ashfield# }}: ''And about the Ashfield show? Worth menioning? It's got steadily worse over the years, they don't even have ferrets there anymore. :(.''
*{{w|Talk:Abergele#Untitled}}: ''YES THIS IS RELEVANT!!! I MAY NOT BE FAMOUS TO YOU BUT I AM TO OTHER PEOPLE, I AM WELL KNOWN IN THE DENBIGH AREA, AND RECENTLY BEEN IN THE LOCAL PAPERS, SO IS THAT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU! BY DANIEL JONES! PEACE OUT!''
*{{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4}}:
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#Chicago-style pizza|#Chicago-style pizza}}: ''I heard you can get Chicago-style deep dish pizza even in Tucson! Is this true? If so, it probably should be added to the article.''
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#Crime?|#Crime?}}: ''Um...I heard this place is kinda dangerous.''
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#Jan. 8 2011|#Jan. 8 2011}}: ''Shouldn't the headline-indicated shooting be included?''
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#What's with all the snow?|#What's with all the snow?}}: ''Why are there three photos showing snow in the vicinity of Tucson? I know snow is an event for us, but I think other Wikipedians know what it looks like.''

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the panel:]
:I love reading the Wikipedia talk pages for articles on individual cites

:[A list of contents for a Wikipedia talk page regarding an article about a city. Except for the header and the square brackets, which are written in black text, the rest is in a blue font.]
:::Contents [hide]

<div style="color:#0645ad;">
:1 Origin of city's name?
::1.1 Idea for a better name
::1.2 Not how Wikipedia works
:2 Too much promotion of the lake festival
:3 Should we mention the murders?
::3.1 Not that notable
::3.2 All cites have murders
:4 Quote verification: Even if Voltaire did visit (unlikely), why would he get so angry about our restaurants?
:5 Discuss: New picture
::5.1 Current one looks awfully bleak
::5.2 Gray sky
::5.3 What about this
::5.4 Also bleak
::5.5 Maybe this place just looks that way
::5.6 Found a better picture, more colorful
::5.7 That's a shot from Disney's ''Zootopia''
:6 "Mining disasters" section too long
::6.1 Not really Wikipedia's fault
::6.2 Why is this town so bad at mining?
:7 Infobox picture: I just realized you can see a murder happening in the background
::7.1 This city is terrible
::7.2 Photoshopped out murder
::7.3 Can someone just take a better picture
::7.4 Okay, uploaded a new picture
::7.5 Wait, never mind, I just noticed there's a murder in this one, too
:8 1982 secession still in effect?
:9 I think the murderer is reverting my edits
:10 Why does this article take '''''any''''' position on correct condom use, let alone such a weird and ambiguous one?
:11 Train station "Designed by Andrew Lloyd Webber"?
::11.1 They probably mean Frank Lloyd Wright
::11.2 I thought so too, but it's apparently not a mistake
::11.3 Didn't know he did architecture
::11.4 Roof collapse
</div>

==Trivia==
*In the comic ''Webber'' was once spelled ''Weber''. This was a mistake by [[Randall]], as it has since been corrected.
**Find the original [http://web.archive.org/web/20160408153019/http://xkcd.com/1665/ here].
*In 2022, Randall [https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1501650939140362241 commented on Twitter that] "I don’t usually laugh at my own comics, but every time I stumble on this one and read through it again, it gets me".
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Disney]]
[[Category:Movies]]

1665: City Talk Pages

2025-10-22T21:52:32Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1665
| date = April 8, 2016
| title = City Talk Pages
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = city talk pages.png
| titletext = I don't think the Lakeshore Air Crash Museum really belongs under 'Tourist Attractions.' It's not a museum--it's just an area near the Lake Festival Laser Show where a lot of planes have crashed.
}}
==Explanation==
{{toc}}
The comic makes fun of Wikipedia talk pages. On Wikipedia, every article has a place to discuss the content of the page, called a "{{w|Help:Using talk pages|talk page}}". This comic presents the table-of-contents of the talk page of an article about a city, showing all headers and subheaders used by Wikipedia editors to organize discussions by topic. Unusually, many subsection headers are used to react directly to previous subsections (i.e. "Not how Wikipedia works"; "Also bleak"). While some of the topics are normal for a talk page (e.g. "Origin of city's name"; "Discuss: New picture") others are increasingly absurd. The topics discussed suggest that the city has many problems and is a bad place to live in or visit.

The topics show a common problem at Wikipedia's talk pages: People often use them as a place to talk about the ''subject'' of the article, but it is for talking about the ''article'' itself. Someone near the top of the talk page is suggesting a better name for the city.

The article repeatedly refers to "the murders", suggesting that the city might be well-known for them. It seems that the editors cannot agree on how notable "the murders" are. "Not that notable" refers to Wikipedia's general criteria for including information in articles. "Notable" is technically incorrect, as Wikipedia's {{w|Notability on Wikipedia|Notability}} guideline only applies to whether an article can be written on a larger subject. "{{w|WP:UNDUE|Undue weight}}" is the appropriate guideline for article content. Material which is not noteworthy should be removed; however, different editors often disagree about what is notable, which may result in text being inserted and then removed (an "edit war"). Someone creates a section on how "all cities have murders." While true, most cities would not have a series of them so well-known that when someone talks about "the murders" any reader could be expected to know what they are talking about, making this sound like an attempt to make the city sound nicer than it is. "I think the murderer is reverting my edits" suggests the murders are being committed by ''one person'' who is influencing how they are shown on Wikipedia - perhaps trying to prevent Wikipedia from publishing evidence of them or possibly publicise them by adding ''more'' information about them. This raises the possibility that the discussion of the murder visible in the infobox picture may have been ''initiated by the murderer''.

The {{w|WP:Infobox|infobox}} is a short fact sheet that many articles in the (English) Wikipedia have; it generally includes the main image illustrating the subject of the article. The question of which picture is best for the prominent infobox can cause arguments, as it is preferred to be high-quality, accurate, and pretty. It seems that the people who are editing the article are getting desperate to find a non-bleak picture of the city. When a non-bleak picture is added, it turns out to be from the 2016 Disney film ''{{w|Zootopia}}'' (e.g. The fictional city which is the setting and title of the film has a distinctive [http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/4/43/Zootopia_City_Full.jpg look] which is far from bleak, but is not a picture of the city.), which is also known as ''Zootropolis'' in some European countries and ''Zoomania'' in Germany.

It is discovered that the photograph of the city has a murder in it. Instead of forwarding the picture to law enforcement, someone uses the image editing software Photoshop to erase the murder so the picture might be less objectionable. It appears that murders are so common in the city that any random photograph of the city has a chance of showing a murder, to the point where a second photo proposed as a replacement for the infobox picture is found to show ''another'' murder.

{{w|Voltaire}} was a French Enlightenment writer. As a prominent and very opinionated intellectual, [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire#Misattributed he gets a lot of quotes falsely attributed to him]; most famously, he did not actually say "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (that was {{w|Evelyn Beatrice Hall}}). Restaurants {{w|Restaurant#Modern format|as they are understood today}} only developed near the end of Voltaire's life in the 18th century, and Voltaire is not known for writing about food establishments.

The city apparently is a mining town and there have been multiple mining disasters. An editor is complaining that this section is too long, but another editor points out that this is because there have been so many mining disasters that a large section is needed to cover the topic. It is absurd to attribute local mining disasters to the city being "bad at mining," mainly because such disasters are significant tragedies for the worker communities in which they occur.

"1982 Secession" refers to Key West, Florida symbolically seceding from the United States in 1982 to form the {{w|Conch Republic}}, a {{w|micronation}}. Presumably the city discussed in the article did something similar, or the user posting this is confused and trying to discuss the article for Key West.

A known problem on Wikipedia is "{{w|WP:COATRACK|coatracking}}", where people use articles to promote topics that are not strictly the subject of the article (perhaps by writing far more about them than is necessary, when they could just be mentioned in passing). Here, it emerges that someone used this article to express a completely irrelevant and weirdly dubious opinion on condom use.

{{w|Andrew Lloyd Webber}} is an English composer famous for writing ''The {{w|Phantom Of The Opera}}''. Webber is also known for writing the music for ''{{w|Starlight Express}}'', a rock opera about anthropomorphized trains, which is probably another factor in the train station joke. Meanwhile, {{w|Frank Lloyd Wright}}, who shares his middle name and last initial, was an American architect, who designed more than 1,000 structures. As it turns out it was the composer who was responsible for the train station. Another editor announces that they're putting a mention of a collapse of the station roof (presumably recently), the implication being that Andrew is a lot better at composing than architectural engineering.

In the title text, it emerges that the Lakeside Festival's eponymous Laser Show is so impressive that it has caused a number of aeroplanes to crash. This refers to the dangerous behavior of deliberately aiming laser pointers at aircrafts, as they can be distracting or even blinding to the pilots, putting the flight at risk. The article has been promoting a location as the "Lakeshore Air Crash Museum", despite it having no such official status, and seems to just be the local scene of multiple accidents resulting from the recklessly recurring laser hazards.

==Examples==
*{{w|Talk:Key West, Florida#What's with the Chicken photo}}: ''If there is a reason like Key West likes to raise chickens, or rather it's people do it should be noted in the article otherwise it the photos serves no purpose[.]''
*{{w|Talk:Rio de Janeiro#Oh, there's no crime in Rio?}}: ''What PR group promoting tourism to Rio has done an insanely good job of preventing this page from having any mention of Rio's horrendous constant warfare in the favelas[?] The truth hurts sometimes, but it's better than denial.''
*{{w|Talk:Kirkcaldy/Archive 1#Derivation of the name}}: ''More likely, it seems to me, is that the name derives entirely from pre-Gaelic sources (e.g. Pictish and/or Brythonic) and is more likely to come from something like "caer" (fort, camp) + "caled" + "dynion" - or, indeed, "caledonii" - where the latter elements mean either "hard men" or "Caledonians"[.]''
*{{w|Talk:Isfahan#Requested move}}: ''Isfahan → Esfahan — The Esfahan pronounce is correcter.''
*{{w|Talk:Chattanooga, Tennessee#Crime}}: ''Besides, it's doubtful Chattanooga didn't have gangs until the summer of 2003.''
*{{w|Talk:Muara Bungo#Recent Editing Events}}: ''Please do not flag this page for deletion.''
*{{w|Talk:Arvada, Colorado#"Police scandal" section is libelous, biased and does not have proper attributes, making it one man's opinion}}: ''Please show us in Attribution 17 where it says that "several members of the Arvada police" were convicted of "previous criminal conduct." Please show us in Attribution 17 where it says that it cost the city "close to half a million dollars defending the criminal actions of one police officer alone ... " If you do not have an attribution, it is only YOUR OPINION.''
*{{w|Talk:Sutton-in-Ashfield# }}: ''And about the Ashfield show? Worth menioning? It's got steadily worse over the years, they don't even have ferrets there anymore. :(.''
*{{w|Talk:Abergele#Untitled}}: ''YES THIS IS RELEVANT!!! I MAY NOT BE FAMOUS TO YOU BUT I AM TO OTHER PEOPLE, I AM WELL KNOWN IN THE DENBIGH AREA, AND RECENTLY BEEN IN THE LOCAL PAPERS, SO IS THAT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU! BY DANIEL JONES! PEACE OUT!''
*{{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4}}:
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#Chicago-style pizza|#Chicago-style pizza}}: ''I heard you can get Chicago-style deep dish pizza even in Tucson! Is this true? If so, it probably should be added to the article.''
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#Crime?|#Crime?}}: ''Um...I heard this place is kinda dangerous.''
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#Jan. 8 2011|#Jan. 8 2011}}: ''Shouldn't the headline-indicated shooting be included?''
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#What's with all the snow?|#What's with all the snow?}}: ''Why are there three photos showing snow in the vicinity of Tucson? I know snow is an event for us, but I think other Wikipedians know what it looks like.''

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the panel:]
:I love reading the Wikipedia talk pages for articles on individual cites

:[A list of contents for a Wikipedia talk page regarding an article about a city. Except for the header and the square brackets, which are written in black text, the rest is in a blue font.]
:::Contents [hide]

<div style="color:#0645ad;">
:1 Origin of city's name?
::1.1 Idea for a better name
::1.2 Not how Wikipedia works
:2 Too much promotion of the lake festival
:3 Should we mention the murders?
::3.1 Not that notable
::3.2 All cites have murders
:4 Quote verification: Even if Voltaire did visit (unlikely), why would he get so angry about our restaurants?
:5 Discuss: New picture
::5.1 Current one looks awfully bleak
::5.2 Gray sky
::5.3 What about this
::5.4 Also bleak
::5.5 Maybe this place just looks that way
::5.6 Found a better picture, more colorful
::5.7 That's a shot from Disney's ''Zootopia''
:6 "Mining disasters" section too long
::6.1 Not really Wikipedia's fault
::6.2 Why is this town so bad at mining?
:7 Infobox picture: I just realized you can see a murder happening in the background
::7.1 This city is terrible
::7.2 Photoshopped out murder
::7.3 Can someone just take a better picture
::7.4 Okay, uploaded a new picture
::7.5 Wait, never mind, I just noticed there's a murder in this one, too
:8 1982 secession still in effect?
:9 I think the murderer is reverting my edits
:10 Why does this article take '''''any''''' position on correct condom use, let alone such a weird and ambiguous one?
:11 Train station "Designed by Andrew Lloyd Webber"?
::11.1 They probably mean Frank Lloyd Wright
::11.2 I thought so too, but it's apparently not a mistake
::11.3 Didn't know he did architecture
::11.4 Roof collapse
</div>

==Trivia==
*In the comic ''Webber'' was once spelled ''Weber''. This was a mistake by [[Randall]], as it has since been corrected.
**Find the original [http://web.archive.org/web/20160408153019/http://xkcd.com/1665/ here].
*In 2022, Randall [https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1501650939140362241 commented on Twitter that] "I don’t usually laugh at my own comics, but every time I stumble on this one and read through it again, it gets me".
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Disney]]
[[Category:Movies]]

1665: City Talk Pages

2025-10-22T21:51:49Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{comic
| number = 1665
| date = April 8, 2016
| title = City Talk Pages
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = city talk pages.png
| titletext = I don't think the Lakeshore Air Crash Museum really belongs under 'Tourist Attractions.' It's not a museum--it's just an area near the Lake Festival Laser Show where a lot of planes have crashed.
}}
==Explanation==
The comic makes fun of Wikipedia talk pages. On Wikipedia, every article has a place to discuss the content of the page, called a "{{w|Help:Using talk pages|talk page}}". This comic presents the table-of-contents of the talk page of an article about a city, showing all headers and subheaders used by Wikipedia editors to organize discussions by topic. Unusually, many subsection headers are used to react directly to previous subsections (i.e. "Not how Wikipedia works"; "Also bleak"). While some of the topics are normal for a talk page (e.g. "Origin of city's name"; "Discuss: New picture") others are increasingly absurd. The topics discussed suggest that the city has many problems and is a bad place to live in or visit.

The topics show a common problem at Wikipedia's talk pages: People often use them as a place to talk about the ''subject'' of the article, but it is for talking about the ''article'' itself. Someone near the top of the talk page is suggesting a better name for the city.

The article repeatedly refers to "the murders", suggesting that the city might be well-known for them. It seems that the editors cannot agree on how notable "the murders" are. "Not that notable" refers to Wikipedia's general criteria for including information in articles. "Notable" is technically incorrect, as Wikipedia's {{w|Notability on Wikipedia|Notability}} guideline only applies to whether an article can be written on a larger subject. "{{w|WP:UNDUE|Undue weight}}" is the appropriate guideline for article content. Material which is not noteworthy should be removed; however, different editors often disagree about what is notable, which may result in text being inserted and then removed (an "edit war"). Someone creates a section on how "all cities have murders." While true, most cities would not have a series of them so well-known that when someone talks about "the murders" any reader could be expected to know what they are talking about, making this sound like an attempt to make the city sound nicer than it is. "I think the murderer is reverting my edits" suggests the murders are being committed by ''one person'' who is influencing how they are shown on Wikipedia - perhaps trying to prevent Wikipedia from publishing evidence of them or possibly publicise them by adding ''more'' information about them. This raises the possibility that the discussion of the murder visible in the infobox picture may have been ''initiated by the murderer''.

The {{w|WP:Infobox|infobox}} is a short fact sheet that many articles in the (English) Wikipedia have; it generally includes the main image illustrating the subject of the article. The question of which picture is best for the prominent infobox can cause arguments, as it is preferred to be high-quality, accurate, and pretty. It seems that the people who are editing the article are getting desperate to find a non-bleak picture of the city. When a non-bleak picture is added, it turns out to be from the 2016 Disney film ''{{w|Zootopia}}'' (e.g. The fictional city which is the setting and title of the film has a distinctive [http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/disney/images/4/43/Zootopia_City_Full.jpg look] which is far from bleak, but is not a picture of the city.), which is also known as ''Zootropolis'' in some European countries and ''Zoomania'' in Germany.

It is discovered that the photograph of the city has a murder in it. Instead of forwarding the picture to law enforcement, someone uses the image editing software Photoshop to erase the murder so the picture might be less objectionable. It appears that murders are so common in the city that any random photograph of the city has a chance of showing a murder, to the point where a second photo proposed as a replacement for the infobox picture is found to show ''another'' murder.

{{w|Voltaire}} was a French Enlightenment writer. As a prominent and very opinionated intellectual, [https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Voltaire#Misattributed he gets a lot of quotes falsely attributed to him]; most famously, he did not actually say "I disagree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" (that was {{w|Evelyn Beatrice Hall}}). Restaurants {{w|Restaurant#Modern format|as they are understood today}} only developed near the end of Voltaire's life in the 18th century, and Voltaire is not known for writing about food establishments.

The city apparently is a mining town and there have been multiple mining disasters. An editor is complaining that this section is too long, but another editor points out that this is because there have been so many mining disasters that a large section is needed to cover the topic. It is absurd to attribute local mining disasters to the city being "bad at mining," mainly because such disasters are significant tragedies for the worker communities in which they occur.

"1982 Secession" refers to Key West, Florida symbolically seceding from the United States in 1982 to form the {{w|Conch Republic}}, a {{w|micronation}}. Presumably the city discussed in the article did something similar, or the user posting this is confused and trying to discuss the article for Key West.

A known problem on Wikipedia is "{{w|WP:COATRACK|coatracking}}", where people use articles to promote topics that are not strictly the subject of the article (perhaps by writing far more about them than is necessary, when they could just be mentioned in passing). Here, it emerges that someone used this article to express a completely irrelevant and weirdly dubious opinion on condom use.

{{w|Andrew Lloyd Webber}} is an English composer famous for writing ''The {{w|Phantom Of The Opera}}''. Webber is also known for writing the music for ''{{w|Starlight Express}}'', a rock opera about anthropomorphized trains, which is probably another factor in the train station joke. Meanwhile, {{w|Frank Lloyd Wright}}, who shares his middle name and last initial, was an American architect, who designed more than 1,000 structures. As it turns out it was the composer who was responsible for the train station. Another editor announces that they're putting a mention of a collapse of the station roof (presumably recently), the implication being that Andrew is a lot better at composing than architectural engineering.

In the title text, it emerges that the Lakeside Festival's eponymous Laser Show is so impressive that it has caused a number of aeroplanes to crash. This refers to the dangerous behavior of deliberately aiming laser pointers at aircrafts, as they can be distracting or even blinding to the pilots, putting the flight at risk. The article has been promoting a location as the "Lakeshore Air Crash Museum", despite it having no such official status, and seems to just be the local scene of multiple accidents resulting from the recklessly recurring laser hazards.

==Examples==
*{{w|Talk:Key West, Florida#What's with the Chicken photo}}: ''If there is a reason like Key West likes to raise chickens, or rather it's people do it should be noted in the article otherwise it the photos serves no purpose[.]''
*{{w|Talk:Rio de Janeiro#Oh, there's no crime in Rio?}}: ''What PR group promoting tourism to Rio has done an insanely good job of preventing this page from having any mention of Rio's horrendous constant warfare in the favelas[?] The truth hurts sometimes, but it's better than denial.''
*{{w|Talk:Kirkcaldy/Archive 1#Derivation of the name}}: ''More likely, it seems to me, is that the name derives entirely from pre-Gaelic sources (e.g. Pictish and/or Brythonic) and is more likely to come from something like "caer" (fort, camp) + "caled" + "dynion" - or, indeed, "caledonii" - where the latter elements mean either "hard men" or "Caledonians"[.]''
*{{w|Talk:Isfahan#Requested move}}: ''Isfahan → Esfahan — The Esfahan pronounce is correcter.''
*{{w|Talk:Chattanooga, Tennessee#Crime}}: ''Besides, it's doubtful Chattanooga didn't have gangs until the summer of 2003.''
*{{w|Talk:Muara Bungo#Recent Editing Events}}: ''Please do not flag this page for deletion.''
*{{w|Talk:Arvada, Colorado#"Police scandal" section is libelous, biased and does not have proper attributes, making it one man's opinion}}: ''Please show us in Attribution 17 where it says that "several members of the Arvada police" were convicted of "previous criminal conduct." Please show us in Attribution 17 where it says that it cost the city "close to half a million dollars defending the criminal actions of one police officer alone ... " If you do not have an attribution, it is only YOUR OPINION.''
*{{w|Talk:Sutton-in-Ashfield# }}: ''And about the Ashfield show? Worth menioning? It's got steadily worse over the years, they don't even have ferrets there anymore. :(.''
*{{w|Talk:Abergele#Untitled}}: ''YES THIS IS RELEVANT!!! I MAY NOT BE FAMOUS TO YOU BUT I AM TO OTHER PEOPLE, I AM WELL KNOWN IN THE DENBIGH AREA, AND RECENTLY BEEN IN THE LOCAL PAPERS, SO IS THAT GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU! BY DANIEL JONES! PEACE OUT!''
*{{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4}}:
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#Chicago-style pizza|#Chicago-style pizza}}: ''I heard you can get Chicago-style deep dish pizza even in Tucson! Is this true? If so, it probably should be added to the article.''
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#Crime?|#Crime?}}: ''Um...I heard this place is kinda dangerous.''
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#Jan. 8 2011|#Jan. 8 2011}}: ''Shouldn't the headline-indicated shooting be included?''
** {{w|Talk:Tucson, Arizona/Archive 4#What's with all the snow?|#What's with all the snow?}}: ''Why are there three photos showing snow in the vicinity of Tucson? I know snow is an event for us, but I think other Wikipedians know what it looks like.''

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the panel:]
:I love reading the Wikipedia talk pages for articles on individual cites

:[A list of contents for a Wikipedia talk page regarding an article about a city. Except for the header and the square brackets, which are written in black text, the rest is in a blue font.]
:::Contents [hide]

<div style="color:#0645ad;">
:1 Origin of city's name?
::1.1 Idea for a better name
::1.2 Not how Wikipedia works
:2 Too much promotion of the lake festival
:3 Should we mention the murders?
::3.1 Not that notable
::3.2 All cites have murders
:4 Quote verification: Even if Voltaire did visit (unlikely), why would he get so angry about our restaurants?
:5 Discuss: New picture
::5.1 Current one looks awfully bleak
::5.2 Gray sky
::5.3 What about this
::5.4 Also bleak
::5.5 Maybe this place just looks that way
::5.6 Found a better picture, more colorful
::5.7 That's a shot from Disney's ''Zootopia''
:6 "Mining disasters" section too long
::6.1 Not really Wikipedia's fault
::6.2 Why is this town so bad at mining?
:7 Infobox picture: I just realized you can see a murder happening in the background
::7.1 This city is terrible
::7.2 Photoshopped out murder
::7.3 Can someone just take a better picture
::7.4 Okay, uploaded a new picture
::7.5 Wait, never mind, I just noticed there's a murder in this one, too
:8 1982 secession still in effect?
:9 I think the murderer is reverting my edits
:10 Why does this article take '''''any''''' position on correct condom use, let alone such a weird and ambiguous one?
:11 Train station "Designed by Andrew Lloyd Webber"?
::11.1 They probably mean Frank Lloyd Wright
::11.2 I thought so too, but it's apparently not a mistake
::11.3 Didn't know he did architecture
::11.4 Roof collapse
</div>

==Trivia==
*In the comic ''Webber'' was once spelled ''Weber''. This was a mistake by [[Randall]], as it has since been corrected.
**Find the original [http://web.archive.org/web/20160408153019/http://xkcd.com/1665/ here].
*In 2022, Randall [https://twitter.com/xkcd/status/1501650939140362241 commented on Twitter that] "I don’t usually laugh at my own comics, but every time I stumble on this one and read through it again, it gets me".
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Disney]]
[[Category:Movies]]

2606: Weird Unicode Math Symbols

2025-10-22T03:55:02Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:2606: Weird Unicode Math Symbols}}
{{comic
| title = Clumsy
| image = sick.gif
| extra = yes
| titletext = [[File:sick.gif|12px]]
}}

== [[File:sick.gif|12px]] ==
[https://originator-kids.fandom.com/wiki/Clumsy_(Endless_Alphabet)]

== [[File:sick.gif|12px]] ==
<big>Clumsy</big>
 [[File:sick.gif|12px]] 

{|
| [[File:sick.gif|12px]] || [[File:sick.gif|12px]] || [[File:sick.gif|12px]]
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|-
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|-
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|-
| [[File:sick.gif|12px]] || [[File:sick.gif|12px]] || <div style="writing-mode: vertical-rl; text-align: center;"> [[File:sick.gif|12px]] [[File:sick.gif|12px]] </div>
|-
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{{disambig}}
[[Category:Disambiguation pages]]
[[Category:Design of xkcd.com]]
[[Category:Root category]]

2606: Weird Unicode Math Symbols

2025-10-22T03:54:36Z

2001:4450:813D:C800:FCCA:442D:8C9D:DF33:

{{DISPLAYTITLE:2606: Weird Unicode Math Symbols}}
{{comic
| title = Clumsy
| image = sick.gif
| titletext = [[File:sick.gif|12px]]
}}

== [[File:sick.gif|12px]] ==
[https://originator-kids.fandom.com/wiki/Clumsy_(Endless_Alphabet)]

== [[File:sick.gif|12px]] ==
<big>Clumsy</big>
 [[File:sick.gif|12px]] 

{|
| [[File:sick.gif|12px]] || [[File:sick.gif|12px]] || [[File:sick.gif|12px]]
|-
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|-
| [[File:sick.gif|12px]] || [[File:sick.gif|12px]] || [[File:sick.gif|12px]] [[File:sick.gif|12px]] [[File:sick.gif|12px]] [[File:sick.gif|12px]] [[File:sick.gif|12px]] [[File:sick.gif|12px]] [[File:sick.gif|12px]] 
|-
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|}

{{disambig}}
[[Category:Disambiguation pages]]
[[Category:Design of xkcd.com]]
[[Category:Root category]]