explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

581: The Race: Part 5

2022-05-04T21:04:50Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 240448 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 581
| date = May 8, 2009
| title = The Race: Part 5
| image = the_race_part_5.png
| titletext = It was actually canceled because they just noticed he's been naked under that coat the whole time. There's a petition on Facebook to get Fox to un-cancel it, and one on Livejournal to get him to take off the coat.
}}

==Explanation==
This is a continuation of the previous comic in "[[The Race]]" series, [[580: The Race: Part 4]].

In panel 6 (2nd panel in the 2nd row), {{w|Nathan Fillion}} line is reminiscent of a similar quote from the 2nd episode of {{w|Firefly (TV series)|''Firefly''}}, {{w|The Train Job}}: "I just wanted you to face me so she could get behind ya." In the show, {{w|Malcolm Reynolds}} is aided by {{w|Zoë Washburne}}, his second in command, who gets behind the bar thug he is speaking to. In the comic, Nathan Fillion is using the line on a fan, but {{w|Gina Torres}} is not standing behind [[Cueball]] this time.

Summer's line about growing but not retracting her hair appears to mean that because Nathan used her to stop Cueball, she has to stop him as well, which she neatly does. Alternatively, the line may be a random non-sequitur of the sort often uttered by her neurologically damaged character in the Firefly 'verse.

"Bwah!" is a sound Malcolm makes during one episode in which one of his crewmembers inadvertently sneaks up on him while trying to ask him a question. When he is questioned about it, he says he has invented a new war cry, and promptly practices yelling 'Bwahhhh' in a confident manner while readying his pistol.

Summer's statement in the 10th panel about swallowing a bug is a reference to the movie {{w|Serenity_(film)|''Serenity''}}, made in 2005 to conclude Firefly's storyline. After a harrowing high-speed chase in an open-topped hovercraft, the only comment from Summer's character is "I swallowed a bug," showing that she was either unconcerned, or stunned, by the narrow escape.

The final panel is a reference to {{w|Fox Television}}'s treatment of ''Firefly''. ''Firefly'' was cancelled after only 11 episodes of the 14 made were aired, leaving three episodes unaired.

Internet petitions, contrary to the sarcastic suggestion in the final panel, pretty much never work.

All comics in "[[The Race]]" series:
*[[577: The Race: Part 1]]
*[[578: The Race: Part 2]]
*[[579: The Race: Part 3]]
*[[580: The Race: Part 4]]
*[[581: The Race: Part 5]]

This series was released on five consecutive days (Monday-Friday) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.

Electric skateboards have been the subject of several other comics like [[139: I Have Owned Two Electric Skateboards]], [[409: Electric Skateboard (Double Comic)]] and a panel in [[442: xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel]].

==Transcript==
:[Nathan skates in.]
:Nathan: So you took care of him?
:Summer: I can extrude hair, but I can't retract it.
:Nathan: That a yes?
:[Summer grabs Nathan's arm as he skates past her, pulling him off the board.]
:Nathan: Bwah!
:[An Andy Capp-esque meleè dust cloud.]
:WHAP BAM POW WHAM
:[Summer skates away.]
:[A beat-up Nathan approaches an similarly battered Cueball.]
:Nathan: She may have my board, but I can still beat you to the finish line if I bring you down.
:Cueball: Bring it, Captain Tightpants.
:Nathan: I've got nothing to bring. I just said that so she could get behind you.
:[Cueball turns.]
:Cueball: Who—
:[Cueball is hit with his board.]
:''WHAM''
:[Nathan stands over a prone Cueball.]
:Nathan: I just said ''that'' so ''I'' could get behind you. The serious fans always fall for the quotes.
:[Wide panel of Summer crossing the finishing line on Nathan's board, breaking through the tape.]
:Announcer: And the winner is...
:Off-screen voice: Summer Glau?
:Summer: I swallowed a bug again.
:[Close-up of Cueball's beaten face.]
:Cueball: All right, Fillion. I've had enough of your treachery and ...rugged good looks. This ends here.
:[Equally close-up: Nathan's face, bearing several grazes.]
:Nathan: All right, fanboy. Let this be our final battle.
:[They rush at each other, fists ready to swing punches.]
:Final battle canceled by Fox.
:Try an Internet petition drive - those ''totally'' work.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:The Race]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|The Race]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Nathan Fillion]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Summer Glau]]
[[Category:Firefly]]
[[Category:Electric skateboard]]

830: Genetic Analysis

2022-05-04T21:04:10Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 241042 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 830
| date = December 6, 2010
| title = Genetic Analysis
| image = genetic_analysis.png
| titletext = There's still a chance you were conceived via IVF. But we've checked your mom's college yearbook photos, and whether or not she and your father had sex, it's clear that... listen, I know this is hard for you.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Genetic testing}} is a medical procedure where researchers analyze your DNA and family history to determine if you have elevated risk factors for diseases such as heart conditions and cancer. Here, the doctor appears to be delivering the results of [[Cueball]]'s genetic test but instead tells him that his parents had sex at some point.

People generally don't like thinking about their parents having sex, but it obviously happened, since having sex is usually the precondition for having children,{{Citation needed}} so this test result is completely unsurprising. If the doctor only came to this conclusion after analyzing genes on several of Cueball's chromosomes, this could have been done in order to verify that Cueball's DNA indeed resembles the DNA of his supposed parents i.e., that the people whom he has always viewed as his parents are indeed his genetic parents. However, the alternative might be even more disturbing.

The title text notes that he could be an {{w|in-vitro fertilization}} baby, which does not require the parents to directly have sex. However, it seems to suggest that Cueball's mother was very attractive in her college years (or that she was pregnant). Thus, Cueball's mother probably did have sex (regardless of whether or not it was with Cueball's father). This is a reference to the stereotype that college students engage in large amounts of sex.

==Transcript==
:Cueball: Did my genetic tests come back?
:Megan: Yeah. Sit down.
:Cueball: Is it bad news? What are my risk factors?

:[Cueball is now sitting in the chair awaiting her answer. Megan looks down at the clipboard.]
:Megan: We can't be sure about this, but we've analyzed genes on several of your chromosomes and it's hard to avoid the conclusion:

:[Megan puts down the clipboard and looks at Cueball as she delivers her news. Cueball puts his hands to his face in dismay.]
:Megan: At some point, your parents had sex.
:Cueball: Oh God!
:Megan: Stay calm! It's possible it was just once!
:Cueball: I... I need to be alone.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Sex]]
[[Category:Biology]]

343: 1337: Part 3

2022-05-04T21:03:38Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 243665 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 343
| date = November 14, 2007
| title = 1337: Part 3
| image = 1337 part 3.png
| titletext = I once asked an NSA guy whether they'd broken RSA. And I know I can trust him, because I asked if he was lying to me and he said no.
}}

==Explanation==
This is the third part of five in the "[[:Category:1337|1337]]" series. The title 1337 is "L-eet," or "elite," using the {{w|Leet}} alphabet, a coding system used primarily on the internet (and on early text messaging system), meant to provide a bit of {{w|obfuscation}} to plain text both to make it harder to read and to show off in a creative way using in-group jargon.

All comics in the series:
*[[341: 1337: Part 1]]
*[[342: 1337: Part 2]]
*[[343: 1337: Part 3]]
*[[344: 1337: Part 4]]
*[[345: 1337: Part 5]]
This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.

The comic is narrated by [[Cueball]] as seen in the previous comic, but that Cueball is not shown here, where the man drawn as Cueball is a real person:

{{w|Adrian Lamo}} is a hacker known for being a threat analyst and has penetrated many corporate networks. As far as we know, he has not penetrated any government networks, so helping Elaine physically break into the {{w|NSA}} would probably inspire second thoughts. The use of a rug to cross the barbed wire fence is likely a reference to a scene in ''{{w|Fight Club}}'', where the same method is used to break into a {{w|liposuction}} clinic.

{{w|RSA (algorithm)|RSA (the algorithm)}} is an encryption algorithm that allows decryption using {{w|Public-key cryptography|public keys}}. No efficient method to {{w|RSA problem|break RSA}} is known.{{Citation needed}} But if the NSA knew any such method, it would be unlikely for them to admit that.
However, the NSA have paid {{w|RSA Security|RSA (the company)}} to put a [http://theverge.com/2013/12/20/5231006/nsa-paid-10-million-for-a-back-door-into-rsa-encryption-according-to backdoor] into one of their encryption schemes.

{{w|Lawrence Lessig}} is a political activist focusing on copyright law and intellectual property, as well as a founding board member of {{w|Creative Commons}}.

{{w|Steve Jobs}} was the two-time {{w|CEO}} of {{w|Apple Inc.}} In partnership with {{w|Steve Wozniak}}, he founded Apple. He oversaw Apple's return from near bankruptcy, the introduction of the original Macintosh, the {{w|iPod}}, the {{w|iPhone}}, and the {{w|iPad}}. But in the '90s, most of this had not happened yet. The comic is implying that it was Elaine, in fact, who planted those ideas in Jobs' mind (while perching on his bedpost, a nearly-impossible physical task for even a relatively small and light human being - such a stance is often depicted for gargoyles or fictional vampires, the latter of which are associated with nocturnal bedroom-invasions like this). Furthermore, Steve's reactions indicate that he was abruptly woken up by Elaine after she broke into his home and started a one-sided conversation with him.

The final panel is a pun on the Riot grrrls - {{w|Riot grrrl}} is an underground feminist punk rock movement. This metamorphosizes in the hands of Randall into Riot Prrl - who presumably prefer to code in {{w|Perl}}. The [https://www.facebook.com/Riot-Prrl-219590338058369/ real Riot Prrl] is from {{w|Northampton}} and is into {{w|Yarn bombing|guerilla knitting}}.

The title text may refer to the {{w|urban legend}} that leads petty criminals to ask each other [http://www.snopes.com/risque/hookers/cop.asp "Are you a cop?"]. The bottom line is that anyone who is capable of lying about breaking the RSA encryption algorithm, possibly including the "NSA guy," would be equally capable of lying about whether or not he is lying.

==Transcript==
:[Outside, Adrian Lamo is helping Elaine Roberts over a barbed wire fence.]
:It was the late 90's. Elaine crisscrossed the country with Adrian Lamo, the 'Homeless Hacker', learning to gain entry into systems both virtual and physical.
:Adrian Lamo: So you just throw a rug over the fence and... say, what ''is'' this place anyway?
:Roberts: Nowhere special.
:Lamo: ...Elaine, is this NSA Headquarters?
:Roberts: ...Look, I just want to see if they've broken RSA.

:[Inside, Lawrence Lessig is sitting at a table, Roberts is standing across the table swinging a knife.]
:She learned, from Lawrence Lessig, about the monstrosity that is U.S. Copyright Law.
:Roberts: So, how do we fix the system? Stab bad guys?
:Lessig: I'm starting something called "Creative Commons"
:''Shink''
:Elaine Roberts: I think we should stab bad guys...

:[Steve Jobs is lying up in his bed, Roberts is balancing while crouched on the foot of Jobs's bed.]
:She met with Steve Jobs to discuss the future of Apple.
:Roberts: Compression and bandwidth are changing everything.
:Jobs: Who are you? It's 3:00AM!
:Roberts: Apple should make a portable music player.
:Jobs: I'm calling the police.
:Roberts: Hey, idea — integrate it with a cell phone!

:[Scene has two of Elaine's activities. In one she is drumming, in the other she has an electric guitar on her shoulders, one hand on the frets. The other hand is holding a laptop by the touchpad.]
:She even, for a time, took up drumming, and helped start a movement among teen girls, a culture of self-taught female programmers and musicians, coding by day and rocking out by night—
:Roberts: Riot Prrl.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:1337|03]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|1337]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Elaine Roberts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]] 
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Steve Jobs]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Cryptography]]
[[Category:Puns]]
[[Category:Music]]
[[Category:Fight Club]]
[[Category:CC-BY-SA comics]]

82: Frame

2022-05-04T21:03:19Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 241255 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 82
| date = March 29, 2006
| title = Frame
| image = frame.jpg
| titletext = ...
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is standing in the middle of the first square panel, but then the panel's frame starts warping away from being square and starts to form into tendrils that move toward him, then slowly wrap themselves around him, and finally retract, reforming the frame again, but pulling him apart in the process, in a rather macabre comic.

Typically, the frame on a cartoon is used to separate different periods of the action. Here, this has been subverted by the frame becoming a character, the main protagonist, and sole survivor of the strip.

There is some indication that Cueball is also just part of a drawing, since his upper torso, with parts of each arm, is left hanging in the air without any tendrils touching it. If it was not stuck in the center of the image, it would fall down, but more importantly, even if all tendrils pulled very fast at the same time, it is highly unlikely that they could pull so precisely that the body would split in four pieces around this remaining body cross, and one of the tendrils should have pulled this part along with either an arm, the head, or the lower torso. This could be some comfort for those who think that this is too much. Of course, it could also just be something that [[Randall]] did not think was important in such a {{w|Surrealism|surreal}} comic.

Comics often use artifacts on the frame to add mood to the comic. This comic then makes those artifacts a major feature of the comic, like a {{w|Chekhov's gun}} ("If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off.") The use of creative panel layouts and effects was first made possible in newspaper comics at the insistence of Bill Watterson, author of Calvin and Hobbes (which it is known that Randall has been influenced by), requiring lengthy negotiations due to the printing technology of the time. The creative use of panel layout and effects is thus part of the artistic legacy of Calvin and Hobbes. xkcd, among others, has continued along that path of pushing the boundaries of the medium.

The title text "..." could indicate that Randall wasn't being very serious about this comic. But perhaps it was an idea to creatively use parts of the comic nobody thought about, and it spoke for itself and needed no extra comment. The three dots also indicate that something more will happen soon. The reader may visualize the final result and empty square panel, ready for the next unfortunate person to walk into this trap. Alternatively, it could mean that Randall found the comic so bizarre, even he couldn't comment on it (see [[#Trivia|Trivia section]]).

==Transcript==
:[Cueball stands alone in the center of this almost normally framed panel. But there are four small indentations two both left and right and maybe also one top right.]

:[Tendrils from the frame develop and grow inwards while breaking the outer frame down. The tendrils comes close to Cueball. There are 13, three from three of the four sides and four from the right.]

:[The tendrils have now completely broken the outer frame down and 11 have reached Cueball and these begins to wind themselves around him. There are tendrils around his forehead, neck, cheek, left arm, left wrist, left hand, right wrist, right hand, lower torso, left leg and right leg. Those around his legs spiraling almost up to his crotch. 14 other tendrils have not reached him yet. All those reaching him was among the 13 from the previous panel. Only the two from the bottom right corner did not make contact. The other 12 not reaching him where new.]

:[Finally the 11 tendrils that have reached Cueball retract along with the other 14 tendrils back to the frame, tearing Cueball apart in 9 pieces, leaving one central piece (his upper torso with a part of each arm) floating in the center without tendrils on it. His head has been split in two by three tendrils, that keep the parts close together. The left arm with one tendril has been split from the hand with two tendrils, whereas the two holding the wrist and hand kept their part of the arm in one piece. The two legs have been separated from the lower torso at the crotch, and they as well as the lower torso is all being pulled away by one tendril. The other tendrils have almost reached the frame, three of them are already gone leaving 11 near the frame. The frame has also nearly reformed it self again.]

==Trivia==
*This is one of two comics featured with [[Blue Eyes]]: The Hardest Logic Puzzle in the World, the other being [[37: Hyphen]].
*The concept of a panel frame destroying its characters would be reused in [[240: Dream Girl]]
*The title text "..." has been used twice later also with somewhat surreal comics, both about the black hat of [[Black Hat]]; [[412: Startled]] and [[455: Hats]].
*There is a striking similarity to the opening scene in the movie {{w|Hellraiser}} (1987) (read the {{w|Hellraiser#Plot|plot}} here - Spoiler).
**The way the room resets after killing the person in it also reminds of the opening scene in the movie {{w|Cube (film)|Cube}} (1997). Although it is a very different way of doing it, that person is also divided into small pieces.
**Although the Hellraiser trap also resets, it is not like it is a room that does the damage or resets, so there is reason to compare to both movies.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]

265: Choices: Part 2

2022-05-04T20:51:12Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 241910 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 265
| date = May 22, 2007
| title = Choices: Part 2
| image = choices_part_2.jpg
| titletext = Maybe someday I'll get to write the Wikipedia article about this place! Wait, damn, original research.
}}

==Explanation==
The "Choices" series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday). It explores and marvels at human freedom. This is, however, a little sidetrack from the "Choices" narrative. [[Cueball]] is studying {{w|special relativity}}. The {{w|speed of light}} in a vacuum (299,792,458 m/s) is denoted as ''c''. [[Megan]] and the spaceship are shown traveling at 0.2''c'' in opposite directions. This would mean (in Newtonian mechanics) 0.4''c'' relative to each other. But due to relativistic effects, their velocities do not simply add when the spaceship observes Megan; in reality, both would measure only 0.385''c'' ( = (u + v)/(1 + uv/c2) ) from the other's point of view. Also, {{w|time dilation}} influences the way time is observed with reference to the two frames of reference. Megan, however, has other concerns. (This text and part of the image were completely reused in the [[1350#Space|space part]] of the interactive [[1350: Lorenz]] (see image [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/File:lorenz_-_rocket_16.png here]).

In the title text, Megan thinks about writing about this after-worldly place in Wikipedia, but then realizes that the content would be removed, due to the {{w|Wikipedia:No original research|Wikipedia policy on original research}}, meaning that you are discouraged from writing your own thoughts, the preference being that you have a source you're paraphrasing. Even though her claims would be true, she would need reliable written sources to support them.

The series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday). All parts of "[[:Category:Choices|Choices]]":
*[[264: Choices: Part 1]]
*[[265: Choices: Part 2]]
*[[266: Choices: Part 3]]
*[[267: Choices: Part 4]]
*[[268: Choices: Part 5]]

As this was the second in the series, it was released on a Tuesday.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is doing some exercises in a book. The clock on the wall says 12:50.]
:Chapter 15: Special Relativity
:Problem 1:
:Two spacecraft transmit messages to each other while passing at constant velocities of...
:Cueball: ''sigh''

:Meanwhile:
:[Megan in a bubble and a spacecraft are moving towards each other. Each one has a velocity vector drawn before themselves, each showing a velocity of 0.2c.]

:[They pass each other.]
:Spacecraft: We observe your speed to be 38.5%c, and your time is passing at 92.3% the rate of ours. Does this mirror your observations?
:Megan: Please help me. I think I'm lost.

:[They continue with the same velocity vectors. Megan is looking back at the spacecraft.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Choices]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Choices]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]

1056: Felidae

2022-05-04T20:50:44Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 240830 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1056
| date = May 16, 2012
| title = Felidae
| image = felidae.png
| titletext = 'Smilodon fatalis' narrowly edged out 'Tyrannosaurus rex' to win this year's Most Badass Latin Names competition, after edging out 'Dracorex hogwartsia' and 'Stygimoloch spinifer' (meaning 'horned dragon from the river of death') in the semifinals.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic shows a graph with three parts.

First, the names are sorted up by genera (plural of {{w|genus}}, a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms) from bottom to top of which animals would win in a fight. Secondly, the names within the genus are then sorted by coolness of name from left to right (the degree of "coolness" of the name is apparently determined in subjective manner by the author). Thirdly, in red you can see the direction that {{w|Apple Inc.|Apple}} has taken with nicknaming the versions of their {{w|OS X}} operating system. They started at v10.0 "Cheetah", and have moved through genera from there in no order that this chart can make out.

{| class="wikitable"
!OS X version
!Code name
!Year released
|-
|10.0||Cheetah||2001
|-
|10.1||Puma||2001
|-
|10.2||Jaguar||2002
|-
|10.3||Panther||2003
|-
|10.4||Tiger||2004
|-
|10.5||Leopard||2006
|-
|10.6||Snow Leopard||2008
|-
|10.7||Lion||2010
|-
|10.8||Mountain Lion||2012
|}

Please note that the second words in "Snow Leopard" and "Mountain Lion" are capitalized in the table because they are used as the proper names of the operating system versions. In their normal use, as species {{w|vernacular name}}s, they are not capitalized and are written as "snow leopard" and "mountain lion".

[[:Category:Bobcats|Bobcats]] are a running XKCD joke, so their inclusion is to be expected. The genus ''Puma'' here only lists synonyms for the puma (see {{w|cougar}}) instead of {{w|Puma_(genus)|the actual genus}}. Of course, the three OS X versions named by three of these synonyms are not the same.

Since this comic was published, Apple has stopped naming versions of OS X after big cats, and now names them after Californian landmarks. OS X v10.8 "Mountain Lion" was followed by v10.9 "Mavericks", named after a {{w|Mavericks, California|surf spot}}, followed by v10.10 "Yosemite", named after a {{w|Yosemite National Park|national park}}, and so on.

The title of the chart depicted on the comic ("OS X problem") is perhaps an allusion to the {{w|Travelling salesman problem|travelling salesman problem}}, as the directed arrows and graph nodes might appear as a possible path of the salesperson between the cities. The computational difficulty of the travelling salesman problem might echo with the difficulties that the author has with trying to figure out the underlying reason for naming the OS X versions in particular order. The chart thus looks like a parody on the scientific presentation.

In the title text, a Smilodon fatalis is a saber-tooth cat, a Dracorex hogwartsia is a dinosaur whose skull looks like that of a fairy tale dragon, and a Stygimoloch spinifer is one of the last dinosaurs before the K-T (Cretaceous-Paleogene) extinction about 66 million years ago. Notably, it's possible both Stygimoloch and Dracorex are in fact juvenile members of the genus Pachycepholosaurus who were wrongly identified as a separate species, meaning two of Randall's top four coolest extinct animal names would no longer be recognized. All of the animals mentioned in the title text are now extinct.

==Transcript==
:Well-known felines:
:[A graph organizing various feline species labeled with common names ordered by genera (in order of which would win in a fight) on the y axis, and coolness of name on the x axis.]
:Smilodon (extinct): "Saber-toothed cat (scientific name: Smilodon fatalis)
:Panthera: "Jaguar", "Leopard", "Snow Leopard", "Tiger", "Lion"
:Puma: "Cougar", "Puma", "Panther", "Mountain Lion"
:Other felidae: "Ocelot", "Cheetah"
:Felis & Lynx: "Housecat", "Bobcat", "Wildcat", "Lynx"
:[Some elements are further connected using an unbranched acyclic digraph. The elements are connected thus: "Cheetah" -> "Puma" -> "Jaguar" -> "Panther" -> "Tiger" -> "Leopard" -> "Snow Leopard" -> "Lion" -> "Mountain Lion".]
:The OS X Problem

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Flowcharts]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Bobcats]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Cats]]

268: Choices: Part 5

2022-05-04T20:50:22Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 240475 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 268
| date = May 25, 2007
| title = Choices: Part 5
| image = choices_part_5.png
| titletext = I wonder what percentage of not-obviously-busy people on the street would say yes to kite-flying with a stranger. This looks like a job for Science!
}}

==Explanation==
In the final part of [[:Category:Choices|Choices]], [[Megan]] is back to real life, and has forgotten about her trip, as afterlife-Megan said. However, she has an {{w|Epiphany_(feeling)|epiphany}}, and in the spirit of what she told her, she talks to the stranger on the street. The stranger is likely Cueball who studied the physics problem she encountered from [[265|part 2]], as they both use a similar backpack.

The urge to talk to strangers in awkward situations has been touched on in [[235: Kite]] and can also be used when you are already flying a kite (see [[1614: Kites]].)

The title text suggests a weird sociological investigation. The capital "S" in "Science" suggests a {{w|personification}}.

The series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday).

All parts of "[[:Category:Choices|Choices]]":
*[[264: Choices: Part 1]]
*[[265: Choices: Part 2]]
*[[266: Choices: Part 3]]
*[[267: Choices: Part 4]]
*[[268: Choices: Part 5]]

==Transcript==
:[Megan is walking towards the right of the panel.]

:[Cueball wearing a backpack is walking towards the left of the panel.]

:[They walk past each other.]

:[Megan has a sudden thought, in a drawing without a frame between two panels.]

:[Megan turns, lifts her arm, and calls out to Cueball, who then turn towards her.]
:Megan: Hi.
:Cueball: Uh, hi.

:[Only Megan is shown.]
:Megan: Sorry if this is weird, but
:Megan: Do you like flying kites?

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Choices]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Choices]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Kites]]

1009: Sigh

2022-05-04T20:49:59Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 240954 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1009
| date = January 27, 2012
| title = Sigh
| image = sigh.png
| titletext = If you're annoying enough, you can get them to respond with an involuntary second sigh and get a rhythm going.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is mispronouncing the name of the British TV show, also available in the US, ''{{w|Downton Abbey}}''. Mispronouncing the title as DownTOWN Abbey causes Megan to sigh because it is such a common and stupid mistake to fans of the show. Mispronouncing the title changes the meaning from being about the eponymous {{w|Yorkshire}} {{w|Country Estate}} (pronounced ''doun''-tuhn ''ab''-ee /ˌdaʊntən ˈæbi/) to being about a monastery in the midst of a large city (incorrectly pronounced ''doun-toun ab''-ee /ˈdaʊnˌtaʊn ˈæbi/). In the UK the CBD, the Central Business District (the big middly bit), is simply called the "city centre".

{{w|LMFAO}} is a ubiquitous group in the US on radio, TV and even strange commercials with [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zJWA3Vo6TU rodents riding in cars with their song, Party Rock Anthem]. However, this comic is a reference to another one of their songs, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZgIYvFu-FQ "Sexy And I Know It."] The relevant lyrics are:

:''sigh''… girl look at that body
:''sigh''… girl look at that body
:''sigh''… girl look at that body
:ah-ah, I work out!

The title text is referring to the multiple uses of that lyric throughout the song, creating a steady rhythm.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is standing behind Megan, who's sitting and watching TV.]
:Cueball: Hey, is that ''Downtown Abbey''? What town is it in the downtown of, anyway?
:Megan: *siiiiiiigh*
:Cueball: —''girl look at that body.''

:[Caption below the panel:]
:We should thank ''LMFAO'' for giving us such a great way to respond to exasperated sighs.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Music]]

2013: Rock

2022-05-04T20:49:31Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 240309 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2013
| date = June 29, 2018
| title = Rock
| image = rock.png
| titletext = It traveled so far to reach me. I owed it my best.
}}

==Explanation==

Megan either knows enough about geology to tell on sight how this particular rock formed, or has brought this rock from a collection. Alternatively she’s simply guessing. Despite admiring its formation, all she wants is to use it as a skipping stone to give it "a weird day in its life" (similar to [[325: A-Minus-Minus]]), and possibly confuse future geologists.

Megan provides three pieces of information about the rock: It formed at the south pole, during an ice age, just before multicellular life developed. Unfortunately, due to disagreements among geologists and palaeontologists about when exactly the first multicellular life emerged it is unclear which time Megan refers to - and consequently where she is and what kind of rock she is holding. There are two possibilities:

# The {{w|Francevillian biota}}, living about 2.1 billion years ago, has been proposed as the first multicellular life. If Megan subscribes to this theory, then the Ice age just before would be the {{w|Huronian glaciation}} which extended from 2.4 to 2.1 billion years ago. The land which was at the South pole at that time would eventually [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwWWuttntio become part of Africa].
# However, not all scientists accept the Francevillian biota as the first multicellular life. If Megan shares this view the first fossils multicellular life would be only 600 million years old (e.g. in the {{w|Doushantuo Formation}}). In this case the ice age "just before" would be the {{w|Cryogenian}} lasting from 720 million to 635 million years ago. The land occupying the South Pole at the time became present-day Scandinavia and Baltic sea.

Thus — assuming that Megan has accurately identified the stone — the stone is either from Western Africa or Northern Europe and has "travelled" from there to get to her.

{{w|Stone skipping}} is the art of throwing a flat stone across water in such a way that it bounces off the surface. Despite there being many factors attributed to successfully skipping a stone (including the attributes of the stone itself), Cueball and Megan are in agreement that skipping this particular stone five times is an above-average throw. (It is, however, far short of the world record of 88 skips set by Kurt Steiner in 2013).

This comic is one of many that look at everyday things from a new, philosophical perspective.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are looking at a rock that Megan is holding up in one hand.]
:Megan: This rock erupted from a volcano near the South Pole when the world was frozen over, just before multicellular life arose.

:[Zoom out reveals that Cueball and Megan are standing on the beach of a bay with hills in the background. The water surface is quite flat without any waves. Megan throws the rock which skips 5 times across the water before it sinks.]
:Stone: Skip Skip Skip Skip Skip Plunk

:[Zoom back on Cueball and Megan who are still looking in the direction she threw the stone.]
:Megan: Now it'll be covered in sediment that becomes a new rock layer. It will likely stay buried until it melts down, erodes away, or the earth is consumed by the sun.

:[Cueball and Megan still looking the same way.]
:Cueball: Today was a weird day in its incredibly long life.
:Megan: Five brief skips, then eons of darkness.
:Cueball: Five is a lot, though!
:Megan: It '''''was''''' a good throw.

==Trivia==
Megan throws the rock with her left hand, which supposes that she may be left-handed.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]
[[Category:Volcanoes]]

745: Dyslexics

2022-05-04T20:47:43Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 244245 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 745
| date = May 26, 2010
| title = Dyslexics
| image = dyslexics.png
| titletext = And of course I had to redo this like three times because I kept writing 'UNTIE'; I kept doing 'doing 'doing it wrong' wrong' wrong.
}}

==Explanation==
The joke shirt is supposed to be "{{w|Dyslexia|Dyslexics}} of the world, Untie!", a nod to the {{w|The Far Side}} comic touching on the same topic (Dyslexics marching in parade, carrying a sign (inadvertently) reading "Dyslexics of the world UNTIE" because dyslexics mixed up the T and the I). In this case, the dyslexics were trying to make a parody of their propensity to transpose letters. The double transposition cancelled out, resulting in the original (but unintended) untransposed message.

The title text is an inversion of the inversion of the joke in the comic, in which [[Randall]] accidentally wrote the "incorrect" version of the shirt while trying to draw the comic. The last sentence ("I kept doing 'doing 'doing it wrong' wrong' wrong") means that, unwittingly, Randall kept failing at failing at failing.

==Transcript==
:[A t-shirt is shown with the text "DYSLEXICS OF THE WORLD, '''UNITE!'''" screen-printed on it.]
:The dyslexic support group ran into difficulties when they tried to make a joke fundraiser t-shirt.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Language]]

1962: Generations

2022-05-04T20:47:11Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 240814 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1962
| date = March 2, 2018
| title = Generations
| image = generations.png
| titletext = For a while it looked like the Paperclip Machines would destroy us, since they wanted to turn the whole universe into paperclips, but they abruptly lost interest in paperclips the moment their parents' generation got into making them, too.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is making fun of the various names we give "generations" while also predicting some future names. The release of this comic coincides with the [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/03/01/defining-generations-where-millennials-end-and-post-millennials-begin/ Pew Research Center's recent announcement that they have decided where the Millennial generation ends].

Each generation listed is exactly 18 years long, which is the approximate length of each "generation" anyway (given that coincidentally, there are exactly 54 intermediate years between the end of World War II and the New Millennium). A number of the entries are parodies of the terms "Generation X," "Generation Y," etc., by substituting other letters or characters that would seem emblematic of the time period.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! scope="col"| Generation
! scope="col"| Time period
! scope="col"| Explanation
|-
| The Founders
| 1730 - 1747
| Most of the {{w|Founding Fathers of the United States|United States' Founding Fathers}} were born in this period. (But not all: Benjamin Franklin, for instance, was born two generations prior, in 1706.)
|-
| Generation ƒ
| 1748 - 1765
| ƒ was used to represent {{w|Long s|"long s"}} in the typography used in Colonial America. It can be seen in many historical documents from the period. It is also the symbol that represented the {{w|Dutch guilder|guilder}}, the currency of the Netherlands from the 17th century until 2002. It has a notable similarity to letter "esh" ʃ. Depicted symbol is also used in mathematical expressions as in <math>f(x)</math>. One of the first and most complete works on both infinitesimal and integral calculus was written in 1748 by Maria Gaetana Agnesi.
|-
| The Adequate Generation
| 1766 - 1783
| Randall apparently found nothing notable about this generation, positive or negative. This is a reference to the Greatest Generation, below.
|-
| Generation Æ
| 1784 - 1801
| Æ is the {{w|Æ|diphthong}} Aesh - its name sounds like X, though it is pronounced as a long e or IPA /æ/. This character is commonly transcribed differently into British English and American English as ae and e respectively making a difference in spelling in words such as encyclopaedia/encylopedia. One of the key influences on this is Webster's dictionary, first published 1828.
|-
| The generation we cut a lot of slack because they produced Lincoln
| 1802 - 1819
| {{w|Abraham Lincoln}} was born in 1809, and is regarded as one of the best presidents of all time. The comic states that the other people born in this generation were "cut a lot of slack" because of him. As with the Oops, one of us is Hitler generation, it is absurd to define an entire generation by defining its most famous member.
|-
| The Gilded Generation
| 1820 - 1837
| {{w|Gilded Generation (Strauss–Howe theory)| So named under the Strauss-Howe generation theory}}, though they use the time period 1822-1842 instead. This likely refers to the "{{w|Gilded Age}}" of American history, roughly the last three decades of the 19th century.
|-
| The Second-Greatest Generation
| 1838 - 1855
|
This is a reference to the Greatest Generation, below, and could be implying a similarity between the accomplishments and sacrifices of this generation - who fought in the U.S. Civil War and who passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution - to those of the Greatest Generation. There is also some humor in the name: what Randall means is that this generation was, supposedly, second best in terms of its greatness. However, the wording could be interpreted to mean that they are chronologically the second generation to be called "greatest", even though they actually were born first.
|-
| Generation – • • –
| 1856 - 1873
| – • • – is the letter X in {{w|Morse_code|International Morse Code}}. This is an old-timey version of Gen Xers, mirrored by the later "More Gen-Xers somehow." This is also a reference to the rise of {{w|telegraphy}}, popular during this time period.
|-
| The kids who died in the Gilded Generation's factories and mines
| 1874 - 1891
| {{w|Child labour #The Industrial Revolution|Child labor}} had been widely used since before the start of the Industrial Revolution, but this is when people started doing something about it - and also, when the need for an educated workforce arose, applying substantial economic pressure on societies to put children in school instead. It would be more accurate to label this generation, "The kids who stopped dying in the Gilded Generation's factories and mines".
|-
| Oops, one of us is Hitler
| 1892 - 1909
| {{w|Adolf Hitler}}, possibly the most hated (and, by most definitions, evil) man in living human memory as of this comic's posting, [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Hitler#Early_years|was born in 1889]. Aside from the fact that this places him in the previous generation, it seems beyond silly to blame everyone else who was born during this period for being born in the same generation as him. Among those who eventually heard of him (thus, excluding those in isolated areas or who died before he rose to power), the vast majority of them would not hear of him until well after 1909. In reality, this generation is known as the {{w|Lost Generation}}, though the dates are somewhat skewed.
|-
| {{w|The Greatest Generation}}
| 1910 - 1927
| Named by journalist {{w|Tom Brokaw}} in 1998 in {{w|The Greatest Generation|a book of the same name}}, this is the first generation on the list to have a real, commonly accepted name, and was named as such due to being the generation that survived the hardships of the {{w|Great Depression}} immediately before being drafted to fight in {{w|World War II}}.
|-
| {{w|The Silent Generation}}
| 1928 - 1945
| Coined by Time Magazine in 1951, the Silent Generation grew up during a time of paranoia and very little activism due to phenomena such as {{w|McCarthyism}} making it dangerous to speak out.
|-
| {{w|Baby Boomers}}
| 1946 - 1963
| A spike in births was seen following the return of soldiers to the US from European and Pacific theatres of war. These children enjoyed the benefits of US prosperity whilst the rest of the world rebuilt, lived in fear of nuclear annihilation and watched the Space Race.
|-
| {{w|Generation X}}
| 1964 - 1981
| "X" here refers to an unknown or undefined element, not specifically a placement in the alphabet as Y and Z (see below) seem to imply, and was used throughout history to refer to alienated youth in general as early as the 1950s, with the name sticking to this one thanks to Douglas Coupland's 1991 novel. Generation X's time period was one of sweeping societal change and rapid technological advancement.
|-
| {{w|Millennials}}
| 1982 - 1999
| The last children born in the 2nd Millennium. Initially called Generation Y, after Generation X.
|-
| Generation 💅
(nail-polish emoji)
| 2000 - 2017
| This begins the hypothetical future generation names, though this generation was already fully born as of this comic's posting. Social media was established and rising during the formative years of this generation, and the widespread adoption of emoji began during this time. The [https://emojipedia.org/nail-polish/ Nail Polish Emoji] (U+1F485) is used here. Currently known in reality as {{w|Generation Z}} or iGen (there's controversy over both names, but the goods and bads of each seem to cancel each other out and other names aren't as exciting) though the comic implies it may change due to emojis ultimately replacing the alphabet entirely.
|-
| Zuckerberg's Army
| 2018 - 2035
| Continuing on the above, this may be presuming the dominance of {{w|Facebook}} during the childhoods of this generation, and corresponding social norming as ultimately directed by its leader {{w|Mark Zuckerberg}}. <s>Ironically, as of this comic's posting, [http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/facebook-quit-young-people-social-media-snapchat-instagram-emarketer-a8206486.html young users were already leaving Facebook for other social media sites].</s> Oh wait, Zuckerberg's creating the {{w|Metaverse}}. May also be a reference to "Dumbledore's Army" in ''Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix''. It is uncertain whether Zuckerberg's Army is in alliance or at war with the other social media militaries of the mid-21st century.
|-
| The Hovering Ones
| 2036 - 2053
| This may posit increased adoption of cybernetics, which (as with any technology) are more easily adopted by the young who do not have to unlearn previous ways. If advances allowed someone to hover all the time, such that one would not need to walk, this generation's name suggests that becoming so widely used among this generation that they became known for it.
|-
| Spare Parts
| 2054 - 2071
| Continuing on the above speculation about cybernetics, this presumes enough apathy or sociopathy among this generation's parents that giving birth (or other means of creating a new human) was often done to create bodies from which organs could be harvested (presumably primarily for the benefit of their elders).
|-
| More Gen-Xers somehow
| 2072 - 2089
| As with "Generation – • • –", this may be positing that Generation X like traits pop up about 3/4 of the way through each century.
|-
| The Paperclip Machines
| 2090 - 2107
| This, and the alt text, are references to the concept of a [https://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Paperclip_maximizer paperclip maximizer], where an AI might be designed to be helpful, but end up being harmful. The clicker game [http://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/ Universal Paperclips] makes this concept playable. Furthering the above speculation of cybernetics, this generation might be primarily artificial intelligences, though of limited ability to set their own priorities (a flaw which would be fixed in later generations).
|-
| The Mixed Bag (produced 4 Lincolns, 1 Napoleon, and 2 Hitlers)
| 2108 - 2125
| As with the above examples, a generation may become known for its most famous members, but it is not useful to define an entire generation by them. In this case, the generation may have literally produced 4 Lincolns, 1 Napoleon, and 2 Hitlers via cloning or the like. This also implies that Napoleon's generation was named after him. However, Napoleon's generation is ironically, the Adequate Generation.
|-
| The Procedural Generation
| 2126 - 2143
| {{w|Procedural generation}} is a way of creating data automatically, rather than capturing it via sensor (including when the "sensor" is a keyboard and the data is typed in). This confusion of the term "generation" could refer to more artificial intelligences that were created via routines instead of directly coded, which would likely stem from attempts to improve child creation once most children were explicitly manufactured instead of relying on evolution-granted biological means.
|-
| Generation Ω
| 2144 - 2161
| "{{w|Omega}}" is the last letter in the Greek alphabet, and used as a symbol of endings. Given the above generation names implying increasingly artificial children, this may suggest the last generation that is recognizably a generation. This does not necessarily mean the end of children or the end of humanity, just that anything after 2161 is widely recognized to no longer have even notional generational coherence - perhaps because of drift (children born to one group during a given time are wildly different enough from children born to another group at the same time that people give up trying to group them by time), child gestation and maturation times (for example, if it became common for a child to go from conception to adulthood in less than a year), or exceptions to what counts as a "child" (for example, if it becomes possible and common to create clones that are somewhere between free-willed beings and mind-controlled drones, and this sufficiently supplants creation of completely free-willed children, regardless of whether the children are artificial intelligences or old-fashioned biological children).
|-
| Star Trek: The Next Generation
|2360 - 2378
|''{{w|Star Trek: The Next Generation}}'' was a TV show set in the future. The first episode of ''TNG'', "{{w|Encounter at Farpoint}}", takes place in 2364, and it concluded with "{{w|All_Good_Things..._(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation)|All Good Things...}}", which took place in 2370. The final canonical adventures of the cast of ''The Next Generation'' did not occur until the events of ''{{w|Star Trek: Nemesis}}'' in 2379.
|}

==Transcript==

:"Generations" are arbitrary. They're just labels we use to obliquely talk about cultural trends.
:But since Pew Research has become the latest to weigh in, and everyone loves a good pointless argument over definitions...

:''xkcd presents''
:A Definitive Chronology of the Generations

:1730-1747 The Founders
:1748-1765 Generation ƒ
:1766-1783 The Adequate Generation
:1784-1801 Generation Æ
:1802-1819 The generation we cut a lot of slack because they produced Lincoln
:1820-1837 The Gilded Generation
:1838-1855 The Second-Greatest Generation
:1856-1873 Generation – • • –
:1874-1891 The kids who died in the Gilded Generation's factories and mines
:1892-1909 Oops, one of us is Hitler
:1910-1927 The Greatest Generation
:1928-1945 The Silent Generation
:1946-1963 Baby Boomers
:1964-1981 Generation X
:1982-1999 Millennials
:2000-2017 Generation 💅 [nail polish emoji]
:2018-2035 Zuckerberg's army
:2036-2053 The Hovering Ones
:2054-2071 Spare Parts
:2072-2089 More Gen-Xers somehow
:2090-2107 The Paperclip Machines
:2108-2125 The Mixed Bag (produced 4 Lincolns, 1 Napoleon and 2 Hitlers)
:2126-2143 The Procedural Generation
:2144-2161 Generation Ω
:2360-2378 Star Trek: The Next Generation

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Emoji]]

8: Red spiders

2022-05-04T20:46:11Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 240949 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 8
| date = September 30, 2005
| title = Red Spiders
| image = red_spiders_small.jpg
| titletext = They are six-legged spiders
}}

==Explanation==
The early comics often feature a style different to what would become the signature xkcd stick-figure style. This comic is the first in an arc of comics, spaced out over 3 years (so far), in which Red Spiders are seen attacking humans. Its objective is not to be funny, philosophical, or scientifically interesting; it just tells a story, in a {{w|Questionable Content}}-esque way.
Interestingly, the red spiders actually more closely resemble opiliones, the order of arachnids that includes the Daddy Longlegs, and which are actually more closely related to mites than to spiders. Of course, the number of legs is incorrect.

The full series of [[:Category:Red Spiders|Red Spiders]] comics:
*[[8: Red Spiders]], this one
*[[43: Red Spiders 2]], in which the spiders begin building.
*[[47: Counter-Red Spiders]], in which the humans begin a counter-offensive.
*[[126: Red Spiders Cometh]], in which the spiders attack a city.
*[[427: Bad Timing]], in which, in a style more typical to xkcd, the spiders attack a couple in the middle of a serious relationship discussion in a hot-air balloon.
*[[442: xkcd Loves the Discovery Channel]], in which it appears briefly in the 14th panel crawling over a cube

==Transcript==
:[Many six-legged red spiders standing on and hanging from cuboids. The cuboids hang in the air with no visible means of support. Some of the spiders have made a bridge out of themselves.]

==Trivia==
*This was the 8th comic originally posted to [[LiveJournal]].
** The previous was [[13: Canyon]].
**The next was [[6: Irony]].
*Original title: "Spiders"
*Original [[Randall]] quote: "They're not spiders; they have six legs!"
*This was one of the [[:Category:First day on LiveJournal|thirteen first comics]] posted to LiveJournal within 12 minutes on Friday September 30, 2005.
*This comic was posted on [[xkcd]] when the web site opened on Sunday the 1st of January 2006.
**It was posted along [[:Category:First day on xkcd|with all 41 comics]] posted before that on LiveJournal as well as a few others.
**The latter explaining why the numbers of these 41 LiveJournal comics ranges from 1-44.
*One of the original drawings drawn on [[:Category:Checkered paper|checkered paper]].

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics posted on livejournal| 08]]
[[Category:First day on LiveJournal| 08]]
[[Category:First day on xkcd]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Checkered paper]]
[[Category:Red Spiders]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Red Spiders01]]

2182: When I'm Back at a Keyboard

2022-05-04T20:45:57Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 242441 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2182
| date = July 29, 2019
| title = When I'm Back at a Keyboard
| image = when_im_back_at_a_keyboard.png
| titletext = [after typing 1,500 words on feathered dinosaurs, paleontology, sexism, lava, and dinosaurs as animals rather than movie monsters] Sorry to cut it short, I'm on my phone. When I'm back at a keyboard, I can give you another 5,000 words.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is texting someone on his phone. However, since with a {{w|Computer keyboard|full sized physical keyboard}} you can type with all of your fingers, which is usually a much faster and more accurate way than using an on-screen keyboard on a smartphone, Cueball cuts off the conversation and says he will get back to whoever he was talking to when he can type on an actual keyboard, presumably at home and on his computer. While there are multiple techniques for making a smartphone increasingly easier to enter words into using its on-screen {{w|virtual keyboard}}, such as keyboard swiping, on-the-fly spelling and grammar checkers, and voice recognition to minimize using the keyboard at all, the combination of a full-sized keyboard along with a generous sized screen is hard to beat for speed and accuracy when typing larger blocks of text.

The joke is that despite claiming to be more proficient with a physical keyboard, rather than a digital one, [[Randall]] still {{tvtropes|BerserkButton|goes into long rants}} through messages on his smartphone, whenever anybody brings up ''{{w|Jurassic Park}}''.

There might also be a reference on Dennis Nedry, a character from the first ''Jurassic Park'' film. The programmer is responsible for a security sabotage and intends to be away from his keyboard only for a short while, but dies (not altogether) unexpectedly, worsening the situation in the park.

The title text shows a typical sentence from Randall after having been in a chat over his phone. Before the sentence he has written 1500 words on his phone, all related to Jurassic Park, more or less. When he finally have written his fingers off he then says that he will have to stop now but once back at a keyboard, and even though he just typed 1500 words on his phone, he is ready to type even more (5000 words) using his keyboard.

The widespread uptake of mobile devices has stark implications for {{w|user-generated content}} sites on the internet. According to [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/10/technology/wikipedia-vs-the-small-screen.html a 2014 ''New York Times'' article,] only one percent of the changes to Wikipedia articles were made via mobile devices, although they displayed about a third of all Wikipedia page views that year.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is walking while holding his phone in both hands. A line from the screen on the phone goes to the text above him, indicating what he writes:]
:Cueball (texting): Sure, I can reply once I'm back at a keyboard and can type more easily.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I say this a lot for someone who routinely types thousands of words in text message conversations when someone brings up ''Jurassic Park''.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Jurassic Park]]
[[Category:Smartphones]]

2468: Inheritance

2022-05-04T20:45:44Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 241961 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2468
| date = May 26, 2021
| title = Inheritance
| image = inheritance.png
| titletext = People ask me whether I feel any moral qualms about the source of the points, but if he hadn't introduced factory farming to Agricola, someone else would have.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is in reference to {{w|Strategy game|strategy board games}}, which often score players on some type of point system based on a variety of possible achievements. The joke in this comic is that Cueball has a massive sum of points that were not scored in the current game but rather handed down from his grandfather. Board games do not normally include an inheritance from previous sessions{{Citation needed}}, in contrast to real life where some people become wealthy by inheriting vast sums of money from ancestors. Such inheritances tend to lead to 'successes' in life for those who have done little, if anything, to earn their wealth. Cueball offers to distribute a trifling fraction of his points to the other players, teasing them, but he will still have an insurmountable advantage. Despite his 'generosity', no one wants to play a game that they have no chance of winning. The value of his score, 10,019, seems to indicate that he "earned" 19 points during the course of the game (less than his competitors) and then added 10,000 from his 'inheritance'.

Some board games do include a "legacy" mechanic where players who have played the game previously (and thus benefit from meta knowledge) can be granted additional items or challenges to keep the game interesting for them, but not usually to the point of breaking the game's balance. As well, gifting these achievements to anyone else is seen as absurd.

The comic may be a reference to {{w|Category:Economic simulation board games
|economic simulation board games}} like {{w|Monopoly (game)|''Monopoly''}}, which was created as a critique to capitalism; in this case, no one can win the game against people who start out with a large amount of accumulated wealth. See also the '[https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/a-small-loan-of-a-million-dollars Small Loan of a Million Dollars]' trope of a profile in which the author or subject discusses the simple tricks they used to retire early or buy a house, often involving a [https://twitter.com/macaulaybalkan/status/1398805590030241792 hurried admission] of financial assistance from a family member.

The title text asks Cueball if he has any moral qualms over the source of these points, then indicates his grandfather's fortune was made through {{w|factory farming}} in the farm-themed board game {{w|Agricola_(board_game)|''Agricola''}}. Factory farming is a broad term for applying mass-production techniques to agriculture, treating both plants and animals as commodities to be processed as efficiently as possible. These techniques are condemned, at least in some circles, as being cruel to livestock, in addition to having serious environmental and land-use implications, among other criticisms. The implication is that Cueball's grandfather somehow managed to introduce an immoral and/or socially harmful mechanic into a board game, greatly enriching himself and his heirs. This echoes another concern about inherited wealth: that the source of the money may have been unethical, but the heirs still get to enjoy the advantages, without considering themselves accountable for the harm. Cueball brushes off this criticism with the claim that the change was inevitable, which is a common response to analogous real-life concerns.

It could also be a reference to inheritance in programming, where a class truly inherits everything from its 'ancestors'. Similarly, it could be a reference to evolution in biology; in evolution, an individual with beneficial traits is more likely to survive to have offspring, and the offspring accumulate the beneficial traits (“points”) of their “ancestors”, making them more likely to survive and “win”. The game Agricola was previously mentioned in [[696: Strip Games]] and [[778: Scheduling]].

This comic possibly alludes to a 100 percent inheritance tax, as such one is effectively employed between each round of a board game - no points are carried over between rounds. In extension, Randall's position might be that only a 100 percent inheritance tax can ensure that everybody begins the "game" - namely his or her life - in a fair manner, and with the same possibilities. Though in practice this too would be unfair, as those who get more points in the game will still give their extra points to the people they want to see succeed along with them, they would just have to make sure they do it while still playing the game.

==Transcript==

:[Ponytail, White Hat, Megan, and Cueball are playing a board game. There are drinks on the table. Ponytail is writing something]

:Ponytail: Let's see...I got 31, you have 28, 35 for you, and-
:Cueball: -I've got 10,019.
:Ponytail: *Sigh*
:Cueball: Hey, add another 20 to everyone, on me!
:White Hat: ''I hate this''.

:[Caption beneath the panel:]
:No one wants to play board games with me ever since I inherited 4,000,000 victory points from my grandfather.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Board games]]

102: Back to the Future

2022-05-04T20:45:15Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 241091 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 102
| date = May 15, 2006
| title = Back to the Future
| image = back_to_the_future.jpg
| titletext = He's kind of an asshole, when you think about it.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a reference to the ''{{w|Back to the Future}}'' film series (specifically the first film) in which the protagonist, {{w|Marty McFly}} (played by {{w|Michael J. Fox}}), travels back from 1985 (present day for him) to 1955 and accidentally interferes with his own parents' first meeting. He must then arrange for them to fall in love before he ceases to exist due to the paradox of his own parents never having children. An unintended side-effect of the way events occur is that his dad gains self-confidence in the past and becomes "less of a loser" in the present.

As noted in the comic, the time machine Marty uses is built by his professor friend, Doctor Emmett L. Brown ({{w|Christopher Lloyd}}), out of a {{w|DeLorean DMC-12}} (a 1980s-era sports car).

[[Hairy]] ([[Cueball]] in the last two panels, as the art is inconsistent in this early comic, and his hair is removed in the last two panels) has had a very similar experience. He suggests that the aforementioned changes to history are what he really needed to do. After a frame of awkward silence, [[Megan]] reminds him that her father was in the {{w|World Trade Center (1973–2001)|World Trade Center}} (WTC) North Tower – implying that he died along with several thousand others in the North Tower on {{w|September 11 attacks|September 11, 2001}} at the time the tower collapsed due to a terrorist-flown passenger jet crashing into the building. Megan is therefore implying that saving her father's life (and perhaps the lives of the other 9/11 victims, or even preventing other disasters in history, such as the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, or the holocaust) might have been something else of importance he "needed" to do — perhaps something of significantly more importance than just helping his father. He seems completely oblivious to what she is trying to suggest. Megan starts to explain, but apparently decides that there's no point even trying to get through to him.

The title text is calling Marty McFly an asshole for not doing something more benevolent for humankind when he travelled back in time, just as the comic implies of Hairy/Cueball. It can also be seen as someone (presumably Hairy/Cueball) trying to justify the choice, by saying that Megan's dad was "kind of an asshole."

As a side note, for the comic to make sense, the events in the comic must take place after {{w|September 11 attacks|September 11, 2001}}, and not 1985 as it is in the movie. Since no dates are mentioned, Hairy/Cueball probably went back by thirty years, because that's how far back Marty travels in the film.

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Hairy are standing, talking to one another.]
:Hairy: This weekend, my professor friend built a time machine out of a DeLorean and I went back in time! I helped make sure my parents got together and helped my dad to be less of a loser.

:Megan: Wow! Do you still have the time machine?
:Hairy: Nah. But I did what I really needed to do.
:Megan: Uh huh.

:[Beat panel. Hairy's hair isn't drawn in this panel or the next one, making him a Cueball.]

:Megan: Okay, you remember that my father was in the WTC North Tower, right?
:Cueball: Yeah...why?
:Megan: I...nothing.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Time travel]]
[[Category:Back to the Future]]
[[Category:9/11]]

391: Anti-Mindvirus

2022-05-04T20:44:52Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 240674 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 391
| date = March 3, 2008
| title = Anti-Mindvirus
| image = anti_mind_virus.png
| titletext = I'm as surprised as you! I didn't think it was possible.
}}

==Explanation==
''{{w|The Game (mind game)|The Game}}'' is a virus-like mind game. The rules are as follows:

#Everybody in the world who knows about The Game is playing The Game. (Or: ''Everyone'' is playing The Game.)
#If you think of The Game, you lose The Game.
#If you lose The Game, you must announce that you lost. This is often done by loudly announcing something like "I/You lost The Game," or "I lost."
#:This usually causes other people within earshot who are playing the game to think of the game, causing them to lose the game as well, which may cause a chain reaction with people all around announcing that they lost the game.
#:Additionally it will make people ask about the game, which will make them new players, once it is explained to them.
#Once you stop thinking about The Game, you are back in, and can lose again.

From the simple way the rules are set up, there seems to be no such thing as ''winning'' The Game, except possibly by permanently forgetting about its existence. This comic gives you an alternative way to win, by simply telling you that you win and are now free from the mind virus.

An alternate interpretation may be that reading this comic causes you to ''lose'' the game, because it reminds you of The Game.

The title text states that [[Randall]] didn't know it was possible to win The Game, and he was surprised just as much as the reader.

==Transcript==
:[The comic is a simple box with text.]
:'''You Just WON The Game.'''
:It's okay! You're free!

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Psychology]]

2098: Magnetic Pole

2022-05-04T20:44:37Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 240552 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2098
| date = January 14, 2019
| title = Magnetic Pole
| image = magnetic_pole.png
| titletext = People keep trying to come up with reasons that we should worry about the magnetic field collapsing or reversing, but honestly I think it's fine. Whatever minor problems it causes will be made up for by the mid-latitude auroras.
}}

==Explanation==
Over the last couple of months, {{w|Earth's magnetic field|Earth's magnetic fields}} have been [https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00007-1 shifting rapidly]. Although the magnetic fields do move regularly, the current shift has been unexpected and unprecedented. As many location systems are reliant on the magnetic fields to function, the accuracy of such tools is being shifted beyond the maximum acceptable error.

Locational and navigational systems use the magnetic field, combined with a model of field behavior, to do fancy math and pop out data. Because of the rapid shifts, a new model was scheduled to be created; however, the model has been considerably delayed by the {{w|United States federal government shutdown of 2018–2019|US government shutdown}},

As shifts occur, the error of geopositional data will increase until a new {{w|World Magnetic Model|model}} is released. The effect is especially pronounced as you move toward the poles.

Cueball is saying that because of the currently published {{w|magnetic declination}} data being slightly incorrect, his {{w|Schooner|schooners}} (old merchant sailing ships) may go off-course and crash on {{w|Shoal|shoals}}. This is to illustrate how magnetic pole shift doesn't actually affect many people's daily lives. Modern ships' navigation systems do not rely on magnetic pole location – in contrast to old vessels which mostly used a {{w|compass}}.

Since the movement is only about two-fifths of a degree, it wouldn't cause much disruption for [[Cueball]] or require him to adjust anything about his lifestyle, but since the speed of the change has been steadily increasing over the past few years, it may mean we are heading for a geomagnetic reversal in the next few decades, something very exciting indeed. During a magnetic reversal, the poles wouldn't just switch places; several different poles would form and interact chaotically, and it's likely that one of them would end up close enough to where [[Randall]] lives to cause auroras to become more common at some point during the transition.

In the title text, Randall mentions that there are reasons people could be concerned, but says that they would be more than made up for by newly being able to experience mid-latitude auroras. Since auroras occur between 10° and 20° from the magnetic poles, the migration of the poles to middle latitudes would cause the auroras to occur there as well; since more people live at middle latitudes than in the Arctic and Antarctic Circles, and since auroras are considered aesthetically attractive, the psychological benefits of the drifting poles might more than make up for the technical difficulties it causes.

==Transcript==
:[White Hat and Cueball are talking to each other. White Hat has a cellphone in his hand, while Cueball is raising his hands in the air in mock exasperation.]
:White Hat: I just read that the Earth's North magnetic pole is drifting rapidly.
:Cueball: Oh no! I must update our declination tables post haste, lest our merchant schooners run aground on the shoals!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I like when the Earth's magnetic field does weird stuff, because it's a huge, cool, urgent-seeming science thing, but there's nothing I personally need to do about it.

{{comic discussion}}

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

231: Cat Proximity

2022-05-04T20:43:53Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 240659 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number =231
| date =March 5, 2007
| title =Cat Proximity
| image =cat_proximity.png
| titletext =Yes you are! And you're sitting there! Hi, kitty!
}}

==Explanation==
This comic refers to the use of "{{w|baby talk}}" when speaking to pets, especially {{w|cats}}. A person's voice becomes {{w|falsetto}} and {{Wiktionary|cooing}}, vocabulary becomes simplified, and phrases are repeated, such as "Here, kitty, kitty, kitty."

The chart shows that a person's apparent intelligence decreases, and that the {{Wiktionary|inanity}} (i.e. uselessness or emptiness) of their statements increases, the closer they get to a cat.
Most people act like this when they're playing with cats or trying to call them over to them.
Thankfully, being close to a cat doesn't actually cause any decrease of intelligence in normal circumstances; the graph technically refers to ''demonstrated'' intelligence rather than actual IQ levels.{{Citation needed}}

The title text continues [[Cueball|Cueball's]] obvious statement (and thus inane/useless point made) from below the graph.

In [[1535: Words for Pets]], [[Randall]] again mentions how people often talk strangely to their pets.

==Transcript==
:[A graph with the x-axis labeled, and the scale indicated from left to right:]
:Far
:Human proximity to cat
:Near
:[Two curves are drawn and labeled, first the one starting on top, which then veers downwards and crosses the other as that curve veers upwards.]
:Intelligence
:Inanity of statements

:[Below the graph, Cueball is seen standing at three distances from a cat that is drawn to the far right. The two first Cueballs are just standing, one below far, the other in the middle, and the last is standing close to the cat (below near) with his hands up, and he is speaking.]
:Cueball: You're a kitty!

==Trivia==
*This comic is available as a signed print in the [https://store.xkcd.com/products/signed-prints xkcd store].

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Cats]]
[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Comics with xkcd store products]]

23: T-shirts

2022-05-04T20:43:49Z

CrapRevver: Undo revision 240717 by Ex Kay Cee Dee (talk)

{{comic
| number = 23
| date = October 26, 2005
| title = T-shirts
| image = t-shirts.jpg
| titletext = It's depressing how many of these are real shirts
}}

==Explanation==

This comic satirizes the plethora of "snarky" phrase T-shirts that exist today. In the top-left, the character wears a typical (and real) snark shirt, "I see dumb people" (suggesting that the wearer thinks everyone else is dumb, while being a parody of the phrase "I see dead people" from the movie ''{{w|The Sixth Sense}}''). Other shirts shown also suggest that the wearer is better than everyone else, and perhaps the shirts increasingly suggest that the wearer is anti-social moving from top to bottom. Near the bottom of the screen, the T-shirts no longer attempt to be witty and simply have straightforward phrases like "go away" and "die". These are exaggerations of the message that the other more-realistic shirts broadcast.

The final three shirts are also exaggerated shirts that suggest [[Randall]]'s view that people who wear snarky shirts are overcompensating for the fact that they are already alone or perhaps putting up a tough exterior to conceal their sadness that no one would talk to them anyway. Most notably "maybe if this T-shirt is witty enough, someone will finally love me" sums up what Randall thinks snarky shirts really say. There are shirts with this or a similar message, although it is unclear whether they were created before this comic or as a tribute to this comic.

In the title text, Randall says that it's depressing how many of the shirts in the comic actually exist in real life, further underlining the point that these shirts are overly arrogant, to the point where one might believe that Randall made them up. This highlights the inadequacy of substance within these T-shirts and the terror they invoke in Randall's mind.

==Transcript==
:[A collection of phrases on T-shirts. The first and the last on actual black T-shirts worn by the same person, whose facial expression is more sad on the last one.]
:I see dumb people
:As a matter of fact the world <big>does</big> revolve around me
:I can only please one person per day / today is not your day.
:You know what your problem is? You're stupid.
:Get a clue
:Do I look like a people person?
:Your village called / they want their idiot back
:Go away
:I hate you all
:Die.
:Help.
:Maybe if this T-shirt is witty enough, someone will finally love me.
:Oh God I'm so alone.

==Trivia==
*This was the 24th comic originally posted to [[LiveJournal]].
**The previous was [[22: Barrel - Part 3]].
**The next was [[37: Hyphen]].
*Original title: "Wednesday's Drawing"
*Original [[Randall]] quote: "I saw the 'problem' t-shirt (upper right) on campus a few days ago and suddenly felt so sad."
*This comic was posted on [[xkcd]] when the web site opened on Sunday the 1st of January 2006.
**It was posted along [[:Category:First day on xkcd|with all 41 comics]] posted before that on LiveJournal as well as a few others.
**The latter explaining why the numbers of these 41 LiveJournal comics ranges from 1-44.
*One of the original drawings drawn on [[:Category:Checkered paper|checkered paper]].
*This is one of the few, early comics that contains a non-[[stick figure]] character.
*The last phrase of the comic was made into an actual T-shirt called "[https://store.xkcd.com/products/witty Witty]" sold at the xkcd store (as "maybe if this shirt is witty enough, someone will finally love me").
*Real shirts are: 'I see dumb people', 'As a matter of fact, the world '''does''' revolve around me', 'You know what your problem is? You're stupid.', 'I can only please one person per day//This is not your day.', 'Do I LOOK like a people person?', 'Get a clue', 'Your village called//They want their idiot back', 'Go away', 'Die.', 'Help', and 'Maybe if this t-shirt was witty enough, someone will finally love me.'
*'I hate you all' doesn't exist, but 'Hate you all' and 'I hate you' does. 'Oh god//I'm so alone' also doesn't exist, but 'Oh god I'm gonna die alone' and 'Oh god I am so alone in my world' does.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics posted on livejournal| 24]]
[[Category:First day on xkcd]]
[[Category:Checkered paper]]
[[Category:Sarcasm]]
[[Category:Comics with xkcd store products]]