explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

3072: Stargazing 4

2025-04-07T15:15:14Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 3072
| date = April 4, 2025
| title = Stargazing 4
| image = stargazing_4_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x386px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = We haven't actually seen a star fall in since we invented telescopes, but I have a list of ones I'm really hoping are next.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a 1-STAR YELP REVIEW. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This is the fourth comic in the [[:Category:Stargazing|Stargazing]] series, and it followed [[2274: Stargazing 3]] that came out five years before. That was the longest stretch between two comics in the series so far.

The host [[Megan]] begins the introduction by referencing rude {{w|Yelp}} reviews of her stargazing lessons. The reviewers doubt that she is actually a qualified astronomer due to how simplistic her lessons are; they claim she is just saying the words that come to mind. She passes these people off as people who "hate cool space facts"

Then she states that there are over 20 stars in the sky and some of them are over the age of 100. Both of these statements are true, but extreme understatements.
*A few thousand stars are visible to the unaided eye under good viewing conditions, though in a city there ''could'' be less than 20 stars visible even on a clear night.
:For a normal stargazing session the event should be held in a venue with as little light pollution as possible, which could mean the middle of an urban green space, conveniently away from lighting or else specially arranging for the most inconvenient lighting to be off for the duration.
:However, given the unprofessional nature of Megan's lessons, there is no guarantee that this session does not take place under less than ideal circumstances. Or she is perpetually unlucky as [[1556: The Sky|daylight or clouds]] may further reduce visible stars.
:Ignoring the need for visibility entirely, it is also estimated that there are about 200 sextillion (i.e. 2x1023) stars in the observable universe, of which around half would be somewhere 'in the sky' at any given moment.
*Stars are typically billions of years old. While new stars are being created in nebulae all the time, it is extremely unlikely that we are seeing the nebulous start of even the shortest lived stars within the first century of their life.
:One of the 'youngest' potential candidates is {{w|SN 1987A}}, which may be a neutron star of less than 40 years old. But that is discounting the additional age it has acquired from it being approximately 168,000 light years away from us (making it actually 168,038(ish) years old, already). It is further undermined by arguably just being the next stage of life of the far older star that had to go supernova in order to leave it behind.
:Of stars within 100 lightyears of Earth, and formed afresh from interstellar material, {{w|AU Microscopii}} is slightly over 30 lightyears away and considered to be very new (as far as stars go). But it is still 22 ''million'' years old, as it is currently understood.

Megan states that our galaxy is huge and that there are more grains of sand in the {{w|Milky Way}} than grains of sand on all of Earth's beaches. This is a parody of the common saying that there are more stars in the visible universe than grains of sand on all the beaches of Earth. Since the Earth's sand is a subset of all of the galaxy's sand, and there are more planets with sand other than Earth (such as Mars), there are unquestionably more grains of sand in the Milky Way than on Earth. Tangentially, it is unclear whether the stars outnumber Earth's sands, as shown here: [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-stars-outnumber-the-sands-of-earths-beaches/ Do Stars Outnumber the Sands of Earth’s Beaches?] and here: [https://www.astronomy.com/science/the-ever-lasting-question-more-sand-or-stars/ The ever-lasting question: more sand or stars?]. Also, the original quote was all the sand on Earth, not just on the beaches. Megan adds a helpful hint, calling a beach a big wet sandbox.

She then finishes the lesson by correctly saying that there is a black hole in the center of our galaxy ({{w|Sagittarius A*}}), and that stars sometimes fall in and get consumed by the black hole. When stars come too close to black holes, they experience a {{w|tidal disruption event}} (TDE), where a star is pulled apart by the black hole after exceeding its tidal radius, or {{w|Roche limit}}. This creates streams of material that orbit the black hole and form an accretion disk, that will eventually be consumed by the black hole or ejected in jets.

She adds her personal opinion on this fact saying that such events are "hilarious" and proceeds by saying that it's okay to laugh at the fate of those stars as the gravity of the black hole will prevent any signals from those stars escaping. This is due to black holes' immense gravitational attraction that prevents even light from escaping. In Megan's case the most important consequence of this fact is that anyone on planets around such stars cannot leave Yelp reviews if they hear her laughing. Thus, they cannot add to those that mock her lesson.

However, as the Roche limit of a black hole for the average star it's consuming is usually greater than its {{w|Schwarzschild radius}}, reviews made just after the star begins spaghettification could still escape the black hole. Not only do stars not use any kind of human-made technology,{{citation needed}} but any information regarding the app Yelp has yet to reach any star near Sagittarius A*, and will only reach it in 27 thousand years. It is much more likely that someone living on one of the star's planets would try to leave a comment on Yelp, not the star itself. But the same issues with distances would of course apply. It also seems unlikely that any planet would still be following a star when it first gets that close to a super massive black hole.

In the title text Megan claims that we haven't actually seen a star fall into the black hole since we invented telescopes. While it is true that we haven't observed any star fall into our closest supermassive black hole, this phenomenon has been been observed for other black holes and the {{w|Sagittarius_A*#Discovery_of_G2_gas_cloud_on_an_accretion_course|G2 gas cloud on an accretion course}} was discovered in 2002. Megan also apparently has a list of stars she would like to see fall into the black hole. But she can keep hoping as humans at this time have no way of changing the position of any star, and probably couldn't implement it soon upon such distant stars, even if were possible. So unless she is hoping for one (or more) of the already closer stars to be observed to fall in next, she is unlikely to experience success based on her list.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[The background is black, Megan is in front of three others, Cueball and Ponytail to the left, and White Hat to the right. Megan is drawn in white while the background characters are in grey.]
:Megan: Welcome back to Stargazing.
:Megan: According to some ''incredibly'' rude Yelp reviews, I'm "not informative" and "can't possibly be an astronomer" and "just kind of say words as they occur to me."
:Megan: I guess some losers just hate cool space facts!

:[The sky is white, the floor is black, Megan is pointing at the sky. Hairy, a Megan-like woman (with longer hair), Cueball, and Ponytail are on the left, White Hat and Hairbun are on the right. All of the characters are drawn in black.]
:Megan: Anyway, that dot is a "star."
:Megan: There are over 20 stars in the sky, and some of them are more than 100 years old.

:[The background is black again, the panel zooms in on Megan's face.]
:Megan: Our galaxy is huge.
:Megan: You know the beach? That big wet sandbox?
:Megan: Well, there are more grains of sand in the Milky Way than in all Earth's beaches combined.
:Off-panel voice to the left: Wow.
:Off-panel voice to the right: ...Wait.

:[The background is still in black, Megan is in front of others and has her finger raised, Ponytail is left of Megan, White Hat and Hairbun on the right. Megan is again drawn in white while the background characters are in grey.]
:Megan: The galaxy has a black hole at the center.
:Megan: Sometimes stars fall in, which is ''hilarious''.
:Megan: Don't worry, it's okay to laugh. The gravity prevents signals from escaping, so they can't leave Yelp reviews.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Stargazing]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Stargazing]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]

3067: SawStart

2025-03-24T13:28:27Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 3067
| date = March 24, 2025
| title = SawStart
| image = sawstart.png
| imagesize = 290x313px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Unfortunately, SawStart is one-use-only. Once started, the blade cannot be stopped, and must be replaced with a fresh blade while the running one is carefully disposed of.
}}

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

{{w|SawStop}} is an American {{w|table saw}} manufacturer whose product is designed to increase safety. Table saws can be highly dangerous if not used properly, because they feature a rapidly spinning {{w|circular saw}} protruding from the surface. If any part of someone's body come into contact with the blade while it's spinning, it can cause severe injury or death. SawStop products feature an automatic brake, designed to detect when flesh comes into contact with the blade. According to manufacturer claims, the brake will stop the blade within 5 milliseconds of detecting contact, and cause the blade to retract into the table. This is intended to prevent major injuries in the event of contact.

Black Hat here takes the notion of a product designed to increase safety, and changes the design to do the opposite, making it much more dangerous. Like the SawStop design, his product ostensibly detects contact with skin and reacts within milliseconds, but rather than stopping the blade, his product uses an explosive charge to ''increase'' the speed of the blade. It's unknown whether the faster blade would actually make it more dangerous (ordinary speeds of a table saw are more than capable of destroying living tissue), but setting of an explosive charge while in contact with such a blade is probably not a particularly good idea. There is no benefit to such a system, and it exists solely to be malicious (which is likely why it's "less popular")

The title text refers to the fact that the braking feature on the SawStop is single use. Because of the very fast response time, both the braking cartridge and the saw blade will be badly damaged in the process, and both with need to be replaced (this being considered preferable to the kinds of permanent injuries that can result from a spinning blade). The SawStart is also single use, but in its case, it somehow makes the blade impossible to stop. Hence, the SawStart blade must also be replaced, but this apparently has to be done while the blade is spinning. To attempt to remove a spinning blade is obviously incredibly dangerous, and this simply adds to the unnecessary harm this product could do.

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

:[Black Hat gestures to a table saw called SawStart, facing Megan and Cueball. The SawStart depicts a circular saw blade behind the word Saw]:
:When the saw detects contact with skin, an explosive charge starts the blade spinning at full speed within a few milliseconds.

:[Caption bellow the panel]
:SawStop's less-popular competitor

{{comic discussion}}

1249: Meteor Showers

2025-03-19T14:44:13Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 1249
| date = August 9, 2013
| title = Meteor Showers
| image = meteor showers.png
| titletext = Remember, meteors always hit the tallest object around.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic spoofs the way that astronomical events are often reported in the mass media — events are often tagged with undeserved superlatives or described as being more dramatic than they actually are. In some cases, outright misinformation is spread. This phenomenon occurs in part by the result of over-eager scientists, but mostly because of journalists with no deeper knowledge on the subject they write about.

Meteor showers typically occur regularly each year. It always happens at the same days because the Earth is crossing the dust path of a particular {{w|comet}}. Sometimes meteor showers are in fact likely to be relatively spectacular when the peak of the shower occurs while your part of the world is in darkness and there is little moonlight. However, even in these cases it must be understood that there is nothing unusual about the meteor shower itself. The shower consists of small particles about one millimeter in diameter. Only their high speed lets them produce enough light to be visible from Earth's surface. The names of the showers refer to the {{w|constellation}} from which they appear to radiate.

Most of the meteor showers listed in the comic are real, but some are made up (and indicated as such below).

{|class="wikitable"
!Name !! Real? !! Note !! Explanation !! Date
|-
|{{w|Quadrantids}} || Yes || Bring pets inside during peak activity || While keeping pets inside may be reasonable on days when fireworks are let off in the beginning of a new year, no regular meteor shower poses much danger to pets. || January 4th
|-
|Tricuspids || No || Not viewable in region 2 countries || Apparently a play on the {{w|tricuspid valve}} in mammalian hearts, or possibly on bicuspid teeth. The mention of "Region 2" is a reference to {{w|region locking}}, a digital rights management (DRM) scheme intended to restrict media to certain areas. DRM of course does not apply to natural events.{{Citation needed}} However, meteor showers are also geographically restricted, and the visible area might roughly coincide with a DRM region. Region 2 covers a large and scattered area, including Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, and Japan: it is a meaningless geographical "region" for the purpose of astronomy. || January 21st
|-
|({{w|Alpha Centaurids|Alpha}} / {{w|Theta Centaurids|Theta}}) Centaurids || Yes || Too faint to see without going outside || Since indoor lights and window glass make them harder to see, it would take a ''very'' bright meteor (like the Chelyabids two entries below) to be visible without going outside. || February 6th
|-
|Beta Aquariids || No || Inverted shower converges toward Aquarius instead of radiating away || This fictional shower would collect shooting stars into the origin to prepare for the real {{w|Eta Aquariids}} meteor shower associated with Halley's comet and ''diverging'' from {{w|Eta Aquarii}} in Aquarius; the real shower peaks around May 6th. Due to perspective, meteor showers appear to radiate outwards from a certain point in the sky. Meteor showers may be seen to converge on a point on the opposite side of the sky, but with the earth in the way there would only be a few visible going past the edge, seen as nearly parallel streaks overhead, so the convergence point would hardly be notable. || February 10th
|-
|Chelyabids || No || Only one meteor per shower, but it's big. || A reference to the February 15, 2013, {{w|Chelyabinsk meteor}} whose explosion shattered windows within a large radius. || February 15th
|-
|{{w|Lyrids}} || Yes || Meteors sometimes scream || A meteor large enough to reach the lower atmosphere could produce sound audible to observers on the ground, but this is very unusual. Also, meteors do not scream.{{Citation Needed}}|| April 22nd
|-
|Daytime {{w|Zeta Perseids}} || Yes || Likely a NASA hoax || This shower is mostly observed via its effects on radio and TV signals, and therefore a good target for conspiracy theorists responding to [https://web.archive.org/web/20160322133927/http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast06jun_1m June's Invisible Meteors - NASA Science]. || June 9th
|-
|{{w|June Bootids|June Boötids}} || Yes || 50/50 mix of meteors and shooting stars || The "50/50 mix of meteors and shooting stars" is a joke, as "meteor" and "shooting star" are synonymous. || June 27th
|-
|{{w|Southern Delta Aquariids}} || Yes || Meteors very bright, but stationary || This is saying that they are indistinguishable from stars, or that the stars themselves are actually meteors. || July 19th
|-
|Dromaeosaurids || No || Fast, highly intelligent, can open doors || {{w|Dromaeosauridae|Dromaeosaurids}} are a family of dinosaurs containing the genus ''Velociraptor'', well-known from the movie Jurassic Park in which they are presented as a deadly menace, fast and especially intelligent to the point of understanding how to open a door; this representation of Velociraptors is a [[:Category:Velociraptors|recurrent topic in xkcd]]. It seems, however, that Randall may have finally gotten over his fear of them; it was still true that, by the time February 2025, this comic is the most recent mention of Velociraptors on xkcd. Velociraptors being able to open a door is also mentioned in [[135: Substitute]]. || July 22nd
|-
|{{w|Perseids}} || Yes || Instead of falling from sky, meteors erupt from ground || Erupting from the ground is the funny inverse of falling from the sky, what meteors always do. || August 12th
|-
|Tau Pyramids || No || Visible even when eyes are closed || Probably a reference to {{w|Pyramidal cells}}, a type of neuron. The "tau" reference has two possibilities. The "visible even when eyes are closed" could refer to the Tau particle, a heavy sibling of the electron. When they traveled outside of Earth's magnetosphere on their way to the Moon, Apollo astronauts saw flashes of light about every three minutes even with their eyes closed; these were caused by high energy particles (cosmic rays) penetrating their eyes and brain. The other possibility is that it refers to {{w|Tau protein}}, a normal structural protein within brain neurons. In Alzheimer's Disease, abnormal Tau proteins can aggregate within pyramidal cells to form insoluble skeins. The number of these "{{w|Neurofibrillary tangle|neurofibrillary tangles}}" roughly correlate with the severity of cognitive impairment. || August 15th
|-
|{{w|Draconids}} || Yes || Very slow, but follow you if you run || This may have something to do with the fact that "draconids" etymologically means "of the dragon", which could make for a fearsome meteor shower. And if you run it will track you down, albeit slowly. This may also be a reference to {{w|Boo (character)|Boo}}, a character in the Mario series of video games that is slow but follows you if you turn your back on them. In the game Terraria, meteors (or rather, "meteor heads") follow this exact behavior. || October 8th
|-
|{{w|Orionids}} || Yes || Entire shower happens at once || Rather than taking place over the course of a week, all the meteors in the shower happen at the same time. This would involve about 3000 meteors appearing simultaneously, which would be quite an impressive sight. || October 21st
|-
|{{w|Leonids}} || Yes || In 1966, unusually active Leonid shower killed God || There ''was'' a very active Leonid shower (a "meteor storm") in 1966, and a precursor to it in 1965. The article ''{{w|Is God Dead?}}'' was published in ''Time Magazine'' on April 8 of 1966. Perhaps this suggests that the meteors killed God earlier in the year when they and He were further out in the solar system? || November 17th
|-
|{{w|Geminids}} || Yes || Can be deflected with tennis rackets || Meteors usually don't reach the surface of the Earth, being destroyed in the atmosphere. If they do approach the surface, deflecting them with tennis racquets would probably not be the most effective strategy,{{Citation needed}} unless Randall is implying that the Geminid swarm is composed of tennis balls. || December 13th
|-
|}

The title text refers to the folk wisdom that ''lightning'' strikes the tallest thing around, but this has never been applied to meteors, where it is basically the size (area) that determines the likelihood of an impact with a given object. [[Randall]] expressed frustration over how "maddeningly inexact" the lightning statement is, and elaborated on the problem mathematically, in the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' ''{{what if|16|Today's topic: Lightning}}''.

==Transcript==
:[A list of 16 meteor showers, with a caption above, labels on the three columns and then every other row in gray, beginning with a gray row beneath the line below the column labels.]
:{| border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="wikitable" style="width: 60%; text-align: left;"
!colspan="3"|The <big><big>xkcd guide</big></big> to <big><big>meteor showers</big></big>
|-
|'''Name'''
|'''Peak'''
|'''Notes'''
|-
|Quadrantids
|January 4th
|Bring pets inside during peak activity
|-
|Tricuspids
|January 21st
|Not viewable in region 2 countries
|-
|Centaurids
|February 6th
|Too faint to see without going outside
|-
|Beta Aquariids
|February 10th
|Inverted shower converges toward Aquarius instead of radiating away
|-
|Chelyabids
|February 15th
|Only one meteor per shower, but it's big.
|-
|Lyrids
|April 22nd
|Meteors sometimes scream
|-
|Daytime Zeta Perseids
|June 9th
|Likely a NASA hoax
|-
|June Boötids
|June 27th
|50/50 mix of meteors and shooting stars
|-
|Southern Delta Aquariids
|July 19th
|Meteors very bright, but stationary
|-
|Dromaeosaurids
|July 22nd
|Fast, highly intelligent, can open doors
|-
|Perseids
|August 12th
|Instead of falling from sky, meteors erupt from ground
|-
|Tau Pyramids
|August 15th
|Visible even when eyes are closed
|-
|Draconids
|October 8th
|Very slow, but follow you if you run
|-
|Orionids
|October 21st
|Entire shower happens at once
|-
|Leonids
|November 17th
|In 1966, unusually active Leonid shower killed God
|-
|Geminids
|December 13th
|Can be deflected with tennis rackets
|}

==Trivia==
In the [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/8/8a/20130809215612!meteor_showers.png original version of this comic], the date beneath the Dromaeosaurids shower was June 12th (instead of July 22nd), the date of the velociraptor attacks in the Jurassic Park movie. To get the order of the dates correct it was probably easier to change just the date rather than move the Dromaeosaurids to the entry below June 9th.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Velociraptors]]
[[Category:Jurassic Park]]
[[Category:Animals]] 
[[Category:Sport]] 
[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:DRM]]

[[Category:Comics edited after their publication]]

1249: Meteor Showers

2025-03-19T14:43:36Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 1249
| date = August 9, 2013
| title = Meteor Showers
| image = meteor showers.png
| titletext = Remember, meteors always hit the tallest object around.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic spoofs the way that astronomical events are often reported in the mass media — events are often tagged with undeserved superlatives or described as being more dramatic than they actually are. In some cases, outright misinformation is spread. This phenomenon occurs in part by the result of over-eager scientists, but mostly because of journalists with no deeper knowledge on the subject they write about.

Meteor showers typically occur regularly each year. It always happens at the same days because the Earth is crossing the dust path of a particular {{w|comet}}. Sometimes meteor showers are in fact likely to be relatively spectacular when the peak of the shower occurs while your part of the world is in darkness and there is little moonlight. However, even in these cases it must be understood that there is nothing unusual about the meteor shower itself. The shower consists of small particles about one millimeter in diameter. Only their high speed lets them produce enough light to be visible from Earth's surface. The names of the showers refer to the {{w|constellation}} from which they appear to radiate.

Most of the meteor showers listed in the comic are real, but some are made up (and indicated as such below).

{|class="wikitable"
!Name !! Real? !! Note !! Explanation !! Date
|-
|{{w|Quadrantids}} || Yes || Bring pets inside during peak activity || While keeping pets inside may be reasonable on days when fireworks are let off in the beginning of a new year, no regular meteor shower poses much danger to pets. || January 4th
|-
|Tricuspids || No || Not viewable in region 2 countries || Apparently a play on the {{w|tricuspid valve}} in mammalian hearts, or possibly on bicuspid teeth. The mention of "Region 2" is a reference to {{w|region locking}}, a digital rights management (DRM) scheme intended to restrict media to certain areas. DRM of course does not apply to natural events.{{Citation needed}} However, meteor showers are also geographically restricted, and the visible area might roughly coincide with a DRM region. Region 2 covers a large and scattered area, including Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, and Japan: it is a meaningless geographical "region" for the purpose of astronomy. || January 21st
|-
|({{w|Alpha Centaurids|Alpha}} / {{w|Theta Centaurids|Theta}}) Centaurids || Yes || Too faint to see without going outside || Since indoor lights and window glass make them harder to see, it would take a ''very'' bright meteor (like the Chelyabids two entries below) to be visible without going outside. || February 6th
|-
|Beta Aquariids || No || Inverted shower converges toward Aquarius instead of radiating away || This fictional shower would collect shooting stars into the origin to prepare for the real {{w|Eta Aquariids}} meteor shower associated with Halley's comet and ''diverging'' from {{w|Eta Aquarii}} in Aquarius; the real shower peaks around May 6th. Due to perspective, meteor showers appear to radiate outwards from a certain point in the sky. Meteor showers may be seen to converge on a point on the opposite side of the sky, but with the earth in the way there would only be a few visible going past the edge, seen as nearly parallel streaks overhead, so the convergence point would hardly be notable. || February 10th
|-
|Chelyabids || No || Only one meteor per shower, but it's big. || A reference to the February 15, 2013, {{w|Chelyabinsk meteor}} whose explosion shattered windows within a large radius. || February 15th
|-
|{{w|Lyrids}} || Yes || Meteors sometimes scream || A meteor large enough to reach the lower atmosphere could produce sound audible to observers on the ground, but this is very unusual. Also, meteors do not scream{{Citation Needed}}.|| April 22nd
|-
|Daytime {{w|Zeta Perseids}} || Yes || Likely a NASA hoax || This shower is mostly observed via its effects on radio and TV signals, and therefore a good target for conspiracy theorists responding to [https://web.archive.org/web/20160322133927/http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2000/ast06jun_1m June's Invisible Meteors - NASA Science]. || June 9th
|-
|{{w|June Bootids|June Boötids}} || Yes || 50/50 mix of meteors and shooting stars || The "50/50 mix of meteors and shooting stars" is a joke, as "meteor" and "shooting star" are synonymous. || June 27th
|-
|{{w|Southern Delta Aquariids}} || Yes || Meteors very bright, but stationary || This is saying that they are indistinguishable from stars, or that the stars themselves are actually meteors. || July 19th
|-
|Dromaeosaurids || No || Fast, highly intelligent, can open doors || {{w|Dromaeosauridae|Dromaeosaurids}} are a family of dinosaurs containing the genus ''Velociraptor'', well-known from the movie Jurassic Park in which they are presented as a deadly menace, fast and especially intelligent to the point of understanding how to open a door; this representation of Velociraptors is a [[:Category:Velociraptors|recurrent topic in xkcd]]. It seems, however, that Randall may have finally gotten over his fear of them; it was still true that, by the time February 2025, this comic is the most recent mention of Velociraptors on xkcd. Velociraptors being able to open a door is also mentioned in [[135: Substitute]]. || July 22nd
|-
|{{w|Perseids}} || Yes || Instead of falling from sky, meteors erupt from ground || Erupting from the ground is the funny inverse of falling from the sky, what meteors always do. || August 12th
|-
|Tau Pyramids || No || Visible even when eyes are closed || Probably a reference to {{w|Pyramidal cells}}, a type of neuron. The "tau" reference has two possibilities. The "visible even when eyes are closed" could refer to the Tau particle, a heavy sibling of the electron. When they traveled outside of Earth's magnetosphere on their way to the Moon, Apollo astronauts saw flashes of light about every three minutes even with their eyes closed; these were caused by high energy particles (cosmic rays) penetrating their eyes and brain. The other possibility is that it refers to {{w|Tau protein}}, a normal structural protein within brain neurons. In Alzheimer's Disease, abnormal Tau proteins can aggregate within pyramidal cells to form insoluble skeins. The number of these "{{w|Neurofibrillary tangle|neurofibrillary tangles}}" roughly correlate with the severity of cognitive impairment. || August 15th
|-
|{{w|Draconids}} || Yes || Very slow, but follow you if you run || This may have something to do with the fact that "draconids" etymologically means "of the dragon", which could make for a fearsome meteor shower. And if you run it will track you down, albeit slowly. This may also be a reference to {{w|Boo (character)|Boo}}, a character in the Mario series of video games that is slow but follows you if you turn your back on them. In the game Terraria, meteors (or rather, "meteor heads") follow this exact behavior. || October 8th
|-
|{{w|Orionids}} || Yes || Entire shower happens at once || Rather than taking place over the course of a week, all the meteors in the shower happen at the same time. This would involve about 3000 meteors appearing simultaneously, which would be quite an impressive sight. || October 21st
|-
|{{w|Leonids}} || Yes || In 1966, unusually active Leonid shower killed God || There ''was'' a very active Leonid shower (a "meteor storm") in 1966, and a precursor to it in 1965. The article ''{{w|Is God Dead?}}'' was published in ''Time Magazine'' on April 8 of 1966. Perhaps this suggests that the meteors killed God earlier in the year when they and He were further out in the solar system? || November 17th
|-
|{{w|Geminids}} || Yes || Can be deflected with tennis rackets || Meteors usually don't reach the surface of the Earth, being destroyed in the atmosphere. If they do approach the surface, deflecting them with tennis racquets would probably not be the most effective strategy,{{Citation needed}} unless Randall is implying that the Geminid swarm is composed of tennis balls. || December 13th
|-
|}

The title text refers to the folk wisdom that ''lightning'' strikes the tallest thing around, but this has never been applied to meteors, where it is basically the size (area) that determines the likelihood of an impact with a given object. [[Randall]] expressed frustration over how "maddeningly inexact" the lightning statement is, and elaborated on the problem mathematically, in the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' ''{{what if|16|Today's topic: Lightning}}''.

==Transcript==
:[A list of 16 meteor showers, with a caption above, labels on the three columns and then every other row in gray, beginning with a gray row beneath the line below the column labels.]
:{| border="1" cellpadding="1" cellspacing="1" class="wikitable" style="width: 60%; text-align: left;"
!colspan="3"|The <big><big>xkcd guide</big></big> to <big><big>meteor showers</big></big>
|-
|'''Name'''
|'''Peak'''
|'''Notes'''
|-
|Quadrantids
|January 4th
|Bring pets inside during peak activity
|-
|Tricuspids
|January 21st
|Not viewable in region 2 countries
|-
|Centaurids
|February 6th
|Too faint to see without going outside
|-
|Beta Aquariids
|February 10th
|Inverted shower converges toward Aquarius instead of radiating away
|-
|Chelyabids
|February 15th
|Only one meteor per shower, but it's big.
|-
|Lyrids
|April 22nd
|Meteors sometimes scream
|-
|Daytime Zeta Perseids
|June 9th
|Likely a NASA hoax
|-
|June Boötids
|June 27th
|50/50 mix of meteors and shooting stars
|-
|Southern Delta Aquariids
|July 19th
|Meteors very bright, but stationary
|-
|Dromaeosaurids
|July 22nd
|Fast, highly intelligent, can open doors
|-
|Perseids
|August 12th
|Instead of falling from sky, meteors erupt from ground
|-
|Tau Pyramids
|August 15th
|Visible even when eyes are closed
|-
|Draconids
|October 8th
|Very slow, but follow you if you run
|-
|Orionids
|October 21st
|Entire shower happens at once
|-
|Leonids
|November 17th
|In 1966, unusually active Leonid shower killed God
|-
|Geminids
|December 13th
|Can be deflected with tennis rackets
|}

==Trivia==
In the [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/8/8a/20130809215612!meteor_showers.png original version of this comic], the date beneath the Dromaeosaurids shower was June 12th (instead of July 22nd), the date of the velociraptor attacks in the Jurassic Park movie. To get the order of the dates correct it was probably easier to change just the date rather than move the Dromaeosaurids to the entry below June 9th.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Velociraptors]]
[[Category:Jurassic Park]]
[[Category:Animals]] 
[[Category:Sport]] 
[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:DRM]]

[[Category:Comics edited after their publication]]

3063: Planet Definitions

2025-03-14T18:46:42Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 3063
| date = March 14, 2025
| title = Planet Definitions
| image = planet_definitions_2x.png
| imagesize = 653x1435px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Under the 'has cleared its orbital neighborhood' and 'fuses hydrogen into helium' definitions, thanks to human activities Earth technically no longer qualifies as a planet but DOES count as a star.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|The explanation is too short.}}

This comic addresses the controversy of whether of Pluto is a planet and gives many other humorous definitions of what a planet could be.

Prior to 2006, there was no formal definition of a "planet" and it was generally accepted as a colloquialism there were nine planets around the Sun, Pluto included. As more sophisticated methods of mapping the Solar System were developed and Eris was discovered to be even more massive than Pluto, it became clear to astronomers that a more standardized definition was needed. In 2006 the International Astronomical Union (IAU) published their formal redefinition of a "planet" to require a planet to be gravitationally dominant within its orbit, disqualifying Pluto (and Eris) which is now considered a "dwarf planet." This has been subject to push back from countless people, including [https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.15285 some planetary scientists], but in numbers mostly nostalgic laypeople dissatisfied with Pluto being "demoted" or otherwise relegated.

This comic takes things a step further with a chart showing what does and does not qualify as a "planet" under several definitions, most of them fairly nonsensical.

Apparently Randall has seen Uranus (see 'Empiricist'). This is fairly rare, since it usually requires a telescope pointed in just the right direction. Technically [https://www.skyatnightmagazine.com/advice/skills/how-see-uranus-in-night-sky Uranus ''is'' visible to the naked eye] under the very best viewing conditions, but these conditions are rare and it again requires knowing exactly where to look.

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

:[A table with 3 columns, labelled "Definition", "# of planets", and "Solar system". The last row is a drawing of the Solar system, with elements included in the definition of the row colored in green]
:['''Traditionalist:''' Pluto is a planet | 9 | Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune + its satellite (probably an error, and Pluto should be colored instead]
:['''Modern:''' Pluto is not a planet | 8 | Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto (probably an error, Pluto should not be colored)]
:['''Expansive:''' Dwarf planets are planets | 17+ | Mercury, Venus, the Earth, Mars, Ceres Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and other dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt]
:['''Ultratraditionalist:''' Only the classical planets are planets | 5 | Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn]
:['''Condescending:''' Only giant planets are planets; the rest are big asteroids. | 4 | Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune]
:['''Simplistic:''' Anything gravitationally round is a planet | 37+ | the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, the Moon, Mars, Ceres, Jupiter and its moons, Saturn and Titan, Uranus and its moons, Neptune and its moon, Pluto and other dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt]
:['''Grounded:''' Only objects a spaceship has landed on are planets | 10 | Venus, the Earth, the Moon, Mars, some asteroids, and Titan]
:['''Regolithic:''' Anything covered in dirt and ice and stuff is a planet | infinity | Mercury, Venus, the Earth, the Moon, Mars, Ceres and all asteroids from the Asteroid belt, the moons of Jupiter, Pluto and other dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt and their moons]
:['''Lunar:''' You can't be a planet if you don't have a moon | 12+ | the Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and some other dwarf planets in the Kuiper belt]
:['''Solipsitic:''' Earth is the only planet | 1 | the Earth]
:['''Judgemental:''' Only the prettiest ones are planets | 6 | the Earth, Jupiter and one of its moons, Saturn and Titan, Triton, and Pluto]
:['''Empiricist:''' Only worlds that I, author of this table, have personally seen are planets | 12 | Mercury, Venus, the Earth, the Moon, Mars Jupiter and its moons, Saturn, and Uranus]
:['''Marine biologist:''' Only objects with oceans are planets | 6+ | the Earth, some moons of Jupiter, and two moons of Saturn]
:['''Maritime:''' Only objects with '''''surface''''' oceans are planets | 6+ | the Earth, and Titan]
:['''Universalist:''' They're all planets | infinity | the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, the Moon, Mars, Ceres and all asteroids from the Asteroid belt, Jupiter and its moons, Saturn and Titan, Uranus and its moons, Neptune and its moon, Pluto and the Kuiper belt]
:['''Existantialist:''' What is space '''''itself''''' is a planet??? | ''Duude'' | the Sun, Mercury, Venus, the Earth, the Moon, Mars, Ceres and all asteroids from the Asteroid belt, Jupiter and its moons, Saturn and Titan, Uranus and its moons, Neptune and its moon, Pluto, the Kuiper belt, and the space around it]
:['''Spiteful:''' '''''Only''''' Pluto is a planet | 1 | Pluto]

==Trivia==
The comic contains a few errors:
*The 'Traditionalist' definition has Neptune's satellite {{w|Triton (moon)|Triton}} colored instead of Pluto.
*The 'Modern' definition has Pluto colored as a 9th planet. It appears that the images for 'Traditionalist' and 'Modern' are swapped.
*The 'Judgemental' definition has 7 colored objects instead of the labelled 6.
*There are seven classical planets, but the 'Ultratraditionalist' definition excludes two of them. An even more traditional definition would include the sun and the moon as planets.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Space]]

3061: Water Balloons

2025-03-11T13:33:41Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 3061
| date = March 10, 2025
| title = Water Balloons
| image = water_balloons_2x.png
| imagesize = 578x713px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Update: The physics department has recruited an astronomer who studies meteor fireballs.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT SHORT CIRCUITING DUE TO A WATER BALLOON - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
The comic graphs the mass vs the lifetime of three objects: {{w|meson}}s, {{w|water balloon}}s and {{w|planet}}s. Mesons, which are subatomic particles, have a very low mass and a very short lifetime, since they naturally decay into other fundamental particles.{{Actual citation needed}} "Flying water balloons" are depicted as having a mass centered around 1 kilogram, but the area outlined covers a very broad range of mass (from grams to hundreds of kilos), and a lifetime centered around 1 second (but the area outlined covers from fractions of a second to a couple of hours), indicating the approximate amount of time that the a water balloon survives after being thrown through the air. (Not all water balloons break on impact, and some are thrown directly into someone's face, thus flight time would be very short). Finally, planets have a very large mass and a very large lifetime, since they tend to exist for billions of years.

This comparison is somewhat absurd because the objects being compared: mesons, water balloons and planets do not have much in common.

The text below the image states that meson particle physicists and planetary scientists are usually evenly matched in water balloon fights, since water balloons are outside of the area of expertise of both departments. In real life, water balloon fights are completely unrelated to particle physics or planetary science. They may also be not directly related to various other academic disciplines, though one might assume that more generalized physicists might study similar objects with the mass and lifetime of water balloons (if not water balloons themselves!), and other topics of education might also confer an 'advantage' (for example, biologists may study similarly-sized bodies of creatures, whilst chemists may monitor chemical reactions could take an equivalent time to complete). This all suggests that deep specialization in a field of study deprives a normal person of their basic aptitude to perform in more 'everyday' activities, but at least it equally disadvantages each of the two teams of researchers and makes for a more satisfyingly [[1819: Sweet 16|competitive match-up]] than with one team clearly far more proficient than the other.

The title text overturns this by stating that "The physics department has recruited an astronomer who studies meteor fireballs". This is likely referring to the fact that meteors are closer to water balloons in terms of their mass and lifetime, so having an astronomer with this area of expertise might be advantageous in a water balloon fight against particle physicist, that have nothing close to the weight range of a water balloon. The lifetime of meteors may also be consistent. While "space rocks" that become meteors may have been around for approximately the age of the solar system (and longer than at least some planets), and may then sit on/beneath the ground for anything up to geologically significant lengths of time, being an actual meteor (and a flaming one, at that) implies we're only talking about the period of time the space-rock is traveling through the Earth's atmosphere, specifically ending before it becomes a meteorite. This is a period of time that may be anything from few seconds (the normally upper limit to the visible 'fireball' stage) to ''possibly'' a minute or two (starting from its first shallow-angle grazing to the atmosphere until it finally lands/burns up/passes back out of the atmosphere). Thus, by one team bringing in a more capable player (especially one arguably more closely aligned to their opponents), they apparently now have an {{wiktionary|ringer#Noun 4|unfair advantage}}.

Other absurd uses of linear regression are seen in [[605: Extrapolating]], [[1204: Detail]] and [[2893: Sphere Tastiness]].

==Transcript==
:[Graph with Y axis using an arrow indicating mass from 10-30 kg to 1030 kg on a logarithmic scale and X axis, also on a logarithmic scale labeled "Lifetime" running from 10-20 to 1020 seconds.]

:[There are three elliptical blobs on the graph, one on the lower left corner labeled "Mesons" another on the upper right corner labeled "Planets", and the last one in the middle (1kg mass, 1s lifespan) labeled Flying water balloons. There are two bidirectional arrows pointing from the center blob to the two other blobs.]

:[To the left of the chart are Cueball and Ponytail. Ponytail is throwing a water balloon, and Cueball is dodging from one. To the right are Megan and Hairy. Megan is preparing to throw a water balloon, and Hairy is slipping in a puddle of water, with a water balloon having landed near his foot with a "Sploosh!".]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:In the annual water balloon fight, meson particle physicists and planetary scientists are usually evenly matched, since they're both equally far outside their areas of expertise.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Extrapolation]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Games]]

3061: Water Balloons

2025-03-11T13:31:19Z

Danger Kitty: grammar

{{comic
| number = 3061
| date = March 10, 2025
| title = Water Balloons
| image = water_balloons_2x.png
| imagesize = 578x713px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Update: The physics department has recruited an astronomer who studies meteor fireballs.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT SHORT CIRCUITING DUE TO A WATER BALLOON - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
The comic graphs the mass vs the lifetime of three objects: {{w|meson}}s, {{w|water balloon}}s and {{w|planet}}s. Mesons, which are subatomic particles, have a very low mass and a very short lifetime, since they naturally decay into other fundamental particles.{{Actual citation needed}} "Flying water balloons" are depicted as having a mass centered around 1 kilogram, but the area outlined covers a very broad range of mass (from grams to hundreds of kilos), and a lifetime centered around 1 second (but the area outlined covers from fractions of a second to a couple of hours), indicating the approximate amount of time that the a water balloon survives after being thrown through the air. (Not all water balloons break on impact, and some are thrown directly into someone's face, thus flight time would be very short). Finally, planets have a very large mass and a very large lifetime, since they tend to exist for billions of years.

This comparison is somewhat absurd because the objects being compared: mesons, water balloons and planets do not have much in common.

The text below the image states that meson particle physicists and planetary scientists are usually evenly matched in water balloon fights, since water balloons are outside of the area of expertise of both departments. In real life, water balloon fights are completely unrelated to particle physics or planetary science. They may also be not directly related to various other academic disciplines, though one might assume that more generalised physicists might study similar objects with the mass and lifetime of water balloons (if not water balloons themselves!), and other topics of education might also confer an 'advantage' (for example, biologists may study similarly-sized bodies of creatures, whilst chemists may monitor chemical reactions could take an equivalent time to complete). This all suggests that deep specialisation in a field of study deprives a normal person of their basic aptitude to perform in more 'everyday' activities, but at least it equally disadvantages each of the two teams of researchers and makes for a more satisfyingly [[1819: Sweet 16|competitive match-up]] than with one team clearly far more proficient than the other.

The title text overturns this by stating that "The physics department has recruited an astronomer who studies meteor fireballs". This is likely referring to the fact that meteors are closer to water balloons in terms of their mass and lifetime, so having an astronomer with this area of expertise might be advantageous in a water balloon fight against particle physicist, that have nothing close to the weight range of a water balloon. The lifetime of meteors may also be consistent. While "space rocks" that become meteors may have been around for approximately the age of the solar system (and longer than at least some planets), and may then sit on/beneath the ground for anything up to geologically significant lengths of time, being an actual meteor (and a flaming one, at that) implies we're only talking about the period of time the space-rock is traveling through the Earth's atmosphere, specifically ending before it becomes a meteorite. This is a period of time that may be anything from few seconds (the normally upper limit to the visible 'fireball' stage) to ''possibly'' a minute or two (starting from its first shallow-angle grazing to the atmosphere until it finally lands/burns up/passes back out of the atmosphere). Thus, by one team bringing in a more capable player (especially one arguably more closely aligned to their opponents), they apparently now have an {{wiktionary|ringer#Noun 4|unfair advantage}}.

Other absurd uses of linear regression are seen in [[605: Extrapolating]], [[1204: Detail]] and [[2893: Sphere Tastiness]].

==Transcript==
:[Graph with Y axis using an arrow indicating mass from 10-30 kg to 1030 kg on a logarithmic scale and X axis, also on a logarithmic scale labeled "Lifetime" running from 10-20 to 1020 seconds.]

:[There are three elliptical blobs on the graph, one on the lower left corner labeled "Mesons" another on the upper right corner labeled "Planets", and the last one in the middle (1kg mass, 1s lifespan) labeled Flying water balloons. There are two bidirectional arrows pointing from the center blob to the two other blobs.]

:[To the left of the chart are Cueball and Ponytail. Ponytail is throwing a water balloon, and Cueball is dodging from one. To the right are Megan and Hairy. Megan is preparing to throw a water balloon, and Hairy is slipping in a puddle of water, with a water balloon having landed near his foot with a "Sploosh!".]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:In the annual water balloon fight, meson particle physicists and planetary scientists are usually evenly matched, since they're both equally far outside their areas of expertise.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Extrapolation]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Games]]

3043: Muons

2025-01-28T14:33:52Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 3043
| date = January 27, 2025
| title = Muons
| image = muons_2x.png
| imagesize = 284x388px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Update: I've been banned from the physics department for the way I pronounce "Doppler effect."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUN moving at 99.97% of the speed of light resulting in 45x battery life. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{w|Muon|Muons}} are particles released in {{w|air shower (physics)|air showers}} from high-energy {{w|cosmic ray}} protons causing nuclear decay in our upper atmosphere. These protons come from all over the universe from various interstellar events and have energies in excess of anything our species has created. Some of the muons created in these collisions are deflected away from us and decay quickly in the upper atmosphere. Other muons retain the high energy of the colliding protons effectively and travel so fast that they emit {{w|Cherenkov radiation}} from outpacing photons in air, which is used to visualize air showers with telescopes. Muons usually decay very quickly, but in part because of time dilation these high-energy muons are able to penetrate deep into the earth densely and are also used as a natural radiation source more powerful than x-rays for internal imaging especially of large opaque structures.

{{w|Time dilation}} is the concept from {{w|special relativity}} where faster moving objects travel through time faster than proportional, resulting in an appearance of it slowing down for them to an observer, as well as an ability to cross greater distances. Because the ‘regular speed’ {{w|Muon|muons}} are moving at a relatively normal speed, Cueball pronounces it properly, but because time slows down for the faster moving muons, Cueball adjusts this, and pronounces it much slower, as if he is being slowed down from talking about them.

Cueball is implying that when he says "muons", he is speaking in the same reference frame as them, with time traveling at the same speed for the listener and for the muon. In the same reference frame, muons decay very quickly. He implies that when he says "muuuoooons" very slowly, that he is now speaking in a reference frame where the muons have time dilated relative to the observer and appear to be aging very very slowly. If a relativistic muon were saying its own name, or if Cueball were in the same reference frame as the muon and the observer were not, (and there were a way to transmit sound at relativistic speeds), then the muon might sound like this, stretched out. This is the kind of reference frame in which muons are detected at the surface. We observe them, and we observe that time is passing slower for them than it is for us.

On average, a stationary muon decays after a bit over two microseconds. While moving at 99.97% of the speed of light, their lifespan (from our perspective) stretches to nearly ninety microseconds. If Cueball speaks at four syllables per second (a typical {{w|Speech tempo|speech tempo}} for English), it will take him about half of a second to name the "muons" created in the upper atmosphere; it will take him more than twenty seconds to name the fast-moving "muuuuuoooons."

The title text references the {{w|Doppler effect}}, the change in frequency of a wave when the observer is moving relative to the source. One common example of this is how the sound of a fast car or airplane starts at a high pitched note but then drops to a low droning noise as it passes the observer. By analogy with the time dilation example, Cueball likely imitates this change in pitch whenever pronouncing the phrase "Doppler effect"; as he has been banned for this we must assume that the first syllable or two were pronounced at an obnoxiously high volume and pitch.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball is standing in front of a whiteboard, which contains a diagram depicting a muon passing through the atmosphere, a distance labeled with a cursive letter, the equation for the Lorentz factor, and some illegible text. He's facing away from the whiteboard and holding a pointer that points towards the diagram.]
:Cueball: ''Muons'' created in the upper atmosphere decay immediately, but fast moving ''muuuuuoooons'' are able to reach the surface due to their longer half-lives.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Physics tip: Remember to adjust your pronunciations to account for time dilation.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Tips]]

3041: Unit Circle

2025-01-22T23:12:57Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 3041
| date = January 22, 2025
| title = Unit Circle
| image = unit_circle_2x.png
| imagesize = 325x259px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = They're continuing to search for a square with the same area as the circle, as efforts to construct one have run into difficulties.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Constructed by a COMPASS AND STRAIGHTEDGE. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A {{w|unit circle}} is a mathematical concept, a circle whose radius is one (with no units). When doing math problems with a unit circle, all other distances are therefore in terms of the circle's radius: a line with length 3 is 3 times the radius, a line of length 1/2 is half the radius, and so on. This is very useful in many geometry problems.

This comic shows an archaeological dig unearthing a "real unit circle": a physical object which somehow is this mathematical idea. By measuring the "real unit circle", mathematicians could then provide measurements in ordinary units, such as inches, to textbooks which describe the unit circle. Doing so would be entirely pointless, as the entire purpose of the unit circle is that its radius is one unit, and it is not meant to correspond to any physical object.

The title-text refers to the old geometry problem of {{w|squaring the circle}}: "constructing" (a term which here means drawing using only an idealized compass and straightedge) a square of area equal to a given circle. This has been proven to be impossible.

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

:[In a single panel, White Hat, Ponytail, Miss Lenhart, Cueball, and Megan are standing in a field. Ponytail is holding a notebook and taking notes, Miss Lenhart is touching a circular object, Cueball is holding a wooden measuring instrument, and Megan is taking a photo with her phone.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
: Math breakthrough: Dimensional analysts have discovered a real unit circle. Once they measure it, units can finally be added to all our geometry textbooks.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Math]]

3041: Unit Circle

2025-01-22T23:12:19Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 3041
| date = January 22, 2025
| title = Unit Circle
| image = unit_circle_2x.png
| imagesize = 325x259px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = They're continuing to search for a square with the same area as the circle, as efforts to construct one have run into difficulties.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Constructed by a COMPASS AND STRAIGHTEDGE. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A {{w|unit circle}} is a mathematical concept, a circle whose radius is one (with no units). When doing math problems with a unit circle, all other distances are therefore in terms of the circle's radius: a line with length 3 is 3 times the radius, a line of length 1/2 is half the radius, and so on. This is very useful in many geometry problems.

This comic shows an archaeological dig unearthing a "real unit circle": a physical object which somehow is this mathematical idea. By measuring the "real unit circle", mathematicians could then provide measurements in ordinary units, such as inches, to textbooks which describe the unit circle. Doing so would be entirely pointless, as the entire purpose of the unit circle is that its radius is one unit, and it is not meant to correspond to any physical object.

The title-text refers to the old geometry problem of {{w|squaring the circle}}: "constructing" (a term which here means drawing using only an idealized compass and straightedge) a square of area equal to a given circle. This has been proven to be impossible.

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

:[In a single panel, White Hat, Ponytail, Miss Lenhart, Cueball, and Megan are standing in a field. Ponytail is holding a notebook and taking notes, Miss Lenhart is touching a circular object, Cueball is holding a wooden measuring instrument, and Megan is taking a photo with her phone.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
: Math breakthrough: dimensional analysts have discovered a real unit circle. Once they measure it, units can finally be added to all our geometry textbooks.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Math]]

3038: Uncanceled Units

2025-01-15T15:39:54Z

Danger Kitty: The US is on the U.S. Customary scale, no longer on the British Imperial system.

{{comic
| number = 3038
| date = January 15, 2025
| title = Uncanceled Units
| image = uncanceled_units_2x.png
| imagesize = 323x355px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Speed limit c arcminutes^2 per steradian
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE PLANCK CONSTANT, WHICH IS TECHNICALLY A FREQUENCY AND CAN THUS BE EXPRESSED IN HERTZ - Please continue to explain the joke and possible interpretations. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Another of [[Randall]]'s [[:Category:Pet Peeves|pet peeves]], this comic expresses disapproval of units that could be mathematically simplified.

In this comic, [[White Hat]] is presenting a refrigerator to [[Cueball]], claiming it only uses 3 kWh per day. This is a commonly used, but uncancelled unit: kiloWatts x hour / day contains two units of time, which can be cancelled (24h = 1d), yielding 1/8 kW or 125 W. White Hat is expressing the refrigerator's power consumption as a unit of energy divided by time, but his choice of energy unit, kilowatt hour, is itself a unit of power times time (as opposed to the standard unit for energy, the Joule). Whilst this way of expressing energy consumption may be jarring to a scientific purist, it may well be preferred by an ordinary consumer as electricity is generally priced in kWh, allowing an easy conversion into currency to understand how much the refrigerator will cost to run each day.

Cueball (possibly representing Randall) answers by asking whether the refrigerator would fit in his kitchen, since the ceiling is only 50 gallons per square foot high, which is also an uncancelled unit, as gallons can be transformed to cubic feet (1 US gal ≈ 0.1337 ft3), which can be divided by the square feet, yielding a ceiling height of around 203.7 cm, or around 6 feet 8 inches. (Using Customary gallons [1 UK gal ≈ 0.1605 ft3], the height is approximately 244.7 cm, roughly 8 feet.) Cueball's unit is much less common and was likely deliberately chosen to be harder to understand, which shows how Randall feels about people using other uncancelled units like "kWh per day".

''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'': [https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/ Droppings] also covers strange instances of unit cancellation, including a measure of volume per distance converted to area; similar to Cueball's measure of volume per area representing a distance (the height of his ceiling).

In the title text, a speed limit is given as c arcminutes^2 per steradian, where c is presumably the speed of light in vacuum, 2.998×10^8 m/s (meters per second) or 186282 mi/s (miles per second). A steradian (sr) is the SI unit for solid angle, subtending a section of a sphere, like a radian is a unit of angle subtending a section of a circle. A square arcminute is also a unit of solid angle, equivalent to a section of a sphere of 1/60 of a degree by 1/60 of a degree. There are ((1/60)*(pi/180))^2 = 8.462×10-8 sr in a square arcminute. Then multiplying by c gives a speed of 56.75 mph (probably 55 mph, based upon the {{w|National Maximum Speed Law|'traditional' US speed limit}}, before rounding errors in the reverse direction), or 91.33 km/h, showing that you can combine an outrageously high speed with two unnecessary units that cancel each other to form a normal road speed.

It is worth noting that although some of these examples are ridiculous, uncancelled units can be helpful to better understand the concept, the {{w|Hubble's law|Hubble Parameter}} can be expressed as 2.17132212x10-18 hertz, 67 km/sec/Mpc is directly related to how it is measured and gives a better understanding of what it means. Another example would be fuel efficiency in cars, as mi/gal and km/l technically simplify to ares, but by expressing it in volume and distance it allows easy estimations of range and travel cost, while mm2 or in2 would require significant unit conversions.

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

:[White Hat and Cueball are standing to either side of a refrigerator. The fridge has two top compartments and one bottom compartment. The top left compartment has a tall handle on its right, the top right compartment has a tall handle on its left, and the bottom compartment has a long handle on its top. The top left compartment has a paper attached to it with unreadable text, possibly an advertisement.]
:White Hat: This fridge uses only 3 kWh per day!
:Cueball: But will it fit in my kitchen? The ceiling there is only 50 gallons per square foot.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Pet peeve: Uncanceled units

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Pet Peeves]]

3036: Chess Zoo

2025-01-10T19:51:00Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 3036
| date = January 10, 2025
| title = Chess Zoo
| image = chess_zoo_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x1221px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The zoo takes special care to keep kings separated from opposite-color pieces as part of their conservation program to prevent mating in captivity.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a PAWN PROMOTED TO A BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A zoological garden, or {{w|zoo}} for short, is a large encampment where various animals are helped to live in small enclosures. Zoos generally serve dual purpose as both a public exhibition and a safe breeding ground for conservation efforts.

Randall has here created a zoo for giant chess pieces, as if they were animals.

There are many subtle "jokes" in the images that plays on how chess pieces moves. For example, the bishops don't need to be fully enclosed, and a narrow corridor with one white and one black square suffices to prevent them from leaving. The knight 'enclosure' is also structured in a way that almost allows it to escape across into various other pieces' enclosures (since it can jump), but prevent it from straying even further afield by carefully placing some strategic fence in exactly the right place (they are also handily restricted by the 'corridor' trick). Each side in a chess game starts with two bishops, one on each color square, and bishops can move only to squares of the same color as the one they started on. Opposing bishops on opposite color squares can never capture one another, and can therefore be kept safely in the same enclosure in the hypothetical zoo, so long as each counterpart (opposite side ''and'' opposite tile-type) are similarly kept in another such enclosure. The pawn enclosures will keep them inside even after they promote into any piece.

"Pawns promoting" refers to moving a pawn to the final rank (the opponent's back rank), which allows it to be exchanged for a queen, rook, knight, or bishop.

The phrase "mating in captivity" in the title text is typically used to refer to animals in zoos copulating, hopefully producing offspring. A reputable zoo will probably take care not to have too many unplanned cases of reproducing, for reasons of managability and ensuring a properly thought out genetic diversity (including arranging selected animals, or a supply of gametes, being strategically exchanged with other zoos). In this case, however, "mating" is used in the chess context, meaning delivering an attack from which the opponent's king cannot escape. To prevent this from occurring, kings are not kept in the same enclosure as any piece of an opposing color. In fact, only opposing bishops on opposite colors are shown together in this zoo.

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

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:3022: Making Tea

2024-12-10T20:10:04Z

Danger Kitty:

I wonder where [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Tea_Party making it in Boston Harbor, at ambient temperature, at scale] would fit on this scale. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.162|172.70.206.162]] 04:38, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
: A little to the left of the microwave thing. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.252|162.158.186.252]] 05:14, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
:: Oh, no, much further to the right. You stole our colony from us, set up some tinpot, pretended 'country' in its place, and you didn't even have the class to make a decent cup of tea first. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.93|12.68.205.93]] 06:24, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
:: And, even if [https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68085304 this guy] is right, ''way'' too much salt... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.130|172.70.91.130]] 07:03, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
::: Soyuz nyerushimyy respublik svobodnik... [[User:DollarStoreBa'al|DollarStoreBa'al]] ([[User talk:DollarStoreBa'al|talk]]) 14:13, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
:::: Well maybe if you didnt force us to buy discounted tea from you after fighting a war for us, we wouldn't be in this situation. [[User:Apollo11|Apollo11]] ([[User talk:Apollo11|talk]]) 15:43, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
::::: Yeah, a tiny island should not have that much control over a fractionable part of a continent[[User:Danger Kitty|Danger Kitty]] ([[User talk:Danger Kitty|talk]])
: I would like to as a british person to corroborate this, in the 80's my Dad visited the USA (he did go to florida) and still is complaining that the freshly boiled water wasn't poured directly onto the tea bag but was instead the tea bag and the hot water(now luke warm water) and bag was delivered separately!!! The delivery of freshly boiling water on to the bag is the major issue with microwaves, not the nucleation thing in my experience. Bear in mind I don't even actually like tea, still care enough to right this, but i'll be signing this anonymously to avoid shame being bought on my family and my family's familys. Murderous royals are a lot less popular the tea [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.227|108.162.245.227]]
:: I first visited the US in 1980. A friend who was with hate coffee and was horrified when he ordered tea that he got the water and the tea bag separately. When he suggested they add the water as soon as it was boiled, the wait staff thought he was joking. Many years later in Texas, a waiter asked me why I, a Brit, was drinking coffee, not tea. "You don't know how to make it," I replied. (In my house, the electric kettle and teapot sit next to each other on the kitchen worktop.)--[[Special:Contributions/172.70.160.135|172.70.160.135]] 09:22, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

When I make ramen, I put the measuring cup in the microwave. Fight me. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.87|162.158.167.87]] 05:35, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
:: On behalf of the British Empire: whateva. [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 18:28, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

"...to the point virtually every home has an electric tea kettle as a standard appliance". If I'm reading it correctly, this and the comic suggests we (though not I, as I'm not a tea-drinker) make tea ''in the electric kettle''. Electric tea-urns, yes, or maybe a setup like a samovar. But, generally, the kettle itself (and, so far as I'm aware, always with an electric kettle) is used to heat the water, which you then pour into the tea''pot'' into which the requisite number of tealeaves/teabags are also put to steep. (Or, for the lazy way, into the mug-with-teabag.) I wouldn't be able to use my electric kettle to (for example) make my instant mashed-potato into the actual mash, if I'd have regularly used it to mash tea. Or top up the boiling saucepan that I'd realised I'd not quite enough water in to cover the pasta/vegetables/whatever. Or to easily add nust a little more heat (with less new water) to the washing-up bowl than would be possible from the hot tap, back to as hot as possible without scalding me. – Whether intentional or not, I suspect Randall has the role of kettle and teapot mixed up, and so (without the intent to parody) has the editor who wrote the above. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.160.135|172.70.160.135]] 05:49, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
:: Agree, we make tea in a mug using water from a kettle. I'd be furious if an American made tea in my kettle, how will I then make up my instant Nescafe? [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 18:28, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the section on 'Boiling the water in a pot' refers to a teapot - I think it means boiling the water in a pot on the hob, and then making tea with it (in a pot/mug). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.27|172.69.195.27]] 07:53, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
:I agree, but I also think there's a language issue with the use of pot vs. pan that makes things more confusing. I think there are several types of cookware that Americans call pot and British call pan. So British would not say they boil water in a pot but rather in a saucepan (if there's no kettle available of course). [[User:Mtcv|Mtcv]] ([[User talk:Mtcv|talk]]) 09:03, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I (as Brit) am uncommon in using an electric filter coffee machine to make tea (two bags in what is supposed to be the coffee filter). Set up, press the button and come back to a not jug of fresh tea which is not stewed. If later, the hot plate has shut off and it is cold, you can zap it in a mug in the microwave. [[User:RIIW - Ponder it|RIIW - Ponder it]] ([[User talk:RIIW - Ponder it|talk]]) 08:11, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
: As another brit, what? I do not understand the mechanics of this, please elaborate. Additionally, my understanding is that the water would be *briefly acquainted* with the tea, thus would be a poor facsimile of "tea" and would rather be closer to something the americans would attempt. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.126|141.101.99.126]] 11:46, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
::I'm guessing the water would drip on to the teabags, then soak all the way through them and drip out into the jug, without allowing sufficient to accumulate that it would run straight out without passing fully through the bag. It's an intriguing idea. But most definitely wrong.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.239|172.70.85.239]] 17:15, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yMMTVVJI4c Technology Connections]! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.109.167|141.101.109.167]] 09:51, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

You Westerners have literally no idea how to make proper, good tea! SMH [[User:TPS|TPS]] ([[User talk:TPS|talk]]) 13:00, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

As a Brit who grew up in sight of the Yorkshire Tea factory – and worked there on occasion – and having travelled very widely around the world – including in the US – I feel I'm supposed to have an opinion. However, I have ''never'' encountered the microwaving of water as mentioned here, and I would not object to it as supposedly problematic for tea-quality reasons. I'd object for reasons of common sense. What mystifies me is the idea that kettles are tea-specific. They are for heating water, not making tea. Coffee uses hot water. Pasta, rice and potatoes use hot water. Peas, carrots, cabbage, sweetcorn...

Baking bread often involves a pan of steaming water in the oven.

"But I can boil water in a pan for cooking pasta or vegetables."

Yes, but you'll be waiting a l-o-o-o-ng time. I'll heat my water in the kettle, pour it into the now-hot pan, cook my pasta, and I'll be eating before your water is boiling.

A kettle is not a tea-making item any more than a frying pan is an omelette-making item; tea is simply one of the things you can make with water from a kettle. Hot water is a basic civilised human commodity, predating recorded history. That we should live in a mechanised world, and the Consumer Nation doesn't have water-boiling appliances as standard (saying instead "I don't have a kettle because I don't drink tea") is ludicrous.

Using a microwave rather than buying a kettle is a bit like not buying a hammer for driving in nails because you've got a big pair of pliers that will do. Sure, they're heavy lumps of metal than live in your toolbag, but they're not the right thing.

The Brits, incidentally, are not tea lovers. They are prolific consumers of awful tea that actual tea lovers wouldn't use for cleaning their drains. The most enthusiastic tea enthusiasts I've ever met were from Maryland.

It's all just social ceremony in the UK. Milk first, tea first, must use a saucer, must use a pot...tea is a British religion, not a British drink.[[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 14:23, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I wonder what the Brits would feel about repurposing a single-cup coffee maker. These days, I usually put a tea bag in a mug and place it in a Keurig machine and run it (without a K-cup, of course) to deliver the hot water. Probably the wrong temperature, but fast and easy and the result is good enough. [[User:Shamino|Shamino]] ([[User talk:Shamino|talk]]) 14:52, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Would any British person care to evaluate my tea making practices? Boil water in electric kettle. Pour water over teabag, allow to steep, remove teabag. Add sugar and ice cubes. [[User:RegularSizedGuy|RegularSizedGuy]] ([[User talk:RegularSizedGuy|talk]]) 15:54, 10 December 2024 (UTC)
:...well, seems a fairly standard "making one mug of tea for oneself" process. It lacks a milk-adding stage (thus no arguments about whether before or after the water). Removing the teabag at that point probably means it's not going to become a Builders' Brew, which is your choicd. Sugar is ok. And... Waitwhat... ''Ice Cubes?!?'' ...can I get back to you on that? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.163|172.70.162.163]] 17:50, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I can confirm (by inadvertent experiments conducted on flatmates) that they indeed do not like tea being make in the kettle. What really makes them angry though is making coffee in the teapot. It ruins the taste of the teapot forever apparently. There is also a faction that insists that a teapot should never be washed, and washing it invokes a lesser anger.[[User:Gopher|Gopher]] ([[User talk:Gopher|talk]]) 15:56, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

On rare occasions where I don't have a kettle available, I use a microwave oven to boil water for tea. But it doesn't look and taste quite the same, and often leaves an ugly foam at the surface when the tea bag is added. This phenomenon is investigated here: https://cooking.stackexchange.com/a/22264. So the British might be right... Disclaimer: I'm neither from the UK nor from the US. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.126|172.69.68.126]] 16:16, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

There is a [https://www.tumblr.com/elodieunderglass/669449994039853056/wizardlyghost-silverjirachi-pidoop tumblr thread] about the topic of teamaking in microwaves, kettles, etc. Funnily enough it showed up in my Instagram reels feed just a few hours before this comic was posted. I was thinking perhaps Randall saw it too and was inspired by it? Both of them have to deal with the different ways of making tea and how "absurd" or "unconventional" (etc.) they are. Even if Randall didn't have it in mind, it's certainly a funny little coincidence. [[User:Pie Guy|Pie Guy]] ([[User talk:Pie Guy|talk]]) 16:36, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I'm guessing my occasional summertime practice of filling a gallon jar with water and lots of tea bags, setting it on the back porch in the sun for a few hours until the water turns dark brown, then putting the whole thing in the refrigerator and later drinking it over ice would be toward the more angry end of the spectrum.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.204|172.70.126.204]] 16:39, 10 December 2024 (UTC)Pat
:I think the "in the sun for a few hours" part might just be too incomprehensible to most of us, here in Britain. If we ''have'' a few hours of sun (and we're not abroad and deliberately sunburning ourselves on the beach/beside the pool in our week at the Costa Lotta budget-all-inclusivs holiday) then we're either fuming at our workdesks complaining about the louts stripping down to their shirtsleeves and splashing in the town-centre fountains or we're on our lunch-break and we ''are'' the louts stripping down to our shirtsleeves and splashing in the town-centre fountains. In neither case would sun-stewed tea be a priority. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.163|172.70.162.163]] 17:50, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps it's worth to mention how dangerous it is to boil water in a microwave. https://tastecooking.com/dangerous-microwave-water/
[[User:Mestafais|Mestafais]] ([[User talk:Mestafais|talk]]) 15:22, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

There are several comics with unmarked scales. It would be interesting if the descriptions started using pixels to point where each mark is along the line. As a rough estimate, the four points mentioned here are at X-values: 90px, 115px, 345px, and 645px, indicating that the pot method is 10% as infuriating as the chalice method - or that making tea in a pot ten times would be equally as infuriating as making it once in a chalice (at least, assuming the kettle method causes zero furons. I know of {{w|hedons and dolors}}. I guess 'furons' are a unit of fury, right? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.46.236|172.70.46.236]] 16:11, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Interesting to see the interest in editing this. Had a quick check of the last ten comics, looking at the number of edits made in the first 14 hours (the exact time this page has been around, as of me starting the check) and in total, and extrapolated to edits/day (in the case of total edits, both just to the latest edit and right up to 'now'). Thought it'd be interesting to give you my results (assuming I tallied/etc correctly)...
*3022 - 14hr: '''61''' ('''105'''/day); Total: 61 ('''105/day...''')
*3021 - 14hr: 23 (39/day); Total: 39 (11/day -> 10/day)
*3020 - 14hr: 22 (38/day); Total: 36 (10/day -> 6/day)
*3019 - 14hr: 28 (48/day); Total: 54 (17/day -> 7/day)
*3018 - 14hr: 14 (24/day); Total: 48 (4/day -> 4/day)
*3017 - 14hr: 29 (50/day); Total: 33 (32/day -> 3/day)
*3016 - 14hr: 28 (48/day); Total: 46 (4/day -> 3/day)
*3015 - 14hr: 20 (32/day); Total: '''83''' (5/day -> 5/day)
*3014 - 14hr: 40 (69/day); Total: 66 (16/day -> 3/day)
*3013 - 14hr: 36 (61/day); Total: 68 (3/day -> 3/day)
...of course, the first 14 hours probably biases to British readers/editors, and it was too fiddly to add up ''|bytes changed per edit|'' as a more useful metric than mere number of pokes. But quite a bit of interest we already have here. More edits in fourteen hours than any other article less than fourteen (indeed, 17!) days old... ;) Seems to have really hit a mark, this subject! [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.201|172.69.195.201]] 19:21, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

:This one is super weird. I may be weirdness incarnate... but... [[User:Maybe Bill Cipher|An anonymous Gravity Falls expert]] ([[User talk:Maybe Bill Cipher|talk]]) 19:33, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

I would argue that the more pessimistic interpretation of the two low-end options makes sense, rather than the more generous versions offered in the current explanation. I think the first one does literally mean making tea in the kettle, and the second one does mean boiling water in a teapot. Making tea *using* a kettle isn't anything to get mad about, it's the default practice. That should put it at the zero point of the line, but it isn't, it's to the right. On the other hand, obviously making tea *in* the kettle would incite a modest amount of rage (on the scale of zero to microwaving a mug), and it makes sense that boiling water in a teapot would incite about 50% more, as shown.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.160|172.69.134.160]] 19:51, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:1070: Words for Small Sets

2024-11-23T01:58:15Z

Danger Kitty:

I disagree on "A Handful" and "Several". A Handful should be about 4 to 7 and several should be 6 to 8, averaging about 7, which sounds just like several. The other two are within the range that makes sense to me. Also, check out how he sneaks "a couple of friends" and "all three of them" into the image text very sneakily. [[User:Jeff]] - From the blog
:Dude, that's the point. You've been trolled. --[[User:Castriff|Jimmy C]] ([[User talk:Castriff|talk]]) 11:43, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
:Several means 12 because I have always understood it to mean 12. I seem to be in a population of 1 though. I wonder how many times I've confused other people or been confused without being able to put my finger on why because of this... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.158|108.162.250.158]] 00:42, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Several sounds like seven, so it should mean a group of 7. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.30|173.245.54.30]] 22:24, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Several is two or more.

A handful to me is just that. A dozen berries, one hand grenade, 2-3 sticks of TNT, a bird (2 in a bush else where gives 3) or a wild blonde (more than 1 way to be a handful I guess). [[User:DruidDriver|DruidDriver]] ([[User talk:DruidDriver|talk]]) 07:09, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

English isn't my natural language, but how common is the word "acrimonious"? Should it be explained? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.56|108.162.254.56]] 03:40, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
:Online dictionaries should help. I'm using some addons to my Firefox to help me. The simplest meaning for "acrimonious" should be "bitter", but this is still one of those words hard to describe. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:56, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm inclined to interpret the hover text as him saying that a couple does mean more than two. A couple of friends, and then all three of them. However, the entry does not agree with me. Thoughts? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.28|173.245.52.28]] 09:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
: My guess is that the entry interpreted "all three of them agree" as "your couple of friends agree with you". I think Randell would sooner troll than use inconsistent grammar so, I also think Randell was using couple to mean 3 friends. [[User:Who PhD|Who PhD]] ([[User talk:Who PhD|talk]]) 13:58, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

There is a similar ambiguity in German, where "ein paar", which literally means "a couple", is used to say "a few". In Italian the ambiguity is even stronger, as certain regions tend to use "un paio" only in the literal sense, while others mean it figuratively. A friend of mine came from Tuscany to Sardinia and one day told me: "I asked for a couple of cigarette packs, and the clerk said ok, how many? and I said, a couple, and he answered yes, how many precisely, and I had to say, uh, two? What an idiot". I had to explain to her that where I live it was not THAT straightforward that couple == 2 --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.31|108.162.229.31]] 08:01, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

This question has been settled before. A few = 1—4, several = 5—9, a pack = 10—19, a lot = 20—49, … --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.192|141.101.105.192]] 13:14, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

How much/many is/are a cupfull?[[User:Weatherlawyer| I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait]] ([[User talk:Weatherlawyer|talk]]) 19:30, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

[Yoseph] - all those words change based on context, for example: A handful of ants(that would probably reffer to something like 60 ants), but a handfull of crackers(would be like 12 crackers), and a handful of batteries(would be something like 6). and so goes for couple(a couple of cars[thats like 2], but a couple weeks ago[thats like 2-3]). {{unsigned ip|199.27.133.56}}

"Several" means 4 to 7. A couple means 1, 2, or 3. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.140|173.245.50.140]] 01:08, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The answer to the spacing one is, of course, "one."[[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.174|173.245.50.174]] 18:59, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I have to take the bait. "A few" literally means three, "A couple" literally means two. {{unsigned ip|173.245.54.20}}

a handful is 4-6 several is 7-11 dozen is 12 {{unsigned|Sci0927|14:55, 20 December 2021}}

"a couple" in the title may also refer to monogamous relationships. Maybe as a hint that you should think about the other person and not just yourself (a couple is not one). Or in the other way, that faithfulness is important (a couple is no more than two). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.240|141.101.107.240]] 15:59, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I just came here because I was going to use this as an expanded citation for the comic itself, which I was going to use as reference for a non-native speaker about the meaning of "a couple", however, I will not be doing so because the explanation here focuses WAY too much on some perceived trolling ulterior motive of the strip, which I think is just a red herring. Whoever wrote the explanation clearly disagreed with Randall, and assumed that therefor Randall must be itching for a fight with this strip. I, on the other hand, see it as a purely benign strip, usefully pointing out a difference in interpretation that not everyone may be aware of (today you are one of the lucky 10,000): not everyone understands and uses "a couple" to mean "exactly two". And the fact that people have different understandings of the term can lead to misunderstandings, because it is so obvious that "a couple" can ONLY mean [what your native understanding of it is], such that you even think anyone who uses it differently must be deliberately trying to provoke you. They're not. There are real differences in the perception of "a couple" among native speakers of English; Randall is among those (like me) who understand "a couple" to mean imprecisely "about two", which can mean as many as five(ish). We don't hold this understanding to provoke those who understand "a couple" to mean "exactly two". Pointing out that we understand "a couple" to mean "2-5" is not "trolling". It is legitimately how we understand (and use) the term. If you don't think that "a couple" can mean "3", it is not trolling to point out that others disagree with you; it is, in fact, educational and useful (today you are one of the lucky 10,000). So, except for the alt-text, where he does deliberately joke about it in the context of talking about how polemical it can be, this strip is NOT an attempt at trolling. If you feel triggered by it, that probably says more about you and where you fall on the interpretation of "a couple" spectrum.{{unsigned ip|173.245.52.187|15:28, 10 October 2020}}

A couple means 10 minutes. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.38.233|172.70.38.233]] 09:33, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

'A few' means anywhere from 3 to 73. [[User:Danger Kitty|Danger Kitty]] ([[User talk:Danger Kitty|talk]])

Talk:1070: Words for Small Sets

2024-11-22T14:28:25Z

Danger Kitty:

I disagree on "A Handful" and "Several". A Handful should be about 4 to 7 and several should be 6 to 8, averaging about 7, which sounds just like several. The other two are within the range that makes sense to me. Also, check out how he sneaks "a couple of friends" and "all three of them" into the image text very sneakily. [[User:Jeff]] - From the blog
:Dude, that's the point. You've been trolled. --[[User:Castriff|Jimmy C]] ([[User talk:Castriff|talk]]) 11:43, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
:Several means 12 because I have always understood it to mean 12. I seem to be in a population of 1 though. I wonder how many times I've confused other people or been confused without being able to put my finger on why because of this... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.158|108.162.250.158]] 00:42, 7 April 2016 (UTC)

Several sounds like seven, so it should mean a group of 7. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.30|173.245.54.30]] 22:24, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Several is two or more.

A handful to me is just that. A dozen berries, one hand grenade, 2-3 sticks of TNT, a bird (2 in a bush else where gives 3) or a wild blonde (more than 1 way to be a handful I guess). [[User:DruidDriver|DruidDriver]] ([[User talk:DruidDriver|talk]]) 07:09, 17 January 2013 (UTC)

English isn't my natural language, but how common is the word "acrimonious"? Should it be explained? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.56|108.162.254.56]] 03:40, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
:Online dictionaries should help. I'm using some addons to my Firefox to help me. The simplest meaning for "acrimonious" should be "bitter", but this is still one of those words hard to describe. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:56, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I'm inclined to interpret the hover text as him saying that a couple does mean more than two. A couple of friends, and then all three of them. However, the entry does not agree with me. Thoughts? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.28|173.245.52.28]] 09:10, 10 March 2014 (UTC)
: My guess is that the entry interpreted "all three of them agree" as "your couple of friends agree with you". I think Randell would sooner troll than use inconsistent grammar so, I also think Randell was using couple to mean 3 friends. [[User:Who PhD|Who PhD]] ([[User talk:Who PhD|talk]]) 13:58, 9 April 2014 (UTC)

There is a similar ambiguity in German, where "ein paar", which literally means "a couple", is used to say "a few". In Italian the ambiguity is even stronger, as certain regions tend to use "un paio" only in the literal sense, while others mean it figuratively. A friend of mine came from Tuscany to Sardinia and one day told me: "I asked for a couple of cigarette packs, and the clerk said ok, how many? and I said, a couple, and he answered yes, how many precisely, and I had to say, uh, two? What an idiot". I had to explain to her that where I live it was not THAT straightforward that couple == 2 --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.31|108.162.229.31]] 08:01, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

This question has been settled before. A few = 1—4, several = 5—9, a pack = 10—19, a lot = 20—49, … --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.192|141.101.105.192]] 13:14, 25 December 2014 (UTC)

How much/many is/are a cupfull?[[User:Weatherlawyer| I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait]] ([[User talk:Weatherlawyer|talk]]) 19:30, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

[Yoseph] - all those words change based on context, for example: A handful of ants(that would probably reffer to something like 60 ants), but a handfull of crackers(would be like 12 crackers), and a handful of batteries(would be something like 6). and so goes for couple(a couple of cars[thats like 2], but a couple weeks ago[thats like 2-3]). {{unsigned ip|199.27.133.56}}

"Several" means 4 to 7. A couple means 1, 2, or 3. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.140|173.245.50.140]] 01:08, 5 March 2015 (UTC)

The answer to the spacing one is, of course, "one."[[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.174|173.245.50.174]] 18:59, 7 September 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but I have to take the bait. "A few" literally means three, "A couple" literally means two. {{unsigned ip|173.245.54.20}}

a handful is 4-6 several is 7-11 dozen is 12 {{unsigned|Sci0927|14:55, 20 December 2021}}

"a couple" in the title may also refer to monogamous relationships. Maybe as a hint that you should think about the other person and not just yourself (a couple is not one). Or in the other way, that faithfulness is important (a couple is no more than two). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.240|141.101.107.240]] 15:59, 24 April 2018 (UTC)

I just came here because I was going to use this as an expanded citation for the comic itself, which I was going to use as reference for a non-native speaker about the meaning of "a couple", however, I will not be doing so because the explanation here focuses WAY too much on some perceived trolling ulterior motive of the strip, which I think is just a red herring. Whoever wrote the explanation clearly disagreed with Randall, and assumed that therefor Randall must be itching for a fight with this strip. I, on the other hand, see it as a purely benign strip, usefully pointing out a difference in interpretation that not everyone may be aware of (today you are one of the lucky 10,000): not everyone understands and uses "a couple" to mean "exactly two". And the fact that people have different understandings of the term can lead to misunderstandings, because it is so obvious that "a couple" can ONLY mean [what your native understanding of it is], such that you even think anyone who uses it differently must be deliberately trying to provoke you. They're not. There are real differences in the perception of "a couple" among native speakers of English; Randall is among those (like me) who understand "a couple" to mean imprecisely "about two", which can mean as many as five(ish). We don't hold this understanding to provoke those who understand "a couple" to mean "exactly two". Pointing out that we understand "a couple" to mean "2-5" is not "trolling". It is legitimately how we understand (and use) the term. If you don't think that "a couple" can mean "3", it is not trolling to point out that others disagree with you; it is, in fact, educational and useful (today you are one of the lucky 10,000). So, except for the alt-text, where he does deliberately joke about it in the context of talking about how polemical it can be, this strip is NOT an attempt at trolling. If you feel triggered by it, that probably says more about you and where you fall on the interpretation of "a couple" spectrum.{{unsigned ip|173.245.52.187|15:28, 10 October 2020}}

A couple means 10 minutes. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.38.233|172.70.38.233]] 09:33, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

'A few' means anywhere from 3 to 74. [[User:Danger Kitty|Danger Kitty]] ([[User talk:Danger Kitty|talk]])

Talk:2999: Bad Map Projection: The United Stralia

2024-10-16T19:04:33Z

Danger Kitty:

He forgot the Idaho abbreviation. [[User:Danger Kitty|Danger Kitty]] ([[User talk:Danger Kitty|talk]])

Talk:2999: Bad Map Projection: The United Stralia

2024-10-16T18:58:54Z

Danger Kitty:

He forgot the Idaho abbreviation. [[User:Danger Kitty|Danger Kitty]] ([[User talk:Danger Kitty|talk]])

2984: Asteroid News

2024-09-12T03:35:40Z

Danger Kitty: The comic said that the astronomers deemed "something cool" as that.

{{comic
| number = 2984
| date = September 11, 2024
| title = Asteroid News
| image = asteroid_news_2x.png
| imagesize = 376x288px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Their calculations show it will 'pass within the distance of the moon' but that it 'will not hit the moon, so what's the point?'
}}

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

This comic is about an unnamed asteroid predicted to approach earth in 2063, possibly related to the recently discovered asteroid [https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/06/Close_approach_of_asteroid_2024_MK 2024 MK] that made a close approach to Earth on June 29 2024. The comic mentions that the asteroid only has a 'one-in-6000 chance of "doing something cool",' meaning that there is only a small chance that the asteroid will have a visible impact on {{w|Earth}}'s surroundings. What the astronomers deems as "something cool" would presumably be the asteroid hitting Earth or the moon. The title text also mentions that the asteroid will also probably not hit the {{w|Moon}}, which is also another way for the asteroid to "do something cool." There is also a discrepancy with the image shown and actual predictions: the asteroid is expected to come within 0.75 lunar distances, inside the orbit of the Moon, while the comic shows the asteroid at least two {{w|lunar distances}} away from Earth.

Unlike almost all of [[Randall]]'s other comics, this one involves {{w|boredom}}.

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

:[Close-up of Blondie as a newscaster speaking, alongside an image to the left of an asteroid passing by Earth. The path of the asteroid is shown as a dashed line near the top-left, with the moon orbiting the earth below it.]
:Blondie: Astronomers initially said there was a one-in-6,000 chance that the newly-discovered asteroid might "do something cool" in 2063, but further observations determined it will be "Just a boring dot like all the others."

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]
[[Category:News anchor]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Space]]

2950: Situation

2024-06-24T18:58:51Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 2950
| date = June 24, 2024
| title = Situation
| image = situation_2x.png
| imagesize = 578x306px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = We're right under the flight path for the scheduled orbital launch, but don't worry--it's too cold out for the rockets to operate safely, so I'm sure they'll postpone.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a Shark, the iceberg of the sea - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
There's the Hindenburg, Titanic, that one bridge, Chernobyl, and the title text also alludes to the Challenger :(it wasn't postponed)

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

[An airship flying, labelled] Hydrogen-filled scout airship for iceberg spotting
[The airship is chained to a ship, going along a river, labelled] Unsinkable ocean liner

[In the background on the coast a nuclear power plant, labelled] Soviet-era nuclear reactor undergoing a turbine test
[The boat and airship are steering towards a bridge, labelled] Bridge prone to aeroelastic flutter in high winds

[Caption]
In retrospect, we should have noticed how nervous the situation was making the engineers.

{{comic discussion}}

2950: Situation

2024-06-24T18:58:07Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 2950
| date = June 24, 2024
| title = Situation
| image = situation_2x.png
| imagesize = 578x306px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = We're right under the flight path for the scheduled orbital launch, but don't worry--it's too cold out for the rockets to operate safely, so I'm sure they'll postpone.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a Shark, the iceberg of the sea - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
There's the Hindenburg, Titanic, that one bridge, Chernobyl, and the title text also alludes to the Challenger :(it wasn't postponed)

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

[An airship flying, labelled] Hydrogen-filled scout airship for iceberg spotting
[The airship is chained to a ship, going along a river, labelled] Unsinkable ocean liner

[In the background on the coast a nuclear power plant, labelled] Soviet-era nuclear reactor undergoing a turbine test
[The boat and airship are steering towards a bridge, labelled] Bridge prone to aeroelastic flutter in high winds

[Subtext]
In retrospect, we should have noticed how nervous the situation was making the engineers.

{{comic discussion}}

358: Loud Party

2024-06-05T22:18:58Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 358
| date = December 17, 2007
| title = Loud Party
| image = loud party.png
| titletext = I'm glad this is so much fun because I'm not sure how we're getting down.
}}
==Explanation==
The comic depicts an average everyday scene - a party, with drinks, dancing, and a lot of commotion going on (hence the title). Amid the chaos, though, there are two people, [[Megan]] and [[Cueball]], staring wistfully at each other. They both think of the same scene: the two of them sitting on branches of a large and bare tree, doing something on laptops. The implication is that these two people are different - they don't derive their enjoyment of life from parties or other typical teenage activities, but rather simpler, more quiet activities. This is evidenced by the fact that everything other than Megan and Cueball (and the [[Wikipedia:Solo Cup Company|Red Solo cup]]s) are grayed out.

The title text presents a simpler joke - it is rather difficult to get down from a tree, especially when carrying a fragile item like a laptop. It may also refer to the design of the tree that has been drawn, as it lacks (visible) branches below Cueball's perch.

==Transcript==
:[In a loud party, Megan and Cueball are looking at each other, both thinking of the same scene: they are sitting on opposite branches of a large leafless tree, each with a laptop. There's cloud in the distance and a grass field around the tree.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Romance]]

2941: Cell Organelles

2024-06-04T00:43:39Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 2941
| date = June 3, 2024
| title = Cell Organelles
| image = cell_organelles_2x.png
| imagesize = 563x451px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It's believed that Golgi was originally an independent organism who was eventually absorbed into our cells, where he began work on his Apparatus.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a GOLGI ENDOPLASMIC RETICULUM. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic depicts a {{w|Cell (biology)|biological cell}} diagram with a mix of real and fictional {{w|organelle}}s, blending accurate {{w|Cell biology|cell biology}} terms with misplaced or absurd labels. While it includes actual cell components like the nucleus, mitochondria, and Golgi apparatus, it also includes unrelated concepts from various fields such as geology, engineering, software, and pop culture. Terms like "evil endoplasmic reticulum" and "sticky endoplasmic reticulum" make fun of scientific terms. The comic plays on the complexity and diversity of cell structures by mixing in unrelated and humorous terms, highlighting the often confusing and intricate nature of scientific diagrams with clever wordplay and cross-disciplinary jokes.

The title text adds a humorous fictional backstory to the {{w|Golgi apparatus}}, an essential cell organelle involved in processing and packaging proteins. It playfully suggests that {{w|Camillo Golgi}}, the scientist who discovered the Golgi apparatus, was originally an independent organism. This organism was supposedly absorbed into our cells, where it then started working on what is now known as the Golgi apparatus. The joke is a satirical take on {{w|Symbiogenesis|endosymbiotic theory}}, which posits that certain organelles within {{w|Eukaryote|eukaryotic}} cells, like {{w|mitochondria}} and {{w|chloroplasts}}, originated from independent symbiotic {{w|Prokaryote|prokaryotic organisms}} that were absorbed by a host cell. Golgi appears to be depicted in the comic as a tiny alien being.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Label
! Meaning
! Real?
! Cell organelle?
! Explanation
|-
| {{w|Carbonation}}
| Carbon dioxide dissolved in a liquid.
| Yes
| No
| The process that causes soda and similar things to bubble.
|-
| {{w|Cellophane}}
| A thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated cellulose.
| Yes
| No
| A type of packaging material.
|-
| {{w|Chloroplast}}s if you're lucky
| Organelles in plant cells responsible for photosynthesis.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelles, only found in plant cells. Not found in animal cells such as is depicted, given that the membrane does not appear to have a {{w|cell wall}}. The phrase "if you're lucky" could suggest that they might be less dangerous than other misplaced plant organelles, or that the animal cell is lucky to be able to photosynthesize.
|-
| Drain plug
| A stopper for a drain.
| Yes
| Conceivably
| Plumbing term. Could refer to a {{w|porosome}}.
|-
| Evil endoplasmic reticulum
| Not a real term.
| No
| No
| A humorous twist on the different types of actual {{w|endoplasmic reticulum}}, implying a malevolent version.
|-
| Golgi
| {{w|Camillo Golgi}} (1843–1926) was an Italian biologist and pathologist who discovered and for whom the Golgi apparatus is named, known also for his works on the central nervous system.
| Yes
| No
| The real Golgi was not and is not a tiny alien being who merged with our cells as the depiction and title text implies.
|-
| {{w|Golgi apparatus}}
| A complex of vesicles and folded membranes involved in secretion and intracellular transport.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelle, which takes polypeptide chains from the rough endoplasmic reticulum (carried via transport vesicle) and processes them into their ultimate protein structure before sending them (via vesiscle) to their destination (such as an organelle or outside of the cell).
|-
| Human skin
| The outer covering of the human body.
| Yes
| No
| Skin cells aren't normally inside cells.{{cn}}
|-
| {{w|Hypoallergenic}} filling
| Materials that do not cause allergic reactions.
| Yes
| No
| Consumer product term.
|-
| {{w|Lithosphere}}
| The rigid outer part of the earth, consisting of the crust and upper mantle.
| Yes
| No
| Term from geology, It is part of the Earth's crust.
|-
| {{w|Mantle}} 
| The layer of the earth between the crust and the core.
| Yes
| No
| Misplaced geological term. Many other meanings.
|-
| {{w|Midichlorians}}
| Fictional microorganisms in the {{w|Star Wars}} universe, which confer Force sensitivity.
| Yes
| Fictional
| Unclear whether {{w|George Lucas}} intended for "midi-chlorians" to be {{w|Symbiogenesis|endosymbiotic organelles}} or internal {{w|Symbiosis|symbionts}}.
|-
| {{w|Mitochondria}}
| Organelles that generate energy for the cell.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelles, known as the "powerhouse of the cell."
|-
| Natural flavor
| Flavoring derived from natural sources.
| Yes
| Conceivably
| A common ingredient on labels. Is used as an euphenism for many things.
|-
| {{w|Norton AntiVirus}}
| A software product designed to protect computers from malware.
| Yes
| No
| Computer viruses and biological viruses are completely different, and systems designed to counter one generally don't work for the other.
|-
| {{w|Nucleolus}}
| A small dense spherical structure in the nucleus of a cell during interphase.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelle, involved in ribosome production.
|-
| Nucleoloulous
| Not a real term.
| No
| No
| A humorous continuation of the terms "nucleus" and "nucleolus."
|-
| {{w|Cell nucleus|Nucleus}}
| The central and most important part of an object, forming the basis for its activity and growth.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelle which houses genetic material.
|-
| {{w|Nucleon}}s
| Protons and neutrons in the nucleus of an atom.
| Yes
| No
| The depicted circles are far too big to be actual nucleons.
|-
| {{w|O-ring}}
| A mechanical gasket in the shape of a torus; used to seal connections.
| Yes
| No
| Engineering term.
|-
| {{w|Pith}}
| The central tissue in plants, used for nutrient transport.
| Yes
| No
| Botanical term.
|-
| {{w|Pleiades}}
| A cluster of stars in the constellation Taurus.
| Yes
| No
| A cluster of stars is far too big to fit in a cell. {{Citation needed}}
|-
| {{w|Rough endoplasmic reticulum}}
| Endoplasmic reticulum with ribosomes attached, involved in protein synthesis.
| Yes
| Yes
| Actual cell organelle. "Rough" refers to the presence of ribosomes covering its membrane, which translate messenger RNA into polypeptide chains. Normally the endoplasmic reticulum would wrap around the cell nucleus.
|-
| {{w|Seed}}s
| Plant embryos used for reproduction.
| Yes
| No
| Seeds are used for other things in animals, but they are not generally found in cells.
|-
| {{w|Slime}}
| A moist, soft, and slippery substance.
| Yes
| Conceivably
| Could refer to the texture and appearance of {{w|cytoplasm}}, but not specific to cells.
|-
| {{w|Smooth endoplasmic reticulum}}
| A network of tubular membranes within the cytoplasm of the cell, involved in the transport of materials.
| Yes
| Yes
| A standard term for the smooth [ie, not ribosome-covered] portion of the endoplasmic reticulum. Normally the endoplasmic reticulum would wrap around the cell nucleus.
|-
| Sticky endoplasmic reticulum
| Not a real term.
| No
| No
| Another humorous twist on the actual types of endoplasmic reticulum.
|-
| {{w|Ventricle}}
| A chamber of the heart that pumps blood out.
| Yes
| No
| Ventricles are actually part of the body, and they are composed of many cells. Possibly a pun on vesicle (or vacuole), a small membrane-enclosed vessel, such as the transport vesicles that carry polypeptides from the rough endoplasmic reticulum to the Golgi apparatus for processing.
|-
| {{w|Vitreous humour}}
| The clear gel that fills the space between the lens and the retina in the eyeball.
| Yes
| No
| The vitreous humor is in eyes, not cells.
|-
| Weak spot
| A vulnerable point.
| Yes
| Conceivably
| Cell membrane surfaces do indeed vary in strength, often due to the presence of organelles such as {{w|ion channel pore}}s or {{w|porosome}} ducts, both of which can be leveraged by viruses to enter cells.
|}

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

Cell Organelles

[A cell is shown with the following structures and areas labeled, counter-clockwise from upper left then down the middle (with the last five labels being inside the cell):]

* Smooth endoplasmic reticulum
* Lithosphere
* O-Ring
* Pith
* Nucleus
* Nucleolus
* Nucleoloulous
* Nucleons
* Drain plug
* Evil endoplasmic reticulum
* Hypoallergenic filling
* Weak spot
* Mitochondria
* Midichlorians
* Chloroplasts if you're lucky
* Human skin
* Carbonation
* Golgi
* Golgi apparatus
* Norton AntiVirus
* Sticky endoplasmic reticulum
* Pleiades
* Natural flavor
* Cellophane
* Rough endoplasmic reticulum
* Ventricle
* Mantle
* Slime
* Vitreous humour
* Seeds

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Biology]]

308: Interesting Life

2024-06-01T20:58:28Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 308
| date = August 27, 2007
| title = Interesting Life
| image = interesting_life.png
| titletext = Quick, fashion a climbing harness out of a cat-6 cable and follow me down.
}}

==Explanation==
'{{w|May you live in interesting times}}' (or, in this comic, 'may you have an interesting life') is supposedly a Chinese saying, except that a few people (usually the worst-case-scenario kind) believe it to actually be a curse, even though it is usually meant in a good way when said. The quote also provides the title of the {{w|Terry Pratchett}} novel {{w|Interesting Times}}, which takes place in a fictional counterpart of China.

[[Cueball]] is shown here as an office worker, a job that, to most people, is the opposite of interesting. This is contrasted with [[Megan]], who is rappelling down the outside of his office building, for no apparent reason other than because she can, and inviting him on an adventure. This contrast is amplified by the usage of "interesting" colors for the outside in comparison to the "dull" gray for the inside of the building. Things are bound to get at least one kind of "interesting" very fast.

The title text refers to a {{w|Category 6 cable|Cat6}} cable, which is more commonly known as Ethernet cable. It would be easily found in an office building, since it is used to connect computers to a network. Its usefulness as a {{w|climbing harness}} is indeterminate.{{Citation needed}}

==Transcript==
:[On the left hand side of the panel is a cutaway of several floors of an office, in gray. On the right side, a blue sky with clouds, and green hills below. Hanging from a cable is Megan, clearly having rappelled down the side of the building, next to a Cueball at his desk, who is looking at Megan.]
:Megan: You know how some people consider "May you have an interesting life" to be a curse?
:Cueball: Yeah...
:Megan: Fuck those people. Wanna have an adventure?

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]

2937: Room Code

2024-05-24T20:02:19Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 2937
| date = May 24, 2024
| title = Room Code
| image = room_code_2x.png
| imagesize = 650x290px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Sorry to make you memorize this random string of digits. If it helps, it can also double as a mnemonic for remembering your young relatives' birthdays, if they happened to have been born on February 5th, 2018.
}}

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

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[Megan is standing next to Cueball, who is holding a phone and each one has a suitcase on the out-facing side of them]
Cueball: Okay, I need to remember that the the room code is 020518.
Megan:
{{comic discussion}}

2937: Room Code

2024-05-24T20:01:55Z

Danger Kitty:

2936: Exponential Growth

2024-05-23T13:27:35Z

Danger Kitty: Just fixing the citation needed.

{{comic
| number = 2936
| date = May 22, 2024
| title = Exponential Growth
| image = exponential_growth_2x.png
| imagesize = 545x264px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Karpov's construction of a series of increasingly large rice cookers led to a protracted deadlock, but exponential growth won in the end.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a 2^64TH ITERATION OF A BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. No mention of the title text yet.}}

{{w|Exponential growth}} is the principle that if you keep multiplying a number by a value larger than 1, you will pretty quickly get very large numbers. Even if you start with 1 and simply double it each time, you'll have a 10-digit number after about 30 iterations.

This principle is often illustrated using the story "Game of Rice". A king of India wished to reward a man for creating a new game of Chess, and told him that he'd grant any wish. The man simply asked for a {{w|Wheat and chessboard problem|grain of wheat to be placed on a chess board and for it to double with each square on the board each day.}} The king granted his strange request and ordered one wheat grain to be placed on the board. The second day two more pieces were placed on the square next to that and the day after four pieces on the next. However, by day 20 there was over 500,000 grains on the board. The king had to dig into his own stock pile to pay his dues. On day 24 the king owed 8 million grains. By day 32 the king owed over 2 billion pieces of grain, at this point he had to give up and offered the man another prize.

Instead of this being a (possibly apocryphal) story, [[Black Hat]] used it literally during a game of chess to annoy his opponent into quitting. Black Hat begins describing the metaphor, only to reveal it wasn't a metaphor at all. Black Hat had been playing actual Chess games, and tried to force his opponent to resign by burying the chess pieces in rice, as implied by the multiple large sacks bluntly labelled 'rice' on his side of the chessboard. This is not the first comic to feature large quantities of rice labelled in this manner - in [[1598: Salvage]], a gargantuan tank of rice has simply the word 'rice' written on the side in equally gargantuan capital letters.

{{w|Garry Kasparov}} is a world renowned Russian chess master. He had the highest FIDE chess rating in the world-one of 2851 points-until {{w|Magnus Carlsen}} surpassed that in 2013 by 31 points. The Kasparov gambit is an opening move in chess.

In 1984-85 Garry Kasparov played {{w|Anatoly Karpov}} in a 5-month-long 48-game championship tournament which was abandoned. In the 1984-85 match Kasparov was losing 4-0 with 6 wins being required to win. Kasparov proceeded to draw 35 times before the match was abandoned.

In a 1985 rematch, Kasparov defeated Karpov for the world championship title, which he retained in their next rematch in 1986.

There are several articles in the International Chess Federation (FIDE)'s [https://www.fide.com/FIDE/handbook/LawsOfChess.pdf Laws of Chess] that might prevent Black Hat from winning in this way:
* 7.3 "If a player displaces one or more pieces, he shall re-establish the correct position (...). The arbiter may penalise the player who displaced the pieces."
* 12.1 "The players shall take no action that will bring the game of chess into disrepute."
* 12.6 "It is forbidden to distract or annoy the opponent in any manner whatsoever. (...)"

The amount of rice collected on each square of the chess board is listed below. It all sums up to around 400 billion tons (each grain weighing approximately 0.02 grams), or 500 times the annual world production. The last day would be 200 billion tons. But the implicit implication of this doubling is that the amount of rice you put on tomorrow is exactly equal to the amount of rice already on the board, plus one extra grain. So there were around 200 billion tons already, before the last square needs ~200 billion more.

* First row:
** a1: 1 grain
** a2: 2 grains
** a3: 4 ...
** a4: 8
** a5: 16
** a6: 32
** a7: 64
** a8: 128
* Second row
** b1: 256
** b2: 512
** b3: 1,024
** b4: 2,048
** b5: 4,096
** b6: 8,192
** b7: 16,384
** b8: 32,768
:
* First of each row
:
** c1: 65,536 grains (~ 1 kg)
** d1: 16,777,216 (~ 400 kg)
** e1: 4,294,967,296 (~ 100 tons)
** f1: 1,099,511,627,776 (~ 25,000 tons)
** g1: 281,474,976,710,656 (~ 6 million tons)
:
* ...
:
* Eighth row
** h1: 72,057,594,037,927,936 (~ 1.5 billion tons, more than the 2022 world harvest)
** h2: 144,115,188,075,855,872
** h3: 288,230,376,151,711,744
** h4: 576,460,752,303,423,488
** h5: 1,152,921,504,606,846,976
** h6: 2,305,843,009,213,693,952
** h7: 4,611,686,018,427,387,904
** h8: 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (~ 200 billion tons)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheat_and_chessboard_problem#/media/File:Wheat_Chessboard_with_line.svg Example on chessboard]

Needless to say, this process would be impossible to do. {{Citation needed}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Black Hat is talking to Cueball standing next to him.]
:Black Hat: Exponential growth is very powerful.

:[Closeup on Black Hat. Next to him is an image of the lower left part of a chessboard. The four leftmost squares in the bottom row have grains of rice on them -- one, two, four, and eight grains respectively.]
:Black Hat: A chessboard has 64 squares.
:Black Hat: Say you put one grain of rice on the first square, then two grains on the second, then four, then eight, doubling each time.

:[Black Hat has emptied a bag of rice on a chessboard. There are several bags next to him and a pile of rice already on the table. A frustrated Hairy is walking away, fists clenched.]
:[Caption above panel, representing Black Hat continuing to speak:]
:If you keep this up, your opponent will resign in frustration.
:It's called Kasparov's Grain Gambit. Nearly impossible to counter.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Chess]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]

2936: Exponential Growth

2024-05-22T21:38:23Z

Danger Kitty:

2936: Exponential Growth

2024-05-22T21:38:08Z

Danger Kitty:

2936: Exponential Growth

2024-05-22T21:37:34Z

Danger Kitty:

Talk:2936: Exponential Growth

2024-05-22T21:36:38Z

Danger Kitty:

If that's done by each of your moves being to add one (more) grain to the board, the game would last quite a while. Even with reduced time-limits on the game-clock. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.154|172.70.91.154]] 21:27, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Hmmm. Interesting. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.58.203|172.69.58.203]] 21:31, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

First transcript! Hope it's good.[[User:Danger Kitty|Danger Kitty]] ([[User talk:Danger Kitty|talk]])

2936: Exponential Growth

2024-05-22T21:35:49Z

Danger Kitty:

2936: Exponential Growth

2024-05-22T21:35:21Z

Danger Kitty:

1537: Types

2024-05-21T16:56:50Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 1537
| date = June 12, 2015
| title = Types
| image = types.png
| titletext = colors.rgb("blue") yields "#0000FF". colors.rgb("yellowish blue") yields NaN. colors.sort() yields "rainbow"
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a series of programming jokes about a ridiculous new programming language, perhaps inspired by {{w|Mathematica}} and {{w|Wolfram Language}} — the latter was used by [[Randall]] many times before. Maybe it's also inspired by [https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat Gary Bernhardt's CodeMash 2012 lightning talk] on JavaScript's unpredictable typing. In the talk, the highly technical audience was unable to correctly guess the results of adding various JavaScript types and roared with laughter when they were revealed. The programming language shown in this comic has types even more unpredictable than JavaScript.

Most regular programming languages distinguish types, e.g. integers, strings, lists… all of which have different behaviours. But for instance, the operation "+" is usually conventionally defined over more than one of these types. Applied to two integers, it returns their sum. Applied to two strings (denoted by being enclosed in quotes) it concatenates them:

<pre>> 2 + 3
5

> "123" + "abc"
"123abc"</pre>

While these behaviours are standard, conventional, and intuitive, there is a huge amount of variation among programming languages when you apply an operation like "+" to different types. One logical approach is to always return an error in all cases of type mixing, but it is often practical to allow some case mixing, since it can hugely simplify expressions. Variation and lack of a clearly more intuitive behaviour leads some languages to have weird results when you mix types.

Weird results abound in the new XKCD programming language:
# <code>2 + "2"</code> uses the <code>+</code> operator on a number and a string. In some programming languages, this might result in the number <code>4</code> in math addition, or <code>"22"</code> in string concatenation; however, the new language converts the string to an integer, adds them to produce <code>4</code> and converts back to a string. Alternatively, it may instead be adding 2 to the ASCII value of the character <code>"2"</code> (50), resulting in the character <code>"4"</code> (52). This is (somewhat) consistent with the behavior for item 4.
# <code>"2" + []</code> adds a string to an array or list. This first inexplicably converts the string to a number again, and then it literally adds the number to the list by prepending it. And then the result (the entire array) is converted to a string again. (Possibly, this is meant to be read as 'adding brackets to the string "2" produces the string "[2]"?')
# <code>(2/0)</code> divides <code>2</code> by <code>0</code> and quite reasonably results in <code>NaN</code>, meaning "Not a Number", though in most languages, as prescribed by the IEEE 754 standard for floating point numbers, dividing a nonzero number by zero would instead return an infinity value.
# <code>(2/0)+2</code> adds <code>2</code> to <code>NaN</code>. <code>2</code> Is "added" to the string <code>"NaN"</code> as again, the number is converted to a string for apparently no reason, which produces <code>"NaP"</code>. If the language's convention is to add to the ASCII value of a character or string, then in this case it added 2 to the character <code>"N"</code> (78), resulting in <code>"P"</code> (80). How the string "NaP" is converted into a bare NaP with undefined meaning is not clear. It is possible the "NaP" means "Not a Positive" as opposed to "Not a Negative". It could also mean "Not a Prayer", as you're taking a "NaN" condition and trying to do more with it.
# <code>""+""</code>: In many languages, two consecutive double-quote characters denote an empty string, so this expression would concatenate two empty strings, resulting in an empty string. However, it appears that this language treats only the outermost quotes of the expression as the string boundary, so all of the characters between them become part of the literal string, producing '<code>"+"</code>' (In many programming languages, you can use both <code>"</code> or <code>'</code> to delimit strings and both behave similarly if not identical). Alternately, these two consecutive double quotes may be treated similarly to the way that consecutive single quotes are treated in a SQL string, with the first quote escaping the 2nd. This would result in a string that contains the value <code>"+"</code>. It is also possible to read this expression as <code>'"'+'"'</code>, which would usually be <code>'""'</code>.
# <code>[1,2,3]+2</code> seems to test whether it's sound to append <code>2</code> to the list <code>[1,2,3]</code>, and concludes that it doesn't fit the pattern, returning the boolean value <code>false</code>. It could conceivably also be the result of an attempt to add <code>2</code> to the ''set'' <code>[1,2,3]</code>, which already contains that element (although <code>{1,2,3}</code> would be a more common notation for sets).
# <code>[1,2,3]+4</code> returns <code>true</code> for much the same reason.
# <code>2/(2-(3/2+1/2))</code> is a floating point joke. Floating point numbers are notoriously imprecise. With precise mathematics, <code>(3/2+1/2)</code> would be exactly 2, hence the entire thing would evaluate to <code>2/0</code> or <code>NaN</code> in Randall's new language. However, the result of <code>(3/2+1/2)</code> is "just slightly off," which makes the result "just slightly off" of <code>NaN</code>, which would be ridiculous in a real language. The ironic thing is that fractions with 2 in the denominator are ''not'' the kind of numbers that typically suffer from floating point imprecision. Additionally, if there had indeed been a rounding error, the actual calculation would become something like <code>2/0.000000000000013</code>, which should not return a <code>NaN</code> since it is not division by zero. It is most likely not a coincidence that there are 13 zeros before the "13" at the end of the "decimal".
# <code>RANGE(" ")</code> normally wouldn't make any sense. However, the new language appears to interpret it as ASCII, and in the ASCII table, character #32 is space, #33 is <code>!</code>, and #34 is <code>"</code>. So, instead of interpreting <code>" "</code> as a string, it seems to be interpreted as <code>34, 32, 34</code> (in ASCII), and then <code>range</code> appears to transform this into <code>34, 33, 32, 33, 34</code> (the "ranges" between the numbers), which, interpreted as ASCII, becomes <code>('"','!',' ','!','"')</code>.
# <code>+2</code> adds 2 to the ''line number'', 10, and returns the result, 12.
# <code>2+2</code> would normally be <code>4</code>. However, the interpreter takes this instruction to mean that the user wishes to increase the actual value of the number <code>2</code> (aka the "literal value") by <code>2</code> for the remainder of the program, making it <code>4</code> and then reports that the work is "Done". The result can be seen in the subsequent lines where all <code>2</code>s are replaced by <code>4</code>s. This could be a reference to languages like Fortran where [http://everything2.com/title/Changing+the+value+of+5+in+FORTRAN literals could be assigned new values]. This would normally be <code>2+=2</code>.
#<code>RANGE(1,5)</code> would normally return <code>(1,2,3,4,5)</code>; however, because the value of <code>2</code> has been changed to <code>4</code>, it returns <code>(1,4,3,4,5)</code>. This also affects the line number by changing the "2" in 12 to "4" resulting in the line number 14.
#<code>FLOOR(10.5)</code> should return <code>10</code> (the "floor" of a decimal number is that number rounded down); however, it instead returns {{w|ASCII art}} of the number on a "floor." The floor is also five lines down and ten characters long (if you count the number as part of the floor), making it look like the "10.5" was taken as two separate arguments to the "floor" function. Normally, multiple arguments for a function are separated by commas, not periods. This could be a reference to different decimal notation conventions in different cultures.

The title text contains three further examples relating to color. <code>color.rgb("blue")</code> returns the hexadecimal code for pure blue (as would be used in HTML, for example), which is how a real programming language might work. The lookup for "yellowish blue" returns "NaN" (Not a Number) again, which makes sense at one level because there is no such color as "yellowish blue" (yellow and blue are opposites on the RGB {{w|color triangle}}, making yellowish-blue an {{w|impossible color}}, which can only be perceived with great difficulty through contrived figures). However a more typical result would have been a failure indicating that the color database does not include the name, in the same way that a typo such as "bluw" would. (Note that HTML does [http://stackoverflow.com/q/8318911/256431 explicitly attempt] to handle all "color names", though unrecognized ones like "yellowish blue" just interprets them as numbers (with zeros replacing invalid hexadecimal digits). For the record, "yellowish blue" is a dark blue with an imperceptible amount of red — <code style='background-color: #0e00b0; color: white'>#0E00B0</code>.) Similarly sorting the colors would normally produce some defined ordering, such as alphabetical, but in this language it generates the string "rainbow". It seems that Randall's new language understands color theory in an unusually deep way.

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the black part of the comic:]
:My new language is great, but it
:has a few quirks regarding type:

:[The rest of the comic is written in a black rectangle. All text to the left of ">" is written in gray. Text to the right of the ">" on the lines with numbers are in white, and then gray text on the other lines. There seems to be a missing ">" after line no. 3.]
:  [1]> 2+"2"
:    => "4"
:  [2]> "2"+[]
:    => "[2]"
:  [3] (2/0)
:    = > NaN
:  [4]> (2/0)+2
:    = > NaP
:  [5]> "" + ""
:    = > ' "+" '
:  [6]> [1,2,3]+2
:    = > False
:  [7]> [1,2,3]+4
:    = > True
:  [8]> 2/(2-(3/2+1/2))
:    = > NaN.000000000000013
:  [9]> Range("   ")
:    = > (' " ',"! "," ","!",' " ')
:[10]> + 2
:    = > 12
:[11]> 2+2
:    = > Done
:[14]> Range(1,5)
:    = > (1,4,3,4,5)
:[13]> Floor(10.5)
:    = > |
:    = > |
:    = > |
:    = > |_ _ _10.5_ _ _

==Trivia==
*There is an inconsistency in the comic after [3] where the ">" is missing.

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

2935: Ocean Loop

2024-05-20T22:54:24Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 2935
| date = May 20, 2024
| title = Ocean Loop
| image = ocean_loop_2x.png
| imagesize = 317x286px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I can't believe they wouldn't even let me hold a vote among the passengers about whether to try the loop.
}}

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

Upon hearing the term "ocean loop", many people think of horizontal {{w|ocean gyres}} or {{w|ocean currents}}. This comic illustrated a vertical, rather than horizontal, ocean loop.

The comic shows a large construction, rising out of the sea to dwarf a nearby cruise ship. It involves a submerged water-jet sending water up out of the surface and round a rollercoaster-loop-like water-flume trough. The scale is such that it seems that the ship, once caught in the necessarily powerful stream of water, is intended to be in turn propelled around the inverting loop before "safely" exiting at the other side.

Apart from various other issues regarding {{what if|43|large "loop-de-loops"}}, the stream of water required to maintain this setup would be {{w|Entrainment (hydrodynamics)|acting upon the nearby water}} and so the nearby ship is probably already close enough to be drawn into the loop (with the best option left being to deliberately steer into it, rather than risk being swept uncontrollably into the structure), assuming that it isn't already caught in the tug of the water-jet's inward flow.

Even assuming a "successful" loop (the stresses, and rotation, inflicted by the loop are likely beyond the design limits of such a vessel), the emergence back into the ''relatively'' calm and stationary waters beyond the exiting outflow would be a severe challenge to navigation. On the positive side, due to the nature of buoyancy, if the loop structure itself is capable of withstanding the force of the water being forced round it then it ''should'' be equally capable of withstanding the passage of the ship, unlike an impromptu rail-based loop which might stand up on its own but then shake itself apart when the first carriage is sent around it.

Not only would there be problems for the engineers, ship and navigators, the "ride" wouldn't be pleasant for the passengers of the ship in any way. Many of the passengers would suffer extreme injuries from the changes of velocity and rotation (unlike {{w|rollercoasters}}, or even airplanes during simple take-off and landing, passengers aren't normally strapped down). It is possible that the initial extreme undercurrent would likely capsize the ship. Depending upon where in the ship you were, the centripetal forces and the ships rotation may not match for all passengers, forcing anyone not properly secured out towards the bow or stern. As well as the passengers, this also is relevant to all unsecured items (e.g. knives and forks would go flying off tables), as well as the dangers of breakable glass, liquids and many other dangerous objects which could create hazards even (or particularly) against those who have strapped themselves down to prevent their own movement through the ship.

The bottom text, "I don't know why the cruise line fired me", implies that Randall either suggested or implemented this idea, much to the dismay of his company.

The title text suggests that the not only are those in charge of the ship skeptical about sailing into this loop, but that they are worried that opening the decision-making process to the passengers might favor the risk over (well-founded) reason.

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

[A cruise ship approaches an enormous loop-de-loop flume. A large jet of water is being propelled into the loop-de-loop]

[Caption below the panel:]

I don't know why the cruise line fired me

==Trivia==
* '''This trivia section was created by a BOT'''
* The [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/ocean_loop.png standard size] image was uploaded with a resolution/size larger than the supposed 2x version.
* This may have been an error.
* At the time of posting, the image was ''massive'', 4760 x 4295 pixels.

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:2930: Google Solar Cycle

2024-05-09T02:24:06Z

Danger Kitty:

When I opened the page I found a bunch of vague misspelled content (maybe spammers or bots? I don't know) so I updated the explanation. Not very knowledgeable about most things, though, so it probably still is not good enough. [[User:DNA Diva|DNA diva]] ([[User talk:DNA Diva|talk]]) 01:10, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

This comic got me to search about [[User:Danger Kitty|Danger Kitty]] ([[User talk:Danger Kitty|talk]]) solar flares too.

==Spike of March 8, 2012==
As far as [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2012-03-01%202012-03-31&geo=US&q=%2Fm%2F0f81b&hl=en-US the spike about 12 years ago], there was [https://www.space.com/14842-biggest-solar-storm-earth-effects.html this]. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.175.149|162.158.175.149]] 00:54, 9 May 2024 (UTC)
:Speaking of spikes, [[what if? (blog)|what if]] the internet and Google Trends had existed in [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrington_Event 1859]? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.166.135|172.71.166.135]] 00:59, 9 May 2024 (UTC)

2926: Doppler Effect

2024-04-29T22:28:44Z

Danger Kitty: grammar error

{{comic
| number = 2926
| date = April 29, 2024
| title = Doppler Effect
| image = doppler_effect_2x.png
| imagesize = 671x317px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The Doppler effect is a mysterious wavelength-shifting phenomenon which seems to primarily affect sirens, which is why the 🚨 emoji is red.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by an ALARMED BOT THAT GOES NYOOOOM - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[[Miss Lenhart]] is teaching a class about the concept of {{w|redshift}} and using the {{w|Doppler effect}} as a demonstration. The comparison begins as relevant, but then quickly becomes extraneous when she brings up the "BUTTON THAT MAKES IT GO ''PYEEW! PYEEW!''". In fact, it seems she cares more about her special interest in various emergency vehicle sirens than about astronomy, the field in which she teaches, similar to [[1519: Venus]].

In the second and third panels, Miss Lenhart talks about the strange noise sirens (and cars) make when the pass you. The usual explanation of Doppler effect is that the source of the sound waves is moving. Consider a sound being generated at a frequency of 1000 cycles per second ({{w|Hertz|Hz}}); each wave will propagate at a fixed speed in the air, the speed of sound. The car generates peak A, which begins moving away at the speed of sound, and 1/1000th of a second later, generates peak B, which also begins moving away at the speed of sound. In that 1/1000th of a second between peaks being generated, the car has traveled slightly forward, so peak B is produced slightly farther along the car's direction of travel than the previous peak. For an observer in front of the car, because peak B was generated a bit closer to the observer, they would measure (hear) a shorter wavelength (higher pitch) than if the peaks were generated from a stationary car. Similarly, for an observer behind the car, because peak B was generated a bit further away, they would hear a lower pitch. However, Miss Lenhart doesn't make this usual explanation and instead starts talking about how cool emergency sirens are.

Redshift is the same concept applied to wavelength of light and stellar objects. Red has a longer wavelength than blue, and stars gets red when they move away from us and blue when they move towards us. We usually talk about redshift and not blueshift because while stars in our galaxy can move in any direction relative to us, most other galaxies are moving away from us, and in fact are moving quicker the farther away they are due to universe expansion. Note that unlike the usual explanation of redshift for sirens, a major component of the redshift of light from distant galaxies is due to the expansion of space. This effect is not an important component of the Doppler shift for sirens. Redshift has been mentioned multiple times before, such as in [[2764: Cosmological Nostalgia Content]] and [[2853: Redshift]].

''Still unexplained: What is the "button" that sometimes makes the noise go "pew pew"? Gun triggers?''

The title text explains that the Doppler effect particularly affects sirens. This isn't actually true,{{cn}} but it may seem like it because sirens tend to employ a recognisable tone (or a given sequence of them), which most people who aren't {{w|Amusia|totally tone deaf}} would have experienced a shift of from a passing vehicle's siren (whereas something like engine noise could change according to differences of speed and the gearbox), as per the initital analogy in Miss Lenhart's lecture. Then it claims that the emoji for sirens is red because they're associated with redshift. Actually, the emoji is a picture of the rotating light on top of emergency vehicles; these tend to be used in conjunction with sirens, and they're red because this color typically signifies danger or warning.

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

:[Miss Lenhart is pointing with a stick to a whiteboard with various scientific drawings and words, including but not only a graph.]
:Miss Lenhart: The more distant a galaxy is, the redder its light.
:Miss Lenhart: Why? Well, that's an interesting question.

:[Zoom in on Miss Lenhart.]
:Miss Lenhart: Ever notice how, when a siren is approaching, it sounds like '''''Bweeeeeeeeee...'''''

:[Zoom in on Miss Lenhart with her arms raised.]
:Miss Lenhart: ...but then it zooms past you and goes '''''Nyeeeeooooowww?'''''
:Miss Lenhart: And sometimes they hit a button that makes it go '''''Pyeew! Pyeew!''''' really loud?

:[Miss Lenhart with her finger raised is standing in front of the whiteboard and holding the stick down.]
:Miss Lenhart: And in Europe they go '''''Ooooeeeeooooeeee...'''''
:Off-panel voice: So '''''why''''' are galaxies red?
:Miss Lenhart: Oh, no idea.
:Miss Lenhart: Anyway, another siren I like is...

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Emoji]]

Talk:1305: Undocumented Feature

2024-04-24T21:27:32Z

Danger Kitty: grammar error

:;Please never edit existing posts at the talk page! Just add your content! And NEVER edit foreign posts! Use the "Sign Button" on top of editor or type this at the END of your post <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>. This will add the IP or User and a timestamp to the END of your post.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

The last panel reminds me of Mastodon.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.221|108.162.246.221]] 02:46, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

This sound pretty cool... Anyone know if it's real or which tool it's in? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.222|173.245.55.222]] 05:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* its real, there are 8 other users, but must stay a secret. {{unsigned ip|108.162.231.233}}

* There is no secret chat room, stop looking for it. It doesn't exist. Look for your own island on the interweb, don't come spoil ours. [[User:scr_admin|scr_admin]]

* A little bit of googling around gave me a strong candidate. Apparently the relevant tool can even run on Windows 10 (found as part of said googling), although it requires mucking about with bat files and icons to achieve its full original functionality. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.160|172.68.54.160]] 05:34, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

* I found my own little secret chat room, but it's not to do with Windows, instead it's in MacOS 7. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.77.98|141.101.77.98]] 23:49, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Okay, let's be honest: how many of us, upon seeing today's comic, immediately went here to see if it was real or not? --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.4|108.162.245.4]] 07:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* I honestly did just that. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.137|173.245.53.137]] 08:06, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* I also just did that... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.206|108.162.231.206]] 08:07, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* I didn't start up my VM to test it, but I came here to see if was real >.< [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.56|108.162.216.56]] 09:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* I also did that. But I take that, if it is real and someone uncovers it, it may destroy that community... [[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.123|173.245.53.123]] 10:28, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* Same here. If it is real, I sincerely hope Randall has a) wiresharked it to find out where this chat room resides so he can prod the admin if it ever goes down b) has a backup plan to migrate himself and his friends to some other private chat room. It won't have the same mystery surrounding it, but at least it's something. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.222|108.162.231.222]] 10:51, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

:;Please never edit existing posts at the talk page! Just add your content! And NEVER edit foreign posts! Use the "Sign Button" on top of editor or type this at the END of your post <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>. This will add the IP or User and a timestamp to the END of your post.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It's not about Youtube, but Facebook, which just launched AUTOPLAYING video ads. Look at the title text, it's about Facebook's real name policy. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.232|108.162.231.232]] 08:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* I wouldn't limit the scope of this commentary just to Facebook; YouTube's been doing autoplaying video ads for years. YouTube's also been asking for real names recently. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.200|108.162.212.200]] 14:26, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* The video ads thing is definitely related to Facebook, but the title text is probably a reference to Youtube recently asking continuously to switch to the real name of google plus account and not the nickname many used on YouTube. Edited the explanation accordingly, since there was no reference to the title text. Spesknight [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.216|108.162.231.216]] 09:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I just searched after reading - and found this site! -- {{unsigned ip|141.101.99.247}}

* The real secret place is here! {{unsigned ip|108.162.229.75}}

* So THIS is the secret chat [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.7|108.162.229.7]] 09:50, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* One day this place will be forgotten and so will we. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.197|108.162.231.197]] 09:52, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

anyone else recognizes the wonderful tcp-ip explanation movie of Ericsson [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hymzoUpM0K0 Dawn of the net] in frames 6 till 10? [User:Tesshavon|Tesshavon]] ([[User talk:Tesshavon|talk]])

* Tesshavon you're in my mind ! Also, the 6th frame is comes from one of the most common Friends posters (see e.g. here : [http://www.infinitydish.com/tvblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Friends-friends-69087_1024_768.jpg Friends] ) [[User:dandraka|dandraka]]

It's true. Small online communities offer a more folksy experience than the online giants. Some of the best places to hang out are BBS's that made it onto the Internet and have been there for 25+ years. {{unsigned ip|216.150.130.111}}

Well there's always IRC... {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.30}}

But did it have regular ads, though?[[User:Danger Kitty|Danger Kitty]] ([[User talk:Danger Kitty|talk]])

:;Please never edit existing posts at the talk page! Just add your content! And NEVER edit foreign posts! Use the "Sign Button" on top of editor or type this at the END of your post <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>. This will add the IP or User and a timestamp to the END of your post.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I've rewritten all the explanation.
As far as I'm concerned, I'd remove the incomplete box.
I just keep it because it's likely that someone else will feel something is missing.
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.180|173.245.53.180]] 15:27, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

If you're interested in a tightknit community out on the fringes of the Net, go join a MUD. Some are combat oriented, some are roleplay and chat oriented, all are text-based, and many have largely the same exact userbase as they had twenty years ago. - [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.228|108.162.212.228]] 15:48, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* If you want a really small and odd community check out the Plato network, you have to emulate a terminal from the late 70's early 80's to use it. --[[User:DECtape|DECtape]] ([[User talk:DECtape|talk]]) 00:27, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmm i think randall also wants to share his believs in the subcontext of the comic, the reason why we live on erth as a random error, the sysadmin who probably sees it all(=god), the question what will happen after all that is gone (his opinion, that our lives are compelty senseless)..etc. {{unsigned ip|108.162.254.161}}

* Anyone else think of comic 37 when reading the last panel (due to the ambiguity of whether he is talking about fucking "video ads" or "fucking video" ads)? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.227|173.245.50.227]] 18:31, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, of COURSE I came here to see if it really exists! I don't know if there's actually a chatroom as described, but Usenet has become much smaller, has no ads, and doesn't require you to know the secret application to get in. IIf a text experience with no ads appeals, dump FB, come back to Usenet! Tell 'em Sea Wasp sent you! :) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.186|108.162.219.186]] 19:15, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

*Shhh! You're forgetting the first rule of Usenet! [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.6|173.245.54.6]] 17:57, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

:;Please never edit existing posts at the talk page! Just add your content! And NEVER edit foreign posts! Use the "Sign Button" on top of editor or type this at the END of your post <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>. This will add the IP or User and a timestamp to the END of your post.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It's obviously about life and religion. The sysadmin who never writes anything must be there to keep everything running, because else the chat would stop to exist. Like most religions contribute to a god who is never seen or heard. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.232|108.162.231.232]] 08:03, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm wondering if he got this idea from Starship Titanic. They had a very similar thing happen. [http://www.metafilter.com/98848/The-Post-That-Cannot-Possibly-Go-Wrong#3435156 See this epic MeFi comment from the self-described "main web hacker" behind Starship Titanic's web site.] [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.119|199.27.128.119]] 17:29, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I've made several edits to clean up the explanation. Not sure whether I should remove the incomplete tag or not. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.227|173.245.52.227]] 17:57, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
:Please don't do that. A comic at this size isn't complete within one or two days. Removing the incomplete tag is a minor issue, explaining is the major one. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:46, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't really see why the trivia should be there. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.45|108.162.216.45]] 20:29, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
:This content was moved from the explain section to a trivia section by me. It still needs some rework but it belongs to "old Windows utilities" like Randall is talking about here at the first panel.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:46, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Reminds me of MUDs. I still check in on New Moon [http://eclipse.cs.pdx.edu/] a few times a year. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.236.25|108.162.236.25]] 16:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
:I see what you mean. For me it's the Discworld MUD. But it could similarly (i.e. not exactly like the comic suggests) apply to some long-term Usenet groups that I (in)frequent. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.229|141.101.99.229]] 16:22, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

It may not be the tool from the comic, but people here might be interested in: http://kurlander.net/DJ/Projects/ComicChat/resources.html {{unsigned|Jvfrmtn}}

If this chatroom was real I'd love to see it. I know ts not though. Of course what if there's a little fridge horror in this comic? Like a chatroom 98 sort of thing? Maybe the sysadmin or the people Cueball and the others are talking to are really ghosts or souls that were sucked into an old server forever doomed to spend their days talking to themselves until another unsuspecting user is sucked in.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.36|108.162.215.36]] 02:54, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Ido: Can someone explain why the URL www.xkcd.com/test reference to this strip? looks like an undocumented feature to me :) {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.220}}

:It doesn't anymore… [[User:Varal7|Varal7]] ([[User talk:Varal7|talk]]) 19:03, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
::It now displays to [[1367: Installing]]. [[User:Z|Z]] ([[User talk:Z|talk]]) 01:11, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I was doing some searching on the internet, and found, in addition to the one/few on this page, some people who said/implied that they have used this chat before, although, like anything on the internet, the claims may not be true. (Links: http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/436369-does-this-actually-exist [see comments 3, 12, and 14], http://pastebin.com/95nGh8Hk [Says it exists, but doesn't elaborate]) [[User:Z|Z]] ([[User talk:Z|talk]]) 22:02, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I used to be part of something very similar to to what the comic describes (but not exactly the same). When AOL first started, it was a completely 'walled garden' with no access to the internet. Old folks will remember how popular brands used to advertise on TV that you should go to their 'AOL Keyword' instead of a web site URL. Check Wikipedia for more about this. Anyway, AOL had its own set of message boards, for many popular topics, which were not connected to the internet and could only be accessed by other AOL members. I was just a kid. I went exploring through a bunch of message boards about niche topics until I found one with a community that I came to like. We had all kinds of off-topic conversations, and, the moderators having long since gone, it came to resemble its original topical purpose very little. The ages were not kind to AOL, and our group grew smaller and smaller as the AOL service gained a connection to the real internet (including the WWW and Usenet) and not as many new people bothered to look at AOL-only message boards any more. Eventually, the Keyword that accessed our special board stopped working and it was dropped from the public directory that lists all the areas of AOL. But we found a workaround: AOL had its own quasi-URL system that was mostly only used internally in the software and not usually exposed directly through the UI. But, those of us who had directly bookmarked the message board could still access it that way, and we found a way to share the aol:// URL amongst ourselves. Just like in the comic, we couldn't figure out why the message board still worked at all, for many years after it was no longer publicly visible anywhere, and wondered if some sysadmins with a sense of humour at AOL were watching us. It was fun in a way, a secret place all to ourselves. But it was also kind of sad, when sometimes months would go where noone posted. The UI would sometimes get migrated to a newer version with no notice, and then rolled back again just as abruptly. Old messages would suddenly disappear, become resurrected and then disappear again. Eventually, the thing that finally killed it was that one by one, we each stopped paying for AOL as we found better ISPs and couldn’t justify the expense. It would have been easy enough to move to another web site or chat program, and at first, some of us tried to recreate it elsewhere, but it was never really the same, and we could never get the same group completely back together again. But I guess that's how life is anyway: people drift apart. Despite that, many of us still keep in touch and have become very close friends, some of us even in real life. It's good to have friends. xxj{{unsigned|Xxj}}
:TL;DR! Keep your comments short. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:57, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
::If you really didn't read that, Dgbrt, you missed out (what are you, from Twitter? everything has to be 160 characters or the ADD kicks in?). It was worth it, for an old internet hand/AOLer. That is too often how life is, xxj; thanks for posting it. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by nostalgia for some old AOL and GameFaqs message boards, now... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.77|108.162.219.77]] 03:17, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
:::This is a typical reaction to misuse my reaction. If you look at my contributions here you would know that I'm really NOT a TWITTER man. I don't like Twitter and AOL was always a big mess by it's time. But including some paragraphs, writing shorter sentences, and I wouldn't have posted my "TL;DR!" reply. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:30, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

The comic says it's an "old" Windows utility, but the UI in the picture can be from no older than Windows 95. Native Win95 software still runs on modern PCs without resorting to a VM, doesn't it? Did Randall forget how a window looked in Windows 3.1? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.77|108.162.216.77]] 06:49, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

: An old Windows 95 ''program'' may be able to run on modern systems, but an old ''utility'' may be very tightly tied to that particular system. --[[User:Dfeuer|Dfeuer]] ([[User talk:Dfeuer|talk]]) 08:37, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I think the reason for the cartoon is to explain chat room vs Facebook/twitter, and rather then say "IRC", which could be misunderstood (as being very large ?), he made up the hidden utility chat room.... this utilities chatroom would explain how there could be a small chatroom that is not filled with mindless *MERE USERS* ... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.205|108.162.249.205]] 06:17, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

"whereas Ponytail is still using an old computer (as evidenced by the CRT monitor)." No, it doesn't. A modern computer can still perfectly use old CRTs. I did it myself a while back, while my LCD was being replaced. All it takes is a VGA connection, and I'm not sure whether modern computers are coming without any VGA connection at all, be it in the mobo or the GPU (at least high end GPUs are dropping VGA support). Anyway, that's not an evidence. It '''hints''' that Ponytail may be using an old computer. I shall fix it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.125|108.162.219.125]] 03:39, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

:Ponytail is using a modern computer; the panel is set years ago before "the internet aged". Also why do the sevens have lines through them? It's increasingly common these days, but is that a facility or a habit of Randall's?[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.130|141.101.98.130]] 10:54, 25 March 2018 (UTC)





Many comments above shared their own stories for currently less frequent technologies, but it can happen with modern app with a sophisticated UI. In my teenage years, not getting on well with people around, I have pinned my social needs on a student-oriented platform called ''I ought to be a learning-master'' where contemporaries behave innocent but moving. I owe my aesthetics thereafter to a few people I acquainted even after their disappearance when the platform shut down in 2017. —[[User:物灵|物灵]] ([[User talk:物灵|talk]]) 07:13, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

i remember that a couple months ago, while wandering through explainxkcd via random page, i found the article on xkcloud. i, happily, joined the room. we had a happy time together, it wasn't exactly a big community, but we had a lot in common. we soonly became friends.
 
then, one of the main supporters of the domain died. a bit later, 2 days ago, to be precise (almost 3 now), euphoria.io was shut down. we had lost &xkcd. some of us made it to a mirror someone made on instant.leet.nu, but not all of us found it. i lost contact with half of them.
 
i wonder where they are. [[User:An user who has no account yet|An user who has no account yet]] ([[User talk:An user who has no account yet|talk]]) 19:57, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

: That's where you were! [[Special:Contributions/172.64.238.56|172.64.238.56]] 21:23, 25 January 2024 (UTC) (56independent)

Talk:1305: Undocumented Feature

2024-04-24T21:26:50Z

Danger Kitty: What's the comic about the jacket?

:;Please never edit existing posts at the talk page! Just add your content! And NEVER edit foreign posts! Use the "Sign Button" on top of editor or type this at the END of your post <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>. This will add the IP or User and a timestamp to the END of your post.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

The last panel reminds me of Mastodon.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.221|108.162.246.221]] 02:46, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

This sound pretty cool... Anyone know if it's real or which tool it's in? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.222|173.245.55.222]] 05:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* its real, there are 8 other users, but must stay a secret. {{unsigned ip|108.162.231.233}}

* There is no secret chat room, stop looking for it. It doesn't exist. Look for your own island on the interweb, don't come spoil ours. [[User:scr_admin|scr_admin]]

* A little bit of googling around gave me a strong candidate. Apparently the relevant tool can even run on Windows 10 (found as part of said googling), although it requires mucking about with bat files and icons to achieve its full original functionality. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.54.160|172.68.54.160]] 05:34, 27 September 2018 (UTC)

* I found my own little secret chat room, but it's not to do with Windows, instead it's in MacOS 7. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.77.98|141.101.77.98]] 23:49, 12 October 2018 (UTC)

Okay, let's be honest: how many of us, upon seeing today's comic, immediately went here to see if it was real or not? --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.4|108.162.245.4]] 07:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* I honestly did just that. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.137|173.245.53.137]] 08:06, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* I also just did that... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.206|108.162.231.206]] 08:07, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* I didn't start up my VM to test it, but I came here to see if was real >.< [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.56|108.162.216.56]] 09:47, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* I also did that. But I take that, if it is real and someone uncovers it, it may destroy that community... [[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.123|173.245.53.123]] 10:28, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* Same here. If it is real, I sincerely hope Randall has a) wiresharked it to find out where this chat room resides so he can prod the admin if it ever goes down b) has a backup plan to migrate himself and his friends to some other private chat room. It won't have the same mystery surrounding it, but at least it's something. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.222|108.162.231.222]] 10:51, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

:;Please never edit existing posts at the talk page! Just add your content! And NEVER edit foreign posts! Use the "Sign Button" on top of editor or type this at the END of your post <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>. This will add the IP or User and a timestamp to the END of your post.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It's not about Youtube, but Facebook, which just launched AUTOPLAYING video ads. Look at the title text, it's about Facebook's real name policy. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.232|108.162.231.232]] 08:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* I wouldn't limit the scope of this commentary just to Facebook; YouTube's been doing autoplaying video ads for years. YouTube's also been asking for real names recently. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.200|108.162.212.200]] 14:26, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* The video ads thing is definitely related to Facebook, but the title text is probably a reference to Youtube recently asking continuously to switch to the real name of google plus account and not the nickname many used on YouTube. Edited the explanation accordingly, since there was no reference to the title text. Spesknight [[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.216|108.162.231.216]] 09:08, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I just searched after reading - and found this site! -- {{unsigned ip|141.101.99.247}}

* The real secret place is here! {{unsigned ip|108.162.229.75}}

* So THIS is the secret chat [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.7|108.162.229.7]] 09:50, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* One day this place will be forgotten and so will we. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.197|108.162.231.197]] 09:52, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

anyone else recognizes the wonderful tcp-ip explanation movie of Ericsson [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hymzoUpM0K0 Dawn of the net] in frames 6 till 10? [User:Tesshavon|Tesshavon]] ([[User talk:Tesshavon|talk]])

* Tesshavon you're in my mind ! Also, the 6th frame is comes from one of the most common Friends posters (see e.g. here : [http://www.infinitydish.com/tvblog/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Friends-friends-69087_1024_768.jpg Friends] ) [[User:dandraka|dandraka]]

It's true. Small online communities offer a more folksy experience than the online giants. Some of the best places to hang out are BBS's that made it onto the Internet and have been there for 25+ years. {{unsigned ip|216.150.130.111}}

Well there's always IRC... {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.30}}

But did have regular ads, though?[[User:Danger Kitty|Danger Kitty]] ([[User talk:Danger Kitty|talk]])

:;Please never edit existing posts at the talk page! Just add your content! And NEVER edit foreign posts! Use the "Sign Button" on top of editor or type this at the END of your post <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>. This will add the IP or User and a timestamp to the END of your post.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I've rewritten all the explanation.
As far as I'm concerned, I'd remove the incomplete box.
I just keep it because it's likely that someone else will feel something is missing.
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.53.180|173.245.53.180]] 15:27, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

If you're interested in a tightknit community out on the fringes of the Net, go join a MUD. Some are combat oriented, some are roleplay and chat oriented, all are text-based, and many have largely the same exact userbase as they had twenty years ago. - [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.228|108.162.212.228]] 15:48, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

* If you want a really small and odd community check out the Plato network, you have to emulate a terminal from the late 70's early 80's to use it. --[[User:DECtape|DECtape]] ([[User talk:DECtape|talk]]) 00:27, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

Hmm i think randall also wants to share his believs in the subcontext of the comic, the reason why we live on erth as a random error, the sysadmin who probably sees it all(=god), the question what will happen after all that is gone (his opinion, that our lives are compelty senseless)..etc. {{unsigned ip|108.162.254.161}}

* Anyone else think of comic 37 when reading the last panel (due to the ambiguity of whether he is talking about fucking "video ads" or "fucking video" ads)? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.50.227|173.245.50.227]] 18:31, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, of COURSE I came here to see if it really exists! I don't know if there's actually a chatroom as described, but Usenet has become much smaller, has no ads, and doesn't require you to know the secret application to get in. IIf a text experience with no ads appeals, dump FB, come back to Usenet! Tell 'em Sea Wasp sent you! :) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.186|108.162.219.186]] 19:15, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

*Shhh! You're forgetting the first rule of Usenet! [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.6|173.245.54.6]] 17:57, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

:;Please never edit existing posts at the talk page! Just add your content! And NEVER edit foreign posts! Use the "Sign Button" on top of editor or type this at the END of your post <nowiki>~~~~</nowiki>. This will add the IP or User and a timestamp to the END of your post.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:53, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

It's obviously about life and religion. The sysadmin who never writes anything must be there to keep everything running, because else the chat would stop to exist. Like most religions contribute to a god who is never seen or heard. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.231.232|108.162.231.232]] 08:03, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm wondering if he got this idea from Starship Titanic. They had a very similar thing happen. [http://www.metafilter.com/98848/The-Post-That-Cannot-Possibly-Go-Wrong#3435156 See this epic MeFi comment from the self-described "main web hacker" behind Starship Titanic's web site.] [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.119|199.27.128.119]] 17:29, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I've made several edits to clean up the explanation. Not sure whether I should remove the incomplete tag or not. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.227|173.245.52.227]] 17:57, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
:Please don't do that. A comic at this size isn't complete within one or two days. Removing the incomplete tag is a minor issue, explaining is the major one. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:46, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't really see why the trivia should be there. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.45|108.162.216.45]] 20:29, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
:This content was moved from the explain section to a trivia section by me. It still needs some rework but it belongs to "old Windows utilities" like Randall is talking about here at the first panel.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:46, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Reminds me of MUDs. I still check in on New Moon [http://eclipse.cs.pdx.edu/] a few times a year. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.236.25|108.162.236.25]] 16:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)
:I see what you mean. For me it's the Discworld MUD. But it could similarly (i.e. not exactly like the comic suggests) apply to some long-term Usenet groups that I (in)frequent. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.229|141.101.99.229]] 16:22, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

It may not be the tool from the comic, but people here might be interested in: http://kurlander.net/DJ/Projects/ComicChat/resources.html {{unsigned|Jvfrmtn}}

If this chatroom was real I'd love to see it. I know ts not though. Of course what if there's a little fridge horror in this comic? Like a chatroom 98 sort of thing? Maybe the sysadmin or the people Cueball and the others are talking to are really ghosts or souls that were sucked into an old server forever doomed to spend their days talking to themselves until another unsuspecting user is sucked in.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.36|108.162.215.36]] 02:54, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Ido: Can someone explain why the URL www.xkcd.com/test reference to this strip? looks like an undocumented feature to me :) {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.220}}

:It doesn't anymore… [[User:Varal7|Varal7]] ([[User talk:Varal7|talk]]) 19:03, 20 May 2014 (UTC)
::It now displays to [[1367: Installing]]. [[User:Z|Z]] ([[User talk:Z|talk]]) 01:11, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

I was doing some searching on the internet, and found, in addition to the one/few on this page, some people who said/implied that they have used this chat before, although, like anything on the internet, the claims may not be true. (Links: http://community.spiceworks.com/topic/436369-does-this-actually-exist [see comments 3, 12, and 14], http://pastebin.com/95nGh8Hk [Says it exists, but doesn't elaborate]) [[User:Z|Z]] ([[User talk:Z|talk]]) 22:02, 12 March 2014 (UTC)

I used to be part of something very similar to to what the comic describes (but not exactly the same). When AOL first started, it was a completely 'walled garden' with no access to the internet. Old folks will remember how popular brands used to advertise on TV that you should go to their 'AOL Keyword' instead of a web site URL. Check Wikipedia for more about this. Anyway, AOL had its own set of message boards, for many popular topics, which were not connected to the internet and could only be accessed by other AOL members. I was just a kid. I went exploring through a bunch of message boards about niche topics until I found one with a community that I came to like. We had all kinds of off-topic conversations, and, the moderators having long since gone, it came to resemble its original topical purpose very little. The ages were not kind to AOL, and our group grew smaller and smaller as the AOL service gained a connection to the real internet (including the WWW and Usenet) and not as many new people bothered to look at AOL-only message boards any more. Eventually, the Keyword that accessed our special board stopped working and it was dropped from the public directory that lists all the areas of AOL. But we found a workaround: AOL had its own quasi-URL system that was mostly only used internally in the software and not usually exposed directly through the UI. But, those of us who had directly bookmarked the message board could still access it that way, and we found a way to share the aol:// URL amongst ourselves. Just like in the comic, we couldn't figure out why the message board still worked at all, for many years after it was no longer publicly visible anywhere, and wondered if some sysadmins with a sense of humour at AOL were watching us. It was fun in a way, a secret place all to ourselves. But it was also kind of sad, when sometimes months would go where noone posted. The UI would sometimes get migrated to a newer version with no notice, and then rolled back again just as abruptly. Old messages would suddenly disappear, become resurrected and then disappear again. Eventually, the thing that finally killed it was that one by one, we each stopped paying for AOL as we found better ISPs and couldn’t justify the expense. It would have been easy enough to move to another web site or chat program, and at first, some of us tried to recreate it elsewhere, but it was never really the same, and we could never get the same group completely back together again. But I guess that's how life is anyway: people drift apart. Despite that, many of us still keep in touch and have become very close friends, some of us even in real life. It's good to have friends. xxj{{unsigned|Xxj}}
:TL;DR! Keep your comments short. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:57, 23 May 2014 (UTC)
::If you really didn't read that, Dgbrt, you missed out (what are you, from Twitter? everything has to be 160 characters or the ADD kicks in?). It was worth it, for an old internet hand/AOLer. That is too often how life is, xxj; thanks for posting it. I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by nostalgia for some old AOL and GameFaqs message boards, now... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.77|108.162.219.77]] 03:17, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
:::This is a typical reaction to misuse my reaction. If you look at my contributions here you would know that I'm really NOT a TWITTER man. I don't like Twitter and AOL was always a big mess by it's time. But including some paragraphs, writing shorter sentences, and I wouldn't have posted my "TL;DR!" reply. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:30, 28 May 2014 (UTC)

The comic says it's an "old" Windows utility, but the UI in the picture can be from no older than Windows 95. Native Win95 software still runs on modern PCs without resorting to a VM, doesn't it? Did Randall forget how a window looked in Windows 3.1? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.77|108.162.216.77]] 06:49, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

: An old Windows 95 ''program'' may be able to run on modern systems, but an old ''utility'' may be very tightly tied to that particular system. --[[User:Dfeuer|Dfeuer]] ([[User talk:Dfeuer|talk]]) 08:37, 1 June 2014 (UTC)

I think the reason for the cartoon is to explain chat room vs Facebook/twitter, and rather then say "IRC", which could be misunderstood (as being very large ?), he made up the hidden utility chat room.... this utilities chatroom would explain how there could be a small chatroom that is not filled with mindless *MERE USERS* ... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.205|108.162.249.205]] 06:17, 22 August 2014 (UTC)

"whereas Ponytail is still using an old computer (as evidenced by the CRT monitor)." No, it doesn't. A modern computer can still perfectly use old CRTs. I did it myself a while back, while my LCD was being replaced. All it takes is a VGA connection, and I'm not sure whether modern computers are coming without any VGA connection at all, be it in the mobo or the GPU (at least high end GPUs are dropping VGA support). Anyway, that's not an evidence. It '''hints''' that Ponytail may be using an old computer. I shall fix it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.125|108.162.219.125]] 03:39, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

:Ponytail is using a modern computer; the panel is set years ago before "the internet aged". Also why do the sevens have lines through them? It's increasingly common these days, but is that a facility or a habit of Randall's?[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.130|141.101.98.130]] 10:54, 25 March 2018 (UTC)





Many comments above shared their own stories for currently less frequent technologies, but it can happen with modern app with a sophisticated UI. In my teenage years, not getting on well with people around, I have pinned my social needs on a student-oriented platform called ''I ought to be a learning-master'' where contemporaries behave innocent but moving. I owe my aesthetics thereafter to a few people I acquainted even after their disappearance when the platform shut down in 2017. —[[User:物灵|物灵]] ([[User talk:物灵|talk]]) 07:13, 3 October 2023 (UTC)

i remember that a couple months ago, while wandering through explainxkcd via random page, i found the article on xkcloud. i, happily, joined the room. we had a happy time together, it wasn't exactly a big community, but we had a lot in common. we soonly became friends.
 
then, one of the main supporters of the domain died. a bit later, 2 days ago, to be precise (almost 3 now), euphoria.io was shut down. we had lost &xkcd. some of us made it to a mirror someone made on instant.leet.nu, but not all of us found it. i lost contact with half of them.
 
i wonder where they are. [[User:An user who has no account yet|An user who has no account yet]] ([[User talk:An user who has no account yet|talk]]) 19:57, 25 November 2023 (UTC)

: That's where you were! [[Special:Contributions/172.64.238.56|172.64.238.56]] 21:23, 25 January 2024 (UTC) (56independent)

2923: Scary Triangles

2024-04-23T13:25:12Z

Danger Kitty: I feel like this makes it less complicated and maybe a bit more clear.

{{comic
| number = 2923
| date = April 22, 2024
| title = Scary Triangles
| image = scary_triangles_2x.png
| imagesize = 303x369px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Concealed mostly beneath the surface, sharks are the icebergs of the sea.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by the [http://www.atlanticconservationpartnership.com/conservation-research/bermuda-shark-project Bermuda Triangle] of the sea - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[[Cueball]] is giving a marine biology lecture about sharks and seems to have mixed up icebergs with the topic.

In pop culture, {{w|shark}}s will often approach prey or people with only their front {{w|dorsal fin}} visible, which looks like a triangle, above the water. As far as prey are concerned, this is inaccurate, as most sharks will attack from below to keep the element of surprise.

In the comic the joke is that Cueball reveals that marine biologists have only recently learned that the triangle is only a small part of a shark. Until this revelation people were only aware of the visible portion, and the fact that death and injury often occurred when they arrive, causing them to be known as 'scary triangles'. Finally the community has learned that more than 90% (i.e. the rest of the shark's body) is hidden beneath the surface. (In most, if not all, cases it would actually be ''significantly'' more than 90%.)

The 90% is borrowed from an often cited factoid about {{w|iceberg}}s: that 90% of their volume is underwater. (This would be true for clean ice in freshwater, but in reality icebergs are filled with air cavities and float in salt water, so although most of an iceberg is beneath the surface, it is somewhat less than 90%.) Having learned that a similar fact is true of sharks, Cueball has drawn a dotted outline of the shark's body, equivalent to that often depicted in diagrams of icebergs, beneath the scary triangular fin, to show what a shark looks like under the surface.

The title text continues the joke explicitly, saying that sharks are the "icebergs of the sea." However, icebergs are already the icebergs of the sea{{Citation needed}}.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball points with a stick to a poster hanging behind him to the left. The poster has a diagram of a shark. The dorsal fin is shown above a wavy surface of water. The part of the outline of the shark that are under water are drawn in dashed lines. There are unreadable text in the top and bottom left corner, and two labels with lines that points to its dorsal fin and its gills. Cueball's stick points to the label near the gills]
:Cueball: Today's marine biology lecture is on '''sharks'''. We all know them as the scary triangles of the sea, but recent research has revealed that the triangle is only a small portion of the shark - over 90% of it is hidden beneath the surface.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Public speaking]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Sharks]]

1677: Contrails

2024-04-22T20:44:51Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 1677
| date = May 6, 2016
| title = Contrails
| image = contrails.png
| titletext = Astronomy (or "astrology" in British English) is the study of...
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Contrail}}s (short for "condensation trails") are trails of vapor produced by aircraft exhaust, trailing the airplane. They are formed from water condensing on jet fuel exhaust particles, some impurities of which provide bases for ice crystals to accumulate on. Some can dissipate in minutes, but others can last for hours or even longer, depending on the temperature, relative humidity and wind conditions at that particular altitude. Long-lasting contrails is a sign of high relative humidity and may sometimes predict the formation of clouds and rain. The {{rw|chemtrail|chemtrail conspiracy theory}} claims that contrails lasting unusually long are actually chemical or biological agents sprayed into the air for more ''nefarious'' purposes, although there is no evidence for the same.

Here, [[White Hat]] notices that there are a lot of contrails in the air. [[Cueball]] (falsely) corrects him, saying that in {{w|American English}}, contrails are called chemtrails, which is incorrect. This might be a reference to the stereotype of Americans being especially likely to buy into conspiracy theories.

This is a comic in the [[:Category:My Hobby|My Hobby]] series. Some of these comics involve [[Cueball]] giving misleading information about pedantic terms, such as [[1405: Meteor]]. Another of these comics, [[966: Jet Fuel]], even mentions chemtrails, saying that they are made of mind-control agents carried on board the planes that make them. Later they were again mentioned in [[1803: Location Reviews]].

The title text includes a similar situation, implying that {{w|astronomy}} and {{rw|astrology}} are synonymous, with astrology being the term used in British English. However, this is incorrect. Astronomy is the scientific study of things in outer space, like stars, planets, and galaxies, whereas astrology is an asinine system that infers a person's personality and characteristics from those same things in outer space. Though both involve studying celestial objects, astrology is considered a {{rw|pseudoscience}} rather than empirical science.

The joke is that {{w|British English}} and American English use different terms to refer to the same object, and one can often learn new words for a simple thing. This, however is not the case in this comic; contrail and chemtrail do not refer to the same thing, the latter being only a conspiracy theory.

This newfound hobby is developing to another hobby about spreading misinformation that was released less than two month after this: [[1697: Intervocalic Fortition]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and a White Hat are walking. White Hat is looking up to the sky while Cueball, walking in front holds out one arm towards him.]
:White Hat: Lots of contrails today.
:Cueball: Oh, you must be from the UK. In American English it's "Chemtrail".

:[Caption below the panel:]
:My hobby: Spreading linguistic misinformation

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:My Hobby]]
[[Category:Conspiracy theory]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Aviation]]

582: Brakes

2024-04-18T19:05:39Z

Danger Kitty: I think this fits here.

{{comic
| number = 582
| date = May 11, 2009
| title = Brakes
| image = brakes.png
| titletext = It was the funniest 6.5 seconds of my life, although as usual like 80% of it was just Tom and Ray's gasping, hacking laughter.
}}

==Explanation==
A car's brakes fail on a winding mountain road. As a response, the driver calls a live radio phone-in show, overlooking the fact that he is in immediate danger and has no time to gather outside advice before improvising a solution. The driver loses control of the car and plunges over a cliff.

If this ever happens to you,
*Try pumping the brakes, it may rebuild enough pressure to slow you down
*Downshift into second and then first gear, which should {{w|Engine braking|limit your vehicle's speed}}
*Use your "emergency brake", it's not just for parking (this can damage it, but it's better than dying{{Citation needed}})
*Otherwise, find a safe place to coast to a stop, if possible, or else
*Try to wreck your car in a way that won't kill you, your passengers or any other road-users/bystanders. Aim for something that will slow you down before stopping you, like a gravel turnout or a stand of bushes.

http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-a-Car-with-No-Brakes

The title text refers to {{w|Tom and Ray Magliozzi}} who were the co-hosts of the weekly radio show {{w|Car Talk}}. It was a car advice/comedy radio show often aired on {{w|NPR}} stations. While there is some actual advice given on the radio show, it's presented as a comedy/entertainment show. Much of the show did involve the hosts "gasping and hacking" as they ask non-relevant questions of the callers and add their own commentary or relate other personal asides and stories.

Since he claims that he has 6.5 funny seconds, he must have connected with them way before going over the cliff. Because in 6.5 seconds a car would fall approximately 200 m (½*g*t^2, with g = 9.81 m/s^2, and t the time in seconds. This will give 207 m, but there will be a lot of air resistance). It is clear from the drawing that the car is still going almost straight out into the air, so it is still almost at the height where it left the road at quite a high speed (to get this far away without turning the engine down towards earth yet.) And the front of the car is just about 5 car lengths to the ground, which would make this a 10-15 m drop only (which would take less than 2 seconds to fall). But according to the comic it seems like he first connected with the show, just when the car has left the road...

==Transcript==
:Of the potential responses to my brakes' failure, I did not choose the best.
:[A cliff is visible, with a car flying off it, and trees below.]
:Voice from car: Hello, you're on Car Talk.

==Trivia==
* NPR made a shirt out of this comic; it can be seen at [https://web.archive.org/web/20161130030315/https://shop.npr.org/products/car-talk-cartoon-t-shirt shop.npr.org].

{{comic discussion}}

1611: Baking Soda and Vinegar

2024-04-11T01:26:49Z

Danger Kitty:

{{comic
| number = 1611
| date = December 2, 2015
| title = Baking Soda and Vinegar
| image = baking_soda_and_vinegar.png
| titletext = Sure, it may not meet science fair standards, but I want credit for getting my baking soda and vinegar mountain added to the Decade Volcanoes list.
}}

==Explanation==
In popular fiction (and maybe in part in fact) the "{{w|Sodium bicarbonate|Baking Soda}} and {{w|Vinegar}}" {{w|volcano}} is often a staple image of the science nerd at the science fair (see [https://sciencebob.com/the-erupting-volcano/ example here]), unless all the science nerds are doing ''real'' imaginative science and the student(s) with the volcano exhibit are dragging out the old hackneyed stereotype. It may also be age-dependent, this being something that is relatively advanced science for the lower grades but rather a childish experiment in the hands of older students.

[[Ponytail]] is about to point out any one of a number of flaws with the trope. For one thing, while the project may exhibit interesting physical phenomena of the sort that some scientists study, the project itself doesn't actually teach anything about the scientific method. {{w|Science fair|Actual science fairs}} are usually intended to teach students about the scientific method by exercising it firsthand: subjecting hypotheses to appropriately rigorous experimentation and reporting on the results. The cliché volcano exhibit doesn't teach any of this and may instead reinforce the idea that science is about cool explosions and not a system of inquiry. Further, the exhibit doesn't (usually) actually demonstrate anything about volcanic activity: it is relatively simple chemistry involving the reaction of acetic acid in vinegar and sodium bicarbonate in baking soda to produce sodium acetate and (notably) a vigorous froth made up of bubbles of carbon dioxide. It is often dressed up to look more impressive, such as by using dye or other additives to make the 'eruption' look more 'realistic,' but it often fails to replicate important features of actual volcanic eruptions, such as the flow of lava, associated seismic events or the collapse of part of the volcanic crater. Most people doing soda volcano projects don't even explain what's happening.

[[Jill]] has made a little more of her volcano, however, as it seems to go beyond simple chemistry. The model replicates many of the dangers (aside from the pure lava) of a volcano and appears to have been given scaled-down vehicles (not visible in the comic) trying (and failing) to escape the dangers of the resultant mud-flows (a.k.a. {{w|lahar|lahars}} in professional terminology) being modeled. Ponytail contradicts her early reaction by also not liking the more realistic model, although it is the carnage she dislikes, not that it has more correct details of the eruption itself.

Even more, this is not an isolated 'model volcano' but a vinegar-powered representation of a geological 'hot spot', such as with the islands of Hawaii, in which the spot moves with respect to the Earth's crust (or vice-versa) and generates a new volcano some way off. Despite this model being supported on a table, it appears that the 'project' extends some way beyond that and has somehow contrived further eruptions away from the table, the room and probably even the building.

The 'project' seems to be turning into a very thorough model of a much larger geological process (a {{w|Supervolcano}} like {{w|Yellowstone Caldera|the one}} under {{w|Yellowstone National Park|Yellowstone}}) and destined to produce a ''very real'' {{w|volcanic winter}}. Where a magma-powered volcano could produce vast clouds of dust, preventing the sun's energy from warming the Earth, in this case it's the airborne salt (probably sodium acetate) from the chemical reaction that appears to be in danger of causing crop failure. There's no mention of the corresponding environmental effects of the vast amounts of carbon dioxide (and/or aqueous carbonic acid) necessarily released in proportion to the ejected salt (presumably itself not left in solution).

It is especially troubling that the child even mentions that her model volcano is an offshoot of a baking soda ''super''volcano. Supervolcanoes are massive volcanoes, far larger than even those on the list of {{w|Decade Volcanoes}} (mentioned in the title text), whose eruption would likely trigger species-level extinction events comparable to the dinosaur extinction. The best hope humanity has here is that the baking soda supervolcano is as small compared to supervolcanoes as the girl's baking soda volcano is to real volcanoes; the ratio is about 1:600 (for a cinder cone volcano), implying that the baking soda supervolcano, if modeled after Yellowstone, would only be about 80 meters by 120 meters in size. Unfortunately, the climatological and economic symptoms witnessed outside and on the grain market suggest that the model supervolcano is not very small.

When someone (presumably Megan) says she wants to stop learning, Jill grimly states that "Soon, we all will", alluding to their impending doom.

[[Randall]] has mentioned supervolcanoes before in [[1053: Ten Thousand]] (title text) and [[1159: Countdown]], making it a recurring interest of his. The volcano [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/6/6a/Entire_Volcano_zoom_out.png Mount Doom] was depicted to the far left in the game [[1608: Hoverboard]] released a week before this comic. It may not be a supervolcano, but quite potent anyway... Later this comic was directly referenced in the seventh panel of [[1714: Volcano Types]], where it is up to the reader to decide it, this is Jill's model people or what happens outside on her supervolcano.

In the title text the student expects extra credit for getting her model volcano added to the Decade Volcanoes list, a list maintained by {{w|International Association of Volcanology and Chemistry of the Earth's Interior}} of the world's most dangerous volcanoes (currently 16). It is either an absurd notion or a very troubling achievement that a science fair project could achieve the threat level posed by the likes of {{w|Mount Vesuvius}} (which destroyed ancient Pompeii in Italy, and threatens modern-day Naples in the same manner), {{w|Mount Rainier}} (whose lahars could potentially destroy parts of Seattle) or {{w|Mauna Loa}} (which could create a massive landslide, triggering a major tsunami that would threaten all of Hawaii). But if the volcano erupting outside is scaled down to match the scale of her original model volcano, at least that means that it was only a "local" volcano event and not a supervolcano event that she created, so it would only doom the local area.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail is standing behind Jill who has one hand up. They are looking at a table with a model volcano.]
:Jill: My science project is a baking soda and vinegar volcano!

:[A larger frame that includes Megan who stands to the right. Ponytail is a little further back and Jill has taken her hand down. The baking soda volcano erupts in a small upwards explosion.]
:Ponytail: Why do people make these? It isn't really even a science project. It doesn't teach anything about-
:Volcano: '''''Foom!'''''

:[Smaller frame again. Ponytail has moved closer to the table, Jill moves around the table to the right, pointing at the volcano while Megan walks closer. The "lava" flows down the volcano on both sides.]
:Jill: See how the baking soda and vinegar mix with mud and ice to form deadly flowing lahars?

:[Zoom in on Jills head close to the stream of lava going down the lower part of the volcano's right slope.]
:Jill: You can see the tiny cars trying to flee.
:Jill: Whoops! Too slow.

:[Zoom in on Ponytail.]
:Ponytail: Um. This is a bit grim.
:Jill (off panel): Learning!

:[Jill stand to the right of the table looking at the now still volcano. Shaky lines surround a sound effect written over the top of this slim frame:]
: ''Rumble''

:[Back to showing all three as before. Jill lifts a finger in the air.]
:Jill: And now we're learning that this volcano is an offshoot of a vinegar hotspot rising from deep within the earth.
:Jill: ''Annnd...''

:[Jill turns away from the table looking right as a loud noise can be heard off-panel, depicted in white text on a wavy black bubble:]
:<big>''Boooom''</big>

:[Megan has walked over to a window to the right. It has the blinds drawn down. She opens a hole in the blinds by pulling down in the middle. It is dark outside. The other two are outside the frame to the left.]
:Jill (off panel): The baking soda supervolcano erupts, injecting clouds of salt into the stratosphere.
:Megan: Why is it getting dark outside?
:Jill (off panel): Learning is fun!

:[We see Jill standing close to the table, of which only the right leg can be seen. She holds up a tablet with a graph showing a rising trend. The other two are both out of the frame.]
:Jill: Sunlight dims. The earth cools. Summer frosts form. Crops die. We check the markets. Grain prices are rising.
:Megan (off panel): I want to stop learning now.
:Jill: Soon, we all will.

==Trivia==
{{w|Campi Flegrei}} is a real-life example of her project.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Jill]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Geology]]
[[Category:Volcanoes]]

1950: Chicken Pox and Name Statistics

2024-04-10T21:47:06Z

Danger Kitty: It is definitely not a gta reference .

{{comic
| number = 1950
| date = February 2, 2018
| title = Chicken Pox and Name Statistics
| image = chicken_pox_and_name_statistics.png
| titletext = People with all six of those names agree that it's weird that we have teeth, when you think about it for too long. Just about everyone agrees on that, except—in a still-unexplained statistical anomaly—people named "Trevor."
}}

==Explanation==
This is another comic with one of [[Randall|Randall's]] [[:Category:Fun fact|fun facts]].

In this comic statistics are used to point out some non-intuitive correlations. The first panel sketches out the prevalence of {{w|Chickenpox|chicken pox}} by age in the {{w|United States}}. 
As the graph indicates, prior to the introduction of the {{w|Varicella vaccine|varicella vaccine}} in the United States, it was an exceptionally common childhood illness, with almost 100% of the population experiencing it at some point. The illness is highly memorable (since the symptoms last for days and are intensely uncomfortable) and noticeable (since the characteristic blisters are distinctive and difficult to hide), meaning that it was once a common experience that people expected to both experience and see in their peers. 
As the vaccine became widespread in the US, rates of varicella infection declined dramatically, and new infections are now relatively uncommon. The graph points out that this has led to a fundamental shift in experiences by age. For an American over the age of 30, nearly all your peers growing up would have had chicken pox. For an American under the age of 10, virtually none of them would have had it. This means that older people are likely to think of chicken pox as a normal part of life, while children are likely to have no experience with it, and may not even know what it is.

The second, seemingly unrelated graph, charts the popularity of certain names over time, in the US. It's normal and expected for certain names to rise and fall in popularity over time, which means that the number of people with those names ends up clustered by age. The names "Sarah" and "Brian" have gone from being highly popular to relatively uncommon for new babies, meaning that people with those names are much likelier to be older. Names like "Logan", "Brooklyn", "Jaxon" and "Harper" went from being virtually unused to having a spurt of popularity, meaning that (as of 2018) people with those names are much more likely to be under the age of 15 than over it.

The final panel points out that these trends, taken together, generate the interesting effect that you can, in some cases, estimate the odds of someone having had chicken pox, based solely on their first name. Having a name like "Brian" or "Sarah" raises the odds that you're over 30, which raises the odds that you had chicken pox. People named "Harper" or "Jaxon" are almost certainly young enough to have grown up with the vaccine in broad use. These time-based trends predict both the odds of a person having had the illness personally, and the odds that they grew up in a time when infections were common and generally expected.

The cartoon demonstrates the correlative fallacy, i.e. what can go wrong if one attempts to draw conclusions based on a random comparison of two variables, as described by the famous saying: "{{rw|Correlation_does_not_imply_causation|Correlation does not imply causation}}". In this case, there's a real correlation between names and the incidence of a particular disease. A superficial reading could suggest that either certain names make people prone to the disease, or that the disease, in some way, impacts a person's name. The real cause of this correlation is simply that certain trends just happen to coincide, causing them to statistically correlate without either variable having a real causal affect on the other.

The citations are real articles. The first citation ''DOI:10.15585/mmwr.mm6534a4'' is on the {{w|Centers for Disease Control and Prevention|Center for Disease Control}} (CDC) web site at [https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/wr/mm6534a4.htm] and the second citation ''DOI:10.1016/j.vaccine.2012.05.050'' is an article in Vaccine at [https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264410X12007761?via%3Dihub]. Both articles describe the effects of the vaccine for varicella which is the virus that causes chicken pox and shingles (also known as herpes zoster).

The title text states that people with all six of the names in the last panel (and indeed, most people in general) tend to think that it's weird we have teeth after thinking about it for a while, but that people named Trevor don't in an unexplained statistical anomaly. {{w|Human tooth|Teeth}} are a normal and near-universal part of the human anatomy (and that of many other animals). Like many aspects of biology, they're generally taken for granted, but can seem "weird" if you think about them too much. Randall has often demonstrated a tendency to over-analyze typical aspects of life until they become troubling. Here, he jokes that people with one particular name don't experience this, for unexplained statistical reasons. This is, of course, fictional. The joke comes from the fact that, were that claim true, it would be as random and as hard to believe as the real phenomenon that the comic addresses.

==Transcript==
:[The first panel shows graph with only the x-axis labeled and with seven labeled ticks. The y-axis has three ticks with percentage labels. A red line rises from bottom to top as it goes from left to right. There is an arrow pointing at the graph with a label. Above the left part of the red line there is a title and beneath that a reference to the source of the data in gray font.]
:[According to the graph, the percentage is close to 0 for ages below 15 and close to 100 for ages above 30.]
:Fraction of kids your age who got chicken pox
:(Very rough US estimates based on DOI:10.15585/mmwr.mm6534a4 and DOI:10.1016/j.vaccine.2012.05.050)
:100%
:50%
:0%
:Your age: 5  10  15  20  25  30  35
:Vaccine introduced in 1995

:[The second panel shows a graph with only the x-axis labeled and with seven labeled ticks. The graph has six gray lines with labels on them. To the right is a title and beneath that a reference to the source of the data in gray font.]
:[According to the graphs, Sarah and Brian are more popular names for older age groups.]
:Relative popularity of several names in your age group
:(Source: ssa.gov)
:Harper
:Sarah
:Jaxon
:Brian
:Brooklyn
:Logan
:Your age: 5  10  15  20  25  30  35

:[The third panel shows a list of names with a percentage next to them. Above the list is a title and beneath that a statement in gray font:]
:Chicken pox incidence by name:
:(Very rough estimate)
:: Brian: 75%
:: Sarah: 60%
:: Logan: 20%
:: Brooklyn: 10%
:: Jaxon: 4%
:: Harper: 2%

:[Caption below the panels:]
:Fun Fact: People named "Sarah" and "Brian" think chicken pox is normal and common, and people named "Logan" and "Harper" do not.

==Trivia==
*This was the first ''[[:Category:Fun fact|Fun fact]]'' comic in more than two years, to be followed just three weeks later by another ''Fun fact'' in [[1959: The Simpsons]].
**It seems that [[Randall]] returned to his [[1960:_Code_Golf#Revitalizing_old_themes|old themes]] this month.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Fun fact]]
[[Category:Kids]]

1649: Pipelines

2024-04-10T17:59:53Z

Danger Kitty: It's just soda. no popping

{{comic
| number = 1649
| date = February 29, 2016
| title = Pipelines
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = pipelines.png
| titletext = In the future, every single pipeline will lead to the bowl of a giant blender, and we'll all just show up with a bucket each day to take our share of the resulting smoothie.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic follows a similar idea to the ''[[what if? (blog)|what if?]]'' "{{what if|147|Niagara Straw}}" from three days before this comic's release, where the entire water flow over {{w|Niagara Falls}} is imagined to be funneled through a straw (i.e. 7 mm diameter), with disastrous results.

In this comic [[Randall]] imagines what size pipes are necessary to carry US domestic production/consumption of various fluids if the flow rate were fixed at 4 meters per second. Randall notes that "many pipes would overlap", owing to the fact that consumption of one item as corn syrup would be due to the production of one of the others, in this case soda (another example, than the previous one which is actually mentioned in the comic, could be gasoline which is produced from petroleum ).

The top panel is in [http://store-xkcd-com.myshopify.com/products/actual-size-stickers actual size] (something Randall often jokes about, like in the very next released ''what if?'' "{{what if|148|Eat the Sun}}", where he shows part of the sun in actual size in the 2nd picture, but in this comic he ''actually'' means it). This means that if you look at the image in actual size (or measure lengths in the full size image) then the measured diameter is the diameter Randall has calculated the pipe should be, based on his data for the consumption of these substances.

In the second panel the pipes are too big for his drawing. To indicate the scale he has both inserted a woman ([[Blondie]]) and the top panel has been shrunk down to indicate how much larger the bottom panel is (this is similar to the link between the panels in [[980: Money]]). Using the size of the top panel and the smaller insert, it can be found that the scale is 20:1. The woman is 9 cm tall in the image, which makes her 180 cm — 5 feet 11 inches — in "real life". The pipe next to her for gasoline would have a diameter of 2.2 m.

Since the caption at the top mentions both fluid produced and consumed in the US it becomes very difficult to find out which number Randall uses. For instance the consumption of wine in the US and the production of wine in the US is not necessarily the same as wine is both imported and exported. Should there then be two pipes? Unlike similar comics (like Money mentioned above) there are no references for where Randall has the data for this comic.

As usual with xkcd, the absurdity — and improbability — of routing the entirety of each fluid through a single pipe at any point is the source of humor. Randall appears to assume that all of the fluids would flow at a similar speed to typical water mains (4 meters per second). This is, of course, unrealistic, given the wide range of pipe size and fluid viscosity. Running water through a pipe of that size would be trivial (such speeds are typical), but forcing a material like Silly Putty through a tube that tiny at similar speeds would be implausible. And, as the comic points out, some of the materials are effectively solids at room temperature. Many examples are just plain zany (e.g. saliva may be a reference to another ''what if?'' "{{what if|144|Saliva Pool}}"). Nonetheless, the table gives a good visual representation of the comparative usage rates. Note that at the bottom of the last panel there is a much larger pipe for the tap water used by the public. This should, perhaps, be unsurprising, as water is used a far higher rate than any other substance that we produce or transport. All substances are listed below in the [[#Table|table]].

The title text refers to a possible future based on the idea of this comic in which all the pipes with the above-mentioned fluids will actually lead into the same hole as shown in the top right panel. This hole will then be the bowl of a giant blender that mixes all these substances together to a ''{{w|smoothie}}''. The future people will then just come up to this blender and get a bucket full of this mix each day. In reality, this would be an impractical method of getting all of the fluids. Setting the logistical considerations of such a setup aside, this would mean that ketchup and salsa, both intended for human consumption, would be mixed with fluids which are harmful to humans, such as windshield wiper fluid.

Note: "Soup" has been left out, and it might have been expected in this comic due to the similarity to this system with [[Beret Guy]]'s use of a "soup outlet" as an entrepreneur in [[1293: Job Interview]]. It is probably a larger pipeline than salsa and possibly even ketchup. However, there are many different varieties of soups, and most soup is probably not bought finished, both very good reasons to not include it in the chart. But still the idea of having a soup outlet is very similar to this comic.

===Table===
*All the substances are listed here in the "reading" order, also used in the transcript.
*The diameter is for the inner part of the tube.
*GL is short for GigaLiters, or one billion liters. This is strictly the annual discharge of the size (cm) column at 4 m/s.
{| class="wikitable sortable"
|-
|+ All substances with size as found in the picture, vs. size calculated from public information
|-
! scope="col" | Substance
! scope="col" | Size (cm)
! scope="col" | Annual Discharge (GL)
! scope="col" | Explanation
|-
| {{w|Toothpaste}}
| 3.5
| 0.121
| In the title text of [[1599: Water Delivery]], Randall claims that he as a child could not understand why there were no toothpaste pipe to his house when there was one for water. Given this is at the top, this is a clear allusion to this comment. The calculation was based on a figure of 542 g/year per capita consumption of toothpaste.<ref>https://www.google.com/search?q=toothpaste+consumption+by+country&tbm=isch&pf=m#imgrc=2wpGcxkoKlCvAM%3A[''dead link'']</ref>
The year the graph was made in is estimated to be 2013, and the 316.5 million estimated 2013 US population was used to calculate the diameter above.
|-
| {{w|Nail polish}}
| 0.4
| 0.000159
| Much less than acetone, which is used as a nail polish remover.
|-
| {{w|Windshield washer fluid}}
| 5.6
| 0.311
| Largely water, also contains methanol, dyes for a hue, normally bluish, and detergent.
|-
| {{w|Silly putty}}
| 0.1
| 0.0000991
| The smallest diameter of any of the pipes. Acting as a non-newtonian viscoelastic, properties of the Silly Putty, the size of the pipe may cause unknown effects to the putty and pipe.
|-
| {{w|Shampoo}}
| 4
| 0.159
| As most people wash, this would be a larger pipe.
|-
| {{w|Honey}}
| 5.2
| 0.268
| In both pure form and many honey products.
|-
| {{w|Blood donation|Donated blood}}
| 0.9
| 0.00803
| A small pipe as not many operations need a huge blood transfer.
|-
| {{w|Vanilla}}
| 0.4
| 0.000159
| Not the ice cream, but the spice (which is black as the substance in the vanilla pipe shows).
|-
| {{w|Ketchup}}
| 5.2
| 0.268
| A huge ingredient in many products in the U.S., for example {{w|McDonalds}}.
|-
| {{w|Salsa (sauce)|Salsa}}
| 3.6
| 0.128
| Smaller than a typical jar of salsa.
|-
| {{w|Sunscreen}}
| 1.35
| 0.0181
| A smaller pipe that is largely dependent on the season (summer).
|-
| {{w|Personal lubricant}}
| 0.65
| 0.00419
| Otherwise known as a "lube", or a sexual lubricant.
|-
| {{w|LCD liquid}}
| 0.26
| 0.000670
| For {{w|Liquid-crystal display|liquid-crystal displays}}.
|-
| {{w|Mayonnaise|Mayo}}
| 4.4
| 0.192
| Otherwise known as mayonnaise, this product contains mainly eggs, dairy, and oil.
|-
| {{w|Printer ink}}
| 1.4
| 0.192
| Some offices and printing centres may need a medium size pipeline of ink.
|-
| {{w|Maple syrup}}
| 1.8
| 0.0178
| Used as a topping on pancakes. As it is a relatively popular ingredient, it has a medium sized pipe.
|-
| {{w|Hair conditioner|Conditioner}}
| 2.5
| 0.0620
| For hair, like shampoo.
|-
| {{w|Mustard (condiment)|Mustard}}
| 3.7
| 0.136
| Like with ketchup, it is a popular topping but not as popular.
|-
| {{w|Liquid soap}}
| 4.7
| 0.219
| A large pipeline as many people use this.
|-
| {{w|Olive oil}}
| 6.2
| 0.381
| Largest diameter in the upper chart. A common cooking oil and also used in Mediterranean cuisine.
|-
| {{w|Coffee}}
| 58
| 33.4
| Extremely popular drink in the U.S. as many people drink it in the morning, so it has a medium sized pipeline in the upper chart.
|-
| {{w|Peanut butter}}
| 8.6
| 0.733
| Smallest diameter in the bottom chart.
|-
| {{w|Ice cream}}
| 20
| 3.97
| Most likely solid rather than melted. This would be a weird pipe as the ice cream would have to be melted to be transported through the pipe and then refrozen to a blend of all flavours. Then again, if the future was really the scenario in the title text, then mixing flavours isn't so bad.
|-
| {{w|Cheese}}
| 70
| 48.6
| Made from milk, also in the chart.
|-
| {{w|Soft Drink|Soda}}
| 82
| 66.7
| As in {{w|Soft Drink|soda pop}} aka soft drinks (flavored carbonated water) or {{w|Carbonated water|club soda}} (unflavored carbonated water). In many parts of the U.S. flavored carbonated water is referred to simply as "soda".
|-
| {{w|Acetone}}
| 13.6
| 1.83
| An organic chemical used as a highly potent cleaner in labs.
|-
| {{w|Liquor}}
| 15
| 2.23
| May not include beer or wine (also in chart).
|-
| {{w|Gasoline}}
| 220
| 480.
| Made from petroleum, also in the chart.
|-
| {{w|Yogurt}}
| 15
| 2.23
| Made from milk (from a cow), also in the chart.
|-
| {{w|Milk#Cow.27s_milk|Milk (cow)}}
| 106
| 111
| All the milk that comes from cows. A large pipeline, as consumption and production of dairy products is in high demand.
|-
| {{w|Bottled water}}
| 71
| 50.0
| See also [[1599: Water Delivery]]. Bottled water normally has a much higher price than tap water, but the bottled water may have "special properties", like spring water.
|-
| {{w|Sugar}}
| 42
| 17.5
| See also [[1639: To Taste]]. Sugar is commonly made from sugarcane or beets. Cooking sugar is generally sucrose. Other chemicals called sugars include glucose and lactose.
|-
| {{w|Saliva}}
| 85
| 71.6
| From this data it could be calculated how long it would take the whole of America to drool enough to fill that pool from the ''what if?'' "Saliva Pool".
|-
| {{w|Wine}}
| 18
| 3.21
| Americans drank just under [https://www.wineinstitute.org/resources/statistics/article86 900 million gallons of wine in 2014], or almost 3.4 million cubic metres per year meaning that Americans drink about 0.11 m3/s.
|-
| {{w|HFCS}}
| 20
| 3.97
| High fructose corn syrup is a widely used sweetener, mostly found in soft drinks. It is naturally found in a low concentration in most fruits (sucrose is made out of a glucose molecule bonded to a fructose molecule), and thus it can be naturally extracted from corn.
|-
| {{w|Breast milk|Milk (human)}}
| 10.6
| 1.114
| A rather small pipe as many people do not breastfeed, preferring to give their babies milk formula.
|-
| {{w|Petroleum}}
| 318
| 1002
| The largest diameter in the bottom chart, except for the public water. Also known as crude oil. Used to make, for instance, gasoline, also in the chart.
|-
| {{w|Meat}}
| 59
| 34.5
| The amount of meat purchased in the U.S. This "pipeline" would be mostly solid, save for some blood.
|-
| {{w|Glass}}
| 28
| 7.77
|Glass is rumored to be a liquid. However, glass is an amorphous solid; people, wrongfully, assume this lack of crystalline structure gives it the potential for viscous flow, making it technically a liquid (non-newtonian). This is incorrect as glass is composed of covalently bound molecules in a somewhat disorganized fashion, more similar to a thermoset plastic than a liquid. This common misconception was referred to before in the title text of [[843: Misconceptions]].
|-
| {{w|Beer}}
| 54
| 28.9
| As only people over 21 can buy this it is a smaller pipe. A larger pipe than wine, as beer is consumed more in the U.S.
|-
| {{w|Tea}}
| 41
| 16.67
| Smaller than coffee, as many people prefer coffee, but some like tea more.
|-
| {{w|Cement}}
| 74
| 54.3
| As most buildings have this and there are countless construction projects ongoing, this is a large pipe.
|-
| {{w|Tap water|Public water}}
| 2550
| 64,465
| Using the formula [http://math.stackexchange.com/questions/564058/calculate-the-radius-of-a-circle-given-the-chord-length-and-height-of-a-segment here], it is possible to calculate the diameter of a circle given the chord length = l and height = h of a segment. From the drawing (and scaling) l = 390 cm and h = 15 cm. The formula states that D = h + l2/(4*h) = 15 cm + (390 cm)2/(4*15 cm) = 2550 cm.
|}

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the first main panel, to the left of a smaller panel to the right:]
:<big>The size of the US’s</big>
:<big><big>'''Pipelines'''</big></big>
:<big>if each fluid produced or consumed in the US has to be carried by a single pipe</big>
:Assuming they all flowed at the same speed of about 4m/s
:Note: Many pipelines would overlap (eg. soda/corn syrup)

:[There is a small panel to the right showing three gray pipes of different sizes leading out over a large hole in the ground. Only a part of the hole can be seen at the bottom left part of the panel, but it curves around indicating it is a large circular hole. The pipes are supported by small legs beneath them and from the end of all three thick liquids are squirting out and down into the hole. The first pipe is by far the largest; the liquid from it is white, but not as white as the background. The second pipe is by far the smallest squirting dark red liquid and the final rightmost pipe is in between and squirts our light brown liquid. Each pipe is labeled. The label on the smallest cannot be read properly, but from the info gained in the next panel it can be inferred for certain what it says (and this is indicated here below):]
:[Large pipe (white)]: Mayo
:[Small pipe (dark red)]: Nail polish
:[Medium pipe (light brown)]: Maple syrup

:[Below is a large panel with a caption at the top. And below this there are twenty circles in different sizes and with different color (or even texture). Each circle is labeled, for the five smallest the label is outside, in one case with an arrow indicating where the label belongs. The rest has the label inside. The text is in black except for four of those with text inside, but with red of black color. Here the text is white. The labels are indicated by color and size, going roughly from top left in reading order based on the position and size of circles not of position of the text:]

:<big>Actual size </big> (When viewed on a typical computer screen) 
:[Medium green blue and white spiral]: Toothpaste
:[Tiny dark red]: Nail polish
:[Big light blue with white specks]: Windshield washer fluid
:[Very tiny purple]: Silly putty
:[Medium light green]: Shampoo
:[Large dark yellow]: Honey
:[Very small blood red]: Donated blood
:[Tiny black]: Vanilla
:[Big red]: Ketchup
:[Medium dark red with chunks of in different green and lighter red colors]: Salsa
:[Small white]: Sunscreen
:[Very small light green]: Personal lubricant
:[Very tiny gray]: LCD liquid
:[Medium off-white]: Mayo
:[Very small black]: Printer ink
:[Small light brown]: Maple syrup
:[Small light green]: Conditioner
:[Medium yellow]: Mustard
:[Large light green]: Liquid soap
:[Big olive green]: Olive oil

:[The panel just described is indicated to fit into a small rectangle at the top left of the next panel below. There are four lines ending at the four corners of this small rectangle, two of these are going to the two bottom corners and the other two ends on the lower part of the panel just above the small rectangle. They are indicated to go under the panel and would hit the two top corners if extrapolated. The 11 largest circles are clearly seen, but most of the other circles can also be noted. The colors are the same but any features in the original circles as well as the labels are gone. The part of the black top frame of the next panel below is faded out to gray in between the section cut off by the two lines going to the bottom corners of the panel above. This rectangle indicated the increasing size compared to the first panel above.]

:[Apart from the insert mentioned above, the second panel follows the same layout, but with 22 circles with even larger range of sizes. The panel is more than twice as long as the first panel. Blondie is drawn at the top of the panel just left of the middle. Her hair is close to the top, just below the line going to the right corner above. There are two medium-sized and five smaller circles to her left and one small close to her head and one huge circle to her right. Her feet are less than a third down this panel standing on top of the next row of circles. In the bottom half of the panel there is a giant circle which almost touches the left side of the panel. There are smaller circles above it and down along the right side. One last circle is to the left almost at the bottom. At the very bottom is a slightly curving line to indicate a much much larger blue circle that only graces the panel (no. 23). There is a small green fish in this water to the left of the label. Below the labels are again listed as above. One label has a foot note. But it is written directly beneath the circle in which it is referenced. So it will be written together with the label on the next line. There is also one case with an arrow used to indicate where the label belongs.]

:[Medium dark gray]: Coffee
:[Very tiny gray]: Peanut butter
:[Very small gray with black specks]: Ice cream
:[Very small yellow with white specks]: Cheese
:[Large brown with white fizzing]: Soda
:[Tiny White]: Acetone
:[Tiny gray]: Liquor
:[Huge dark yellow]: Gasoline
:[Tiny White with blue and orange specks]: Yogurt
:[Big white]: Milk (cow)
:[Large light blue]: Bottled water
:[Small white]: Sugar
:[Large light gray with white specks]: Saliva
:[Very small light yellow]: Wine
:[Very small orange]: HFCS
:[Very tiny white]: Milk (human)
:[Gigantic dark gray]: Petroleum
:[Medium dark red with black texture]: Meat (mostly solid)
:[Small white]: Glass*
::<nowiki>*</nowiki>Solid at room temperature
:[Medium light brown]: Beer
:[Small gray brown]: Tea
:[Large gray]: Cement
:[Gracing bottom of panel light blue, with a fish inside]: Public water

==Trivia==
*In addition to the what if? article, the relevancy of pipelines, particularly regarding public water, is heightened due to the ongoing public health crisis in {{w|Flint, Michigan}}, caused by recent (mis-)management of their public water system.
**See McLaughlin, Elliot. [http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/18/us/flint-michigan-water-crisis-five-things/index.html 5 things to know about Flint's water crisis], '{{w|CNN}}', January 21, 2016. Retrieved 1 March 2016.
**Studies have shown that temporary use of the Flint River as a water source caused corrosive water to leach lead from old pipes, causing lead poisoning in many residents, particularly children; other ill effects in addition to lead have been noted.
**The crisis has lead to a public outcry against the state "emergency financial management" team appointed and supervised by the state executive (Gov. Rick Snyder and staff) and an outpouring of support from nearby communities such as Metro Detroit via bottled water donations to Flint residents.
*This is the third comic posted on Leap Day ({{w|February 29}}) on Monday in 2016; the previous ones were:
**[[390: Nightmares]] on a Friday in 2008 and
**[[1023: Late-Night PBS]] on a Wednesday in 2012.
**If the current M-W-F schedule continues, the next such comic will not happen before 2036 when the leap day again falls on a Friday (Following the {{w|Solar cycle (calendar)|28 year cycle}}).
**It may also be interesting to note that the first three leap years after xkcd began (in just over 10 years) all fell on a release day, then followed by a break of 20 years.

== References ==
<references/>

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Blondie]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Rankings]]
[[Category:Food]]
[[Category:Animals]]

Talk:2915: Eclipse Clouds

2024-04-06T15:48:37Z

Danger Kitty: where did it go?

I suspect Friday's and next Monday's comics will also be about the eclipse. We should be proactive and create a category for them. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 17:12, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
:Might explain why there was no time to fit in a decent AF comic. (And this one definitely reminds me of '99!) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.225|172.69.43.225]] 17:31, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Nephele (νεφέλη) is Greek for cloud. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.123.81|172.71.123.81]] 17:14, 3 April 2024 (UTC)Ben
:I'm still trying to find a good way to word it, for those not already aware. (There are a number of related words, c.f. germanic "nebel", "nebulous" or of course "nephelococcygia"). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.225|172.69.43.225]] 17:31, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

I thought the joke in the title text is that a combined solar-lunar-nephelogical eclipse is impossible, not just "rare". You can't have a solar and lunar eclipse at the same time. Either of them can be nephelogical, though. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 17:16, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
:Triple-conjunctions (plus the 'viewpoint', to make it a four-body syzygy) are a thing, though. A rare thing. And not to be confused with the standard meaning of {{w|triple conjunction}}, but I'm not sure what else to call it (when not just a sequence across time). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.225|172.69.43.225]] 17:31, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
:no the clouds are occluding the moon and the moon is occluding the sun so it is a lunar eclipse. Not a nephelogical eclipse though because the clouds aren’t occluded
::They are if you close your eyes.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.242|172.69.43.242]] 08:28, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
:If you are in Australia through India, on Monday, you will be able have a solar '''and''' lunar eclipse, as the moon will block the sun and the Earth will block the moon. :) Extremely rare. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 15:27, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

We don't already have a catagory for eclipses?? I'd have thought someone would have made one last eclipse, since there was so many comics about them [[User:Apollo11|Apollo11]] ([[User talk:Apollo11|talk]]) 17:24, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
:Someone has just been adding the (currently redlinked) [[:Category:Solar eclipses]]. Which is admirable, but perhaps better to have established the actual Category first. (I would have suggested "Eclipses" be created. Or at least that as a super-category for the separate Solar and Lunar cats, plus any further eclipses that individually might be mentioned.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.190|172.70.90.190]] 17:41, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
:I created the category page. I wasn't sure what should go on it, so other people could review it [[User:Firestar233|guess who]] ([[User talk:Firestar233|if you want to]] | [[Special:Contributions/Firestar233|what i have done]]) 23:50, 3 April 2024 (UTC)

Oddly enough, clouds tend to disappear during eclipses. Strange, but true. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.39.72|172.70.39.72]] 20:03, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
:Maybe they're there, but you can't see them because it's dark :) [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 00:55, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
::Clouds typically form because warm air rises, cools off in the higher layers and water vapor then condenses. During an eclipse, the Sun no longer heats the ground, temperature drops a bit, and thus the cloud forming mechanism is interrupted. This means that there will indeed be somewhat fewer/less dense clouds during an eclipse. It is definitely not enough to get rid of all possible clouds, but I have seen a lightly overcast sky clear up when the totality approached. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.142|172.71.182.142]] 06:41, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
:::I've seen lightly overcast skies clear up when there wasn't an eclipse, though - how do you explain that?[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.38|172.70.162.38]] 08:31, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
::::Clearly that was just an eclipse you couldn't see! Checkmate! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.163.48|172.70.163.48]] 13:58, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
::::To the clear up without eclipse question: that could be a matter of the butterfly in the Brazil rainforest [i]not[/i] flapping its wings. We are usually only told what happens when the butterfly is active, but it stands to reason that quiet and clear weather results when the beastie is asleep. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.99.218|172.71.99.218]] 06:59, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Nobody has mentioned that Eclipse coolness tends to a Dirac delta function. I fear this site is dumbing down. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.50|172.70.86.50]] 12:39, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
:Perhaps its creator is more focused on financial functions these days - such as the one asserting that every equation in a published work cuts sales/hits by half. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.147.18|172.71.147.18]] 19:49, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

I always thought Murphy's given name was Edsel.[[Special:Contributions/172.71.147.18|172.71.147.18]] 19:49, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

"My tastes are very singular" is a quote from Fifty Shades of Gray and, by the looks of it, a bit of a meme because of that. It seems to me the use here is intentional... and I don't know what to do with the info. Personally, I'd forget that book if I could. [[User:LRataplan|LRataplan]] ([[User talk:LRataplan|talk]]) 15:00, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Surprising how Randall didn't post a comic this Friday. Anyone heard from him? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.39.203|172.70.39.203]] 13:34, 6 April 2024 (UTC)

Given the absence of an April 5 comic, so far, I wondered if there is a trick in the April 3 strip (2915) and we are supposed to refresh (a lot) to see something new? But I tried about 20 times without results.

Yeah, where'd the Friday comic go?

User:Danger Kitty

2024-04-04T19:50:35Z

Danger Kitty:

You're a kitty! Yes, you are! And you're sitting there! Hi, Kitty!

User:Danger Kitty

2024-04-04T19:21:58Z

Danger Kitty: I can make my own profile page, right? This is okay?

USER:DANGER KITTY
You're a kitty! Yes, you are! And you're sitting there! Hi, Kitty!

1683: Digital Data

2024-04-02T19:01:58Z

Danger Kitty: Randall refers to it as mouseover text, so I'm changing it to that.

{{comic
| number = 1683
| date = May 20, 2016
| title = Digital Data
| image = digital_data.png
| titletext = â€&oelig;If you can read this, congratulationsâ€”the archive youâ€™re using still knows about the mouseover textâ€!
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Digital information}} has the potential to be copied such that the copy is 100% identical to the original. While physical media themselves (such as books, or hard drives) and information stored by analog means may degrade as the universe continues, digital information as expressed by specific values, such as combinations of binary zeros and ones, does not decay over time and can be copied indefinitely with no changes.

However, in this comic, [[Randall]] points out that while digital information itself doesn't need to degrade, things that are on the Internet are often degraded through copying when the copy is not a 1:1 copy or changes are deliberately introduced. In addition, as technology advances, the method to save or call the information changes and the medium to view it changes, occasionally causing misinterpreted information. (This is also demonstrated with the mouseover text.) As the frames continue, they gain the appearance of images which have been screenshotted repeatedly, with a resulting loss of quality due to compression of the original resolution and {{w|JPEG}} {{w|compression artifact|artifacting}}. (The JPEG format is intended for representing photorealistic grayscale or color images; when misused for line drawings, such as comic strips, any compression artifacts become particularly noticeable, as the background is normally of completely uniform color.) In the last frame, this is taken to an extreme, as the frame appears to have been very sloppily screenshotted off of at least two different smartphones (not the same device that uses the bottom frame in the third panel as the top border in panel four), and the final image is covered both with a watermark from an unregistered screenshot program, as well as references to at least two different web sites: {{w|9GAG}} (bottom right image) and {{w|Tumblr}} in the web address bottom left. 9GAG is an online platform and social media website where users upload and share content of their own, or of other networks. It is often accused of rehosting other sites' funny content without attribution and adding their own watermark to the image or video.


As an easter egg, the [http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/digital_data_2x.png high-resolution] (pixel-doubled) version of the comic is merely the comic resized to 50% and then to 400%, making it an image of poorer quality rather than a higher resolution image as for other comics, demonstrating how repeated {{w|image scaling}} can also introduce artifacts into images.

The mouseover text is seemingly addressed to a reader in the future who will only be able to access xkcd through a {{w|digital archive}}. Digital information might not degrade with time, but it can't be properly displayed without knowledge of the encoding. As new encodings and file formats get developed and old ones abandoned, the webpage format of the comic might not be available in the future, when users would need special archives to view content from today's world. The mouseover text contains seemingly {{w|mojibake|garbage characters}}, which typically result from data being interpreted according to a {{w|character encoding}} different from the one used to encode it. In this case, the characters are the result of encoding the string [https://ftfy.vercel.app/?s=%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%C5%93If+you+can+read+this%2C+congratulations%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%80%9Dthe+archive+you%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2re+using+still+knows+about+the+mouseover+text%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%C2%9D%21 <tt>“If you can read this, congratulations—the archive you’re using still knows about the mouseover text”!</tt>] using {{w|UTF-8}} (which represents non-{{w|ASCII}} {{w|Unicode}} characters as multibyte sequences) and then interpreting the resulting bytes as the still commonly used {{w|Windows-1252}} encoding (which uses only one byte per character, but utilizes the non-ASCII codepoints for a limited selection of extra letters and symbols such as "â" or "€"). This shows that degradation of digital data through conversions isn't restricted to images. Furthermore, as screen navigation moves away from the mouse toward touch, voice recognition, and modes still to be implemented, mouseover text will itself become archaic.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and a White Hat are walking, Cueball holds both hands in front of him palms up.]
:Cueball: The great thing about digital data is that it never degrades.

:[They walk on in the next panel which shows jpeg compression artifacts, as if the image had been converted from png format to a lossy jpeg format.]
:Cueball: Hard drives fail, of course, but their bits can be copied forever without loss.

:[They continue walking in the third panel which is now clearly pixelated, the white is slightly discolored, and it contains part of the interface of some program, probably supposed to be a screen shot from a smartphone. At the bottom there are three blue buttons and one gray. the first is a blue "<" indicating back in a browser. Then a grayed out ">" that is not active. And then three more standard buttons in blue to the right of those two. The interface matches that of an iPhone running Safari in iOS 9 (or other versions with the same Safari UI (probably iOS 7-9))]
:Cueball: Film degrades, paint cracks, but a copy of a century-old data file is identical to the original.

:[Still walking, now Cueball holds out both arms to the sides, and finally White Hat replies. This panel is heavily pixelated and discolored and has a distorted aspect ratio. It contains a clear watermark of 9GAG (although difficult to read all letters in the end of the first word), even more 'frame' elements, and text above the image at the bottom (where the last letter is obscured by the frame of the image). There is also an internet address at the bottom left, but it is not readable except for the .tumblr.com ending. In this panel it is clear that it is a screen shot from a smart phone. The frame around the image obscure the very top of Cueball's text and the half of the last letter in White Hat's reply.]
:Cueball: If humanity has a permanent record, we are the first generation in it.
:White Hat: Amazing

:Watermark: Screenshotpro 2
:Watermark: ~Unregistered~

:Top border: Verizon LTE '''4:45 PM'''
:Bottom text [slightly cut off]: 9GAG
:Internet address at the bottom [nearly unintelligible]: [ama].tumblr.com

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Self-reference]]

1683: Digital Data

2024-04-02T19:00:44Z

Danger Kitty: Randall refers to it as mouse-over text, so I'm changing it to that.

{{comic
| number = 1683
| date = May 20, 2016
| title = Digital Data
| image = digital_data.png
| titletext = â€&oelig;If you can read this, congratulationsâ€”the archive youâ€™re using still knows about the mouseover textâ€!
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Digital information}} has the potential to be copied such that the copy is 100% identical to the original. While physical media themselves (such as books, or hard drives) and information stored by analog means may degrade as the universe continues, digital information as expressed by specific values, such as combinations of binary zeros and ones, does not decay over time and can be copied indefinitely with no changes.

However, in this comic, [[Randall]] points out that while digital information itself doesn't need to degrade, things that are on the Internet are often degraded through copying when the copy is not a 1:1 copy or changes are deliberately introduced. In addition, as technology advances, the method to save or call the information changes and the medium to view it changes, occasionally causing misinterpreted information. (This is also demonstrated with the title text.) As the frames continue, they gain the appearance of images which have been screenshotted repeatedly, with a resulting loss of quality due to compression of the original resolution and {{w|JPEG}} {{w|compression artifact|artifacting}}. (The JPEG format is intended for representing photorealistic grayscale or color images; when misused for line drawings, such as comic strips, any compression artifacts become particularly noticeable, as the background is normally of completely uniform color.) In the last frame, this is taken to an extreme, as the frame appears to have been very sloppily screenshotted off of at least two different smartphones (not the same device that uses the bottom frame in the third panel as the top border in panel four), and the final image is covered both with a watermark from an unregistered screenshot program, as well as references to at least two different web sites: {{w|9GAG}} (bottom right image) and {{w|Tumblr}} in the web address bottom left. 9GAG is an online platform and social media website where users upload and share content of their own, or of other networks. It is often accused of rehosting other sites' funny content without attribution and adding their own watermark to the image or video.


As an easter egg, the [http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/digital_data_2x.png high-resolution] (pixel-doubled) version of the comic is merely the comic resized to 50% and then to 400%, making it an image of poorer quality rather than a higher resolution image as for other comics, demonstrating how repeated {{w|image scaling}} can also introduce artifacts into images.

The mouseover text is seemingly addressed to a reader in the future who will only be able to access xkcd through a {{w|digital archive}}. Digital information might not degrade with time, but it can't be properly displayed without knowledge of the encoding. As new encodings and file formats get developed and old ones abandoned, the webpage format of the comic might not be available in the future, when users would need special archives to view content from today's world. The title text contains seemingly {{w|mojibake|garbage characters}}, which typically result from data being interpreted according to a {{w|character encoding}} different from the one used to encode it. In this case, the characters are the result of encoding the string [https://ftfy.vercel.app/?s=%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%C5%93If+you+can+read+this%2C+congratulations%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%80%9Dthe+archive+you%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%E2%84%A2re+using+still+knows+about+the+mouseover+text%C3%A2%E2%82%AC%C2%9D%21 <tt>“If you can read this, congratulations—the archive you’re using still knows about the mouseover text”!</tt>] using {{w|UTF-8}} (which represents non-{{w|ASCII}} {{w|Unicode}} characters as multibyte sequences) and then interpreting the resulting bytes as the still commonly used {{w|Windows-1252}} encoding (which uses only one byte per character, but utilizes the non-ASCII codepoints for a limited selection of extra letters and symbols such as "â" or "€"). This shows that degradation of digital data through conversions isn't restricted to images. Furthermore, as screen navigation moves away from the mouse toward touch, voice recognition, and modes still to be implemented, mouseover text will itself become archaic.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and a White Hat are walking, Cueball holds both hands in front of him palms up.]
:Cueball: The great thing about digital data is that it never degrades.

:[They walk on in the next panel which shows jpeg compression artifacts, as if the image had been converted from png format to a lossy jpeg format.]
:Cueball: Hard drives fail, of course, but their bits can be copied forever without loss.

:[They continue walking in the third panel which is now clearly pixelated, the white is slightly discolored, and it contains part of the interface of some program, probably supposed to be a screen shot from a smartphone. At the bottom there are three blue buttons and one gray. the first is a blue "<" indicating back in a browser. Then a grayed out ">" that is not active. And then three more standard buttons in blue to the right of those two. The interface matches that of an iPhone running Safari in iOS 9 (or other versions with the same Safari UI (probably iOS 7-9))]
:Cueball: Film degrades, paint cracks, but a copy of a century-old data file is identical to the original.

:[Still walking, now Cueball holds out both arms to the sides, and finally White Hat replies. This panel is heavily pixelated and discolored and has a distorted aspect ratio. It contains a clear watermark of 9GAG (although difficult to read all letters in the end of the first word), even more 'frame' elements, and text above the image at the bottom (where the last letter is obscured by the frame of the image). There is also an internet address at the bottom left, but it is not readable except for the .tumblr.com ending. In this panel it is clear that it is a screen shot from a smart phone. The frame around the image obscure the very top of Cueball's text and the half of the last letter in White Hat's reply.]
:Cueball: If humanity has a permanent record, we are the first generation in it.
:White Hat: Amazing

:Watermark: Screenshotpro 2
:Watermark: ~Unregistered~

:Top border: Verizon LTE '''4:45 PM'''
:Bottom text [slightly cut off]: 9GAG
:Internet address at the bottom [nearly unintelligible]: [ama].tumblr.com

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Self-reference]]

1956: Unification

2024-03-15T21:57:08Z

Danger Kitty: It just sounds better.

{{comic
| number = 1956
| date = February 16, 2018
| title = Unification
| image = unification.png
| titletext = For a while, some physicists worked on a theory unifying the other forces with both the force of gravity and the film "Gravity," but even after Alfonso Cuarón was held in a deep underground chamber of water for 10^31 years he refused to sell his film to Disney.
}}

==Explanation==

In physics, the fundamental interactions, also known as fundamental forces, are the interactions that do not appear to be reducible to more basic interactions. There are four {{w|fundamental interactions}} known to exist: the {{w|gravity|gravitational}} and {{w|electromagnetism|electromagnetic}} interactions, which produce significant long-range forces whose effects can be seen directly in everyday life, and the {{w|strong interaction|strong}} and {{w|weak interactions|weak}} interactions, which produce forces at minuscule, subatomic distances and govern nuclear interactions. Some scientists speculate that a fifth force might exist, but, if so, it is not widely accepted or proven.

This comic lists five physical forces (it split up electricity and magnetism), but also includes a number of other things (two countries and three businesses) that are known for "unifying" in a non-physics sense. {{w|East Germany|East}} and {{w|West Germany}} {{w|German reunification|united politically in 1990}}, more than forty years after being divided at the end of {{w|World War II}}. Entertainment company {{w|Disney}} has united in a business sense with a number of others over the years; the comic mentions animation studio {{w|Pixar}} and the ''{{w|Star Wars}}'' franchise. The comic states that this is the progress toward unifying the fundamental forces of nature, which is absurd, with the addition of Disney and {{w|Germany}}, neither of which is one of the fundamental forces.{{Citation needed}} Star Wars is, of course, all about {{w|The Force (Star Wars)|The Force}}, but this has, for some reason, gone unnoticed by most physicists.

The title text jokes that some physicists tried to unify the force of {{w|gravity}} with the 2013 movie ''{{w|Gravity (2013 film)|Gravity}}'', starring {{w|Sandra Bullock}}. Of course, this is also absurd, but it turns out that this is just another jab by [[Randall]] at {{w|George Lucas}} for selling his rights to ''{{w|Star Wars}}'' to {{w|Disney}}. The jab comes when he makes it clear that the director of ''Gravity'' {{w|Alfonso Cuarón}} would refuse to sell the rights to his film to Disney, even if he was held in underground chamber of water for 1031 years.

This water chamber and incredible time span is a reference to {{w|Proton decay}}, which is being investigated by trying to detect the {{w|Cherenkov radiation}} that could occur from possible decay of protons in water. These measurements are being conducted in {{w|Proton_decay#Experimental_evidence|immense water tanks}} buried under mountains to protect them against similar signals that could result from cosmic radiation. The same type of tanks have been used to detect {{w|neutrinos}}.

The half life of protons is currently believed to be between 1031–1036 years. This should be compared to the age of the universe at around 1.3×1010 years, which means that one second compared to the age of the universe is larger than the age of the universe compared to the smallest suggested half life of the proton (as used in the comic) by a factor of about 10,000, but even this time would not make Cuarón cave in...

===Unifications===
{|class="wikitable"
!Item
!colspan="2"|Unifications
|-
!Electricity
|rowspan="2"|Electricity and magnetism were historically considered separate forces. Observations through the 19th century indicated that the two were closely linked, however, and the work of James Clerk Maxwell finally established their common identity in 1873. Today, their unified explanation, {{w|electromagnetism}}, is considered one of the four fundamental interactions in physics.
|rowspan="3"|The unification of electromagnetism and the weak nuclear force—known as the {{w|electroweak interaction}}—is the only currently-accepted unification of two fundamental forces. Two Nobel Prizes in Physics have been awarded for work on this unification, in 1979 and in 1999.
|-
!Magnetism
|-
!Weak force
|style="text-align:center;"|→
|-
!Strong force
|colspan="2"|The strong nuclear force is similar to the electroweak forces, as they are all part of the model known as {{w|quantum field theory}} (QFT). There have been attempts to unify them to produce a so-called {{w|Grand Unified Theory}}. No model of their unification has yet been shown to be correct, and it remains a major unsolved problem in physics.
|-
!Gravity
|colspan="2"|Unlike the other three fundamental forces, gravity is not described by QFT, but by {{w|general relativity}} (GR). A so-called "{{w|Theory of Everything}}", describing both QFT and GR, could also unify gravity and the other forces. Such a unification is still strictly hypothetical, however.
|-
!East Germany
|rowspan="2" colspan="2"|In 1945, after {{w|Nazi Germany|Nazi Germany's}} defeat in the Second World War, Germany was occupied by the {{w|Allies of World War II|Allied Forces}}. At first, it was expected that the whole country would be transitioned to a single post-war government, but political and ideological differences between the {{w|Soviet Union}} and the other allies (which developed into the Cold War) prevented this. The Soviet-controlled zone became the German Democratic Republic, or {{w|East Germany}}, while the British, American and French zones of control merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany, or {{w|West Germany}}.

With the fall of the Berlin Wall (a physical and symbolic representation of the division) in 1989, and the fall of the East German socialist government in the "Peaceful Revolution", {{w|German reunification}} again became an immediate possibility. By late 1990, the merger was achieved, with East Germany joining the federal structure already existing in West Germany.

On 5th February 2018, just under two weeks before this comic appeared, the {{w|Berlin Wall}} had been "gone as long as it had stood"; that is, 28 years, two months, and 27 days.
|-
!West Germany
|-
!Disney
|rowspan="2"|Pixar was originally a part of the computer division of Lucasfilm, but was spun off into a separate business in 1986. The studio had a positive partnership with Walt Disney Animation, which resulted in a deal for Pixar to produce animated feature films for Walt Disney Pictures. Though the partnership later became strained, Disney agreed to buy Pixar in 2006. Pixar films produced after this acquisition have been branded "Disney-Pixar" films.
|rowspan="3"|The Star Wars franchise was perhaps the most successful and best-known property of {{w|Lucasfilm}}, the company founded by George Lucas in 1971. Discussion in 2011 of a distribution deal with Disney, around the time that Lucas was planning his retirement, turned into the outright purchase of Lucasfilm by Disney in 2012. Since then, Disney has extensively revamped and developed the Star Wars franchise, with three new films and a television series released by the date of this comic, and several more in the works.
|-
!Pixar
|-
!Star Wars
|style="text-align:center;"|→

|}

==Transcript==
:[Ten rounded frames with text inside are shown in two rows. Below each frame there is a line going down and then this line either joins with one or two of the other frames lines or in two cases do not joins with any other. At the bottom of the panel the now five remaining lines turn towards the center of the bottom of the panel and ends in arrows that points towards three question marks. The first three frames' lines are unified, same goes for the next two, and the three after that. The lines of the last two are not joined with any other lines. The text in the transcript is given as it appears from left to right, disregarding if it is the top or bottom row, but this will alternate through the ten frames, starting with one up, then one down etc.]

:[Group one, starting with up:]
:Electricity
:Magnetism
:Weak force

:[Group two starting with down:]
:East Germany
:West Germany

:[Group three starting with down:]
:Star Wars
:Disney
:Pixar

:[Two single frames, the first is up:]
:Strong force
:Gravity

:[All five arrows points to this:]
:<big><big>???</big></big>

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Progress toward unifying the fundamental forces of nature

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Star Wars]]
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Geography]]