explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2762: Diffraction Spikes

2023-04-19T22:06:17Z

Dansiman: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2762
| date = April 12, 2023
| title = Diffraction Spikes
| image = diffraction_spikes_2x.png
| imagesize = 324x370px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Even if a planet is lucky enough to have a stable orbit that weaves between the spikes, the seasons get weird whenever it passes close to them.
}}

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

{{w|Diffraction spike|Diffraction spikes}} are visual artifacts that appear to extend from light sources, mostly when viewed through a reflector telescope. In telescopes, they are often caused by the support struts of the secondary mirror in the telescope. They've become especially well known lately because they're quite prominent in images from the {{w|James Webb Space Telescope}}; its bigger spikes are due to the [https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/diffraction-spikes-jwst/ edges of the hexagonal mirror sections], not the struts.

The comic feigns that these artifacts are real spikes of stellar matter extending from the stars being viewed. The spikes have sufficient energy and coherence to slice planets that intersect them, rather than merely bludgeon or vaporize them. Additionally, they appear to nullify gravity - preventing the halves from recombining and allowing them to maintain their shape.

The title text suggests that a planet would have to be particularly lucky to avoid encountering one of these spikes during its lifetime. This would make our own solar system exceptionally fortunate, given the number of planetary bodies that remain whole, though it could perhaps serve as an explanation for the {{w|Asteroid belt}}, being remnants of formerly destroyed planets.

The title text also claims that the spikes produce sufficient light and heat to disrupt seasonal (and perhaps even diurnal) patterns on planets that come close enough to them, but this is not something we experience on Earth.{{cn}}

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

:[SHORT VERSION : The comic is a photo of a star, with the diffraction spikes that usually happen when taking pictures with telescopes. An exoplanet orbits that star, and its trajectory crosses one of the spikes. At the intersection point, the onomatopoeia "SLICE" is written, and the trajectory splits in two. Not far after, two half-planets continue their course.]

:[Caption below panel:]
:Bad news for exoplanets: it turns out those diffraction spikes are real.

:[LONG VERSION : On a black square background, there is a white circle, representing a star, with a diameter one-fourth the length of the background perimeter. Its center is approximately one radius left of the center of the square. Six solid white lines intersect the center of the circle, and extend into the background. Those portions of the lines that are in the background are drawn as narrow triangles; the portions within the circle (white on white) are invisible. The lines represent the rays of a diffraction pattern. The "star" drawing is bilaterally symmetrical along any of the six lines. The longest line, with the length of each ray equal to the diameter of the circle, is oriented at approximately 15/195 degrees from the vertical (left and right boundaries of the background). The second, very short, is at approximately 20 degrees. The third, fourth, and fifth, with the emergent parts approximately one radius long (the fourth slightly longer) are oriented at about 35, 50, and 80 degrees respectively. The sixth, short like the second, is at approximately 95 degrees.]

:[Near the apex of the longest line (diffraction pattern ray) at 15 degrees, there is a dashed white line, curved as if part of the circumference of a circle with radius three times that of the "star" circle, and describing approximately twenty degrees of arc. This line represents the orbit of an exoplanet circling the star. At its intersection with the diffraction pattern ray, indicated by a small white circle, the dashed line bifurcates. At the rightmost ends of the dashed lines, there are two circles, one light gray with an irregular, darker gray pattern at the center, the other white. These represent a planet that has been sliced into two equal portions by the diffraction ray. A few white specks surrounding the circles represent debris from the cutting. The word SLICE is written in white capital letters immediately to the right of the point of intersection.]

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Photography]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]

2761: 1-to-1 Scale

2023-04-12T20:15:53Z

Dansiman: Additional information about the title text

{{comic
| number = 2761
| date = April 10, 2023
| title = 1-to-1 Scale
| image = 1_to_1_scale_2x.png
| imagesize = 444x281px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = There's a version that shows the planets with no cropping, but it's hard to find a display that supports it.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a DISPLAY THAT SUPPORTS THE PLANETS WITH NO CROPPING - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic supposedly shows what each planet would look like at 1:1 scale, which would mean at real size. However, because a minuscule portion of each planet is visible on the page at that scale, it becomes comically useless at distinguishing the size or relative size of each planet, and each planet is just a differently textured straight line.

To understand the diagram, imagine that all eight planets have been drawn close to each other with just a tiny spot of the sky visible between them. The planets have been drawn so it is possible in this small 1:1 image to see all eight planets edges. Space is the black polygon in the center, with Earth the top white segment. The reason why each planet is so smooth is because it's such a small area of each planet: you're only seeing a couple of square inches of the surface of each of the planets, and even though they are all round, the curvature would be invisible on this scale. The four Gas giants are completely flat, whereas the four rocky planets display features, most notably on Earth where grass is visible.

That it cannot have been an image of the real planets aligning is clear, as Mercury can be shown to be in front of Jupiter (implying that the latter is in the part of its orbit beyond the Sun), yet Jupiter obscures Earth (which necessitates that it be in the arc of orbit ''nearest'' any given observer). In the title text it is made clear that this is just a small part of a larger drawing, so this is not an image taken from far away – they are only placed this way for scale.

The title text remarks that it is hard to find a display that supports a version of the image without cropping. This is because a true 1:1 scale image showing each of the planets would be ridiculously large[https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/1164/how-big-is-the-solar-system/], larger than any monitor or display currently available on Earth (since it would be much larger than Earth, in fact it would would have to be larger than Jupiter, to depict 1:1). Furthermore, the amount of video memory that a graphics card would need to have in order to output to such a display (even a 1bpp image, i.e., all pixels are either black or white) is well beyond the capabilities of any graphics cards that exist today.{{cn}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|The main panel itself is missing explanation. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[A frame with a central area of black 'space', bounded at various intersecting angles by eight 'straight lines' representing planetary surfaces, originating from various out-of-frame angles of 'down' and the white of some bodies obscuring some part of the others.]
:[There are labels indicating which line represents each planet.]
:[The four gas-giants' lines are simply drawn, near straight and featureless.]
:[The lines for the rocky inner-planets have variations to them, stereotypical of some part of their surface.]
:[The "Earth" line ('down' being out the top of the frame) has a profile indicating various small-scale vegetation and also features the white sillouette of an ant that may be of a realistic size for your display.]
:[Caption below the panel:]
:The solar system's planets at 1:1 scale

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category: Space]]
[[Category:Comics_with_inverted_brightness]]

Talk:2750: Flatten the Planets

2023-03-20T20:43:14Z

Dansiman: added funny citation needed tag

I have to wonder, would you slide down to the sun, or be flung outwards? [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 19:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
: The discs are centered on the orbit of the parent planet, and presumably rotating at the same frequency as the parent planet's orbit. That means the inner edge of each disc is going slower than you'd need to orbit the Sun at that distance, and the outer edge faster. If you moved inward from the original planet's orbit, the Sun's gravity would pull you in, but when you crossed the boundary to the next disc, you'd get flung back outward.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.61|162.158.62.61]] 19:58, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
::No Each planet fills out the space within their orbit into the next planet. Easy to see as the outer edge of Neptune's orbit is the same as with the planet flattened. There is a distance from Mercury to the Sun indicated. Maybe because it would melt if it got any closer? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:03, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
:::Take another look at the top and bottom images, you'll notice that the Neptune disc is significantly larger than Neptune's orbit (especially on the left hand side of the image). I suspect that, as the other response suggested Mercury and Neptune takes the inner edge of the disc as the average between Neptune and Uranus's orbital radii, and then the outer radius the same distance on the other side of Neptune's orbit. Similar for Mercury.
:::First, they're rings not discs, but I'm skeptical of the math. And it looks to me like the ring's edges are halfway between the orbits, with Neptune extended outwards the same distance as halfway to Uranus's orbit. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.4|172.69.22.4]] 20:08, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

{{cot|My mistake, Randall's math is correct, sorry.}}

{| class="wikitable" style="text-align: right;"
|-
! Planet !! Volume (109 km3) !! Orbital radius (106 km) || halfway to prior || halfway to next || Annulus area (10<s>9</s> ''12'' OOPS! km2) || Thickness (<s>cm</s> ''10s of microns'')
|-
| Mercury || 61 || 58 || 29 (to 0) || 83 || 19,000 || 321
|-
| Venus || 928 || 108 || 83 || 129 || 30,637 || 3,029
|-
| Earth || 1,083 || 150 || 129 || 189 || 59,942 || 1,802
|-
| Mars || 163 || 228 || 189 || 504 || 685,794 || 24
|-
| Jupiter || 1,4310,00 || 779 || 504 || 1,107 || 3,051,847 || 46,890
|-
| Saturn || 827,130 || 1,434 || 1,107 || 2,154 || 10,726,236 || 7,711
|-
| Uranus || 68,340 || 2,873 || 2,154 || 3,684 || 28,061,145 || 244
|-
| Neptune || 62,540 || 4,495 || 3,684 || 5,304 (symmetry) || 45,743,348 || 137
|}

:::: The volumes in this table are at 2 different scales. Only the Mercury to Mars volumes are at 1010 km3. Jupiter to Neptune are at 1012 km3 [[User:Sandor|Sandor]] ([[User talk:Sandor|talk]]) 21:01, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
::::: Thanks, fixed; I had the scale wrong for the radii too. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.158.231|172.71.158.231]] 21:16, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
:::Someone please double-check this, I think Randall is off by a factor of 1000. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.229|172.71.154.229]] 21:37, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
:::: I did my own spreadsheet, and my figures agree with Randall's (roughly). I think your thinkness figures are mostly out by 1000, and a few of your volume figures also have the wrong scale (Mercury is smaller than Mars, and the giants are too big by a factor of 10). [[User:Sandor|Sandor]] ([[User talk:Sandor|talk]]) 22:07, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
::::: 61 * 10^9 km^3 is [https://www.google.com/search?q=61+*+10%5E9+km%5E3+in+cm%5E3 6.1 × 10^25 cm^3], 19000 * 10^9 km^2 is [https://www.google.com/search?q=19000+*+10%5E9+km%5E2+in+cm%5E2 1.9 × 10^23 cm^2], and (6.1 × 10^25 cm^3) / (1.9 × 10^23 cm^2) is [https://www.google.com/search?q=%286.1+%C3%97+10%5E25+cm%5E3%29+%2F+%281.9+%C3%97+10%5E23+cm%5E2%29 3.2 meters]. I'm afraid I'm correct. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.145|172.69.22.145]] 22:31, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
::::: According to {{w|List_of_Solar_System_objects_by_size#Objects_with_radius_over_400_km}} yes I had Mars wrong (corrected) but the others are roughly correct. I stand by my claim that Randall is in error. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.86|172.71.154.86]] 22:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
:::::: Mercury's orbital radius is about 58 * 106 km, not 58 * 109 km, which makes the annulus' area 19000 1012 km2. [[User:Sandor|Sandor]] ([[User talk:Sandor|talk]]) 23:20, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
::::::: I fixed that label, hold on... [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.86|172.71.154.86]] 23:30, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
::::::: You're right. Thanks. Sorry. Reverted on main. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.215|172.71.154.215]] 23:39, 15 March 2023 (UTC)

|} 

This makes about as much sense as other Flat Earth theories. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.200.137|172.70.200.137]] 20:00, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
:But this would actually be a flat Earth. Albeit with a rather larger surface area ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 20:03, 15 March 2023 (UTC)
:And..the Earth-ring is not a disc and it's also in the same plane as the sun. Meaning If you were to stand on the surface of this ring earth , there would be a perpetual sunrise / sunset... And similar for everything else in the plane of the ecliptic. [[User:Iggynelix|Iggynelix]] ([[User talk:Iggynelix|talk]]) 12:36, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

But what does the plot of surface gravity vs distance from the Sun look like? Gravity of an infinite plane and all that?--[[User:Brossa|Brossa]] ([[User talk:Brossa|talk]]) 00:01, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

The explanation currently says that it would require "several solar system's worth" of matter, but isn't there enough matter in the actual solar system? --[[User:Purah126|Purah126]] ([[User talk:Purah126|talk]]) 00:49, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
:That was said in reference to the Alderson Disk, which requires 1000km or so of thickness. Clearly more than the proposal here that gives a minute thickness (relatively) from the ''actual'' planetary mass in the solar system. Even if you reduced its extent (smaller outer, bigger hole for the Sun) it wouldn't thicken up enough. The prior (non-xkcd) version would require a mass of material rivaling, if not exceeding, that of the Sun itself. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.222|172.70.162.222]] 02:07, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

One of the reasons NASA rejected this could've been the use of inches. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.102.13|172.71.102.13]] 02:26, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
: Except for Mars. I can only imagine that use of the metric system for the Mars ring is a reference to the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#Cause_of_failure Mars Climate Orbiter] fiasco, which certainly would not endear Randall, or his proposal, to a NASA granting agency program officer. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.150|172.70.214.150]] 02:45, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
:: I assume the use of microns there is simply because 5/512 is a really awkward fraction. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.223.25|172.71.223.25]] 05:48, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
::: Awkward? Its vulgar! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.56|172.70.162.56]] 08:05, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
:: Oh right, the Mars Climate Orbiter reference makes sense! I was wondering why Randall would mix imperial and metric units like that. No sane physicist would do that, especially not Randall. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.250.88|172.71.250.88]] 12:52, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
::: And Randall rubs more salt into the wound by using "micron", when the formal/correct SI unit name is "micrometer".[[Special:Contributions/172.70.206.187|172.70.206.187]] 17:13, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

If the planets of the solar system were to become disks centered on the respective planet's current orbit, how do we deal with the different orbital eccentricities? For example, per That Other Wiki, Venus has an orbital eccentricity of 0.006772, Earth has 0.0167086, and Mars has 0.0934. Not to mention Neptune's 0.008678 and Pluto's 0.2488; Pluto's orbit actually crosses Neptune's. Surely that would cause issues with the disks? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.98.5|172.71.98.5]] 08:33, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
:Pluto isn't involved, so at least that difficulty doesn't have to be dealt with. Maybe Pluto and other dwarf planets could be used to supplement the asteroid ball bearings.[[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.63|172.71.242.63]] 10:55, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

It appears that there is enough material in the asteroid belt to do this, since a ring of asteroid ball bearings with a 1 trillion kilometer diameter where each ball bearing was a cube 1 meter by 1 meter (clearly more than enough!) would be less than 10 trillion cubic meters. Since the total mass of the asteroid belt is 10^21 kg, and the average density is around 2 g/cm^3, = 2000 kg/m^3, then the amount of matter required is 2,000*10 trillion = 2 quadrillion which is much less than 10^21. (Not sure if this is actually correct) --[[User:Purah126|Purah126]] ([[User talk:Purah126|talk]]) 12:17, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
:Ahh yes, the classic cubic-bearing. Just what we need in this planetary ring system we've created. Since Randall elects to eschew spheres for the planets, let's go all in and refuse them for the bearings as well. Bravo. ;-) [[User:Iggynelix|Iggynelix]] ([[User talk:Iggynelix|talk]]) 12:40-12:47, 16 March 2023 (UTC) 
::''I just want to say that this line of logic ''really'' tickled my funnybone. Well done! ...I've got no other valid contribution at this time, just that.'' [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.101|172.70.90.101]] 13:11, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
::That was to further overestimate the material needed, since a cube is more mass than a sphere. {{cn}} --[[User:Purah126|Purah126]] ([[User talk:Purah126|talk]]) 15:09, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
Did anyone notice that this came out just after pi-day? [[User:Iggynelix|Iggynelix]] ([[User talk:Iggynelix|talk]]) 12:40, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
: That's really crusty of Randall. It does explain the rolling pin. He probably also knows, and chooses (for cause) not to disclose, that pronunciation of the Greek letter as "pie" [https://www.dude-n-dude.com/2023/03/14/amoebas-lorica-14-march-icymi/ doesn't conform to modern language usage]. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.232|162.158.90.232]] 17:01, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
:: for the same reasons outlined in the link, beta and phi are also pronounced differently, and I'm pretty sure zeta, eta, theta, xi and chi are too [[Special:Contributions/172.71.26.105|172.71.26.105]] 22:03, 16 March 2023 (UTC)Bumpf
:::Although all these terms were deliberately taken from ancient Greek, because that's when they were first proposed! I believe Pi was devised around 250 BC by the Greek mathematician Archimedes, and is sometimes called Archimedes' Constant. There is no reason to use more modern pronunciation, except to make jokes about "Pee Day", I suppose. Why are we talking of hypotheticals of Randall's knowledge and secret humor, anyways? Do we need such an elaborate justification to quote and link to this dude, "Amoebe"? Please wait til next time, next year![[User:Cuvtixo|Cuvtixo]] ([[User talk:Cuvtixo|talk]]) 22:40, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
::::Mathematicians have recognized that the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter is a constant since around 2000 BCE, but it was only given the symbol π in 1647 CE (and even then as the *p*erimeter of the circle; π wasn't used for the ratio until 1706). So if you want the pronunciation as it was when the usage was first proposed, you're looking for how English people would have said it in the 17th and 18th centuries, not how the ancient Greeks would have said it.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.88|172.70.114.88]] 17:55, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't know if there's a non spoilery-way to mention that there are similar ideas explored in the novel ''Death's End'' by Liu Cixin. [[User:Nedlum|Nedlum]] ([[User talk:Nedlum|talk]]) 13:22, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

What would even happen here? Would the rings collapse into planets again? Where will the atmospheres go? Are the rings a uniform material like rock or many small pebbles? What happens at the borders? Would i be squished or will all life still be intact? If i a squished, do i have to put up with my worst enemy next to me? Will it be like the flat skins from //All Tomorrows//? Will i die? I expect to see this in «What If 2» coming out 13th october. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.134.38|172.68.134.38]] 14:31, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
:Presumably for the gas giants to hold a disc shape, the gas would have to be encased in hollow discs made out of the solid cores. How thick would the walls be? What if we used thinner cavities to store the inner planets' atmospheres as well? And how much would the core material decompress as a result of not being a core? [[User:Promethean|Promethean]] ([[User talk:Promethean|talk]]) 18:18, 16 March 2023 (UTC)
::isn't it hypothesized that they're "solid cores" are only solid because of the immense pressures? Like isn't much of Jupiter's inner core (or outer-inner core) metallic helium or something? My reading about this is outdated, but it's mentioned in the explanation that it requires "tensile strength beyond what is likely physically possible for any known form of matter." Actually I'm a little annoyed that this statement doesn't get "citation needed", rather than "planets of our solar system would not be suitable for this endeavor", because obviously if the first statement is true, the second needs no citation if the first is true, because no planet is made of unknown forms of matter. Correct?" [[User:Cuvtixo|Cuvtixo]] ([[User talk:Cuvtixo|talk]]) 22:19, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

Is there an element of Pluto discourse here? IIRC, one of the complaints about the "clearing your orbit" was that different metrics would 'punish' (for those who view the reclassification as a punishment) objects orbiting at a greater distance. I find the distribution of thicknesses really intriguing, and I wonder how the various dwarf planets at different parts of the system would stack up, thickness-wise. [newbyBoredAtWork]

I've replaced 'roller pin' with 'rolling pin' because a quick online search indicates that a roller pin facilitates relative motion, linear or rotary, between objects whereas a rolling pin is used to make a mass of material thinner, especially in culinary contexts.

I did an estmate of max 210m for the bearing sizes which is clearly enough even if I was off by a factor of a thousand, the proceedings are [https://0paste.com/448864 here] if someone wants to put it into the main article or check for errors. [[User:Xkcdjerry|Xkcdjerry]] ([[User talk:Xkcdjerry|talk]]) 12:48, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

2734: Electron Color

2023-02-06T23:24:59Z

Dansiman: funnier text for incomplete template

{{comic
| number = 2734
| date = February 6, 2023
| title = Electron Color
| image = electron_color_2x.png
| imagesize = 568x256px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = There's quark color, but that's not really color--it's just an admission by 20th century physicists that numbers are boring.
}}

==Explanation==

{{incomplete|Created by A SUPERINTELLIGENT SHADE OF THE COLOUR BLUE - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

(Uncertain explanation)

This comic may be referring to how, on many scientific diagrams, electrons are referred to as yellow.

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

:[Miss Lenhart teaching a class. Science Girl and Hairy sit at their desks.]
:Miss Lenhart: You have a question?
:Hairy: Yeah - what color are electrons and protons? Are they yellow? Red? Blue?

:[Zoom in on Miss Lenhart.]
:Miss Lenhart: Subatomic particles don't have a color.
:Miss Lenhart: They're too small to interact with visible light, so "color" isn't even defined for them.

:[Panel of just Miss Lenhart.]
:Miss Lenhart: That said, electrons are ''definitely'' yellow.
:Offpanel voice 1: I knew it!
:Offpanel voice 2: And protons are red, right?
:Offpanel voice 3: ''What?'' No! They're gray!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Science Girl]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Science]]

Talk:2728: Lane Change Highway

2023-01-24T23:18:49Z

Dansiman:

There's a section of the M25 motorway around London which does this... Never did like it. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.201|172.70.85.201]] 07:14, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
:I hope you are kidding ;-) Although there are some funny histories about that road. For instance Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. (Now a series - see [https://youtu.be/M0S3a32RzEo?t=112 Crowley Creates (and Destroys) The M25 - Good Omens]. :-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:25, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
::Not quite the same thing, but in my city there are many roads that run through a substantial portion of town, occasionally varying the number of lanes by either adding a new one immediately following an intersection, or converting an existing lane to turn-only at an intersection, and then after the intersection only having as many lanes as were permitted to travel straight through the intersection. But for one or two of these roads, in order to drive the full length of it, you will have to make several lane changes in the same direction (I can't recall whether it's to the right or to the left), because through one intersection where only a single lane is able to go straight, that same lane eventually ends up becoming a turn-only lane at another intersection somewhere farther down the road. It's obviously not like Randall's example, but it is a mild annoyance when you end up driving that stretch of road often enough to notice it. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 23:18, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

:A lot of highways in France do something similar. At every ascend, the ascending traffic gets its own new lane, presumably to keep ascending cars from doing merging manoeuvres. To keep the same number of lanes, the leftmost lane merges into the adjacent lane before the ascend. So if you simply stay on your lane, you kind of drift to the left with every ascend. I am not sure if this really helps to cut accidents, but I think it is a clever solution at least for some accident-prone ascends. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.160.36|172.71.160.36]] 08:32, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
:: That sounds like using passing lanes, so that slower traffic, with more difficulty going up the hill, like transport trucks, will use the outside lane and faster cars will be on the inner lane, to not be significantly impeded by the slower traffic. [[User:Nutster|Nutster]] ([[User talk:Nutster|talk]]) 14:44, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
::: That sounds odd to me. Even taking into account that my "left lane" is the US/French "right lane" (the one close to the kerb, furthest from the median/dividing line), "outside lane" to me means the overtaking or 'fast' lane, with "inside lane" the one most to the roadside (the driver is on the outside edge of a vehicle, assuming the usual local parity between Foo-side-driving and Bar-side-driv''er'').
::: But I do know some roads (on undulating landscapes) that on the bottom of an uphill section will have a new road-edge lane (vehicles expecting to go slow will filter into that, hopefully without crawling past a marginally slower climbing vehicle to get ahead of them) and then, near the top of the rise, the centre-lane is forced back into the left just in time to encounter the end of the contrary direction's two-lane rise up ''its'' hill.
::: That is, three lanes for most of the time, the centre being assigned to the direction going uphill on any given stretch (a permant type of 'Tidal Flow' traffic management system). [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.137|172.71.178.137]] 19:04, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Saved the image to the wayback machine here https://web.archive.org/web/20230124073752/https://xkcd.com/ [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 07:41, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
:Doesn't that happen automatically? I like they are there, but do webcrawlers not manage that on a daily basis? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:17, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
::Huh, didn't know that. Better safe than sorry! [[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 08:33, 24 January 2023 (UTC)
:::Indeed, it doesn't hurt to do so. In fact, xkcd is actually archived every day, multiple times. I've also configured my bot to archive xkcd and explainxkcd when a new comic comes out automatically through archive.org. —[[User:Theusaf|theusaf]] ([[User talk:Theusaf|talk]]) 21:35, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

It's really a very wide single-lane road. The left lanes originate from the edge of the road so no cars feed into them, and on the right side once you merge there is no where to go except to merge into the next right-hand side, so the net effect is that the road is 4 lanes wide, but is functioning as a single-lane road. That assumes everyone is entering from the right side. But I guess they could be entering from the left but still in a very short time all cars are on the right. [[User:Rtanenbaum|Rtanenbaum]] ([[User talk:Rtanenbaum|talk]]) 12:24, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

This is very similar to major roundabouts, in the UK at least, that have a spiral outwards. If entering a four-way junction (and there can be more feed-offs than that) , you may be invited to assume one of three entry lanes (as soon as the feed-in is wide enough to accommodate them) for left (the side of the road upon which we drive), forward or right that lead onto one of three lanes going clockwise round the island.
 (Sometimes the left-lane becomes marking- or even curb-separated from the island lanes, effectively skirting the island so there's no waiting for traffic on the island to pass. It merges with the feed-out lane, or becomes a two-lane carriageway direction, some useful distance from the junction.)
 On safely entering the junction (by giving way to anything already on it ''or'' being filtered by traffic signals), the semi-perpendicular lane markings (oblique crosses at the lane-edge intersections) guide you to the outer/inner or any median encircling lane which, as each outlet is passed, shifts over by one with a new 'inner' lane for that latest input road's "(almost) all the way round" traffic. (For some junctions, 180 degree change of travel is also a necessity, e.g. due to no cross-traffic (right-hand turning) possible on the lead up to the island, but a sub-junction comes off it in that direction anyway.)
 It tends to work best on the rounder roundabouts with periodic entry/exit points, or on the truly huge ones that act like a town-centre one-way inner ring-road, only without the town. When there's a large complex with straights and curves, the guiding lines (especially across the 'crosses' might not be so obvious (if they are for the first car on the road, the one immediately behind might not have sufficient sight of the outward jinks in the indicated path and lose track of which path they should be on (especially if it is their first use of the junction) and the cross-overs can get worn and/or dirtied to make it less obvious), so inevitably there's lane-drift (and ''more'' wear/obscuration of the lane-guides).
 But, in general, with only accidental merging needed ("no, not this exit, it's the next one... there's nothing behind, so quickly...") and continuous lane-generation (to which the rarer all-the-way-round traffic can shift over into), I think there's a parallel. But this not being the inspiration or reference. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.65|172.71.178.65]] 13:12, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I feel like this comic was posted later in the day than usual. It would be interesting to see a graph of what time of day comics were posted in (ignoring the day of posting, just in hours since the previous midnight EST) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.66|172.69.68.66]] 14:41, 24 January 2023 (UTC)Bumpf
:Yes, it was very late, after midnight EST. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 14:56, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I personally would LOVE this road, as I would stay to the left and floor it. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 15:30, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

2712: Gravity

2023-01-03T18:42:03Z

Dansiman: /* Hacks */ noclip definitely does not disable gravity.

{{comic
| number = 2712
| date = December 16, 2022
| title = Gravity
| image = gravity_2x.png
| titletext = It's a long way down.
}}

*To experience the interactivity, visit the [http://xkcd.com/2712/ original comic].
==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by THE UNIVERSE FROM A PIECE OF FAIRY CAKE- Please continue expanding and describing the various bodies. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this interactive comic, the viewer pilots a small spaceship throughout a vast area in space. The viewer is capable of exploring various bodies and planets within the play area, many containing easter eggs alluding to the book What If? 2 and previous xkcd comics. The flight mechanics are largely, if not entirely, Newtonian, so the vessel is capable of using the gravity of planets to alter its trajectory or even enter orbit. The spaceship has indicator circles around it which appear when a gravitational body comes into range, showing the direction towards their center of gravity and the size of the body. A circle also appears around the spaceship whenever it collides with a gravitational body, acting as a shield. The shield remains until the player orients the spaceship upright so its landing gear can deploy.

With a keyboard the arrow keys rotate the spaceship and accelerate it forward and backward. You can also use the standard first person shooter keys 'w', 'a', 's' and 'd', and the standard vi text editor navigation keys 'h', 'j', 'k', and 'l' to control the spaceship. Despite some ships having no unique backward texture, all ships can reverse. On mobile the comic will full screen, pressing either side of the center rotates the spaceship, and pressing in the center accelerates it forward.

It is fairly easy to fly between planets as long as you pay attention to orbital mechanics; don't just floor the accelerator. The background stars show your velocity and orientation relative to the nearest gravity well. If you are having difficulties navigating space, point towards a gravity orb and accelerate for only a few seconds. Wait until the background stars spin wildly, and then reduce your velocity to 0 before gently accelerating towards the object.

'''Playing on mobile:''' Various additional glitches may occur. Having a starting position slightly below the take-off pad means you're already 'glitched' inside the planet from the off. Escaping the planet may need inverted 'accelerating' (turning perpendicular to the local vertical, and thrusting ''backwards'' until you can glitch back out into more open space. You may also be trapped within the cannonball 'orbit', with seemingly inconsistent collision-detection, such that you can be sat ''with landing gear extended'' upon features (projectile tracks, etc) that seem not to count as solid for most other purposes.

There is no "universal" point of view — the bottom of the window, "down", is oriented towards the object exerting the most gravity upon the player. Multiple things found in this comic draw attention to this, such as how on Earth Ponytail says to White Hat, "I checked downforeveryoneorjustme.com and it says just me", and he replies "Yeah, I guess down isn't down for everyone."

Throughout the play area are coins that change the spaceship into different rockets and non-space based vehicles, including humans.

The comic promotes Randall's new book [https://xkcd.com/what-if-2/ What If? 2], which was released in September and is available for purchase. Many of the planets contain references to various What If? articles.

The comic is similar to [[1608: Hoverboard]], which celebrated Thing Explainer instead.

===Celestial Bodies===

The following is an incomplete table of features:

{|class="wikitable sortable"
!
!
!
!
! colspan="4"|References
!
|-
! ID
! Description
! Transcript
! Tiles (X, Y)
! What If
! XKCD
! Movies
! Other
! Explanation
|-
|<code>origin</code>
|'''Starting planet'''
|
Cueball: "To celebrate the world of ''What If? 2'', here is your very own tiny planet to explore!

Megan: "Welcome!"

Ground caption: "Give someone the science question-and-answer book ''What If? 2'' for the Holidays: xkcd.com/whatif2"

Cueball feeding T-Rex: "Burger?"

Isaac Newton: "Robert Hooke must be down there ''somewhere!''"

Megan to Cueball: "If you ever get lost in space, just fly down. That's where the ground is."

Beret Guy to squirrel: "Hi!"
|(0, 0)
|Y
|
|
|Y
|The starting planet. The player begins on the launch pad in a landed position. Collecting the orbiting cannonball will transform you into a different rocket, although it does not improve your abilities.

Cueball feeding the T-Rex is possibly a reference to What If #78: {{what if|78|T-rex Calories}}.

{{w|Isaac Newton}} is referencing the {{w|Newton's cannonball}} thought experiment, where a cannon is fired at greater and greater speeds until the cannonball goes into orbit. Newton's comment suggests that instead of demonstrating orbits, he is firing repeatedly to hit his rival, {{w|Robert Hooke}}.
|-
|<code>earth</code>
|'''Earth'''
|
"How am I supposed to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs if they keep moving out from under my comet?"

"Unusually high-speed squirrels."

"Jump in! The water's fine!"

"Ugh, the frame rate is really bad out today."

"I don't know why people complain about going down rabbit holes. These lil guys are adorable!"

"Ahh, the mysterious natural wonders of sailing stones"

"I'm Bananas Georg.
Every year our company publishes global per capita banana consumption numbers, so to make the printing easier, I eat enough bananas of December 31st to make sure it's a round number."

"Weird, I feel ''heavier''."

"Hey"

"I checked downforeveryoneorjustme.com and it says just me"
"Yeah, I guess down isn't down for everyone"
|(27867,-35648)
|Y
|Y
|
|Y
|A planet with among other things:
* A {{what if|162|crane dropping a comet}} onto a dinosaur
* Unusually high speed squirrels (creating a sonic boom). Reference to ''What If? 2'' Chapter 56: Walking Backward in Time, where these squirrels are surprisingly present in the past
* Megan inviting Cueball into a pool
* A region where the frame rate is intentionally limited. Reference to Chapter 56 again, where the weather and sun cycle fast enough to cause similar strange visual effects
* A flagpole
* A literal {{w|burrow|rabbithole}} referencing the figuratively speaking [[wikt:rabbit hole|rabbit hole]]
* Someone aiming at a satellite with an arrow
* A lake with an eel
* The {{what if|157|earth-moon firepole}}
* A "doot cone," a reference to [[Volcano Types]]
* Two figures being attacked by a third with a sword
* Two kids playing soccer (Catching the ball will turn the ship into a soccer ball)
* A farmer on a tractor being stuck in gooey candy. Reference to ''What If? 2'' Chapter 64: Lemon Drops and Gumdrops, where it rains candy
** A nearby hummingbird excited by all the sugar
** Cueball attempting to eat the falling candy, but having it hit his teeth painfully
* A banana pile being consumed by "Bananas Georg" to make the per capita annual banana count round, referencing the "[https://reallyreallyreallytrying.tumblr.com/post/40033025233/average-person-eats-3-spiders-a-year-factoid Spiders Georg]" meme as well as ''What If? 2'' Chapter 11: Banana Church, where he also makes an appearance
* Megan and Cueball digging a hole (in the center of this planet is the "earth's core", referenced below)
* The {{what if|147|Niagara Falls water being redirected into the LHC}} (Large Hadron Collider)
* Japan leaving earth. Reference to ''What If? 2'' Chapter 50: Japan Runs an Errand
* A tube to the bottom of the ocean. Reference to ''What If? 2'' Chapter 30: Mariana Trench Tube
* Ponytail and White Hat making a reference to [https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com downforeveryoneorjustme.com]
* Two mini asteroid moons: A tiny version of B612 with Little Prince and the rose, plus one with just Cueball standing on it. They can be found by flying straight up from the Super Mario flagpole.
|-
|
|Earth's core
|
| (28850, -28570)
|
|
|
|
|[[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] floating in a small space in the center of the planet in inverted rotations. Can be legally accessed using a high velocity collision onto the surface of the planet, although requires tapping the up arrow afterwards many, many times.
|-
|<code>europa</code>
|'''Europa'''
|
|(13180, -2540)
|Y
|
|
|Y
|Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons (in real life). A broken, icy crust has a single path into its core.
|-
|
|Europa's crust
|
"It's so unfair we don't get to compete in EuroVision."

"The region of the solar system where liquid water can exist on the surface is the habitable zone, and the region where it can exist beneath the surface of moons is the Eurozone."

"WHIRRRR"
|
|Y
|
|
|
|Europa's crust, with a single entrance into the core demarcated by an octopus leaving a hole.
EuroVision is a European song competition that includes many European countries, and it's not too much of a leap to claim that "Euro" includes Europa

Cueball states that Europa, with liquid underneath its surface, is in the Eurozone, a pun on the ''other'' Eurozone.

A roomba whirs across the icy crust.

Cueball has a hairdryer and is melting the surface of the crust. A direct reference to {{what if|35|What If's Hairdryer}}.
|-
|
|Europa's core
|"We've always used neutrinos for astronomy, but if we place my 'optical telescope' in orbit above the kryosphere, we could potentially observe the universe using electromagnetic waves. Who knows what else there is out there besides stars! There could be other worlds!"

"Hi, I'm Annie. Welcome to the depths of Europa. There's some weird stuff down here."

"We were caught in a powerful November gale on the Great Lakes outside Whitefish Bay. Our ship foundered and sank here." "This is Jupiter's moon Europa." "It was a REALLY powerful gale."

"Does our book club really need this much secrecy?" "That sounds like a question a SPY would ask."
|
|
|
|Y
|
|A watery ocean with octopi looking out into the great unknown using telescopes. This is a reference to octopus's intelligence here on earth! It may also be a reference to (Spoilers!) a certain 2013 science-fiction film featuring Europa, if not a 1987 book. There's also a secret path leading to a book club, through the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The woman presenting herself as Annie is a reference to Annie Rauwerda, the creator of the popular social media accounts {{w|Depths of Wikipedia}}.
|-
|<code>b612</code>
|'''B-612'''
|
Probe: "Asteroid deflection mission to earth. The package is delivered. Commencing planetary threat neutralization."

Sign: "Welcome to B-612"
|(2610,3700)
|Y
|Y
|
|Y
|A reference to [[618: Asteroid|Asteroid]]. In a tragic turn of events, the Earth-bound asteroid being blown up is the home of {{w|The Little Prince|the little prince}}.
|-
|<code>dogplanet</code>
|'''Dog park planet'''
|
[Dog Park]

"I want more dogs!"

"Ball! Again!"

"I hope it lands soon."

"English adjective order means that you're "Clifford the Big Red Dog" but not "Clifford the Red Big Dog""

"You can't have too many dogs!"

|(1240, 11230)
|Y
|
|
|
|A planet covered in dogs, along with dog walkers, some fences, and a sign that reads "Dog Park". Two dogs watch a ball which is traveling in what appears to be a circular orbit around the planet. One dog is much larger than anything else on the planet. A hole is being dug by two dogs. Visible at the bottom, there is an empty space in the center of the planet in the shape of a dog bone.

Ponytail's explanation of adjective order was originally miswritten, saying "Clifford the Red Big Dog" twice.

The two Cueballs excited by all the dogs reference ''What If? 2'' Chapter 60: Dog Overload.
|-
| <code>goodhart</code>
|'''What If? 2 scenario planet'''
|
Cueball to White Hat: "The tower over there is the Vehicle Assembly Building, and then behind it is the Vehicle Disassembly Building."

Ponytail to Cueball: "You know how tires pollute the environment with rubber particles? Well, I've developed a solution."

"MMM SPIDERS HOMF HOMF"

Shooting star caption: "THE MORE YOU KNOW"
Sauropod: "Oh no!"

Person on uncontrolled helicopter: "AAAAAA"

Geyser: "Fwoosh!"
Cueball and Megan: "Oooh!"

Giant phone crushing city: "ALERT" "Giant phone crushing city" "Dismiss" "More"

Cueball with jetpack: "Wheeeee!"

Cueball to Megan: "Do you ever look up at the night sky and think, "Wow, I bet those little white dots taste ''delicious!''"

Neighbor: "Why is my house on fire ''again?!''"
Cueball: "Dunno"
Laser captioned: "Laser"

Person with Washington Monument: "Okay, let it drop!"
|(-13300,-3260)
|Y
|Y
|
| Y
| In aerospace, a Vehicle Assembly Building is where spacecraft are constructed. Randall Munroe whimsically refers to the launchpad as the Vehicle Disassembly Building.

Contains a figure in a cave saying "MMM SPIDERS HOMF NOMF", which refers to [[1268: Alternate Universe|Alternate Universe]] and may also be a reference to the [https://reallyreallyreallytrying.tumblr.com/post/40033025233/average-person-eats-3-spiders-a-year-factoid Spiders Georg] meme.

Collecting the small dot above the mountain peak will turn your ship into a flying person figure.

''What If? 2'' references include:
* A car preventing rubber pollution by being in a rubber ball, referencing Chapter 25: Tire Rubber
* People catching helicopters, one by the skid and another by the blade, referencing Chapter 2: Helicopter Ride (by the blade is reportedly more effective for downing the helicopter)
* Old Faithful, which appears in Chapter 8: Geyser
* A giant phone, presumably running on archaic {{w|vacuum tube}}s, from Chapter 36: Vacuum Tube Smartphone
* A jetpack takeoff appearing in Short Answer Section #1
* A T-Rex being weighted against an elephant, referencing Chapter 7: T. Rex Calories
* Igniting a house with a laser, referencing Chapter 37: Laser Umbrella
* Dropping the Washington Monument to propel a plane, referencing Chapter 18: Airliner Catapult
|-
|<code>sun</code>
|'''The Sun'''
| "The sun is governed by magnetohydrodynamics, or 'Magic' for short"

"My countertop!"

"This will make a good soup base"

"Can I touch it yet?" "No, be patient. It's still too hot. Give it another 20 or 30 billion years."

"It's okay. I'm wearing five layers of sunscreen."

TV Anchor: "The forecast for today is lots of sun"

"This should be enough sunscreen"
|(-14950, 12080)
|Y
|Y
|
|
|Difficult to escape from if you hit the core. The description of magnetohydrodynamics is a reference to [[1851: Magnetohydrodynamics]]. Throwing a countertop into the Sun is a reference to {{what if|89|What If? Tungsten Countertop}}. Both the five layers of sunscreen (effective against ultraviolet) and the ten-meter blob (still ineffective against heat) are references to ''What If? 2'' Chapter 62: Sunscreen. Waiting for it to cool down before touching it may reference Chapter 64: Walking on the Sun.
|-
|
|Sun's core
| Cueball: "The core of the sun may seem hot, but it only produces about as much energy per volume as a lizard" Megan: "Wow. So how many lizards are there?" Cueball: "No-one knows."
|
|Y
|
|
|
|Difficult to escape from. Can be escaped by rotating around the sun until an escape-like velocity could be reached. Comparing the sun's heat per volume to reptiles- in this case, lizards- is a reference to {{what if|148|What If? Eat the Sun}}.
|-
|<code>soupiter</code>
|'''Soupiter'''
|"I think it's chicken noodle? Hard to tell."
|(-800, -9040)
|Y
|
|
|
|A model of the solar system filled with soup out to the orbit of Jupiter. As commented by Cueball, noodle soup. Soupiter was the title of ''What If? 2'' Chapter 1, but it filled the Solar System ''out to'' Jupiter and became a black hole, rather than another fun planet.
|-
|<code>nojapan</code>
|'''Earth without Japan'''
|"Something is missing."
|(-7680, -5850)
|Y
|
|
|
|Earth, except it's missing Japan. Reference to ''What If? 2'' Chapter 50: Japan Runs an Errand.
|-
|<code>japanmoon</code>
|'''Just Japan'''
|
|(-5930, -5800)
|Y
|
|
|
|A moon with water surrounding... just Japan. In ''What If? 2'', this is a possibility for where Japan might go without intending to return.
|-
|<code>pigeons</code>
|'''A blob labeled "Pigeons"'''
|
|(-9020, -2490)
|Y
|
|
|
|A reference to Chapter 6 of ''What If? 2'', where it would take 1.6 x 10^25 pigeons to lift you and a chair up to the halfway point of Australia's Q1 skyscraper.
|-
|<code>enterprise</code>
|'''Starship Enterprise'''
|
|(2389, -60879)
|Y
|
|
|
|Star Trek reference: The Enterprise-C, 2344, commanded by Captain Garrett's. While defending a Klingon outpost, the weapons discharges resulted in the creation of a temporal rift, through which the badly damaged Enterprise drifted. In the comic, there is a large, invisible gravity distortion near the Enterprise-C.
|-
|<code>qwantz</code>
|'''Dinosaur planet'''
|"Welcome... to Jurassic Park."
| (20403,-49559)
|
|
|Y
|
|An homage to [https://www.qwantz.com/ Dinosaur Comics], a webcomic Randall has mentioned several times before. All the dinosaurs on the planet are black-and-white versions of the clip art dinosaurs in that comic. Also references the Jurassic Park movies, with CEO John Hammond welcoming paleontologists Dr. Sattler and Dr. Grant to the planet. The long grass depicted is a plot point in later films.
|-
|<code>roads</code>
|'''Cat blocking traffic flowing through portals'''
|
|
|Y?
|
|
|
|Roads in space may reference ''What If? 2'' Chapter 5: Cosmic Road Trip.
|-
|<code>outside</code>
|'''Edge of the Universe'''
|"Welcome, traveler!" (found inside the edge of the bubble universe)
| ( 6081, 26138 )
|
|Y
|
|
|It looks like a planet labeled "edge of the universe". Outside the universe, so inside the "edge of the universe" planet, is another universe, the bubble universe, whose outside is labeled "edge of the bubble universe". Hidden entrance is between 10 and 11 'o clock. It is a reference to [[Bubble Universes]].
|-
|<code>roads</code>
|'''A tree larger than the planet it's growing on'''
|
|
|
|Y
|
|
|May be a reference to [[2: Petit Trees (sketch)|Petit Trees]]. More probably, a reference to ''The Little Prince'', a French children's novel about a traveler from a distant asteroid. In the novel, baobab trees are a serious threat to the Prince's home asteroid, as they are so large that their roots would engulf the asteroid entirely. Randall has alluded to The Little Prince numerous times before, especially in what-if articles.
|-
|<code>outside</code>
|'''Milliways'''
|
| in code: <code>[0,-14500]</code> in game: <code>[0,29000]</code>
|
|
|Y
|Y
|A reference to Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe from ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. On one side of the planet, Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, and other characters gather on the patio of the Milliways restaurant; on the other side, the Sojourner rover examines a rock.
|-
|<code>greatattractor</code>
|'''The Great Attractor'''
|
|(-596048, 247952)
|
|Y
|
|
|Beret Guy stands on the surface of a large ball labeled "The Great Attractor". The gravity is extremely strong (over 200 times that of the black holes), leading to various bugs and collision issues. It's a reference to [[Great Attractor]], in which Beret Guy is gravitationally attracted to the Great Attractor more strongly than usual.
|-
|<code>present</code>
|'''Present'''
|
"I didn't do any of my Christmas shopping yet because I was too busy drawing tiny planets."

"I'm done with my shopping! I got everyone What if? 2"

"...You got me my own book?"

"Yeah! I figured that since you wrote it, it must be right up your alley."

"It does make a good gift, though. You can get it at xkcd.com/whatif2"

"I got you this present!"

"Is it an angry bobcat?"

"It might not be."
|in code: <code>[22820,-18920]</code> in game: <code>[45640,37840]</code>
|
|Y
|
|
|The XKCD cast react to giving each other What if 2? as a present. Black Hat gives Cueball a "gift" which he claims "might not be a bobcat", a reference to [[A-Minus-Minus]] A quarter of the planet was missing on the release day, but it's fixed now.
|-
|<code>maw1</code>, <code>maw2</code>, ... <code>maw14</code>
|'''Black hole cluster'''
|
|
|
|
|Y
|
|A cluster of black holes with extremely high gravitational strength, set to the maximum of 2048. Not particularly easy to land on with multiple conflicting gravitational fields, but once landed on, rather difficult to escape. Likely a reference to the [[wikia:w:c:starwars:Maw Cluster|Maw Cluster]] in Star Wars.
|-
|<code>remnant</code>
|'''Remnant'''
|"All right, that's close enough"
"Oh no"

{{w|Walkin' on the Sun|"So don't delay, act now, supplies are running out"}}

"In 5 billion years, the Sun will run out of fuel and suffer gigennial burnout."

"The immense gravity of the sun's remnant means that this is the tallest possible skyscraper."
|(19620, 3800)
|Y
|
|
|Y
|A white dwarf stellar remnant, with high gravity (making it difficult to escape, although it's possible to achieve escape velocity by flying sideways). Has various small landmarks, including a "skyscraper" and suspension bridge, using a penny for scale. There is a set of images of a rocket descending towards the planet, falling and then trying to escape by sledding. The band is performing Smash Mouth's "Walkin' on the Sun". Most of these are references to ''What If? 2'' Chapter 63: Walking on the Sun.
|-
|<code>steerswoman</code>
|'''Steerswoman Planet'''
|"As a Steerswoman, I have to answer any question anyone asks me, or I'm expelled from the order."
"What's one question that you would be unwilling to answer?"
"Oh no."

"Handle this artifact with great care. It contains a magical wizard's potion which the ancients called 'trinitrotoluene'"
|(-35070,-2500)
|
|
|
|Y
|A reference to the Steerswoman series of books by Rosemary Kirstein. Includes a number of references to the series, including a group of people observing a small object orbiting the planet.

Trinitrotoluene is better known as {{w|TNT}}, a powerful explosive.
|-
|<code>peeler</code>
|'''Peeler'''
|
|(-9270, 620)
|Y
|
|
|
|A reference to the question posed by ''What If? 2'' Chapter 13: Lose Weight the Slow and Incredibly Difficult Way. A large potato peeler is seen removing the earth's crust.
|}

===Ships===
{|class="wikitable sortable"
|-
! Name
! Description
! Location
! Filename
|-
|Default
|The starting ship.
|It is possible to change back to this ship by collecting a dot located within the Black Hole cluster
|ship2
|-
| Tintin
| Ship in the shape of the {{w|Destination Moon (comics)|moon rocket from Tintin}}
| On the starting planet; can be obtained by collecting the cannonball in orbit
| ship-tintin
|-
| Figure
|Stick figure
|On Goodhart, atop the mountain up which Sisyphus is pushing his boulder.
|ship-figure
|-
| Soccer ball
| Soccer ball shaped ship
| On Earth, between two figures playing ball
|ship-soccer
|-
|Alternative Ship
|Default ship with KSP-style parachutes on both sides of the ship. The parachutes seem to disappear on landing.
|Only available by using console to change Comic.ship = ship1
|ship1
|}

==Data and Maps==

View the data that is embedded in the comic on [[2712: Gravity/Data|this page]].

Maps created by the Community:
*https://bacontime.github.io/xkcd2712 | A zoomable map of the universe with markers for all planets, coins and with the option to highlight secret passages
*https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/zpe7bz/i_rendered_the_entire_what_if_2_universe_as_a/ | The whole universe rendered as one big image

==Hacks==
Various modes and hacks have been found or developed by the community, and can be activated by opening the browser console (F12, Ctrl-Shift-I or Cmd-Option-I to open your browser's developer tools, then choose the Console tab) and typing a command. 
'''Click to expand:''' 

<div class="mw-collapsible mw-collapsed leftAlign" style="width:100%">
 
*'''Speedhack:''' <code>ship.engines = "warp"</code> - Speed hacking, sets speed to 1.4x. set to "standard" to reset to normal speed
*'''Teleport to planet:''' <code>[Comic.voyager.pos.x, Comic.voyager.pos.y] = Comic.planetRects.'''''origin'''''.slice(0,2)</code> - teleport near a planet, in this example near earth. You'll still have to fly a bit towards the nearest planet to reach it. Replace '''''origin''''' with the ID of the planet you want to go to, from the table above.
*'''Teleport to coordinate:''' <code>[Comic.voyager.pos.x, Comic.voyager.pos.y] = '''''[0, -2000]'''''</code> - teleport to an exact coordinate. <code>[0, -2000]</code> happens to take you to the starting area.
*'''Improved radar:''' <code>Comic.wayfinderFarDistance = Infinity</code> - make the direction of all objects visible. This can be hard to understand though. reset with <code>Comic.wayfinderFarDistance = 10000</code>.
*'''Chaos Mode:''' <code>ship.engines="infinite improbability drive"</code> - Seems to randomly teleports the ship. A reference to its namesake in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
*'''Insta Death:''' <code>ship.shields = false</code> - Kill the player if they land on a planet, the code never sets it to false, so it seems to be always true.
*'''No Clip:''' <code>noclip = true</code> - Enables noclip.
*'''Select ship:''' <code>Comic.ship = "ship-tintin"</code> - Select ship (use filename from list of ships)
*'''Autorotate:''' <code>Comic.cameraRotation = false</code> - View does not rotate with ship
*'''Goggles:''' <code>ze.goggles()</code> - returns a warning: "they do nothing!". This is a reference to Hoverboard, where ''ze.goggles()'' would give you the ability to see false walls. Both of which are a reference to the Simpsons episode "Radioactive Man" (season 7, episode 2), where Rainier Wolfcastle, playing Radioactive Man, complains that his safety goggles do nothing against a deluge of acid, sounding like "Ze goggles, zey do nothing!" with his accent.
*'''Python:''' <code>python("import antigravity")</code> - reverses gravity, so the ship falls away from planets. A reference to [[353: Python]]. Reset with <code>Comic.gravityConstant = 100</code>.
*'''Light Mode''' <code>Comic.lightMode = true</code> - inverts the color of the comic. reset with <code>Comic.lightMode = false</code>
</div>
 

==Trivia==
The objects in the mini-universe of this browser game are all at fixed positions and do not interact through gravity, however, the ship controlled by the player is affected by gravity. While this makes it technically a relatively easy integration problem (of the position of the player ship forward in time), the integrator used seems to be a relatively simple one - and certainly not a symplectic one, because it does not conserve angular momentum. This can be seen when one manages to get into orbit around some object, e.g. the core of the sun. The orbit slowly decays over time.

The logic for extending the landing legs and landing is rather simple. A ship can (normally) land if it is facing away from the surface it collides with, and if its momentum is more-or-less directed towards the surface. Once landing is triggered, the ship will rotate to face directly away from the object exerting the most gravity on the player, regardless of how sloped the surface is. The only way to get into space again is to accelerate forwards, as neither turning nor accelerating backwards cancels the landed state. All of this can be abused to land on almost everything. To land on the underside of an object, simply point your ship away from the object and slowly accelerate backwards to counteract the force of gravity. Landing on the side of an object is more difficult, as ships cannot accelerate sideways. The first method is to accelerate backwards to launch yourself upwards and towards the object so that at the top of your arc you will collide with the object. Then, rotate your ship accordingly to land. Method two is to just repeatedly slam your back of your ship into the object until you land. Note that with any of these weird landing methods, your ship will turn to face away from the source of gravity and can clip into objects.

Executing <code>window.python("import antigravity")</code> or <code>python("import antigravity")</code> as Javascript on the page will reverse gravity, multiplying the gravity constant by -1.

Executing <code>window.ze.goggles()</code> or <code>ze.goggles()</code> as Javascript on the page will show a warning in the console: "<code>they do nothing!</code>"

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

Welcome!

To celebrate the world of what if? 2, here is your very own planet to explore!

Give someone the science question-and-answer book what if? 2 for Christmas:
xkcd.com/whatif2

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Book promotion]]
[[Category:Interactive comics]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Bobcats]]

Talk:2711: Optimal Bowling

2022-12-21T18:34:34Z

Dansiman:

Who cares about rules? I mean, I'm pretty sure your score won't count according to rules if you bowl from establishment uphill from bowling alley. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 05:36, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

If the ball has a diameter of 8.5 inches (multiplied by 2.54 and Pi makes about 67.8cm circumference) the rpm is also limited by the speed of light of the surface (reached at about 6.4x10^9rpm).

Please elaborate on how widespread the aforementioned destruction would be. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.38|172.71.154.38]] 10:50, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
: See What-If #1 (https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/) for reference. [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 11:01, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
:Really wide. Really, really wide.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.127|172.70.91.127]] 09:49, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Randall is clearly overestimating the mass range at which "equipment damage" would occur. Even 10^3 kilos is a //car//. I'm pretty sure that throwing a bowling ball the mass of a car would do a lot of equipment damage. I believe the 10^10 to 10^20 range should be "widespread destruction" (already a category above) and between that and the Schwarzchild mass should be something like "all life on Earth destroyed" because 10^20 kilos is plenty large enough for a global killer asteroid (admittedly its velocity would be much smaller... but still, I don't see how you have 1% of the Moon's mass in bowling ball without wiping out all life on Earth). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.175|172.70.85.175]] 11:20, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
: That's the joke :) The humour is in the understatement [[User:Xseo|Xseo]] ([[User talk:Xseo|talk]]) 11:51, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
::If the bowling ball is made from material on Earth having 1 % of the Moons mass concentrated in one city but without any speed should not have any wide impact on Earth. Probably alot for those in the city. the gravity changes locally, and surrounding area. But not massive destruction. If 1% of Moons mass was added to Earth I also do not think it would make much difference, as long as it was placed softly on Earth. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:26, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

For further edification: A 10^3 kg bowling ball traveling at 10^3 m/s is approximately equivalent to a shell fired from the main battery gun of a battleship. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.74|162.158.159.74]] 11:40, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
: Or maybe a cannonball...?[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 12:56, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

The aim graph is wrong, isn't it? I have never practiced bowling, but I am pretty sure I have seen videos explaining that you need to aim on the side, and the spin will bring the ball to strike the pin group with an angle, not head on. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.134.132|172.71.134.132]] 12:26, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
:It's not clear what the target is in the aim graph. If it's straight down the middle towards the headpin, you're right. But maybe it's aiming towards that optimal curve angle. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 14:50, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
:: on that note, what is assumed for the other 3 parameters as 1 is changed along the graph? 0? average? optimal? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.22.160|172.71.22.160]] 15:04, 15 December 2022 (UTC)Bumpf
:considering the whole graph covers everything up to and including facing away from the lane, it could be that the spike "at" 0 degrees encompasses a lot of fine grain control. After all being 5 degrees off center wouldn't show up much in a 360 degree span, but could make a decent difference on where the ball hits within a lane.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.96|172.70.134.96]] 15:59, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

:It really depends on what kind of spin you impart. Beginners often bowl with virtually no spin, in which case the ideal aim point would be straight on (to the pocket between pins 1 and 2 or between 1 and 3, not to the headpin itself). Experience and/or instruction will typically lead to bowlers imparting spin that causes the ball to curve in the direction opposite the throwing hand, i.e., curving left for a right-handed bowler, so the more spin you impart, the farther you want to aim to the same side as your throwing hand. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 18:33, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Is there an extra gag in the fact all the numbers are on a logarithmic scale, or is that just so he can get to the absurdist values? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.164|172.68.174.164]] 16:52, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I would like to know precisely how anybody scores a strike when their ball has 0 RPM!? Y'all playing on ice rinks!? --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.185|172.69.79.185]] 00:49, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
:I think "spin" is referring to horizontal spin (along the vertical axis), since "speed" is a separate graph. No spin then just means no curve. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.49|172.71.182.49]] 08:19, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

:Actually, bowling lanes are supposed to have a coating of oil on them, so you absolutely ''can'' throw a ball with no spin in ''any'' direction, and it will glide about ⅔ of the way down the lane before the very low amount of friction on the ball introduces any appreciable spin in the direction of travel. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 18:33, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

At the beginning it references "Ten Pin Bowling" by which I presume the author of that section was referring to "Duck Pin Bowling" which is the major form in the United States. There is also "Candle Pin Bowling" which is a different class of Ten Pin, but with very differently shaped pins and smaller balls without finger holes and mostly limited to small areas of the Northeast. Some of the physics is enough different that the curves would vary if they weren't so absurdly scaled already, in that sense the graphs are as applicable to Candle Pin as they are to Duck Pin. Of course, this is all in the extreme detail that's not really relevant to readers understanding, so I'm not sure if it needs to be explained. [[User:MAP|MAP]] ([[User talk:MAP|talk]]) 05:12, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
*No, I really meant {{w|ten-pin bowling}}. {{w|Duckpin bowling}} is a variation played regularly in only a few states, and {{w|candlepin bowling}} is yet another variation played in only a few states. But the kind of bowling most widely played in the U.S. is ten-pin bowling. See the respective Wikipedia articles linked in the preceding sentences. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.254.94|172.71.254.94]] 08:17, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm surprised Randall didn't include a graph on ball size effect on your chances ;-) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.129.138|162.158.129.138]] 09:51, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

The hovertext excludes setting up pins in a non-standard bowling area. (such as with kids bowling pins in your living room) One wonders if this is intentional.

I'm not sure I understand why the graph drops in the area of 'equipment damage'. Do you not get credit for a strike if the pins are all knocked down but the lane is destroyed? {{unsigned ip|172.70.206.92|16:40, 16 December 2022}}
:: No. According to USBC Rule 8(g), damage causing the lane to come out of compliance is treated as the ball encountering a foreign obstacle (i.e. the damaged surface fragments) and as such results in a dead ball, requiring the delivery to be rebowled; presumably in a different lane. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.16|172.69.22.16]] 10:32, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
:A ball too heavy to properly be rolled may damage equipment but not takes down any pins. —[[User:While False|While False]] ([[User:While False/explain xkcd museum|'''museum''']] | [[User talk:While False|talk]] | [[special:Contributions/While_False|contributions]] | [[special:Log/While_False|logs]] | [[Special:UserRights/While_False|rights]] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:While_False&printable=yes printable version] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:While_False&action=info page information] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:While_False what links there] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChangesLinked&days=30&from=&target=User%3AWhile_False related changes] | [https://www.google.com Google search] | current time: {{CURRENTTIME}}) 16:51, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
:...IRTA graph 2 (speed), where the "probability of strike" drops, right into the amorphous "equipment damage" getting reached, not the mass, where it quickly drops to (near-)zero and stays there until the similar cloud.
:But it is likely much the same reason. An increasingly infeasible speed is going to effect the result. And probably even if you get a direct front-pin hit (or an angle close enough to make for a useful version of a Strike under most circumstances), it conveys forward momentum enough to power the middle-pins straight though and cause a Split (not only not a Strike, but reduces the possibility of making your second shot a plausible Spare).
:And, by the time you make your parameters actually at a level to cause damage, it no longer has a good Strike Probability value, with the state of the equipment (then the vicinity!) taking over from the original plot. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.134|172.70.162.134]] 17:07, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
::What does IRTA mean?? I can't find a meaningful definition of it anywhere.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.194|108.162.237.194]] 22:17, 16 December 2022 (UTC)Bumpf
:::"I Read That As...". HTH, HAND. (( <= "Honour To Hastur, His Ascendence Nears Daily" ;) )) 23:22, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

It seems like another important data point is direction in relation to the pins. Best chance of success is when you're on the lane side of the pins. Anywhere else, you could still be aiming squarely at the pins, but the ball would have to go through solid objects to hit the pins: walls, machinery, ground... [[User:Mschmitt|Mschmitt]] ([[User talk:Mschmitt|talk]]) 19:46, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2711: Optimal Bowling

2022-12-21T18:33:07Z

Dansiman:

Who cares about rules? I mean, I'm pretty sure your score won't count according to rules if you bowl from establishment uphill from bowling alley. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 05:36, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

If the ball has a diameter of 8.5 inches (multiplied by 2.54 and Pi makes about 67.8cm circumference) the rpm is also limited by the speed of light of the surface (reached at about 6.4x10^9rpm).

Please elaborate on how widespread the aforementioned destruction would be. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.38|172.71.154.38]] 10:50, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
: See What-If #1 (https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/) for reference. [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 11:01, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
:Really wide. Really, really wide.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.127|172.70.91.127]] 09:49, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Randall is clearly overestimating the mass range at which "equipment damage" would occur. Even 10^3 kilos is a //car//. I'm pretty sure that throwing a bowling ball the mass of a car would do a lot of equipment damage. I believe the 10^10 to 10^20 range should be "widespread destruction" (already a category above) and between that and the Schwarzchild mass should be something like "all life on Earth destroyed" because 10^20 kilos is plenty large enough for a global killer asteroid (admittedly its velocity would be much smaller... but still, I don't see how you have 1% of the Moon's mass in bowling ball without wiping out all life on Earth). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.175|172.70.85.175]] 11:20, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
: That's the joke :) The humour is in the understatement [[User:Xseo|Xseo]] ([[User talk:Xseo|talk]]) 11:51, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
::If the bowling ball is made from material on Earth having 1 % of the Moons mass concentrated in one city but without any speed should not have any wide impact on Earth. Probably alot for those in the city. the gravity changes locally, and surrounding area. But not massive destruction. If 1% of Moons mass was added to Earth I also do not think it would make much difference, as long as it was placed softly on Earth. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:26, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

For further edification: A 10^3 kg bowling ball traveling at 10^3 m/s is approximately equivalent to a shell fired from the main battery gun of a battleship. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.74|162.158.159.74]] 11:40, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
: Or maybe a cannonball...?[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 12:56, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

The aim graph is wrong, isn't it? I have never practiced bowling, but I am pretty sure I have seen videos explaining that you need to aim on the side, and the spin will bring the ball to strike the pin group with an angle, not head on. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.134.132|172.71.134.132]] 12:26, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
:It's not clear what the target is in the aim graph. If it's straight down the middle towards the headpin, you're right. But maybe it's aiming towards that optimal curve angle. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 14:50, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
:: on that note, what is assumed for the other 3 parameters as 1 is changed along the graph? 0? average? optimal? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.22.160|172.71.22.160]] 15:04, 15 December 2022 (UTC)Bumpf
:considering the whole graph covers everything up to and including facing away from the lane, it could be that the spike "at" 0 degrees encompasses a lot of fine grain control. After all being 5 degrees off center wouldn't show up much in a 360 degree span, but could make a decent difference on where the ball hits within a lane.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.96|172.70.134.96]] 15:59, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
:It really depends on what kind of spin you impart. Beginners often bowl with virtually no spin, in which case the ideal aim point would be straight on (to the pocket between pins 1 and 2 or between 1 and 3, not to the headpin itself). Experience and/or instruction will typically lead to bowlers imparting spin that causes the ball to curve in the direction opposite the throwing hand, i.e., curving left for a right-handed bowler, so the more spin you impart, the farther you want to aim to the same side as your throwing hand. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 18:33, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

Is there an extra gag in the fact all the numbers are on a logarithmic scale, or is that just so he can get to the absurdist values? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.164|172.68.174.164]] 16:52, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I would like to know precisely how anybody scores a strike when their ball has 0 RPM!? Y'all playing on ice rinks!? --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.185|172.69.79.185]] 00:49, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
:I think "spin" is referring to horizontal spin (along the vertical axis), since "speed" is a separate graph. No spin then just means no curve. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.49|172.71.182.49]] 08:19, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
:Actually, bowling lanes are supposed to have a coating of oil on them, so you absolutely ''can'' throw a ball with no spin in ''any'' direction, and it will glide about ⅔ of the way down the lane before the very low amount of friction on the ball introduces any appreciable spin in the direction of travel. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 18:33, 21 December 2022 (UTC)

At the beginning it references "Ten Pin Bowling" by which I presume the author of that section was referring to "Duck Pin Bowling" which is the major form in the United States. There is also "Candle Pin Bowling" which is a different class of Ten Pin, but with very differently shaped pins and smaller balls without finger holes and mostly limited to small areas of the Northeast. Some of the physics is enough different that the curves would vary if they weren't so absurdly scaled already, in that sense the graphs are as applicable to Candle Pin as they are to Duck Pin. Of course, this is all in the extreme detail that's not really relevant to readers understanding, so I'm not sure if it needs to be explained. [[User:MAP|MAP]] ([[User talk:MAP|talk]]) 05:12, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
*No, I really meant {{w|ten-pin bowling}}. {{w|Duckpin bowling}} is a variation played regularly in only a few states, and {{w|candlepin bowling}} is yet another variation played in only a few states. But the kind of bowling most widely played in the U.S. is ten-pin bowling. See the respective Wikipedia articles linked in the preceding sentences. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.254.94|172.71.254.94]] 08:17, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm surprised Randall didn't include a graph on ball size effect on your chances ;-) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.129.138|162.158.129.138]] 09:51, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

The hovertext excludes setting up pins in a non-standard bowling area. (such as with kids bowling pins in your living room) One wonders if this is intentional.

I'm not sure I understand why the graph drops in the area of 'equipment damage'. Do you not get credit for a strike if the pins are all knocked down but the lane is destroyed? {{unsigned ip|172.70.206.92|16:40, 16 December 2022}}
:: No. According to USBC Rule 8(g), damage causing the lane to come out of compliance is treated as the ball encountering a foreign obstacle (i.e. the damaged surface fragments) and as such results in a dead ball, requiring the delivery to be rebowled; presumably in a different lane. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.16|172.69.22.16]] 10:32, 20 December 2022 (UTC)
:A ball too heavy to properly be rolled may damage equipment but not takes down any pins. —[[User:While False|While False]] ([[User:While False/explain xkcd museum|'''museum''']] | [[User talk:While False|talk]] | [[special:Contributions/While_False|contributions]] | [[special:Log/While_False|logs]] | [[Special:UserRights/While_False|rights]] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:While_False&printable=yes printable version] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User:While_False&action=info page information] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Special:WhatLinksHere/User:While_False what links there] | [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Special:RecentChangesLinked&days=30&from=&target=User%3AWhile_False related changes] | [https://www.google.com Google search] | current time: {{CURRENTTIME}}) 16:51, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
:...IRTA graph 2 (speed), where the "probability of strike" drops, right into the amorphous "equipment damage" getting reached, not the mass, where it quickly drops to (near-)zero and stays there until the similar cloud.
:But it is likely much the same reason. An increasingly infeasible speed is going to effect the result. And probably even if you get a direct front-pin hit (or an angle close enough to make for a useful version of a Strike under most circumstances), it conveys forward momentum enough to power the middle-pins straight though and cause a Split (not only not a Strike, but reduces the possibility of making your second shot a plausible Spare).
:And, by the time you make your parameters actually at a level to cause damage, it no longer has a good Strike Probability value, with the state of the equipment (then the vicinity!) taking over from the original plot. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.134|172.70.162.134]] 17:07, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
::What does IRTA mean?? I can't find a meaningful definition of it anywhere.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.194|108.162.237.194]] 22:17, 16 December 2022 (UTC)Bumpf
:::"I Read That As...". HTH, HAND. (( <= "Honour To Hastur, His Ascendence Nears Daily" ;) )) 23:22, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

It seems like another important data point is direction in relation to the pins. Best chance of success is when you're on the lane side of the pins. Anywhere else, you could still be aiming squarely at the pins, but the ball would have to go through solid objects to hit the pins: walls, machinery, ground... [[User:Mschmitt|Mschmitt]] ([[User talk:Mschmitt|talk]]) 19:46, 17 December 2022 (UTC)

2711: Optimal Bowling

2022-12-21T18:18:40Z

Dansiman: /* Explanation */ equipment damage will probably still happen with balls well under 22 billion pounds

{{comic
| number = 2711
| date = December 14, 2022
| title = Optimal Bowling
| image = optimal_bowling_2x.png
| imagesize = 306x670px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If you want to bowl a strike, the optimal place is almost certainly inside a bowling alley, although with a little luck any establishment uphill from one could also work.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SUPERMASSIVE BOWLING BALL - Need a full analysis of each graph (preferably with input from someone who understands bowling). Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This series of line graphs purports to advise players on how to improve their odds of achieving a strike in the sport of {{w|bowling}} – presumably {{w|ten-pin bowling}}, the most popular version of the sport in the United States. Among the parameters being measured — those being angle of throw, throwing speed, spinning speed, and weight of the ball — all four graphs encompass a range far larger than would be useful for reference by a bowler. The latter three in particular are on {{w|logarithmic scale}}s, leading up to values that are impossible for a human to achieve.{{Citation needed}}

The first line graph indicates that a bowler has the greatest chance of achieving a strike by aiming the ball directly at the pins, with the chance of a strike decreasing rapidly as the ball is aimed to the left or the right. The closer you aim to the pins, the more likely it is you hit them.{{Citation needed}} While a novice bowler may have difficulty achieving a 0° angle roll, their roll would still not come close to a -90° or 90° angle (due left or due right), much less a -180° or 180° angle (which, in either case, would be the opposite direction from the pins). Unlike with the other graphs, it is physically possible for a bowler to aim the ball at any angle, albeit not permissible under bowling rules; aiming the ball at an angle which deviates significantly from 0° would most likely cause the ball to end up in the gutter, while more violent or wildly aimed actions could create a risk of the ball going into one of the other lanes or missing the lanes entirely, which could annoy, anger, or even endanger other bowlers and employees of the bowling alley.

The second graph indicates that a bowler has the greatest chance of achieving a strike by throwing the ball about 5–20 m/s (11–45 mph, 18–72 kph), with the chance of a strike decreasing as the speed is increased or decreased. Most bowlers cannot throw more than 45 m/s (100 mph or 160 kph).{{Citation needed}} According to the graph, any throw faster than 100 m/s would cause equipment damage, and then widespread destruction several orders of magnitude later. (Possibly a reference to {{what if|1|Relativistic Baseball}}.) The graph ends at the {{w|speed of light}}, as it is physically impossible to throw anything faster.

The third graph concerns the rotational speed of the ball. The "ball explodes" section is a reference to one of [[Randall]]'s favorite equations, which is that an object cannot spin faster than the square root of its specific tensile strength. Spinning the ball any faster than this limit would cause the bowling ball to lose its structural integrity and explosively disintegrate. At particularly high speeds, the material of the ball would be flung outwards at a significant fraction of the speed of light, causing, as in the second graph, widespread destruction (possibly a reference to {{what if|92|One-Second Day}}.)

The fourth graph in this comic illustrates a bowler's probability of a strike with a ball whose mass ranges from 100 kg (2.2 pounds) to close to 1010 kg (over 22 billion pounds), and continues by indicating that balls even larger than that would cause "equipment damage" (up to 1020 kg) or the creation of a black hole (starting from around 1025 kg and up). In reality, a ball would be very likely to cause equipment damage at much lower masses than 1010 kg.{{Citation needed}} The last entry on the x-axis of this graph is 1040 kg, which is about 5 billion times the mass of the {{w|Sun}}. The {{w|United States Bowling Congress}} requires all bowling balls to weigh no more than 16 pounds (that is, a mass of no more than 7.257 kg), with no minimum weight. Hence, if the x-axis of the graph ran from, say, 0 to 8 kg, the graph might actually impart some useful information.

The title text continues the trend of providing unhelpful information by stating that the optimal place to stand when trying to bowl a strike is inside the bowling alley, but mentions the possibility of "any establishment uphill from one" working, with a little luck. This suggests the possibility of rolling the bowling ball downhill, in to the bowling alley and the pins.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[The header is surrounded on either side by small drawings of two bowling pins and a bowling ball.]
:Data for Optimal Bowling

:[Four line graphs are depicted. Each has a numbered one-word general description in a box at the top, an unlabeled y-axis, and a labeled x-axis. The relevant curve and other comments on each graph are in red.]

:1. Aim
:[The graph's x-axis is labeled from -180° to 180°.]
:Release Direction
:[The red curve on the graph is just above the x-axis at all points except for a steep peak around 0°. The red curve is labeled:]
:Relative Probability of Strike

:2. Speed
:[The graph's x-axis is labeled from 10-1 to 108, with the last point on the x-axis labeled "Speed of Light".]
:Ball Speed (m/s)
:[The red curve on the graph starts at the x-axis for 10-1, reaches its peak around 10, then declines and becomes a dashed line ending around three-quarters of the peak around 102. The remainder of the curve is replaced by two labels:]
:Equipment Damage [from approximately 102 to approximately 105]
:Widespread Destruction [from approximately 105 to the end of the axis]

:3. Spin
:[The graph's x-axis is labeled from 0 to 1012.]
:Spin (RPMs)
:[The red curve on the graph starts about halfway from its peak for 0, reaches its peak somewhere between 0 and 1,000, then declines and becomes a dashed line around 1,000, soon after which the remainder of the curve is replaced by two labels:]
:Ball Explodes [from approximately 10,000 to approximately 107.5]
:Widespread Destruction [from approximately 107.5 to the end of the axis]

:4. Weight
:[The graph's x-axis is labeled from 100 to 1040.]
:Ball Mass (kg)
:[The red curve on the graph starts just above the x-axis for 100, rises steeply and drops steeply ending just above the x-axis, then becoming a dashed line, all before reaching 1010. The remainder of the curve is replaced by two labels:]
:Equipment Damage [from approximately 109 to approximately 1022]
:Black Hole Created [from approximately 1025 to the end of the axis]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Sport]]

2711: Optimal Bowling

2022-12-21T18:14:34Z

Dansiman: /* Transcript */ added more details about the range of the two labels at the high ends of the latter 3 graphs

{{comic
| number = 2711
| date = December 14, 2022
| title = Optimal Bowling
| image = optimal_bowling_2x.png
| imagesize = 306x670px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = If you want to bowl a strike, the optimal place is almost certainly inside a bowling alley, although with a little luck any establishment uphill from one could also work.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SUPERMASSIVE BOWLING BALL - Need a full analysis of each graph (preferably with input from someone who understands bowling). Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This series of line graphs purports to advise players on how to improve their odds of achieving a strike in the sport of {{w|bowling}} – presumably {{w|ten-pin bowling}}, the most popular version of the sport in the United States. Among the parameters being measured — those being angle of throw, throwing speed, spinning speed, and weight of the ball — all four graphs encompass a range far larger than would be useful for reference by a bowler. The latter three in particular are on {{w|logarithmic scale}}s, leading up to values that are impossible for a human to achieve.{{Citation needed}}

The first line graph indicates that a bowler has the greatest chance of achieving a strike by aiming the ball directly at the pins, with the chance of a strike decreasing rapidly as the ball is aimed to the left or the right. The closer you aim to the pins, the more likely it is you hit them.{{Citation needed}} While a novice bowler may have difficulty achieving a 0° angle roll, their roll would still not come close to a -90° or 90° angle (due left or due right), much less a -180° or 180° angle (which, in either case, would be the opposite direction from the pins). Unlike with the other graphs, it is physically possible for a bowler to aim the ball at any angle, albeit not permissible under bowling rules; aiming the ball at an angle which deviates significantly from 0° would most likely cause the ball to end up in the gutter, while more violent or wildly aimed actions could create a risk of the ball going into one of the other lanes or missing the lanes entirely, which could annoy, anger, or even endanger other bowlers and employees of the bowling alley.

The second graph indicates that a bowler has the greatest chance of achieving a strike by throwing the ball about 5–20 m/s (11–45 mph, 18–72 kph), with the chance of a strike decreasing as the speed is increased or decreased. Most bowlers cannot throw more than 45 m/s (100 mph or 160 kph).{{Citation needed}} According to the graph, any throw faster than 100 m/s would cause equipment damage, and then widespread destruction several orders of magnitude later. (Possibly a reference to {{what if|1|Relativistic Baseball}}.) The graph ends at the {{w|speed of light}}, as it is physically impossible to throw anything faster.

The third graph concerns the rotational speed of the ball. The "ball explodes" section is a reference to one of [[Randall]]'s favorite equations, which is that an object cannot spin faster than the square root of its specific tensile strength. Spinning the ball any faster than this limit would cause the bowling ball to lose its structural integrity and explosively disintegrate. At particularly high speeds, the material of the ball would be flung outwards at a significant fraction of the speed of light, causing, as in the second graph, widespread destruction (possibly a reference to {{what if|92|One-Second Day}}.)

The fourth graph in this comic illustrates a bowler's probability of a strike with a ball whose mass ranges from 100 kg (2.2 pounds) to close to 1010 kg (over 22 billion pounds), and continues by indicating that balls even larger than that would cause "equipment damage" (up to 1020 kg) or the creation of a black hole (starting from around 1025 kg and up). The last entry on the x-axis of this graph is 1040 kg, which is about 5 billion times the mass of the {{w|Sun}}. The {{w|United States Bowling Congress}} requires all bowling balls to weigh no more than 16 pounds (that is, a mass of no more than 7.257 kg), with no minimum weight. Hence, if the x-axis of the graph ran from, say, 0 to 8 kg, the graph might actually impart some useful information.

The title text continues the trend of providing unhelpful information by stating that the optimal place to stand when trying to bowl a strike is inside the bowling alley, but mentions the possibility of "any establishment uphill from one" working, with a little luck. This suggests the possibility of rolling the bowling ball downhill, in to the bowling alley and the pins.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[The header is surrounded on either side by small drawings of two bowling pins and a bowling ball.]
:Data for Optimal Bowling

:[Four line graphs are depicted. Each has a numbered one-word general description in a box at the top, an unlabeled y-axis, and a labeled x-axis. The relevant curve and other comments on each graph are in red.]

:1. Aim
:[The graph's x-axis is labeled from -180° to 180°.]
:Release Direction
:[The red curve on the graph is just above the x-axis at all points except for a steep peak around 0°. The red curve is labeled:]
:Relative Probability of Strike

:2. Speed
:[The graph's x-axis is labeled from 10-1 to 108, with the last point on the x-axis labeled "Speed of Light".]
:Ball Speed (m/s)
:[The red curve on the graph starts at the x-axis for 10-1, reaches its peak around 10, then declines and becomes a dashed line ending around three-quarters of the peak around 102. The remainder of the curve is replaced by two labels:]
:Equipment Damage [from approximately 102 to approximately 105]
:Widespread Destruction [from approximately 105 to the end of the axis]

:3. Spin
:[The graph's x-axis is labeled from 0 to 1012.]
:Spin (RPMs)
:[The red curve on the graph starts about halfway from its peak for 0, reaches its peak somewhere between 0 and 1,000, then declines and becomes a dashed line around 1,000, soon after which the remainder of the curve is replaced by two labels:]
:Ball Explodes [from approximately 10,000 to approximately 107.5]
:Widespread Destruction [from approximately 107.5 to the end of the axis]

:4. Weight
:[The graph's x-axis is labeled from 100 to 1040.]
:Ball Mass (kg)
:[The red curve on the graph starts just above the x-axis for 100, rises steeply and drops steeply ending just above the x-axis, then becoming a dashed line, all before reaching 1010. The remainder of the curve is replaced by two labels:]
:Equipment Damage [from approximately 109 to approximately 1022]
:Black Hole Created [from approximately 1025 to the end of the axis]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Sport]]

Talk:2710: Hydropower Breakthrough

2022-12-13T22:24:41Z

Dansiman: comment

ChatGPT sez:
:The comic depicts Beret Guy, a character known for his expertise in science and engineering, standing on a podium and announcing that their hydroelectric dam has achieved a level of efficiency greater than one, producing more water than was fed into it. This is cause for celebration, as it indicates that the dam is functioning properly and efficiently. However, the second off-panel voice raises a question, suggesting that there may be more to the situation than initially thought.
:The title text adds further information by revealing that a hydroelectric dam is also known as a heavy water reactor. This suggests that the dam may not be operating in the traditional way, but rather may be using a different type of technology, such as nuclear power, to produce the excess water. This could raise concerns about safety and the potential risks associated with this type of technology.
Meh. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.45|172.69.33.45]] 03:44, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

It *is* possible. All Beret Guy has to do is use the electricity to run air conditioners, which will have one side condensing water from the atmosphere, ergo more water coming out than went in. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 04:00, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
:I think there's a conservation of energy violation here, but can't model the entire system. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.97|172.70.134.97]] 14:31, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Considering that he phrases it "more water than we fed into it" in the past tense, it might just be that there's a leak in the dam.
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.19|172.69.33.19]] 04:06, 13 December 2022 (UTC) mraction

More variation: "more water than *we* fed into it" ie not counting water from the river that feeds it, or rainfall. There's also the title text turn of phrase "heavy water reactor". "heavy" could refer to either the "water" (in the sense of gravity, or deuterium passing through), or the "reactor" (as in its mass) - [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.242|172.70.210.242]] 05:43, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

If Q is only barely >1 it could square the circle by converting atoms to oxygen by fusion in order to create water but the whole energy of the dam is used to make the fusion of a few oxygen atoms.

"Another member of audience, who is presumably familiar with regular physics, says "Wait.", because conservation of mass usually applies to water such that a dam should produce the same amount of water as that fed into it. That said, for a regular dam in a natural valley like the one shown in this comic, it is entirely normal for the dam to "produce" more water than input in the sense that in addition to water from upstream rivers, the dam will also output any "unofficial" inflow from direct rainfall above and from uncharted sources of groundwater below." 
I thought that the "Wait" comment was in relation to the fact that the announcement, although achieving something that was not achieved so far, is impractical. As the power plants are expected to produce energy, announcement that they produce additional water is irrelevant, and the "wait" comment indicated that they have missed the point. {{unsigned ip|172.68.50.204}}

Given the title of ''Hydropower Breakthrough'', is a possible interpretation that the dam is just about to fail? --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.110.171|172.68.110.171]] 10:35, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

My immediate thought was that he was using the generated electricity to ignite a hydrogen cell, but my immediate thoughts are always weird. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.97|172.70.134.97]] 14:31, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

I feel Randall's comic is strongly indicative of a fair degree of skepticism around recent fusion power hype (many existing ''fission'' reactors produce an energy surplus, but fail to meet their cost of operations)... Yet, the comic's explanation currently reads as a guileless exhortation of fusion's possibilities, making no mention of the many other challenges faced by fusion reactors, besides this critical ''first step'' of generating more power than required to sustain the reaction. The comic is clearly making light of the recent publication\marketing push, yet the explanation gives no sign that fusion power is anything but practical & just around the corner. Fusion still has many remaining challenges to overcome, before reaching practicality as an energy source even for military applications (moreso still, for public utility); wind & solar are the top KWh:$ producers & another 10 or 100 billion spent researching fusion are very unlikely to change that in the next couple decades. In fact, solar research returns more Watts per dollar. The comic should probably mention the other challenges involved in nuclear fusion power, besides raw output quantity?
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:00, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

I think the explanation is overthinking it. The joke is that there's a leak in the dam.
[[User:Nico31415926|An idiot]] ([[User talk:Nico31415926|talk]]) 16:37, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

The explanation says nothing about the effect this would have downriver from the dam. [[User:Inquirer|Inquirer]] ([[User talk:Inquirer|talk]]) 16:51, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

I wonder if the image depicts Vajont Dam, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajont_Dam, which was overtopped by a massive wave generated by a landslide--briefly outputting MUCH more water than was input. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.150.3|172.71.150.3]] 18:38, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Is not counting rain, equivalent to only counting the energy released by the laswers, not the energy fed into the lasers? [[User:Arachrah|Arachrah]] ([[User talk:Arachrah|talk]]) 20:47, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

Another possible reason for the "Wait." comment is that, if Beret Guy's dam is indeed magically creating water, then left unchecked it could, over time, lead to the sea levels rising higher than all land surface on Earth. This would indeed be a very unfortunate situation. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 22:24, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

2689: Fermat's First Theorem

2022-10-27T18:35:06Z

Dansiman: /* Explanation */ sans serif

{{comic
| number = 2689
| date = October 24, 2022
| title = Fermat's First Theorem
| image = fermats_first_theorem_2x.png
| imagesize = 280x248px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Mathematicians quickly determined that it spells ANT BNECN, an unusual theoretical dish which was not successfully cooked until Andrew Wiles made it for breakfast in the 1990s.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SPELLING ANT- Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This is a reference to {{w|Fermat's Last Theorem}}, humorously implying that {{w|Pierre de Fermat}} created a similar theorem as a child. Fermat's Last Theorem states that no three positive integers ''a'', ''b'', and ''c'' satisfy the equation ''a''''n''+''b''''n''=''c''''n'' for any integer value of ''n'' greater than 2. It is notable for having remained unproved for hundreds of years, despite many attempts to prove it. The Taniyama–Shimura conjecture (now known as the Modularity theorem) and the epsilon conjecture (now known as Ribet's theorem) together imply that Fermat's Last Theorem is true. The epsilon conjecture, proposed by Jean-Pierre Serre, was proved by Ken Ribet in 1986. {{w|Andrew Wiles}}, with assistance from his former student {{w|Richard Taylor (mathematician)|Richard Taylor}}, succeeded in proving a special case of the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture for semistable elliptical curves in 1995, which finally proved Fermat's Last Theorem. (The full Modularity theorem was subsequently proved by Wiles's former students Brian Conrad, Fred Diamond and Richard Taylor, and Christophe Breuil in 2001.)

The young Fermat here didn't try to prove the mathematical equation, but simply tried to read it as words, treating the "+" sign as a "t" so that "AN+" can be read as "ANT". His interpretation was quickly disproved because there's no "A" between "B" and "C", and no "O" between "C" and "N".

In the title text, the "words" are "ANT BNECN", treating the equals sign "=" as an "E"; while "=" doesn't look especially close to "E", it is similar in that it contains horizontal bars in a horizontally symmetrical arrangement (and of course, it can be read as "equals", which begins with "E"). If the letter E is written in sans-serif block text in white on a black background, the "negative space" between the Upper Bar, the Middle Bar and the Lower Bar of the E form a =. The comic shows a blackboard with white letters. The text then references Wiles, asserting that he proved this modified form of Fermat's First Theorem as well by cooking this "ant bnecn" (whatever "bnecn" is) as breakfast.

[[2492: Commonly Mispronounced Equations]] also contains equations pronounced as if they were words in the ordinary sense.

==Transcript==

:[A Hairy-like boy, representing Pierre de Fermat as a child, stands at a blackboard holding a piece of chalk. To his right is Miss Lenhart. The following text is somewhat crudely written on the blackboard:]
:AN + BN = CN
:SPELLS
:ANT BACON

:[Caption below the panel]:
:Fermat's ''First'' Theorem was quickly disproved

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]

2681: Archimedes Principle

2022-10-06T19:43:16Z

Dansiman: put something a little more interesting into the incomplete tag

{{comic
| number = 2681
| date = October 5, 2022
| title = Archimedes Principle
| image = archimedes_principle_2x.png
| imagesize = 312x379px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = "I've always wanted to run naked through town, but I don't want to get in trouble with the king or be remembered by history as a weirdo. I wonder how I could ... EUREKA!"
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a FLUID MECHANIC - Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{w|Archimedes' Principle}} is a well-known principle of fluid mechanics that states "Any object, totally or partially immersed in a fluid or liquid, is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid displaced by the object." {{w|Archimedes}} supposedly discovered it when he was getting into a bathtub and noticed how much water spilled out of the tub when he got into it. A corollary to this law is that the volume of an object can be determined by immersing it in liquid and determining how much the liquid is displaced. By weighing the object and dividing by the volume, the net density can be calculated.

Archimedes' insight led to the solution of a problem posed by king Hiero of Syracuse on how to assess the purity of an irregular golden votive crown; Hiero had given his goldsmith the pure gold to be used, and correctly suspected he had been cheated by the goldsmith removing gold and adding the same weight of much cheaper silver. Because Archimedes could determine the crown's density, and because gold is nearly twice as dense as silver, the purity of the crown could be determined.

The legend says that upon discovering that he could use this insight to solve the problem, he went running naked down the street shouting "{{w|Eureka (word)|Eureka}}!" (which is Greek for "I have found it!"). Note that Archimedes' Principle is about buoyancy, not volume measurement, so his Principle is not strictly required for the crown measurement story; however [https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/it-true-archimedes-formulated-his-famous-principle-based-observation-he-made-he-immersed-himself Archimedes did formulate] the Archimedes' Principle.

In the comic, Archimedes' insight doesn't just involve science, but plan for self-enrichment. Evidently, he plans to conceal a less valuable gold-plated or gold-alloy crown in the tub of liquid, and swap it for the real crown when measuring the volume. This implies that the king's crown was, in fact, pure gold, but Archimedes reported it to be alloyed with silver, in order to steal the gold crown for himself. This is claimed to be the first heist. While robberies have existed since property has existed{{Citation needed}}, a "heist" implies a complex plan, often based on deception and carefully planned operations, as is typical of {{w|heist films}}.

According to the title text, Archimedes's eureka moment wasn't when he discovered the buoyancy principle, but when he realized that he could use this discovery as a pretext for running naked through town, which is something he'd always wanted to do.

==Transcript==
:[Megan is leaning over a large bucket standing on the floor. She is resting one hand on the bucket and holding a crown in other other hand, which she has pulled partially up over the top of the water filled bucket. The water is now splashing over the edge of the bucket and dripping from the still partially immersed crown. Behind her back, with his back toward hers, Archimedes sits on a chair at a desk. He is depicted as a balding man with a white beard, and he is writing on a piece of paper, while a stack of papers lies in front of him.]
:Megan: Uh, Archimedes, why is there a bucket of water with a gold crown hidden in the bottom?
:Archimedes: It's mostly silver. Replica of the King's crown. He's coming here later, and I have a plan.

:[Caption beneath the panel:]
:Archimedes invents the heist.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category: Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category: Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category: Physics]]

Talk:2647: Capri Suns

2022-07-18T21:27:57Z

Dansiman:

The title text could also be referring to a catheter. I'm not sure which is funnier, but one is certainly grosser. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.115|172.70.85.115]] 18:15, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

That is defenitely a urine collection bag from the end of a catheter. The colour would make it doubly "mistakable" for a Capri-Sun with primary flavour/colour being orange. And urine (when collected and undiluted) is usually orange in colour. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.156.215|172.69.156.215]] 18:38, 18 July 2022 (UTC)
:Actually, Capri Sun drinks are generally completely colorless{{citation needed}}, since the pouches are opaque and the liquid is therefore never really seen, so there's no need for artificial coloring to be added (which is the only reason other similar drinks have a color to them). [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 21:27, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

I feel like these are more likely saline bags, given that 1) they've got a substantial amount of text on them, more consistent with saline bags' photos (https://www.google.com/search?q=saline+bag&tbm=isch) than with urine bags, which generally are blank. The tiny label text on the bag also seems to read saline -- would it be all right to change this to the preferred interpretation? [[User:Lorea|Lorea]] ([[User talk:Lorea|talk]]) 18:56, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Yeah, it's definitely an IV bag, not a urine bag. I would say to change it back. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.214.185|172.70.214.185]] 19:01, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2646: Minkowski Space

2022-07-18T21:19:10Z

Dansiman:

I still don't get it. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.163|172.69.33.163]] 03:06, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
: It's definitely not in the top ten all-time funniest ever, but there are probably more than a few academic physicists it got a grin out of. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.233|172.70.210.233]] 03:38, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
:: It's been a long time since I had any sort of dealing with Minkowski diagrams, but it definitely got me chuckling... I suppose you just have to appreciate Randall's particular slant. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.10|172.70.86.10]] 04:45, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

I don't think checking in to Hilbert's Hotel provides any comfort at all. After all you are required to pack up your belongings and move to a new room a possibly infinite number of times, thus leaving you no chance to get any sleep. [[User:MAP|MAP]] ([[User talk:MAP|talk]]) 05:46, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
:I agree, and removed "The fugitives of the first ship may enjoy a more comfortable getaway if they check into {{w|Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel|Hilbert's Hotel}}." because the hotel paradox has nothing to do with Hilbert space or anything else in the comic. I also think the subsection should be removed as misleading, but I'm waiting on someone to perhaps proofread it as maybe it's just poorly drafted. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.210.233|172.70.210.233]] 06:06, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
::If the pursuer knows what the prefered "move and insert" algorithm is (and 'arrival number(s)' used in that), then they can go ''immediately'' to the pursued's room, without bothering to book in themselves. So maybe that's a danger. But I'd rather be in a hotel room (that is an unknown one amongst a countably infinite whole) than in a quite obvious maybe-reachable tin can in the openness of space.
::(And any given insertion of new residents needs only a single move at a time, no matter how many nested infinities of arrivals/transports/etc. So moving every now and then isn't so onerous, so long as housekeeping has an infinite number of staff to clean and prepare each new room each time, which they probably can with evenly distributed live-in staff alone.)
::That said, it seems to be more the ubiquity of Hilbert in mathematical constructs than a direct link, him seemingly having an infinite number of fingers in an infinite number of infinite-pies. Probably no loss. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.137|162.158.159.137]] 12:14, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
:::An infinite housekeeping staff would either be able to so easily keep up with the rooms that the hotel could give them infinite paid vacation, or they'd all be working 24 hours a day and still getting farther and farther behind on the cleaning, depending on how the housekeeping staff's infinity is defined. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 21:19, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

On position alone, "Closer?" could be Voice 1, "Reference" is Voice 2 (both from the cockpit) and "Tell" a new voice (from further behind, passenger/engineer?). Which matches (and adds to) the original dialogue, with Voice 2 being the experienced captain reacting to the more worried copilot/operator next to him, etc. Except that Voice 2 says "On my mark" but then their presumed "Mark" emits elsewhere (to leave room for the actual click, which I'd expect Voice 1 to make). I have sympathy with Randall, if he actually wanted to put this story down in accurate visuals and yet ''positionally'' keep to conventions (having a top-down reading experience) he'd need to either wrap speech-lines around the nose of the craft or (...might need some intermediate frame showing some 'acrobatic' drawing...) have the evading craft flip inverted for the current second frame. Could get more complex than 'necessary', just to leave us with less of a voice-ID mystery where it probably matters very little in the long run. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.155|172.70.162.155]] 12:51, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Hilbert space sounds like the Infinite Probability Drive. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.16|108.162.238.16]] 13:46, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
: How long should I wait before getting worried about not returning to normality? [[User:15635176|15635176]] ([[User talk:15635176|talk]]) 15:30, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

At first I wondered if this was a reference to the Wolf 359 podcast ([https://wolf359.fm/]), which has a couple of characters named Minkowski and Hilbert. But it's likely that those names are references to these different kinds of space. [[User:ShifterCat|ShifterCat]] ([[User talk:ShifterCat|talk]]) 16:30, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
:that was what I thought too, then I had the same train of thought. At least I wasnt the only one lol [[Special:Contributions/172.69.71.30|172.69.71.30]] 03:28, 18 July 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2637: Roman Numerals

2022-06-28T18:47:45Z

Dansiman:

Immediately came to this site as soon as the comic popped up [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.43|172.70.114.43]] 22:43, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

For anyone wondering about the alt text: "CheCk out thIs InnoVatIVe strIng enCoDIng IVe been DeVeLopIng! It's VIrtuaCy perfeCt! ...hang on, what's a "virtuacy"?" Roman numerals are in uppercase. : [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.209|162.158.90.209]] 23:00, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
:I didn't see this comment, but I decoded it above. Feel free to update with your text, which includes the casing.
::It should be virtually - LL is 50 50, C is 100. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.121|172.70.110.121]] 00:37, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:By the way, this encoding is not that innovative: back when Roman numbers still meant something to people they were oftentimes hidden inside inscriptions on churches and monuments. If you ever stand in front of a church and wonder why certain letters in a sentence of an inscription are capitalized seemingly at random, this may be the reason. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.250.231|172.70.250.231]] 06:12, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::The (almost) exact encoding style of the alt text also was used before, e.g. in works of fiction - the first I can think of is Howard Taylor's Schlock Mercenary (used for AI names) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.242.45|172.70.242.45]] 13:41, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Relevant OEIS entry: https://oeis.org/A093788 [[Special:Contributions/162.158.129.117|162.158.129.117]] 23:43, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, I immediately got the comic, when I saw it, but (though I admire the effort put in) the explanation that seems to have been given is... overly long, IMO. I have no wish to invalidate all the thought put into it, but I really feel it says too much. Even by my standards (I'm often a waffler, as I 'improve' the accuracy and all-inclusiveness of such text). But don't want to rain on the existing author(s) parade, myself, so just sayin'... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.15|162.158.159.15]] 02:01, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:It's not overly long if someone spent the time writing it. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 02:10, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::I wondered too when first reading but like it geeky like that. --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.15|172.68.50.15]] 05:37, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:I've repeatedly had my edits, longer and shorter, reverted completely away. I've occasionally started the same to manage the experience. Your opinion is a breathe of fresh air but I wouldn't be worried about increases in quality that shorten the text. One can even leave concepts in by replacing them with links. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.241|172.70.110.241]] 12:01, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
::One thing you learn, when contributing to a wiki, is that you better be prepared to [https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-kill-your-darlings Kill Your Darlings], or have them killed by others. The many's the time I've written something I'm (eventually) quite pleased about, but it gets wiped out either by someone disagreeing with my particular form of self-satisfaction, or just completely rearranging things and either crashing through the carefully crafted copy or ruthlessly removing my radient repartee. But such is life...
:And often I feel that whoever got in there with the first footprint of explanation has ''not'' done it the way I would (surprisingly often I had the same idea, but obviously there are so many ways to do it... but here I may disagree entirely rather than "I'll happily work with it, then, however different it is...") and I might be ''very'' tempted to replace it wholesale. I don'5 think I have ever done so, but I might tweak it a ''lot'', in bits and pieces. It may still upset an OP who finds it bears little relationship to what they submitted, but I try never to do anything beyond the general hum of the community. Coward that I am. But it can happen to anyone. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.44|172.70.86.44]] 17:01, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
:I'm not sure about 'overly long', but as it stands it takes an awfully long time to come to the point. I'd be inclined to lift the basic explanation (roughly equating to the paragraph starting 'The joke is...') to the top, and only after that dive into the niceties of how each system works and what specifically is going on in the examples in the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.58|172.70.91.58]] 09:11, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I, in a rather faint and not really concerned way, object to the use of the phrase 'archaic' with regard to Roman Numerals. That would imply that they aren't in use at all, whereas when I look around me I can see a number of examples of current usage of Roman Numerals, e.g. Clock Faces, Chapter Numbering (some books) and the most important, the 'Manufacture Date' of a televisual programme from the BBC shown at the bottom of the end-credits. I believe a better phrase may be 'venerable' or 'historical' or 'unmodern'.
[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 07:46, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:I was also thinking that. But maybe qualified as "archaic but still commonly seen" (or similar), were my thoughts. I was wondering if it was a local perspective, though. 'Historical' US usage is rather sparser, I imagine, than the accumulation of Old World monuments/etc, from deeper back into the times it was more usual, so making only the "stylstically old" things predominantly use them (certain clock faces, etc). Meanwhile, even our programmes broadcast on the BBC still regularly close with the date in letters (anything from this year is "MMXXII") on the final frame/line of the credits, while our other broadcasters go with contemporary numerals in the same context. (I wonder, was 1999 "MIMIC", rather than "MCMXCIX"..? I think it was...) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.221|141.101.98.221]] 11:58, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::In mathematics, Roman numerals are archaic (obsolete, no longer in active use), common use is just for numbering (monarchs - themselves a somewhat archaic concept, generations of using the same name, events, sequels, volumes, paragraphs or appendices, etc.) or very occasionally for years (e.g. of construction) - "archaic" is correct even if you mean from the/an archaic period which may be the period when a civilization built the foundation for a later "classical" period ("Golden Age") (some exemptions may apply) or specifically the time of the Greek archaic era leading up to Classical (Hellenic) Greece, usually defined some time between about 800 and 480 BCE (they did (probably) originate from the Roman archaic period which overlaps with the Greek one) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.242.45|172.70.242.45]] 13:41, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::I recall that, while many 1999 films correctly used "MCMXCIX" at the end of their credit rolls, there was at least one that instead went with "MIM". Can't remember what it was, though. Also, MIMIC would be ''completely'' wrong, as that would equate to 1000 + (1000 - 1) + (100 - 1), or 2098. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 18:22, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

In case anyone is interested, I created a small encoder/decoder program (Python+PyQt): https://gist.github.com/MaurizioB/6bedeca961b5152006d030f56f817a2f [[User:Musicamanate|Musicamanate]] ([[User talk:Musicamanate|talk]]) 17:05, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

It's rather ironic that the hindu/arabic numerals contain zero, while roman numerals don't. By mixing a zero into the roman numerals things get confusing.

Ran500a100s 5ers1on of th1s en100o501ng 1s 4st 100o1000p50ete50y 50a100k1ng. He's ob6o5s50y forgotten that the 50etters 1, 5 and 10 are rea100y 4st 5ar1ants of 1 and 5 an500 999 not e11st 1n the 150ass99a50 50at1n a50phabet. "10" 1n part144ar 1s a Ger1000an99 1nno5at1on!
(sorry, 1 4st 100o445n't res1st, tho5gh 1 ''al1000ost'' 11sh 1 ha500 - b5t 1 500ef1n1te50y 50o5e the 10or500 999 - aka "did" 1n 5nen100o500e500 10r1t1ng) --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.250.185|172.70.250.185]] 15:35, 27 June 2022 (UTC)
:I figured out that you treated "U" as identical to "V", "J" as identical to "I", and "W" as identical to "X", but I'm not sure why you encoded "couldn't" as "100o445n't" - V and L are never used as subtractors, so it should be something more like "100o550500n't" or maybe "100o555n't". [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 18:47, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

"virtuammmmmly" is a perfectly cromulent word! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.82.3|172.70.82.3]] 18:23, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2637: Roman Numerals

2022-06-28T18:25:00Z

Dansiman: replaced some of my spaces with non-breaking ones so my math would stay on one line

Immediately came to this site as soon as the comic popped up [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.43|172.70.114.43]] 22:43, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

For anyone wondering about the alt text: "CheCk out thIs InnoVatIVe strIng enCoDIng IVe been DeVeLopIng! It's VIrtuaCy perfeCt! ...hang on, what's a "virtuacy"?" Roman numerals are in uppercase. : [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.209|162.158.90.209]] 23:00, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
:I didn't see this comment, but I decoded it above. Feel free to update with your text, which includes the casing.
::It should be virtually - LL is 50 50, C is 100. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.121|172.70.110.121]] 00:37, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:By the way, this encoding is not that innovative: back when Roman numbers still meant something to people they were oftentimes hidden inside inscriptions on churches and monuments. If you ever stand in front of a church and wonder why certain letters in a sentence of an inscription are capitalized seemingly at random, this may be the reason. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.250.231|172.70.250.231]] 06:12, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::The (almost) exact encoding style of the alt text also was used before, e.g. in works of fiction - the first I can think of is Howard Taylor's Schlock Mercenary (used for AI names) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.242.45|172.70.242.45]] 13:41, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Relevant OEIS entry: https://oeis.org/A093788 [[Special:Contributions/162.158.129.117|162.158.129.117]] 23:43, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, I immediately got the comic, when I saw it, but (though I admire the effort put in) the explanation that seems to have been given is... overly long, IMO. I have no wish to invalidate all the thought put into it, but I really feel it says too much. Even by my standards (I'm often a waffler, as I 'improve' the accuracy and all-inclusiveness of such text). But don't want to rain on the existing author(s) parade, myself, so just sayin'... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.15|162.158.159.15]] 02:01, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:It's not overly long if someone spent the time writing it. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 02:10, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::I wondered too when first reading but like it geeky like that. --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.15|172.68.50.15]] 05:37, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:I've repeatedly had my edits, longer and shorter, reverted completely away. I've occasionally started the same to manage the experience. Your opinion is a breathe of fresh air but I wouldn't be worried about increases in quality that shorten the text. One can even leave concepts in by replacing them with links. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.241|172.70.110.241]] 12:01, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
::One thing you learn, when contributing to a wiki, is that you better be prepared to [https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-kill-your-darlings Kill Your Darlings], or have them killed by others. The many's the time I've written something I'm (eventually) quite pleased about, but it gets wiped out either by someone disagreeing with my particular form of self-satisfaction, or just completely rearranging things and either crashing through the carefully crafted copy or ruthlessly removing my radient repartee. But such is life...
:And often I feel that whoever got in there with the first footprint of explanation has ''not'' done it the way I would (surprisingly often I had the same idea, but obviously there are so many ways to do it... but here I may disagree entirely rather than "I'll happily work with it, then, however different it is...") and I might be ''very'' tempted to replace it wholesale. I don'5 think I have ever done so, but I might tweak it a ''lot'', in bits and pieces. It may still upset an OP who finds it bears little relationship to what they submitted, but I try never to do anything beyond the general hum of the community. Coward that I am. But it can happen to anyone. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.44|172.70.86.44]] 17:01, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
:I'm not sure about 'overly long', but as it stands it takes an awfully long time to come to the point. I'd be inclined to lift the basic explanation (roughly equating to the paragraph starting 'The joke is...') to the top, and only after that dive into the niceties of how each system works and what specifically is going on in the examples in the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.58|172.70.91.58]] 09:11, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I, in a rather faint and not really concerned way, object to the use of the phrase 'archaic' with regard to Roman Numerals. That would imply that they aren't in use at all, whereas when I look around me I can see a number of examples of current usage of Roman Numerals, e.g. Clock Faces, Chapter Numbering (some books) and the most important, the 'Manufacture Date' of a televisual programme from the BBC shown at the bottom of the end-credits. I believe a better phrase may be 'venerable' or 'historical' or 'unmodern'.
[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 07:46, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:I was also thinking that. But maybe qualified as "archaic but still commonly seen" (or similar), were my thoughts. I was wondering if it was a local perspective, though. 'Historical' US usage is rather sparser, I imagine, than the accumulation of Old World monuments/etc, from deeper back into the times it was more usual, so making only the "stylstically old" things predominantly use them (certain clock faces, etc). Meanwhile, even our programmes broadcast on the BBC still regularly close with the date in letters (anything from this year is "MMXXII") on the final frame/line of the credits, while our other broadcasters go with contemporary numerals in the same context. (I wonder, was 1999 "MIMIC", rather than "MCMXCIX"..? I think it was...) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.221|141.101.98.221]] 11:58, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::In mathematics, Roman numerals are archaic (obsolete, no longer in active use), common use is just for numbering (monarchs - themselves a somewhat archaic concept, generations of using the same name, events, sequels, volumes, paragraphs or appendices, etc.) or very occasionally for years (e.g. of construction) - "archaic" is correct even if you mean from the/an archaic period which may be the period when a civilization built the foundation for a later "classical" period ("Golden Age") (some exemptions may apply) or specifically the time of the Greek archaic era leading up to Classical (Hellenic) Greece, usually defined some time between about 800 and 480 BCE (they did (probably) originate from the Roman archaic period which overlaps with the Greek one) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.242.45|172.70.242.45]] 13:41, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::I recall that, while many 1999 films correctly used "MCMXCIX" at the end of their credit rolls, there was at least one that instead went with "MIM". Can't remember what it was, though. Also, MIMIC would be ''completely'' wrong, as that would equate to 1000 + (1000 - 1) + (100 - 1), or 2098. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 18:22, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

In case anyone is interested, I created a small encoder/decoder program (Python+PyQt): https://gist.github.com/MaurizioB/6bedeca961b5152006d030f56f817a2f [[User:Musicamanate|Musicamanate]] ([[User talk:Musicamanate|talk]]) 17:05, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

It's rather ironic that the hindu/arabic numerals contain zero, while roman numerals don't. By mixing a zero into the roman numerals things get confusing.

Ran500a100s 5ers1on of th1s en100o501ng 1s 4st 100o1000p50ete50y 50a100k1ng. He's ob6o5s50y forgotten that the 50etters 1, 5 and 10 are rea100y 4st 5ar1ants of 1 and 5 an500 999 not e11st 1n the 150ass99a50 50at1n a50phabet. "10" 1n part144ar 1s a Ger1000an99 1nno5at1on!
(sorry, 1 4st 100o445n't res1st, tho5gh 1 ''al1000ost'' 11sh 1 ha500 - b5t 1 500ef1n1te50y 50o5e the 10or500 999 - aka "did" 1n 5nen100o500e500 10r1t1ng) --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.250.185|172.70.250.185]] 15:35, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

"virtuammmmmly" is a perfectly cromulent word! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.82.3|172.70.82.3]] 18:23, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2637: Roman Numerals

2022-06-28T18:22:38Z

Dansiman:

Immediately came to this site as soon as the comic popped up [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.43|172.70.114.43]] 22:43, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

For anyone wondering about the alt text: "CheCk out thIs InnoVatIVe strIng enCoDIng IVe been DeVeLopIng! It's VIrtuaCy perfeCt! ...hang on, what's a "virtuacy"?" Roman numerals are in uppercase. : [[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.209|162.158.90.209]] 23:00, 24 June 2022 (UTC)
:I didn't see this comment, but I decoded it above. Feel free to update with your text, which includes the casing.
::It should be virtually - LL is 50 50, C is 100. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.121|172.70.110.121]] 00:37, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:By the way, this encoding is not that innovative: back when Roman numbers still meant something to people they were oftentimes hidden inside inscriptions on churches and monuments. If you ever stand in front of a church and wonder why certain letters in a sentence of an inscription are capitalized seemingly at random, this may be the reason. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.250.231|172.70.250.231]] 06:12, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::The (almost) exact encoding style of the alt text also was used before, e.g. in works of fiction - the first I can think of is Howard Taylor's Schlock Mercenary (used for AI names) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.242.45|172.70.242.45]] 13:41, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

Relevant OEIS entry: https://oeis.org/A093788 [[Special:Contributions/162.158.129.117|162.158.129.117]] 23:43, 24 June 2022 (UTC)

Well, I immediately got the comic, when I saw it, but (though I admire the effort put in) the explanation that seems to have been given is... overly long, IMO. I have no wish to invalidate all the thought put into it, but I really feel it says too much. Even by my standards (I'm often a waffler, as I 'improve' the accuracy and all-inclusiveness of such text). But don't want to rain on the existing author(s) parade, myself, so just sayin'... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.15|162.158.159.15]] 02:01, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:It's not overly long if someone spent the time writing it. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 02:10, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::I wondered too when first reading but like it geeky like that. --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.15|172.68.50.15]] 05:37, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:I've repeatedly had my edits, longer and shorter, reverted completely away. I've occasionally started the same to manage the experience. Your opinion is a breathe of fresh air but I wouldn't be worried about increases in quality that shorten the text. One can even leave concepts in by replacing them with links. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.241|172.70.110.241]] 12:01, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
::One thing you learn, when contributing to a wiki, is that you better be prepared to [https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-does-it-mean-to-kill-your-darlings Kill Your Darlings], or have them killed by others. The many's the time I've written something I'm (eventually) quite pleased about, but it gets wiped out either by someone disagreeing with my particular form of self-satisfaction, or just completely rearranging things and either crashing through the carefully crafted copy or ruthlessly removing my radient repartee. But such is life...
:And often I feel that whoever got in there with the first footprint of explanation has ''not'' done it the way I would (surprisingly often I had the same idea, but obviously there are so many ways to do it... but here I may disagree entirely rather than "I'll happily work with it, then, however different it is...") and I might be ''very'' tempted to replace it wholesale. I don'5 think I have ever done so, but I might tweak it a ''lot'', in bits and pieces. It may still upset an OP who finds it bears little relationship to what they submitted, but I try never to do anything beyond the general hum of the community. Coward that I am. But it can happen to anyone. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.44|172.70.86.44]] 17:01, 26 June 2022 (UTC)
:I'm not sure about 'overly long', but as it stands it takes an awfully long time to come to the point. I'd be inclined to lift the basic explanation (roughly equating to the paragraph starting 'The joke is...') to the top, and only after that dive into the niceties of how each system works and what specifically is going on in the examples in the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.58|172.70.91.58]] 09:11, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I, in a rather faint and not really concerned way, object to the use of the phrase 'archaic' with regard to Roman Numerals. That would imply that they aren't in use at all, whereas when I look around me I can see a number of examples of current usage of Roman Numerals, e.g. Clock Faces, Chapter Numbering (some books) and the most important, the 'Manufacture Date' of a televisual programme from the BBC shown at the bottom of the end-credits. I believe a better phrase may be 'venerable' or 'historical' or 'unmodern'.
[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.5|172.70.162.5]] 07:46, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
:I was also thinking that. But maybe qualified as "archaic but still commonly seen" (or similar), were my thoughts. I was wondering if it was a local perspective, though. 'Historical' US usage is rather sparser, I imagine, than the accumulation of Old World monuments/etc, from deeper back into the times it was more usual, so making only the "stylstically old" things predominantly use them (certain clock faces, etc). Meanwhile, even our programmes broadcast on the BBC still regularly close with the date in letters (anything from this year is "MMXXII") on the final frame/line of the credits, while our other broadcasters go with contemporary numerals in the same context. (I wonder, was 1999 "MIMIC", rather than "MCMXCIX"..? I think it was...) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.221|141.101.98.221]] 11:58, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::In mathematics, Roman numerals are archaic (obsolete, no longer in active use), common use is just for numbering (monarchs - themselves a somewhat archaic concept, generations of using the same name, events, sequels, volumes, paragraphs or appendices, etc.) or very occasionally for years (e.g. of construction) - "archaic" is correct even if you mean from the/an archaic period which may be the period when a civilization built the foundation for a later "classical" period ("Golden Age") (some exemptions may apply) or specifically the time of the Greek archaic era leading up to Classical (Hellenic) Greece, usually defined some time between about 800 and 480 BCE (they did (probably) originate from the Roman archaic period which overlaps with the Greek one) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.242.45|172.70.242.45]] 13:41, 25 June 2022 (UTC)
::I recall that, while many 1999 films correctly used "MCMXCIX" at the end of their credit rolls, there was at least one that instead went with "MIM". Can't remember what it was, though. Also, MIMIC would be ''completely'' wrong, as that would equate to 1000 + (1000 - 1) + (100 - 1), or 2098. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 18:22, 28 June 2022 (UTC)

In case anyone is interested, I created a small encoder/decoder program (Python+PyQt): https://gist.github.com/MaurizioB/6bedeca961b5152006d030f56f817a2f [[User:Musicamanate|Musicamanate]] ([[User talk:Musicamanate|talk]]) 17:05, 25 June 2022 (UTC)

It's rather ironic that the hindu/arabic numerals contain zero, while roman numerals don't. By mixing a zero into the roman numerals things get confusing.

Ran500a100s 5ers1on of th1s en100o501ng 1s 4st 100o1000p50ete50y 50a100k1ng. He's ob6o5s50y forgotten that the 50etters 1, 5 and 10 are rea100y 4st 5ar1ants of 1 and 5 an500 999 not e11st 1n the 150ass99a50 50at1n a50phabet. "10" 1n part144ar 1s a Ger1000an99 1nno5at1on!
(sorry, 1 4st 100o445n't res1st, tho5gh 1 ''al1000ost'' 11sh 1 ha500 - b5t 1 500ef1n1te50y 50o5e the 10or500 999 - aka "did" 1n 5nen100o500e500 10r1t1ng) --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.250.185|172.70.250.185]] 15:35, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

"virtuammmmmly" is a perfectly cromulent word! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.82.3|172.70.82.3]] 18:23, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2636: What If? 2 Countdown

2022-06-23T21:49:55Z

Dansiman:

I've started the table to explain all the calendar entries. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 00:19, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Is the dog minutes calculation backwards? 777,777 dog minutes should be 777,777 x 7 human minutes, which is over 10 years. Randall seems to be dividing instead of multiplying. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 00:36, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
: No - 1 human year = 7 dog years; 1 dog year = 1/7 human year; 1 dog minute = 1/7 human minute; 777,777 dog minutes = 111,111 human minutes = 77 days, 3 hours, 51 minutes. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.173|172.70.90.173]] 11:32, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

First entry is probably mistake by Randall, e^pi would give value of 84.5 [[Special:Contributions/162.158.203.38|162.158.203.38]] 11:57, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
: That would be too high, though. 82.xxx days (from midnight at the start of launch day) would fall within the 83rd day before it (Jun 22). 84.5 would fall within the 85th (Jun 20). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.58|172.70.91.58]] 12:15, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Not sure if this is even worth mentioning, but he forgot the box around the date number in the top corner for August 29th. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.151|172.70.126.151]] 12:49, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Fyi, used wolfram alpha for most of the calculations. Seems to be able to handle anything I throw at it (nanocenturies, megaseconds, fortnights etc) [[User:Aditya95sriram|Aditya95sriram]] ([[User talk:Aditya95sriram|talk]]) 13:02, 23 June 2022 (UTC)aditya95sriram

Some of the calculations done forward (assuming what Randall means as a Generation, for example) might be best done as "to get this many days, what does Randall think ilhe is starting from. And see if 365, 365.25 or even 365.24 days per year works best, where relevent. Although I think in many cases you'll find the fractional differences negligable, when done right. (I'm also a bit surprised by the off-by-one errors in days-to-go and derived value, but I suspect that this is because of [[2585: Rounding|assymetric rounding effects]] that would be revealed by running the assumption backwards and seeing how different (or otherwise) the decimals actually are.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.211|172.70.85.211]] 13:32, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
: I would suggest using 365.2425 days per year, as that's consistent with current leap year conventions. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 21:49, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Not sure about most numbers but at least the order of magnitude seemed plausible. I can't quite find a proper way to read August 28th. π^π^π is roughly 80662.666 - if you read πcoseconds as "picoseconds", that's way less than a second. I have no idea what π * coseconds are supposed to be. π * c * o * seconds doesn't look much better - there are values associated with "c" (speed of light, for example) but I have no idea what "o" could be and certainly nothing that would make this a unit of time. Sixteen days would be 1,353,600,000,000,000,000 ps (picoseconds). π^π^π^π is three orders of magnitude too small, π^π^π^π^π is many orders of magnitude too big a number. Am I missing something (really obvious, maybe?) here? [[User:627235|627235]] ([[User talk:627235|talk]]) 14:52, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
: Exponent towers are by convention evaluated top-down, so pi^pi^pi should be read as pi^(pi^pi), which is ~1.34e18, which in picoseconds is ~15.51 days. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.71|172.70.114.71]] 15:21, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

10,000 minutes in Heaven is making out for a week. I was able to find a record for the longest kiss (58 hours, 35 minutes), but not the longest make-out session. I think Randall may be indulging in some nerdy wishfull thinking. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:27, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

When the beer song reached F(0) how would you 'take one down' from -1 bottles of beer? Would they be imaginary bottles of beer? (Joking) At F(n-1) would there be a matter/antimatter annihilation, where Randal could do a riff of What-If #1 and describe the play by play of the bartender turning into exotic forms of matter? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.68.88|172.69.68.88]] 15:58, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
:(Not ✓-1, it's just straight repeated subtraction, not a power function...) After so much beer, you probably think it a good idea (even necessary) to fill cans up and start to put them back up on the wall... Not sure you could sustain it, to the point of F(-99), but I think someone'd be more than ready to start the process when F(-1) is invoked, for any group of just a few likely individuals.. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.58|172.70.91.58]] 16:23, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
:This begs the question of what beer bottles are doing on a wall, rather than a shelf. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 16:26, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

We've finally filled in all the units columns in the table. Hopefully someone can automate turning that into a transacript. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 16:51, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Funfact: This comic mentions Cyndi Lauper by name, and it was published on her birthday… [[Special:Contributions/162.158.38.27|162.158.38.27]] 20:51, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Looks like someone's math is wrong on the explanation for July 18. I calculated using 4681 and 4763 years and they came out to 51.29 days and 52.19 days, respectively. So then I worked backwards and determined that Randall would actually have to be using a number closer to 5200 years to arrive at the correct result of 57 days. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 21:49, 23 June 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2631: Exercise Progression

2022-06-13T17:30:21Z

Dansiman:

The bot appeared to have not created the page, so I created it- apologies for any mishaps that I might've caused as a result. [[User:Char Latte49|Wielder of the Staple Gun]] ([[User talk:Char Latte49|talk]]) 02:42, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

I replaced the comic image, which was the 2x size image, with the correct size image from XKCD. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 03:07, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

;"[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2631:_Exercise_Progression&oldid=286674 CRAPDALIZER]"?
Witw is a crapdalizer? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.221|172.70.126.221]] 03:42, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
:I would guess WotSG couldn't think of what to put there and made up a silly nonsense word. It's also an anagram of "lizard caper"... Anyway, I've changed it to something a bit more relevant. (Not sure if I should have deleted the "Please change this comment" part as well.)[[Special:Contributions/172.70.174.159|172.70.174.159]] 05:02, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
::Sounds like more of the crapper syndrome we have had. It is confusing with such a comment here, when the word is removed from the explanation, so I have [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2631:_Exercise_Progression&oldid=286674 linked to a version] of the explanation with the word in place in the incomplete reason. Also please do not add sections in the talk page... --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:23, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
:It was by an anonomous user, I tried to remove it but they reverted and it wasn't major enough to warrant an edit war [[User:Char Latte49|Wielder of the Staple Gun]] ([[User talk:Char Latte49|talk]]) 17:33, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
Surprised that there was STILL no Explanation or Transcript at 2am EST, so since I fully understand this one (I feel like I wrote this comic, LOL!) I gave it a shot. '''I''' feel like they're complete and thorough, but last time my writing was completely replaced, LOL! [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:17, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

I was a nerd, but discovered exercise around 2012 and became very active. After the social media political stuff around 2013-2016, my curve shifted from the normal one to Randall's, incredibly hard to do things other than what's supported by the patterns. I don't think Randall's curve is natural, I think he was hit by the influence stuff too. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.121|172.70.110.121]] 11:05, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
:My solution has been that I didn't increase the difficulty. I found a level I was comfortable with and don't whine about it. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 12:55, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

I never heard of this "up to six months" rule of thumb. Can someone add a citation or remove it? --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.108|172.68.132.108]] 21:43, 11 June 2022 (UTC)
:I didn't write that one, someone added it since I wrote the explanation, but I've heard this Rule Of Thumb many times. The thing is, a "Rule Of Thumb" is as opposed to "written down" :) so it might be difficult to find a citation, except maybe if somebody can find an advice article. Also, it's something that comes from personal experience, it's quite a vague amount. It might be 5 months for this person and 7 for that person, and it depends on frequency and dedication. This is basically "In my experience, in general, on average, it takes 6 months". It SHOULD stay because it's standard advice from any trainer [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:47, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
::Besides which, anybody seeking for explainxkcd to be a purely and fully-cited authoriterical work (except on matters of xkcd itself, which is at least our primary role, if not entirely our accomplished one) is already over-optimistic. If I don't think that a trainer would ''normally'' mention the six-months thing (either at all or with a differing period more suited for their own purposes of boasting/milking-the-naive-client-for-as-much-as-possible), I still wouldn't argue with the mention of the principle as it stands... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.128|172.70.91.128]] 12:18, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

The X axis here is confusing. It's labeled 'workout difficulty' but the arrows are labeled 'progression in time.'
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.7|162.158.62.7]] 13:48, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
: That's because the graphs are illustrating how, over time, people move through a graph of complaint-intensity vs workout difficulty. As time goes on, people can take on increasingly more difficult workouts.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.70.39|172.69.70.39]] 14:14, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
:((Repeat of above, probably, as I hit an Edit Conflict from... <s>Someone who did not sign their addition...</s>...someone who belatedly signed it and thus ECed me ''again''! ;) )) It's a scattergraph of whine vs difficulty, with points joined to show (in leiu of a third axis) that a progression through the plane of those two variables is timelike. (It would be possible to have a loop on those two axes with a directional (or bi-directional/reversible) transit passage whichever way up or down either value.)
:Obviously, it has other interesting consequences/conclusions to it (''dt'' is never negatively correlated with ''dx'' on that graph, which is interesting, regardless of dt/dy or dx/dy having clear sub-zero stretches on at least one of the lines/ribbons), but there's no problem with time progressing (at an unknown rate, could still be non-linear while positive) alongside the labelled horizontal incrementing. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.177|172.70.85.177]] 14:15, 13 June 2022 (UTC)
::I feel like this fact could be included a bit more in the explanation. I, too, had some difficulty in processing the graph because, despite the phrase "over time" appearing within the graph, the horizontal axis is not, in fact, a time axis. Perhaps a description of how the graph might look if time ''were'' plotted on the x axis, or alternatively an explanation of why the use of such an axis would be problematic. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 17:30, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

The second paragraph doesn't look right - the arrow for 'people who are aggressively uninterested in and not accustomed to exercise' would start and stop in the top left corner - i.e. they would refuse to increase the difficulty of their exercise above 'barely any', and would complain a LOT about any they had to do. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.77|172.70.162.77]] 14:29, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

2631: Exercise Progression

2022-06-13T17:15:29Z

Dansiman: /* Explanation */ add note about ADHD time blindness; replace weird-sounding "fitter" with a different phrasing

{{comic
| number = 2631
| date = June 10, 2022
| title = Exercise Progression
| image = exercise progression.png
| titletext = They said after I got into a routine, I'd enjoy getting progressively stronger and stop whining so much about how hard exercise was. Well, they were half right!
}}

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

The arrows on the graph progress from left to right on the axis for "workout difficulty", showing that as people exercise (both normal people, and [[Randall]]), their bodies become stronger and able handle more difficult workouts.

The "normal progression over time" arrow in the graph shows how, when normal people unaccustomed to exercise first start out, it is perceived as unpleasant, for a variety of reasons: it takes time from the day, causes them to become sweaty and hot, feels particularly difficult, causes sore muscles, and so forth. Over time, as their body becomes accustomed to the exercise and can take on higher exercise loads, increasing muscle strength and endurance, so too does the brain, increasing both the amount of dopamine in the brain, and the number of dopamine receptors, as well as other positive changes. This means the "enjoyment" rewards from exercise begin to dominate, and exercise becomes a pleasant pastime, rather than a tedious, time-consuming and perhaps painful slog. This naturally causes a related reduction in whining.

The "my progression over time" arrow shows that while his body is becoming accustomed to the exercise just like any other, Randal whines linearly with the exercise difficulty. This could be because he is not neurochemically rewarded in the same way. Randall has implied he suffers from [[1106: ADD|ADD]], and this is a common symptom, caused by an excess of dopamine transporters in the brain carrying away the dopamine before it can activate the receptors.

It could also be because there are other downsides to exercising that he cares about more than the enjoyment; for example, if his exercise duration increases linearly with difficulty, and he values his time highly, that could cause a linear increase in whining with difficulty. Or since there is no scale for time on the graph, it could be that Randall has significantly misjudged the timescale of the effect (another common symptom of ADHD), and has only just begun his exercising journey: he may simply not realize that the neurological changes will take longer than the muscular ones, so he is seeing his muscles get stronger but has not yet reached the downturn in whining. Or he might just enjoy whining, and have more strength for lengthy whining sessions as his fitness increases.

Since the strip does not give information about the content of his whining, duration of exercise regimen, etc, the specific cause of the difference in whining behavior cannot be identified from the strip alone, though in the context of other strips, it is likely to be a real effect of neurodiversity.

The title text refers to the common response to such whining by people who '''are''' neurochemically rewarded by exercise, and have reached the bottom right of the graph: that getting stronger through an exercise routine will become its own reward, leading to a reduction in whining. Randal's statement that they were "half right", together with the graph, implies that he does indeed enjoy the rightward progression on the graph as he gets stronger and is able to take on increasingly difficult exercise; but that despite their reassurances, his whining has ramped up linearly with the exercise difficulty no matter how well-accustomed to it his body becomes.

To give an idea of the scale of time on the graph, a common rule of thumb is that while gains in strength can be seen within weeks (the stretch of the graph where both arrows rise), it can take months for a neurotypical mind (and its body) to acclimate to a serious change and begin to reap the rewards{{Actual citation needed}} (the falling area on the graph). Military boot camps are 6-13 weeks.

==Transcript==
:[A graph is shown with labelled axis, and arrows at the tip of each axis. There are two thick arrows plotted, both starting mid-range on the Y-axis, one of them goes upwards at a constant angle of about 40°. The other, which lies over the first mentioned where they overlap close to the Y-axis, first rises a bit before it bends downward and then after having increased its downward bend for a bit it changes to a continuously lower down bending rate and seemingly converges towards a constant y-value close to zero before the end of the graph. Both arrows tip ends at the end of the X-axis. Inside each arrow there is a label.]
:Y-axis: How much you whine and complain about doing exercise"
:X-axis: Workout difficulty
:Upwards arrow: My progression over time
:Downwards arrow: Normal progression over time

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Randall Munroe]]

2604: Frankenstein Captcha

2022-04-13T22:27:24Z

Dansiman: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 2604
| date = April 8, 2022
| title = Frankenstein Captcha
| image = frankenstein_captcha.png
| titletext = The distinction between a ship and a boat is a line drawn in water.
}}

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

This comic strip is a play on the meanings (and misunderstanding) of the name "Frankenstein". ''{{w|Frankenstein; or, the Modern Prometheus}}'' is an 1818 novel by Mary Shelley about a medical student named Victor Frankenstein who creates an artificial life-form. The man he creates once describes himself as "the Adam of [Frankenstein's] labour" in the book, and strictly speaking is properly known as "Frankenstein's ''monster''" (or perhaps "creation" or "son"), but is often erroneously called "Frankenstein" himself. This has been fertile ground for many, many debates about whether the monster could also properly be called "Frankenstein," either as a family name, an honorific, or simply because it's more recognizable and convenient. Randall has weighed in on the debate himself in a previous comic, [[1589: Frankenstein]].

The CAPTCHA shown in the comic instructs the user to select all tiles containing Frankenstein. The tiles include both a reanimated corpse resembling Frankenstein's monster and a scientist yelling, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qNeGSJaQ9Q "It's alive!”] who is clearly intended to be Victor Frankenstein. The problem arises from the contrast between various definitions of the term Frankenstein. Going just off the book's text, the monster has no name, so the correct answer to the CAPTCHA is just the left square of the third row. However, the character depicted there is clearly ''Henry'' Frankenstein from the famous {{w|Frankenstein (1931 film)|1931 film adaptation}} (Victor Frankenstein never said the words "it's alive!" in the book), and likewise the creature depicted is clearly inspired by {{w|Boris Karloff}}'s iconic portrayal in that film and its sequels. If the images are captured from that film, then all four of them could be said to be "containing (a subset of) ''Frankenstein'' (the 1931 film)".

CAPTCHAs serve a dual purpose: (1) to separate human users from bots by way of intelligent interaction, and (2) to train a neural network, hence the "correct answer" to image recognition CAPTCHAs is not known ahead of time and is merely based on the most commonly-chosen tiles. Users who frequently face CAPTCHAs are familiar with the dilemma of having to choose tiles that they know do not contain the requested object but which they know were likely chosen by previous users, making the CAPTCHA one part object-identification exercise and one part human-psychology exercise. Thus, a user who knows that "Frankenstein" refers only to the scientist would face this CAPTCHA with dread, uttering "Oh No" as they realize that they must select the tiles containing the monster, and possibly not even be allowed to select the tile containing the actual scientist Victor Frankenstein if they want to pass the CAPTCHA.

Alternatively, this comic strip with its "Oh No" caption could be referencing [[1897]], which would imply that someone had actually created a Frankenstein's monster which needs to be located as soon as possible.

Many of the other tiles appear to be pictures of entities that inspire similar pedantry. For example, there is a picture of a turtle (or possibly a tortoise, or a reference to the {{w|Voight-Kampff_machine|Voight-Kampff test}} used in a manner analogous to CAPTCHA), a ship (or possibly a boat), {{w|Link (The Legend of Zelda)|Link}} (the name given to each of several protagonists that appear across generations and timelines, throughout the ''{{w|Legend of Zelda}}'' video games, who many erroneously refer to as Zelda), a pond (or possibly a lake, a puddle, or a {{w|mirage}}), a squash or pumpkin (often subject to the ''fruit or vegetable'' debate), an erupting volcano (with lava, or is it magma?), and the planet Pluto (or is it a dwarf planet?). Other tiles seem to be inspired by images that commonly occur in actual captchas, like the STOP sign or the traffic light. However, at least some of these may also be meant to fall into the category of entities that inspire pedantry, for example: because traffic lights can also be called traffic signals or stoplights; many people thinking that the shape of a stop sign is a hexagon, not an octagon; and the definition of a sandwich (previously discussed as a “random semi-ironic obsession” in [[1835]]).

The title text refers to one of the methods used to distinguish a ship from a boat. When making a turn, if the vessel leans towards the inside of the turn circle then it is considered a boat, whereas if the vessel leans away from the turn circle it is considered a ship[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1iM2CG5QQ8]. Since the vessel generates a wake as it moves, checking whether it is a boat or a ship can be done while it is literally drawing a line on the water (the wake). The phrase "a line drawn in water" is also an idiom for something ephemeral. Ironically, it has persisted for a long time and dates back at least to the early Buddhists. (e.g. [https://suttacentral.net/an3.132/en/sujato?layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin| AN 3.132] & [https://suttacentral.net/an7.74/en/sujato?layout=plain&reference=none&notes=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin| AN 7.74]). The distinction between a ship and a boat is also unclear, having changed over time, with no universally accepted rule to {{w|Ship#Nomenclature|distinguish between the two}}. The title text is also a pun on the common idiom "drawing a line in the sand."

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

:[A captcha design, with a header and four rows of four pictures each below it. The header, in white lettering on a blue background, reads:]
:To continue, please click
:All squares containing
:Frankenstein

:[The pictures, all with gray backgrounds, are as follows, from left to right in each row:]

Row 1
* Tortoise (or turtle)
* Ship (or boat)
* Frankenstein's monster (often mistaken as Frankenstein) waking up from a slab, while lightning strikes.
::Monster: GRRR
* Link from Legend of Zelda series (often mistaken as Zelda)

Row 2
* Lake (or pond), possibly a mirage, in the Egyptian desert
* Megan (or Science Girl, or Danish--possibly a direct joke about this wiki)
* The top of a volcano spewing lava (or magma)
* Pumpkin (or squash [fruit vs vegetable])

Row 3
* A mad scientist (Victor Frankenstein) throwing a switch while lightning strikes outside
::Frankenstein: It's alive!
* Sandwich
* Stop sign
* Girl running away from Frankenstein's monster
::Girl: Monster!

Row 4
* Rocket (spaceship) flying by Pluto (planet or dwarf planet)
* Cueball and Ponytail standing next to each other
* Traffic light (also called a stoplight, possibly mistaken as stop sign?) (called a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light robot] in South Africa/Zimbabwe)
* Frankenstein's monster

:[Caption below the panel]:
:Oh no.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:CAPTCHA]]
[[Category:Frankenstein]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Food]]

2594: Consensus Time

2022-03-18T20:39:45Z

Dansiman: /* Explanation */ adding Target parameter to template since it's the current comic

{{comic
| number = 2594
| date = March 16, 2022
| title = Consensus Time
| image = consensus_time.png
| titletext = Now, you may argue that the varying hour lengths and feedback effects would cause chaos. To which I say, yeah, and I'm also curious to see how the weekday cycle interacts with it! So, you in?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SUNSHINE PROTECTION BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.|Target=2594: Consensus Time}}

{{w|Daylight Saving Time}}, a [[:Category:Daylight saving time|recurring theme]] on xkcd, has recently started (in the US, as of this comic's publication). At the time of transition, clocks in (most of) North America are turned an hour forward. People frequently complain about the switch into (and out of) DST, due to it having been invented for the no-longer-relevant cause of saving coal during wartime. One of many complaints is that it will still "feel" like 5 am at 6, or whatever other case. A few days before this comic went up, the United States Senate passed the {{w|Sunshine Protection Act}}, which would permanently abolish the biannual daylight savings adjustment, setting (what was) the local daylight savings time offset as the year-round time zone for all but a handful of states and territories rather than eliminating DST completely.
[[Randall]], jumping on this topic, proposes a system that allows everybody to say when it "feels" like 9 am, and then the median 9 am will become the real 9 am. This happens every day. As the title text points out, this would be chaotic and, to put it bluntly, awful.{{citation needed}}

Presumably the times indicated on this diagram are as the clocks in this time zone would indicate, as opposed to an "ordinary" reference time.

Although the hours between midnight and 9 am are labelled as "longer" (which we can assume means each would take longer than an hour of ordinary time to pass) the effect on the remaining hours is left unstated. If we assume that the remaining hours pass at the usual rate then this would suggest that midnight would come sooner or later than normal and hence the next vote would occur sooner or later respectively. This implies the time in this time zone could drift further than a day (or even multiple days) from existing time-zones which could be what is meant by "feedback", "chaos" and the effect on weekdays mentioned in the title text.

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

:Proposal: Consensus Time

:Every day, anyone in the time zone can press a button when they feel like it's 9 AM. The next day, clocks slow down or speed up to match the median choice from the previous day.

:[A diagram representing the hours of two days with tick marks, with some of the tick marks longer than others and/or in boldface, and some of them labeled as follows:]

:Midnight
:6AM
:9AM today
:Median
:Noon
:6PM
:Midnight
:6AM
:9AM tomorrow
:Noon
:6PM
:Midnight

:[A brace connects the period from the second "Midnight" to "9AM tomorrow". It is labeled:]
:Longer hours

:[A scatterplot of 57 dots appears below the hashmarks, indicating the distribution of when participants pushed the "9 AM" button. The most extreme outliers are at roughly 3AM and 9PM, but they most densely cluster around a vertical dotted line labelled "Median" at approximately 11:15AM, interrupted as it passes through the main mass of dots at roughly the position of the 29th plotted dot from either end.]

:[Megan, facing to the left, and Cueball, facing to the right, each hold a handheld device. The devices are too small to see clearly but are making sounds, implying that each of them has just pressed the "9 AM" button.]
:Beep
:Beep

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Daylight saving time]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

2594: Consensus Time

2022-03-18T20:36:52Z

Dansiman: /* Explanation */ restore incomplete tag that was removed in first edit

{{comic
| number = 2594
| date = March 16, 2022
| title = Consensus Time
| image = consensus_time.png
| titletext = Now, you may argue that the varying hour lengths and feedback effects would cause chaos. To which I say, yeah, and I'm also curious to see how the weekday cycle interacts with it! So, you in?
}}

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

{{w|Daylight Saving Time}}, a [[:Category:Daylight saving time|recurring theme]] on xkcd, has recently started (in the US, as of this comic's publication). At the time of transition, clocks in (most of) North America are turned an hour forward. People frequently complain about the switch into (and out of) DST, due to it having been invented for the no-longer-relevant cause of saving coal during wartime. One of many complaints is that it will still "feel" like 5 am at 6, or whatever other case. A few days before this comic went up, the United States Senate passed the {{w|Sunshine Protection Act}}, which would permanently abolish the biannual daylight savings adjustment, setting (what was) the local daylight savings time offset as the year-round time zone for all but a handful of states and territories rather than eliminating DST completely.
[[Randall]], jumping on this topic, proposes a system that allows everybody to say when it "feels" like 9 am, and then the median 9 am will become the real 9 am. This happens every day. As the title text points out, this would be chaotic and, to put it bluntly, awful.{{citation needed}}

Presumably the times indicated on this diagram are as the clocks in this time zone would indicate, as opposed to an "ordinary" reference time.

Although the hours between midnight and 9 am are labelled as "longer" (which we can assume means each would take longer than an hour of ordinary time to pass) the effect on the remaining hours is left unstated. If we assume that the remaining hours pass at the usual rate then this would suggest that midnight would come sooner or later than normal and hence the next vote would occur sooner or later respectively. This implies the time in this time zone could drift further than a day (or even multiple days) from existing time-zones which could be what is meant by "feedback", "chaos" and the effect on weekdays mentioned in the title text.

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

:Proposal: Consensus Time

:Every day, anyone in the time zone can press a button when they feel like it's 9 AM. The next day, clocks slow down or speed up to match the median choice from the previous day.

:[A diagram representing the hours of two days with tick marks, with some of the tick marks longer than others and/or in boldface, and some of them labeled as follows:]

:Midnight
:6AM
:9AM today
:Median
:Noon
:6PM
:Midnight
:6AM
:9AM tomorrow
:Noon
:6PM
:Midnight

:[A brace connects the period from the second "Midnight" to "9AM tomorrow". It is labeled:]
:Longer hours

:[A scatterplot of 57 dots appears below the hashmarks, indicating the distribution of when participants pushed the "9 AM" button. The most extreme outliers are at roughly 3AM and 9PM, but they most densely cluster around a vertical dotted line labelled "Median" at approximately 11:15AM, interrupted as it passes through the main mass of dots at roughly the position of the 29th plotted dot from either end.]

:[Megan, facing to the left, and Cueball, facing to the right, each hold a handheld device. The devices are too small to see clearly but are making sounds, implying that each of them has just pressed the "9 AM" button.]
:Beep
:Beep

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Daylight saving time]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

Talk:2583: Chorded Keyboard

2022-03-08T23:38:01Z

Dansiman:

Why is it H+<Left> rather than H+<Right>? [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 03:22, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
:Probably for the rhyme with "Shift" in the previous verse. In terms of practicality, though, I agree — <Right> would make more sense for a real keychord. {{unsigned ip|108.162.246.154}}
::A pity Shift and Left don't rhyme very well. But then neither do Chord and Word. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.79|172.70.85.79]] 03:41, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
::It works if you're from New Zealand. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.16|162.158.111.16]] 10:37, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
::Wow, I totally missed that {{w|near rhyme}}. It's not quite so bad if you sing it, though. [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 03:46, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
::: Eh, {{w|Tom Lehrer}}'s certainly done much worse slant rhymes. -- [[User:KarMann|KarMann]] ([[User talk:KarMann|talk]]) 03:55, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
::Sadly, too, there was the opportunity for "The other hand, hits H and ''lift.''" Alas. [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 04:23, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
::I don't know about other people, but I can reach H+<Left> on my keyboard with the index finger and pinky of my right hand, but H+<Right> requires thumb and pinky and doing something terribly awkward with my wrist. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.110.161|172.70.110.161]] 06:51, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
:::Interesting to note that in vi, the '''H''' key ''is'' left. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 23:38, 8 March 2022 (UTC)
::I added some (necessary?) additional contextualising of how it mirrors the original song, consider it a bridge/middle-eight, so that those who still don't quite get that bit of popular culture get a bit more of the idea than before.
::In the process I made an executive decision to comment about the rhyming (or not) along the way.
::...but I strayed into 'Cueball's Computer Problems' territory, and then noticed (sorry, missed it before diving in) that it's mentioned again (but chronologically before!) at the the end of the explanation. I'm not quite sure how to remove the redundancy. The lyrical trailing-off really needs to mention this, I feel, but removing repetitions from the other person's text will need extra thought too. If someone gets in there before I do and modifies either/both of the sections nicely then that'll be Ok, but I'll try to revisit it myself (and {{wiktionary|kill_one%27s_darlings|'kill my darlings'}} if necessary) if nobody else sees fit to in my stead. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.22|172.70.86.22]] 19:02, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
:presumably he programmed his keyboard to use chord-logic for ALL common words.... if he has ctrl, alt, shift, and at least two special function keys, such as win and alt-gr.... that's 2^5=32 possible signal combinations from function keys. if he uses the 8 direction keys on the numeric keypad, that's 32*8= 256 possibilities for command modifiers to each letter. So, in theory, he could program in an unique combination of key strokes that chooses between the 256 most common words that begin with each letter, totaling 6656 possible words that can by typed using chording. The combination that results in "hallelujah" just happens to be ctrl-shift-h-left. hopefully there's a graphical prompt which shows you the 8 possible current words to choose from, given the most recent combination of function keys and a given letter.
::I happen to know that if you're typing in Japanese phonetic letters using MS Word, there are actually so many homonym words which have different logographic symbols, and different meanings, but which all SOUND the same, and thus are phonetically TYPED the same, that's it actually NORMAL for Word to list a pop-up context menu with the top-8 word choices you might have just meant to enter, and require you to select one before continuing. and then it swaps out the correct logograph symbol for the phonetic symbols you just typed. I don't think it uses the numpad directional arrows to make the choice, but honestly, it would be a lot more user-friendly if it did.... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.170|162.158.74.170]] 05:38, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Is it steganography? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.41|108.162.237.41]] 04:03, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
:Stenography* [[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.239|198.41.242.239]] 19:09, 19 February 2022 (UTC)
:Stenotype actually (though they use special typing machines, but there's software to use any keyboard for stenotype). It's been a cornerstone of court reporting and live captioning for over a century, and it doesn't seem to be replaced anytime soon by transcription "AI", given how horrible it still is. I'm surprised it's not been mentioned in the article.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.190.113|162.158.190.113]] 12:53, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Ironically, having considerable knowledge of one of those covers of the song can lead to more confusion than less familiarity with any of them. My wife was recently moderately obsessed with Rufus Wainwright, including his cover of 'Hallelujah'. So when I read this comic, I didn't catch on until most of the way through what other Randall was up to. But when she read it, she caught on in the first line, and yet, didn't get the title text at all until I explained it to her (having compared some versions overnight before then), since that line isn't included in Rufus' version. No particular point here, just, well, 'Talk'. -- [[User:KarMann|KarMann]] ([[User talk:KarMann|talk]]) 01:55, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Has anyone recorded a cover with these lyrics yet? I had kind of assumed that would happen soon after this was posted. --[[User:Sensorfire|Sensorfire]] ([[User talk:Sensorfire|talk]]) 04:14, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

Kind of disappointed that the explanation isn't itself written in verse form after Hallelujah. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.73|172.70.85.73]] 11:51, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

;Control Shift H
https://defkey.com/what-means/ctrl-shift-h shows the shortcut action in 113 programs. (Who knew there was a website devoted to keyboard shortcuts?) In Firefox, it shows your history as soon has you hit the H. (I like to think that Randall uses good ol' open source Firefox.) Your history will show the current XKCD page first, of course, but that listing does not include the word "HALLELUJAH." The next keydown is interpreted as a separate keystroke. Nothing interesting happens with the 8 permutations of Ctrl-Shift (up or down) and (left arrow, numpad left, left tab, backspace). I was kinda hoping that Mozilla had secretly conspired to tweak this keystroke combination in the last update. In short, I have nothing to add to the explanation, but not for lack of trying. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.187|108.162.219.187]] 23:52, 19 February 2022 (UTC) (This is my first explainxkcd comment. I'll properly sign up before I comment again.)

We can add a javascript snippet that captures this keychord and shows "Hallelujah" on this website, right :P
[[Special:Contributions/172.70.188.81|172.70.188.81]] 04:46, 20 February 2022 (UTC)

It's interesting that the strip is "technically incorrect" in two ways, in order to make the song work. Firstly, while key-combos are often referred to as "chords", when they are user-configured they are typically called "macros" instead... but that would break the joke. Secondly, *Corded keyboards* (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard) are a very, very different thing to "perfectly normal keyboard hardware connected to a system where someone has set up macros". A corded keyboard would not typically have any of the keys described in the strip: they normally have a half-dozen keys or less, though some exist with two or three rows of about four keys.

Also, the current explanation is incorrect both in that macroing is in any way a thing of the past, and also that it is always application-level. Things like AutoHotKey (windows), BetterTouchTool (mac), AutoKey and IronAHK (Linux) etc permit system-level macroing, so that the key-combo can inject the word hallelujah into whichever application currently has keyboard focus, typos can be automatically fixed, etc. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.162|108.162.238.162]] 16:33, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

: To be clear, the closest thing that exists to any kind of special keyboard hardware required to support chords/macros is a keyboard with *N-key rollover* ({{w|Rollover (keyboard)}}) ... but this would not be required for the chord described in the strip. There are also gaming keyboards which have additional keys (eg Logitech's with extra "G keys") which allow you to map macros to those extra keys using custom keyboard driver software... but this is explicitly there to prevent you needing to chord to fire a macro. Neither of these are called "chorded keyboards", either. Fairly sure Randal would know all this and was just stretching facts to fit the joke. It'll be interesting to see if his alternative meaning for "chorded keyboard" becomes popular after this strip. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.187.130|162.158.187.130]] 16:58, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

'''Randall is not a millennial''' (& popularization of the interface hacks described, pre-dates millennials), so I have changed the first occurrence to read "gen-X", & corrected the past-tense phrasing farther down, to allow for modern usage (especially since alternative keyboards are ''more'' widely known\used now, than in the past). Randall has even done comics about this obnoxiously persistent & utility-reducing shift in terminology around "millennials": ''Not everyone born after the "baby boom" generation is a millennial!'' There were ''two'' generations in between. Regardless, common usage persistently shifts toward calling everyone since the Baby Boomers a "Millennial". In point of fact, many (or most?) of the social phenomena commonly associated with millenials, were well established over a decade before the millennium ("meme" image captions, digital nativism, eschewing traditional career & transportation modes, et cetera). Unfortunately, because the generation subsequent to the baby boom was comparatively so small, they are largely insignificant in terms of marketing & finance. (Gen-X also happen to have the lowest average income of any living generation.) Hence, everything post-BabyBoom tends to be attributed to "millennials", because ''actual'' millennials are the first generations since the baby boom, to comprise a population segment too large to be marginalized. 
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 21:21, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
:(Moreover:)
:In reality, increased interaction between age groups has largely erased any clear "generational" segmentation in behavior, rendering useless the entire concept of distinctly divided "generations": Age is an increasingly poor indicator of social set, & there is no globally consistent swell & decay cycle in birth rates, to produce meaningful points of demarcation between clusters. In other words, while age may ''sometimes'' still provide statistically useful clues toward an individual's behavior, there is no longer any clear dividing line between age groups over time. More practical & applicable to any year, are terms such as "teens" (13-19), "young adults" (<35), "middle aged", & "geriatric". Terms defining a "generation" by arbitrary decade rollovers, are increasingly disinformative & constitute poor set optimization.
:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 21:26, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
::Actually... Randall is a millennial. I won't revert the change as I find these generational categories silly and don't see how mentioning it adds anything to the (already very bloated) explanation but general consensus (i.e. wikipedia) is, that the term "Millennial" describes those born between 1981 and 1996. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennials Randall was born in 1984. [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 07:42, 22 February 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for fixing the phrase "millenial". I meant like the 80s and 90s but didn't know the right term. I'm surprised that the link to the section of the wikipedia showing open source hacker keyboards like the one randall depicts was changed back, dunno. It would be cool to link the image in from that article ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorded_keyboard#/media/File:Chording_Keyboard.png ) or any other image. The current wording of the article added some inclusion around GUI operating systems, maybe like Windows, which is great, but do they have the level of customisation that linux and emacs hackers enjoy? When you code it yourself you can make arbitrarily large chords. It's been a long time since I've customised a GUI OS, so I'm imagining things have changed and you could somehow set up a homebrew chorded keyboard on windows or osx as well nowadays. It's certainly gotten _harder_ on linux, where things are much less barebones than they used to be. Probably a software package for all the environments somewhere. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.99|172.70.114.99]] 22:37, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
:"I'm surprised that the link to the section of the wikipedia showing open source hacker keyboards like the one randall depicts was changed back"... I did that. The link was for Chorded Keyboards, not for specificall the open-source ones. The reader who follows your link would have to scroll up to find out what a chorded keyboard ''was'', and might be excused for imaginging there was no relevence to the next section down about Commercial Devices was also not being possibly referenced.
:As pointed out, it appears that it was a lyrical thing, and it was a standard keyboard with various settings, but at the point of the link it was explaining the principle of any chorded keyboard, like a Braille-writer...
:...which, incidentally, does ''not'' do "whole words" with a combination, except if set up that way through optional configuration, much as Cueball has done for his regular-seeming non-chorded keyboard, but is calling a "chord".
:(I personally often set up many shortcuts on my Windows machines. I seem to be able to use Ctrl-Shift-Alt-<character> with impunity to launch many programmes or other features, because there are virtually no situations in which my four-fingered-salute would be something another program with keyboard-focus is likely to misinterpret as being an instruction built into it. Generally that's a mnemonic <character> to the thing I want to speed-launch, but I have occasionally used a cursor. I must admit I have never tried to hack a two-meta-two-'normal' key thing, so not sure whether I need to use something a bit more interesting than inbuilt Windows functionality for that. Will check next time I'm back on an MS OS. And I've never used it to speed-type things, which would need me to call something I've written/appropriated that does a configurable buffer-dump.)
:Anyway, I see in you a fellow verbose individual, like I'm striving (and failing) not to be. Welcome, if you're new to this site! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.121|172.70.90.121]] 01:02, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Based on prior discussion about Milennial vs Generation-X, I think the solution is to go with the Xennial term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xennials. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.146.69|162.158.146.69]] 23:00, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
:I already thought, when the whole age-group-of-Randall was first brought up, that it was an unnecessary commentary. It's Cueball, who could be anybody of whatever age you want across a whole swathe of Gen-X and onwards. If I were of a mood to editorialise it to my own tastes I'd just put it back to "this is something that certain technically-minded people do" (to paraphrase, without looking up if it was written as hackers/geeks/whatever).
:The bit about "and his original audience" just confuses me. Is this a message to the far future when people like me (not a customised-keyboard user, but been reading xkcd almost from the beginning, so 'original' to that extent) are dead and gone? Or out virtually picketting the Metaverse so we no longer have time to keep up with CyberRandall 2.0's output anymore? It's a messy paragraph that seems to have something of an agenda behind it, not just simple explanation. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.113|172.70.85.113]] 00:05, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
:: Agree. [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 13:13, 25 February 2022 (UTC)

New user here, apologies if formatting inadequate - just wanted to observe that this is not the first XKCD to reference Cohen's secret chord song, it's also in the background of XKCD 1234 "Douglas Engelbart 1925-2013. Chris [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.85|162.158.159.85]] 08:09, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

This comic seems to have sparked a brief but bloody editing war over the efficiency of dvorak and qwerty, that issue raising its hoary head once more. It was funny to watch in real time. [[User:Requiscant|Requiscant]] ([[User talk:Requiscant|talk]]) 09:53, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

Does the title text imply that a fatal accident occured due to a misconfigured keyboard?
[[Special:Contributions/141.101.76.41|141.101.76.41]] 14:40, 2 March 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2581: Health Stats

2022-02-15T21:30:49Z

Dansiman:

Pretty late comic! [[User:GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e|GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e]] ([[User talk:GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e|talk]]) 06:26, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

It's positive feedback, not negative. Negative feedback is when the response is in the opposite direction of the stimulus (e.g. Cueball becoming more relaxed as blood pressure goes up) and often results in an equilibrium state. A vicious circle (positive feedback) by contrast is when the response ends up increasing the stimulus further, as is the case in this comic.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.233.29|162.158.233.29]] 11:19, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
https://www.albert.io/blog/positive-negative-feedback-loops-biology/#:~:text=Positive%20feedback%20occurs%20to%20increase,back%20to%20a%20stable%20state.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.221|172.70.126.221]] 11:50, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

I feel Cueball's pain. My employer has a checklist where we are supposed to take our temperature every day before coming to work. My problem is, I run hot. My "normal" temperature is usually 99.6ish, not 98.6ish. I knew this for years prior to the pandemic - I used to be a frequent blood donor and would get turned away about a third of the time because they won't take anyone above 99.5. Even though I knew all this, the paranoia induced by daily monitoring and a value that would be abnormal for others but totally typical for me got so bad that I don't do it. No one is enforcing it at the door - it is basically the honor system, and it was causing me more anxiety than actually solving anything. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.114.69|172.70.114.69]] 18:54, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
:A simple "solution" to this, at least for forehead thermometers, would be to engage in some moderate exercise shortly before having your temperature taken, such that you get some perspiration on your forehead. Then you can discontinue the exercise, and the sweat will evaporate soon afterwards, resulting in a particularly low skin temperature for a short while. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 21:30, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

I see this as mainly a joke on how consumer devices often provide more precision than is actually needed, and users don't understand that the extra precision is usually not significant. The only reason "normal" human temperature is 98.6F, to the 10th of a degree, is because average temperature was first measured in Celsius then this was convered to Fahrenheit. But 37C was originally rounded off from an average, so it wasn't precise enough to warrant using an extra decimal place in the conversion. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 19:23, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
:Also a saultory lesson in the misunderstanding of the relationship (i.e. that there really isnt one, at least reliably) between precision and accuracy. Without proper calibration, even moment-to-moment consistency of measurement can be sullied by it being (consistently) wrong, or wrongly read out. Adding more decimals may seem to give a more persuasive estimate, but doesn't do a thing to stop inaccuracy. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.225|141.101.98.225]] 19:51, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

I think we can assume that customer devices have a significant inaccuracy but have build-in time consistency to increase the trust in the device. Thus, I don't think the inconsistency between two measurements can explain the variation. Since the hand is moved around on the comic strip positioning is a more likely cause. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.38.243|172.70.38.243]] 20:10, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

Talk:2561: Moonfall

2022-01-21T22:33:20Z

Dansiman:

Well, it did fund 8 out of 10 seasons of Mythbusters[[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 19:11, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
:What is "it"? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 21:58, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
::Explosions, probably. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:15, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
:: Yes, 'novel ideas ABOUT cool explosions' (alt text) [[User:Seebert|Seebert]] ([[User talk:Seebert|talk]]) 14:58, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

This synopsis makes me eager to never ever see this tripe, which the comic failed to achieve. Thank you, explainxkcd, for saving me time and money.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.18|162.158.107.18]] 20:03, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
:It doesn't sound much different from most other action blockbusters, like the "Terminator" franchise, or "Armageddon". And it will probably be better than the "Transformer" movies. As Cueball and Megan indicate, it's mostly about watching lots of things blow up, not about plausibility. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 21:57, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
:”…only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is.” – Wait, what, the moon isn’t cheese?? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.183.164|162.158.183.164]] 22:32, 29 December 2021 (UTC)

Only thing less likely than Moon suddenly getting on collision course is that we will be able to prevent the collision. Wait. I see he lowered the bar even more with only THREE people somehow fixing it without help of rest of NASA ... how do they even get to space without help? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:14, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
:"[O]ne astronaut from her past, Brian Harper and a conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman" is grammatically confusing. That could be either three people (assuming it's an omitted Oxford comma) or one person (an astronaut named Brian Harper who spreads conspiracy theories under the pseudonym "K.C. Houseman"). It needs at least one more comma if "Brian Harper" is supposed to be an appositive [[Special:Contributions/162.158.78.77|162.158.78.77]] 06:06, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
:: I believe it's a quote. So the grammatical errors are on the movie producers. ---- {{unsigned ip|172.68.110.133}}
::: On Wikipedia, now linked from the Moonfall link, it states two astronauts and a conspiracy person --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:42, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
:::: This point is utterly irrelevant to this comic!

To be fair, Shakespeare not writing Shakespeare is NOT the idea of Emmerich, and the idea was so seriously discussed that it has a Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_authorship_question [[Special:Contributions/141.101.77.64|141.101.77.64]] 09:34, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
:Agree I have deleted this and just mentioned three of his most catastrophic films. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:42, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
:Plenty of Emmerich's listed disaster films use stupid ideas other people thought of—he's hardly the first person to have said 2012 would be the End Of the World. But fair enough; I just thought it was an amusing aside. [[User:GreatWyrmGold|GreatWyrmGold]] ([[User talk:GreatWyrmGold|talk]]) 20:41, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

I think Ronald is an amateur :-D. The Danish director Lars von Trier managed, in ''{{w|Melancholia (2011 film)|Melancholia}}'' to let the Earth hit into a planet large enough that Earth could have been it's moon. Of course his budget was rater smaller so the explosions are not so cool. But the damage was total obliteration, and no rescue team, hence the title matches the film --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:42, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
:There was also {{w|When Worlds Collide (1951 film)}} (imagine what Ronald/Bay would have done, with the full power DreamWorks rendering, or similar). Though (as everyone knows) when the Moon leaves orbit it {{w|Space: 1999|goes ''away'' from the Earth}} at a strangely plot-friendly velocity that lets them both pass many extrastellar worlds (roughly one a week!) and yet still visit and return from them a convenient number of times while they are somehow still in range of their limited spacecraft... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.22|172.70.86.22]] 15:33, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

This sounds a bit like the plot of [[wikipedia:Majora's Mask|Majora's Mask]]. --[[User:WhiteDragon|WhiteDragon]] ([[User talk:WhiteDragon|talk]]) 13:50, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

For some reason 2562 is not on here; i thought a bot automatically added new xkcd posts but for some reason 2562 wasn't added and its been a few hours [[Special:Contributions/172.70.82.53|172.70.82.53]] 17:00, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Moonfall sounds like it should be the sequel to {{w|Skyfall}}. [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 02:50, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

Why does the mass of the moon have two leading 0, but is in scientific notation. Shouldn't it just be ^22 instead of ^24

:Fixed! [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 22:33, 21 January 2022 (UTC)

2561: Moonfall

2022-01-21T22:32:54Z

Dansiman: /* Explanation */ replaced unicode superscript numerals with ordinary numerals in superscript markup for better accessibility; converted moon's mass into proper notation and corrected value

{{comic
| number = 2561
| date = December 29, 2021
| title = Moonfall
| image = moonfall.png
| titletext = Novel ideas and cool explosions are both good, but what I really want from a movie is novel ideas ABOUT cool explosions.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by COOL EXPLOSIONS. - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[[Megan]] asks [[Cueball]] if he is excited for the release of the movie ''Moonfall''.

''{{w|Moonfall (film)|Moonfall}}'' is an upcoming 2022 movie scheduled for release in February. Its director, {{w|Roland Emmerich}}, is known for blowing up things in his movies (see for instance [https://www.gq.com/video/watch/explosions-the-roland-emmerich-supercut the Roland Emmerich Supercut]), as well as for factual inaccuracies in his work (mainly the scientific implausibility of his many disaster movies like ''{{w|Independence Day (1996 film)|Independence Day}}'', ''{{w|The Day After Tomorrow}}'' and ''{{w|2012 (film)|2012}}'').

The [[#Plot|plot]] of ''Moonfall'' is scientifically preposterous, making it potentially "cringe-worthy" for someone who enjoys "hard" science fiction, like Cueball.

For the moon to fall from the sky, it would have to stop orbiting. Most forces applied it to will simply change the way in which it is orbiting, making the orbit more elliptical, larger or smaller. To stop it from orbiting entirely, a 'braking' force would need to be applied in the opposite direction of its travel, to halt it.

The moon's mass is about 7.34767×1022 kg and its speed about 1.022 km/s, so the energy needed to stop it is ½''mv''2 or about 3.8364×1028 joules. That's about the energy of 1 trillion large nuclear explosions, centered on the leading-most point of the moon's surface. A precisely-oriented stellar body could strike the moon to do this, like a billiard ball colliding with tons of interstellar moon shrapnel instead of dust.

Less counteractive energy could make the Moon change orbit to one with a {{w|perigee}} below the surface of the Earth, close enough to (partially) enter the atmosphere or merely bring it down beneath the applicable {{w|Roche limit}}. These scenarios would be only technically less catastrophic, and whether the Moon fragments from the initially applied force, the stresses of its nearest (non-contact) distance to Earth or actually survives largely intact until there is a more direct physical interaction, the precise degree of the effect might be practically academic.

Cueball explains to Megan that he usually likes it when stories are based on good science. Maybe only bending it a bit to create the story, to expand our ideas of what is possible. But then he goes on to state that he supports giving Roland Emmerich as much money as he wants, to make cool spaceship noises and smash moons into things. In the movie it is only a moon (the {{w|Moon}}, presumably, see the [[#Plot|plot]] below). But in general Roland often uses huge explosions in his movies, something also previously said about other similarly-styled directors like [[748: Worst-Case Scenario|Michael Bay]].

Megan sums the situation for Cueball up, stating that he is excited to expand our ideas of how much stuff can explode at once.

In the title text Cueball continues by explaining that while novel ideas and explosions are good, what he really want from a movie is novel ideas about cool explosions. So new ways to explode things, or ideas about exploding more things at once. Or both.

In [[1536: The Martian]] a similar discussion of an upcoming movie is made for {{w|The Martian (film)|The Martian}}. But in that case it is the scientific accuracy that is the subject, and the lack of huge explosion that makes it hard to believe it could become a big budget movie! It is very rare that Randall makes a movie review like in those two comics.

===Plot===
'''Spoiler Alert'''
:In Moonfall, a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler is convinced she has the key to saving us all - but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper[,] and a conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman believe her. These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is. —Centropolis Entertainment, [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5834426/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl quoted at IMDB]

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan walking to the right]
:Megan: Are you excited for ''Moonfall''?
:Megan: Or cringing?
:Cueball: Well...

:[Closeup on Cueball]
:Cueball: I like when stories are grounded in good science because it's exciting to expand our ideas of what's possible.

:[Zoomed back out to Cueball and Megan walking to the right. Cueball has his palms raised]
:Cueball: But I also support giving Roland Emmerich as much money as he wants to make cool spaceship noises and smash moons into things.
:Megan: Excited to expand our ideas of how much stuff can explode at once.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category: Fiction]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category: Comics featuring real people]]

2561: Moonfall

2022-01-21T22:20:11Z

Dansiman: /* Explanation */ the ''moon'' doesn't get larger or smaller

{{comic
| number = 2561
| date = December 29, 2021
| title = Moonfall
| image = moonfall.png
| titletext = Novel ideas and cool explosions are both good, but what I really want from a movie is novel ideas ABOUT cool explosions.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by COOL EXPLOSIONS. - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[[Megan]] asks [[Cueball]] if he is excited for the release of the movie ''Moonfall''.

''{{w|Moonfall (film)|Moonfall}}'' is an upcoming 2022 movie scheduled for release in February. Its director, {{w|Roland Emmerich}}, is known for blowing up things in his movies (see for instance [https://www.gq.com/video/watch/explosions-the-roland-emmerich-supercut the Roland Emmerich Supercut]), as well as for factual inaccuracies in his work (mainly the scientific implausibility of his many disaster movies like ''{{w|Independence Day (1996 film)|Independence Day}}'', ''{{w|The Day After Tomorrow}}'' and ''{{w|2012 (film)|2012}}'').

The [[#Plot|plot]] of ''Moonfall'' is scientifically preposterous, making it potentially "cringe-worthy" for someone who enjoys "hard" science fiction, like Cueball.

For the moon to fall from the sky, it would have to stop orbiting. Most forces applied it to will simply change the way in which it is orbiting, making the orbit more elliptical, larger or smaller. To stop it from orbiting entirely, a 'braking' force would need to be applied in the opposite direction of its travel, to halt it.

The moon's mass is about 0.07346×10²⁴ kg and its speed about 1.022 km/s, so the energy needed to stop it is ½''mv''² or about 3.8364×10²⁸ joules. That's about the energy of 1 trillion large nuclear explosions, centered on the leading-most point of the moon's surface. A precisely-oriented stellar body could strike the moon to do this, like a billiard ball colliding with tons of interstellar moon shrapnel instead of dust.

Less counteractive energy could make the Moon change orbit to one with a {{w|perigee}} below the surface of the Earth, close enough to (partially) enter the atmosphere or merely bring it down beneath the applicable {{w|Roche limit}}. These scenarios would be only technically less catastrophic, and whether the Moon fragments from the initially applied force, the stresses of its nearest (non-contact) distance to Earth or actually survives largely intact until there is a more direct physical interaction, the precise degree of the effect might be practically academic.

Cueball explains to Megan that he usually likes it when stories are based on good science. Maybe only bending it a bit to create the story, to expand our ideas of what is possible. But then he goes on to state that he supports giving Roland Emmerich as much money as he wants, to make cool spaceship noises and smash moons into things. In the movie it is only a moon (the {{w|Moon}}, presumably, see the [[#Plot|plot]] below). But in general Roland often uses huge explosions in his movies, something also previously said about other similarly-styled directors like [[748: Worst-Case Scenario|Michael Bay]].

Megan sums the situation for Cueball up, stating that he is excited to expand our ideas of how much stuff can explode at once.

In the title text Cueball continues by explaining that while novel ideas and explosions are good, what he really want from a movie is novel ideas about cool explosions. So new ways to explode things, or ideas about exploding more things at once. Or both.

In [[1536: The Martian]] a similar discussion of an upcoming movie is made for {{w|The Martian (film)|The Martian}}. But in that case it is the scientific accuracy that is the subject, and the lack of huge explosion that makes it hard to believe it could become a big budget movie! It is very rare that Randall makes a movie review like in those two comics.

===Plot===
'''Spoiler Alert'''
:In Moonfall, a mysterious force knocks the Moon from its orbit around Earth and sends it hurtling on a collision course with life as we know it. With mere weeks before impact and the world on the brink of annihilation, NASA executive and former astronaut Jo Fowler is convinced she has the key to saving us all - but only one astronaut from her past, Brian Harper[,] and a conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman believe her. These unlikely heroes will mount an impossible last-ditch mission into space, leaving behind everyone they love, only to find out that our Moon is not what we think it is. —Centropolis Entertainment, [https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5834426/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl quoted at IMDB]

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan walking to the right]
:Megan: Are you excited for ''Moonfall''?
:Megan: Or cringing?
:Cueball: Well...

:[Closeup on Cueball]
:Cueball: I like when stories are grounded in good science because it's exciting to expand our ideas of what's possible.

:[Zoomed back out to Cueball and Megan walking to the right. Cueball has his palms raised]
:Cueball: But I also support giving Roland Emmerich as much money as he wants to make cool spaceship noises and smash moons into things.
:Megan: Excited to expand our ideas of how much stuff can explode at once.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category: Fiction]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category: Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category: Comics featuring real people]]

Talk:2529: Unsolved Math Problems

2021-10-26T21:12:27Z

Dansiman:

Does anyone have any clue whether the writing on the board in the weirdly abstract panel means anything? Maybe add an explanation about it?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.227.91|162.158.227.91]] 13:23, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Center panel possibly related to "The drunkards walk" and theories on randomised motion.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/random-walk-puzzle-solution-20160907/
More references https://mathworld.wolfram.com/RandomWalk.html

Someone's gotta point out that "walking randomly on a grid, never visiting the same square twice" would rapidly trap you in a corner (even the example has a 50/50 chance of that happening on the next move) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.125|172.70.130.125]] 04:29, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Not if it's an infinite grid.

I think there's two different ways to interpret the question - as a uniform random element of the set of all non-self-intersection NxK length paths, in which case it's fine, or as a path defined by a random walk in which moves onto your own path are not allowed, which doesn't seem well defined, since you might end up in a situation where you are surrounded by your own path and cannot continue for all NxK steps.

An early example of a cursed problem is the Cantor Function. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantor_function

I admire whoever wrote the description of the curve in the "cursed" panel. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 05:36, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

"Algebreic" is a misspelling of "algebraic". Could Randall really have made this mistake, or is it another malamanteau? What does "breic" come from? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 06:10, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

I wonder if Randall was actually referring to that quote about "Into the Woods", or he just thought "Sondheim calculus" sounded cool and it was a total coincidence. I found it when I googled "sondheim calculus" to make sure it wasn't a real thing. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 06:29, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

In panel 2, what would 'k' be? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.35.108|172.69.35.108]] 08:00, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

'k' would represent the number of marbles placed on the ground. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.127|162.158.88.127]] 08:09, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
:Though probably correct, I think the implied state is that an integer multiple (k) of N steps is made (s=N*k), with that number of marbles dropped, not s=(N*k)+c steps (for N>c) which would have the same result (uselessly) for all values of s where c ranges 0..N-1. It just introduces inflections into the graph (with s as an axis) that needn't be there (with just a k-based one). Or, in other words, selectively poll all s-values that are exactly divisible by N, and forget all the rest. (That divisor is k, and hence k is the number of marbles. Or perhaps k+1 if you leave one on the starting spot too.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.25|162.158.159.25]] 21:59, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

To me, the cursed curve looks a bit like a crosier https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crosiere_of_arcbishop_Heinrich_of_Finstingen.jpg

--> I had the same impression and added it. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.94.219|162.158.94.219]] 11:40, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

No explanation of the "Euler Field Manifold Hypergroup (Isomorphic to a)..." part?

The cursed curve looks almost like someone took a graph of the Binet formula in the complex plane, stretched it out a bit, and rotated it onto the i axis.
: This was my first thought too when I saw it. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.87|172.69.34.87]] 17:16, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
: It looks like Vulcan script to me. [[User:LtPowers|LtPowers]] ([[User talk:LtPowers|talk]]) 13:51, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
: That's what it looks like to me too; recognized it from that Numberphile video on Fibonacci numbers in the complex plane [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.245|108.162.245.245]] 07:36, 17 October 2021 (UTC)
: It looks to me like someone has raised a dark spirit, which is about to manifest from a column of black smoke. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.206|162.158.154.206]] 10:25, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Could the cursed curve be a reference to the logistic map?

Can someone produce a high resolution image of the Cursed Curve? It needs to be on a T-shirt [[User:Avimimus|Avimimus]] ([[User talk:Avimimus|talk]]) 21:39, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Is someone going to mention the title text?

I swear I've seen that third plot, I thought it was in XKCD, but a quick run through tagged entries didn't find anything... unfortunately I consume a lot of math media so I can't place it. It's bugging me so I hope this note will serve as encourgement to someone that DOES remember [[Special:Contributions/162.158.106.221|162.158.106.221]] 21:29, 16 October 2021 (UTC)
:I'm sure I've seen components of the cursed-curve, not sure if they fit together like that, easily, though. The differentiation of dy/dt (which is odd in itself) of the first (lower) bit looks discontinuous, followed by a chaotic oscilation (may just be the culmination of the less frenetic chaos that created the first set of x=f(y) - again, an unusual way round) that then settles into a pattern where ''regardless'' of the 'prime axis', you have multiple real roots on the other, towards some great-attractor value.
: In more standard x/y (or y=f'(x)?) notation, it is clear that there are multiple real roots for various values of x within a range, and possible none at all beyond that (or it's a plotting error insofar as x tends to ±infinity it has a very narrow range of y that is never sampled properly, but should connect to that pulse 'randomness'). If it's a plot of real vs imaginary components of a complex function to a different continuous value, I suspect someone is playing silly-buggers with multiple (perhaps nested?) trigonometric functions, polynomials and variable-shifted powers. But it's nearly thirty years since I did mathematics at the level needed to disentangle this neatly (back when Mandelbrots and Julias were still a staple wall-poster for any student not more into the likes of Iron Maiden skull-motifs or <insert your favourite classic film here>, and even then it might be) so don't ask me where to start. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.89.140|162.158.89.140]] 16:48, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

To me the curve in panel three looks like a cursed (ha) mixture of an oscillatory time responses of dynamic systems with either an Nquist plot or simply trajectories of eigenvalues (of a stable system) at the end. Links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist_stability_criterion#Nyquist_plot , https://electronicscoach.com/time-response-of-second-order-system.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigenvalues_and_eigenvectors [[User:Domi|Domi]] ([[User talk:Domi|talk]])Domi

Are there any examples of "cursed" math problems? I've seen "weirdly abstract" and "weirdly concrete" ones, but not "cursed" ones. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.117|162.158.63.117]] 01:03, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

:: Some functions definitely make graphs that look weird to humans for reasons that are not immediately obvious (see <code>sin(cos(tan(xy))) = sin(cos(tan(x))) + sin(cos(tan(y)))</code>: https://www.desmos.com/calculator/mt08x3yqxj). I suppose to be cursed in the sense I take here, it would have to be unsolved as to ''why'' it looks weird to humans, which is probably not the case in my example, but I imagine there are examples. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.92|141.101.99.92]] 19:41, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

The symbol in the third panel looks like an unalome, which is not a mathematical symbol but a Buddhist or mystical one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yantra_tattooing#Types_and_designs

There is at least one paper on arxiv defining quasimonoid, 1401.7748. It's from 2014 so it existed long before the comic. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.253|162.158.88.253]] 14:04, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

Links, '''please'''! Not all of us are mathematicians. If you mention something that you think the cursed curve might represent, please provide a link to something describing that something so the rest of us can read it and attempt to learn more. [[User:Shamino|Shamino]] ([[User talk:Shamino|talk]]) 17:44, 17 October 2021 (UTC)

That cursed squiggle reminds me of the zeta function: https://www.johndcook.com/blog/2019/11/29/near-zeros-of-zeta/

That cursed squiggle sure looks like the sort of thing that used to flow from {{w|Saul Steinberg}}'s pen, as seen in the pages of the New Yorker back in the 60s. The most relevant example I can find right now is from 1965: https://fineartamerica.com/featured/new-yorker-february-20th-1965-saul-steinberg.html [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.177|162.158.255.177]] 03:38, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

So, is the middle one an actual unsolved problem? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.236|162.158.91.236]] 16:07, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

In this comic ponytail is obviously not Dr. Adams. (Discussion came up two comics ago.) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.115|162.158.88.115]] 21:42, 18 October 2021 (UTC)

Is Panel #2 a real unsolved problem? It reads like one.

Adding to the first comment - should we include an explanation of the formula in the first panel as well? The denominator means "is an element of aleph-5, the fifth [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleph_number infinite cardinal number]". The numerator is less clear; a dot over a variable usually indicates a derivative, but I haven't seen a dot over a set. Raising R (set of real numbers) to the power of Z (set of integers) refers to the set of all functions from the integers to the reals. I don't recognize the diamond with a line through the bottom or the two arrows.

Shout-out to whoever wrote the incomplete tag. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.172|162.158.74.172]] 20:21, 19 October 2021 (UTC)

Is there a reason why the article uses "millennium" (correct) and "millenium" (incorrrect)?

:Maybe bad spelling by one or more editors? The spelling has now been fixed where it was incorrect. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 02:20, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

I swear I recognize the Cursed Curve as the art from the story "The Theory that Jack Built", from "The Space Child's Mother Goose", by Frederick Winsor. Haven't been able to find my copy, so still not sure. [[User:Elkern|Elkern]] ([[User talk:Elkern|talk]]) 21:35, 25 October 2021 (UTC)

In the transcript, the first 3 characters of the equation in panel 1 are showing up as basic squares for me. When I go into editing mode, I see the correct rendering of the characters in the wikitext, just not on the page itself. Don't know if this might create/indicate a problem for screen readers. I'm viewing the page on Chrome 94, in Windows 10 version 1909. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 21:12, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Talk:2495: Universal Seat Belt

2021-07-29T20:50:38Z

Dansiman:

Looks like Randall has started a new series: Cursed Connectors. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.171|172.69.34.171]] 01:51, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
:I now await the 10Base2 connector with ''actual'' bayonet blade attached... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.183|141.101.99.183]] 03:27, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
::I have now created the series category: [[:Category:Cursed Connectors]]. Looking forward to see how many and for how long he will continue this series. The Bad Map Projection series continued recently after a long break. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 08:05, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Dangit! Its the wrong way around... Wait, it doesn't fit this way either... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.51.134|172.70.51.134]] 01:56, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
: Oh noes. [[User:"iLB"|"iLB"]] ([[User talk:"iLB"|talk]]) 03:50, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
: Yeah, this is a nightmare. If you forget (or ignore) your seatbelt, it'll take 3 tries (with flipping) to get it to connect. You'll either have crashed or be ticketed by then. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.147|162.158.126.147]] 04:58, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
:: It teaches you to buckle up _before_ starting the engine. I don't see a problem with that. [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 08:23, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
::: If you insert the belt before starting up, it gets detected (or not) but without fuss. Only if you insert after you're running do you get "Device inserted", "Device not recognised" or occasionally that sickening mid-point between the two where you get neither because it recognises as a drive, but the drive bit behind it is now RAW instead of FAT/whatever. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.29|141.101.99.29]] 09:10, 29 July 2021 (UTC)
:::: Or, possibly, a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW7Rqwwth84 BSOD]. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 20:50, 29 July 2021 (UTC)

Talk:2487: Danger Mnemonic

2021-07-13T17:40:32Z

Dansiman:

1) Strangely, I find even the established motherWiki page for the Red Sky motto to be a little short of full explanation. It could do with a diagram to demonstrate how line-of-sight extends one's view beyond the horizon and above surface effects to reveal the nature of the oncoming atmosphere, either imminent (upwind) or historic (downwind, with the implication of an oscillation in the other direction). But, not only that, a sky clear enough to give a good direct red-sky in the Sun's rising/setting direction also will allow Earth-skimming sunlight to red-illuminate the presence of clouds in the opposite direction (with the greater guarantee of 'weather system opposites' east-to-west), enhancing the 'forecast' even further and before/after rising/setting of the Sun as well. Not something to add to the Explanation, but fun to realise. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.152|141.101.98.152]] 08:50, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

2) Perhaps don't use a [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_sky_at_morning web link] to wikipedia when you can use a much more elegant {{w|Red sky at morning|wikilink}}..? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.152|141.101.98.152]] 08:50, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

3) The (''probably'' as apocryphal?) rhyme here is "Beer before wine and you'll feel fine; wine before beer and you'll feel queer", so I leave it up to you to work out what this means for how to ultimately mix your Chateau-Whatever and your no-'e' whisky. ;) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.152|141.101.98.152]] 08:50, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
:So if you combine the two aphorisms, the best order is liquor->beer->wine? I don't drink, so I can't attest to the truth of any of these. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 12:03, 10 July 2021 (UTC)
::That's if it's not like Rock-Paper-Scissors.. :p [[Special:Contributions/162.158.158.106|162.158.158.106]] 10:29, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't think the title text is warning against getting drunk, just the particular order of drinks that the old saying warns against. She's already told the kids to "get out of there", you don't want to get sick and stop to vomit. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 12:08, 10 July 2021 (UTC)

Do you reckon this is a reference to the current wildfires ... three x dangerous but the colours of red and yellow and a mention of a nature setting ... [[User:Boatster|Boatster]] ([[User talk:Boatster|talk]]) 02:00, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

In the UK I've never heard the first two of these mnemonics- we don't have poison ivy and our only venomous snake is the adder, which has zig-zag markings. And the weather warning is usually "Red sky at night, shepherd's delight, red sky in the morning, shepherd's warning. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.183|162.158.91.183]] 07:33, 12 July 2021 (UTC)
:Watch ''A Perfect Storm'' to see why sailors should be very concerned with upcoming weather. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 19:49, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

<blockquote>"the order in which you drink alcohol is unlikely to impact how sick you become"</blockquote>

Not directly, but it can easily affect ''how much'' you ultimately drink! The reasons you'll get "sicker" drinking beer before liquor are that, after consuming a few drinks (of either type), the alcohol will have numbed your mouth a bit, so that a strong drink no longer tastes as strong, and also that your judgement will have become impaired, making it easier to accidentally overindulge. Now, consider the fact that beer has a much lower concentration of alcohol than liquor has. Therefore, if you start off with beer, and then switch to liquor, you could very easily consume far too much alcohol, whereas if you start off with liquor, and then switch to beer, it becomes much more difficult (though, to be fair, certainly not impossible) to consume significant quantities rapidly, because you'll tend to get physically full after a few beers. Even if you don't have the presence of mind to consciously control your intake, your subconscious mind will stop you from consuming ''anything'' once your stomach is completely full.

Don't believe me? Try it — pour yourself a big glass of water and see how quickly you can drink it. Repeat until you feel "full". Then fill that big glass up one more time, and notice how long it takes you to finish it. You'll have a hard time taking more than a small sip at once; your body just won't ''let'' you do more. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 17:40, 13 July 2021 (UTC)

Talk:1103: Nine

2020-08-26T14:08:48Z

Dansiman:

I really find that the hover-over text applies to me more often than not, unless I'm not in mixed company. This reminds me of a time that I was staying with a friend and she walked in on me changing the time on her microwave. When I explained to her that her microwave, stove, and coffee pot were all set to different times and it was bugging me, she just looked at me like I was crazy. --[[User:Grate314|"grate314"]] ([[User talk:Grate314|talk]]) 16:47, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
:I don't think that is what the title text meant. Also, anybody who reads an xkcd comic and remembers that they did that ''is'' crazy. --[[Special:Contributions/98.221.139.80|98.221.139.80]]
:I agree with grate314. I have to fix this every time the power goes out in my house because the stove, microwave, and radio all treat power outages differently. Between different rooms, though, it doesn't bother me. --[[User:DanB|DanB]] ([[User talk:DanB|talk]]) 19:04, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
::I know that that isn't specifically what the hover-over text was talking about, but I was thinking of it in a more general way. I've just found that whenever someone asks me what I'm thinking about, it's best to say 'nothing'. What I meant by 'mixed company' is a general social gathering, like a wedding or birthday party. I'm an EE student, so when someone asks me that question at school, I answer honestly. The answer is usually 'soldering'. I think about soldering a lot. Thanks, DanB, the clocks were all on top of each other, btw, I'm not sure how she lived in that chaos.--[[User:Grate314|grate314]] ([[User talk:Grate314|talk]]) 21:27, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Did anybody try doing what the title text is saying? Just wondering. --[[Special:Contributions/98.221.139.80|98.221.139.80]]

When I'm not following written instructions, I tend to use multiples of 1:11, out of laziness. So, if I figure something should take about 2-3 minutes, I'll nuke it for 2:22. That way, I can press one button 3 times without having to move my finger. [[User:MGK|MGK]] ([[User talk:MGK|talk]]) 17:23, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

If your microwave is connected to your home network you should accept that GCHQ have probably broken all your codes.[[User:Weatherlawyer| I used Google News BEFORE it was clickbait]] ([[User talk:Weatherlawyer|talk]]) 20:03, 20 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm lazy and like to use repeated digits rather than have to move my finger along to find the next one - thus 33, 55, 66 get used a lot. I also find that for most items, longer time at lower power settings is more effective at even heating, so I do a lot of 66 at 50% rather than 33 at 100%. Our current oven only has 10 power settings, unlike a previous one that had two digit power settings resulting in 66 sec at 55% being a fairly commonly used setup. Interestingly, the logic of every microwave oven I have encountered treats 99 entered in the seconds display the same as if one were to have entered 1minute and 33 seconds. Thus 99:99 would be 100 minutes and 33 seconds. [[User:J-beda|J-beda]] ([[User talk:J-beda|talk]]) 17:31, 3 September 2012 (UTC)
:I have never seen a microwave that treats 99 as 1:33. Treating 99 as 1:3'''9''', however, is quite common. Why would a microwave run for 93 seconds when 99 is entered? [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 14:08, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

Oddly (apparently) my microwave has only 3 buttons (10 minutes, 1 minute, 10 seconds), though I do feel sorry for the 10 minute button.
:Maybe it would make more sense to change the 10 minutes button to a 6 minutes button [[Special:Contributions/212.23.140.110|212.23.140.110]] 16:39, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I usually just push the "add 30 seconds" button until I reach the desired time (6 pushes for three minutes, 3 for 1:30, etc.). [[User:Erenan|Erenan]] ([[User talk:Erenan|talk]]) 16:06, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

:mine only has a single analogue dial that jumps up in increasingly large steps, and for some reason is numbered to skip over some sensible times, such as six minutes. however, no buttons, so problem solved. [[Special:Contributions/86.15.83.223|86.15.83.223]] 22:00, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The 9 and 0 button are near each other so I do a lot of 90 (meaning 1 minute, 30 seconds). Sometimes, I'll get lazy<strike>er</strike> and press 99.

'''Quasar '''unit offers the additional accuracy/simplicity/utility of min 10, 1 and sec 10, 1 There are no other numbers on the control face, which has 14 buttons total. hmm, Minimum number of buttons required to accomplish nuking?--[[User:Idkrash|Idkrash]] ([[User talk:Idkrash|talk]]) 01:28, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
:For simplicity I would be in favor of 2 dials and 2 buttons. The dials could serve for power and time, which could output to digital displays. The buttons then could serve as start and stop. Pressing start and stop simultaneously would toggle the clock set function and you could use the dials to set the min and hour.----[[User:Shine|Shine]] ([[User talk:Shine|talk]]) 10:47, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
::I suspect that sooner or later they'll all just have a power button and a touchscreen. [[User:Erenan|Erenan]] ([[User talk:Erenan|talk]]) 15:15, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
::Agreed that the touchscreen is likely but you could get away with just the two dials by having the time dial start the oven when it is pulled out and stop when pushed in. (#Analog) --[[User:DanB|DanB]] ([[User talk:DanB|talk]]) 19:18, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
::: My microwave already has a touch screen... we use the 30 second button on it a lot... --[[User:Tustin2121|Tustin2121]] ([[User talk:Tustin2121|talk]]) 16:36, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
:::The pushable dial isn't even necessary, have the machine start when the dial is twisted, which then ticks back to zero, and stop when the door is opened [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.65|141.101.99.65]] 14:13, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford's_law Benfords law] pops to mind.

I don't use 20, 30 ,40, because find it easier to just click twice same button: 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, 99 and anything beyond 99 seconds - well, 200 {{unsigned ip|82.71.241.138|17:25, 6 December 2012‎ (UTC)}}

As a datum-point, my microwave has a (linear, clockwork, with mechanical bell-ding) dial, which is imprecise enough. Also it's a ''really'' old one (20 years old? 25? 30?) with a lower power than is common to see mentioned, so I look at the packaging recommendations, see perhaps 650W, 750W and 850W times, or 700W and 800W ones, and then add half again onto the lower rate's required time, and then perhaps a little more for good luck, as the amount I (roughly) twist the dial. I rarely use anything other than 'full'-power, out of the five settings. And I still sometimes need to renuke after testing. I really ought to get a new one. Probably would be more efficient, as well as accurate. ;) [[Special:Contributions/178.98.141.216|178.98.141.216]] 13:07, 31 March 2013 (UTC)

Shockingly, no one has mentioned Cirno from Touhou Project.--[[Special:Contributions/67.78.126.46|67.78.126.46]] 12:41, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Shockingly, noone has mentioned that 159 seconds is closer to 3 minutes that it is to 2. [[User:Marklark|Marklark]] ([[User talk:Marklark|talk]]) 23:03, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
: I think it's a reasonable assumption that a the 1 gets bumped into the minutes column, otherwise all times would have to be entered in seconds or some other untidy interface would be necessary [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.65|141.101.99.65]] 14:13, 21 July 2017 (UTC)

::{{ping:Marklark}} has the right assumption, however ''141.'' turns out to be right in fcats, at least in my machine. My microwave will accept an entry like '99', which is seen as 1 minute 39 seconds, but the first digit of a series of three, as in '159' will be interpreted as being minutes, not hundreds of seconds.[[User:Yamaplos|Yamaplos]] ([[User talk:Yamaplos|talk]]) 14:09, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

:::that being said, I can't approach the microwave without thinking of this so-called comic. Rather a tragic, if you ask me. Likewise, the Roomba is not a pet, but a creature of the wild captured. sigh [[User:Yamaplos|Yamaplos]] ([[User talk:Yamaplos|talk]]) 14:09, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

::::'''besides the fact that the assumption in this comic is wrong.''' Because being used to max out certain options, multiple comments in this thread confirm that, '9' is not the least used digit in a touch button microwave interface, "7' or '8' are, '1' to '6' being options to ''express cook'' and ''reheat'', thus used more often. My microwave key pad is actually worn from "1" to "4". This fact, because of the previous comment, requires eternal vigilance so proper non-discriminatory, fair allocation of keypresses are the norm in this household. Fair we is, fair we stay, yay! [[User:Yamaplos|Yamaplos]] ([[User talk:Yamaplos|talk]]) 14:09, 24 June 2020 (UTC)

Am I the only one that uses "99" whenever the instructions say something close to "1 minute 30 seconds"? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.49|108.162.216.49]] 15:11, 26 February 2016 (UTC)BenDanTomJack
:If the instructions say 1:30, wouldn't 88 be a better choice than 99? A variance of 2 seconds under vs. a variance of 9 seconds over. {{unsigned ip|173.245.48.105}}

* Shockingly, no one has mentioned Pluto. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.10.172|172.68.10.172]] 18:12, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Who doesn’t use 90 fairly often? A lot of things need to be cooked for 90 seconds. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.214.82|162.158.214.82]] 13:58, 25 November 2019 (UTC)

From a scientific standpoint, we moved into a new house last year which has a well-used (probably 20+ years) Amana Radar-range, so lots of button pushes. The buttons for 1, 2, 3, 5, and 0 are WELL worn with the rest nearly untouched. [[User:Cosumel|Cosumel]] ([[User talk:Cosumel|talk]]) 07:27, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Talk:2326: Five Word Jargon

2020-08-26T13:54:40Z

Dansiman:

Approximate nonnegative matrix factorization algorithms

That's all. -[[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.119|162.158.62.119]] 22:04, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

super cali fragilistic expiali docious
[[User:Bo Lindbergh|Bo Lindbergh]] ([[User talk:Bo Lindbergh|talk]]) 22:26, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

Over at [https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/ Language Log] they have fun documenting bewildering "noun piles". In the post '''[https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3341 noun pile blog post madness]''' for example
: '''data bound control table row action links'''
:: is a header in this page from Microsoft: '''[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/api/system.web.dynamicdata.dynamichyperlink?view=netframework-4.8 DynamicHyperLink Class]'''
[[User:JohnB|JohnB]] ([[User talk:JohnB|talk]]) 23:59, 29 June 2020 (UTC)

All cyanobacteria are unicellular. That word is just an imposition. [[User:Nitpicking|Nitpicking]] ([[User talk:Nitpicking|talk]]) 02:25, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
: Cyanobacteria come in various types, such as unicellular, filamentous or colonial. Or even part of a composite organism such as lichen. Plastids, which are intracellular endosymbiotic organelles are technically acellular cyanobacteria. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.165.8|162.158.165.8]] 04:31, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
::Plastids are still unicellular. Living as endosymbionts doesn't make them multicellular, it makes them endosymbionts. Colonial unicellular organisms are still unicellular. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.188|108.162.219.188]]

Cueball could be Randall copying down the phrase into his collection. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.131|173.245.54.131]] 03:10, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
:Yea that is clear from it being one of my hobby. Have changed the explanation. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:32, 1 July 2020 (UTC)
::I thought that Cueball was typing the phrase in to Google to figure out what it meant. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 13:54, 26 August 2020 (UTC)

I was expecting these would in fact all mean something incredibly simple. I'm a little disappointed :( [[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.108|198.41.238.108]] 04:03, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

My undergraduate research was on fluxional behavior in zwitterionic isoindoline complexes, so this struck close to home.[[User:Eärendil|Eärendil]] ([[User talk:Eärendil|talk]]) 04:17, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

The phrase from the caption '''really satisfying-sounding five-word technical phrases''' also meets (almost) every criteria it states (except maybe 'technical') - having read many of Randall's comics, I can't imagine this to be a coincidence... [[Special:Contributions/172.68.50.54|172.68.50.54]] 07:39, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Before reading this explanation, I was convinced these were nonsensical phrases that Randall had made up![[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.168|162.158.155.168]] 08:18, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

anomalous electroweak sphaleron transition baryogenesis - roughly translates out of Jargon as Weird Forces Slippery change creation [[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.228|162.158.155.228]] 11:33, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

I really want to dive into the word relationships within these 'semantically multityped divaricatedly polyconstructed descriptors' and see how much or little they obey the 'rules' for {{w|Branching_(linguistics)|word order}} of component {{w|Adjective#Order|adjectives}}, etc. Maybe when I get a piece of paper and pencil and a bit of time to tease them apart. ;) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.240|162.158.155.240]] 13:02, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

Horrifically enough, Pachelbel's Canon uses five chords: I-V-vi-iii-IV-I-IV-V . (It's deeply hated by us musicians who have to play it at weddings and whatnot). Beethoven's 6th: AllegroMaNonTroppo; AndanteMoltoMosso; Allegro; Allegro; Allegretto. Mahler's Fifth: in short terminology, Pan&Bacchus; Flowers; Animals;Man,Angels; Love . [[User:Cellocgw|Cellocgw]] ([[User talk:Cellocgw|talk]]) 13:06, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

I don't believe Cueball is looking up the phrase when he types A-N-O-M... I think he's just typing the phrase into the file where he collects the 5-word phrases, as it's listed as the last of his favorites in the bottom section of the panel. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 13:11, 30 June 2020 (UTC)
:Yea that is clear from it being one of his hobbies to collect them. Have changed the explanation. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:32, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

I had a foundling dog diagnosed with "Juvenile Canine Psychogenic Polydipsia - Polyurea. He also had five different kinds of parasites. [[User:Pwydde|Pwydde]] ([[User talk:Pwydde|talk]]) 21:37, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

I've noticed that Epson loves five word names for its inkjet papers, such as "Ultra Premium Presentation Paper Matte" [[User:Tanana|Tanana]] ([[User talk:Tanana|talk]]) 23:37, 30 June 2020 (UTC)

“Natural orifice transluminal endoscopic surgery.” Might be one best not to know about.

:dear 162.158.2.216, thankyou for giving us something to not think about! oh and please sign your comments [[User:Ocæon|ocæon]] ([[User talk:Ocæon|talk]]) 20:18, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

"Stationary ergodic Gaussian random processes" were the central part of a university project I did just a month ago ! [[Special:Contributions/141.101.69.159|141.101.69.159]] 19:56, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

My new favourite is Dynamic Organic Anthropomorphically Engineered Entropy.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.66|162.158.159.66]] 21:59, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

"and then proceed to type the phrase into his phone to add to his list of favorite Five Word Jargon" - That's not how I understand the comic. I thought he was typing it to look up the term on Google. That is also supported by this discussion about the previous comic #2325 on the XKCD sub-reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/hhcgej/randalls_done_it_again/fwh1vl6/ [[Special:Contributions/172.68.215.166|172.68.215.166]] 04:04, 4 July 2020 (UTC)

An intermediate phase Type-II superconducting plate suspended in a gradually increasing strong uniform applied magnetic field will have its core penetrated by individual cylindrical magnetic flux quanta together forming an induced quantum supercurrent vortex lattice with a minimized field energy spacing parameter that exhibits quasi-bifurcating meta-stable equilibrium state trajectories that form a transitory phyllotactic fluxon lattice spiral before reaching critical field flux density limits. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.50.78|172.69.50.78]] 23:16, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

I would say it should be "Exhibit" instead of "Model", but that would be gauche.
[[User:Ysth|Ysth]] ([[User talk:Ysth|talk]]) 12:40, 13 July 2020 (UTC)

Talk:2288: Collector's Edition

2020-04-05T14:16:15Z

Dansiman:

== The joke ==
Very early on April 1st, Mojang\Microsoft released a version 20w14Infinite build of Minecraft which allows players to create millions of wildly different new worlds by writing text in a book & throwing it through a Nether portal. The world generated depends on what is written in the book, & some specific worlds contain many "starter chests" to help the player in their explorations. Players can share what they wrote in each book with others, allowing multiple players to each access the same new dimensions on their own. In this way, individual single-player Minecraft instances can essentially become a collaboratively evolving game featuring previously nonexistent block types. Given that Randall has done multiple comics referencing Minecraft & seems to be an avid player, & given the presence of "chests" & the "worldbuilding" & collaborative nature of this latest comic, I believe xkcd's April 3rd 2020 comic is a reference to this "final" Minecraft build.
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 14:10, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:I think this is extremely unlikely. Munroe has comics planned in advance, and a complex interactive comic like this one takes more than a couple hours to make.[[User:Matthias1|Matthias1]] ([[User talk:Matthias1|talk]]) 18:43, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

==The Meta-Message==
Beginning one month earlier with [[2275: Coronavirus Name]] (March 2, 2020) there was a long [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] about the {{w|coronavirus}} pandemic. Superficially this April comic is not about the pandemic, but note that anybody anywhere can affect the comic's globally shared sandbox. Credit [[Randall|Randall]] with engineering a script reminding us that {{w|We%27re_All_In_This_Together|"We're all in this together."}} JohnB [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.215|162.158.74.215]] 19:01, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

==Explanation==
Clicking on the URLs in the explanation return "File not found". I will remove the hyperlink so people are less confused. [[User:Fwacer|Fwacer]] ([[User talk:Fwacer|talk]]) 02:18, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

== How the comic works ==
... is this going to be like [[1190: Time]]? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.63|162.158.74.63]] 04:08, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
: I hope so, otherwise I don't get the joke [[User:Forresthopkinsa|Forresthopkinsa]] ([[User talk:Forresthopkinsa|talk]]) 04:15, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
: The page just went down for me so maybe what we've seen isn't what it's supposed to be? [[User:Avi m|avis_magpie]] ([[User talk:Avi m|talk]]) 04:20, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
Looks like the whole comic was just taken down. [[User:Parzivail|Parzivail]] ([[User talk:Parzivail|talk]]) 04:27, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
: Can confirm - the most recent comic is Pathogen again [[Special:Contributions/162.158.187.207|162.158.187.207]] 04:26, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
It is still up on the mobile website, but only if you directly go to comic page https://m.xkcd.com/2288 [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.146|172.69.22.146]] 05:10, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
: Perhaps this is a collector's edition because it was only up for a limited amount of time? {{unsigned ip|108.162.219.60|05:12, 3 April 2020}}
:: That was my immediate assumption. The title text says, "I'm sure you can find some suitable worldbuilding material if you scavenge through the archives." And I was viewing the comic by using the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine — which, wouldn't you know it, captured the page exactly once before it went down. Between that and the title "Collector's Edition", I can't help thinking that the comic was actually intended to be viewed this way. Though for what reason, and what intended meaning, I couldn't tell you. …And jeez, in the time it took me to type this, the comic is back, but changed! Oy vey. [[User:NoriMori|NoriMori]] ([[User talk:NoriMori|talk]]) 06:42, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Maybe it's called collectors edition, because it was only available quite limited and to an unusual time? But that logic doesn't fit with the title text. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 05:14, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:I doubt that could be caused by "technical difficulties". [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.186|172.69.34.186]] 06:14, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

It looks like it went back up about 5 minutes age. I can't figure out if it's possible to do more than pan right now though. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.120|108.162.215.120]] 06:39, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:Yeah I see the same thing, looks like they're just testing it live. What a shame :(--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.215.242|108.162.215.242]] 06:47, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::what makes you assume that this is testing right now? however it doesn't seem to be very interactive apart from panning through it, and that it seems to chagne over time (the moon from [[1300]] wasn't there a few minutes ago, was it? --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 06:49, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

:It's a giant pan similar to [https://xkcd.com/1110], although it's mostly empty, with some content at [https://xkcd.com/2288/#-361,-161]
. The title reads that you can find world building material, if you scavenge through the archives. I assume, more content will be unlocked as you read through past comics. [[User:Goatfryed|Goatfryed]] ([[User talk:Goatfryed|talk]]) 06:52, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::That would mean it is individual? That everyone gets their own picture? --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 07:03, 3 April 2020 (UTC) Edit: I can kinda rule that out. I get the same picture on my phone and my work laptop, the work laptop is in a different country via vpn, and doesn't share any logins/advertisement ID's apart from explain xkcd with my phone... --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 07:05, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Yeah, it definitely changes. The orange swimming pool just showed up now. Also, at the bottom of the page, it says something about "backpack", and what appears to be a reference to some other xkcd comic. For example, "Hint: why waste time say few word when lot word do trick", which I think refers to Up Goer Five. But I have no idea what to do with that info. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.141.190|172.68.141.190]] 06:55, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:and the content seems to be related to previous comics and what-ifs... but still no clue what to do apart from exploring the page. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 06:57, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

So I just stumbled upon this and it seems to be exactly as other commentors have theorised: as you read previous comics more stuff gets added to the page. There seems to be some kind of backpack mechanic where you collect items from previous ones somehow, but, perhaps because I've already read all previous comics, that didn't seem to work for me. Instead I just had to click the link above the backpack, which opened the comic in a new tab, and it had a bunch of stuff there. We may need to co-ordinate to figure out if different people end up with different sets of items, and to ensure we have all of them, but I think other than that it should be just a cut and dry thing of making a table with every item in it. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.202|162.158.34.202]] 07:12, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:Hang on, mine just changed: before there was only 1 pool on the left, now there are two. I only went back to pathogens and then forwards agin. This may be harder than I thought, I'm going to start keeping a screenshot log of actions vs. results. [[User:Benkor42|Benkor42]] ([[User talk:Benkor42|talk]]) 07:17, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:You may need to try xkcd.com instead of www.xkcd.com - there seems to be an issue with the latter at the moment. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.216|162.158.255.216]] 07:18, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::Hold up it changed again! This time without a reload! [[User:Benkor42|Benkor42]] ([[User talk:Benkor42|talk]]) 07:28, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:::It seems to change periodically, the url does change everytime. New stuff always seems to be added, not old stuff rremoved. [[User:Benkor42|Benkor42]] ([[User talk:Benkor42|talk]]) 07:28, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::::The URL is related to the coordinates, it changes when you pan the image. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 07:34, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::::Timings seem to be random, working on double checking that rn. Highest first number so far is 1127, once it switches agin I'm going to experiement with manually editing the url.

I was briefly able to do things. Open the archieve, navigate it to one of the comics, that are hinted for (e.g. compiling or iata) and when viewing that comic I get a lootbox, with an image I can then place in the 2288. It worked twice, and now it doesn't again... neither with those that have worked before, nor with others I am fairly sure have been placed by other people. (such as galilean moons) --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 07:21, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:I'm working on assembling an image log, wonder if we could compare? Also, the two number url could be useful, rn I'm on -1378, -152 [[User:Benkor42|Benkor42]] ([[User talk:Benkor42|talk]]) 07:25, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::What do you mean by compare? Also the URL is related to the coordinates, it changes when you pan the image. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 07:34, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:::Yh just got that, is that the same for other panning comics (I'm a little new)? And I was wondering if the comic changed per person/system like certain previous comics. [[User:Benkor42|Benkor42]] ([[User talk:Benkor42|talk]]) 07:40, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::::Just seen a previous comment from you saying it doesn't change cross-system. However, it definetely changes with time, so the question is whether that's per user or done on a sort of universal clock, so we all unlock the same new content at the same time.
:::::I didn't complete writing up the thing I was able to do above... after opening the lootbox I got one image related to the comic I opened in my backpack and was able to place that in the actual 2288, where it now is placed. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 07:50, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::::::For me that didn't happen, it started with a loading screen type thing, and then objects just started appearing seemingly at random. I've also noticed some of them dissapear. I feel like the best course of action would be to start with a table of all the different objects, and then see if we can figure out when/why they appear later.
::::::: At least 2 objects appeared, because I placed them. It is a colaboration of many xkcd readers to do this world building here. I placed one of the sword fights around #439,-181 and the non-inverted kite at #-1679,-290 . --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 07:55, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::::::::Do you agree that the best course of action would therefore be a table with all the items? [[User:Benkor42|Benkor42]] ([[User talk:Benkor42|talk]]) 08:03, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:::::::::Not a big fan of tables, unless there really is content of muliple categories to be entered for one line. A list would do fine I guess? Also I find lists easier to work with. Or what would be the columns you'd set up? --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 08:08, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::::::::::Something along the lines of the comic that it's a reference to, an image, and an explanation. Do we know if you find the same sticker at the same comic every time? If so, then that. A list would work well too. [[User:Benkor42|Benkor42]] ([[User talk:Benkor42|talk]]) 08:12, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::::::::::From looking at what image URLs don't 404, it looks like there are 253 stickers, which is quite a lot for a table.[[User:Matthias1|Matthias1]] ([[User talk:Matthias1|talk]]) 10:03, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:::::I think we can unlock new elements by reading older comics (seemingly at random, it doesn't work with every comic read) and that everyone can see the changes once they are put on the global picture. If someone could check, I have put berret guy and his goat around (5000,0)
::::::Yep, he's there. [[User:Benkor42|Benkor42]] ([[User talk:Benkor42|talk]]) 08:01, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

I almost feel like someone needs to show them this xkcd... https://xkcd.com/169/

It seems to be an interactive canvas. You can find stickers in chests on specific comics and put them in your backpack, and then when you come back here you can choose where to put them on the canvas. The hints in the empty backpack are cryptic references to comics. {{unsigned ip|162.158.107.85}}
:Yep, I figured the same thing, but for me it only worked twice (fly from wtf to lol was a reference to the iata thing and compiling was a reference to the compiling one) - but it didn't work again. Also: Some of the placed images are clearly references to what-if. Like the squirrel on top of an AK47 or the yoda powering an IPOD. --[[User:Lupo|Lupo]] ([[User talk:Lupo|talk]]) 07:59, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

I've made a catalog of the stickers but it's only partial because stuff keeps appearing: https://photos.app.goo.gl/dPYeYVpGqu5tqGTt5 [[User:Lev|Lev]] ([[User talk:Lev|talk]]) 08:02, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

I got it. I wrote the steps on reddit and included some screenshots. Feel free to use it to edit this page https://old.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/fu1dt0/xkcd_2288_collectors_edition/fmaqp1w/ [[User:Ufolicker|Ufolicker]] ([[User talk:Ufolicker|talk]]) 09:27, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Am I too late to participate in this or am I doing something wrong? Where is this hint supposed to appear? I only see an empty backpack and the canvas on which references to different comics are placed. No comic I've visited, either inspired by references on the canvas, nor by random selection has any chest or other interactive components to it. [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 09:53, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:No, you're doing it right. Hints show up in the backpack area. Obviously no one is sure of anything, but even users who have seen hints have reported not seeing hints on a different browser/device. I suspect something similar to [https://xkcd.com/1037/ Umwelt], where different hints are shown to different people. And I think once a chest is picked up, it stops appearing to everyone that could see it, but that's a guess.[[User:Matthias1|Matthias1]] ([[User talk:Matthias1|talk]]) 10:03, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::Ok, I was unsure because on my windows 10 laptop I have yet to see a hint. I've tried chrome, firefox and internet explorer. [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 11:09, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:::Finally got it to work in Safari in iOS [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 11:13, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::::That's really great, Bischoff, we were worried about you. Care to share how you did it, for the benefit of others? [[User:Jimmbo|Jimmbo]] ([[User talk:Jimmbo|talk]]) 14:19, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
::::I took part in the scavenger hunt and about 2 hours ago it stopped showing hints. So I assume it shut down and there is nothing to do anymore.¯\_(ツ)_/¯ [[User:Curse|Curse]] ([[User talk:Curse|talk]]) 15:15, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:::::I think everybody gets a limited number of hints, and once you've found them all it won't show any more to you, but other people can still get hints. [[User:Pelosujamo|Pelosujamo]] ([[User talk:Pelosujamo|talk]]) 20:09, 4 April 2020 (UTC)
::::::Nope, it's not that. I visited this comic for the first time today, and no hints for me at all. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 14:16, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

When I view the comic, I don't see the closed box - the screen is absolutely full of stickers. I've not done any scavenger hunting (I'd upload an image, but I don't have permissions to do so) [[User:Kvetch|Kvetch]] ([[User talk:Kvetch|talk]]) 11:10, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Hints I've seen so far: "The first one was funnier" (chest appeared in comic 1, contained I'm a turtle);
"418 I'm a teapot"
"26th September, 1983" (comic 2052, Stanislav Petrov Day, white dove); [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.135|172.69.134.135]] 11:20, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps a table for found chests with no attached hints? I've stumbled across a few but don't know if they're hinted at or not :). [[User:Deranged|Deranged]] ([[User talk:Deranged|talk]]) 11:54, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:Maybe add a line to the table with a blank first box, the link in the second box, empty third box? Someone will match it up. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.166.37|162.158.166.37]] 12:21, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

"Churchill's gonna have to rehydrate" is Nothing to Offer. Can't remember what number, I think 1148?

In other news, the bad ads are back ([[Talk:2220: Imagine Going Back in Time/Ads|previous discussion]]) - who's in charge of dealing with them anyway? [[User:Arcorann|Arcorann]] ([[User talk:Arcorann|talk]]) 12:25, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Could someone post an image showing what it looks like to find a chest on a comic? I've browsed to some of the comics referenced as having chests but couldn't see one so far. Thanks![[Special:Contributions/141.101.69.13|141.101.69.13]] 12:54, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:I've uploaded a few images on https://imgur.com/gallery/4q1QIW5. Can't upload them here yet, new account [[User:Madsmtm|madsmtm]] ([[User talk:Madsmtm|talk]]) 13:24, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

"The other side of the wardrobe", someone's put in the solution [[2218: Wardrobe]]; but I also found the chest on [[665: Prudence]]. Can there be multiple solutions to the same hint? [[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 13:00, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Is anyone else having issues with things just not working? I clicked around a bit, it gave me the award in being very smart, and now won't give me any hints or chests. [[User:Crazymachinefan|Crazymachinefan]] ([[User talk:Crazymachinefan|talk]]) 13:57, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
::I am also not getting any hints anymore after getting one chest.[[User:Eesley|Eesley]] ([[User talk:Eesley|talk]]) 14:01, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:::Nope, nothing to get anymore. [[User:Curse|Curse]] ([[User talk:Curse|talk]]) 15:15, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

The "Was it a rat I saw" hint is probably [[1632: Palindrome]]. I haven't gotten the hint yet, so I can't confirm. [[User:Nvaiko24|Nvaiko24]] ([[User talk:Nvaiko24|talk]]) 14:12, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Interestingly, the [[1110: Click and Drag]] disables the backpack overlay. Also, anyone have any news on how to get the Go Big to Go Small hint?

I got the "First annual award for excellence in being very smart" on page 7, rather than 179 as stated above. Can't remember what the hint was. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.222|162.158.34.222]] 14:26, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Found that award on comic 7, too. And "Researchers are reporting record number of sharks (loot 159) on comic 1368, but I'll be damned if I know the hint. Those give me nothing [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.43|162.158.91.43]] 14:44, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Found another one! It's a bug on a box, loot_007. From comic #442, no idea what hint goes with it. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.7|162.158.74.7]] 15:18, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

For the ooOOOooo hint, I've now gone through every comic, and none of them give a chest. [[User:Lawruble13|Lawruble13]] ([[User talk:Lawruble13|talk]]) 19:41, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
: Well that's just ducky! I'm stuck on that hint. Any way to get the hint to change without losing my collectibles? Anonymous 02:19, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

If you scroll almost directly upward, the Y-coordinate keeps resetting to 5000 (same with downward and -5000. However, if you scroll up and to the side with a slope of less than 1, you eventually get to this URL: https://xkcd.com/#-Infinity,-Infinity which just has the word "[LOADING_]" hand-drawn. -- brad
: I think that's just Javascript floatingpoint math for ya. The loading image just appears while it is trying to load in new tiles --[[User:Jhollowe|Jhollowe]] ([[User talk:Jhollowe|talk]]) 19:11, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

I wrote a script that gives a list of all the loot images that are on the page if we want to make a complete list of loot images, and a list of images that haven't been found yet. --[[User:Jhollowe|Jhollowe]] ([[User talk:Jhollowe|talk]]) 19:11, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Has anyone else gotten a "miniloot"? I just got "/2288/collectors/static/loot/miniloot-words-laser.png" from [[293: RTFM]] with the hint listed in the above table. [[User:Lawruble13|Lawruble13]] ([[User talk:Lawruble13|talk]]) 19:41, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

In a private window on Firefox, I had previously seen the hint, but it's now disappeared. I got loot_109.png (which is the sheeple eye from [[1013: Wake Up Sheeple]]), and I can place it, but it stays in the inventory. Possible bug? [[User:Lawruble13|Lawruble13]] ([[User talk:Lawruble13|talk]]) 19:43, 3 April 2020 (UTC)
:Viewable at https://xkcd.com/2288/#453,1003, both eyes posted using the same item. [[User:Lawruble13|Lawruble13]] ([[User talk:Lawruble13|talk]]) 19:50, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

The "tea time" hint seems a bit weird; I found it at [[579: The Race: Part 3]], and others have apparently found it at 581, 578, 479 and maybe elsewhere. Not sure what connection any of those comics have to tea, except that 579 and 479 both have 79 in them and the image is from what-if 79. [[User:Pelosujamo|Pelosujamo]] ([[User talk:Pelosujamo|talk]]) 01:17, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

I don't know if there's an element of "the clue you get depends on the clues you answered"..? Yesterday, when I first visited, it seemed to be giving different hints as I scrolled through/jumped around the comics looking for the answers to earlier hints. Now (after finding three, confirmed as listed in the table) it's just flipping between two of the early once, the "chnace" and "fetish" ones, still undetailed in the table so I can't even cheat) leading me to believe I'm left with those two in my (personal?) 'pool' of hints, and I won't get any more until I answer one or other. Either that or I need to ''place'' my current meagre three discoveries, but I was actually wanting more first so I could be creative in combination... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.93.141|162.158.93.141]] 04:04, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Are "oOOOoooo" and "oooooooo" different clues? I don't see the second one listed.

Unless I missed something, "Hint: Everyone deserves a second chnace" doesn't refer to a particular comic, but rather something else. I went through comics 500-2288. -- [[User:162.158.92.22|162.158.92.22]] ([[User talk:162.158.92.22|talk]]) 08:29, 4 April 2020‎ (UTC) ''(please sign your comments with <nowiki>~~</nowiki>~~)''
:Probably requires a sequence of comics to be visited in specific order, like "A new model released each year" or "Take a ride in a barrel" [[User:Jaalenja|Jaalenja]] ([[User talk:Jaalenja|talk]]) 11:29, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Random question--is there a way to edit or delete items once they have been placed? This world is pretty messy.... -- [[User:162.158.74.65|162.158.74.65]] ([[User talk:162.158.74.65|talk]]) 14:12, 4 April 2020‎ ''(please sign your comments with <nowiki>~~</nowiki>~~)''

I had these hints (along with 2 other) hints: oOOOoooo, Keep coming back, Everyone deserves a second chance. I have visited ''every'' comic and every series on [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Comic_series this list], forwards and backwards, and none of them was awarded. They are either glitched or have very unusual requirements. Maybe something with one of the interactive comics? (I even tried collecting all coins in Hoverboard!) Maybe there is something that Randall considers a series but this wiki doesn't? Something else altogether (visit the same comic a number of times, return after elapsed time...)? I am giving up, if someone gets one of these and is up to the challenge, good luck, hopefully I helped a bit with getting a small list of things not to try. [[User:Jaalenja|Jaalenja]] ([[User talk:Jaalenja|talk]]) 14:58, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

== Browser agent related issues: Post what browser (Chrome, Firefox; mobile, desktop) you are using here & what issues (if any) you experience when interacting with this comic. ==

On Chrome version 80.0.3987.162 in mobile view, only "Collector's Edition" appears for me. The comic is not scrollable or interactive, & the backpack does not appear. In desktop view, the collectively added content appears, as does the backpack. (I have not tested whether I can add things, yet.)
[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 13:52, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

On Chrome version 80.0.3987.163 on desktop, the hint doesn't seem to appear. [[User:Lawruble13|Lawruble13]] ([[User talk:Lawruble13|talk]]) 19:41, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

Firefox 74.0 on desktop - looks like I don't get any hints. Everything else seems to be fine. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.92.98|162.158.92.98]] 19:59, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

:Apologies if this has been covered, but if you right-click-->inspect the backpack area, can you see the hint in the Java script? I can't find it with Chrome running in Windows 10, but it is entirely possible I don't know how/where to look.[[User:Godzilla|Godzilla]] ([[User talk:Godzilla|talk]]) 21:38, 3 April 2020 (UTC)

On Opera, hint doesn't appear.

In Firefox I have an item in my loot box, I can scroll around the world and the text is "find an empty area". I find an empty area (Damn long way out :P ) and the text changes to "place it" or "Cancel" I can cancel OK, but place it doesn't work at all. Is this a bug or have I hit the limit of my abilities? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.86.34|172.68.86.34]] 01:05, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

:oh...wait...there is a 5 second or more delay from clicking to it appearing. May be caused by the size of the world and number of elements. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.86.34|172.68.86.34]] 01:08, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Firefox 52.9 Windows XP Doesn't get past "loading" and cannot drag around. However, the backpack does appear and can be closed and opened. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.76|172.68.174.76]] 04:20, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

I tried Samsung browser (mobile, tablet), Chrome (mobile, desktop) and Edge (desktop). At first, only the Samsung browser on only one of the devices worked. Then it glitched, I got infinite Polish sausages and no more hints. It unglitched after deleting browser data. Then glitched after deleting browser data gain (I was stuck and wanted fresh batch of hints, karma is a bitch, I guess). Then it started working again after clearing browser data few more time. Then, on one occasion, I got a set of hints on desktop Chrome in incognito mode. Something weird is going on related to cookies, it seems. [[User:Jaalenja|Jaalenja]] ([[User talk:Jaalenja|talk]]) 07:35, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

FireFox/Ubuntu, nothing is working. No bag, no hint, whatever.

Firefox/Chromium on Ububntu, I seem to see evertything, it looks like this for example: https://ibb.co/BL1gDvX or https://ibb.co/PCByw8f (all add-ons disabled, chrome in standard settings)

== Screenshots ==

Since this appears to be a time-limited event, I decided it would be good idea to save some screenshots for posterity. I have uploaded several screenshots:
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/File:2288_hint_1.png
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/File:2288_hint_2.png
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/File:2288_chest.png
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/File:2288_chest_open.png
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/File:2288_place_item.png
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/File:2288_place_item_cant.png
https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/File:2288_place_item_kitty.png

Add them to the article as you see fit. [[User:Jaalenja|Jaalenja]] ([[User talk:Jaalenja|talk]]) 09:29, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

== Spelling ==

I've moved this from [[2288: Collectors Edition]] to [[2288: Collector's Edition]], which is both the correct spelling and the one used on xkcd; but was it misspelled on xkcd earlier, or did the typo originate here? [[User:Pelosujamo|Pelosujamo]] ([[User talk:Pelosujamo|talk]]) 20:09, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

New Comic:

I don't know if anyone has noticed since it's Saturday and xkcd doesn't usually update. But there's been a new comic 22889: Scenario 4. Can someone who knows how and actually has an account add the next page for it.

Thanks,

--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.207|173.245.52.207]] 22:08, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Talk:2078: Popper

2019-11-12T14:28:45Z

Dansiman:

I think this might have to do with the President's claims regarding climate change, there's no evidence that I'm not wrong [[User:Zachweix|Zachweix]] ([[User talk:Zachweix|talk]]) 18:08, 28 November 2018 (UTC)
:I don't think you're wrong. I've never seen any evidence that you're wrong. I've never met the guy (I've definitely met the guy).
:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 19:49, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

I have no evidence to prove that the comic's explanation is incorrect. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.90.112|172.68.90.112]] 18:10, 28 November 2018 (UTC)SiliconWolf

: I haven't failed to find no evidence that doesn't prove that you're not incorrect. [[User:Cosmogoblin|Cosmogoblin]] ([[User talk:Cosmogoblin|talk]]) 13:03, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

This comic is almost doubly self-referential. Has Randall done that before? Has anyone asked if somebody has done that before? What about asking that: has that been done before?
[[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.64|172.68.174.64]] 18:39, 28 November 2018 (UTC)

So how about that? There's no evidence denying that this comic exists and has an explanation, and there's no evidence denying that the explanation is correct [[User:DiceGuy|~DiceGuy]] ([[User talk:DiceGuy|talk]]) 13:11, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

Is the transcript really incomplete? It doesn't seem like it.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.22|162.158.255.22]] 16:26, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

: Doesn't seem incomplete to me either. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.43|162.158.107.43]] 17:48, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

:: There certainly doesn't appear to be any evidence that the transcript is incomplete. [[User:Shishire|Shishire]] ([[User talk:Shishire|talk]]) 19:11, 29 November 2018 (UTC)

::: As a counterargument, if a picture is worth 1,000 words, the transcript appears to be about 959 words short of completion. And I fail to see any evidence that the transcript is ''not'' incomplete. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.226.239|108.162.226.239]] 04:45, 30 November 2018 (UTC)

: Negation by failure. Hey, it works perfectly in PROLOG. ;-)

Every time I read this, it reminds me of Bad Lip Reading's Carl Poppa[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9aM9Ch97U8].

Surely there's no such thing as "historical proof" as opposed to "scientific proof"? That's creationist talk.

: There's no evidence that denies the existence of "historical proof". [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 14:28, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Talk:1807: Listening

2017-03-09T05:47:55Z

Dansiman:

I think it's important to note that, at least with Alexa, the device isn't transmitting to the cloud 24/7 - the "wake word" detection happens locally, and then it starts streaming to the Amazon servers. [[User:Okofish|Okofish]] ([[User talk:Okofish|talk]]) 13:18, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I think [[I Know You're Listening]] should be mentioned as a related comic. [[User:Effy|Effy]] ([[User talk:Effy|talk]]) 13:33, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
:That comic is about surveillance.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:59, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
::I agree with Effy as this comic here is also about knowing if anything you say might be overheard. Will add it in. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 21:19, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

That's a recent variant of an old joke. https://www.google.fr/search?q=voice+command+format+c+colon
Perhaps Randall got triggered by this news: [https://teleread.org/2017/01/10/when-voice-command-listens-to-anyone/ “Alexa, buy me a dollhouse.”]
--[[User:MGitsfullofsheep|MGitsfullofsheep]] ([[User talk:MGitsfullofsheep|talk]]) 15:31, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

It's worth noting that Amazon Echo was recently criticized because the host of a television show was filmed using his to make an order, which, when watched, was recognized as valid on devices which didn't use a pin. This caused many unanticipated purchases for viewers. I'm not sure wether it was an urban myth, but I heard lots of discussion on the topic a few months ago. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 17:08, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
:A quick google shows it's related to the dollhouse story: https://www.engadget.com/2017/01/08/amazon-echo-attempted-spending-spree/ --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.11|108.162.238.11]] 18:20, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Don't read this comic out loud. [[User:13thehappykid|13thehappykid]] ([[User talk:13thehappykid|talk]]) 20:42, 6 March 2017 (UTC)
:Ha could be a problem for those who some to use this site to read the transcript with a reader because of problems with their sight... They would not read this warning first ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 21:19, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

This device reminds me on Star Trek (TNG):
Captain Piccard: Computer, initiate self destruction.
...
Nowhere else people are talking so often in a human form to a computer. And I'm sure that will be the future -- not only at home or in a car.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Anyone still waiting for a whatif or comic about Trappist-1?[[User:XFez|XFez]] ([[User talk:XFez|talk]]) 13:51, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
:Would be nice, but I'm no longer specially optimistic about it. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 21:19, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

I am impressed that someone took the time to calculate (at least roughly), how much two tons of creamed corn would cost. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.62.75|162.158.62.75]] 16:28, 7 March 2017 (UTC)
:That is what we do here on explain xkcd ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 21:19, 7 March 2017 (UTC)

FWIW, the current version of Google Now only responds to "OK, Google" when spoken by the device owner (or someone with closely matching vocal qualities); my wife's phone won't respond to my voice, nor mine to hers, for the initial hotword detection. (Any voice is accepted for the actual query after a successful hotword match, or following a tap on a voice-command icon. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 05:47, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Talk:1807: Listening

2017-03-09T05:47:21Z

Dansiman:

1763: Catcalling

2016-11-24T16:12:32Z

Dansiman: /* Explanation */ per discussion comments, it's not certain that any real relationship to the universe's source code/language can be inferred here.

{{comic
| number = 1763
| date = November 23, 2016
| title = Catcalling
| image = catcalling.png
| titletext = Effect strength => [unstoppable] | Effect range => [2 miles] | Effect duration => [1 year]
}}

==Explanation==
"{{w|Street harassment|Catcalling}}" refers to the act of whistling or shouting to attract the attention of an attractive woman, and in some cultures carries connotations of harassment. Annoyed by this practice, Megan alters the Universe Control Console to create a setting in which catcalling actually attracts cats (as the name implies), thus resulting in the catcaller being harassed by the overwhelming feline presence, instead of the other way around, likely in an attempt to discourage the act.

The "Universe Control Console" was introduced in [[1620: Christmas Settings]] as the "Universe Control Panel", where it was used to control aspects of reality related to Christmas. Based on the name, it is presumed all aspects of reality could be altered using this fictitious device. The pointer arrow and menu options shown above Megan appear to depict aspects of the user interface that Megan is seeing.

The Console appears to have been modified/upgraded since its last appearance and features fewer controls while gaining a joystick in this incarnation. It also appears that Megan has learned to operate the console better since first encountering it. (Ponytail, who first demonstrated the console to Megan, could be the offscreen voice in this comic.)

Furthermore, the title text suggests that catcalling now attracts ''all'' cats within two miles for an entire year. The prospect of being piled in cats for a year would discourage catcalling!{{Citation needed}} [[1156: Conditioning]] also persuades people to change behavior related to wildlife.

This relates{{Citation needed}} to comics [[224: Lisp]] and [[312: With Apologies to Robert Frost]] where it is suggested that the "source code" of the universe is a mixture of perl and lisp, leaning toward the perl side.

The redefining of terms related to sexual harassment as more innocent things has also been discussed in [[1178: Pickup Artists]].

Notably{{Citation needed}} the cursor on the console is left-handed.

==Transcript==
:Offscreen: "''Hey! Are you messing with the Universe Control Console!?''"

:Megan: [standing at a control panel with a small lever and what appears to be a display] "It's cool. Just gotta fix one thing."

:[Megan still at the control panel; now a mouse pointer appears]

:[Megan still at the control panel; "Catcalling" appears written at the top of the panel above a dropdown menu that says "Harasses women"; the pointer is hovering over the arrow]

:[Megan still at the control panel; The dropdown menu is expanded to show two elements: "Harasses women" and "Attracts cats". The pointer is hovering over "Attracts cats", which is highlighted]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

Talk:1710: Walking Into Things

2016-07-25T21:17:30Z

Dansiman:

'TFI a UFE? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.245|108.162.237.245]] 04:58, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
:I was wondering about this as well and googled it before i noticed that it's just the letters L and I that are not properly spaced. So UFE translates to "LIFE"... --- 11:33, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
::Leam to kem (learn to kern) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.58|141.101.98.58]] 15:45, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Frame 1: Cueball mentions three groups. I think he implies the study only has 3 groups. Is the control group "looking at the sky"? [[Special:Contributions/199.27.133.109|199.27.133.109]] 05:37, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

:There is no control group in the first panel. It's a controlled (or monitored) trial, with three different outcomes. The control group mentioned by Megan is all mankind except Cueball.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 07:33, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
::I read that as sometimes Cueball doesn't do any of the three things while walking, and yet still walks into things. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.58|141.101.98.58]] 15:47, 22 July 2016 (UTC)
Perhaps Randall meant "discovering new things" by "walking into things". I walk into more things when I don't have a phone with me.--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.150.228|162.158.150.228]] 19:48, 22 July 2016 (UTC)

Does the word "rate" have a specific meaning in the context of controlled trials? If so, the explanation needs a summary of that meaning and a description of what the "rate of the control group" means in that context. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 21:17, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Talk:1711: Snapchat

2016-07-25T21:05:45Z

Dansiman:

"No, it's because I'm ignorant." Is Snapchat the one where photos last ten seconds only, then they're gone? And the Pulitzer prize is some American thing, right? (As opposed to Pulletzer prize, some chicken thing.) [[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.32|198.41.238.32]] 11:43, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

Pulitzer prize is a worldwide prize for Journalism (amongst which Photography is a category) and arts (drama, etc). {{unsigned ip|141.101.104.92}}

Its for published items from the U.S., not worldwide.~d {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.96}}

Should there be some level of explanation that in spite of Snaps "self destructing" people often save screenshots of Snaps meaning that the picture is probably out there somewhere? Possibly even saved by the Pulitzer committee? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.242|108.162.237.242]] 15:49, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure in the title text ("...while it's still fresh in the committee's memory") the "it" is referring to the picture, not the name of the person who took it, as stated in the above explanation. I'm not sure though, and do not like to change these things, so if someone else could look it over and, if necessary, change it, it would be much appreciated.--[[User:Snewmark|Snewmark]] ([[User talk:Snewmark|talk]]) 18:46, 25 July 2016 (UTC)
:I agree with your assessment. I've changed the text to only refer to forgetting what the picture looked like; after all, the winner's name can simply be written down, whereas few committee members likely have the skill to sketch a decent reproduction of the snap from the memory of 10 seconds or less of viewing it. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 21:05, 25 July 2016 (UTC)

1711: Snapchat

2016-07-25T21:00:46Z

Dansiman: /* Explanation */ removed "winner's name" from the scope of what the Pulitzer committee is likely to forget between choosing a winner and awarding the Prize.

{{comic
| number = 1711
| date = July 25, 2016
| title = Snapchat
| image = snapchat.png
| titletext = For obvious reasons, the prize is awarded at a different time of year from the others, while it's still fresh in the committee's memory.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Maybe there's more to it.}}
The {{w|Pulitzer Prize}} is awarded for spectacular writing (there are many categories; see {{w|Pulitzer Prize#Categories|here}}). {{w|Snapchat}} is a photo-sending app that allows the receiving user to only view the photo (known as a "snap") for a few seconds before it is deleted.

[[Cueball]] reads about the prize but then when [[Megan]] states the she heard the picture was really good Cueball becomes disappointed because he has missed out on the chance to see the prize winning photo due to the temporary nature of Snapchat.

The title text extends this ephemeral nature of Snapchat's content to the prize awarded for it: The other Pulitzer prizes are announced annually in April and awarded in May (except for 2016, the centennial year, when an awards dinner will be held in October). The Snapchat Pulitzer alone must be awarded as quickly as possible after the winner has been decided, before the prize committee forgets what the winning picture looked like.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan standing together. He holds a smartphone in his left hand and looks at it.]
:Cueball: Oh, the Pulitzer Prize for Snapchat was just awarded.
:Megan: Yeah.
:Megan: I hear the photo was really good.
:Cueball: Aw, ''maaaan''...

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Smartphones]]
[[Category:Social networking]]

1699: Local News

2016-06-27T16:06:19Z

Dansiman: /* Explanation */ clean up Wikipedia link

{{comic
| number = 1699
| date = June 27, 2016
| title = Local News
| image = local_news.png
| titletext = Will there ever be a physics term greater than 'tachyonic antitelephone?' According to this message from the future, the answer is 'no.'
}}

==Explanation==
This comic contrasts the term local with the Quantum mechanics jargon [[wikipedia:Quantum nonlocality|nonlocality]]. [More likely dealing with causal nonlocality.]
A "tachyon" is a theoretical or thought-experiment particle which can travel faster than the speed of light. It has many strange properties, including being able to go back in time. The comic and title text are based on this, with the comic making a pun on "local news".

==Transcript==
[Newscaster sitting at her desk]

Newscaster: In local news, city council elections were held today.

Newscaster: In nonlocal news, I killed my past self with a tachyon beam.
{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1685: Patch

2016-05-28T15:48:32Z

Dansiman:

Hey, I'm first! Guessing the Bot only JUST created this, it was mere minutes after midnight EST when I landed on this page. Unfortunately this is a comic I'm less capable of explaining. From the looks of it, his Photoshop Patch turned what looks like C code into gobbledegook by filling in several of the spaces (and I think even changing some of the characters, possible with characters which fill more of the space). - NiceGuy1 [[Special:Contributions/108.162.218.77|108.162.218.77]] 04:24, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

This appears to be Python code. Note the "def" keyword, how "for i in [garbled]:" is used rather than C's for syntax, and how there are no semicolons or braces. --[[User:Sherlock9|Sherlock9]] ([[User talk:Sherlock9|talk]]) 05:03, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Photoshop has a 'patch' tool but it has a very different function from a software patch. {{unsigned ip|108.162.242.123}}
:An explanation of Photoshop's patch tool might be helpful in identifying patterns in what pixels were changed by it, perhaps facilitating the identification of some likely characters. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 05:56, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

The first function looks like "isPrime" and seems to check if a number is prime. The last function looks like "quicksort". Both are common functions you create when learning programming. Not sure about the second one, but it looks like it uses regular expressions. -- [[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.242|198.41.242.242]] 06:44, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
:I think the second one is "isPrimeRegex". *cringe* [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.25|141.101.104.25]] 08:55, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Second function looks like a function to check if number is a prime using Regex (described here http://www.noulakaz.net/2007/03/18/a-regular-expression-to-check-for-prime-numbers/). I don't know if it deserves some special mention, but at least to me (non-programmer) it looks like one of the most arcane things you can do in programming [[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.79|141.101.80.79]] 07:22, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
:That indeed looks very much like it. I think this is worth mentioning. --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.240|198.41.242.240]] 11:22, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
:Note that mathematically speaking, that regular expression is NOT regular expression - use of backreference in match is one of originally perl extension which makes it much more powerful (and much slower in some cases). It's just that both python and ruby already copied most of perl extensions of regular expressions. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 12:39, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

Do you think the use of pi is a reference to one of the other comics(I forgot which one...)?[[User:Transuranium|Transuranium]] ([[User talk:Transuranium|talk]]) 10:35, 25 May 2016 (UTC)Transuranium
:I rather guess it is short for pivot. See {{w|quicksort}} for what the pivot does. --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.242.240|198.41.242.240]] 11:22, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

You know, it's theoretically possible for Photoshop to create compilable code in [https://esolangs.org/wiki/Piet the esoteric programming language] "[http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/piet.html Piet]". But unless there's a way to turn off the Patch tool's antialiasing, it'll be practically impossible for patches larger than a single pixel. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.220|108.162.237.220]] 14:15, 25 May 2016 (UTC)

I don't really know anything about programming, but it looks like it's checking for factors of n from 2 to sqrt(n)+1. Why would it need to check any number larger than sqrt(n) though? If i>sqrt(n), then ij=n implies that j<sqrt(n), and j should already have been found. So the largest integer you need to check is floor( sqrt(n) ), which is in the range from 2 to sqrt(n). Checking ceiling( sqrt(n) ) for a non-square number seems redundant. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.250|108.162.237.250]] 15:25, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
:It's because <code>range(a, b)</code> in Python means the interval [a, b) (excluding b). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.222.29|108.162.222.29]] 15:41, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
::That mismatched bracket in your comment is hurting me. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.68.71|162.158.68.71]] 17:02, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
:: It's not mismatched; the right paren indicates the value's the upper limit but excluded. I'd include a right bracket in my response but I think that might make a compiler curse. [[User:Elvenivle|Elvenivle]] ([[User talk:Elvenivle|talk]])

The line with re.match in the likely original code should have an "r" for "raw" before the first string thus:
if re.match(r'^1?$|^(11+?)\1+$', '1'*n):
I am not changing it in the main explanation because I don't know what colour it should be and it's my first time contributing. - Charles W. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.42|141.101.98.42]] 22:24, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
:Seems like it has been changed by now. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 07:13, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

Has someone added this to the Protip category?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.2.139|162.158.2.139]] 23:53, 25 May 2016 (UTC)
:Uhm yes, it should be clear right below these comment on the main page? All categories are listed at the bottom of each page. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 07:01, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

It might be worth explaining the [pivot] * (len(a) - (len(l) + len(r))) since that threw me when I first saw it. Since l has the elements of a < pivot, and r has the elements of a > pivot, len(a) - (len(l) + len(r)) will be the number of elements in a that = pivot (which must be in the range [1, len(a)]), and these are then 'spliced' into the result between the result of quicksorting l and r.
[[User:Jstout|Jstout]] ([[User talk:Jstout|talk]]) 19:48, 26 May 2016 (UTC)

;Resemblance to Xerox number mangling issue

To me, this reminds me of the problem that a large set of Xerox copiers had. Their faulty use of image compression when scanning could cause portions of images to be replaced with similar portions, but the threshold of similarity was loose enough that numeric data would be subtly corrupted. For example, building plans and spreadsheet data could have numbers copied incorrectly, either of which could certainly have disastrous consequences. Documents were corrupted for a period as much as eight years before the problem was corrected, making legal archive data unreliable for this period, and some of the faulty machines may still be in use. http://www.dkriesel.com/en/blog/2013/0802_xerox-workcentres_are_switching_written_numbers_when_scanning {{unsigned ip|162.158.252.185}}
:Now that you mention it... Although here it's a person intentionally doing harm to the image.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.69|173.245.52.69]] 22:20, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
::So ''that's'' what it was! I wondered why all the copies I could find of ''Concrete Mathematics'' had random font changes all over (and half the formulas came out wrong). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.121|141.101.80.121]] 22:26, 26 May 2016 (UTC)
:::Wow. that's intense.[[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.69|173.245.52.69]] 00:04, 27 May 2016 (UTC)
:A couple of decades ago, the firm I was working for suddenly realised that one of its dot-matrix printers was causing problems. It was being used to print out specific validation information for archival, but the centre pin of the (vertical)print-head pin array was no longer striking. Out of 9 or perhaps 13 pins, it didn't represent much difference in the output ''normally'', but the difference between a 0 and a 8 was whether that pin's contribution was two separated pixels, the middle of the two long verticals in the zero*, or a short horizontal sequence of dots representing the contact between the two small circles in the eight. The way the hardly-noticed absent row caused the character to be read meant that both read as zero, with no difference. (Other characters had problems, but usually did not look like anything else. There were no hyphens/minus-signs, but they might have rendered as whitespace if there had been.) This was not an ideal situation, and a different printer was swapped in ASAP.
: * - This typeface's zero did not have a diagonal bar, of the type I even habitually ''handwrite'', but confusion with O-for-Oscar characters was already not an issue due to context... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.43|141.101.98.43]] 03:37, 27 May 2016 (UTC)

I think the party of the explanation that details OCR is more in depth than it really needs to be. Considering that the comic itself makes no reference to OCR, these details should be trimmed down considerably, or at least moved to a later point in the explanation after the more salient details. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 15:48, 28 May 2016 (UTC)

Talk:1685: Patch

2016-05-25T05:56:45Z

Dansiman:

Talk:1685: Patch

2016-05-25T05:55:10Z

Dansiman:

Talk:1663: Garden/Images

2016-05-05T16:19:36Z

Dansiman: /* Stackables */

Sorry to post this here, but I'm unable to "add a comment" at the bottom of the page because [[Talk:1663:_Garden/Images]] does not exist, and:
<blockquote>"You do not have permission to create discussion pages, for the following reason: You do not have permission to create pages."</blockquote>
Can someone that has permission create it? [[User:User:173.245.55.63|173.245.55.63]] ([[User talk:173.245.55.63|talk]]) 22:36, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
:Yes I have now created the talk page [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 22:46, 12 April 2016 (UTC)

== Stackables ==

Can we get some information together on which objects can or cannot have something else appear on top of them, or can have only certain other things on them? For example, the balloon segments can have more balloon segments or a balloon, but can they have anything else attached? What prompted me to ask about this was seeing [[:File:Garden_Cat_Balanced.png|Garden_Cat_Balanced.png]] sitting on top of [[:File:Garden_Man_1a.png|Garden_Man_1a.png]]'s head. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 21:54, 12 April 2016 (UTC)
:My hope is to get a table like the one of the [[1350#Themes|themes]] in [[1350: Lorenz]]. This page here I made based on the one here [[1350: Lorenz/Images]]. It will be a job to make these tables though, especially if there keeps appearing new images.. I was thinking to make it in this page at the bottom at first and the moving it into the main explanation when it works. Also when the page is again up and running on full power, so the tables can be collapsed again. This do not work now (but did for instance with the Lorenz comic before. It has now been affected more than a week after the inrush to see the "gardens". The table should be divided i item type as well with images. I was thinking Animals, plants, characters, smaller items and larger items. The animals could be divided into bird, fish, mammals, reptiles. If some items that belong together would belong in different sections based on this, these can go in more than one section, as is also the case with the images in Lorenz... [[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 14:30, 13 April 2016 (UTC)
::I have now made the table, now just need to fill out the description and links to images[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:27, 16 April 2016 (UTC)
::Before the table is moved onto the Explanation page, I think all of the images should be scaled down from 2x to actual size - or maybe any larger than some threshold - because this is a '''lot''' of vertical scrolling. [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 21:08, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

:I've noticed a lot of turtles, ducks, and "standing birds" perching on the heads of sword Megan and stilt girl. Cueball also attracts [http://xkcd.com/1663/#cb79b454-006f-11e6-8001-42010a8e0019 owls]. [[User:.42|.42]] ([[User talk:.42|talk]]) 15:00, 14 April 2016 (UTC)
::I think all of the characters can have animals on their head or hands if outstretched. Also the deer can have other animals on them. But maybee this first occurred later?[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:27, 16 April 2016 (UTC)

:I just found Beret Guy in a shrub. The interesting thing is that even though he isn't a "wind-swayer", because the shrub is, he wound up swaying along with the shrub! :) [[User:Dansiman|Dansiman]] ([[User talk:Dansiman|talk]]) 16:19, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Talk:1663: Garden/Images

2016-04-18T21:08:09Z

Dansiman: /* Stackables */

Talk:1663: Garden/Images

2016-04-12T21:54:32Z

Dansiman: /* Stackables */ new section