explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

882: Significant

2022-05-04T02:21:22Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232815 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 882
| date = April 6, 2011
| title = Significant
| image = significant.png
| titletext = So, uh, we did the green study again and got no link. It was probably a-- "RESEARCH CONFLICTED ON GREEN JELLY BEAN/ACNE LINK; MORE STUDY RECOMMENDED!"
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is about {{w|data dredging}} (aka ''p''-hacking), and the misrepresentation of science and statistics in the media. A girl with a black ponytail comes to [[Cueball]] with her claim that {{w|jelly beans}} cause {{w|acne}} and Cueball then commission two scientists (a man with goggles and [[Megan]]) to do some research on the link between jelly beans and acne. They find no link, but in the end the real result of this research is bad news reporting!

First some basic statistical theory. Let's imagine you are trying to find out if jelly beans cause acne. To do this you could find a group of people and randomly split them into two groups - one group who you get to eat lots of jelly beans and a second group who are banned from eating jelly beans. After some time you compare whether the group that eat jelly beans have more acne than those who do not. If more people in the group that eat jelly beans have acne then you might think that jelly beans cause acne. However, there is a problem.

Some people will suffer from acne whether they eat jelly beans or not and some will never have acne even if they do eat jelly beans. There is an element of chance in how many people prone to acne are in each group. What if, purely by chance, all the group we selected to eat jelly beans would have had acne anyway while those who didn't eat jelly beans were the lucky sort of people who never get spots? Then, even if jelly beans did not cause acne, we would conclude that jelly beans did cause acne. Of course it is very unlikely that all the acne prone people end up in one group by chance, especially if we have enough people in each group. However, to give more confidence in the result of this type of experiment, scientists use statistics to see how likely it is that the result they find is purely by chance. This is known as {{w|statistical hypothesis testing}}. Before we start the experiment, we choose a threshold known as the significance level. In the comic the scientists choose a threshold of 5%. If they find that more of the people who ate jelly beans had acne and the chance it was a purely random result is less than 1 in 20, they will say that jelly beans do cause acne. If however, the chance that their result was purely by random chance is greater than 5% they will say they have found no evidence of a link. The important point is this – '''there could still be a 1 in 20 chance that this result was purely a statistical fluke'''.

At first the scientists do not want to stop playing the addictive game ''{{w|Minecraft}}'', but they do eventually start. Minecraft was previously referenced in [[861: Wisdom Teeth]].

The scientists find no link between jelly beans and acne (the probability that the result is by chance is more than 5% i.e. ''p'' > 0.05) but then Megan and Cueball ask them to see if only one colour of jelly beans is responsible. They test 20 different colors each at a significance level of 5%. If the probability that each trial gives a false positive result is 1 in 20, then by testing 20 different colors it is now likely that at least one jelly bean test will give a false positive. To be precise, the probability of having ''no'' false positive in 20 tests is 0.9520 = 35.85%. Probability of having ''no'' false positive in 21 tests (counting the test without color discrimination) is 0.9521 = 34.06%.

This leads to a big newspaper headline saying '''Green Jelly Beans Linked To Acne''' where it is said that they have 95 percent confidence with only a 5% chance of a coincidence. Unfortunately, although this number has been reported by the scientists' stats package and would be true if green jelly beans were the only ones tested, it is also seriously misleading. If you roll just one die, one time, you aren't very likely to roll a six... but if you roll it 20 times you are very likely to have at least one six among them. This means that you cannot just ignore the other 19 experiments that failed.

There are good methods for handling this problem, notably {{w|Bayesian_inference|Bayesian inference}}, but they can be difficult to use and explain, and complexity does not sell newspapers.
In the title text we find out that the scientists {{w|Reproducibility|repeated the experiment}} (another key part of the scientific method), but now they no longer find any evidence for the link between acne and green jelly beans. They try to tell the reporter something, maybe that it was probably a coincidence, but the reporters are not interested since that is not news. So they do not listen to what the scientist has to say and instead uses the information they have to make another major headline saying '''Research conflicted''' and recommend more study on the link. But that was just what the scientist already did.

This is (sadly) often an issue with more serious matters than jelly beans and acne – at any one time there are many studies about possible links between substances (e.g. red wine) and illness (e.g. cancer). Because only the positive results get reported, this limits the value any single study has - especially if the mechanism linking the two things is not known.

=== p-hacking and bad news reporting in real life ===
In 2015 some journalists demonstrated the same problem: just how gullible other news outlets are with the same sort of flawed "experimental design": [http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/05/28/how-and-why-a-journalist-tricked-news-outlets-into-thinking-chocolate-makes-you-thin/?hpid=z5 How, and why, a journalist tricked news outlets into thinking chocolate makes you thin - The Washington Post]

==Transcript==
:[A girl with a black ponytail runs up to Cueball, who subsequently points off-panel where there are presumably scientists.]
:Girl with black ponytail: Jelly beans cause acne!
:Cueball: Scientists! Investigate!
:Scientist (off screen): But we're playing Minecraft!
:Scientist (off screen): ...Fine.

:[Two scientists. The man has safety goggles on, Megan has a sheet of notes.]
:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:[Back to the original two.]
:Cueball: That settles that.
:Girl with black ponytail: I hear it's only a certain color that causes it.
:Cueball: Scientists!
:Scientist (off screen): But Miiiinecraft!

:[20 identical small panels follow, 4 rows 5 columns. The exact same picture as in panel 2 above. The scientist with goggles are stating the results and Megan holds some notes in her hand. The only difference from panel to panel is the color and then in the 14th panel where the result is positive and there is an exclamation from off screen.]
:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between purple jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between brown jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between pink jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between blue jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between teal jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between salmon jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between red jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between turquoise jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between magenta jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between yellow jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between grey jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between tan jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between cyan jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found a link between green jelly beans and acne (p < 0.05).
:Voice (off screen): ''Whoa!''

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between mauve jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between beige jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between lilac jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between black jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between peach jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:Scientist with goggles: We found no link between orange jelly beans and acne (p > 0.05).

:[Newspaper front page with a picture with three green jelly beans. There are several sections with unreadable text below each of the last three readable sentences.]
:'''News'''
:'''Green Jelly Beans Linked To Acne!'''
:95% Confidence
:Only 5% chance of coincidence!
:Scientists...

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color‏‎]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Statistics]]
[[Category:Research Papers]]
[[Category:Minecraft]]

2532: Censored Vaccine Card

2022-05-04T02:21:08Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232834 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2532
| date = October 22, 2021
| title = Censored Vaccine Card
| image = censored_vaccine_card.png
| titletext = CVS's pharmacies are fine, but I much prefer their [censored]s.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is another entry in a [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] related to the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}, specifically regarding the [[:Category:COVID-19 vaccine|COVID-19 vaccine]].

The comic hinges on the sharing of vaccination card photos on social media as proof that the user has been vaccinated against COVID-19 (in this case, gotten a {{w|Booster dose|booster shot}}, a third dose of the vaccine). When people in the United States first started receiving their vaccine shots, a large number of them shared photos of the CDC vaccination proof cards that they received alongside the vaccines; it was enough of a trend that the {{w|Federal Trade Commission|FTC}} released an official statement warning vaccine recipients [https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/blog/2021/02/social-media-no-place-covid-19-vaccination-cards not to share photos], due to the cards containing {{w|Personal data|personal identification}} that probably should not be made public.

The irony here is that [[Randall]] has "{{w|Sanitization (classified information)|censored}}" (redacted) some impersonal lines, such as the instructions that are identical on all vaccination cards, and many easy-to-guess lines, while not censoring any of said personal information.
Considering the date of the 3rd dose (one day prior to the comic's uploading), it is likely that the blackouts in the last line are only covering whitespace.

Another possible reference here is to the practice of filing for {{w|Freedom of Information Act (United States)|FOIA}} requests that has been getting more popular in recent years, with sites like muckrock.com developing to support it. These requests provide for citizens to view the contents of government files, but the files first go through a process of redaction via solid black rectangles. The information that is redacted can seem random, ridiculous, and frustrating, and be a source of legal action.

The caption indicates that his intention is to "seem more mysterious". This is best exemplified by the blanking of most of the word "clinician" to leave the acronym "{{w|Central Intelligence Agency|CIA}}", referring to the US government agency known for its frequently "mysterious" (classified) activity, as well as its liberal use of redaction like that in the comic.

[[File:CDC_COVID-19_Vaccination_Record_Card.jpg|thumb|300px|A real and appropriately censored CDC vaccination record.]]

The "19" in COVID-19 is systematically censored in the comic. This is humorous because currently COVID-19 is the only thing that could be meant by "COVID-[anything]", and so the redaction is pointless. This may also be intended, in the interest of mystery, to imply some future outbreak of a similar disease (given an identifier based on the year of its inception).

The sentence at the top of the card, which appears once in English and once in Spanish, has equivalent portions redacted in both languages:
* "medical information" and "the vaccines you have received" in the English version, and
* "información médica" and "las vacunas que ha recibido" in the Spanish.
This is the first comic including a sentence (or, given the censorship, at least a good portion of one) in Spanish.

{{w|CVS Pharmacy}} is a pharmacy chain in the US which provides COVID-19 vaccinations. CVS #05309 is in Pineville, LA, while Randall lives in Massachusetts; it is not clear why he would have received his first vaccine dose in Louisiana.

The title text comments on the "Provider or clinic site" of the second dose on the card. Where the word "pharmacy" appears in the previous row (and would be on a real card), it is censored in the comic. The most reasonable assumption is that the word is still "pharmacy" and that Randall has simply chosen to redact that instance for some reason, but the title text humorously implies that it was in fact some ''other'' CVS-related venture where he got his second dose, for instance a "CVS parking lot" or perhaps an {{w|anti-submarine warfare carrier}}.

CVS's parent company, {{w|CVS Health}}, does have other enterprises with compatible names: {{w|CVS Caremark}} and {{w|CVS Health#CVS Specialty|CVS Specialty}}. However, neither of these provide COVID-19 vaccinations.

===Numerical trivia===
Randall's patient number is the 2nd to 9th digits of the fractional part of the decimal expansion of {{w|pi}} inclusively: 41592653.

The lot numbers of the first and second doses allude to two numbers that appear frequently in Star Wars and other works related to George Lucas: {{w|THX 1138#Etymology and references|1138}}, and {{w|21-87#Influence on George Lucas|2187}}. The lot number of the third dose is the {{w|1729 (number)|Ramanujan-Hardy number}}.

The Clinician number for the first shot is the last 4 digits of the phone number for {{w|867-5309/Jenny|"Jenny" 867-5309}}, which has been entered into communication technology by a massive number of people.

Given the reasonable assumption{{citation needed}} that the partially censored year relates to the twentieth century, the date of birth on the card corresponds to that given in the acknowledged [[Randall_Munroe#Timeline|timeline]] for Randall. The censorship of that specific part of his date of birth might be related to the fact that the number "19" has been systematically redacted on the card. Another interpretation is that Randall is implying he is either over one hundred years old or a time traveler, although neither is likely to be true.{{citation needed}}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Profile picture of a Cueball's head and shoulders, with unreadable lines of text to the right.]
:Check it out, I just got my booster!

:[Picture of the U.S. COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card attached on a media post. The card includes pre-printed information in black and handwritten information in blue, the latter indicated here by bold text. Some of the text has been blacked out, indicated here by "[censored]".]

:COVID-[censored] Vaccination record card
:[At the upper right of the card appears the logo of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, a stylized eagle surrounded by the words "Department of Health & Human Services USA", although those words are not legible in this drawing. Next to that appears the logo of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a shaded box with the letters "CDC" and the words "Centers for Disease Control and [censored]" below it.]

:Please keep this record card, which includes [censored]
:about [censored].
:Por favor, guarde esta tarjeta de registro, que incluye [censored]
:[censored] sobre [censored].

:'''Munroe''' '''Randall'''
----
:Last Name First Name

:'''10-17-[censored]84''' '''41592653'''
----
:Date of birth Patient number

:[A table fills the remainder of the card. It has four columns and five rows. The first row gives the column names:]
:Vaccine. Manufacturer lot number. Date. Provider or clinic site.
:[The rest of the rows have been filled out. Each "date" cell also includes pre-printed "MM DD YY" below the line where the date is written.]
:1st dose COVID-[censored]. '''Pfizer ER1138'''. '''04'''/'''01'''/'''21'''. '''CVS Pharmacy Clinician #5309'''.
:2nd dose COVID-[censored]. '''Pfizer ES2187'''. '''04'''/'''22'''/'''21'''. '''CVS''' [censored] [censored].
:Other. '''3rd dose''' [censored] '''FH1729'''. '''10'''/'''21'''/'''21'''. [censored] [censored] [censored]'''CIA'''[censored].
:Other. [censored]. [censored]/[censored]/[censored]. [censored].

:[Caption below panel:]
:Security tip: To seem more mysterious, try censoring only ''non''-identifying information.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:COVID-19 vaccine]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Randall Munroe]]
[[Category:Comics referencing THX 1138]]

1371: Brightness

2022-05-04T02:20:33Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233057 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1371
| date = May 21, 2014
| title = Brightness
| image = brightness.png
| titletext = Recently, some exoplanet astronomers have managed to use careful analysis of reflected light to discover Earth during the day.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Exoplanets}} are planets outside of our solar system, and exoplanet astronomers are astronomers who attempt to discover and study such planets.

[[Megan]] is using a common exoplanet {{w|Exoplanet#Indirect_methods|discovery technique}} to discover a planet around a nearby star. When a planet passes between an observing astronomer and a star, the planet will block some tiny part of the light coming from that star, causing it to appear dimmer for some amount of time. The {{w|Kepler (spacecraft)|Kepler telescope}} used this technique to find evidence for exoplanets.

But here Megan is standing on the surface of the Earth at night, looking at the ground, and therefore presumably looking in the direction of the sun. By observing that it is completely occluded at night, she correctly concludes that the Sun is orbited by at least one planet: the Earth. This is obviously an absurd usage of that method. Reasons include the fact that exoplanets are not big enough to block out all of their stars' light when seen from Earth{{Citation needed}}, making what Megan says a massive understatement, and that the period of the brightness oscillations would correspond to the length of a day, not a year as it would for exoplanets.

The title text alludes to using more complicated techniques to observe light reflected by small planets like the Earth, for example by detecting {{w|Methods of detecting exoplanets#Polarimetry|polarized light}} reflected from the planet's atmosphere. In some sense, observing the light that reflects off of the Earth during the day is in fact how we see everything around us. It also implies that astronomers, who because of their career choice are more likely to work at night, might be completely unaware of Earth's existence in the daytime and thus surprised to "discover" it from their nighttime work.

==Transcript==
:[A black panel with white text and a white Megan who is standing staring at the ground.]
:Megan: Based on this decrease in the star's brightness, I believe it is orbited by at least one planet.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Exoplanet astronomers at night

==Trivia==
*The title text may also be a reference to [[1231: Habitable Zone]] where an astronomer is messed up by someone who puts a mirror in front of the telescope.
*More details at: {{w|Methods of detecting exoplanets}}.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Exoplanets]]

1562: I in Team

2022-05-04T02:19:51Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232961 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1562
| date = August 10, 2015
| title = I in Team
| image = i_in_team.png
| titletext = There's no "I" in "VOWELS".
}}

==Explanation==
"There's no I in team" is a well-known saying that tries to encourage teamwork by reducing each member's individual self-importance. The intention of the phrase is to remind team members that, just as the letter "i" is not present in the word "team", focus on the metaphorical "I" (i.e. individual self-interest) is not constructive in teamwork. It can be used as a light reprimand to a team member who isn't cooperating, with the reminder that when working as a team one cannot think only for oneself, and must work in partnership with the rest of the team towards a common goal.

The phrase "no I in team" dates from the 1960s in the USA with printed references [http://www.knowyourphrase.com/phrase-meanings/Theres-no-I-in-team.html] showing it is familiar to baseball pitchers such as {{w|Vern Law}}. As an aside, it's interesting that it seems to come from baseball, a sport where players have significantly more independence compared to, say, {{w|rugby}}.

Interestingly, the letters M and E can both be found in "team." This suggests that the phrase "There's no I in team" was a slight victim of {{w|cherry picking}}. This comic makes fun of this, and uses an extreme example, by [[Cueball]] taking the sentence literally, as a metalingual comment (see {{w|Jakobson's functions of language}}), and he points out to [[Hairy]] that the spelling (or {{w|orthography}}) of a word doesn't relate to its meaning (an instance of the {{w|use–mention distinction}}).

Cueball is using the same joke against Hairy by saying there ''is'' a "u" in "People who apparently don't understand the relationship between orthography and meaning". There is a "u" (pronounced as "you") in what Cueball said, implying that Hairy is included in the set of people who mistakenly link orthography and meaning.

Of course, it's very likely that Hairy knows that orthography doesn't determine meaning, and could easily reply "There's also a 'u' in 'People who take {{w|aphorisms}} too literally' ". On the other hand, there is in fact no 'u' in that sentence, which would make it the one actually false statement mentioned.

The title text "There's no 'I' in 'VOWELS'." provides another illustration of the distinction between orthography and meaning. "A", "I" and "U" are vowels, notwithstanding the irrelevant fact that they are not included in the spelling of "VOWELS".

Orthography was the subject of [[1069: Alphabet]].

==Transcript==
:[Hairy and Cueball stand opposite each other.]
:Hairy: Remember, there's no "I" in "team".
:Cueball: No, but there's a "U" in "People who apparently don't understand the relationship between orthography and meaning".

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Language]]

674: Natural Parenting

2022-05-04T02:19:30Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232959 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 674
| date = December 11, 2009
| title = Natural Parenting
| image = natural_parenting.png
| titletext = On one hand, every single one of my ancestors going back billions of years has managed to figure it out. On the other hand, that's the mother of all sampling biases.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic relates to the anxiety of having a first child, particularly an unplanned child, and is a play on the double meaning of the expression "do what comes naturally".

Doing what comes naturally is a euphemism for couples pairing off and forming intimate relationships, including sex. It is also advice given to new parents, advising them not to second guess themselves so much, to alleviate the stress that comes with parenting.

The couple [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] find themselves as unexpected parents. Both parents experience anxiety over how to manage their life with the child. The new father defuses the situation and states that parenting can not be that hard and they should just do what comes naturally. Naturally the couple find themselves with a second child. This adds insult to injury as now they have two children and still no idea about how to parent. As the first child was an "accident" the birth of the child was because of instinctual urges. Therefore, assuming nothing has changed in their relationship it would be natural if they produced another child.

The title text claims that parenting can't be too hard because, up to the present, all of your ancestors have produced an unbroken line of children who figured out how to raise at least one child that is able to continue this unbroken chain. [[Randall]] jokes that this is the "mother" of all {{w|sampling bias}}es: Had anyone of one's ancestors completely failed at being parents, that person would never exist. Therefore, this sampling is heavily skewed by sampling only those that were all successful in at least one instance. It does not take into account the number of people in the past who do not have any lineage today to speak of, or the number times our ancestors failed at being parents to children we are not directly descended from.
The baby says, "Baby!", either copying Cueball, or saying its name, Pokémon-style. This is also the topic of [[441: Babies]] and [[1384: Krypton]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are looking down at a baby, throwing its arms in the air, standing between them.]
:Cueball: Oh man, we made a baby.
:Megan: ''Don't panic. Don't panic.''
:Baby: Baby!

:[Cueball looks at Megan, who still look down at the baby, which now looks down at her feet.]
:Cueball: Parenting can't be that hard. Let's just do what comes naturally.

:[In a frame-less panel they all three just stand there, they look down and the baby has spread it's arms out. Beat frame.]

:[A caption is in a frame at the top of the panel. Cueball and Megan are looking down between them. There are now two babies, one larger looking at Cueball's feet the smaller looking at Megan's feet.]
:Soon:
:Megan: Aw, crap.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring babies]]
[[Category:Romance]]

2213: How Old

2022-05-04T02:19:13Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232950 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2213
| date = October 9, 2019
| title = How Old
| image = how_old.png
| titletext = We've met! I remember you when you were thiiiis tall! [*holds a hand an inch above their head*]
}}

==Explanation==
Another comic of the [[:Category:Tips|tips type]], this time regarding one of [[Randall|Randall's]] problems, [[:Category:Social interactions|social interactions]], this time including an ''interaction tip''.

[[White Hat]] introduces his dad to [[Cueball]], who then expresses a reaction more typical of people being introduced to children, by saying ''Aww, how old is he?''

When introduced to a young kid, saying "aww" is accepted as normal, because the speaker thinks the little child is cute. The speaker also wishes both to know the age of the kid and to give the kid a chance to answer this question.

But when meeting someone older this would feel very awkward, and Randall, indicating he is very awkward around other (normal) people, continues to make this type of comic about problems with social interactions. Hence for others with his problems, this comic gives an interaction tip in the caption, letting you know that ''How Old?'' (the title of the comic) is a common question to ask only when introduced to kids, not to older people such as elderly parents. Another excellent example of how Randall also doesn't know how to speak with people with children can be seen in [[1650: Baby]].

White Hat's father is wearing a {{w|sailor cap}} like the old version of Cueball in [[572: Together]] and as other old people both in [[586: Mission to Culture]] and [[1910: Sky Spotters]].

In the title text, Cueball continues down the road to awkwardness by saying other things normally reserved for meeting kids. Here he notes that he has actually met White Hat's father before, but so long ago that he since has changed height. For kids this usually means they have grown taller, but old people, who have long stopped growing, will over time become more compressed and lose height. So apart from saying that he remembers when White Hat's father was ''thiiiis tall'', he also holds his hand an inch (2–3 cm) above the father's head to indicate this age-related height loss. For a growing child, he would instead have held his hand some distance below the top of their head.

This interaction would be really embarrassing for White Hat and his father, as being made aware of aging is usually not something people like to be confronted with by someone they hardly know, and being treated like a child is embarrassing.{{Citation needed}}

==Transcript==
:[White Hat holds his hand out towards a man with a sailor-cap standing to the left in the image while addressing Cueball standing to the right.]
:White Hat: I'd like you to meet my dad.
:Cueball: Aww, how old is he?

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Interaction tip: This is a common question to ask parents about their kids, but for some reason in the other direction it's weird.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Characters with hats]]
[[Category:Tips]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]

1324: Weather

2022-05-04T02:18:39Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232968 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1324
| date = January 31, 2014
| title = Weather
| image = weather.png
| titletext = At least if you're really into, like, Turkish archaeology, store clerks aren't like 'hey, how 'bout those Derinkuyu underground cities!' when they're trying to be polite.
}}
==Explanation==
Social norm accepts casual small-talk as an ice breaker for interaction — usually it is always safe to talk about the weather without hitting any disagreements as there are rarely any personal viewpoints about the weather — in contrast small-talk is never about political subjects or similar where chances are that there are strong personal viewpoints.

In this strip [[Cueball]] is described a "weather geek", enjoying subjects such as {{w|meteorology}} and {{w|weather forecasting}}. When [[Hairy]] makes a comment about the weather, Cueball launches into a detailed technical discussion, not realizing Hairy is simply trying to engage in small-talk. Only weather geeks would have this problem, but this topic is a common opening for a conversation in casual small-talk. Cueball switches to small-talk once he realizes that Hairy is confused and didn't expect this level of technical information.

As to the jargon:
*{{w|Jet stream|Jet streams}} are strong air currents high in the atmosphere which have a big influence on the weather.
*18z is 18:00 {{w|Coordinated Universal Time|UTC}} (6 PM in London, 10 AM in California). See {{w|ISO 8601}} at Wikipedia. The letter "Z" is used as 'Zulu' in the {{w|NATO phonetic alphabet}}, meaning just UTC.
*GFS is the {{w|Global Forecast System}} (also known as NCEP-GFS). It is a computer model used by the {{w|National Weather Service}} to predict the weather up to 16 days in advance. The model is run 4 times a day and the output is distinguished by the UTC hour it was started (18z in this case).
*Part of the prediction is the {{w|atmospheric pressure}} expressed in {{w|Bar (unit)|millibars}} (or mb). 960 mb is very low pressure, which is usually associated with seriously bad weather (record low pressure for Minnesota was 963 mb till 1998).
*"Think it'll verify?": A forecast "verifies" when an analysis of observations at the forecast time are found to match the forecast. Cueball is asking if Hairy thinks the prediction of a 960 mb low will be shown to have been correct.

The title text clarifies the problem weather nuts like Cueball here have: Unlike other geeky pursuits (like, say, the {{w|Derinkuyu Underground City|Derinkuyu Underground Cities}}, [[1368: One Of The|one of the]] most well-known {{w|History of Turkey|archaeological sites in Turkey}}) weather is a fairly common small talk subject. As a result, weather geeks have to be constantly vigilant so as not to launch into technical monologues.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Hairy are talking.]
:Hairy: So, how 'bout this weather?
:Cueball: I ''know,'' right? The whole jet stream layer is ''nuts!''
:Hairy: Um, sure...
:Cueball: The 18z GFS forecasts 960mb by Tuesday. Think it'll verify?
:Hairy: What?
:Cueball: ...Right. Sorry. Uh, yeah! Weather sure has been crazy.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Weather geeks have it tough.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Social interactions]]
[[Category:Weather]]

709: I Am

2022-05-04T02:18:18Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232982 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number =709
| date =March 3, 2010
| title =I Am
| image =i_am.png
| titletext =Great, LO-M. Do you speak Bocce? I'm supposed to find one that speaks Bocce.
}}

==Explanation==
In the {{w|Book of Exodus}} in the {{w|Hebrew Bible}}, God announces his presence to {{w|Moses}} by way of a {{w|burning bush}}. The quotation in this comic is a combination of [https://www.bibleref.com/Exodus/3/Exodus-3-14.html Exodus 3:14] - "I am that I am", and [https://www.bibleref.com/Exodus/3/Exodus-3-16.html Exodus 3:16] - "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob."

The punchline comes when God introduces his "counterpart, {{w|R2-D2}}", implying that the "god" in this case is not actually the {{w|God of the Jews}} as expected, but rather {{w|C-3PO}}, a {{w|Droid (Star Wars)|droid}} from the ''{{w|Star Wars}}'' universe; theoretically, in the mind of the reader, God's voice might humorously go from [https://youtu.be/zUm6rC0o7Po?t=24 booming and sepulchral] in the first frame, to [https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/8d7dcc54-fb0f-4068-a741-c86259cd5112 snooty and British] in the second frame. It could be a reference to a plot point from ''{{w|Return of the Jedi}}'', in which the [https://youtu.be/rk_HB2Pdk2M Ewoks believe C-3PO is a god]. (In the movie, C-3PO states that it's against his programming to "impersonate a {{w|deity}}", but he does so anyway; whether it's actually a violation of his programming is [https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/110974/how-did-c3po-manage-to-impersonate-a-deity-if-it-was-against-his-progamming debatable].)

The joke is that "I AM", the name of God in the Bible, is represented in {{w|Hebrew}} by the {{w|Tetragrammaton}}, YHWH. This abbreviation coincidentally{{Citation needed}} follows the 4-character naming convention of ''Star Wars'' droid characters such as C-3PO and R2-D2 and, like the latter, contains identical characters in the 2nd and 4th positions. (In English translations of the text, this is the part rendered as "LORD" in capitals.)

In the title text, "LO-M" refers to the [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/LOM-series_protocol_droid LOM], a model of [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Protocol_droid protocol droid] in the Star Wars universe similar to the [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/3PO-series_protocol_droid 3PO] model; "L-O-M" sounds like "{{w|Elohim}}", a Hebrew word for "God". [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Bocce Bocce] refers to a language that [https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Owen_Lars Owen Lars] wanted his protocol droid to be able to speak; C-3PO claimed that it was [https://youtu.be/LWPENk8rH7w "like a second language to me"].

==Transcript==
:[The Burning Bush of Exodus fame speaks to Moses, who is shielding himself with his arm, as if a great gust of wind is overtaking him.]
:Bush: I AM THAT I AM, THE '''LORD''' YOUR GOD AND THE GOD OF YOUR FATHERS, OF ABRAHAM, OF ISAAC, AND OF JACOB.
:[A droid comes into frame, Moses looks down at it.]
:Bush: AND THIS IS MY COUNTERPART, R2-D2.
:''BLEEP BLOOP''
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:Star Wars]]

1664: Mycology

2022-05-04T02:17:50Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232641 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1664
| date = April 6, 2016
| title = Mycology
| image = mycology.png
| titletext = Conspiracy theory: There's no such thing as corn. Those fields you see are just the stalks of a fungus that's controlling our brains to make us want to spread it.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] are studying a {{w|fungus}} that takes over the brains of mammals and makes them want to study the fungus. This is a reproductive tactic by the fungus, since the fungus makes the mammal whose brain it took over want to study the fungus, which means that mammal will need to produce more of the fungus to study it. Cueball and Megan are most likely themselves being controlled by the fungus, since they tell [[Ponytail]] that they want to cultivate the fungus as much as possible.

The title of the comic refers to {{w|Mycology}}, the study of fungi.

This is likely a reference to various parasitic species of ''{{w|Cordyceps}}'' fungi, which can infect the brains of insects causing behavior advantageous to the reproduction or spread of the fungus. This also may be an allusion to another fungus, ''{{w|Ophiocordyceps unilateralis}}'', which manipulates its hosts to aid its propagation.

''{{w|Toxoplasma gondii}}'' is also known to alter the behavior of mammals, and some researchers have proposed that this parasite may be partly responsible for the "{{w|Cat lady}}" phenomenon, whereby humans are compelled to hoard cats. The comic and its subtitle may, in fact, be a subtle argument that human behavior, and the entire concept of free will, may need to be re-evaluated given the massive numbers of {{w|Human parasites}} known to exist.

In {{w|evolutionary biology}}, the phenomenon of an organism influencing its environment, sometimes by modifying the behavior of other organisms, is known as “the extended phenotype”. {{w|Richard Dawkins}} wrote a {{w|the extended phenotype|book of that name}} (as a follow-up of “{{w|The Selfish Gene}}”) where he describes this mechanism as an extreme example of the so-called selfishness of genes.

The title text parodies numerous {{w|Conspiracy_theory|conspiracy theories}}, by suggesting that {{w|corn}}, which has been propagated by humans throughout large parts of the world, is actually just a fungus that has used humans, and is not a grain at all. This type of theory is remarkably similar to the {{w|Brain in a Vat}} thought experiment, and to the {{w|Isaac Asimov}} short story {{w|Each an Explorer}}. In both cases something has affected the perception of the mind itself, making it impossible to discern the true reality of something.

This is quite similar to an argument made in the book {{w|Sapiens:_A_Brief_History_of_Humankind|''Sapiens''}}. Author Yuval Noah Harari points out that domesticated crops are among the most successful life forms on the planet, in terms of propagation. These plants have influenced humans to do everything in our considerable power to spread their seeds, eliminate competing plants and animals, and even provide fertilizer and irrigation to help them grow and spread. From the perspective of the plants, they've domesticated us, rather than the other way around. This differs from Randall's conspiracy theory, in that domesticated plants provide us with food in exchange for propagation, making this more like {{w|symbiosis}} than {{w|parasitism}}.

Conspiracy theories are a [[:Category:Conspiracy theory|recurring subject]] on xkcd.

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball are talking to Ponytail.]
:Megan: Our lab is studying a fungus that takes over mammal brains and makes them want to study fungi.
:Cueball: It's very promising! We're opening a whole new wing of the lab just to cultivate it!

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

1541: Voice

2022-05-04T02:16:01Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233234 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1541
| date = June 22, 2015
| title = Voice
| image = voice.png
| titletext = Anyway, we should totally go watch a video story or put some food in our normal mouths!
}}

==Explanation==
During a casual talk with [[Megan]], [[Ponytail]] suddenly interrupts her normal speech stating that she is for some reason only capable of controlling her own voice once every six years. Apparently only for a very brief time since she immediately returns to the casual talk, continuing her previous sentence mid-word before being able to tell Megan how she could help her. Upon Megan's confused request, she denies knowledge of the occurrence, although in a somewhat suspicious way, using possibly fake laughter.

It could be this was just a prank by Ponytail, to tease Megan, but given her fake laughter reply to Megan's inquiry and the continuing comment in the title text it seems most likely that Ponytail is indeed possessed by some sort of entity that prevents her from expressing her own thoughts, except for a very short time every six years. Of course this may just be her way of continuing with the prank; see a previous case of such a prank [[#Voice hijacking|below]].

In case it is not a prank it would thus appear that Ponytail's usual "self" is indeed this possessing entity. Whether this entity is actually aware that the "real" Ponytail did speak, or if it actually does not know that it was interrupted (since it continued mid-word) is not clear from the last response to Megan.

The title text suggests that Ponytail {{tvtropes|BodySnatcher|is possessed by some sort of inhuman entity}}, most likely an alien or {{w|AI}}, unfamiliar with movies and eating. See below for [[#Related comics|related comics]].

===Related comics===
====Non-human entity trying to behave like a human====
The comic, [[1530: Keyboard Mash]], also revolves around the same theme of a non-human entity trying to convince other humans that it is in fact a human. This is most clearly referenced in the title text of this comic. In Keyboard Mash, it is a spider that tries to chat like it was a human, making statements that are true if you are human, but which humans would never utter in a conversation like here - ''put some food in our normal mouths!'' However, the pretended 'human' being (the spider) is not seen by the other person in this comic. As opposed to this one where Megan speaks directly with Ponytail.

====Voice hijacking====
It has already been established recently, in [[1528: Vodka]], that Ponytail's voice can be hijacked by non-human entities. That time it was the vodka she was drinking that took over. It is possible that this is continuing or caused by the same openness to possession as shown here. It is also possible that she simply thinks possession jokes are funny and once again jokes with Megan.

====Six years ago====
Six years ago today, which according to this comic was the last time Ponytail had control of her own voice, this comic [[600: Android Boyfriend]] was posted. Ponytail acquired an android boyfriend. It seems unlikely that this older comic has any relation with this particular episode - except that this comic mentions a six-year period and Ponytail is also in that comic.

====Note on Ponytail====
''Ponytail is mainly a filler character, showing up when two females are needed or when a large group of people are present.''

It is important to note that [[Ponytail]], like most xkcd [[stick figure|stick figures]], usually does not represent the same character in each comic. This Ponytail is likely unrelated to other instances of Ponytail.

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Ponytail are walking.]
:Megan: Are you doing anything later?
:Ponytail: I was th- ''I can only control my voice once every six years. Please, you have to'' -inking of going out, but no real plans.
:Megan: ...What was that?
:Ponytail: Haha, what?

==Trivia==
*{{w|Demonic possession|Possession}} stories are common in films and books. Some recent examples that could have inspired this comic could be one of these (beware of '''spoilers'''):
**In the film {{w|The Host (2013 film)|The Host}} the human race has been taken over by small parasitic aliens called "Souls" that inserts themselves individually into a host body where they are then able to access the host's memories. In the story the main character is the host that controls a body, and then the personality of that body, which is then no longer able to control her body, but can speak to the host. And in a few situations can take over her body for a short period. Very similar to what happens in this comic.
**The Yeerks from the {{w|Animorphs (TV series)|Animorphs}} TV series take humans as a host by entering and merging with their brain through the ear canal. The host can fight to temporarily take back control, but this is very painful. However how many times human can fight back is not as specific as in this comic. Animorph is referenced in a [[:Category:Animorphs|a few other comics]].
**In the movie {{w|Being John Malkovich}} the main character possesses Malkovich, but Malkovich is occasionally able to communicate through the possession.
**In {{w|Warlord (Star Trek: Voyager)|an episode}} of {{w|Star Trek: Voyager}}, Kes is taken over by a warlord who has discovered a means of immortality by using technology to transfer his consciousness to another body. The warlord enters a mental struggle with Kes's latent mind, and as he begins to lose the battle, Kes's personality resurfaces on several occasions.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]

870: Advertising

2022-05-04T02:15:22Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233430 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 870
| date = March 9, 2011
| title = Advertising
| image = mathematically annoying.png
| titletext = I remember the exact moment in my childhood when I realized, while reading a flyer, that nobody would ever spend money solely to tell me they wanted to give me something for nothing. It's a much more vivid memory than the (related) parental Santa talk.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic pokes fun at a few advertising tricks, analyzing them mathematically.

*In the first panel, the phrase "up to 15% or more" is examined, and shows to encompass all real numbers. While intended to entice to customer with savings of 15%, the savings could be lower or even not at all. The phrase ultimately means "less than, equal to, or more than 15%," which is true no matter whether you save anything or not (it's a {{w|Tautology (logic)|tautology}}).

:The equation at the top of the panel expresses the same thing using {{w|set theory}} notation. It reads out as: The {{w|Union (set theory)|union}} of {{w|Set (mathematics)|sets}} A and B equals the set of all x, such that x is {{w|Inequality (mathematics)|less than or equal to}} 15, or greater than 15, which equals the set of all {{w|real numbers}}.

:The same is expressed again with a {{w|number line}}; the numbers being interpreted as {{w|percentages}}. The first range, ending with a black dot, indicates that everything below, as well as the number 15, is included ("up to 15%"). The second range beginning with a white dot indicates that it only includes numbers strictly bigger than 15 ("more than 15%"). The two ranges combined clearly cover the entire number line.

:The phrase "up to 15% or more" may be a reference to the {{w|Geico}} slogan at the time: a phone call lasting "15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance." However the reference is unclear, as the words "''up to'' 15%" are not actually used by Geico. Though Geico's advertising is also referenced in [[42: Geico]].

*Second panel: Whatever is advertised with a big capital "FREE!" splashed over the ad, most likely does not belong to the things truly free. The small asterisk, indicates the presence of a {{w|fine print}}, ensuring that the advertisers are only technically not guilty of {{w|false advertising}}. The conditions attached in the fine typically reveals how they will (try to) make money from you.

:We are even given a little formula to calculate the average amount of money they expect to make from the readers. The assumption is that they expect to generate at least as much income from the ad as what they paid to print and publish it in the first place.

*The third panel relates to sales tactics that are based on a scaling percentage rate - for example, all items are 20% off, but if you spend more than $200, you get 30% off instead, and so on. These are almost universally proclaimed with a phrase like "The more you spend, the more you save!" In absolute dollar terms, this is of course nonsense, as "spending" is the opposite of "saving", and the deal is there to make you spend more. The graph shows this interpretation - spending zero money implies you have saved all your money (the dot where it intersects the X axis), whereas spending all your money implies you have saved none (the dot where it intersects the Y axis). There is a linear relationship between the two: the amount of money spent, plus the amount of money saved, has to add up to a constant number (your original savings).

The title text compares Randall's realization of the "FREE"-fraud to the revelation that {{w|Santa Claus}} is not real.

==Transcript==
:Mathematically Annoying Advertising:

:A ∪ B = {x:x ≤ 15 or x > 15} = ℝ
:[line graph representing the above equation.]
:When discussing real numbers, it is impossible to get more vague than "up to 15% or more".

:["'''FREE!'''*" in large text, with substantial illegible fine print.]
:If someone has paid $x to have the word "free" typeset for you and N other people to read, their expected value for the money that will move from you to them is at least $(x / (N+1))

:[Graph representing inverse relationship between "amount you spend" on the y axis and "amount you save" on the x axis.]
:It would be difficult for the phrase "the more you spend the more you save" to be more wrong.

==Trivia==
Randall changed the image name from advertising.png to mathematically_annoying.png, since adblocking extensions interpreted it as an ad and made the comic blank. He had the same problem again just three months later with [[906: Advertising Discovery]].

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Math]]

2257: Unsubscribe Message

2022-05-04T02:15:08Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232794 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2257
| date = January 20, 2020
| title = Unsubscribe Message
| image = unsubscribe_message.png
| titletext = A mix of the two is even worse: 'Thanks for unsubscribing and helping us pare this list down to reliable supporters.'
}}

==Explanation==
When a website offers a subscription service (e.g., an email newsletter), they will offer the opportunity to '''unsubscribe''' from the service in the event that the subscriber is no longer interested in the service, or discovers that the service is not what they thought it was. As with any online process, subscribing and unsubscribing require messages to inform the viewer that the process has completed as intended. Some sites also request confirmation when unsubscribing, to prevent accidentally unsubscribing due to a mistyped URL or a misclicked link.

This comment explores the different "moods" that unsubscribe messages can carry, taking standard examples and pushing them further than is normally seen. It also pokes fun at the trend for websites to guilt users when they unsubscribe (or try to guilt them out of it before they complete the process), which is widespread among new-age website design and some examples of which can be seen at [https://reddit.com/r/Clickshaming/ /r/Clickshaming/]. The first example appears to be a message in the confirmation phase, while the others are messages that the unsubscription is complete.

The first message is of a "very negative" mood, where the "confirmation" message begs to know why the user dared to unsubscribe to the service, sounding either very angry or alarmingly desperate, as if the service is endangered by the user's unsubscribing. This can be very off-putting and would be very likely to confirm to the user that they made the right choice; hearing such an aggressively needy tone when they leave could make them feel like they escaped something instead, and thus it is given three red X marks and ranked "Very Bad".

The second message is of a more controlled "negative" mood; the "process complete" message tells the viewer that they will be missed with a sad emoticon accompanying it. Although not quite so bad as the forceful clinginess of the "very negative" message, this one can still come across as an attempt to guilt the user into re-subscribing; thus it is rated with one red X and the label "Not Great".

The third message is of a fully "neutral" mood; the "process complete" message is simply a matter-of-fact statement that the user has been successfully unsubscribed from the service. Randall seems to consider this the optimal mood for an unsubscribe message to carry; thus it is rated with a green check mark and the label "Perfect".

The fourth message is of a "positive" mood; the "process complete" message cheerfully proclaims that the attempt to unsubscribe has been completed. This is the most common mood for many services that attempt to avoid emotionless, robotic messages; however, in this particular instance, it can come across as somewhat unnerving, since no service should seem happy to see a user leave. The tone also comes across like a proclamation of the sort you would see in a video game text box, making the action feel like an achievement, which wouldn't make sense for a company to do. This mood is rated with a green check mark, but also with the label "A Little Weird".

The fifth message is "very positive", where the "process complete" message expresses ''relief'' that the user has chosen to unsubscribe from their service, as though their subscription in the first place had been some sort of burden upon the service, and indeed, their leaving is stated to be the best thing to happen to the service. Like the "very negative" message, this response is likely to assure the user never returns, since they have been indirectly insulted and told "good riddance".

The title text expands on the joke by combining the positive reaction to unsubscribing with a more negative tone, which supports the user's choice to unsubscribe because they were unwanted. This references the {{w|1% rule (Internet culture)|1% rule}}, which states that for users of an online service only approximately 1% will be significantly active.

==Transcript==
:Caption: Choosing the right emotional tone for your unsubscribe message

:[A window labelled "Very Negative"]
:Website: You want to ''unsubscribe?!?!'' How could you do this to us?! We need you!!!
:✗✗✗
:Very Bad

:[A window labelled "Negative"]
:Website: We're sad to see you go :(
:✗
:Not Great

:[A window labelled "Neutral"]
:Website: You have been unsubscribed.
:✓
:Perfect

:[A window labelled "Positive"]
:Website: Success! You have been unsubscribed!!
:✓
:A little weird

:[A window labelled "Very Positive"]
:Website: You have been unsubscribed. This is the best gift you could have given us. Thank you.
:✗✗✗
:Very Bad

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]

1384: Krypton

2022-05-04T02:14:26Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233781 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1384
| date = June 20, 2014
| title = Krypton
| image = krypton.png
| titletext = Their Sun and gravity will make you, uh, something, I guess. Out of earshot from Earth, mostly.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is an {{tvtropes|InvertedTrope|inverse version}} of the {{w|origin story}} of the {{w|superhero}} character {{w|Superman}}.

In the Superman story, {{w|Jor-El}} and his wife {{w|Lara (comics)|Lara}} notice that their home planet {{w|Krypton (comics)|Krypton}} is about to be destroyed in a giant explosion, so they decide to send their baby {{w|Superman|Kal-El}} to {{w|Earth}} to save him - and there he becomes Superman.

In this comic, [[Cueball]] and [[Megan]] also notice that the planet Krypton is about to explode, but instead of attempting to save a baby from Krypton, they decide to send a baby to Krypton from Earth so that it'll stop annoying them with its crying.

In the fourth panel both spaceships can be seen. The rocket containing the Earth baby arrives at planet Krypton, while the crystal star shaped spaceship containing Kal-El leaves Krypton towards Earth - this is a reference to the [http://collectingsuperman.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/stmstoryboard1a.jpg version of the spaceship] depicted in the 1978 {{w|Superman_(1978_film)|Superman movie}}, (see [[#Trivia|trivia section]]).

In the fifth and last panel we see Krypton explode into multiple pieces, also emitting a disc-like wave from the assumed equator.

In the Superman movie, Kal-El carries with him a lot of information pre-recorded by his parents. During the very long trip he listens to the recordings, one of which explains that the Sun and gravity of Earth will give him (Kal-El) great powers (this is the way he becomes Superman). The title text is a satirical version of this information, given to the Earth baby during his trip: That Megan & Cueball do not have the faintest idea (or care about) what the sun and gravity of Krypton will do to it - but their best guess at what these ''mostly'' will do to it is to "make you out of earshot from Earth", which was their original reason for shipping the baby off in the first place.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are standing near a telescope.]
:Cueball: The distant planet Krypton is becoming unstable!
:Baby crying (from outside the panel): Waaaaaa
:Megan: That crying baby is really annoying.

:[Cueball and Megan looking at each other.]

:[Spaceship taking off.]

:[Spaceship passing another spaceship on route to distant planet.]

:[Planet exploding.]

==Trivia==
*Whereas the Kal-El rocket clearly looks like the one in the 1978 Superman, a movie which is also the origin of the title text joke, the Earth baby rocket looks like any nondescript rocket. It has some features in common with the one used in [[1350: Lorenz]] as can be seen here under the [[1350: Lorenz#Rocket launch|Rocket launch theme]] - color scheme the same, but different body of the rocket. One could also argue that it resembles some of the [http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_M7D1hE_0cz0/TS88t-Rs2vI/AAAAAAAAEMY/EnIOj3AGFu8/s800/SupermanOrigins.jpg various] [http://thecomicmuseum.com/superman146.jpg versions] of the rocket that brought Superman to Earth as depicted in early {{w|List of Superman comics|comic books}} - Not that big a resemblance though, due to the very different tip and fins.
*As the nearest stars are several light years away, this comic does of course not make any sense if you look at it from a scientific point of view, but can still do if you don't.
**First of all - how would Cueball be able to see that Krypton is unstable in a telescope - as we at the moment can only just detect planets around other stars.
**And even if he did detect this and immediately shipped his baby away in a close to light-speed rocket, then it would take several years to reach Krypton; at best - more likely to be somewhere between a hundred to a thousand years.
***Plus, because light takes time to travel, Cueball was seeing the planet as it was many years ago, meaning it had been unstable for some time already. So even for the closest star (exclusive of the Earth's sun), it would be 4.3 years to see the instability and then over 4.3 more years for the ship to travel, even with close to light speed travel, for a total of over 8.6 years from when the light left the planet until the rocket arrived there.
**As faster than light-speed travel is impossible according to the current model of our universe this option is not really relevant here.
**During all those years, the unstable planet should still keep together - in spite of being so unstable that Cueball can determine this instability with his telescope on Earth.
**And then the rocket arrives just when Kal-El is being shipped the other way a few moments before the planet explodes. Of course if the arrival of the rocket causes the explosion this would explain the last two events. Kal-El is shipped off at the last moment when his parents realizes an incoming rocket will destroy their planet.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring babies]]
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Telescopes]]

911: Magic School Bus

2022-05-04T02:14:07Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233842 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 911
| date = June 13, 2011
| title = Magic School Bus
| image = magic school bus.png
| titletext = At my OLD school, we used Microsoft Encarta 2005.
}}

==Explanation==
''{{w|The Magic School Bus}}'' is a series of educational children's books in the US that was adapted in the mid-nineties into an animated {{w|television}} show. The series centers on a class of children whose teacher {{w|Ms. Frizzle}} makes use of the titular magic school bus to take her students on a variety of magical field trips that allow them to experience various scientific topics first hand, such as the inner anatomy of the human body, the effects of friction, what goes on inside a beehive, and many others.

In this comic, however, Ms. Frizzle initially takes the students onto the bus apparently for one of these field trips to explore the way batteries work, but then for whatever reason, she has the students get off the bus again and simply resorts to looking up the {{w|Wikipedia}} article about {{w|Battery (electricity)|batteries}}. The implied joke is that, with the advent on resources like Wikipedia, it's no longer necessary for Ms. Frizzle to take the students on half-hour long trips in the bus to experience whatever phenomenon they are studying that day (which is what the third panel symbolizes) - Wikipedia effectively answers the question quickly and easily. An alternative answer is that Ms. Frizzle has just gotten lazy, and has resorted to looking up the answers to the students' questions on Wikipedia instead of taking them on field trips. The alternative seems more likely, since the third panel shows them still going on an adventure, however briefly it takes to get to the library/computer lab.

The red and white checkered rocket in the bottom-right of the third panel can possibly be a reference to The Adventures of Tintin ''{{w|Destination Moon (comics)|Destination Moon}}'' and {{w|Explorers on the Moon}}, in which Tintin goes to the moon in a rocket that is similar, if not identical, to the one depicted. To the bottom-left is a green {{w|Ciliate}}, a single celled life-form covered in hair-like fibres. At the top right are a set of {{w|Planetary gears}}. To the top left is a ringed planet, perhaps {{w|Uranus}} and in the background is a complex {{w|Feynman diagram}}.

The child who is asking the question looks similar to Wanda, one of the regular students in the class who often asked the questions that set the field trips in motion. Ralphie, the student in the second panel with the backward hat, was another student who often asked these questions. The students in the class were shown to be from many backgrounds (i.e. some of the students were black, another was Asian, etc.), something Randall appears not to have added into this comic, despite it being in color.

The title text is a reference to Phoebe, one of the students in Ms. Frizzle's class, who would regularly make a remark beginning with "At my old school..." (Phoebe used to go to a different school, unlike many of the other students in the class) to express wonder at how unusual were the events of Ms. Frizzle's field trips (e.g. "At my old school, we never rode on bees!"). Phoebe actually said that so much that in an episode where she goes back to her old school, the sign out front labels it as "Phoebe's old school".

{{w|Encarta|Microsoft Encarta 2005}} was a digital encyclopedia that was often used in school settings for learning with the aid of computers. Arguably, with the advent of Wikipedia, programs like Encarta have become relatively less widely used, which is part of the joke in the title text.

==Transcript==
:[A girl sits at a desk in a classroom, and the teacher stands before her. The teacher has a blue dress and blonde hair piled on her head in a bun. The girl raises her hand, the teacher raises both arms above her head, a pointer in one hand.]
:Girl: Ms. Frizzle, how do batteries work?
:Ms. Frizzle: To the bus!

:[Ms. Frizzle and the children are shown getting onto the bus.]

:[The bus, with Ms. Frizzle at the helm and a child's face in every window, soars through a rainbow void filled with a giant amoeba, a rocket, an epicyclic gear, a planet with rings, and a Feynman diagram.]

:[The bus is parked, and the occupants have gotten out. The children stand around Ms. Frizzle, and she stands at a desk with a computer on it, typing.]
:Computer: Wikipedia - Batteries

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]

726: Seat Selection

2022-05-04T02:13:42Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232866 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 726
| date = April 12, 2010
| title = Seat Selection
| image = seat_selection.png
| titletext = Don't click on the wing.
}}

==Explanation==
Many airlines give passengers the opportunity to select a preferred seat when booking a flight. In this case, [[Megan]] appears to be {{w|Airport check-in|checking in}} at a [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/ad/Self_check-in_at_Dublin_Airport.jpg/1280px-Self_check-in_at_Dublin_Airport.jpg self-check-in] at the airport, where she is given the opportunity to select her seat. Rather than selecting a seat on the diagram, Megan clicks on the pilot seat (which is of course not an actual option for online seating reservations{{Citation needed}}). In the last frame, we see that, because she chose the pilot seat, she is now actually sitting in the captain’s seat, flying the plane while whooping. A worried-looking pilot sits behind her at the back of the cockpit, holding both hands in front of his mouth.

The title text says to not click on the wing. The implication is that if you did click on the wing you would, similarly, end up sitting outside on the wing. Even if you were able to hold on, this would put you above the Death Zone, which is at 7 km (See the [[what if?]] ''{{what if|64|Rising Steadily}}''). Standard cruising altitude is {{w|Stratosphere#Aircraft_flight|10 km}}. It would be an unpleasant death, as the air is so thin that you actually ''lose'' oxygen to the air (as explained in the mentioned what if?).

This kind of event could lead to situations as the one depicted in [[1660: Captain Speaking]].

==Transcript==
:[A seat selection diagram to book your seat on a plane is displayed on a gray background. It shows the front end of a plane to just behind the wings. The outline of the plane is in a darker gray color, while the seating section is light gray with black seats. The cockpit windows are shown as well as the entrance section in the front of the plane where two arrows point out of the two possible exits one on each side. The first class section with only four seats for each of the 3 rows are clearly separated from the rest of the seats. The six seats for each row is labeled with letters A to F and the rows are labeled for every third seat starting at 9 and ending after two numbers behind the wings at 27. Below, going over the wing pointing down is a frame with light gray background and the following text:]
:<big>Select desired seat</big>
:by clicking on the above chart.
:
:F
:E
:D
:C
:B
:A
:9 12 15 18 21 24 27

:[Megan in a scarf with two suitcases behind her is standing in an airport, contemplating her choice at the self-check-in looking at the display from the first panel. Behind her is a manned check-in counter with Cueball and Ponytail sitting behind three screens at the counter. Above them is a big sign with an arrow to the right:]
:<big>Gates</big>

:[Back to the seat selection diagram where a hand shaped cursor indicates that Megan has chosen the cockpit of the plane.]
:<nowiki>*Click*</nowiki>
:<big>Select desired seat</big>
:by clicking on the above chart.
:
:F
:E
:D
:C
:B
:A
:9 12 15 18 21 24 27


:[Close up of Megan seen through the front window in the cockpit of the plane, holding the yoke, her scarf hanging behind her into the next windows frame, like if she was riding a motorcycle, because she makes the plane rise enough for it to fall behind her. A pilot sitting behind her seen in the third window, is wearing a cap and sunglasses. He looks at her with both his hands held in front of his mouth.]
:Megan: <big>WOOOOOOO!</big>

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Characters with hats]]

2298: Coronavirus Genome

2022-05-04T02:13:13Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233147 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2298
| date = April 24, 2020
| title = Coronavirus Genome
| image = coronavirus_genome.png
| titletext = Spellcheck has been great, but whoever figures out how to get grammar check to work is guaranteed a Nobel.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is another comic in a [[:Category:COVID-19|series of comics]] related to the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}.

It was also the first in a [[:Category:Coronavirus Genome|new series]], followed in the next comic by [[2299: Coronavirus Genome 2]].

[[Megan]] is a {{w|Genetics|geneticist}} doing research on the SARS-CoV-2 virus. She is analyzing the virus's {{w|genome}}, its genetic material composed of {{w|RNA}}. The genomic sequence can be represented as a list of {{w|nucleotide}} bases ({{w|guanine}}, {{w|adenine}}, {{w|cytosine}}, {{w|thymine}} and {{w|uracil}} - often abbreviated as G, A, C, T, and U).

The nucleotide sequence displayed is a 100% match to six SARS-CoV-2 sequences in public databases, all of them originating from the East Coast of the United States. The sequence is from nucleotides 26202-26280 of the virus genome and overlaps an unknown open reading frame/gene named ORF3a. One of the matching sequences is [https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena/data/view/MT344963]. However, SARS-CoV-2 is an RNA virus, and so its genetic material (not containing any DNA) would not include thymine (T) but would use uracil (U) instead. The sequence uses the codes of DNA as {{w|RNA sequencing}} involves copying the genome into a DNA, and the DNA code is more familiar anyways.

[[Cueball]] is surprised that Megan and her colleagues actually use {{w|Microsoft Notepad}}, a simple {{w|text editor}}, to look at the genome, instead of more modern technology. She explains that better research institutions use {{w|Microsoft Word}}, a more advanced editor, to allow additional formatting (such as '''bolding''' and ''italics''), and humorously calls this "{{w|epigenetics}}". In the real world, epigenetics is the study of changes that are not caused by changes in nucleotides, but by chemical modifications of DNA or chromosomes that cause changes in patterns of gene expression and activation, sometimes several generations down. This might be considered analogous to altering the meaning of a text by changing its formatting rather than the content; for example, content can be moved into parentheses or footnotes to be de-emphasized, or rendered in boldface or enlarged to attract attention and emphasize key points. Much as text can be wrapped in HTML tags or similar markup to change its formatting, nucleotides can be {{w|DNA methylation|methylated}} to prevent transcription, and the {{w|histone}}s around which DNA is wound can also be modified to promote or repress gene expression. During DNA replication, these modifications are often also reproduced.

The real punchline comes when Megan uses {{w|Spell checker|spellcheck}} to detect mutations in the genome by adding the previous genome to spellcheck and comparing them. Overall, Megan uses ridiculously and humorously crude methods to analyze a major genetic item. The genome of SARS-CoV-2 is almost 30,000 base-pairs long, which exceeds the {{w|longest words}} of any natural language by two orders of magnitude (the longest words ever used in literature -- i.e. not constructed in isolation simply for the purpose of being a long word, or chemical formulas -- approach 200 letters), and may exceed the capabilities of any available spell-checking program. Furthermore, a spellcheck program underlines the whole word if a single letter is wrong and not just the letter itself. Thus, it would not be able to highlight individual mutated base pairs. Megan might be better served by using a {{w|diff}} tool, but most scientists generally use commercial software that is designed to view, annotate, and edit DNA sequences (eg: Snapgene, Geneious, DNAstrider, ApE).

The title text mentions {{w|Grammar checker|grammar checking}} and claims that whoever discovers how to use that to compare genomic material should be awarded a {{w|Nobel Prize}}. Spell-checking is analogous to comparing sequences against ones previously known, an activity that is the bread and butter of bioinformatics nowadays. Grammar checking would be analogous to having some sort of sense as to how well all the sequences generally cooperate and interact to create possibly viable functionality in an organism, something we are unable to do at the moment except in very limited ways and only in a few simple cases. It may also be a snarky commentary on the untrustworthy nature of grammar-check programs in general, which often follow grammatical rules far more strictly than is practical; it's not uncommon for an author to follow a grammar-check recommended correction only to find the corrected portion is now part of a longer portion that the checker deems "incorrect".

Amusingly, this and the title text foreshadowed the usage of an MIT language learning algorithm to predict mutations in SARS-CoV-2.

==Transcript==

:[Megan sits at a desk, working on a laptop. A genome sequence is displayed on her laptop screen, shown with a jagged line in a text bubble.]
:Cueball (off-screen): So that's the coronavirus genome, huh?
:Megan: It is!
:Laptop: ''<A long string of unintelligible letters, presumably the genome>''

:[Cueball walks up and stands behind Megan, still working on the laptop.]
:Cueball: It's weird that you can just look at it in a text editor.
:Megan: It's essential!
:Megan: We geneticists do most of our work in Notepad.

:[A frameless panel, Cueball still standing behind Megan. Megan rests her arm on the chair. ]
:Cueball: Notepad?
:Megan: Yup! Nicer labs use Word, which lets you change the genome font size and make nucleotides bold or italic.
:Cueball: Ah, okay.
:Megan: That extra formatting is called "epigenetics".

:[A regular panel. Cueball still stands behind Megan, this time with his hand on his chin.]
:Cueball: Hey, why does that one have a red underline?
:Megan: When we identify a virus, we add its genome to spellcheck. That's how we spot mutations.
:Cueball: ''Clever!''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Coronavirus Genome]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Coronavirus Genome]]
[[Category:COVID-19]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Nobel Prize]]

2120: Brain Hemispheres

2022-05-04T02:12:34Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234579 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2120
| date = March 6, 2019
| title = Brain Hemispheres
| image = brain_hemispheres.png
| titletext = Neurologically speaking, the LEFT hand is actually the one at the end of the RIGHT arm.
}}

==Explanation==
As a general rule, each cerebral hemisphere controls the opposite side of the body; things on the left half of the body are controlled by the right side of the brain and vice-versa. Biology is complicated, of course, so as with most biology "rules" there are exceptions, such as the {{w|cranial nerves}}, but it's true for most motor functions, and a relatively well-known factoid, if not strictly correct in all cases.

[[Randall]] spoofs this by saying that rather than controlling the left half of the body, the right brain controls the top. This leads to a Venn-diagram-like picture of the human body, with an overlap in the upper right, labelled "disputed," echoing maps that display a {{w|territorial dispute}}, suggesting that the halves of your brain fight for control of the region, or "{{w|dual control}}" like in an airplane, where the pilot and the copilot both can control the plane at any time. The reorganization also leaves a gap in the bottom left, implying that the left leg is not controlled by any part of the brain, and instead has a mind of its own.

The title text is another, separate joke about the same factoid. He proposes that the hands should be referred to not by their physical location, but by the hemisphere of the brain they're connected to. Of course, this is not only silly but inconsistent: if the hands were labelled by hemispheres of the brain, the same would presumably apply to the arms. Furthermore, there would be no reason to give left/right names to the hemispheres themselves, since their placement in the skull would be irrelevant.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is shown with the right half of his brain (on the viewer's left) colored in orange and the left half (on the viewer's right) in iris blue. An iris blue box is overlaid over the right half of the body (on the viewer's left), and an orange box is overlaid over the top half. The boxes are overlapping in a greenish color on the upper right quarter of the body (on the viewer's left).]
:'''Neuroscience Fact:'''
:[An arrow pointing to the iris blue rectangle on top with the text above:]
:The ''left'' half of the brain actually controls the ''right'' half of the body...
:[An arrow pointing to the orange rectangle at the right, the text reads:]
:...while the ''right'' half of the brain actually controls the ''top'' half of the body.
:[An arrow pointing to the overlapping area (the top left body from the viewers perspective) with the text below:]
:Disputed/dual control
:[An arrow pointing to Cueball's left leg area (on the viewer's right), not highlighted by any color, and the text is:]
:This leg is fully autonomous

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Biology]]

1208: Footnote Labyrinths

2022-05-04T02:12:04Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233362 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1208
| date = May 6, 2013
| title = Footnote Labyrinths
| image = footnote_labyrinths.png
| titletext = Every time you read this mouseover, toggle between interpreting nested footnotes as footnotes on footnotes and interpreting them as exponents (minus one, modulo 6, plus 1).
}}

==Explanation==
This is a logic puzzle where the reader has to follow a confusing network of footnotes to determine whether the word "no" is to be ignored or not.

In the following solutions, "right-associative" means that the footnotes are evaluated from right to left or top to bottom, and left-associative from left to right or bottom to top (e.g. (26)3 is left-associative, and 2(63) is right-associative).

The term "ibid." is short for "ibidem", or "at the same place", meaning the reference was noted on the same page just before.

;Interpreting nested footnotes as footnotes on footnotes, left-associative
:no12 = (no1)2 = "ignore this" (it is meaningless to increment a phrase by 2), so the correct statement is "we found evidence for it in our data".

;Interpreting nested footnotes as footnotes on footnotes, right-associative
:"no12" = "no1 + 2" = "no3". We turn to the definition of 3, which is "not true32" = "not true3 + 2" = "not true5".
:Now 5 is "true263". The 6 says that the 2 footnote is really 122 = 1(4. ibid.) = 13, but the 3 tells us that the 6 is "not true5", getting us into an infinite loop, meaning there is no solution.

The title text suggests interpreting footnotes as exponents (minus one, modulo 6, plus 1). Because applying the operations "minus one, modulo 6, plus 1" to an integer always results in an integer between one and six (inclusive), no sequence of integer exponents will ever end up referencing a footnote that does not exist. In mathematics, nested exponents are exclusively right-associative. "no12" = "no1", so we ignore the "no" and the correct statement is "we found evidence for the data." Meanwhile, 3 becomes "not true3", an {{w|infinite recursion}}, and since 263 mod 6 = 4, we just get "ibid" and the 5 refers back to the 3. Footnote 6 is equivalent to 14 = 1 = "ignore this".

The comic [[1184: Circumference Formula]] is also playing on the typographical similarity between footnotes and exponents, as well as adding even more ridiculous rules.

==Transcript==
:[Excerpt from what appears to be an academic paper with footnotes.]
:experiments to observe this and we found no12 evidence for it in our data.

:1Ignore this
:2Increment by 2 before following
:3Not true32
:4Ibid.
:5True263
:6Actually a 122

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:My Hobby]]

1928: Seven Years

2022-05-04T02:11:41Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233204 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1928
| date = December 13, 2017
| title = Seven Years
| image = seven_years.png
| titletext = [hair in face] "SEVVVENNN YEEEARRRSSS"
}}

==Explanation==
[[Randall]]'s then girlfriend, now wife, was diagnosed with cancer in late 2010, a matter he has discussed in the comic [[:Category:Cancer|multiple times before]]. Here, motivated by the seven-year period between the American solar eclipses of {{w|Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017|2017}} and {{w|Solar eclipse of April 8, 2024|2024}}, we see them reminiscing the seven years prior to the first eclipse, leaving an open question to what the next seven years will bring.

This comic is part of a [[:Category:X Years|series of comics]] and directly continues [[1141: Two Years]], which is shown as the first eight panels, slightly grayed out. It later continued in [[2386: Ten Years]].

It was released as a response to another cancer diagnosis, this is explained in the [[Design_of_xkcd.com#Header_text|Header text]], which, for [[Design of xkcd.com#Unique header text|this comic only]], has replaced the standard ''xkcd updates every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.'' The header for this comic, with the active link included, is:
:Becky Beaton, sister of fellow cartoonist Kate Beaton, has also been diagnosed with cancer. You can support her treatment [https://www.youcaring.com/beckybeaton-1008390 here].
{{w|Kate Beaton}} is the creator of the web comic [http://www.harkavagrant.com/ Hark! A Vagrant]. Although this comic is not one on Randall's list of [[Design_of_xkcd.com#Comics_I_enjoy|Comics I enjoy]], he is clearly much influenced by another cancer diagnosis among someone in his own creative field.

[[Image:seven years key.png|right]]

Explanations of the individual panels:

*Panels 1–8: See [[1141: Two Years]], where there are also three more panels, not included here, with the punch line for that comic.
*Panel 9: Randall (drawn as [[Cueball]]) and Randall's wife (with her hair noticeably longer than it was at the end of [[1141: Two Years]], so she looks like [[Megan]]), are walking through a forest with very tall trees (maybe {{w|Sequoiadendron giganteum|giant redwood}}). The perspective is from a distant vantage point, and themes of extreme longevity are mixed with new growth: The old trees are so tall they grow out of the frame, yet saplings are clearly growing as well. Importantly, they are literally "not out of the woods yet," the very question that was posed to them at the start of [[931: Lanes]].
*Panel 10: Randall's wife is sitting down, not in the forest anymore. She is concerned because she has pain in her toe and worries that this is an early sign of her cancer spreading again. Randall points out the simpler explanation- that she stubbed her toe the previous day, and the pain is likely a result of that. This panel shows the paranoia that comes from cancer remission, as earlier explained in [[931: Lanes]].
*Panel 11: Randall and his wife are going spelunking (aka {{w|caving}}). Their guide, [[Hairy]], is gesturing deeper into the cave while Randall and his wife are climbing down. It is the first of three frames that contrast darkness and light, and two frames center on exploring a dark underworld.
*Panel 12: Randall's wife stands on a rock above an alligator in a swamp, photographing the alligator. Randall, on a balcony behind safety railings, observes that medical predictions about the odds of someone surviving cancer generally assume that the cancer patient doesn't risk something ''else'' killing them first. In this case her extreme hobbies (not related to [[:Category:My Hobby|Randall's hobbies]]).
*Panel 13: Randall's wife sits on an examination bed, listening to a doctor [[Ponytail]] holding a clipboard. The doctor talks about an issue which is "probably nothing" but ''might'' be the cancer — again showing the paranoia that comes with cancer. Ponytail tells her not to worry about until they have the result of a full scan she will order for her. This could be a full body {{w|Positron emission tomography|PET scan}} to ensure there are no active {{w|lymph node|lymph nodes}}. If there are this could be caused by {{w|metastasis}} of the cancer to the {{w|lymphatic system}}, which could be difficult to cure. In the first comic we see that it is very difficult to wait for the reply of such a scan.
*Panel 14: Randall and his wife stand above a deep pond full of fish and other objects. Randall's wife is piloting a wired underwater camera with lights. Randall shared pictures of his [https://blog.xkcd.com/2010/11/05/submarines/ underwater ROV] before. If this panel can be taken as following directly after the previous, it could be concluded that after some years they have learned to go do something fun rather than sit and worry for a result that they cannot change and do not know when will arrive. That would be a positive take on the sequence. They are shown both literally and figuratively searching -- as in the cave -- in the dark unknown. In the same way the doctor in the previous frame was exploring his wife's body, searching for hard to find things at depth.
*Panel 15: Randall and his wife are standing next to each other. Randall's wife has shoulder-length hair covering most of her face, and observes that, despite the chemotherapy robbing her of most of her hair six years ago, it is now growing enough to obscure her face. "The little girl from ''The Ring''" refers to {{w|Sadako Yamamura}}, the antagonist of the {{w|Ring (novel series)|''Ring'' series}} by {{w|Koji Suzuki}}, and popularized in a {{w|The Ring (2002 film)|2002 movie}}. See the title text,
*Panel 16: A line of six people, Ponytail between two other [[:Category:Multiple Cueballs|Cueball-like]] characters as well as Randall and his wife, with [[Megan]] to the right, stand and watch the corona of the Sun during the totality of the {{w|Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017|total solar eclipse of 2017}}. This has already been mentioned in [[:Category:Total Solar Eclipse 2017|several comics]] earlier in 2017, where this {{w|solar eclipse}} passed over the entire continental USA. Thematically, all three dark frames (cave, pond, and eclipse) are without speech. In this dark frame, exploration is replaced with awe, and when light comes in the next frame, speech returns and, in the light of day, determination to move forward.
*Panel 17: The sky has been brightened, and the eclipse is over. As the eclipse is cool to see in person (as Randall made clear in [[1880: Eclipse Review]]), the onlookers are left with little more than exclamations of amazement, one of which comes from Randall's wife, which 7 years ago had not expected, or even thought that she would be here to watch it (or a bit earlier, had doubted that she would be!)
*Panel 18: Randall and his wife are walking together and holding hands. When his wife inquires about the next total eclipse, Randall replies that the next one is in seven years (2024), and asks whether they should go to see it.
*Panel 19: Still walking, Randall and his wife think together about a timeline. Seven years have passed since 2010, represented with a solid line from the past to 2017; seven years in the future will be 2024, represented with a dotted line into the future and surrounded by three question marks. This is reflective of Panel 6, where "next year" is not guaranteed to be a thing.
*Panel 20: The pair keeps walking, with his wife optimistically agreeing to this stating that she will do her best to accomplish this, and Randall states that they have a date! (His way of claiming her to still be there in seven years!) His affirmation of something so simple as a "date" highlights the contrast to the natural awe of an eclipse or the staggering diagnosis of cancer, and it simultaneously elevates the event to a much higher accomplishment.

The title text is a continuation to panel 15 concerning the horror movie ''The Ring''. Specifically, watching the videotape in ''The Ring'' is supposed to kill a person in seven days, but the title text instead says "seven years".

With all these thoughts in mind, there is no wonder that he wishes to participate in helping a colleague's cancer-stricken sister with the [[xkcd Header text#Changes to the header text|unique header text]] above this comic, as mentioned above.

==Transcript==

:[The first eight panels, used earlier in the comic [[1141: Two Years]], are faded out.]

:[Randall and Randall's fiancée sit on a bed, Randall's fiancée is talking on the phone. The person she is talking to, a doctor holding a clipboard, is shown inset.]
:Randall's fiancée: Oh god.

:[Randall and Randall's fiancée sit together while Randall's fiancée, now bald, is receiving chemotherapy. They are both on their laptops.]
:IV pump: ... Beeep ... Beeep ... Beeep ...

:[Randall and Randall's fiancée (who is wearing a knit cap) are paddling a kayak against a scenic mountain backdrop.]

:[Randall and Randall's fiancée sit at a table, staring at a cell phone. There is a clock on the wall. Her head is stubbly.]
:Randall's fiancée: How long can it take to read a scan!?

:[Randall and Randall's fiancée are back at the hospital again, Randall's fiancée receiving chemo. They are playing Scrabble.]
:Randall: "Zarg" isn't a word.
:Randall's fiancée: But ''caaaancer.''
:Randall: ...Ok, fine.

:[Randall and Randall's fiancée (wearing a knit cap) are listening to a Cueball-like friend. A large thought bubble is above their heads and it obscures the friends talk. The text below, split in three is the only part there can be no doubt about:]
:Friend: So next year you should come visit us up in the mounta
::a
::and
:Randall and Randall's fiancée (thinking): '''"Next year"'''

:[Randall and Randall's fiancée are getting married, with a heart above their heads. Randall's wife's hair is growing back.]

:[Randall and Randall's wife (wearing a knit cap) stand on a beach, watching a whale jump out of water. This is the last gray panel, with an additional label in normal black color.]
:''Fwoosh''
:Label: Two years

:[Randall and Randall's wife (with her hair noticably longer) are walking through a forest.]

:[Randall's wife is sitting down, not in the forest anymore.]
:Randall's wife: My toe hurts and I found a report of a case in which toe pain was an early sign of cancer spreading.
:Randall: Wait—didn’t you stub your toe yesterday?
:Randall's wife: Yes, but what if this is unrelated?

:[Randall and his wife are going spelunking. The guide is gesturing deeper into the cave while Randall and his wife are climbing down.]

:[Randall's wife stands on a rock above an alligator in a swamp, photographing the alligator. Randall is on a balcony behind safety railings.]
:Randall: When they estimated your survival odds, I think they made some optimistic assumptions about your hobbies.

:[Randall's wife sits on an examination bed, listening to a doctor holding a clipboard.]
:Doctor: This is probably nothing.
:Doctor: But given your history, we should do a full scan.
:Doctor: We'll call with the results in a few days. Try not to worry about it until then!

:[Randall and his wife stand above a deep pond full of fish and other objects. Randall's wife is piloting a wired underwater camera with lights.]

:[Randall and his wife are standing next to each other. Randall's wife has shoulder-length hair covering most of her face.]
:Randall's wife: Hard to believe—six years ago, I was bald. But today, after a long struggle, I finally look like the little girl from ''The Ring''.
:Randall: That's, uhh... good?
:Randall's wife: ''Hissssss''

:[A line of six people, including Randall and his wife, stand and watch the solar eclipse.]

:[The sky has been brightened.]
:Ponytail: ''Wow.''
:Randall's wife: Yeah.

:[Randall and his wife are walking together and holding hands.]
:Randall's wife: That was incredible.
:Randall's wife: When's the next one?
:Randall: In seven years.
:Randall: Wanna go see it?

:[Still walking, Randall and his wife think together about a timeline. Seven years have passed since 2010, represented with a solid line from the past to 2017; seven years in the future will be 2024, represented with a dotted line into the future and surrounded by three question marks.]

:[The pair keeps walking.]
:Randall's wife: Yeah.
:Randall's wife: I'll do my best.
:Randall: It's a date!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:X Years]]
[[Category:Doctor Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Randall Munroe]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Cancer]]
[[Category:Romance]]
[[Category:Total Solar Eclipse 2017]]
[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]

2347: Dependency

2022-05-04T02:11:20Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234031 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2347
| date = August 17, 2020
| title = Dependency
| image = dependency.png
| titletext = Someday ImageMagick will finally break for good and we'll have a long period of scrambling as we try to reassemble civilization from the rubble.
}}

==Explanation==
Technology architecture is often illustrated by a [https://www.guru99.com/images/1/102219_1135_TCPIPvsOSIM1.png stack diagram], in which higher levels of rectangles indicate components that are dependent on components in lower levels. This is analogous to a physical tower of blocks, in which higher blocks rest on lower blocks. The stack in this cartoon bears a striking resemblance to a physical block tower, suggesting the danger that the tower will lose its balance when a critical piece is removed, in this case a piece near the bottom, labeled as being maintained by a single semi-anonymous person located somewhere relatively unimportant doing it for their own unknown reasons without fame or acknowledgement. The concept of balance is not intended to be communicated by a stack diagram, making this a humorously absurd extension of a well-known diagram style.

{{w|ImageMagick}}, mentioned in the title text, is a popular, standalone utility released in 1990 that is used for performing transformations between various graphics file formats, and various other transformations. While there are also numerous libraries and APIs for performing these tasks within larger programs, ImageMagick is so popular and easy to use that many programs use its API or just find it easier to {{w|Shell (computing)#Other uses|shell out}} to ImageMagick to perform a necessary transformation. They therefore {{w|Dependency hell|depend}} on ImageMagick, and would break if ImageMagick were to disappear.

===Background and Examples===
Taking code re-usability and modularization to its logical extreme has been a long-time tenet for programmers; programming began as a slow task on very memory-constrained systems, utilizing punch cards and days of delay waiting to discover a bug, so that reuse made things possible that otherwise wouldn't be. Once systems became small, fast, and able to hold a lot of data, the ability to provide higher and higher degrees of automation made reusable libraries a huge engine behind the development of technology. By outsourcing what would seem like basic functions, such as string manipulation, to other libraries, developers waste less time reinventing the wheel, so the philosophy goes (or as Beret Guy's business practices literally: [[2140: Reinvent the Wheel]]), and thus many tiny packages, many of which contained only one function, became popular dependencies. This was especially true in Unix and Linux, where an entire program is commonly used for one small task, and programs exist to tie others together into powerful shell scripts.

Node.js (a platform for JavaScript) and Python are two modern ecosystems providing huge stashes of centralized libraries where developers of the world can come together to stand on the shoulders of all the small useful libraries they make for each other, to make new ones that are more and more powerful, and also more and more prone to sudden new unexpected bugs somewhere in the dependency chain. JavaScript was designed to be an easy to use front end scripting language, not a basic and core backend language as users of node.js's {{w|npm (software)|NPM}} package manager have made it be. While in theory, such a system may sound good for developers who would need to write and maintain fewer lines of code, systems which are highly optimized are also highly susceptible to rapid changes. For example, the famous left-pad incident in the NPM package manager left many major and minor web services which depended on it unable to build. [https://www.theregister.com/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/ A disgruntled developer unpublishing 11 lines of code was able to break everybody's build, because everyone was using it.]

In 2014, the {{w|Heartbleed|Heartbleed bug}} revealed a significant portion of the internet was vulnerable to attack due to a bug in OpenSSL, a free and open-source library facilitating secure communication. One headline at the time demonstrated this comic in real life: [https://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisstokelwalker/the-internet-is-being-protected-by-two-guys-named-st "The Internet is Being Protected by Two Guys Named Steve"]. The aforementioned Steves were overworked, underfunded, and largely unknown volunteers whose efforts nevertheless underpinned the security of major websites throughout the world. Randall provided a concise, helpful explanation of the bug in [[1354: Heartbleed Explanation]].

The current model of libraries and open-source development (topics which Randall has addressed extensively in the past) relies heavily on the free and continued dedication of unpaid hobbyists. Though some major projects such as Linux may be able to garner enough attention to build an organization, many smaller projects, which are in turn reused by larger projects, may only be maintained by one person, either the founder or another who has taken the torch. Maintaining libraries requires both extensive knowledge of the library itself as well as any use cases and the broader community around it, which usually is suited for maintainers who have spent years at the task, and thus cannot be easily replaced. Thus, there are many abandoned projects on the internet as people move on to greener pastures. Far from the days of backwards compatibility, that's usually not a problem, unless a project happens to be far up the dependency chain, as illustrated, in which case there may be a crisis down the road for both the developers and the users down the chain.

==Transcript==
:[A tower of blocks is shown. The upper half consists of many tiny blocks balanced on top of one another to form smaller towers, labeled:]
:All modern digital infrastructure

:[The blocks rest on larger blocks lower down in the image, finally on a single large block. This is balanced on top of a set of blocks on the left, and on the right, a single tiny block placed on its side. This one is labeled:]
:A project some random person in Nebraska has been thanklessly maintaining since 2003

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

696: Strip Games

2022-05-04T02:11:06Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234307 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 696
| date = February 1, 2010
| title = Strip Games
| image = strip_games.png
| titletext = HOW ABOUT A NICE GAME OF STRIP GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR?
}}
==Explanation==
The frequency of strip versions of various games is measured by means of Google search results. Strip versions of popular games are a common activity at parties, especially when alcohol is involved. The obligation to remove pieces of clothing is supposed to add an extra zest to the game. A very widespread variant is {{w|Strip Poker}}, followed by strip versions of regular party games like {{w|Truth or Dare}} or {{w|Spin the Bottle}}.

However, the comic also suggests playing other games in a way that involves stripping. In reality, playing such games as "Strip {{w|Tennis}}" or "Strip {{w|Agricola (board game)|Agricola}}" is rather unusual. The Chris Van Allsburg picture book ''{{w|Jumanji (picture book)| Jumanji}}'' and the Robin Williams movie adaptation
''{{w|Jumanji}}'' are about a magical board game that manifests dangerous creatures and traps from the jungle and lost civilization therein; a theoretical Strip Jumanji would probably not remain very titillating during the chaos (evidently, therefore, "strip Jumanji" refers to [https://jumanji.fandom.com/wiki/Jumanji_(Milton_Bradley_Board_Game) the real-life board game based on the movie]).

The last column features games of which strip versions are (according to Google) nonexistent. While the other columns named sports or board games where a strip variant would be at least conceivable, the last one includes the {{w|zero-player game|zero-player}} {{w|Conway's Game of Life|Game of Life}} and the {{w|Prisoner's_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoner's_dilemma|Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma}}, which is a theoretical example in {{w|game theory}}. It is therefore left to the reader to imagine how a strip version of these pseudo-games would appear.

"Global Thermonuclear War" in the title text is a reference to the film "{{w|WarGames}}", where a young hacker accesses a US military supercomputer and starts a nuclear war simulation, believing it to be only a computer game. The film ends by showing the computer that nuclear war is "a strange game" in which "the only winning move is not to play", and proposes "a nice game of chess".

Strip global thermonuclear war is a patently absurd idea; while it is a common trope for people to engage in one last moment of intimate pleasure before certain doom, foreplay (including strip games of any type) is a time-consuming practice, and time is something you don't have much of considering that the bomb could drop on your place of residence at any moment. Besides all that, the act of betting on which city is going to go up next in a nuclear inferno tends not to be an effective aphrodisiac for most people.{{Citation needed}} But at least you wouldn't be wearing your radioactive clothes!

==Table of games==
{| class="wikitable sortable"
!style="width:15%"|Frequency
!style="width:20%"|Name
!Explanation
|-
|rowspan="5"|Frequent n > 1%
|{{w|Poker}}
|Poker, a card game with rounds of betting, is a game with common "strip" variations, see {{w|strip poker}}.
|-
|{{w|Spin the bottle}}
|Spin the bottle is a kissing party game played at teenage parties comprising boys and girls. As this is a teenage party game, strip varieties seem like they could be popular.
|-
|{{w|Beer pong}}
|Beer pong is a drinking game common at universities and colleges.
|-
|{{w|Never have I ever}}
|Never have I ever is a drinking game where players take turns asking other players about things they "have not done".
|-
|{{w|Truth or Dare}}
|Truth or dare? is a party game, in which players are given the choice between answering a question truthfully, or performing a dare.
|-
|rowspan="5"|Rare 1% >= n > 0.01%
|{{w|Chess}}
|Chess is a board game between two players. Theoretically, clothing could be removed whenever a piece is captured.
|-
|{{w|Blackjack}}
|Blackjack is a gambling card game, played between players and a dealer, in which players do not play against each other.
|-
|{{w|Tennis}}
|Tennis is a racket sport played between 2 players (or between teams of 2, in the case of doubles).
|-
|{{w|Settlers of Catan}}
|Settlers of Catan is a strategy board game, where players compete to "settle" an island by harvesting resources.
|-
|{{w|Pictionary}}
|Pictionary is a party board game, involving drawing and guessing words.
|-
|rowspan="5"|Extremely rare 0.01% >= n > 0
|{{w|Cricket}}
|Cricket is a bat-and-ball sport, commonly played in the UK, India, and other Commonwealth countries. The laws of cricket (and, given that cricket is an outdoor sport, public obscenity laws) disencourage the players removal of clothing, though it is far from unknown for {{w|Sheila Nicholls|spectators}} to do so.
|-
|{{w|Magic: The Gathering}}
|Magic: The Gathering is a trading card game, released in 1993 by Wizards of the Coast.
|-
|{{w|Stickball}}
|Stickball is a game similar to baseball, using a broom handle and a rubber ball.
|-
|{{w|Agricola (board game)|Agricola}}
|Agricola is a farming-inspired strategy board game.
|-
|{{w|Jumanji#Games|Jumanji}}
|''Jumanji'' is a 1995 fantasy film (based on a {{w|Jumanji (picture book)| picture book by Chris Van Allsburg}}) that centers on a supernatural board game. A board game based on the film was released by Milton Bradley.
|-
|rowspan="5"|Nonexistent n = 0
|{{w|Poohsticks}}
|A children's sport mentioned in the {{w|Winnie-the-Pooh|Winnie-the-Pooh books}} played by dropping sticks into a river and watching them reappear on the other side of a bridge. Despite the kid-friendly origins, and unlike the other games below it, a "strip" version of Poohsticks is actually viable.
|-
|[[wikia:w:c:starwars:Podracing|Podracing]]
|Podracing appears in the {{w|Star Wars}} films as a racing competition held with hovering vehicles. How a "strip" version would work between two racers is unclear, but a determined set of spectators "wagering" their clothes on the races could probably hammer out a system.
|-
|{{w|Prisoner's_dilemma#The_iterated_prisoner's_dilemma|Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma}}
|The prisoner's dilemma is a "game" that is analyzed in game theory, showing why rational individuals may not cooperate, even if it is in their best interest to do so. This does not seem like a "playable" game that could involve removing clothing.
|-
|{{w|Chess by mail}}
|Could conceivably work if the players include increasingly-nude photographs of themselves in their correspondences. The problem is, a game by e-mail can take days to finish, and a game by snail-mail can take upwards of ''several months''. The titillation factor is far too spread out to satisfy the desires of anyone who would elect to play a game of strip chess in the first place. It could be an interesting idea for a long-distance relationship, however.
|-
|{{w|Conway's Game of Life}}
|Conway's Game of Life is a {{w|cellular automaton}} devised by British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. It is not a "game" in the traditional sense, so "stripping" would also be very difficult, if not impossible.
|}

==Transcript==
:Frequency of Strip Versions of Various Games

:n = google hits for "strip <game name>" / google hits for "<game name>"
:(at the time of this writing)

:Frequent
:(n > 1%)
:-Poker
:-Spin the Bottle
:-Beer Pong
:-Never Have I Ever
:-Truth or Dare

:Rare
:(1% >= n > 0.01%)
:-Chess
:-Blackjack
:-Tennis
:-Settlers of Catan
:-Pictionary

:Extremely Rare
:(0.01% >= n > 0)
:-Cricket
:-Magic: the Gathering
:-Stickball
:-Agricola
:-Jumanji

:Nonexistent
:(n = 0)
:-Poohsticks
:-Podracing
:-Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma
:-Chess by Mail
:-Conway's Game of Life

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Sport]]
[[Category:Chess]]
[[Category:Nuclear weapons]]
[[Category:Board games]]

1359: Phone Alarm

2022-05-04T02:10:51Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232985 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1359
| date = April 23, 2014
| title = Phone Alarm
| image = phone_alarm.png
| titletext = Who's calling me?? WHY IS THE WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD CALLING ME!?
}}

==Explanation==
The flowchart shows a problem [[Randall]] has with using alarms built into phones. Notably, that the sound is similar to a normal ring tone (probably related to [[479: Tones]]), making it sound like someone is calling him, and not waking him up. This results in him having a {{w|false awakening}}, where he dreams about answering the phone, talking, and eventually hanging up. Of course this doesn't stop the actual phone from ringing, and he ends up answering the phone again. The looping arrow around the "beep beep" box implies that the phone keeps ringing only until he attempts to answer it, which would be quite a coincidence. This is an example of an [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_loop endless loop], where there is no given way for the flowchart to end, just as in [[1195: Flowchart]]. Now, smartphones typically support customization of tones for different apps so that your alarm doesn't have to sound like your ringtone and many apps load their own distinctive tone now by default.

The title text, consisting of Randall shouting at the phone in his dream, enforces the fact that he can't tell between his ringtone and his alarm. In doing so he believes that a prank caller is harassing him which infuriates him. Alternatively, "the worst person in the world" could just refer to the confused logic in dreams, where a caller could, inexplicably yet unquestionably, be the worst person in the world.

A list of all the flowchart comics can be found [[:Category:Flowcharts|here]].

==Transcript==
:[A flowchart:]

:[Alarm goes off]
:→ [Beep beep beep beep!]
:↺ One line with an arrow goes back to: [Beep beep beep beep!]
:→ Another line goes to: ["???"]
:→ Then: [Answer phone in dream] → [Talk] → [Hang up]
:→ Finally a line goes back to: [Beep beep beep beep!]

:My problem with phone alarms

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Flowcharts]]
[[Category:Phones]]

1479: Troubleshooting

2022-05-04T02:10:35Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233711 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1479
| date = January 28, 2015
| title = Troubleshooting
| image = troubleshooting.png
| titletext = "Oh, you're using their Chrome APP, not their Chrome EXTENSION. They're very similar but one handles window creation differently." is a thing I hope I can stop saying soon.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic revolves around the complexity of modern software and its sometimes low quality. Many problems that users experience are not obvious or straightforward, and methods for correcting the root cause of the problem requires invoking unrelated actions that happen to cause a desired side-effect. Knowing the non-obvious cause, the desired side effect, and how to trigger the unrelated feature that causes it requires memorization of lots of "stupid computer knowledge" rather than general principles and logical investigation of the software.

One particular example of an illogical fix to a software problem is depicted in the comic. Here, [[Cueball]] is trying to help [[Hairy]] resolve the problem of a program that is not responding to any mouse clicks. Cueball surmises that this is not due to abnormal behavior of the software (such as {{w|Hang (computing)|freezing}}), but rather because either the user or the software itself has opened a {{w|Modal dialog|modal dialog window}} outside of the main screen area, where it can not be seen. Modal dialog windows block access to the rest of the application, by seizing the sole focus of the user input. They are valid {{w|GUI}} tools and are used when the software needs the user's input before it can proceed further. However, opening such a window and placing it outside of the visible screen area ("off-screen") will make the window both inaccessible and invisible to the user, precluding them from closing it and re-gaining access to the software.

One non-obvious way to repair such a problem is to switch the screen resolution; this in itself does not fix the problem, but the resolution switch also forces the operating system to redraw all windows on the desktop, and some operating systems will also validate the coordinates of all windows and adjust these coordinates so that the windows do not end up in off-screen area. In this scenario, it is used as a side-effect to fix the problem, because operating systems rarely provide other, more obvious ways to bring off-screen windows back to the visible area.

By saying "Why is that even possible?", Hairy is quite correct in pointing out that the best way to address this problem at its root would be for the operating system developers to prevent the creation of windows off-screen, preemptively avoiding a whole class of window management problems before they can occur. For example, such mechanisms could validate coordinates during window creation, thus making sure that the dialog window would always be accessible and visible. Such a mechanism exists on OS X, but not on Windows, which the majority of desktop/laptop computers are running at the time of this comic's release.

In general, one can sort the possible solutions to the problem being discussed in the following order of preference, from best to worst:
*(Best): Have OS programmers implement automatic coordinate adjustment during window creation
*Have OS programmers provide easily accessible and visible control to invoke coordinate adjustment for all windows
*Have OS programmers provide a shortcut to invoke coordinate adjustment for all windows
*(Worst, depicted in comic): Have users rely on side-effect of properly implemented screen resolution change mechanism to fix the problem counter-intuitively.

The title text refers to the fact that two different and unrelated software packages can have confusingly similar names, even if the usage and features of those two packages can vary wildly, and knowing the implications of using one instead of the other is a case of "stupid computer knowledge". Knowing the difference between a '''Chrome app''', a cell phone app-style application, delivered from the Chrome web store, designed to be run in the Chrome browser, and a '''Chrome extension''', a browser extension installed into the Chrome browser, delivered from the Chrome web store, designed to modify the behavior of the browser itself, is a subtle distinction that may not be immediately apparent to users who might just have the name of the software they are looking for. {{w|Google Hangouts}} is an example of a product that exists as both a Chrome app and a Chrome extension, whose windows are more similar to each other than to normal Chrome browser windows; and confusingly, it's possible to be signed into one account with the app and another with the extension, especially when your employer or school uses Apps for Business/Education.

In many cases, Randall (or Cueball, his avatar) loves to help people using his specific knowledge (see [[208: Regular Expressions]]). But when the trick is "stupid", he would prefer the programmers to fix the problem definitively so he never has to rely on this trick anymore.

==Transcript==
:[Hairy sitting at a desk with laptop, with Cueball standing behind him.]
:Hairy: Wait, why can't I click anywhere?
:Cueball: I don't... Ugh, It opened a dialog box offscreen.
:Hairy: Why is that even ''possible?''
:Cueball: It really shouldn't be. But you can fix it by changing your screen resolution to trigger a window cleanup.
:Hairy: ''Seriously?''
:Cueball: I know, I know...

:To be honest, I can't ''wait'' for the day when all my stupid computer knowledge becomes obsolete.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Computers]]

296: Tony Hawk

2022-05-04T02:10:13Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233834 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 296
| date = July 30, 2007
| title = Tony Hawk
| image = tony_hawk.png
| titletext = Bad idea #271: Dropping into the half-pipe on a Segway.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] is seen using a hand-held game system, while on a skateboard. He is playing one of the many ''{{w|Tony Hawk's (series)|Tony Hawk}}'' titles in which you control a skater and perform tricks to gain points and achievements. While playing the game, he wants to simultaneously perform the trick in real life, both because it is exceptionally difficult to do both and because the game will give him praise when he does a trick successfully.

In the title text, Randall describes his Bad Idea #271: Dropping into the {{W|half-pipe}} on a {{w|Segway PT|Segway}}.
One imagines this would result in the Segway becoming unstable and going completely crazy, hence one would classify it as a "bad idea."
Which is surprisingly not the case; [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmvyHs4VmHs it even looks quite fun].
The Segway engineers obviously foresaw this situation and implemented the Segway controller with its tilt sensors accordingly.

==Transcript==
:My Hobby:
:Doing skateboard tricks in ''Tony Hawk'' while also doing them in real life.
:[Cueball moves towards a quarter pipe on his skateboard while manipulating his PSP.]
:''Beep''
:''Click''
:''Beep''

:[Cueball is in mid air having performed a Frontside 360°, both literally and on the PSP.]
:''♪ Frontside 360°! ♫''
:''Frontside 360°!''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:My Hobby]]

578: The Race: Part 2

2022-05-04T02:10:02Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233022 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 578
| date = May 5, 2009
| title = The Race: Part 2
| image = the_race_part_2.png
| titletext = The Hammer + Captain Tightpants == Captain Hammerpants?
}}

==Explanation==
''{{w|Firefly (TV series)|Firefly}}'' was a television series aired by {{w|Fox Broadcasting Company|Fox}} in 2002. The star of the show was {{w|Malcolm Reynolds|Captain Malcolm "Mal" Reynolds}}, played by {{w|Nathan Fillion}}.

Megan tries to play the rational card, and insist that the characters of major TV shows must get tired of fans' never-ending need to see them playing that character, and never being themselves. Nathan Fillion, however, appears to miss the days of ''Firefly'' so much that he spends his time reenacting his role as Malcolm at home.

In the fourth panel Cueball suggests they race for charities, which would mean the winner gets to donate the prize money to their charity of choice. In the fifth panel Fillion, takes the phrase and twists it to mean that the winner gets the charity. This is why Cueball says the confused line "Come again?"

The title text refers both to Mal being referred to by Kaylee as "Captain Tightpants" in the episode {{w|Shindig (Firefly)|"Shindig"}}, and to Captain Hammer, a superhero played by Nathan Fillion in ''{{w|Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog}}'', another series created by {{w|Joss Whedon}}. "Hammerpants" may also be a reference to the odd, puffy parachute pants worn by 1990s rapper MC Hammer.

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

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

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

==Transcript==
:[Cueball with skateboard and gear and Megan are talking.]
:Cueball: "Why race him?" He's ''Captain Reynolds!''
:Megan: Mr. Fillion is an actor. Firefly was years ago.

:[They go over to a computer; Cueball is using a phone and presumably looking up a phone number.]
:Megan: He has his own life to live, and I'm sure the last thing he wants to do is indulge a fan by playing Mal for him.

:Meanwhile...
:[Nathan Fillion is standing in front of a mirror in a trenchcoat.]
:Nathan: (into the mirror) Name's Captain Reynolds, ma'am. *ahem* Name's Captain Reynolds, ma'am.
:Someone offpanel: Nathan? Telephone!
:Nathan: That's ''Captain!''
:Someone offpanel: Fine, Captain Nathan.
:Nathan: No, use my '''space''' name!
:Someone offpanel: *sigh*

:[Nathan and Cueball talk on the phone.]
:Cueball: So, how about we race for charities?

:Nathan: Sure. Always did want a charity of my own.

:Cueball (between panels): Come again?

:Nathan: You know, boxes in supermarkets collecting food. 'Course, ought to tack up a list sayin' which wines I like best...

:Cueball: Uh, that's not quite—
:Nathan (over the phone): Listen, I'm the captain here.
:Cueball: ...I just got goosebumps when you said that.

:Nathan: Yeah, happens to me too whenever I get captainy. I cut such a strapping figure.
:Nathan: Buckle! Swash!
:Nathan: All right, let's do this race.

{{comic discussion}}

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

2361: Voting

2022-05-04T02:09:48Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234576 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2361
| date = September 18, 2020
| title = Voting
| image = voting.png
| titletext = 'Wait, our state has mail voting. The forms are literally on the kitchen table.' 'Not now, I'm busy researching which channels have sharks in them.'
}}
==Explanation==

The run-up to the {{w|2020 United States elections}}, occurring on November 3, 2020 (less than 2 months from the time of the comic's publication), has been fraught with various overlapping worries about the legitimacy of the forthcoming result. The {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}} has created a new interest in {{w|postal voting|voting by mail}}, at a historically large scale. See {{w|Postal voting in the United States}} for more detail. Cueball, however, is in a very patriotic mood and makes a series of hyperbolic statements to Megan about the trials he would be willing to endure in order to vote in the upcoming elections, none of which would (hopefully), in reality, apply to his or anyone else's circumstance.

Crawling across broken glass might have actually been necessary at some polling sites of the {{w|2001 New York City mayoral election}} primary, which had begun on September 11, 2001, and would have continued had it not been postponed two weeks due to the {{w|September 11 attacks|terrorist attacks}} of that day. However, as Megan states, their polling sites, unlike those of the 2001 election, don't even feature any especially large windows or other such structures from which broken glass could be derived. The idea of being so intent on doing something (in this case, voting) that a person claims to be willing to crawl across broken glass to do so is a common expression.

The Sun, currently a yellow dwarf star on the main sequence, will eventually expand into a red giant, then collapse down to a white dwarf when its fuel is exhausted; this will not happen for billions of years, as Megan points out. Because of this, waiting until the sun burns out would result in Cueball's vote not being counted at all, both because it would be after the official deadline for ballots to be cast and because there would no longer be anyone alive on Earth.

As Megan observes, hot coals would most likely not even be present at their polling stations, and although some states have been accused of trying to make voting inconvenient or unsafe, this comic has not yet led any states to prohibit wearing shoes at polling places.

According to Megan, her and Cueball's municipality does not even include a single shark-infested body of water that Cueball would be able to swim through in order to cast his vote. Cueball's solution to this problem is to simply swim back to their location after swimming in his shark-filled channel.

Megan tries in vain to convince Cueball that his proposed actions are unnecessary or even impossible in their area, but, unable to bring him back to reality, she closes the final panel by asking if he'd be willing to put off all of this dangerous stuff until after voting, perhaps so that he will be alive long enough to vote in the first place.

Broken glass, the extinction of humanity, hot coals, and sharks aside, though, Cueball faces the risk of contracting COVID-19 from being in such close proximity to so many other voters, as he seems to plan on voting in person (his words show his desire for activities only possible by way of physical action; in the title text, he also ignores Megan when she says that mail-in voting is available).

In the title text, Megan tells Cueball that he does not need to go to such lengths to vote, as their state has mail-in voting and already sent forms either to cast a ballot or to apply for mail-in ballots. Cueball ignores her and continues looking online for shark-filled channels to swim through. In doing so, he completely negates his professed desire to vote, as he is ignoring the easy path and going after paths that would end up making it impossible to cast his vote. Alternatively, he may just be caught in the normal rabbit hole of doing Internet research, where you start researching one thing (voting locations) and end up reading about another (locations of shark-infested channels).

Randall is making the point that, despite apparent obstruction tactics and threats and attempts to de-legitimize the process, voting is very important (Cueball is using {{w|hyperbole}} to illustrate the importance), and relatively easy (as Megan keeps reminding him). He is also expressing an opinion that the increased danger of system compromise harming the legitimacy of the voting process due to massive mail-in voting is less worrisome than the corona-virus pandemic keeping people from voting at all, if in-person voting were the only viable option.

Randall lives in Massachusetts, a state with majority Democrat media, voters, and government. Sharks [https://www.wcvb.com/article/shark-sighting-massachusetts-july-29-2020/33456756 are sighted off Cape Cod] on occasion, so if he really wanted to, he could swim with them, but unless he lives on Cape Cod itself, it would take him very far outside his voting district.

==Transcript==

:[Cueball walks in from right, staring at his phone and talking to Megan.]
:Cueball: I will crawl across broken glass to vote this year if I have to.
:Megan: ...Why would there be broken glass?
:Megan: There aren't even any big windows at our polling place.

:[Cueball raising a finger triumphantly.]
:Cueball: I will wait in line till the sun burns out.
:Megan: Ok, some places have lines, which is awful, but it's usually pretty quick here?
:Megan: Definitely not 5 billion years.

:[Cueball raising a fist.]
:Cueball: I will walk barefoot across hot coals to cast my ballot!
:Megan: Where would you even '''''find''''' coals?
:Megan: You can wear shoes to vote. This scenario makes no sense.

:[Cueball raising a finger, and walking back off-panel to the left]
:Cueball: I will swim across a shark-filled channel!
:Megan: That'll take you '''''way''''' outside our precinct.
:Cueball: '''''Then I'll swim back!'''''
:Megan: Can you do all this stuff '''''after''''' voting?

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

Blag

2022-05-04T02:09:31Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233511 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{Quote|The forums weren’t really a great place to post news, so davean helped me set up a blag here. I’ve got a bunch of news/info on a bunch of topics, and will answer questions in the comments, so here we go...|[[Randall Munroe]]|[https://blog.xkcd.com/2006/10/06/many-news-things-some-overdue/ Source]}}

The Blag is the official [[xkcd]] blog. Its name is an intentional typo of the word "blog", inspired by the comic [[148: Mispronouncing]]. It was launched in October 2006, 6 weeks after the publication of that comic.

Since 2012, updates to the blog have been sporadic, and most new posts are now about [[Randall Munroe|Munroe]]'s books or book tours. There were no posts to the blog between [https://blog.xkcd.com/2015/11/24/a-puzzle-for-the-uk/ November 24, 2015] and [https://blog.xkcd.com/2019/02/05/how-to-absurd-scientific-advice-for-common-real-world-problems/ February 5, 2019], most likely due to the three-year gap between the promotional cycles of ''[[Thing Explainer]]'' and ''[[How To]]''. As of November 2019, the most recent post unrelated to Munroe's books was [https://blog.xkcd.com/2014/05/30/isee-3/ ISEE-3], published on May 30, 2014. The blog seems to be abandoned, with the last blog post being on [https://blog.xkcd.com/ September 25, 2019].

With the announcement of the [[2575: What If? 2|What if? 2]] book the first blag post in more than two years was made on [https://blog.xkcd.com/2022/01/31/what-if-2/ 2022-01-31]. So the blag has not been completely abandoned.

== External links ==
*[https://blog.xkcd.com blog.xkcd.com]
*[https://blag.xkcd.com blag.xkcd.com] (yes, it exists but only redirects to blog.xkcd.com)

[[Category:Meta]]
{{xkcdmeta}}

2432: Manage Your Preferences

2022-05-04T02:09:14Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234670 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2432
| date = March 3, 2021
| title = Manage Your Preferences
| image = manage_your_preferences.png
| titletext = Manage cookies related to essential site functions, such as keeping Atrus and his sons imprisoned within the page.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic illustrates the complex dialogues often employed by webpage or software designers to hide settings from the user. Many pages provide controls to set privacy-related preferences but make those settings opaque in an attempt to dissuade users from using them. The idea is that a user will become impatient by the confusing options and select the defaults, which provide the site or software with more access or information. This situation is compared to ''{{w|Myst}}'', a 1990s puzzle video game.

Companies which collect or process personal information are required by privacy legislation to give their users the option to withhold personal information, although regulations vary depending on the region-specific laws. The operators of such services usually want to collect as much personal data as they can in order to target advertisements or sell their information to someone else, and wish to incentivize their users not to activate those features. One tactic that is frequently used to accomplish this goal is to provide the user an option which enables all the data collection, but to make the process of disabling the collection time-consuming or difficult. This type of action is generally illegal under the same privacy legislation, but regulation of it has been lax so many companies still try it.

"Atrus" in the title text is the main non-player character in the ''Myst'' series. In the first game these people were imprisoned within books. Pages needed to be collected to complete the books, and it was incredibly hard to find a single page, involving extensive laborious navigation and exploration, and the finding and solving of hidden puzzles. In the ''Myst'' mythos, the books open portals to other worlds, a little like web hyperlinks. Some sites' privacy settings are similarly labyrinthine. For example, some sites will run scripts from a variety of providers but will only allow users to disable them one site at a time without an explanation of what each one does.

The black background possibly shows how many sites are providing tools to switch between light and dark backgrounds now. For a long time white backgrounds were the usual default style, and only people who understood esoteric browser configurations could redisplay many things with a black background - possibly to help with perceived eyestrain ''or'' power usage in certain displays. More recently, it is a fashionable setting for content providers to compose as a selectable option. It is out-of-place for Randall to show a black background, as many of his comics take place in technical computer systems that often have a black background anyway, as most computer terminals still do.

Some browsers and websites do have actual games embedded within their various configuration interfaces. {{w|Google Chrome|Chrome}}, for example, has the famous {{w|Dinosaur Game|dinosaur game}}.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting in an office chair at a desk in front of his laptop computer. A black zigzag line points to the screen, and above this is shown what is displayed on Cueball's screen. This is shown as a black rectangle, with a white box, with black frame, overlaid over the top of the black section, extending half way above it. The text in this white box is in gray font. Inside the black rectangle are two gray rectangles, with white borders and black text. A small rectangle at the top has "Manage your Preferences" inside it, and a large rectangle below has 6 lines of text.]
:Agree to whatever
:Transport me to an immersive Myst-like game where I click confusingly-labeled toggle switches, only some of which work, perhaps never to find my way back to the page I wanted.

==Trivia==
The title-text originally said "Atrius" instead of "Atrus". A few hours after the comic's release, this was changed.
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Internet]]

2496: Mine Captcha

2022-05-04T02:08:37Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234293 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2496
| date = July 30, 2021
| title = Mine Captcha
| image = mine_captcha.png
| titletext = This data is actually going into improving our self-driving car project, so hurry up--it's almost at the minefield.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic, like [[1897: Self Driving]], references the approach of using human-entered {{w|CAPTCHA}} inputs to solve {{w|machine learning}} problems, particularly those involving image classification.

In order to prevent automated programs from using web services, Google offers a protection called {{w|reCAPTCHA}}, which performs various tests to see if a user is human or machine. (One of these tests is a "I'm not a robot" checkbox which must be checked in order to proceed, although ticking the box is merely a formality, and later versions of reCAPTCHA can simply perform the tests quietly in the background without needing user consent).

If the reCAPTCHA system suspects that the user may be an automated bot, it presents an image recognition challenge that only humans should be able to pass. This has the desired effect of denying access to robots, but it also has a side benefit that the human input can be used to train Google's image recognition software. The challenge usually features a square grid of images, typically things one might see while driving - eg. "check all squares containing a STOP SIGN". If the user clicks the correct squares, they are permitted to continue.

{{w|Minesweeper (video game)|Minesweeper}}, on the other hand, is a logic puzzle game in which the player is presented with a grid of unrevealed squares, and must deduce the location of mines that have been secretly hidden on random squares. The game provides clues by marking some squares with the number of mines (up to a maximum of 8) that are adjacent to that square; by carefully considering the possibilities, a player can deduce which squares must contain mines, and mark them with flags to avoid clicking on them. Revealing a mine loses the game.

In this comic, Randall combines the two concepts to create a "Mine Captcha", which is presented in the form of a reCAPTCHA challenge but actually appears to be a mini game of Minesweeper. (To be more precise, it is actually the opposite of regular Minesweeper, since the challenge invites the user to click on the mines - in Minesweeper, you are supposed to ''not'' click the mines. Furthermore, on its own terms it is unsolveable as a reCAPTCHA, since the user is asked to click on all ''pictures'' of mines. However, as in the real Minesweeper, there are no pictures of mines displayed (in Minesweeper, these only appear when the game is over). Taking the game as playable, however, in both cases you still need to know where the mines are, so it is still solved the same way).

A real-world Mine Captcha would be somewhat ineffective for a variety of reasons. Firstly, not every human would recognize a game of Minesweeper and therefore wouldn't understand what they are being asked to do. Even if they do recognize the game, they may not know the logical method for deducing the locations of mines. Additionally, even for skilled players, there is a trap in that the Captcha's objective is the reverse of regular Minesweeper; they might therefore get tripped up by muscle memory and click on something that is not a mine, which would fail the challenge.

Another issue is that games of Minesweeper can sometimes involve a degree of luck, as it is possible to generate a puzzle which does not give sufficient information to unambiguously deduce the location of every mine (Though this may not be a problem since Randall's Minesweeper is only a 4x4 grid). In these situations, the most a player can do is click the uncertain square and hope for the best. If the Mine Captcha is poorly implemented in this way, this would increase false negatives in human detection due to some humans failing the captcha purely due to bad luck. (Some variants attempt to eliminate this problem: ''[https://pragmada.x10hosting.com/mindet.html Mine Detector]'', for example, is a variant game which provides better information, such that it's almost always solvable without guessing except at the highest difficulty level).

Finally, a Mine Captcha would actually be fairly easy for an artificial intelligence (AI) to solve, since it is a logic puzzle - as long as the AI can read the numbers, it can simply use an algorithm to eliminate all impossibilities until it has the correct answer. (Indeed, for a 4x4 grid, it's even easier than that; a computer could quickly brute-force the problem by trying every possible arrangement of mines until it has the correct one).

It seems that Randall predicted that an AI might try to solve the captcha itself, as he rendered each numeral in a different style; this is similar to obfuscation methods used in text-based captchas to prevent automatic text recognition software from reading the captcha. However, it would not be very effective in this case as the same numbers have the same color; an AI could simply recognize the color instead, which is even easier for an AI than trying to read a number.

The title text is similar to [[1897: Self Driving]] where the CAPTCHA solver is asked to answer quickly, implying that the training data is actually a real-world situation being experienced by a self-driving vehicle at that very moment. The joke here is that real-life minefields do not have large numbers indicating which of the surrounding land contains mines{{citation needed}}.

==Solving the Mine Captcha==
Assuming that columns are denoted by letters A, B, C, D, left to right, and rows are denoted by 1, 2, 3, 4, top to bottom, one way to solve the captcha is as follows:

The leftmost red 3 at A3 is surrounded by four squares (A2, B2, B3, A4), of which we know three are mines. Therefore, one of these squares is not a mine. However, because of the blue 1 at B4, we know that only one of B3 and A4 can be a mine, otherwise, there would be more than one mine adjacent to B4; therefore, '''A2''' and '''B2''' ''must'' be mines. Otherwise, there could only be two total mines adjacent to A3.

2 . 1 .
X X 3 .
3 . . .
. 1 . 1

Since A1 is a green 2 and is adjacent to two squares that we now know are mines (A2 and B2), this means that B1 is ''not'' a mine. If it was, there would be 3 adjacent mines to A1. Furthermore, since there is a blue 1 at C1, and we know that the adjacent B2 is a mine, this means that D1 and D2 are also ''not'' mines, since if any of them were, there would be more than one mine adjacent to C1.

2 O 1 O
X X 3 O
3 . . .
. 1 . 1

We also know that C3 and C4 are ''not'' mines, since we already know that the blue 1 at B4 is next to exactly one mine (on either B3 or A4). Since this eliminates two of the three possible neighbors of the blue 1 at D4, this means that '''D3''' ''must'' be a mine.

2 O 1 O
X X 3 O
3 . O X
. 1 O 1

Finally, since we now know the locations of two of the mines around the red 3 at C2, and we have eliminated all other possibilities, '''B3''' ''must'' be a mine. Therefore, the mines are at '''A2''', '''B2''', '''B3''', and '''D3'''. This solves the puzzle.

2 O 1 O
X X 3 O
3 X O X
O 1 O 1

==Transcript==
:[A Minesweeper game in a 4x4 grid is shown beneath a blue rectangle. There is an explanation in white text in the blue field:]
:To proceed, click all the pictures of '''<big>Mines</big>'''

:[The ''Minesweeper'' field has six cells with revealed numbers on a light gray background. The other 10 fields are empty and dark gray. The three ones are blue, the single two are green and the two threes are red. On top of this each number is drawn in a different font/style. The ones changes how bold they are. The two is drawn in a 3D format, the one three is very thin and the other is drawn with two lines and no filling in between (hollow). The grid looks like this:]

2 . 1 .
. . 3 .
3 . . .
. 1 . 1

==Trivia==
*The solved version of the puzzle showing where the mines are in this comic:
:[[File:2946_Mine_Captcha_With_Bombs.png]]
*The solved puzzle as it would look if played as a real minesweeper game, except the mines would be represented by flags. (The empty square top right corner has 0 bombs next to it. This is not written in the game but indicated as this field has been pushed down):
:[[File:2946_Mine_Captcha_Solved.png]]
*The original game can be played here: [https://minesweeper.online/ World of Minesweeper]
**It is possible to build a 4x4 CAPTCHA game there:
:[[File:2946_Mine_Captcha_Example_of_4x4_game.png]]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:CAPTCHA]]
[[Category:Self-driving cars]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]

2363: Message Boards

2022-05-04T02:08:24Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234805 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2363
| date = September 23, 2020
| title = Message Boards
| image = message_boards.png
| titletext = (c) You can have a scooter when you pay for it yourself, and (d) if you can't learn to start a new thread rather than responding to an old one, you'll be banned. [thread locked by moderator]
}}

==Explanation==
The joke of this comic lies in the dates of the forum posts and the (presumed) relation between the posters.

The initial post was made in 2000 by NIN85 who was, at the time, a teenaged girl (likely 14 or 15 years old given that her username ends in "85," implying she was born in 1985), complaining that her mother did not allow her to get a {{w|Vespa}}. Vespa is a brand of scooters and mopeds produced by the Italian manufacturer Piaggio. Most U.S. states require motorcycle licenses for any vehicle with an engine size over 50 cubic centimeters. Most Vespas are larger than this, although 49 CC models (classified as mopeds) do exist. Depending on the state, the [https://drivinglaws.aaa.com/tag/mopeds-other/ minimum age to get a moped in the United States] is 14, 15, or 16.

The reply was written in 2020 (twenty years later) by JULZ (or Julian), the presumed son of the now-adult NIN85, likely in his teenage years. The "Z" may refer to "Generation Z", paralleling the "85." "JULZ" complains about his mother refusing to allow him to get an electric scooter, which doesn't require a license. He is implicitly pointing out the hypocrisy of his mother, as a fifteen-year-old, thinking that teenagers with scooters are perfectly reasonable, while as a thirtyfive-year-old, being against the idea.

The primary source of humor in this strip (made explicit in the caption) derives from the fact that the Internet has been in common use for so long that teenagers can now look up old posts that their parents made when they, themselves, were teenagers. The late 1990s to early 2000s was right around the time the average person would be expected to have access to the internet and use it regularly, which means that, as of 2020, that's been the case for around one human generation. This can be jarring for people who are still used to thinking of the Internet as a new technology. Noting how much time has passed since events that feel recent is [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Comics_to_make_one_feel_old a recurring theme in xkcd.]

Of course, the basic premise of this exchange is nothing new. Teenagers have encountered (and been surprised by) the notion that their parents were once young for as long as there have been people. In the past, it's happened through finding old photographs, old videos, old diaries, or simply by hearing stories from their family and old friends. Young people are often shocked by what they learn, and accuse their parents of hypocrisy when they punish behavior that they once engaged in. Of course, this isn't true hypocrisy: we expect teenagers to grow and evolve, and develop mature, adult viewpoints. Parents naturally have both more understanding of dangers and lower tolerance for risk when dealing with their children. This strip points out that the internet has now existed for long enough (and preserves archives for long enough) that it's now become a potential medium for this whole dynamic. Part of the humor results from the unexpected situation that the child went to the trouble of tracking down his mother's old forum post, and that his mother is still active in the same niche forum 20 years later (as evidenced by her rapid response).

In the title text, the parent is apparently a {{w|Internet_forum#Moderators|moderator}} on that board now, or at least can quickly twist the ear of an actual mod. She has the thread locked (preventing further replies) and threatens banning the kid if he does not learn to post new threads, instead of dredging up dead threads from two decades ago. The act of reviving long-dead threads is often called "thread necromancy" or "necroing," and many forums (and users) frown upon it. It is seen as similar to bringing up a conversation from ages ago in real life. It often adds nothing new, and the original participants in the discussion may no longer be active or no longer interested in the topic. Some forums may actually encourage tagging onto existing but idle discussions (to add new or updated information) rather than repeatedly creating new threads, but that does not seem to be the case here.

Invoking the power of moderation could suggest that, in typical parental fashion, she's using her greater influence and social position to end the discussion, making clear that she's the one in charge. "You'll be banned from this forum thread" could be seen as the Internet version of "as long as you live under my roof, you'll live by my rules".

==Transcript==
:[Single panel showing a view of the "MopedPro" forum on a message board, with a caption below the panel.]
::Forum Tab: '''''MopedPro Forum''''' (Top Left) | (4 tabs with illegible writing on them. None of them appear to be selected) (Top Right)

:NIN85 (posted December 5, 2000 - 13:01):
:So mad that my mom won't let me get a Vespa. I'm old enough for a moped license and they're really not that dangerous.

:JULZ [new user] (posted September 23, 2020 - 17:05):
:At least she's not stopping you from getting an electric scooter you don't even need a license for

:NIN85 (posted September 23, 2020 - 18:36):
:Okay, Julian, (a) you know we talked about this, and (b) how the heck did you find this thread

:[Caption below the comic]:
:I love that message boards are now old enough for this to happen.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Social networking]]

878: Model Rail

2022-05-04T02:06:28Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234596 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 878
| date = March 28, 2011
| title = Model Rail
| image = model rail.png
| titletext = I don't know what's more telling--the number of pages in the Wikipedia talk page argument over whether the 1/87.0857143 scale is called "HO" or "H0", or the fact that within minutes of first hearing of it I had developed an extremely strong opinion on the issue.
}}

==Explanation==
In model rail construction, the {{w|HO scale}} refers to the most popular scale for modeling railroads, in which 3.5 millimeters in the model corresponds to 1 real-world Imperial foot. As the comic suggests, it works out to a ratio of about 1:87.1 (or 3048:35 exactly, which equals 1:87.08̄5̄7̄1̄4̄2̄8). In Europe, the scale is defined as exactly 1:87 instead, to avoid references to non-metric measurements.

This comic features [[:Category:Multiple Cueballs|two Cueballs]] conversing; we'll refer to them as Lefty and Righty to avoid confusion. The conversation takes place in Lefty's basement. Lefty is apparently a less-experienced train modeler, and he tells Righty that he wants to make an HO model layout of his town. However, the more-experienced Righty points out that this is a bad idea, due to nesting. To make it a perfectly accurate model, Lefty would have to include a model of his house, which includes his basement, which includes the model. So, he would have to make a model of the model, which will include a smaller model of the model, and so forth. This is illustrated in the comic.

At the end of these six nested models ''The Matryoshka limit'' is stated: "It is impossible to nest more than six HO layouts". {{w|Matryoshka doll|Matryoshka dolls}} are toys of Russian origin that can be stacked inside one another. Here, the "Matryoshka limit" is the hard barrier that follows as a result of the nesting. Matter is not infinitely divisible; once one gets to the level of atoms, it is impossibly difficult to go any smaller. The unit shown in the last diagram is the {{w|Angstrom|ångström}}, a very small unit of measurement (1/10000th of a {{w|micrometre}}, 1/10 of a {{w|nanometre}}, 100 {{w|picometre}}s or 10−10 m) which was created when humans started discovering objects on an atomic scale, such as crystal structures or wavelengths. The last nested model looks like the atoms on a surface as seen using a {{w|scanning tunneling microscope}} (STM).

The rules of model train layouts reference the 1999 cult classic ''{{w|Fight Club}}'', where the first rule of Fight Club is "do not talk about Fight Club." However, while the club instituted the rule because their activities were morally and legally questionable, the rule in the comic was instituted by friends and family members who were apparently sick of hearing the train enthusiasts talk about model train layouts all the time. The second rule of Fight Club is "you ''do not'' talk about Fight Club", repeated for emphasis, but evidently Cueball and his friend are good enough at following the first rule of model train layouts that they only had to be told once.

The "Philistines" comment is not referring to citizens of ancient {{W|Philistia}} (at least not directly), but rather the philosophy of {{w|Philistinism}}. {{w|Friedrich Nietzsche}} defined a Philistine as someone who is purely negative in how they define style, i.e. they know exactly what they hate and don't really have anything they like. A common stereotype for artists is to refer to anyone who dislikes their work as "Philistines," thus dismissing their criticism as being part of a larger personality defect on the critic's part rather than any particular failing of the artwork in question.

The title text references {{w|HO scale}} and, more specifically, whether it should be spelled with the letter "O" or the number zero (0). Such debates often seem petty to the "layman", yet the people involved in the debates can form ''very'' strong feelings for their side. Randall recognizes "nerdy tendencies" almost immediately when he gets the urge to take a side.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball to the left and his friend, who also looks like Cueball, are standing in the friend's rather large basement, where the celling is held up by six thin columns, and the walls are shown angling in towards a point of perspective, to display how big the room is.]
:Friend: I want to build a perfect HO-scale (~1/87) model train layout of my town.
:Cueball: In your basement? Bad idea. Never make a layout of the area you're in.

:[Zoom in on the two friends without the basement visualized.]
:Friend: Why not?
:Cueball: Because it'd include a little 10" replica of your house.

:[Zoom in Cueball's friend who takes his hand to his chin.]
:Friend: So? That's be cool! I'd make tiny replicas of my rooms, my furniture—
:Cueball (off-screen)l: —And your train layout?

:[Beneath this first row of the comic is the zoom-out of how the full model would look in the basement. The town lies beneath some small mountains. There is some water with a bridge over it continuing to the roads going through the city. There is no frame around this section, but instead there follows five zoom-outs, each one going from the friend's house, that proceeds to a circular frame. Within each of these is shown a nested model. Starting to the right of the main model, and then moving down, then left, and then down and right. Each layer has a broken arrow above the model between two vertical lines to indicate the scale, the length being written between the two parts of the arrow. Some foreign objects are also labeled to help understand the scale.]

:[Layer 1, the model with the two friends standing to the left of it.]
:18 m

:[Layer 2, looks exactly as the model, but without the friends.]
:21 cm

:[Layer 3, with a mosquito shown for comparison. It stands over half the model covering the mountains.]
:2.4 mm

:[Layer 4, with a strand of spider silk (labeled) shown for comparison. The silk is much thicker than the roads, almost as thick as the mountains and much longer than the model. But the model still looks fairly much like the original one.]
:28 μm
:Spider web

:[Layer 5, with a cold virus (labeled) shown for comparison. It covers roughly a quarter of the model, taking up the water part of the model. At this level the whole model becomes notably "fuzzy" as individual atoms are discernible, and most of the features apart from the mountain is indiscernible. There may be two viruses. The other would then be to the right of the one in the water but above the model. The label stands between them.]
:320 nm
:Cold virus

:[Layer 6, is simply spheres (atoms) at this point. The mountain near the back is the only noticeable feature, consisting of five atoms jutting out from the surface of atoms, which is by no mean flat.]
:37 Å

:[Beneath these six versions of the model is a caption:]
:The Matryoshka limit:
:It is impossible to nest
:more than six HO layouts

:[Back to the two friends in the basement, still not showing the basement.]
:Friend: My God.
:Cueball: Yeah. It's the second rule of model train layouts: No nesting.

:[Zoom in on the heads of the two friends.]
:Friend: ...What's the first rule?
:Cueball: "Do ''not'' talk about model train layouts." That rule was actually voted in by our friends and families.
:Friend: Philistines.

==Trivia==
* The city of Bourton-on-the-Water, Gloucestershire, England actually contains {{w|Bourton-on-the-Water model village|such a model}}. Although, it only has 4 nestings, and is built at a larger scale.
* The {{w|Miniatur Wunderland|Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg (Germany)}}, the biggest model rail construction in the world, contains a 1:7500 version of the Miniatur Wunderland with movable vehicles.
* It should be noted that the day this comic went up, it was then repeatedly referenced in the HO talk page by several people commenting on the arguable triviality of the edit war.
* The comic [[1167: Star Trek into Darkness]] is about a similar debate on Wikipedia.
* Randall later created a series discussing scale-model worlds more generally: [[2411: 1/10,000th Scale World]], [[2412: 1/100,000th Scale World]], and [[2417: 1/1,000th Scale World]].

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Illustrations of scale]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Recursion]]
[[Category:Fight Club]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]

1713: 50 ccs

2022-05-04T02:05:59Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234431 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1713
| date = July 29, 2016
| title = 50 ccs
| image = 50_ccs.png
| titletext = There's been a raccoon accident at an accordion bacchanalia! Double doses!
}}

==Explanation==
This comic presents a busy day in the clinic for doctor [[Ponytail]], who orders 50 ccs from a nurse (probably [[Megan]] who walks in front of her rather than [[Cueball]] walking away behind her), all the while everyone is hurrying along the hall. This could be a typical scenario in a busy hospital. However the pun is that the 50 ccs are not medicine but should be used to write "hiccup vaccine" 25 times.

In medicine, "cc" usually means "{{w|cubic centimeter}}", and is often called that by medical personnel. A cubic centimeter is equal to 1 ml (milliliter), so "50 ccs" usually means 50 ml of a certain medicine. In this case however, the doctor has not told the nurse to bring 50 ccs of any given medicine; instead, she needs to write "hi'''cc'''up va'''cc'''ine" 25 times, with both words containing the letter combination "cc", so she needs to write that combination 50 times.

That is the joke, that the 50 ccs literally means the two-lettered 'cc' fifty times.
*50 cc would be
**cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc cc
** just enough 'cc's to spell ''hiccup vaccine'' 25 times.

There's no conventional {{w|vaccine}} against {{w|hiccup}}s. However, performing tasks meant to distract one's self is a method to stop hiccups. Therefore the act of writing "hiccup vaccine" 25 times would itself comprise one more of those hiccup cures that never seems to work. What these techniques all rely on is that they all force one to hold one's breath, thus resetting the diaphragm from its out of sync spasms. But if Ponytail has discovered a vaccine that ''does'' somehow cure or prevent hiccups, then this unexpected result is worth reporting in medical journals and seeking grants for further study. Thus, wanting to write about it 25 times is understandable!

The title text text refers to a fictional event with four words containing "cc" (ra'''cc'''oon, a'''cc'''ident, a'''cc'''ordion, ba'''cc'''hanalia), which means she needs to write "cc" 100 times. Referring to the 50 ccs from above, this would be a double dosage.

Although the words of the sentence has been chosen based on their cc's the sentence is quite interesting in itself:
*An {{w|accordion}} is a box-shaped musical instrument with tangents like on a piano. The instrument is played by compressing or expanding the bellows. It has sometimes been accused of being a [http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f193/ZenLunatic82/FarSide-Accordion.jpg hellish instrument]. It has not been used in xkcd before.
*The ''{{w|Bacchanalia}}'' were Roman festivals of {{w|Bacchus}} (Roman name for the equivalent Greek wine God Dionysus). The festivals were based on various ecstatic elements of the Greek {{w|Dionysia}}.
*The animal {{w|raccoon}}, has begun to appear in {{w|Raccoon#Urban_raccoons|urban areas}} which has given rises to increasing {{w|Raccoon#Conflicts|conflicts with humans}}. A dead raccoon had thus found its way into Cueball's car in [[1565: Back Seat]] and already back in [[1025: Tumblr]] Megan has a raccoon sex dungeon in her attic!

So here there is talk of a wine festival with music played on accordions that has had an accident involving raccoons, in addition to the need for vaccine against the hiccups.

A similar doctor Ponytail is shown in [[883: Pain Rating]] also along with Cueball and Megan and just with Megan in [[996: Making Things Difficult]].

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail in a doctor's coat, walks right while reading from a clipboard, passing Cueball walking the other way while she talks to Megan walking in front of her.]
:Ponytail: Nurse, bring me 50 ccs!
:Ponytail: I need to write "hiccup vaccine" 25 times!

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Animals]] 
[[Category:Doctor Ponytail]]
[[Category:Medicine]]

1902: State Borders

2022-05-04T02:05:29Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234409 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1902
| date = October 13, 2017
| title = State Borders
| image = state_borders.png
| titletext = A schism between the pro-panhandle and anti-panhandle factions eventually led to war, but both sides spent too much time working on their flag designs to actually do much fighting.
}}

==Explanation==

In this comic, graphic designers take control of the United States, but the only thing they do is to change the state and national borders, using primarily aesthetic criteria. State and national borders have generally emerged from some combination of political decisions, natural boundaries, control of natural resources, and, to some degree, from chance. As the comic implies, some borders originally resulted from surveying errors, but became encoded by law and tradition, and thus were never changed.

Despite the caption's rather blasé reaction to the graphic designers' master plan, the changes they propose could be rather tumultuous. Political boundaries are difficult to change because rewriting them places entire populations in different states or even different countries. Even within the US, changing a population from one state to another has serious implications. A different state means different laws, tax obligations, public benefits, business regulations, infrastructure support, etc. It would also mean that control of some very substantial natural resources would be transferred from one state to another. More significantly, the suggestion to cede portions of the US to Canada and Mexico would be a much bigger deal, forcing residents of those areas to either leave their homes, businesses, and communities or surrender their current nationality and apply for citizenship in another country. The joke behind the comic is that graphic designers would tend to ignore these practical concerns and pay more attention to a map looking orderly.

This comic hints at the fact that it is indeed Randall who wants to see these changes made.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Proposed change !! Explanation
|-
| Give to Canada || {{w|Minnesota}} has a small northern exclave (the {{w|Northwest Angle}}) which is sparsely populated (with only about 120 residents), and is accessible from the rest of the US only via water (the {{w| Lake of the Woods}}) or by travelling through Canada. This land being part of the US is the result of a geographic error during the original negotiations over the border, and its irregularity would naturally bother someone concerned with clean and logical boundaries. The new borders suggest giving this territory to Canada to simplify the state and national border. In fact, during the Covid pandemic that hit the US in 2020, the US/Canada border was closed to nonessential travel, and so many of the Angle’s residents struggled to make ends meet, as the cross-border tourism that typically supported them largely disappeared.
|-
| This should be {{w|Wisconsin}} || {{w|Michigan}} is divided into two parts by {{w|Lake Michigan}}. The graphic designers suggest eliminating a boundary line by assigning the upper peninsula of Michigan to Wisconsin. The upper peninsula of Michigan was given to Michigan as part of a compromise to end the {{w|Toledo War}}.
|-
| Move Long Island to NJ or CT, or make it its own state || {{w|Connecticut}} and {{w|New Jersey}} are very close to each other but don't actually border, separated only a few miles by {{w|New York State}}. {{w|Long Island}} is part of New York State, which visibly juts out into the Atlantic (extending so far to the east that it gives New York a maritime border with Rhode Island) and apparently drives graphic designers crazy who see an association with New Jersey or Connecticut or even becoming its own state more logical than being a part of New York State. This would have some issues, not least of which is that Long Island contains two of {{w|New York City}}'s five boroughs ({{w|Brooklyn}} and {{w|Queens}}) and more than half the city's population.
|-
| Unlabelled cleanup at the eastern border of New York, northern border of Massachusetts, and northern border of Connnecticut || Straighten the eastern border of New York from New York City to the southern tip of Lake Champlain, straighten the northern border of Massachusetts, and straighten the northern border of Connecticut.
|-
|-
| Align to Grid || Most of the Western states are variations on "large box", but there's something a bit irregular about them. Never fear, the Design Team has fixed it! In the process, they've also changed the border between Idaho and Montana from a natural boundary following the Continental Divide into an arbitrary squiggle.
|-
| Clean Up (Maryland/Ohio/Pennsylvania/Virginia/West Virginia) || Maryland's western panhandle and both of West Virginia's to the east and north would be smoothed out to have nice, straight, shorter lines. The Mason-Dixon Line that forms the current border between Maryland and Pennsylvania would also be extended east to the border between Pennsylvania and Delaware, which the latter in real life cuts into Pennsylvania a little bit via the {{w|Twelve Mile Circle}}.
|-
|Enlarge Rhode Island & Delaware || {{w|Rhode Island}} and {{w|Delaware}}, the two {{w|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_area#Area_by_state.2Fterritory|smallest U.S. states by area}}, are often difficult to make out on a map of the United States.
Expanding Delaware to occupy the entire {{w|Delmarva_Peninsula|Delmarva peninsula}} eliminates some boundary lines the designers apparently consider excessively fiddly, as well as solving another "Michigan" problem, as the "VA" of "Delmarva" refers to its {{w|Eastern Shore of Virginia|Eastern Shore}}, which is separated from the rest of Virginia by the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. The two parts of Virginia are connected by the {{w|Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel}}, while Maryland's two bay shores are connected by U.S. Route 50. Rhode Island is not indeed entirely an island, and the mainland portions are the focus of the graphic designers.

Expanding Rhode Island eastward would make it easier to see on a map. Giving the former {{w|Plymouth Colony}} to Rhode Island would have the additional advantage of making Massachusetts a more neatly rectangular state.
|-
| If we're going to have a panhandle, why not commit to it? || {{w|Oklahoma}} has a "panhandle" to its west, which is a kind of {{w|Salient (geography)|Salient}}. The obvious fix would be to give it to Texas. In a twist, the graphic designers suggest extending it even further, across the northern parts of {{w|Arizona}} and {{w|New Mexico}}. This would make the {{w|Four Corners Monument}} obsolete, since Arizona and New Mexico would no longer border {{w|Utah}} and {{w|Colorado}} respectively, let alone all four states sharing a corner.
|-
| Fix this thing || The border of {{w|Missouri}} cuts into {{w|Arkansas}}, in the so-called {{w|Missouri Bootheel}}. The Design Team has awarded that piece to {{w|Arkansas}}, straightening the border.
|-
| Unlabelled cleanup at the junction of {{w|Kentucky}}/{{w|Virginia}} || Virginia's western border is shifted east to align it with the borders to the north and south, forming a continuous line along the {{w|Appalachian_Mountains|Appalachians}}.
|-
| Unlabelled cleanup at the junction of {{w|Nevada}}/{{w|Arizona}} || Continue the line of Utah's western border and Arizona's far northwestern border south (replacing part of the {{w|Colorado River}} boundary), transferring part of Arizona's {{w|Mohave_County,_Arizona|Mohave county}} to Nevada.
|-
| Unlabelled cleanup at the junction of {{w|Texas}}/{{w|Oklahoma}}/{{w|Arkansas}}/{{w|Louisiana}} || Square off {{w|Southwest Arkansas}}, and move {{w|Lousiana's}} northwest border to meet up, presumably because square corners are better.
|-
| Clean up (Arizona/New Mexico/Texas) || One of {{w|New Mexico}}'s borders should be extended into a single line. This results in ceding some land to Mexico, having {{w|El Paso}} split across New Mexico and Texas, and Highway 62 alternating between two states.
|-
| Straighten to fix survey errors (Tennessee) || {{w|Tennessee}}'s southern border is supposed to be the 35th parallel north, but due to surveying errors made in the 19th Century the marked border is one mile south of that line. At many times since, Georgia has sought to fix this by various means (at least partly because doing so would net them some rights to the water from the Tennessee River) including bringing its case to the US Supreme Court - with the Design Team in charge, they wouldn't need those lawyers any more. Farther westward, Tennessee's actual southern border suddenly juts south at the Tennessee River between Alabama and Mississippi - again, the Design Team would rather see it smoothed out. Tennessee's northern border with Kentucky has similar hitches that prevent it from being a straight line that the Design Team wants to address.
|-
| Good Curve! Keep. (Florida/Georgia/South Carolina) || The only thing the design team likes already about the shape of the US is the shape of the Atlantic coast in northern {{w|Florida}}, Georgia, and {{w|South Carolina}}, as it seems to bend into the US smoothly. Unfortunately for them, the curve is coastline; whether or not we get to keep it is up to the whims of Mother Nature {{Citation needed}}. Fortunately for them, they like it as is, so it doesn't matter that they can't change it.
|-
| Let's be honest, this should be Canada too || {{w|Southeast Alaska}} should be given to {{w|Canada}}, presumably because it more neatly fits with {{w|British Columbia}}. This is slightly problematic, as the current state capital, {{w|Juneau}}, is within this section. Presumably, the state capital would be moved to Alaska's most populous city, {{w|Anchorage}}.
|-
| Why should Florida get Alabama's coastline? It has plenty. ||
The {{w|Florida Panhandle}} borders southern {{w|Alabama}} denying the state all but a sliver of coastline. Given that Florida already has an abundance of coast, the Graphic Designers consider the present arrangement unfair. Ceding the Florida counties west of the {{w|Apalachicola River}} has actually been {{w|Florida_Panhandle#Alabama_annexation_proposals|raised since the 19th century}}. This change would have the additional benefit of more neatly aligning Florida's western border with that of neighboring {{w|Georgia (U.S. state)|Georgia}}. As a sidenote, this would have significant political implications, as Florida is a closely divided "swing state" whose votes can easily determine the outcome of US Presidential elections. Ceding the largely rural and conservative population of the panhandle would likely tilt the rest of the state in favor of the Democratic candidate in future elections. Such an upset of the power balance is one reason why these kinds of changes would be aggressively opposed.
|}

In the title text, the graphic designers have a civil war between the ones that favor "panhandles" in the borders, such as the Oklahoma one which is enlarged in the map, the Florida one which is removed in the map, and maybe others such as the Texas region known as the "Texas panhandle". However, as graphic designers, they get too caught up in making the flag designs for their faction to actually fight. Randall has shown interest for vexillology (the study of flags) in the past.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[An outline map of the United States is shown, including state boundaries. The following edit marks are shown in red text:]
:[Minnesota's Northwest Angle is circled] Give to Canada
:[Border between Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula is crossed out] This should be Wisconsin
:[New York's Long Island is circled, with arrows and question marks pointing to New Jersey and Connecticut] Move Long Island to NJ or CT or make it its own state
:[New York's eastern border has been straightened]
:[Wyoming's western border is moved to align with that of Colorado. The Montana/Idaho and Idaho/Utah borders are extended to reach the new border. Similarly, Colorado's eastern border is moved to align with that of Wyoming, and the Nebraska/Kansas border has been extended] Align to grid
:[West Virginia's northern panhandle has been given to Ohio and part of its eastern panhandle has been given to Maryland. In return, Western Maryland has been given to West Virginia. The altogether effect is that West Virginia and Maryland have more compact shapes] Clean Up
:[Rhode Island has been enlarged to encompass southeastern Massachusetts, and Delaware now takes up the entire Delmarva Peninsula] Enlarge Rhode Island & Delaware
:[The Oklahoma Panhandle has been extended west until it reaches Nevada, taking the northernmost parts of Arizona and New Mexico with it] If we're going to have a panhandle, why not commit to it?
:[The Missouri Bootheel has been given to Arkansas] Fix this thing
:[The part of Virginia west of the Appalachian Mountains has been given to Kentucky]
:[The southwestern and eastern borders of Nevada have been extended into Arizona until they meet a point. A part of California is slightly extended to reach the revised border]
:[Parts of Arizona and New Mexico have been ceded to Mexico, and part of Texas has been given to New Mexico, so that the southern borders of Arizona and New Mexico and the northern border of the Trans-Pecos area of Texas collectively form a straight line] Clean Up
:[Parts of northeastern Texas have been given to Arkansas and Louisiana]
:[The northern and southern borders of Tennessee have been straightened] Straighten to fix survey errors
:[A line has been traced along the coasts of South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida] Good curve! Keep.
:[Alaska's southeastern panhandle has been circled] Let's be honest - this should be Canada, too.
:[The Alabama/Florida border has been erased, and Alabama's eastern border has been extended south until it meets the Gulf of Mexico] Why should Florida get Alabama's coastline? It has plenty.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:It was scary when graphic designers seized control of the country, but it turned out they just wanted to fix some things about the state borders that had always bothered them. 

==Trivia==
*Here's how the outline map of the United States (excluding Hawaii) will look like if the suggested border changes are done:
[[File:1902-border-changed.png|600px]]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:US maps]]

452: Mission

2022-05-04T02:05:11Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234544 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 452
| date = July 21, 2008
| title = Mission
| image = mission.png
| titletext = Don't you know? The chances of a random object being a scone are about one in six.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]] and [[Beret Guy]] are on a mission, intending to destroy whatever machine they are in, except that Beret Guy tends to be a bit surreal and brought a bag for holding pastries instead of explosive charges.

This is not the first time he's made such a bakery mistake; see [[434: xkcd Goes to the Airport]].

He then attempts to eat what Cueball identifies as {{w|lug nut|lug nuts}}, believing them to be scones. In reality, lug nuts do not look very similar to scones.{{Citation needed}} He bites into them and it hurts him, but as he says, maybe some of them are not lug nuts, and he wishes to test them all.

The title text further emphasizes Beret Guy's obsession with bakery goods, by stating that if a random object is selected, there will be a 1/6 chance that it is a scone, which explains his behavior with the lug nuts. This is, of course, a ridiculous assertion, as if it were true, more than 16% of all things in the universe would have to be scones.
Beret Guy and scones are also referenced in the title text of both [[677: Asshole]] and [[1030: Keyed]].

==Transcript==
:[Beret Guy and Cueball are rappelling down separate ropes into the interior workings of a large machine.]
:Cueball: Okay, we're in the belly of the machine. You got the charges?
:Beret Guy: The what?

:[The two are standing next to some large pieces of machinery.]
:Cueball [gesturing]: The explosive charges!
:Beret Guy [pulling out a bag]: I just brought this bag for pastries.
:Cueball: The hell? We're on a mission here!

:Beret Guy [looking around]: This isn't a bakery?
:Cueball [head in hand]: Oh, Christ, not this shit again.

:Beret Guy [crouching by some lug nuts lying on a piece of machinery]: What about these scones?
:Cueball: Those are lug nuts.
:Beret Guy [stuffing them in his mouth]: ...Maybe SOME of them aren't. ''crunch'' Ow! ''crunch''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Food]]

984: Space Launch System

2022-05-04T02:04:41Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232863 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 984
| date = November 30, 2011
| title = Space Launch System
| image = space_launch_system.png
| titletext = The SLS head engineer plans to invite Shania Twain to stand under the completed prototype, then tell her, 'I don't expect you to date me just because I'm a rocket scientist, but you've gotta admit--this is pretty fucking impressive.'
}}

==Explanation==
SLS, which stands for {{w|Space Launch System}}, is the new launch program being designed by {{w|NASA}} to replace the retired {{w|Space Shuttle}} launch system. In the first frame, [[Cueball]] is showing [[Black Hat]] something about the SLS, possibly a video on his phone or other portable electronic device.

As usual with his appearances, Black Hat is causing trouble. Specifically he asks if {{w|Nazi}} scientists are going to build NASA's new SLS program. Specifically he mentions the former Nazi party member {{w|Wernher von Braun}}, who was one of the developers of the {{w|Saturn V}} launch vehicle, who came over to America (from {{w|Germany}}) as part of {{w|Operation Paperclip}} and helped develop NASA's space program. The unfortunate reality of Operation Paperclip, and one that Black Hat aims to make people uncomfortable with, is that a significant number of ex-German personnel were Nazi party true-believers, and their defection to America effectively granted them amnesty of any war crimes.

Black Hat extrapolates this sad reality into an obvious troll attempt: that putting actual Nazis in charge will get you results. This assumption is obviously a bridge too far (which is the comic's punchline), but he gets his desired reaction out of Cueball, who is hanging his head (or staring him down- [[Randall]] has left no details to distinguish). First he makes it clear that the lesson is that you should put the Nazis in charge (and we saw from {{w|World War II|World War Two}} what that could lead to). Then when Cueball states this is a terrible lesson, Black Hat puts salt in his wound by suggesting that the only way to find a better lesson is to ask a Nazi for a better one - a consistent move if you apply his lesson, but a logic bomb because he suggests to put a Nazi in charge of finding another lesson other than "put a Nazi in charge".

The title text is a reference to {{w|Shania Twain}}'s song "{{w|That Don't Impress Me Much}}". Twain's lyrics include the line "Okay, so you're a rocket scientist / That don't impress me much". But, the title text argues that if she stood under the new SLS prototype, she would admit it was in fact, impressive. And it is thus the SLS head engineer (Garry Lyles) plans to invite Shania to do just that. Although he could still understand if she did not wish to date him, he would be surprised if she was still unimpressed.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball, is holding something up to show it to Black Hat. It is small and rectangular with a black line in the middle (possible a rocket).]
:Cueball: Check out the SLS — 130 tons to orbit. Finally, rockets that improve on the ones we had 40 years ago.
:Black Hat: Are we getting Nazis to build those ones, too?

:[Text is written between two frames, with two smaller frames below. A line comes up to Cueballs first comment, showing that it is still the two from the first frame talking, but off-panel.]
:Cueball (off-panel): What?
:Black Hat (off-panel): When we first captured von Braun and his team, we had our engineers interview them, then ''we'' built the rockets.
:Black Hat (off-panel): But our rockets kept exploding.
:[First small panel below the above text: A soldier with helmet and a machine gun is guarding von Braun who is tied to a chair, while being interviewed by an almost bald scientist (hair along the back of his head), who takes notes on a piece of paper.]
:[Second small panel below the above text: The same scientist standing with the paper, watches as a launching rocket explodes. The landscape behind shows a hill.]

:[A black frame with white text above the white Saturn V rocket flying through space.]
:Black Hat (off-panel): Eventually we gave up and had the German teams do it, and they built us the Saturn V Moon rocket.

:[Cueball is looking down, his hand with the thing he showed to Black Hat in the first panel hanging down. Black Hat looks at Cueball.]
:Cueball: I'm… not sure what lesson to take from that.
:Black Hat: "If you want something done right, learning from the Nazis isn't enough. You have to actually put them in charge."
:Cueball: That's a ''terrible'' lesson.
:Black Hat: Then I guess you should get a Nazi to come up with a better one.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Space]]

1246: Pale Blue Dot

2022-05-04T02:04:26Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 235215 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1246
| date = August 2, 2013
| title = Pale Blue Dot
| image = pale_blue_dot.png
| titletext = Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. There is no road out of this oblivion; we must embrace it. We must join with the darkness. Ba'al the Annihilator offers us no happiness, no answers, naught but the cold embrace of the void. To imagine any other end is delusion. We must give in to the will of Ba'al, for he will one day consume us and our world alike. I therefore call on Congress to fully fund space exploration, and to join with Ba'al, the Eater of Souls. Thank you.
}}
==Explanation==
[[File:Pale Blue Dot.png|thumb|right|Earth is the "pale blue dot" halfway up the rightmost color band.]]
The {{w|Pale Blue Dot}} is a picture of the Earth taken in the year 1990 by the {{w|Voyager 1}} space probe at a distance about 6 billion kilometers (3.7 billion miles). It was part of the {{w|Family Portrait (Voyager)|Family Portrait}}, a series of images of the entire {{w|Solar System}} from beyond it.

The picture was taken at the request of {{w|Carl Sagan}}, a well known space scientist at that time. In 1994 Sagan wrote the book "{{w|Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space}}" inspired by this picture. In the book, Sagan waxed eloquent about the picture in a widely quoted passage. The complete passage can be found in [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Carl_Sagan#Pale_Blue_Dot:_A_Vision_of_the_Human_Future_in_Space_.281994.29 Wikiquote], and you can hear Carl Sagan himself reciting it in [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupToqz1e2g this YouTube video].

[[Cueball]] quotes from a condensed version of this passage until he is interrupted by several {{w|Heckler}}s who begins an argument over which speck in the picture is actually the Earth. Then, when Cueball cries out in exasperation that it doesn't matter, one heckler takes it the wrong way and points out that he just said that the picture doesn't matter. This pokes fun at the fact that the Pale Blue Dot picture has very little to no visual attractiveness, apart from the intellectual interest relying on the viewer's knowledge that the central speck is actually our home planet, Earth, seen from a very great distance.

The first two sentences of the title text are also a quotation from Sagan's paean to the Pale Blue Dot picture, but then the text veers humorously into non-scientific mysticism that starkly contrasts with the attitude and intent of the original work.

The title text evokes {{w|Cosmicism}}, a philosophy developed and exemplified by the fictional {{w|Cthulhu Mythos}}. This Mythos is expounded in fantasy/horror works of H.P. Lovecraft and, later, August Derleth, and features a cosmology in which humanity is depicted as inconsequential within a greater existence that is unknowable and frightening. Cosmicism asserts that humanity is doomed to death and destruction through the workings of vastly more powerful supernatural forces way beyond our understanding. There are many instances in the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft of factions that embrace the destruction of humanity and actively work towards bringing about that end through the invocation of the unknowable and powerful forces that supporters of Cosmicism believe surround everything.

The text also references {{w|Ba'al}}, originally a Semitic deity that has been since associated with demonic or otherwise evil forces. The name Ba'al, and other variants of the same, has been included in many other fictional works often as a villain or antagonist. For example, the fictional System Lord {{w|Ba'al (Stargate)#Ba.27al|Ba'al}} from the television show {{w|Stargate}}. The title text supplants all of the supernatural forces associated with Cosmicism in the works of other authors with Ba'al. Cueball, who continues his discourse in the title text, may be acting as a Cosmicist and is calling on a Congress, to which he is speaking, to fund the space exploration program as a means to join with Ba'al, the Eater of Souls. The fact that a Ba'al cultist would be speaking in front of a government body in such a manner is absurd{{Citation needed}} and thus hilarious.

Ba'al, the Eater of Souls (sometimes as Ba'al the soul eater) has been mentioned later in [[1419: On the Phone]] and [[1638: Backslashes]].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball stands in front of a large gray picture of the ''Pale Blue Dot''. (There is no evidence that there is any blue in this comic). He holds up a stick with one hand towards it. He is interrupted by several hecklers from off-panel.]
:Cueball: Consider this Pale Blue Dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. Everyone you love, every human being who ever was, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived out their lives on this mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. All our-
:Heckler 1 (off panel): I think that's a stuck pixel. We're the speck on the left.
:Cueball: ...Ok, '''''this''''' Pale Blue Dot is everything you-
:Heckler 2 (off panel): No, you were right before. ''That'' one is earth.
:Cueball: '''''Look, it doesn't matter!'''''
:Heckler 3 (off panel): I ''knew'' it!
:Heckler 4 (off panel): I think this is just a lens cap picture.

==Trivia==
*At the time when this comic was published NASA did reveal two other pictures, showing our home planet from a long distance, [http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20130722.html Saturn] and [http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/gallery/sciencePhotos/image.php?image_id=1228 Mercury] probes did picture the Earth at the same time. Earth appears as a tiny dot in these images as well as a result of the vast distance between Earth and the probes.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Philosophy]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Space probes]]

843: Misconceptions

2022-05-04T02:04:08Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 235168 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 843
| date = January 5, 2011
| title = Misconceptions
| image = misconceptions.png
| titletext = "Grandpa, what was it like in the Before time?" "It was hell. People went around saying glass was a slow-flowing liquid. You folks these days don't know how good you have it."
}}

==Explanation==
The Wikipedia article {{w|List of common misconceptions}} gives a list of {{tvtropes|CommonKnowledge|commonly-repeated anecdotes}} that are widely believed to be true, but actually are not.

The teacher, [[Miss Lenhart]], is announcing that since it is the first {{w|Tuesday}} in {{w|February}}, by law and custom the reading of this article is requirement to stem the repetition of these incorrect anecdotes. (Funnily enough the comic was released the first Wednesday in January, which could just as well have been written in the comic).

She continues to make it clear that this is to make the students in general a little less wrong, and the main outcome will be that the guest of any future parties the students ever attend, will not have to listen to them retell these misconceptions and for that these guest will thank those who have decided on this new law in advance.

In the caption below the comic [[Randall]] expresses his wishes that he lived in a {{w|Many-worlds interpretation|parallel universe}} where this rule had been used for many years. So he would not have to listen to all these stories at every party he goes to. Since Randall likes to correct people if they are wrong (see [[386: Duty Calls]]), not having to discuss with those that believe these misconceptions, would make his parties much better.

The title text refers to a specific one of these {{w|List_of_common_misconceptions#Materials_science|false stories about glass}}:
:''That {{w|glass}}, while seeming solid, is actually an extremely viscous liquid and will flow over time, as is seen on older buildings where the window panes are thicker at the bottom.''
In reality, older manufacturing processes did not produce glass panes with as uniform thickness as modern processes, and people tended to install the uneven panes with the thicker side at the bottom for stability. Glass simply does not flow at room temperature; it's more viscous than solid lead by a factor of over a ''billion''. The fact that glass is solid at room temperature was again referenced in a foot note, under the pipe with glass, in [[1649: Pipelines]].

==Transcript==
:[Miss Lenhart the teacher is standing in front of a board, looking at a laptop computer she is holding in one hand while elocuting.]
:Miss Lenhart: Okay, middle school students, it's the first Tuesday in February.
:Miss Lenhart: This means that by law and custom, we must spend the morning reading through the Wikipedia article ''List of Common Misconceptions'', so you can spend the rest of your lives being a little less wrong.
:Miss Lenhart: The guests at every party you'll ever attend thank us in advance.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I wish I lived in this universe.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Physics]]

1252: Increased Risk

2022-05-04T02:03:50Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 235308 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1252
| date = August 16, 2013
| title = Increased Risk
| image = increased_risk.png
| titletext = You may point out that strictly speaking, you can use that statement to prove that all risks are tiny—to which I reply HOLY SHIT WATCH OUT FOR THAT DOG!
}}
==Explanation==
The panel satirises the common misunderstanding of the concept of percentage. Quoting a percentage change without mentioning the base probability that this ratio acts on is meaningless (outside of arithmetic for arithmetic's sake). Most everyday communication, however, succumbs to such incompleteness. In the aftermath of this ambiguity, people tend to conflate relative and absolute changes.

If the probability of a shark attack at the North beach is 5 per million, then the probability of shark attack at the South beach is still not more than 6 per million. The difference between these values is not enough to normally justify choosing one beach over the other, even though a "20% greater" chance sounds significant when stated out of this larger context.

[[Cueball]] parodies the concern by noting that by going to a beach three times instead of two, their chances of attack by dogs with handguns in their mouths (a ludicrous and unrealistic scenario as dogs cannot buy guns{{Citation needed}} and are not likely to pick one up off the ground) increases by 50%. If the chance of the dog attack is one per billion on each visit to the beach, then the chance of attack increases over multiple visits; regardless it's still one in a billion for any specific visit. This does not change the overall improbability of there ever being a dog swimming with a gun in its mouth.

[[Beret Guy]] misunderstands Cueball's probability, exhibiting the {{w|gambler's fallacy}} by believing that since they haven't been attacked in their first two trips, the chance of attack by dogs with handguns is higher on this outing.

This is a common misunderstanding of statistics. While the overall probability of an attack in three trips would be higher than in a single trip, it doesn't change the fact that in each individual trip, the probability is still the same; whether or not they managed to avoid being attacked in their first two trips, the results of these trips do not factor into the probability equation of the third trip.

This also can be illustrated by coin flips: if one flips a "fair" coin ten times in a row, no matter what the result of each previous flip is (even if it were nine heads in a row), the odds of getting heads on the tenth coin flip theoretically remains 50%. In other words, past experience does not impact subsequent flips. In practice, if the odds on each flip were 50%, then the odds of nine heads in a row would be 0.2%, so after it might be worth considering the possibility that the coin has been bent or weighted to alter the odds, or even a counterfeit with "heads" on both sides.

The caption clarifies Cueball's point, but without sarcasm.

Then again, the title text objects to this point (that a tiny risk increased by 50% is still tiny). If this 50% increment is done repeatedly, the risk can get arbitrarily high, while the statement says that it is still tiny. This can be compared to the {{w|Sorites paradox}} (the "paradox of the heap"), which involves a "heap" of sand from which grains of sand are removed individually. If one assumes that, after removing a single grain, a heap of sand is still considered a heap of sand, and that there are a limited number of grains of sand in the heap, then one is forced to accept the conclusion that it can still be considered a heap of sand even if there is only a single grain of sand (or even none at all).

Being shot by a swimming dog with a handgun in its mouth is also specifically referenced in what if? 146, [https://what-if.xkcd.com/146/ Stop Jupiter].

==Transcript==
:[Cueball, Ponytail, and Beret Guy are standing around. Cueball and Ponytail have beach towels. Ponytail is looking at her cell phone. Beret Guy has his hands up to his face, looking distressed.]
:Ponytail: We should go to the north beach. Someone said the south beach has a 20% higher risk of shark attacks.
:Cueball: Yeah, but statistically, taking three beach trips instead of two increases our odds of getting shot by a swimming dog carrying a handgun in its mouth by '''''50%!'''''
:Beret Guy: Oh no! This is our third trip!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Reminder: A 50% increase in a tiny risk is '''''still tiny'''''.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Dogs]]
[[Category:Statistics]]
[[Category:Sharks]]

1853: Once Per Day

2022-05-04T02:03:32Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233368 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1853
| date = June 21, 2017
| title = Once Per Day
| image = once_per_day.png
| titletext = I'm not totally locked into my routine—twice a year, I take a break to change the batteries in my smoke detectors.
}}

==Explanation==
Many news reports on health recommend the "best" way to perform the processes, such as eating, drinking, exercising, or sleeping, that are required to live healthy. These reports tend to give such factors as a type of food to consume regularly, the amount of a nutrient to consume, or how long to exercise, in terms of what or how much to do daily. A simple example of this is the proverb, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away." Perhaps this kind of advice is [[1592|overthinking]] things, but [[Cueball]] decides to follow it strictly as explained in the caption.

So when [[Megan]] asks Cueball what his plans are, he just lists his routine consisting only of things that the news has told him exactly how often to do.

His list includes the following, which he has to do once per day:
*Eat an [//www.care2.com/greenliving/10-reasons-to-eat-an-apple-a-day.html apple] - This references the common old wives tale of "an apple a day keeps the doctor away"
*Eat an [//www.nhs.uk/news/2016/11November/Pages/Eating-one-egg-a-day-may-lower-risk-of-stroke.aspx egg] - One egg would provide protein. This could also be a stand in for "breakfast is the most important meal of the day"
*Take one [//www.webmd.com/men/features/aspirin-day-not aspirin] - {{w|Aspirin}} can reduce heart issues. Baby aspirin would contain a lower dose and be safe.
*Eat a piece of [//www.everydayhealth.com/diet-and-nutrition-pictures/delicious-reasons-to-eat-dark-chocolate.aspx dark chocolate] (see also {{w|John_Bohannon#Misleading_chocolate_study|John Bohannon's chocolate study}} for an example of how bad science can wind up as such "you should do ... daily" suggestions in the media) - Dark chocolate would contain more antioxidants and less sugar.
*Drink [//www.lifescript.com/diet-fitness/tips/y/your_weight-loss_solution_drink_6_glasses_of_water_a_day.aspx six glasses of water] - There is a common, long standing myth that you're supposed to [[1708:_Dehydration|drink X amount of water per day]]. Some say 6 or 8 cups. A liter or two. etc. etc.
*Drink [//www.health.com/health/article/0,,20410287,00.html one glass of red wine] - Always used as a "health can be fun" example. Wine would contain large amounts of antioxidants, and one glass a day shouldn't cause liver damage.
*Drink [//www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/10/17/coffee-health-benefits_n_4102133.html a cup of coffee] - Coffee is one of those health items that has a new health benefit or loss every week, depending on which media outlet you follow.
*Drink [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/11/reasons-to-drink-tea_n_6276862.html a cup of tea] - Tea's health benefits are a very common subject. There is much media talk about the benefits of different types of teas, usually focused around Green Tea.
*Get [http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20120824/30-minutes-daily-exercise-shed-pounds 30 minutes of exercise] - Different media outlets give different amounts of exercise to do. Usually, they tend towards 15-30 minutes a day to sound easy and low commitment.{{Citation needed}}
*Get [http://archive.jsonline.com/news/health/studies-say-7-8-hours-of-sleep-is-needed-for-best-health-b9936714z1-212691521.html/ 8 hours of sleep] - An average adult needs 6-8 hours of sleep daily, but this varies per person, and by age.

Several obvious problems arise with these "you should do ... daily" tips. They are often based on population studies, but they may be harmful in the case of some individual persons. This health-related advice would be beneficial in, say, 60 or 70% of the population, but may be ineffective in other 20% of the people, and deleterious in 10%. This especially relates to the suggested daily intake of aspirin.

The second problem is the shaky scientific foundation of this advice. There have been studies examining the effects of a daily glass of red wine, for example, but there is certainly no study which has observed the ''interaction'' of all ten of these health tips at once. In particular, {{w|tannin}}s (which occur in red wine and coffee) are known to absorb certain substances, which may influence the way in which apples and eggs are digested.

Furthermore the scientific basis for these articles are shaky at best. A large number of these studies are just junk science - poor methodology and bias making the study more attention-grabbing, but lacking real substance. Even those studies that are scientifically rigorous are often reported on poorly. "Study proves that dark chocolate helps you lose weight" is a better headline than "Several studies over the last five years hint that chocolate may have certain long term benefits; more research needed"

Of course, if Cueball ''only'' does these things, then he can't/doesn't attend to other important matters, such as going to work, which most likely allows him to buy the recommended materials in the first place, or even using the toilet. Also, if Cueball only does these things, he will complete his "daily" schedule in significantly less than a day, probably between 8.5 and 9 hours. This means that he will do his "daily" schedule on average almost three times a day. One consequence is that Cueball will be drinking on average about 19 glasses of wine per week instead of 7 glasses of wine per week if he actually drank one glass of wine per day. While drinking 7 glasses of wine per week won't have any negative consequences as long as they are evenly or about evenly spaced, drinking more than fourteen servings of alcohol (where one glass of wine has one serving of alcohol) per week causes long-term liver damage. Also, it's not clear how Cueball is able to overpower his circadian rhythm in order to sleep for over twenty hours per day. Furthermore, while the routine is theoretically subject to change as soon as Cueball hears another such daily recommendation on the news, this won't happen because he hasn't heard a recommendation to tune in to the news every day, so poor Cueball is trapped in his daily schedule.

In the title text Cueball explains that his daily routine is not completely fixed. It is broken twice a year, since he also follows public information campaigns suggesting the replacement {{w|Smoke_detector#Batteries|smoke detector batteries}} twice a year. While the US {{w|National Fire Protection Association}} recommends a replacement at least once per year others suggest every time when the clock changes according to {{w|daylight saving time}}, i.e. twice a year. (All such recommendations will likely become irrelevant as citizens of the United States, starting in California, are encouraged to replace their existing smoke detectors with new models containing irremovable ten-year batteries.) This is just another example for official overdone recommendations nobody follows, in this case since smoke detectors make annoying beeps when their batteries run low and thus rarely need routine replacements before then.

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball are standing together, facing each other.]
:Megan: Got any plans for the day?
:Cueball: I'm going to eat an apple, an egg, one baby aspirin, and a piece of dark chocolate, drink six glasses of water, one glass of red wine, a cup of coffee, and a cup of tea, then do 30 minutes of exercise.
:Cueball: Then back to sleep for another 8 hours!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I only do things that news stories have specifically told me to do once per day.

==Trivia==
*Fire alarms were also the subject at [[1794: Fire]].
*Drinking six glasses of water per day has been the subject in [[1708: Dehydration]], and earlier, when it was more common to say eight glasses per day, in [[715: Numbers]].
*If Cueball actually did all these things once per day, then he would have to stretch out the eating and drinking over 15 hours and 30 minutes.

{{comic discussion}}

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

1535: Words for Pets

2022-05-04T02:03:18Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233389 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1535
| date = June 8, 2015
| title = Words for Pets
| image = words_for_pets.png
| titletext = Seventh year: Perfectly coherent words, but in the pet's language, not mine.
}}

==Explanation==
The comic shows four similar {{w|Euler diagram}}s, one for each of the first four years of living with a {{w|pet}}. The diagrams depict sets of words which have varying efficacy in actually identifying the pet, and each one shows how the words used by [[Randall]] to refer to his pet change year by year and becoming less and less specific as time goes on.

In the first year it is dominated by the actual name of the pet or words closely related. For example, a dog named Lassie might be called either "{{w|Lassie}}", "dog", "collie" or "boy/girl".

Moving on to the second year, these related words like "dog" and "collie" get more abundant while the actual name is seldom used. Phrases such as "good dog" or "here, boy" are likely common. Giving a dog the name "Dog" is so common that there is a {{tvtropes|ADogNamedDog|trope}} about that.

In the third year, the pet's name is no longer used at all and the owner probably uses simple phrases like "come" or "come here" to call the pet, omitting the name. This is also probably referring to expletives.

The fourth year entails the use of just any sound, not {{w|Coherence (linguistics)|coherent words}}. This may be referring to something like {{w|baby talk}}, attempted mimicry of the pet's vocalizations, or whatever random sounds the owner has discovered that get a response from the pet.

This development can be attributed to the fact that some animals don't listen to their own name but rather react to the sound of the voice of their owner. It could also refer to the growing bond between owner and the pet, as well as the effect described in [[231: Cat Proximity]].

The title text suggests that the inevitable result of this continuing pattern is that by the seventh year, Randall will be communicating with the pet in its own language. This might refer to the tendency of some pet owners to mimic or imitate their pets' vocalizations, as if speaking to them. Alternatively, this could be interpreted as a joke that pets don't have proper {{w|language}} and the owner has degenerated to a lack of language themselves as time goes on.

The title text and the caption makes it a little difficult to be certain if the comic refers to when you talk about your pet to other people ("my ''dog'' is always hungry") or when you call at it, which would be the only time it would make sense to use ''coherent words in the animal's own language'' - "Woof" = come here.

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the frame:]
:Words I use to refer to a pet over the years I live with it:

:[Inside the box are four diagrams. Each diagram contains three elliptical sections containing the previous one, each section is drawn identical from diagram to diagram and they are labeled the same way from diagram to diagram. A fourth section (a red ellipse) moves from diagram to diagram and its label changes from diagram to diagram.]

:[The red section of the first diagram mainly overlaps the innermost section, but about a third of it is in the second section. The labels are written above the three white sections and then inside the red section. The labels from inside and out and last the label of the red section:]
:The pet's name
:Words related to the pet
:Coherent words of any kind
:First year

:[The red section of the second diagram mainly overlaps the right part of the second section, but it just touches both the first and the third section. The labels are written above the three white sections and then inside the red section. The labels from inside and out and last the label of the red section:]
:The pet's name
:Words related to the pet
:Coherent words of any kind
:Second year

:[The red section of the third diagram mainly overlaps the right part of the third section, but about a third of it is inside the second section and a small part is outside of the third section. The labels are written above the three white sections and then inside the red section. The labels from inside and out and last the label of the red section:]
:The pet's name
:Words related to the pet
:Coherent words of any kind
:Third year

:[The red section of the fourth diagram is completely outside the third section and has to be so far to the right, that the other sections has been moved from the center of the frame to the left. The labels are written above the three white sections and then inside the red section. The labels from inside and out and last the label of the red section:]
:The pet's name
:Words related to the pet
:Coherent words of any kind
:Fourth year onward

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Euler diagrams]]

1670: Laws of Physics

2022-05-04T02:02:52Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233528 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1670
| date = April 20, 2016
| title = Laws of Physics
| image = laws_of_physics.png
| titletext = The laws of physics are fun to try to understand, but as an organism with incredibly delicate eyes who evolved in a world full of sharp objects, I have an awful lot of trust in biology's calibration of my flinch reflex.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Black Hat]], being Black Hat, is deliberately perverting a classic physics demonstration. In the normal version of the demonstration, a heavy ball on a pendulum is pulled to one side until it is almost, but not quite, touching the demonstrator or volunteer's nose or chin. When the ball is released at rest, it swings down and away, then back up to (almost) the same distance in the arc from where it started — but ''never'' (by the laws of physics) farther than where it started. As long as the demonstrator doesn't lean in or push the ball, it's impossible for it to strike them. It's a natural instinct to move away or protect yourself if you see a heavy object moving quickly toward you, but confidence in the physics of the demonstration means there is no reason to flinch. ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2GdY1OlDpA Sample video.])

In this comic, Cueball is not standing at the beginning edge of the ball's movement, but rather at the base of its swing, meaning that the ball will strike him at its maximum speed. Presumably, Black Hat is entirely aware of this and is hoping that Cueball's understanding of physics is insufficient to see through this prank. Judging from the "slack" of the rope, the ball should not hit Cueball in the head but could certainly hit him in a lower, and quite painful, place...

The title text refers to the fact when someone flinches during the pendulum experiment, they are commonly accused of not having faith in the laws of physics. Randall is rebutting this argument by stating that, rather than not having faith in science, he is actually in tune with it, specifically the biological processes that led to the flinch reflex. His eyes and his flinch reflex have been calibrated through millions of years of evolution. To instantly dismiss his body's natural reaction when a heavy object comes quickly towards his face does not give enough credit to these mechanisms that successfully kept him (and every one of his ancestors) alive. In other words, while flinching may indicate doubt of the laws of physics, it may equally well indicate trust in the laws of biology.

The idea of hitting someone else with a pendulum is also the topic of [[755: Interdisciplinary]] and [[2539: Flinch]].

==Transcript==
:[Black Hat is standing on a ladder, holding a heavy ball attached to a line from above. Cueball stands beneath, where if the ball swings it will smack him in his upper body.]
:Black Hat: Okay, hold still.
:Black Hat: And remember, if you ''really'' believe in the laws of physics, you won't flinch.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category: Physics]]

467: X Girls Y Cups

2022-05-04T02:02:34Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234416 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 467
| date = August 25, 2008
| title = X Girls Y Cups
| image = x girls y cups.png
| titletext = Also no results: 1girl10000cups, 2girls(5+3i)cups, 65536girls65536cups, or 3frenchhens2turtledoves1cup.
}}

==Explanation==
The comic refers to ''{{w|Hungry Bitches}}'', a 2007 {{w|scat fetishism|scat-fetish}} pornographic film. The one-minute preview, unofficially nicknamed "2 Girls 1 Cup," is a {{w|viral video}} that became a well-known {{w|internet meme}}. It is therefore not surprising that only the input combination of x=2 and y=1 generates a significant number of search results, being 257 times as frequent as the runner-up, "1 Girl 1 Cup."

This table is an example of a rudimentary {{w|heat map}}. The cells in the table with zero hits are white. From 1 to 9 they are yellow, and above that they are orange - except the maximum, which is red. As the second largest count is below 10,000 (7503) and the maximum almost two million, it is impossible to say if the red color is reserved for the maximum or for any number above a given value, say from ten thousand or up to above a million hits.

The title text suggests other combinations like 1 girl to 10,000 cups (very large number of cups to one girl), 2 girls to (5+3i) cups (a {{w|complex number}}), 65536 girls to 65536 cups (216, the first {{w|Integer (computer science)|integer}} that can't be represented as a two-byte unsigned integer), and finally 3 French hens and 2 turtle doves to 1 cup. All are phrases with apparently no search results.

The last phrase is a reference to the song ''{{w|The Twelve Days of Christmas (song)|The Twelve Days of Christmas}}''. After the publication of this comic, the phrase has been cross-posted at various sites in order to generate search results and prove the statement in the title text wrong. The same has happened to other entries, as it often happens shortly after [[Randall]] posts something regarding Google searches.

==Transcript==
:Google results for "<x> girls <y> cups"
:[There is a table with eight columns and eight rows. The cells are colored depending on the value in the cell: cells with the value 0 are clear/white, cells with values 1-9 are yellow, cells with values 10 and above are orange, and the cell with the highest value is red.]
:[Above the tabel is the label for the columns:]
:Cups
:[To the left the label for the rows:]
:Girls
:[0 girls 0 cups has value 3; 0 girls 1 cup has 375; 0 girls 2 cups has 9; 1 girl 0 cups has 7; 1 girl 1 cup has 7503; 1 girl 2 cups has 2007; 1 girl 3 cups has 10; 1 girl 4 cups has 5; 1 girl 5 cups has 3; 1 girl 6 cups has 6; 1 girl 7 cups has 2; 2 girls 0 cups has 9; 2 girls 1 cup has 1,929,000; 2 girls 2 cups has 247; 2 girls 3 cups has 7; 2 girls 4 cups has 14; 2 girls 5 cups has 13; 2 girls 6 cups has 2; 2 girls 7 cups has 1; 3 girls 0 cups has 7; 3 girls 1 cup has 6335; 3 girls 2 cups has 394; 3 girls 3 cups has 34; 3 girls 4 cups has 3; 3 girls 5 cups has 2; 3 girls 6 cups has 6; 4 girls 0 cups has 3; 4 girls 1 cup has 3513; 4 girls 2 cups has 34; 4 girls 4 cups has 63; 5 girls 0 cups has 1; 5 girls 1 cup has 9; 5 girls 2 cups has 5; 5 girls 3 cups has 3; 5 girls 6 cups has 3; 6 girls 0 cups has 3; 6 girls 1 cup has 1461; 6 girls 2 cups has 1; 6 girls 3 cups has 1; 6 girls 4 cups has 1; 7 girls 0 cups has 2; 7 girls 1 cup has 19; 7 girls 2 cups has 4; 7 girls 3 cups has 2; and the rest have 0.]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Sex]]
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Google Search]]

1866: Russell's Teapot

2022-05-04T02:02:12Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233221 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1866
| date = July 21, 2017
| title = Russell's Teapot
| image = russells_teapot.png
| titletext = Unfortunately, NASA regulations state that Bertrand Russell-related payloads can only be launched within launch vehicles which do not launch themselves.
}}
==Explanation==
{{w|Russell's teapot|Russell's Teapot}} is a philosophical argument that reflects on the difficulty of trying to prove a negative. It involves a hypothetical teapot orbiting a heavenly body, whose existence hasn't been proven, and states that it cannot be disproven (somebody put it there secretly?). While an instrument could be theoretically engineered to pick out a teapot-sized object of any luminosity, the teapot would be very easy to confuse for other pieces of space debris, and the space to search is extremely large; the task is thus akin to the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack.

{{w|Bertrand Russell}} devised this analogy "to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others." As such, Russell's teapot is very often used in atheistic arguments.

<blockquote>"He wrote that if he were to assert, without offering proof, that a teapot orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, he could not expect anyone to believe him solely because his assertion could not be proven wrong." ({{w|Russell's Teapot|Wikipedia}}) </blockquote>

[[Cueball]] is trying to settle the teapot argument by actually launching a teapot into space via a {{w|crowdfunding}} campaign. This misses the point of Russell's argument, which is about unfalsifiable claims in rhetoric and not a literal teapot.

"{{w|CubeSat}}-based design" refers to a type of miniaturized satellites that is made up of 10-centimeter cube units (here seemingly consisting of 3 units) and enables cost-effective means for getting a payload into orbit.

The title-text refers to {{w|Russell's paradox}}, also formulated by Bertrand Russell. Russell's paradox was a flaw found in {{w|naïve set theory}} where one could consider "the set of all sets that do not contain themselves" (a "set" is a mathematical term for a "group of things" -- "things" in this case including a set itself). The paradox arises with whether this set, in turn, contains itself: if it does, then it cannot; if it doesn't, then it must. Similarly, like in the {{w|barber paradox}}, the vehicle which launches only vehicles which do not launch themselves is impossible: if the vehicle takes off, it must launch itself as well as the teapot, and thus can never be launched (without violating alleged NASA regulations, at least). That said, he might get around those regulations by using an initial first stage with an offboard power source for the moment of launch, for example a laser striking a parabolic mirror and massively heating air beneath the craft, causing expansion, or a compressed gas cold launch system such as used to clear submarine launched missiles from their tubes before the real rocket motor ignites.

The barber paradox can be stated as follows: "Consider a town in which a man, the barber, shaves precisely those men who do not shave themselves. Does the barber shave himself?" Either answer, yes or no, leads to a contradiction. Sometimes the paradox is incorrectly stated, replacing "precisely those" with "only". Under that scenario, there is no paradox; the barber is merely unkempt.

There is, however, a solution in this case. Instead of launching itself, the teapot-containing vehicle may be fired from a {{w|space gun}}, catapult, or other launcher, and then boost itself the rest of the way. This, while true for the CubeSats themselves, is not true for their carrier.

[[Randall]] has talked about CubeSats in later comics as well, specifically in [[1992: SafetySat]] and [[2148: Cubesat Launch]].

==Potential List of Labeled Items==
From the top right, clockwise.
{| class="wikitable" | Starting at Top Right
! scope="col" | Item #
! scope="col" | Possible Label
! scope="col" | Possible Description
|-
| 1 || Teapot || Classic teapot, the point of the satellite.
|-
| 2 || Base || Holds Teapot in Place
|-
| 3 || Vehicle Equipment Bay || With foldable antenna and stabilizers
|-
| 4 || Fuel ||
|-
| 5 || Milk / Lemon Juice || add to taste. Either/Or
|-
| 6 || Combustion Chamber ||
|-
| 7 || Nozzle ||
|-
| 8 || Micro-USB connector || To charge the Battery
|-
| 9 || Battery || Powers the Heater Unit (q.v.)
|-
| 10 || ||
|-
| 11 || ||
|-
| 12 || Heater Unit || To keep the tea from freezing
|-
| 13 || Display Cabinet || Protects the teapot from micrometeorites
|}

==Transcript==

:[Cueball is standing in front of a blueprint labeled "CubeSat-Based Design", containing a satellite with a teapot in the top.]

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I'm crowdfunding a project to launch a teapot into orbit around the sun to settle the Russell thing once and for all.

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

2029: Disaster Movie

2022-05-04T02:01:58Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233518 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2029
| date = August 6, 2018
| title = Disaster Movie
| image = disaster_movie.png
| titletext = Really, they'd be rushing around collecting revisions to go into the next scheduled quarterly public data update, not publishing them immediately, but you have to embellish things a little for Hollywood.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Disaster movie}}s are a sub-genre of movies, which resolve around a disaster, such as a natural disaster, worldwide disease pandemic or an attack. Typically, the plot of a disaster movie is how the main characters escape the disaster, avert its climax or deal with the aftermath of the disaster. Here, Randall has subverted this plot device by showing Ponytail call for a GIS survey team to map out the result of the disaster. Instead of panicking for survival, the scientists are rushing to update their data sets.

"Lava entering the sea, and new rifts opening to the north" may be a reference to the {{w|2018 lower Puna eruption}}, a volcanic event on the island of {{w|Hawaii (island)|Hawaii}}. Due to this eruption event, lava did enter the Pacific Ocean. As of the time of publishing, this event was still occurring.

{{w|GIS}} ("geographic information system") is a computer system that stores and analyses spatial and geographic data, and by extension, the profession of experts who use computers to make maps and perform spatial analysis.

Presumably, a "GIS survey team" would go above the affected area in a helicopter, mapping the coastline changes caused by the natural disaster. A "GIS survey team" presumably means a team of geographic surveyors. However, surveying is usually carried out on the ground, and surveying is not usually considered part of GIS. Also, these days, satellite imagery is usually used for this purpose, as there are several companies that can provide imagery refreshed as often as every day. Finally, a "GIS survey team" would most likely be one of many companies that provides these kinds of services, not "scientists", as suggested in the caption. An example of this is [http://www.arcgis.com/apps/Embed/index.html?webmap=f2cf4433a9424f71bce8e775d1a65dab&extent=-154.9448,19.4237,-154.8252,19.5149&home=true&zoom=true&scale=true&search=true&searchextent=true&details=true&legend=true&active_panel=legend&basemap_gallery=true&disable_scroll=false&theme=light an ArcGIS map] of the mentioned 2018 lower Puna eruption.

A {{w|Shapefile}} is a proprietary data format for spatial data which remains in widespread use, despite being created in the early 90s, and based on an even older database format. Amongst non-GIS people "shapefile" is often used synonymously with "geographic data", regardless of the actual file format. "Our coastline shapefiles" then means "our geographic data for the coastlines", although such data would most likely be stored in a database, not a Shapefile.

The situation described (scrambling to update geographical datasets in the advent of natural disaster) is actually a common occurrence these days. The [https://www.hotosm.org/impact-areas/disaster-response/ Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team]'s Disaster Response unit does almost exactly this: When there is a natural disaster in a location that lacks high quality GIS data (common in much of the developing world), a team of volunteers across the world mobilises to update and improve OpenStreetMap. They use the latest available satellite imagery, usually donated free for the purpose. Disaster response teams then use the GIS data in OpenStreetMap to create maps and plan their response.

The title text refers to the fact that most GIS datasets are not published in "real time", but, rather in updates every 3 months or less often. This is due to the many manual steps still present in many GIS publishing and consuming workflows, which preclude more frequent schedules. Thus, there is not as much of a rush to do their updates, and the need is not as urgent as the proposed film would show. Randall claims the urgency was exaggerated for dramatic effect, humorously disregarding the fact that neither version of this scene would be dramatic to a typical moviegoer.

==Transcript==
:[A fraction of an office with two desks is shown. On the right Cueball sits behind a computer while in the middle Ponytail talks into a radio device with a small antenna. On the left Megan runs into the scene holding something like a tablet computer in her hand.]
:Megan: The lava is entering the sea, and new rifts are opening to the north!
:Ponytail: Get a GIS survey team in the air! We need to revise our coastline shapefiles!

:[Caption below the frame:]
:I want to make a disaster movie that just shows scientists rushing to update all their data sets.

{{comic discussion}}

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

1857: Emoji Movie

2022-05-04T02:01:48Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 235405 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1857
| date = June 30, 2017
| title = Emoji Movie
| image = emoji_movie.png
| titletext = Some other studio should do the Antz/A Bug's Life thing and release The Dingbats Movie at the same time.
}}

==Explanation==

[[Megan]] asks [[Cueball]] if he knows about the then-upcoming ''{{w|The Emoji Movie}}''. It was released on July 28, 2017, a month after this comic, and had been widely reviled on the Internet for its lack of original plot, characters, and jokes.

Cueball responds to the topic by {{w|Damning with faint praise|damning it with faint praise}}, starting with the presumption that somebody had to make a film about a "section of Unicode".

{{w|Unicode}} is the standard by which almost all modern text, in all languages, is represented as computer data. It consists of thousands of "code points", grouped into about 280 contiguous sections known as "blocks". There is no formal term "section of Unicode", which Randall seems to be using to skirt the fact that emojis are not all represented within one Unicode block.

Examples of potential Unicode blocks include "Playing Cards", "Musical Symbols", "Tibetan", "Hangul Jamo Extended-B", "Braille Patterns" – and of course "Combining diacritical marks" and "Dingbats", referred to in the comic.

Emojis are standard pictograms which include smileys (eg 😂) and common objects such as beer (🍺) and eggplant (🍆). Dating from the late 1990s, they were added to Unicode in 2010. There is actually no Unicode block known as "Emojis". There is {{w|Emoticons (Unicode block)|Emoticons}} (U+1F600..U+1F64F), which contains 80 code points, mostly of facial expressions. However it does not include all emojis. For instance, "Baby" (👶) is U+1F476, within the {{w|Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs}} block.

The topic of emoji in Unicode also appears in [[1813: Vomiting Emoji]].

Megan responds to this presumption by facetiously suggesting that Hollywood should make a series of films about different code blocks, referencing Hollywood's current trend of reducing risk by making many sequels and adaptations. She proposes a movie about {{w|Combining Diacritical Marks}} (see [[1647: Diacritics]]), a different section of Unicode which contains 112 code points (each assigned to a character). These code points include many varieties of diacritics such as accents, cedillas and tildes which can be combined with other letters to produce an almost unlimited number of possibilities, such as "ў" (Cyrillic U plus breve).

Cueball quips that this series would have too many characters. This is a pun on the word "character", which has the double meaning of a {{w|Character_(arts)|fictional character}}, or a {{w|Character (computing)|symbol which corresponds to a grapheme}} (e.g. letter, digit, punctuation mark). It's true that although the Combining Diacritical Marks movie would have only 112 characters, the series as a whole would have tens of thousands, including such epics as "Egyptian Hieroglyphs" (1,071) and "CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B" (42,720).

The "''{{w|Antz}}''/''{{w|A Bug's Life}}'' thing" in the title text refers to the {{w|twin films}} phenomenon, in which two films with very similar (or identical) concepts are released within roughly the same timeframe. Competing studios Dreamworks and Pixar released their respective insect-oriented films in 1998, a year infamous for many other such film pairings (see the Wikipedia article for a full list).

{{w|Dingbat}}s were an early form of pictograph included within the normal mechanisms for producing computer text, serving a similar function to emojis, but oriented towards practical symbols such as telephones, airport symbols and a wide variety arrows. Unlike emojis, they are usually black-and-white. Previously, dingbats required a specific font to render, but as part of Unicode (U+2700–U+27BF), they can now be displayed in a variety of fonts. For example: ✈ ✆ ➹ ✂ ✰ Some characters are both dingbats and emoji, and are followed with a variant-selector character to indicate whether they should be in color.

The joke is that although dingbats and emojis are superficially equivalent, a film which contains many cute human expressions would have much more potential for success than one about dry symbols such as arrows, asterisks and scissors.

Megan and Cueball's discussion about the movie is continued in [[1870: Emoji Movie Reviews]].

==Transcript==
:[Megan and Cueball are walking together while Megan is looking at her smartphone.]
:Megan: Did you see there's an emoji movie?
:Cueball: If they have to make a movie about a section of Unicode, it's not the '''''worst''''' choice...
:Megan: They should do a whole series. I would watch the ''Combining Diacritical Marks movie''.
:Cueball: That series would have '''''way''''' too many characters.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Emoji]]
[[Category:Unicode]]
[[Category:Fiction]]

775: Savannah Ancestry

2022-05-04T02:01:36Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 232980 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 775
| date = August 4, 2010
| title = Savannah Ancestry
| image = savannah_ancestry.png
| titletext = She's a perfectly nice lady from a beautiful city, and there's no reason to be mean just because she thinks a quarterback is a river in Egypt.
}}

==Explanation==
Savannah ancestry usually means our ancestors in the {{w|Human evolution|African savanna}}, millions of years ago.

Evo-psych means {{w|evolutionary psychology}}.

[[Cueball]] is apparently trying to teach [[Megan]] something mathematical, feels frustrated at his lack of success, blames that lack of success entirely on his student, and appears to use evolutionary psychology, specifically a popular trope/myth about women being bad at abstract thinking, as an excuse. Evolutionary excuses in this context are trying to lay blame somewhere other than either participant, and so can be seen as comforting, but of course they falsely place all women in an inferior position to all men, at least when it comes to "abstract math". She naturally objects to the excuse, rightly calls it bullshit sexism, and, depending on how you interpret it, may indicate this isn't the first time she's heard him say something similar.

But the twist is that he turns out not to be talking about her lower-case savannah ancestors, the ones in the African savannah of eons ago, but rather of her very recent "Savannah ancestors", better called parents, who live in the city of {{w|Savannah, Georgia|Savannah, Georgia, USA}}. They apparently know each other well. The implication is now much more personal: that her mother didn't prepare her. Of course, Randall uses only upper case everywhere, so he has avoided giving the reader a clue about the misdirect-joke he is working toward.

Teasing people about their mothers in the USA, specifically about their mothers' stupidity or fatness, is a common enough theme in popular culture that there is a series of jokes that start with the words "Yo mama" that exemplify the genre. There is also an extremely common theme that the South's education system is failing; the comic combines the two.

The title text is apparently Megan starting to defend her mother, but then lapsing into a Yo Mama joke without the introducing words, showing that her mother is stupid enough to think that a quarterback (one of the positions played in American football) would be a river in Egypt. This is a conflation of the Yo Mama joke "Yo mama so stupid she thinks a quarterback is a refund!" and the common pun, "Denial (sounds like "The Nile") is not just a river in Egypt".

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and Megan are at a blackboard with equations and graphs on it.]
:Cueball: Look, I'm doing my best, but the fact is your savannah ancestors just didn't prepare you for doing abstract math.
:Megan: See, that's just the kind of bullshit sexism that discredits evo-psych. Your "evolutionary histories" always seem tuned to produce 1950's gender roles.
:Cueball: Evolutionary? What? I meant Savannah, ''Georgia.''
:Megan: ...Hey! Let's leave my mom out of this.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Math]]
[[Category:Your Mom]]
[[Category:Puns]]

2581: Health Stats

2022-05-04T02:01:24Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 235665 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2581
| date = February 14, 2022
| title = Health Stats
| image = health_stats.png
| titletext = You will live on forever in our hearts, pushing a little extra blood toward our left hands now and then to give them a squeeze.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball|Cueball's]] has a smartwatch that tells him a new health statistic. It is clearly either a new watch or a newly discovered feature added to his existing one.

It seems to monitor the volume of blood currently in his left hand (specifically the one the watch is being worn on the wrist of, implying it tracks the inflow and outflow and maintains a running tally) and conveys this quantity in milliliters (ml). It also tracks other stats like his pulse, as seen later, but this is not what currently interests Cueball. Instead he studies the blood volume information and finds it changing from moment to moment. This may be from a combination of his pulse (misaligned to the frequency of the updates) or the vertical position and attitude of his hand (he subtly changes the hand's position from panel to panel). It could just be inaccuracies in the data, an issue with all scientific instruments but more so for consumer devices used without practiced expertise - it is unlikely he has strapped the measuring device tight enough onto his wrist to give scientifically consistent results, even with such slight arm movements as he makes.

He reports his thoughts on this to someone off-panel, who is heard replying to all his comments. At first, Cueball just voices the assumption that the small change is normal, and accepts the movement away from a number he had no reason to disbelieve as realistic. But then two measurements in a row both increase. Although all the changes are slight, compared to the magnitude of the numbers themselves, this freaks him out. He may be [[605: Extrapolating|extrapolating these two data points]] into the future - if this rather selective trend continues, his hand may explode from its ever-increasing volume of blood. Either this, or Cueball noticed that the variation in the first three data points was ±0.025, but the final variation suddenly surpasses this level by ten times this range, massively redefining his evolving expectations.

For whatever reason he becomes anxious, a consequence of this is that his pulse also begins to rise, as also documented by the watch. This could simultaneously increase his blood pressure (not noted as being another monitored statistic) and in turn causing another rise in the volume of blood in his hand. Knowledge of the pulse increase makes him even more alarmed, which will cause a positive feedback loop at least in the short term.

The total difference between the maximum (22.09 ml) and minimum volume (21.81 ml) of blood in his hand is only 0.28 ml compared to an average of 21.9 ml, so less than 1.5% difference. This can realistically be assumed to be a normal fluctuation from heartbeat to heartbeat and/or with change of posture. For that matter, neither Cueball nor ourselves may have any idea what a normal volume of blood in his left hand would be. His comment in the first panel is that he's "not sure how to interpret" the initial measurement, and it might need rather uncommon medical knowledge to do so - even those who have learnt how much blood a typical human body should contain might be stumped by how much of that is just within a typical (or specific) human hand. However, he seems to have assumed that 21.83 ml was a normal measurement simply since it was the first one he saw (a stereotypical {{w|Confirmation_bias#Preference_for_early_information|preference for early information}}).

Just before his anxiety reaches breaking point, his off-panel friend begins to tell him to stop looking at the watch all the time, but is interrupted mid-sentence by Cueball actually freaking out. This final outbreak causes his off-screen companion to tease him by saying that "We will treasure your memory", thus joking that Cueball will soon die from the blood loss when his hand explodes.

The title text continues with this teasing where the friend jokes that after his demise he will live on forever in his friends' hearts. From there he will thus also be responsible for pushing a bit more blood into his friends' left hands, now and again, so they can feel this as a squeeze to remind them of how they lost their friend to a left-handed blood explosion.

This is likely meant to parody the tendency of people to monitor minute details of their own health, pandered to by possibly misguided developments in personal meditech, without having a clear idea of what any of the data means. This is arguably much more common today with health devices readily available, which can give the average person data about their own body but often don't offer useful context. Cueball is apparently sufficiently fixated on data that apparent changes to any metric causes him to panic. He doesn't know what the blood volume of his hand means for his health, or even whether it's a useful metric, yet he obsesses over perceived trends in the data. The irony is that his very focus causes a more important metric (his pulse rate) to elevate. This may be intended to suggest that excessive fixation on one's own health can cause elevated anxiety. Ironically, this stress can potentially be more harmful than the things that the person has become upset about.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is looking down and to the right at his bent arm, where a small device is radiating as shown with several small lines. Above him the message from the device is shown in a frame, that is divided in two by a line. The top part has one line of text, with a x at the end for closing the message. And below in the second half are two lines of text. Cueball is speaking to someone off-panel, who replies from a starburst at the panel's edge.]
:Box title bar: New health stat!
:Box: Left hand blood volume: 21.83 mL
:Cueball: Oh. Cool. Not sure how to interpret that, but good to know, I guess.
:Off-panel voice: I guess!

:[Same setting but Cueball has turned to the left, still looking at his device on his bend arm. The message on the device is now only showing the message part, so it is no longer divided into two parts.]
:Box: Left hand blood volume: 21.81 mL
:Cueball: Huh, it's going down. I guess that happens.
:Off-panel voice: Mhm.

:[In a frame-less panel, Cueball now has both arms bent with his hands close together in front of him. He has once again turned toward the right, and is still looking at the device.]
:Box: Left hand blood volume: 21.86 mL
:Cueball: Oh weird, now it's going up higher than before.
:Off-panel voice: Maybe you shouldn't look at-

:[Cueball now holds his arm with the device outstretched towards the right, with his other arm bent in front of him a finger raised.]
:Box: Left hand blood volume: 22.09 mL
:Cueball: It's going '''''way''''' up! '''''Is my hand exploding?!'''''
:Cueball: And now my pulse is rising! '''''Aaaaa!!!!'''''
:Off-panel voice: So sorry. We will treasure your memory.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with lowercase text]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Biology]]

2381: The True Name of the Bear

2022-05-04T02:01:07Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 235519 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2381
| date = November 4, 2020
| title = The True Name of the Bear
| image = the_true_name_of_the_bear.png
| titletext = Thank you to Gretchen McCulloch for fielding this question, and sorry that as a result the world's foremost internet linguist has been devoured by the brown one. She will be missed.
}}

==Explanation==
The Canadian Internet linguist {{w|Gretchen McCulloch}} [https://twitter.com/gretchenamcc/status/1113195661275611137 tweeted] about [https://www.charlierussellbears.com/LinguisticArchaeology.html the theory] that the word for bear became taboo in some branches of Indo-European languages - notably the Germanic one - and it was replaced by euphemisms. In the Germanic branch, the euphemism may have been "the brown one," and thus the modern word "bear" (derived from Germanic "beran") would more literally translate into the color "brown" rather than the animal.

The Indoeuropean root for bear is *rkto-, which has been inferred from modern languages that still use a word derived from it. In the comic, McCulloch applies {{w|Sound change|sound shifting}} laws to it to guess how it would have evolved in English had it not been superseded, but saying it seems to actually summon a bear.

Interestingly enough, the hypothesized word “arth” is the same as the Welsh and Cornish for the word “bear.” Welsh belongs to the Celtic language family, which is one of the Indo-European branches that still uses a word derived from *rkto-, as do the Italic (Romance), Greek and Indo-Aryan (Sanskrit) branches, while Germanic, Slavic and Baltic branches abandoned it for different euphemisms. Another Indo-European language where the word for bear is very close to this extrapolation is Armenian, where it's written [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/արջ արջ] and pronounced “artch”. The comic does not explain why speakers of Welsh, Cornish, Italic, Greek, Indo-Aryan, and Armenian languages do not summon a bear every time they refer to one.

Use of true names appears to be [[1013: Wake Up Sheeple|highly effective in the xkcd universe, rather like a fairy tale]], and it is also {{tvtropes|IKnowYourTrueName|a common trope}} elsewhere. Some say a true name contains clear meaning of who someone or something really is.

In [[2421: Tower of Babel]] a linguist that resembles Gretchen from this comic appears. Since that story takes place in biblical time, it is not Gretchen, but obviously this is how linguists look in xkcd from now on.

==Transcript==
:[Megan walks in front the left, looking down at her phone. Cueball and Ponytail are standing next to each other.]
:Megan: Wow - according to the internet, we don't know the true name of the bear.
:Cueball: What?

:[Gretchen McCulloch, drawn with short, curly hair, comes on-panel from the right.]
:Megan: Apparently there was a superstition that saying its name would summon it. "Bear" and "bruin" mean "the brown one." Its actual name has been lost.
:Cueball: Wow.
:Ponytail: Gretchen, is this for real?

:[Zoom-in on Gretchen.]
:Gretchen: Well, sort of
:Gretchen: The Proto-Indo-European root was *rkto-
:Gretchen: It was lost in the Germanic languages like English, but survived elsewhere, e.g. Greek "arktos" and Latin "ursus"

:[Back to the second panel, with Megan holding her phone down, Ponytail with her hands in the air, and Gretchen with her hand on her chin.]
:Megan: So could we figure out what the word would have been in English?
:Gretchen: Hmm. I mean, we'll never know, but given Germanic sound shifts, a reasonable guess might be "arth"?
:Ponytail: ''No!!''

:[The panel zooms in again to Gretchen.]
:Ponytail (off-panel): ''Stop! AAAAA!''
:Gretchen: What??
:Ponytail (off-panel): Don't ''say'' it!

:[Ponytail is holding her palms out. Megan is no longer in the panel.]
:Ponytail: What have you ''done''?
:Off-panel noise: <big>'''''ROAR'''''</big>
:Gretchen: Oh
:Gretchen: Oh no

== Trivia ==
The last comic strip that ended with the words "Oh no" was [[2314: Carcinization]], which also featured an unfortunate occurrence involving an animal as its punchline when Cueball spontaneously transformed into a crab.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Animals]]

2553: Incident Report

2022-05-04T02:00:51Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 234451 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 2553
| date = December 10, 2021
| title = Incident Report
| image = incident_report.png
| titletext = Increasing-precision timestamps are the Jaws theme of incident reports.
}}

==Explanation==

An {{w|incident report}} describes the sequence of events when something goes wrong, including the lead-up as well as the aftermath. This usually involves describing at what time related events happen. In this comic, a report at a {{w|nuclear power plant}} on the day of the comic's publishing starts with particularly vague timestamps (that a package of fireworks arrived "roughly 18 hours prior" to it), then uses approximate minute-level precision ("14:00" and "14:20", which could reasonably be five minutes off in either direction), then minute-level precision ("14:28"), then second-level precision ("14:29:22" and "14:29:26").

This suggests that the ''clock'' time is really a proxy for the ''amount'' of time before one specific moment where everything falls apart, and when seconds start appearing, it implies that the recollection is within a few minutes of the disaster. Normally the increased level of precision reflects close monitoring capabilities of the affected systems, reviewing monitoring equipment, such as surveillance camera and microphone recordings, and/or detailed analysis by incident investigators. It may have been sufficient for the resulting inquiry to merely note the prior arrival of the original package, and possibly then read off (whatever remains of) the signing-in logs for the approximate times each member of staff arrives on the scene. At some point, though, the investigation will refer to fully timestamped security recordings, perhaps even eventually frame-by-frame with particular interest in exactly which things touched exactly what other things, in sequence, in order to hopefully learn all the necessary lessons about the incident.

Synchronization of events is important in [https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/process/Pages/default.aspx incident investigations], so often systems are required to take input from common, relatively precise time references, such as {{w|GPS_disciplined_oscillator|GPS}}, {{w|WWV_(radio_station)|WWV broadcast}}, or cellular telephone systems. For example, an aircraft crash needs {{w|Airport_surveillance_radar|radar}} positioning data synced with [https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/foa_html/chap3_section_4.html voice communications] and {{w|Flight_recorder|flight recorder data}}. Lack of correlation between these is a potential source of conspiracy theories, for example one of the {{w|United Airlines Flight 93#Crash 9-11|hijacked planes on 9/11}} crashed into Pennsylvania either at 10:03 or 10:06 depending on two different information sources.

In many situations, incident reports are anonymized as shown to protect the identities of those people involved in the incidents. This is often done to prevent unnecessary blaming of certain individuals, particularly when it hasn't yet been determined whether the incident was negligence or just an accident.

Examples of real-life incident reports with second-level precision timestamps showing the increasing precision around critical moments include:
* [https://spaceflightnow.com/challenger/timeline/ Explosion] of the Space Shuttle Challenger
* [https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-security/safety-of-plants/appendices/chernobyl-accident-appendix-1-sequence-of-events.aspx Chernobyl explosion]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island_accident Three Mile Island Accident]
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2021_United_States_Capitol_attack January 6]

The report shown cuts off before reaching the actual incident, leaving it to the reader to imagine what happened next. If the birthday cake has lit candles, one possible sequence of events is that a dropped or badly thrown juggling pin could have hit one of them and then rolled over to the fireworks package, thus igniting the package. This would have caused the fireworks to go off underneath the reactor control's console.

Although the comic refers to {{w|Juggling club|juggling "pins"}}, jugglers commonly call those props "clubs." It is possible Randall is confusing the {{w|Bowling pin|similarly shaped objects}} in 10-pin bowling to juggling clubs. "Pins" are another name for a component of Uranium Carbide type {{w|Nuclear fuel#Uranium carbide|nuclear fuel rods}}, which are involved in the safe control of the nuclear reaction within a nuclear power plant. No sane reactor staff would juggle these complex, heavy and expensive pieces of equipment.{{citation needed}}

The title text refers to the [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZvCI-gNK_y4 theme music] from the 1975 film ''{{w|Jaws (film)|Jaws}}'', which has come to represent impending danger. Movies use music to create the correct emotional tone; suspenseful music indicates that something bad is about to happen. The ''Jaws'' theme is an iconic example, famously used to create a sense of foreboding, then uses increasingly rapid tempo to build a sense of imminent danger, culminating in a dramatic moment of disaster (a shark attack, in the film). As with the increasing tempo of this theme, the increasing precision with which events are recorded in an incident report build the increasing sense that something terrible is imminent.

9603120071 is an actual accession number for an [https://adamswebsearch2.nrc.gov/webSearch2/main.jsp?AccessionNumber=9603120071 incident] at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station in 1996. Four slightly contaminated stray kittens were found, cleaned, and adopted. No clock times were mentioned in the report.

Real-world nuclear power stations have strictly regulated control rooms which would prevent the simultaneous presence of fireworks, juggling and birthday celebrations.<ref>U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Regulatory Guide 1.114, "Guidance to Operators at the Controls and to Senior Operators in the Control Room of a nuclear Power Unit." (https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0823/ML082380236.pdf)</ref><ref>U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Regulatory Guide 1.189, "Fire Protection for Nuclear Power Plants." (https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML1734/ML17340A875.pdf)</ref> There is no East Valley nuclear power plant, but there are two reactor units at the nuclear power plant in Beaver Valley, Pennsylvania.

==Transcript==
:Facility: East Valley Nuclear Plant
:Date: 12/10/2021
:Report ID: 9603120071
:Event description: Roughly '''18 hours''' prior to the incident, an Amazon package containing fireworks was mistakenly delivered to the reactor control room and left under the console.
:The next day, at approximately '''14:00''', Technician A arrived at the facility with a bag containing four juggling pins. At '''14:20''', Technician A entered the control room, and joined Technician B at the console.
:At '''14:28''', Technician C exited the elevator and approached the control room holding a birthday cake intended for Technician B.
:At '''14:29:22''', Technician A said "Hey [Technician B], check out this cool trick I learned" while taking out the juggling pins. Technician B turned to look just as, at '''14:29:26''', Technician C entered holding the cake.

:[Caption below the panel]:
:You know things are about to get bad when the incident report starts including seconds in the timestamps.

{{comic discussion}}

1326: Sharks

2022-05-04T02:00:35Z

Garbagecollector: Undo revision 233347 by X. K. C. D. (talk)

{{comic
| number = 1326
| date = February 5, 2014
| title = Sharks
| image = sharks.png
| titletext = 'Now, minions, I'm off to inspect our shark cages.' 'Do you really need to inspect them this often?' 'PRISONERS MUST NEVER ESCAPE.'
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a joke about the use of sharks in action movies. In these movies, {{tvtropes|SharkPool|sharks are often used to guard locations and dispense capital punishment.}} Since the idea of a guard shark is not practical, this comic suggests that villains raise sharks to help with declining shark populations in the oceans.

In this comic [[Cueball]] is an evil villain who rules over a "Doom Island." In addition to commanding minions and detaining prisoners, he keeps sharks to threaten prisoners. When a prisoner escapes the island, he orders his minions to "release the sharks." However, the sharks do not hunt the prisoner, but merely swim away. The comic jokes that Cueball is using fugitives as a pretense to help with declining shark populations, and that Doom Island is just a front for a marine biology center. Cueball maintains the whole "guard sharks" idea as a cover-up, so that his minions do not catch on to the real mission.

The title text plays on the idea that Cueball can't be openly concerned with his sharks' welfare without his minions catching on. He claims to be inspecting the shark cages. As a {{w|shark proof cage|shark cage}} is normally used to provide protection for divers wishing to observe sharks up-close, they would not work well as cages to hold prisoners (which is their stated purpose). The comic implies that when he is "inspecting the cages" he is really performing a scientific study on the sharks, or simply observing them because he loves them.

Because a real villainous lair would have no use for shark cages, it follows that Cueball owns them solely for the purpose of gratifying his interest in his sharks, thus forcing him to keep up the pretense of the cages being of some help in preventing prisoners from escaping.

The shark issue is also one of the items on the chart of [[1331: Frequency]].

"Doom Island" is most likely meant to be a generic name for the villain's lair (a trope dating back to at least the first James Bond film, {{w|Dr. No (film)|''Dr. No''}}); however, a {{w|Doom Island|real island of this name}} exists in Indonesia.

===Use of sharks in movies===
In action movie trope from the '70s and '80s, evil villains use sharks to kill off enemies. Some examples are:
*{{w|Le Magnifique}}, with the opening scene of the French movie a spy is trapped in a phone booth, which is then lifted by an helicopter and lowered into the sea, where a squad of frogmen attach it to a shark's cage before opening the door.
*{{w|The Phantom (1996 film)|The Phantom}}, the Sengh Brotherhood has a {{tvtropes|SharkPool|Shark Pool}} in their {{tvtropes|ElaborateUndergroundBase|Elaborate Underground Base}}. This is one of the parts of the film lifted directly from the very first Phantom story, published in 1936, so the trope is at least that old.
*{{w|Despicable Me}}, where the comical villain has a shark in his lair that unrealistically acts as a guard dog.
*{{w|Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery}}, Dr. Evil wanted a pool full of sharks (with laser beams attached to their heads), but had to settle for ill-tempered mutated seabass.
And in the James Bond series:
*{{w|Thunderball (film)|Thunderball}}
*{{w|Live and Let Die (film)|Live and Let Die}}
*{{w|The Spy Who Loved Me (film)|The Spy Who Loved Me}}
*{{w|Never Say Never Again}} with electronically controlled sharks in the Caribbean.
*{{w|Licence to Kill}}

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is sitting on a throne, talking to a minion who's not shown in the panel.]
:Minion: The prisoner escaped and is swimming toward the mainland!
:Cueball: ''Release the sharks.''
:Minion: Yes, sir.

:Minion: The sharks are swimming away.
:Cueball: They're escaping, too? Send sharks after them!

:Minion: Now ''those'' sharks are swimming away.
:Cueball: '''''More sharks.'''''
:Minion: ...Sir, what's going on?
:Cueball: Prisoners, of course! Can't let 'em escape!

:Minion: Sir, are you trying to turn Doom Island into a marine biology center?
:Cueball: ''Shark populations are in decline–''
:Cueball: *ahem*
:Cueball: I mean, the world must fear us!
:Minion: Right...

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Sharks]]