explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1164: Home Alone

2013-01-24T04:17:39Z

Katya:

This made me laugh more than it should have. [[Special:Contributions/2.120.136.128|2.120.136.128]] 08:17, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
:I know. I saw the panel and thought "Okay, that's interesting," and then moused over. Very nice. [[Special:Contributions/76.122.5.96|76.122.5.96]] 10:17, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

The only place this movie would work is at a Rube-Goldberg convention. Where all attendees are dads. [[Special:Contributions/220.224.246.97|220.224.246.97]] 17:55, 23 January 2013 (UTC)

Could that reboot suggestion also be a comment on the reboot of the Star Trek series where all the characters we know and love now never existed in that universe? Maybe some series should not be rebooted. [[User:Katya|Katya]] ([[User talk:Katya|talk]])

1048: Emotion

2012-11-23T14:57:57Z

Katya: Fixing spam

{{comic
| number = 1048
| date = April 27, 2012
| title = Emotion
| image = emotion.png
| imagesize =
| titletext = Fortunately, the internet has a virtually inexhaustible supply of code that doesn't work and people who are wrong, which bodes well for a return to normalcy. [Note: Click to read context for the cancer comics. She's doing well.]
}}

Here's the [http://blog.xkcd.com/2011/06/30/family-illness/ link] referenced in the image text, which is a blog post from 2011 regarding his fiancée's breast cancer.

== Explanation ==
This comic shows, in typical [[523: Decline|"graphing everything"]] fashion, what were the sources of [[Randall Munroe]]'s emotions as time passed:
* Politics became prominent in 2008 due to the upcoming {{w|United States presidential election, 2008|US presidential elections in november 2008}}.
* "Code not working even though it ''should'' work" is a common frustration in software development, when the developer is convinced to have covered every possible scenario, but their code still does not run as expected, because of some obscure tiny problem which they didn't think of and which often takes much time (and frustration) to find.
* {{w|Joss Whedon}} is best known as the creator and showrunner of the television series {{w|Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV series)|Buffy the Vampire Slayer}} (1997–2003), {{w|Angel (TV series)|Angel}} (1999–2004) and {{w|Firefly (TV series)|Firefly}} (2002), so he's the "cause" of emotions for Randall during the time they were aired.
* "People being wrong on the internet" is something that can easily annoy and preoccupy an internet-savvy guy like Randall, who knows the things they're (incorrectly) talking about; this was previously dealt with in the comic [[386: Duty Calls]].
* Eventually, Randall's fiancée's cancer, once diagnosed, monopolizes all of his emotions, wiping out everything else as insignificant in comparison. Only the romance can get back a little bit of room as time passes; there is also an unknown part, which may represent the uncertainty in which Randall finds himself, or the fact that he feels lost at times, due to that cancer and what can happen in the future (as was also described in comic [[931: Lanes]]).

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Cancer]]

24: Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey

2012-11-23T14:44:00Z

Katya: Undo revision 19298 by 188.143.232.12 (talk) undoing troll's total delete

{{comic
| number = 24
| date = September 30, 2005
| title = Godel, Escher, Kurt Halsey
| image = godel_escher_kurthalsey.jpg
| imagesize =
| titletext = I love the idea here, though of course it's not a great-quality drawing or scan.
}}

==Explanation==
The name of the comic is a take on the book {{w|Gödel, Escher, Bach}}. The book is about "strange loops", self-reference, and recurring patterns, partially shown through the works of the three people in its title.

{{w|Kurt Gödel}} was a 20th century mathematician most famous for mathematically proving that there are some mathematical truths that can't be proven.

{{w|M. C. Escher}} was a 20th century artist most famous for mathematically-inspired engravings of tessellated animals, impossible scenes, distorted images that contained themselves, and so on.

{{w|Johann Sebastian Bach}} was a German composer and musician during the Baroque Period

[http://www.kurthalsey.com Kurt Halsey] is a comic artist from Oregon.

==Transcript==
:Drawn during an unending NASA lecture.
:[Two people are talking, one in a hat.]
:Hatless: it's just so hard to compare kids now with kids in the past. you can't help but to belong to one group or the other.

:Hatless: and of course every generation seems awful to the one before it. look at quotes from throughout history.

:Hatted: yeah, and it sure would be nice to have some perspective on some of this stuff. I just don't know what to make of it.
:[Circles are appearing--maybe snow?]

:Hatless: i guess you do what you can to help the people around you and hope it turns out okay.

:Hatless: in the end, what else can you do?

:Hatted: lead a crusade?

:[We can no longer see the people, just the circles.]
:it's presentism, man. the idea that historical context is irrelevant, that we understand it

:all that we need take no warnings from the follies of the past. that we're facing something new.

:socrates couldn't imagine the internet. but people don't change.
:[We can start to see the corner of a darker circle in the lower right.]

:(The borders between the three panels on this line are cracking.)
:have you seen those collections of historical pornography? talk about historical context.

:did you know the first porn photo was bestial in.
:[inside a circle:] nature?

:at least that stuff was out of the mainstream
:[each word in one circle:]
:no
:just
:in
:history

:(the three panels have merged into one on each row.)

:i don't know about you, but
:[circled] I
:[uncircled] never

:even once seen

:[The circles are highly variable in size now, and pressed up against a larger one on the right side.]

:[There is mass of circles of different sizes, with some dark fissures in between, against the side of a large circle which we can see part of in the right half of the panel. They look like cells. There's a tiny square in the center of the giant cell.]

:[We see only the tiny square, centered. It has a few marks inside it.]

:[Closer, the square is divided into rectangles of different sizes, each of which has text in it.]

:[Much closer, we can see fragments of the text. Some are sideways, some are cut off, some are too small to read.]
:machine language translated by principles of isomorphism it is a consequence of the Church-Turing thesis that ...
:but how do you select the channel you wish to se-
:thou ... shou ... palin ... stri ... it is a ... crab ...

:[Closer still, we can just see a huge sideways s and h.]

:[Those letters are faded and mixed with a faded version of the next panel.]

:girls take boys away ...
:never be further than a phone call and a goosebumped shiver away ...
:drove all night listening to mix tapes ...
:the past is just practice
:[There is a heart at the bottom and, in the lower left, the name Kurt.]

:[The same as the previous panel, but with the words blurred out to scribbles.]

:[Jagged, shaded shapes and strands start to fall. Faint panel borders appear again. There is a person on the far right.]

:(Back to three panels per row.)
:[A man and woman are standing amid the fragments.]

:Man: There's too much. And so little feels important.

:[The jagged edge of the shaded area is encroaching on the sides of the panel.]

:What do you do?

:[We see them from farther away through a rough hole in the shaded area. Bits continue to fall around them.]

:[She takes his hand.]

==Trivia==
* Original [[Randall]] quote: "One of a series of strips I drew during a long and boring NASA lecture. It careers wildly from intellectual to chaotic to Godel, Escher, Bach to Kurt Halsey to chaotic and sappy."
* The original comment on LiveJournal suggests that the actual image there was only part of this strip (and that the above is the whole series). Unfortunately, the image link in live journal is broken.
* Original title "Strip series"
* This is the sixth comic posted to livejournal. The previous comic was [[1: Barrel - Part 1]], the next is [[13: Canyon]].

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics posted on livejournal]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]

Talk:287: NP-Complete

2012-11-23T02:17:20Z

Katya:

Shame this only works in restaurants that price all their appetizers differently. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]] ([[User talk:Davidy22|talk]]) 03:18, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

I have a hunch that the seven fruit cups are pretty intentional as the first item on the menu and the simplest solution possible.
I was about to write a script to solve the problem through random selections and was going to optimize for speed by limiting the maximum times an item could be order to floor(15.05/price). Thus, one could order up to 2 sample plates, 3 moz sticks, 5 of the hot wings/side salad/french fries or 7 fruit cups without going over budget. (side note: you can always with these prices squeeze in a fruit cup with the exception of the 7 fruit cups). I found the "trivial" solution on the first step of the "preliminary" work for that script and then took a catnap.
Of course, since the nontrivial solution involves the same item as the trivial solution, one could just pick a number, multiply by that number, subtract one unit, and pick two other items, whose prices were not set yet, and adjust their prices to add up accordingly just to ensure both trivial and nontrivial solutions lest anyone actually write a program to solve the problem through brute force as oppose to through wit. Why seed? Because to not have a nontrivial solution would be so much like Blackhat.
Note to self: try this sometime in the real world using a real menu. [[User:Katya|Katya]] ([[User talk:Katya|talk]]) 02:17, 23 November 2012 (UTC)