explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2907: Schwa

2026-02-09T07:55:41Z

Slashme: not ZA

In what crazy dialect do these all use the same 1 vowel? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.210.73|172.68.210.73]] 22:10, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
:I can think of several. I was immediately reminded of Lucy Porter's Hull accent ([https://www.google.com/search?q=hull+accent+oh+no some examples, including videos/audio, here]), but I can also think of New Zealand (more 'i'ish vowels, at least stereotypically), South African (down a couple of tones from that), and a number of state-side accents that ''conceivably'' are what Randall's drawing upon. [...as ninjaed, below, by 172.71.166.190 at 22:30]
:: Definitely not in my South African accent! --[[User:Slashme|Slashme]] ([[User talk:Slashme|talk]]) 07:55, 9 February 2026 (UTC)
:My own accent (when given its full reign) actually tends to be consonant-light ("o'er" for "over", such that my vowels tend to be ''two or three'' separate tones in a row), so it doesn't work so well. But if I shift my focus to try to impersonate people from ten miles to the north (or a dozen or so miles east) from where I grew up then I can actually get quite close to 'perfect monovowelism' (still suppressing the consonants!). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.139|172.69.79.139]] 22:32, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
:All of them? I had to read the explanation to get what constitutes a schwa, but then I read the comic again, and yeah, they're all roughly the same sound, in the average North American accent anyway. Only exception is the word "A", which people might often pronounce like the letter "A", which of course isn't a schwa, :) [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:57, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
::'Round these 'ere parts, you'd never say "A"-to-rhyme-with-"Hay" (except to stress "that isn't just ''a(y)'' good song but ''the(e)'' best song ever!", e.g.). Still confused, me, though when at my first ever French class at school, the teacher (with not far off the local accent) told us that 'un' and 'une' were "the words for 'uh'...". Which only became clear when she clarified "...like 'uh book', 'uh table', 'uh window'...". This was actually how we all spoke. (More or less... Ah din't spake quart ser m'tch lahk dat, wot wi' mi mam'n'dad bofe bin frum a cupla tarns ovver, f'witch ah gut uh rep f'beyin "posch". Ur mebbe 'twuz cuz mi mam whir uh titch'r, ser ah gut lurnt t' spake proppah?) [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.3|172.71.242.3]] 17:23, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
::: In my experience, A-as-hay is PRIMARILY used for emphasis like that, but it does pop up in normal use too. I'd say outside of emphasis it might be 70/30%? For example, my natural instinct and inclination would lead me to usually do so here for "A truck" (dunno why, maybe since it's the first word in the sentence?). This is entirely instinct, I can't think of what the underlying reasons are, but I AM sure I have a subconscious set of rules for it. Problem with it being my mother tongue, I grew up with the language, so there are things I know that I don't KNOW I know. :) (Like, I once saw someone declare how adjectives have an order, and native speakers just KNOW it. "Big red truck" is right but "Red big truck" sounds wrong, he declared like 15 kinds of adjectives and their order, it was weird how right it was). [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:37, 23 March 2024 (UTC)
::::Can't find a fifteen-adjective version, easily, but a typical list-order given might be "quantity, opinion, size, age, shape, colour, origin, material, purpose and qualifier". And when you break a 'natural' sequence, there's usually a reason. "A disgusting old green mouldy slice of bread" might have been full discussed as "that old slice of bread is a ''mouldy disgusting green'' old slice of bread", for rhetorical emphasis via epistrophe/anadiplosis/whatever.
::::Also, "(a) slice of" could seriously be considered 'quantity', and sent to the beginning to start the whole thing off, rather than here clearly(?) being used as a qualifier (or maybe 'origin'!). Or just taken as part of the dominant noun-phrase "slice of bread", rather than stacking up in the maybe-adjectival usage. "A green mouldy old slice of disgusting bread" conveys other implications to the description (the bread was already considered disgusting, even before it was sliced and then allowed to gain the rest of its problems, perhaps).
::::Thinking about further permutations "...green old mouldy..." seems harder to find a good reason for. The "...old mouldy..." maybe just hits the wrong tone of rhyme-and-rhythm, however used. Maybe ''invoke'' it though? "First bold soldier-man, / Then old mouldy man, / Now all colder than, / ...the grave." (Not exactly Poet Laureate material, I grant you, just a snap example.)
::::But, like many things, I'm with you on the "it's hard to define, but I know it when I see it" camp. Always interesting to ponder, though. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.219|172.71.178.219]] 18:00, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Personally I pronounce those pretty much all the same (I live in Boston like Randall but don't have an actual Boston accent)
--[[Special:Contributions/172.71.166.190|172.71.166.190]] 22:30, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
:I too, living in the Pacific Northwest of the US, immediately saw all the vowels the same. [[User:RandalSchwartz|RandalSchwartz]] ([[User talk:RandalSchwartz|talk]]) 00:43, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
::Same here, I'm from western Washington State, and these vowels sound the exact same to me. [[User:RadiantRainwing|RadiantRainwing]] ([[User talk:RadiantRainwing|talk]]) 17:28, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

I didn't think it was considered schwa when stressed as in "up" and "love". But my dictionary has a schwa in its pronunciation guide for both, so I guess I was wrong. But this basically means the usual "short U" pronunciation is schwa. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 22:59, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
:Some dialects split the vowel at the end of "comma" from the vowel in "strut," but most North American dialects don't. So in pronouncing dictionaries, you will sometimes see the strut vowel written ʌ and the comma vowel written ə even though they might be exactly the same in your accent. In vowels that split comma and strut, schwa is rarely stressed, but that's not a rule. This is sometimes confused by American teachers, who try to explain why they see two different symbols for the same sound. But they really are different sounds, and Americans just don't use /ʌ/ at all. [[User:EebstertheGreat|EebstertheGreat]] ([[User talk:EebstertheGreat|talk]]) 02:50, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
::Plus, this "schwa is never stressed" mnemonic doesn't even make perfect predictions for dialects without the merger. I've heard that in ''undone'' /ʌnˈdʌn/, the unstressed vowel doesn't go to schwa. In the end, the IPA wasn't created just for English, and it only defines [ə] as a mid central vowel, not an unstressed one. Reduced vowels may often mid-centralize, but nothing says a language can't stress mid central vowels at other times, just like any other vowel quality can be stressed or unstressed. [[User talk:AgentMuffin|~AgentMuffin]] 21:53, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
::As in science in general, there is no "true" description of language, but only models that are more or less useful. Conceptualizing the STRUT vowel as /ʌ/ or as stressed schwa are two possible models. The latter is more popular in writing about US English, and maybe less obvious in some other Englishes. But in the end, in the context of this cartoon, it's self-defeating (if we are being pedantic, which should be allowed in the xkcd universe), because even if we're categorizing them as the stressed and unstressed versions of the same vowel, they're sufficiently different that non-native speakers will still have to learn how to pronounce both of them, especially if their native language doesn't have word stress. [Quinn C, linguist] [[Special:Contributions/172.69.214.39|172.69.214.39]] 16:28, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

This all works in a generically american accent, except for the i vowel in onion, which cannot be schwa-ified in any english accent I've ever heard. [[Special:Contributions/
172.69.34.171|172.69.34.171]] 23:27, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
:Depends. {{wiktionary|onion|Wiktionary says}} /ˈʌn.jən/ (any particular places?) or /ˈʌŋ.jɪn/ (Canada) (and an obsolete version that I'd imagine the Kiwis to use).
:If the /j/ ''isn't'' considered a vowel then you could definitely justify something like "un-yun" or "ern-yern" or even "in-yin" (amongst various ''other'' like-vowel versions)...
:If you do the /j*n/ more as in {{wiktionary|eon|/ˈi.ɑn/, /ˈeɪ.ɑn/, /ˈiː.ən/, /ˈiː.ɒn/ or /ˈeɪ.ɒn/}} then clearly you can't switch to "uhn-uh-uhn" quite so easily. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.69|162.158.74.69]] 23:52, 15 March 2024 (UTC)
:It says every vowel SOUND, which is different than "how each vowel sounds". The sound of that I is a Y. The O following it indeed uses the schwa. :) That's my guess, anyway, I don't know these pronunciation things that deeply. [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 05:57, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
:This dipthong has a consonant in it. What is going on? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.65.182|172.69.65.182]] 12:15, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
: "''except for the i vowel in onion''" IMHO, there is no 'i' in onion. UN-YUN. The Y acts more of a consonant. -Me (born of a Missouri mom and a Connecticut father, babbled in Colorado, schooled in Calif then New Jersey within hearing of South Philly, yo!) [[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 20:18, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
::Personally, I'd call onion a two-and-a-half syllable word. I've internalized the concept of half syllables ever since my Korean friend Hyun taught me how to properly pronounce her name. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.247.40|172.69.247.40]] 18:54, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
I can't read the words "love cult" without thinking of DHMIS 3. [[explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Miscellaneous#Help_with_Creating_a_User_Page|Trogdor147]] ([[explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Miscellaneous#Help_with_Creating_a_User_Page|talk]]) 00:10, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
::The /j/ sound commonly found in "onion" is not generally considered a vowel. As a test, try to put it between two consonants to make a complete syllable: first try to say /np/, and notice you have to add a schwa (neutral vowel), /nəp/; then try to say /nyp/, and you'll add that same extra vowel, /nyəp/. It's sometimes called a "semivowel", because it has some properties of a vowel and some of a consonant; or sometimes a "glide", because of the way it sets at the edge a syllable. - [[User:IMSoP|IMSoP]] ([[User talk:IMSoP|talk]]) 16:01, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

If someone actually read this conversation to me using only schwa, I don't think I'd understand it. I usually consider myself a fluent English speaker, but my native language - Polish - doesm't have this vovel at all. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.103.231|162.158.103.231]] 07:16, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
:Yeah, I think for us non-native speakers this is quite hard to replicate. I had to read the sentences out loud several times before I heard it. The standard British English I learned at school 35 years ago tends to have less Schwas in it, I guess. In German we do have some Schwas, mainly towards the end of words, but I don't think it is possible to construct whole sentence without any other vowels. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.155.157|162.158.155.157]] 07:56, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
I’m american (boston area) but some of these vowels do sound different from others to me, although it still seems it would be clear and ok if they’re all said the same. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.65.182|172.69.65.182]] 12:15, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Randall seems to have terminally confused the schwa [ǝ] with [ʌ] as in "cup". I've never seen such an incorrect xkcd. In the UK, the Manchester accent almost universally consists of [ǝ] and even they wouldn't be able to use [ǝ] for "onion" [[Special:Contributions/172.69.223.163|172.69.223.163]] 13:04, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
:The explanation mentioned the {{w|strut–comma merger}} well before this comment. There's no need to jump to {{w|Linguistic prescriptivism|calling other dialects "incorrect"}}. [[User talk:AgentMuffin|~AgentMuffin]] 21:53, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

Maybe a better symbol could be used than an apostrophe in the explanation? It's difficult to read/spot, and the quote is surrounded in quotation marks, which makes it a little confusing. I'm not sure what though. --[[User:Mushrooms|Mushrooms]] ([[User talk:Mushrooms|talk]]) 15:24, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

:Maybe an underscore? “D_gs c_s(_)n, th_ _n fr_m L_nd_n, r_ns _ B_mbl l_v c_lt.” - 16:01, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

It's a shame Schwa isn't pronounced with a schwa. [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 16:47, 16 March 2024 (UTC)
:Apparently it was pronounced 'shuwa' at some point, with a schwa for the 'u'. The sound just kind of faded over time since people barely pronounced it. Don't have a source, just remember hearing it somewhere (in a Youtube video, probably).[[Special:Contributions/172.71.98.193|172.71.98.193]] 10:54, 20 March 2024 (UTC)

For an example of where people mispronounce vowels for comic effect, here's a 40 year old and occasionally very impolite/politically incorrect BBC comedy which used people speaking in different accents as their conceit for different languages. So an englishman speaking very bad french comes across very like these XKCD characters https://youtu.be/ycqc0L4a2wQ?si=KO_qvZqMJH-3Gy1N&t=90 [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 16:52, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

This is highly inconsistent both with my experience and the diction/IPA I studied in college as part of a vocal music education degree. The short U [ʌ] and schwa [ǝ] are different vowels, and the difference is most obvious (in words used in the strip) in "cousin" and "obstruction" which would sound ridiculous if you pronounced all the vowel sounds exactly the same. I would have failed an assignment I turned in marking this strip full of schwas. They're almost all [ʌ] except in those words and "a" and "of". {{unsigned ip|172.70.131.119|13:10, 17 March 2024}}
:Diction ('correct' diction, e.g. RP or other elevated standards) is one thing, but this is everyday casual speech. Maybe your vocal music emphasis is on something like RADA's high-baseline 'standard' accent, beating out the provincial drawl (like they certainly used to, yet anyone in a Ken Loach film is expected to use more highly local inflections (as suited to themselves and their intended character). Accents in music are going to be different (either hyper, in 'folk'/regional, suppressed in easy-listening or stylised for partifular wide genres), but again hard to compare with casual (lazy?) speech.
:Ironically "of" is the one word I might not 'schwaify' so quickly. For something "I would've done it", there's a schwa in the "d'v", but "I would of course have done it" has none in the "d of" (even run together). [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.190|172.71.178.190]] 14:48, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

We should make this post able to be spoken only using ə. I'll have a go tomorrow if no-one does first. [[User:SqueakSquawk4|SqueakSquawk4]] ([[User talk:SqueakSquawk4|talk]]) 22:30, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

I like how this is one of the most controversial comics in recent memory and it's about pronunciation. [[explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Miscellaneous#Help_with_Creating_a_User_Page|Trogdor147]] ([[explain_xkcd:Community_portal/Miscellaneous#Help_with_Creating_a_User_Page|talk]]) 18:15, 18 March 2024 (UTC)
:"Pron''ou''nciation"! [[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.161|172.69.43.161]] 04:41, 19 March 2024 (UTC) ;) 

:I know, right? I think comments are also longer because we have to '''''describe''''' and '''''explain''''' the sounds and pronunciations we mean, instead of just letting people hear what we mean. Then as this discussion proves, not all pronunciations are as universal as we thought, LOL! [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 04:56, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

Talk:3138: Dimensional Lumber Tape Measure

2025-11-27T14:46:53Z

Slashme: German wood - good.

I was under the impression this was actually a thing that exists, somewhere. (Separate and apart from so-called "shrink rules" used by patternmakers who create patterns for metal castings). No? [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 00:36, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

https://www.inchcalculator.com/actual-size-of-dimensional-lumber/ for reference --- MEL

: Wikipedia has {{w|Lumber#Dimensional_lumber|a similar table}}. Interestingly, if the values on this table are correct, the xkcd measure fails for the 8 x 8 board. [[Special:Contributions/2605:59C8:160:DB08:988B:772A:4E5:B209|2605:59C8:160:DB08:988B:772A:4E5:B209]] 02:18, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

:: >''the xkcd measure fails for the 8 x 8 board'' Studs and joists are routine repetitive structure and should be the same as their neighbors. 8x8 are non-routine; even in say a heavy mill building 8x8s are costly enough for the carpenter to measure or trim every column. --[[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 17:10, 8 September 2025 (UTC)
:: My house has near full-size 2x4s and 2x6. Very-dry trees were sawn on site, the saw set for 2.0" centers. Band saw has very narrow kerf. About 1.9". A profitable saw-mill would use a coarser blade and push the size down as much as customers would accept (and even a junior carpenter can tell an undersize stud by feel). But here they were clearing land as much as saving money. --[[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 17:10, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

:"I was under the impression this was actually a thing that exists, somewhere" - if doesn't exist now, it soon will. [[Special:Contributions/70.115.234.146|70.115.234.146]] 03:59, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

Thinking that there might be a typo in the comic - It says : A "1x8" IS "3/4 BY 7 1/8", yet it should be "3/4 BY 7 1/4".

I no longer want to be a lumberjack! [[Special:Contributions/2A02:2455:1960:4000:748F:2291:F005:1989|2A02:2455:1960:4000:748F:2291:F005:1989]] 06:57, 6 September 2025 (UTC)
:I'm a lumberjack and I'm OK. I sleep all night and I work all day! ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 05:31, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

This reminds me of when I changed my friend’s text replacements to be slightly misspelled whenever she tried to type a common word in college. She was getting a degree in linguistics and it was SO FUNNY 《プロキシ》(XKCD中毒者) 13:29, 6 September 2025 (UTC)
:She should have claimed that she was undertaking "applied linguistics" and investigating how to create a deliberate {{w|language change}}! [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 20:23, 6 September 2025 (UTC)
:I once set a stoned friend's keyboard to French. 90% of the letters and 20% of the special characters are the same, so he spent multiple minutes getting frustrated why he kept "missing" the correct keys. :D [[User:Fabian42|Fabian42]] ([[User talk:Fabian42|talk]]) 07:26, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

I was told (and maybe this is wrong), that the dimensions are intended to represent the final thickness of a wall when drywall (usually 0.5" thick) is attached to the studs. [[User:Shamino|Shamino]] ([[User talk:Shamino|talk]]) 20:58, 6 September 2025 (UTC)
:I think that's just a convenient side effect. Of course, if the drywall is 1/2 thick, a wall with 2x4 studs will be 4.5 inch thick. [[User:RegularSizedGuy|RegularSizedGuy]] ([[User talk:RegularSizedGuy|talk]]) 22:22, 6 September 2025 (UTC)

:That would be pretty ahistorical, so I think it is indeed wrong. Drywall is a relatively modern invention, and I think the standardization of 2x4s as 1.5″ thick predates it (need to check that…but even if it didn't, then it would be worse). Wood lath and plaster walls are more like 5/8″ from the stud face, if not more. And, of course, in modern American multifamily residential construction 5/8″ walls are more common, or even double-5/8″ walls (making 1 1/4″) in fire-rated assemblies. So it does not even end up being "convenient," not that a 4" wall assembly is particulary more "convenient" than a 4.5″ or a 4.125″ or a 4.75″ wall assembly…very little turns on the thickness of the stud plus wallboard, but a lot turns on the thickness of the stud cavity (insulation, space for utilities, &c.) or the thickness of the drywall (spacing of electrical outlets, mudrings, etc.). [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 04:20, 7 September 2025 (UTC)
Once again, the UK wins on ridiculousness. I bought some fencing materials yesterday. The panels were 1.83m x 1.22m, so they could be metric but nevertheless 6' x 4'. I got some presawn posts that were 2400mm long (so kind of 8', or close enough), and they were sold as 75mm x 75mm, so they were 3x3, but they fit perfectly into the 70mm x 70mm post supports I got to go with them. Using metric to sidestep the need for traditional-measurement nonsense...but just keeping the nonsense and throwing new numbers at it. Actually, that should rendered into Latin and put on a scroll as part of a national coat of arms. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 09:49, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

: And in the meanwhile, when you buy wood here in Germany, it's the size it's specified. Buy a 40mm×60mm×4m beam from [https://www.obi.de/search/bauholz/ Obi], and that's what you'll get. --[[User:Slashme|Slashme]] ([[User talk:Slashme|talk]]) 14:46, 27 November 2025 (UTC)

Since the tape measure uses variable length inches, the watch (provided by the cartoonist) might be similar to Vetinari's clock. (Where individual ticks are of random duration.) I looked to see if xkcd had covered such a clock before (for possible link), but didn't find one. [[Special:Contributions/2600:387:4:803:0:0:0:90|2600:387:4:803:0:0:0:90]] 19:16, 7 September 2025 (UTC)

As an aside, I am always bemused about Americans being so stuck on imperial measurements when metric is so much easier. Oh except money...Americans are happy with metric money :o). [[Special:Contributions/59.101.181.77|59.101.181.77]] 20:42, 7 September 2025 (UTC)
:Oh, undoubtedly. It's literally just counting. The system we all use for enumerating everything (including feet and inches, or furlongs and chains, or drachms and scruples, or whatever else) is base 10. So just use base 10 and give names to 1,10,100,1000, etc. of length/capacity/mass/etc. units, and nobody needs to know anything beyond counting to deal with absolutely everything. Anybody who says pounds and ounces, or yards and miles (or whatever) is superior is objectively wrong.

:But.

:People get used to things.

:So you get the mess I mentioned above.

:Adopt the metric system, but then sell milk in 568ml bottles, because that's a pint, and milk inherently belongs in pints, so people have to have that much milk as a unit. Sell syrup and treacle in 454g and 907g cans, so 1lb and 2lb cans of sugary stuff can still exist. Nobody would be able to cope with 400g, 450g, 500g, 900g or 1kg! Keep selling beer and cider in pints, but change spirits to 25ml or 35ml (which you choose is up to you as a licensed bar) from 1/6 of a gill (or 1/5 of a gill in Scotland). Sell fuel in litres, but advertise vehicle fuel consumption in miles per gallon. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 22:59, 7 September 2025 (UTC)
:I know, obviously not {{wiktionary|the full shilling}}! [[Special:Contributions/92.17.62.87|92.17.62.87]] 23:16, 7 September 2025 (UTC)
:I was amused to see, watching the women's rugby world cup at the weekend that distances were given in metres.--[[Special:Contributions/86.163.160.215|86.163.160.215]] 08:56, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

::I will venture the hypothesis that folk in this conversation are not cooks. It's in the kitchen that the difficulties with the metric system are most frequently encountered. Many Imperial measures are factors of two; it's easy and intuitive to double something or halve something and have the result make sense, as several kitchen veterans have told me over the years, with varying degrees of irritation. A pound (16 ounces), half a pound (8), a quarter pound (4), yada. Too many halvings in the metric system, and you're into fussy decimals. Moreover, if the recipe calls for a pound of butter, and you feed it half a kilogram, thinking that's the metric equivalent and close enough, the biscuits/cookies ain't gonna come out the same, and folk are gonna come after you. I learned years ago to check the cup measure carefully to see if it was graded in ounces or milliliters, and whether the recipe it was supposed to be serving came from Yankeeland or Godzone. Or else. The metric system may be logically superior, but may not be practically superior in all contexts. It might be well to seek reasons, other than the usual dismissive ones, for why, for example, {{w|https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Canada#Metrication_stalled|Canada took 15 years to fail to fully convert to the metric system}}.[[Special:Contributions/2605:59C8:160:DB08:F102:9332:DCBD:89C6|2605:59C8:160:DB08:F102:9332:DCBD:89C6]] 03:10, 8 September 2025 (UTC)
:::I very much ''am'' a cook, and that is, I'm afraid, nonsense. Cooking is the perfect example of why metric is better! A recipe written in imperial, or the almost-identical US Customary Units, doesn't work if you substitute a round number of grams in for it, no. Obviously. But that presupposes that recipes naturally occur in imperial, with conversion being necessary if grams are used. Plenty of recipes exist natively in metric though, and are a clumsy mess if performed in avoirdupois.

:::And "fussy" decimals aren't a problem. If you need to halve 325ml (for example), no recipe will be affected by your using 163ml instead of 162.5 – much as fluid ounce measurements aren't accurate to the half millilitre, millilitres don't need to be either. Being a Brit, I learned to bake bread in imperial because we're across two systems here, and were even more so when I was young, but I forced myself to change, because metric is, inarguably, vastly superior. Working with percentages of hydration when you're in fluid ounces of water and pounds of flour (or the entirely nonsensical volumetric cup system) is utterly ridiculous when you could just use numbers that are exactly equivalent to each other. 1kg of flour, at a 66% hydration ratio? Why, that'll be 660ml of water, which can simply be weighed into the bowl at 660g. Can pounds, ounces, pints, fluid ounces and cups do that? Very much no.

:::And your halveable measures are all well and good...if you're halving those particular numbers. Anyone can think of numbers that are easily halved though. But what if it's a 2 egg recipe with 3oz of flour, and you want to make 3 eggs' worth? Well, then you need 4.5oz of flour. A bit...fussy, no? Imperial and US-measure recipes feel like examples of pounds working neatly, because they've been constructed around easy-to-use quantities in that system. But metric recipes behave just as neatly, and are far more readily scalable, because the numbers are all just base 10, which everybody uses for everything all the time.

:::I know both. I can use both. I started out with imperial. But I choose to use metric, because metric is so very obviously superior. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 15:17, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

::::I am also a cook. I do all or part of the cooking on a regular basis for multiple families. The system ''I am accustomed to'' is the "obviously superior" one. While I can use both, multiplication by two (or three or five or 19) is just as easy as by ten. More importantly, grabbing the "nonsensical volumetric cups", while more than a little inaccurate, is very easy compared to grabbing the scale and making sure it's tare'd correctly for each ingredient. You also ignore the intrinsic issues with the metric system as well, given your example: two eggs is very easy to work with, while 114gm of eggs just begs for the same half-again issues. While the metric system has many advantages, I'm responding to your very clear tone that you feel superior since you "upgraded" which system you use. Perhaps most importantly, as a cook AND a baker, I'm also well aware that no measurements really need that much precision in cooking. Source: I do almost all my "measuring" by "feel" which is so very obviously superior to both. AlexaDTink [[Special:Contributions/172.223.58.201|172.223.58.201]] 16:19, 5 October 2025 (UTC)

:::Of course, American recipes get round this problem by measuring things by volume, using a standard cup size.--[[Special:Contributions/86.163.160.215|86.163.160.215]] 11:15, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

::::See Technology Connection's latest video where he goes through a ridiculous series of imperial conversions to get from 192g of water to "about 0.2L". {{unsigned ip|80.189.2.17|23:49, 8 September 2025}}
:::::This is, of course, already covered by [[2585: Rounding]] and [[3065: Square Units]], in which a value of [exactly?] X <unitOne>s is described as [roughly?] Y <unitTwo>s ''then'' the premise becomes that it's [exactly!] Y <unitTwo>s or [roughly?] Z <unitThree>s, etc (including immediately/eventually back to X′ <unitOne>s, where X′≠X, and it may even be doubtful if X′≈X to a useful degree).
:::::Conversely, where the conversion ratio is exact and rational (especially ''decimally'' rational, yet may have {{w|International yard and pound|a number of significant digits}} actual precision may get lost by there being an unknown/unstated/misstated exactitude (and the inverse of any rational number is often (decimally!-)irrational/even more unweildy).
:::::This is not to say that 192g of water (especially if overprecise, for the circumstances) cannot be usefully summarised as "about 0.2L", even without transitioning through non-metric scales or convolutions. (How many pounds weight? ...that means a given amount of pounds force, in a given situation. ...that could be expressed as newtons. Which, in a particular setup conveys a given pressure as of <blah> atmospheres... The number of moles of a gaseous substance that would apply that same degree of pressure at a given temperature is... and ''eventually'' that's then related back again to a volume of water under STP.) But you really need to know where (and how much of) the fuzziness crept in along the way.
:::::The usual culprit is when information is translated between audiences. A scientific paper mentions a phenomenon as a large number of kilogrammes (SI), ''maybe already with an 'errorbar'/rounding to that''. Some more public article relates that as "N [thousand/million/etc, additionally rounded?] kg" but also in (rounded) tons. Long or short tons, maybe. Perhaps tonnes, for the least problematic conversion! That, though, then gets taken up and reprinted elsewhere again, intermediate journalist/subeditor now reporting the ton(ne)s, but explaining how many pounds-weight that is (or numbers of elephants/jumbo-jets/Sydney Harbour Bridges that is, by some look-up value that might itself be a vague average or estimate), more or less. Picked up by someone who likes the latter value, but feels the need to state (their own calculation of) what the SI-compatible units would be... YGTI.
:::::That was, of course, the whole point of 2585 and 3065, only relevant to this comic's side-conversation about units. To which I'd add, maybe you can more easily read ⅛th-inches from an 'imperial' measuring tape, than the equivant not-exactly-3-centimetres from a metric one, but ⅕th-cm is easier than whatever that is in inches (2½-sixteenths, so five-thirty-twoths? ...just cross-comparing on my own measuring tape, which is top-half (feet-and-)inches with sixteenths, bottom half centimetres with tenths, in the British style). So it largely depends upon what scale works best/good enough for your use, and that you're used to. I, personally, still think of my ''own'' bodyweight in 'stone(s)', but am no longer quick enough to do the factor-14 conversion to relate that to what's often stated in US-lbs (rather than st+lbs, or "Xn''and a half'' stone"-ish, how we use them here) in common US usage. Nor have I ever really dwelt upon my weight in kg. So, unlike my height in feet-and-inches also being known in its reasonable dqyivalent of centimetres(/metres-point-two-decimals, give or take how unruly/untrimmed my hair currently is), I'd have to always do/accept a conversion (or just read off what the scales tell me, though I rarely bother to find out for my own 'fun'). Yet I usually bake/etc in grammes (or kilogrammes, as necessary), or ''perhaps'' ounces (three ounces of chocolate chips in one of my otherwise gramme-measured recipies, with perhaps 250g of this and 175g of that, for the rest of the mixture) just out of long-standing habit and the divisions being handier (ok, so basically that's basically 85g, but aiming for a 1 oz division (and slightly going over, if ''strictly necessary'' ;) ) is better than aiming half way between two 10nbsp;g ones on a scale that only otherwise has 25 g 'intersticial' graduations.
:::::Additionally: has anyone else appreciated that the 'hook head' of a metal tape-measure is ''loosely'' riveted to the steel tape, such that when measuring the external distance (the hook 'hooking' over one end of the long item, or the edge of a windowsill/frame/etc, in tension) it makes an accurate internal measure of the tape-end, but when measuring an internal distance (pushed up against the internal corner of the wall, or whatever, in slight compression) the end pushes into the tape so your 'zero' is the external limit of the hook-bend? Not precisely equivalent, especial on cheap and/or worn retracting tapes where the hook has lateral wobble/angling to it, but clearly intentional to lessen the worry about the hook-metal's thickness (16th″? Half-mil? Where's my micrometer, so that I may measure my measuring tape's actual dimensions?!), even if it's usually barely significant a distinction when used over (in my current case) a 9′+ tape (at least 2.80 m, but I feel its spring complaining, so not trying for the full three metres, or possibly ten feet or more, just for fun!). And the tape-body is marked with graduations, too ("METRICmeters"{{asic}} on one side, "Non-METRICinches"(!) on the other) so I can add to the 'visible tape' the correct suplementary length of 'unexposed' tape still within the casing. [[Special:Contributions/82.132.238.27|82.132.238.27]] 11:58, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
::::::Re "''Additionally: has anyone else appreciated…,"'' people on the (notional) tape measure forums '''can't stop talking about this'''! With stories about the children or apprentices who "fix" the problem leading to non-stopped cursing by the storyteller, &c, &c. Was that supposed to be a rhetorical question? Not sure why this is topical here, though. [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 13:09, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

More notes on nominal wood sizing - The nominal lengths of framing lumber are not adjusted, so a nominal 2"x4"x8' board is actually 1.5"x3.5"x8'. In fact they are often slightly oversize to allow for cutting to exact length. However, the nominal length and width for sheet goods like plywood are normally accurate although thickness may or may not be, with softwood sheet goods usually being around 1/4" thinner than stated and hardwood typically being accurate. {{unsigned ip|2600:1700:b39:3010:30e0:301c:3150:8abf|18:17, 9 September 2025}}

I tried to pay for some gasoline with dimensional currency, and the Secret Service has just pulled me over. :( [[User:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For]] ([[User talk:These Are Not The Comments You Are Looking For|talk]]) 00:17, 14 September 2025 (UTC)

3158: Shielding Chart

2025-11-27T14:30:14Z

Slashme: /* Table */ Oven mitts aren't a better heat shield than a vacuum.

{{comic
| number = 3158
| date = October 22, 2025
| title = Shielding Chart
| image = shielding_chart_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x720px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Sharks can occasionally travel short distances through air when pursuing prey, but their attenuation coefficient is pretty high.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is part of a series on [[:Category:Confusion matrices|confusion matrices]].

Various hazardous (or merely obnoxious) materials, objects, and effects can have their danger reduced with specialized protective equipment. The yellow squares are where the shield fails to protect against the object. The grey-yellow squares are where the shield is partially successful, but still presents some risk. The grey squares are where the shield succeeds.

The first five barriers are materials/conditions which may be used to block some things and not others, which makes for a relatively normal comparison matrix. The last five barriers are devices which are deliberately designed and manufactured to block the last five materials/effects. Comparing those with effects for which they aren't designed is presented for absurdity.

The first three hazards - Gamma Rays, Neutrons, and Alpha Particles - represent different types of radiation. Their associated "beep" and "click" sounds mirror real detection behavior: "beep" corresponds to ionizing radiation like gamma and alpha particles, detected by modern radiation detectors, while "click" refers to neutron detection, which uses a separate type of counter designed for neutral particles. {{w|Geiger counter|Geiger counters}}, an earlier form of radiation detector, also clicked.

All but two tiles feature [[Cueball]] (or in one case [[Hairy]]) trying to make use of that column's chosen 'protective shield', although in the case of some scenarios (involving vacuum or water) he may also be sufficiently equipped against the environment he finds himself in. Also present will be the row's specific 'effect', either in its own right (an object or creature that embodies the phenomenon automatically) or as conveyed by [[Megan]] (when not just present as onlooker) who may also have had the 'shield' primarily delegated to her. The two main exceptions are where Cueball himself emits the sound (from within 'protective' suits that turn out to be ineffectual sound-blockers), to apparently annoy Megan, and depictions of radio reception (which always show Cueball's attempt to transmit, whether or not it shows a successful incoming message).

Some hazards, such as {{w|alpha particles}}, a form of radiation with particularly low penetrative power, can be easily deterred by common things; even a relatively short distance through air is enough to minimize their impact. Comparatively, more dangerous hazards, such as the far more penetrative {{w|gamma rays}}, are unaffected by all but the shielding methods actually intended for them. No effect is either all effective or all ineffective, against each form of 'shielding', and neither is any instance of shield consistent against all effects.

The title text notes that, while the shark hazard is shown on the chart to be entirely nullified by a sufficient air barrier, in reality sharks are capable of attacking prey even if it is a short distance out of the water. However, it claims a high "attenuation coefficient", which is an {{tvtropes|ExpospeakGag|overly scientific way of saying}} that you don't need a ''lot'' of air between you and the shark before it can't hurt you. Indeed, while sharks can jump out of the water to a certain height, there's a hard line between "vulnerable" and "out of reach", and a person can be within arm's reach of a shark's attack while they themselves are in no danger whatsoever. So long as they ''don't'' unwisely reach out to tempt fate.

This table might imply that lead is the best defense against everything in general, but it is toxic, so don't bring lead with you at all times.
===Table===
{| class="wikitable" | style="background:#E6C3C3;"
! Shielding Chart
! scope="col"| {{w|Air}}
! scope="col"| {{w|Lead}}
! scope="col"| {{w|Water}}
! scope="col"| {{w|Glass}}
! scope="col"| {{w|Vacuum}}
! scope="col"| {{w|Oven mitts}}
! scope="col"| {{w|Armor}}
! scope="col"| {{w|Hazmat suit|Bio-hazard suit}}
! scope="col"| {{w|Faraday cage}}
! scope="col"| {{w|Shark cage}}
|-
! scope="row"| {{w|Gamma rays}}
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Gamma rays are not significantly shielded by air.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|Lead is commonly used as {{w|Lead shielding|shielding}} against gamma rays. Lead works because of its density and high atomic number, scattering gamma rays.
| style="background:#DDDCB2;"|Water can be used to shield against gamma rays, but you need at least 10 feet of water between you and the gamma rays for it to work.
|colspan=7; style="background:#FFF978;"|Gamma rays have the highest energy of any type of light and have no mass or charge, making them pass through most materials easily.

|-
! scope="row"| {{w|Neutrons}}
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Neutrons are not stopped by low density materials such as air.
| style="background:#DDDCB2;"|Lead's high density means that neutrons will keep bumping into lead nuclei, losing their energy through inelastic scattering. However since lead nuclei are much heavier than neutrons, most of the energy will remain with the neutron; as a result, many collisions are needed to slow the neutrons. Some neutrons will also be absorbed by the nuclei, although the {{w|Cross section (physics)|cross section}} is rather low.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|Since protons and neutrons have almost the same mass, a collision with a hydrogen atom in water will result in the neutron losing almost half of its energy, resulting in a very rapid attenuation. Moreover the cross section for the fusion of neutrons and protons is high, leading to most neutrons being captured to form deuterium.
|colspan=7; style="background:#FFF978;"|None of these materials are dense enough to slow or absorb neutrons in significant quantities.

|-
! scope="row"| {{w|Alpha particles}}
|colspan=4; style="background:#C4C5C7"|As alpha particles are almost completely unable to travel through most materials, any of these would effectively stop them. Even if they didn't, the intervening air and distance to Cueball would prevent them being detected in any case. In the third panel, Cueball questions if his equipment is working, as this is the only thing which isn't detected within the first four shields.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|While alpha particles are unable to travel through air, they can move freely in a vacuum. As such, alpha particles are able to reach Cueball in this scenario, activating his detector and allowing Cueball to know that his equipment is indeed working properly.
|colspan=3; style="background:#C4C5C7;"|As with the first four shields, any of these materials would block the particles, and in any case they would have a hard time travelling through air to reach Cueball regardless of the shield provided.
|colspan=2; style="background:#FFF978;"|There are gaps in both the cages through which the particles could pass. In both cases, the emitter has been moved closer to the observer, because otherwise the effect would be masked by the intervening air.

|-
! scope="row"| {{w|Light}}
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Light passes easily through air; if it didn't, we would not be able to see.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|As lead is a solid, opaque material, light is not able to pass through it.
| style="background:#DDDCB2;"|Water is mostly transparent to visible light. It will attenuate over long distances, but won't be quickly blocked.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|As glass is a largely transparent substance, light is usually able to pass through it.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Because a lack of air does not impact the travel of light, it reaches Cueball without issue.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|Cueball is able to use the opaque oven mitts to cover the light source, successfully preventing the light from reaching him.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|The helmet Cueball is wearing is opaque, blocking the light from reaching him. It also makes this a fairly useless set of armor.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|As with the oven mitts, Hairy uses the helmet part of the biohazard suit to block the light source.
|colspan=2; style="background:#FFF978;"|As both types of cages have holes in them, it is easy for the light to pass through the holes and reach Cueball.

|-
! scope="row"| {{w|Sound}}
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Air is the most common medium through which we perceive sound. It would not serve as an effective barrier between a source of sound and someone's ears, unless it was over a very great distance.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Lead is very dense, and is in fact used for soundproofing due to its resistance to buffeting by airborne sound waves. But, as an extremely dense solid, it is a very fast conductor of vibration within itself (so long as the thickness of the material does not invoke the dampening softness and attenuate those vibrations). In this case, Megan is directly knocking upon the lead screen itself, which seems to be enough for the sound of the knocking to emerge at Cueball's side.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Sound travels significantly faster and further in water than in air, making it difficult to locate and understand, but certainly not doing any good when it comes to ''blocking'' sound. The image in this square is of a dolphin,[[[285: Wikipedian Protester#top|''cetacean needed'']]] detecting fish using sound waves, which it is very good at doing precisely ''because'' its sounds travel very well through water.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Glass, while useful for muffling sound, cannot block it entirely, as anyone whose neighbors mow the lawn at 6:00 can attest to.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|"In space, no one can hear you scream." In a vacuum (like space), there are no atoms or molecules to carry sound waves.
| style="background:#DDDCB2;"|Oven mitts are thick enough that they block some of the sound if a person shouts into them, but it will not be enough to fully block out the sound.
| colspan=2; style="background:#FFF978;"|The two cases of whether sound can penetrate suits are the only two cases where Cueball is trying (successfully) to inflict the phenomenon on [[Megan]], who otherwise features only as the (attempted) instigator. Neither suit is able (or intended) to significantly block sound waves.
| colspan=2; style="background:#FFF978;"|The cages are open enough that their ability to block sound is negligible, and standing in one will do very little to block out sound.

|-
! scope="row"| {{w|Heat}}
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Air can be a fairly effective thermal insulator when constrained, as in {{w|aerogels}} and many types of insulation. However, freely moving air as depicted in this panel flows as it heats up, transferring heat from the campfire to Cueball's marshmallow. Additionally, air does little to block thermal radiation from the heat source.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Lead conducts heat, allowing Cueball to toast a marshmallow on the surface of the shield. However, since lead is poisonous, he should not do this.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Heat will raise the temperature of water. If the temperature is raised high enough the water will start to boil; boiling has long been used by humanity to prepare food. Marshmallows however are not meant to be boiled.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Cueball appears to be holding a glass bottle over an open fire, into which he has presumably placed his marshmallows. Depending on the temperature, the type of glass and its thickness, it is possible to heat the contents of a glass container, but if the container is unsuitable this can be dangerous to the user. Also, it is unclear how he proposes to consume the sticky marshmallow mess this would create.
| style="background:#DDDCB2;"|The lack of matter in a vacuum completely blocks transmission by conduction and convection, the two main ways in which heat is spread. It still allows transmission by radiation, which is less efficient. For the specific example of the thermos shown in the image, the way they are constructed completely blocks radiation, but there are enough residual air particles for a very slow convection. The fact that the shielding is made from one single (very thin) piece, and it has lips, also allows some conduction.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|Cueball is holding a pan over an open fire while wearing oven mitts. Pans whose grip or handle is not made of a material that conducts less heat than the pan proper are dangerous to grab onto with one's bare hands: wearing oven mitts protects the user from heat. It should be noted that, depending on the weight of the pan and the time the pan needs to be held over a fire to prepare its contents, this can be quite tiring for the user. Also, this implies that oven mitts are a better heat shield than a vacuum, which isn't correct.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|A suit of armor is made of metal, which will conduct the heat and do little to protect one's hands against an open flame. The inside of the gloves will be made of some kind of cloth and/or leather, which, as well as giving little protection, might pose a fire hazard.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Bio-hazard suits are designed to help filter air and allow the user to handle dangerous chemicals. However, most bio-hazard suits are made out of fabrics with a laminate coating, both of which are prone to burning and allow heat to pass through.
| colspan=2; style="background:#FFF978;"|Both cages have a minimal effect on the heat from a fire. Depending on the intensity of the fire and the distance from the cage this can create a comfortably warm temperature to the person inside of the cage.

|-
! scope="row"| {{w|Swords}}
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Air has a negligible force against objects and is unable to stop Megan's sword's thrust.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|Lead is a heavy and dense metal, and as a result, it can stop blows from a sword.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|While water has a greater force than air against objects, it is still not enough to stop Megan's attack.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Glass is easily broken by sharp blows, especially if it isn't tempered, and as a result does not stop Megan's sword.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|A vacuum has no resistance against objects and unsurprisingly is not able to stop Megan's attack.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Oven mitts are typically made of fabric, which would provide only limited protection. They also do not cover the full body.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|The metallic armor Cueball is wearing was probably designed to stop penetrating and slashing sword blows, with further layers beneath to dampen impacts.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Swords are sharp, and as such are able to break through the thin hazmat suit Cueball is wearing.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|A Faraday cage can be a fine mesh, optimal to screen out various radio frequencies of EM radiation but not intended to stop anything else and comparatively delicate against any physical penetration.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|A shark cage, while able to provide resistance against larger threats, has holes through which Megan's sword can go.

|-
! scope="row"| {{w|Particulate matter#Health problems|Toxic dust}}
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Dust can travel through air, hanging onto small currents. Air does nothing to protect Cueball.
| style="background:#DDDCB2;"|{{w|Lead poisoning|Lead is poisonous}}, so while a solid lead barrier would prevent toxic dust from passing through, any dust or metal fragments from the shield would still be dangerous.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Water actually can be {{w|Dust abatement|used to prevent the spread of dust}}. However, toxic dust that gets into drinking water will {{w|Water pollution#Groundwater pollution|contaminate it}}, and could cause health problems, just as airborne toxic dust can.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|Dust cannot travel through glass, and being fully encased in a glass bell protects one from dust (though it would bring its own problems).
| style="background:#FFF978;"|With no air to slow it down, dust in space can move at dangerously high speeds, possibly fast enough to tear through Cueball's space suit.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Oven mitts are worn on the hands and do not normally interfere with one's breathing. However, if there is a notable amount of toxic dust in the air, holding an oven mitt over one's face is better than no protection.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|A suit of armor still allows the wearer to breathe, and provides no particular protection from dust.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|A biohazard suit is fully enclosed with its own internal oxygen supply, and so protects the wearer from airborne particles.
| colspan=2; style="background:#FFF978;"|Both cages are too open to provide any significant protection against dust.

|-
! scope="row"| {{w|Radio}}
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Radio waves are more than able to travel through air. This is what allows walkie-talkies to work.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|Although lead is a relatively poor conductor and therefore attenuates radio waves less than most metals, a lead enclosure can still work as a Faraday cage with a sufficiently thick layer of lead.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|Radio waves from two-way radios, like the kind shown in the comic, {{w|Radio propagation#Direct modes (line-of-sight)|cannot penetrate deep water}}. There are {{w|Radio propagation#Surface modes (groundwave)|radio frequencies that ''can'' penetrate deep water}}, but these have a much lower frequency, require more powerful transmitters, and (in the case of {{w|Extremely low frequency#Difficulties of ELF communication|extremely low frequencies}}) cannot transmit audio.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|In a similar way that glass is transparent to visual light, it is also transparent to radio waves, allowing them to pass through.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|As there is nothing getting in the way of radio waves in a vacuum, radios work very well in space. This allows ground control to communicate with astronauts in space.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Oven mitts, typically being made of fabric, have no effect on radio waves.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|A metal suit of armor blocks radio waves. This is because metals are very good electrical conductors, which block the radio waves.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Biohazard suits do not block radio waves, and someone wearing such a suit can send and receive radio transmissions without issue.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|A {{w|Faraday cage}} is specifically designed to block electromagnetic fields such as radio waves. In fact, this is the ''only'' 'hazard' here that it blocks.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|The openings in a shark cage are too wide for the cage to experience the properties of a Faraday cage.

|-
! scope="row"| {{w|Sharks}}
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|Sharks cannot travel very far on land or in the air.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|Shielding yourself with lead plates will effectively protect you against sharks.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Sharks live in water, so water is not an effective shield against sharks.{{cn}}
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|Glass will effectively protect you against sharks, provided that it is thick enough. In fact, sharks are commonly (and safely) shown to the public in aquariums.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|In the vacuum of space, Cueball is very far from sharks' ocean habitat (though he may be at risk of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5xcvAoKojo dolphins]).
| style="background:#FFF978;"|Although shark-shaped Oven mitts are quite common due to their similar appearance, oven mitts are not very effective at stopping sharks.{{cn}}
| style="background:#DDDCB2;"|Depending on the design of the armor, a shark might be able to permanently deform it enough that it causes injury, though the more flexible {{w|Chain_mail#Practical_uses|chain mail}} ''is'' successfully used to prevent actual piercing damage from bites.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|A biohazard suit is weak enough that a shark can rip through it.
| style="background:#FFF978;"|A Faraday cage is weak enough that a shark can rip through it.
| style="background:#C4C5C7;"|A shark cage is specifically designed to protect against sharks. In fact, this is the ''only'' hazard here that it blocks.
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Don't remove this notice too soon.}}
:[The whole comic is in one panel]
:[A 10x10 matrix sits in the middle with rows labelled as follows:]
:Gamma Rays
:Neutrons
:Alpha Particles
:Light
:Sound
:Heat
:Swords
:Toxic Dust
:Radio
:Sharks
:[The columns are:]
:Air
:Lead
:Water
:Glass
:Vacuum
:Oven Mitts
:Armor
:Bio-Hazard Suit
:Faraday Cage
:Shark Cage


:[In all of the Gamma Ray boxes, Cueball stands next to a gamma ray emitter with a smattering of dots a short distance away from it, which is perched on a table as necessary, a geiger counter held in his hand or worn.]

:[Gamma Rays vs. Air - yellow tile]
:[Just standing a few feet from the emitter. The geiger counter Cueball wears beeps three times:] Beep Beep Beep!

:[Gamma Rays vs. Lead - gray tile]
:[The gamma ray emitter and the table have a lead enclosure covering them. The geiger counter, held towards everything else in Cueball's hand, does not beep.]

:[Gamma Rays vs. Water - grayish-yellow tile]
:[The gamma ray emitter and table are placed in a large, nearly full, glass of water. Cueball's outstretched geiger counter beeps once:] Beep!

:[Gamma Rays vs. Glass - yellow tile]
:[A glass 'bell-jar' covers the gamma ray emitter, atop the table, the geiger counter beeps three times:] Beep Beep Beep!

:[Gamma Rays vs. Vacuum - yellow tile]
:[The gamma ray emitter appears to be held within an open hatch of a satellite. The satellite, together with a spacesuited Cueball, can be seen to be in orbit around the Earth. His chest-mounted geiger counter is transmitting three beeps:] Beep Beep Beep

:[Gamma Rays vs. Oven Mitts - yellow tile]
:[Megan stands to the left of the gamma ray emitter, wearing oven mitts and covering the emitter with one hand. Cueball’s body-mounted geiger counter beeps three times:] Beep Beep Beep

:[Gamma Rays vs. Armor - yellow tile]
:[Cueball stands to the right of the gamma ray emitter wearing a suit of plate armor. From inside the armor, his Geiger counter beeps three times:] Beep Beep Beep

:[Gamma Rays vs. Bio-Hazard Suit - yellow tile]
:[Cueball stands to the right of the gamma ray emitter wearing a bio-hazard suit. From inside the suit, his Geiger counter beeps three times:] Beep Beep Beep

:[Gamma Rays vs. Faraday Cage - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is surrounded by a mesh cage. His geiger counter beeps three times:] Beep Beep Beep

:[Gamma Rays vs. Shark Cage - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is within a barred cage. His geiger counter beeps three times:] Beep Beep Beep

:[In all of the Neutron boxes, Cueball stands next to a neutron emitter, that looks like two half-sphere shells that are angled slightly open in Cueball's direction, in similar scenarios to the above but with a heftier pedestal in place of the table. No visible effects emit from the emitter. Cueball holds the top handle of the same large detector in each scenario.]

:[Neutrons vs. Air - yellow tile]
:[The detector emits two clicks:] Click Click

:[Neutrons vs. Lead - grayish-yellow tile]
:[The emitter and pedestal are within their lead enclosure. The detector clicks once:] Click

:[Neutrons vs. Water - gray tile]
:[The emitter and pedestal are in the large glass of water. The detector makes no noise.]

:[Neutrons vs. Glass - yellow tile]
:[The glass bell-jar covers the pedestalled emitter. The detector clicks twice:] Click Click

:[Neutrons vs. Vacuum - yellow tile]
:[The emitter sits in the satellite's open hatch. Spacesuited Cueball's hand-held detector transmits two clicks:] Click Click

:[Neutrons vs. Oven Mitts - yellow tile]
:[Megan wears oven gloves and covers the emitter, on its pedestal, with both hands. Cueball's detector clicks twice:] Click Click

:[Neutrons vs. Armor - yellow tile]
:[Cueball has removed his armor’s helmet and placed it over the emitter. His detector clicks twice:] Click Click

:[Neutrons vs. Bio-Hazard Suit - yellow tile]
:[Cueball stands as normal, having draped his unworn biohazard suit over the emitter, leaving the hood on the floor. His detector sounds two clicks:] Click Click

:[Neutrons vs. Faraday Cage - yellow tile]
:[Within his mesh cage, two clicks come from Cueball's detector:] Click Click

:[Neutrons vs. Shark Cage - yellow tile]
:[Within a barred cage, the detector Cueball holds clicks twice:] Click Click

:[In all of the Alpha Particle boxes, it is a small spherical mass or flask with 'fizzy' strands or dashes, set in the same base scenarios as previously.]

:[Alpha Particles vs. Air - gray tile]
:[Cueball is holding a detector and looking at it. The detector is doing nothing.]

:[Alpha Particles vs. Lead - gray tile]
:[There is a lead wall between the alpha particle source and Cueball. Cueball's worn detector is doing nothing.]

:[Alpha Particles vs. Water - gray tile]
:[The alpha particle item is stood in a large glass of water. Cueball is holding a detector and looking at it. The detector is doing nothing.]
:[Cueball:] Does this thing even work?

:[Alpha Particles vs. Glass - gray tile]
:[The source, on its table, is covered by a bell-jar. Cueball stands looking at it, wearing a detector that does nothing.]

:[Alpha Particles vs. Vacuum - yellow tile]
:[The source of alpha particles is inside the open satellite hatch. Spacesuited Cueball floats nearby, with a detector that transmits three beeps:] Beep Beep Beep

:[Alpha Particles vs. Oven Mitts - gray tile]
:[Megan wears over mitts, placing one over the source on its table. Cueball looks ok, his worn detector doing nothing.]

:[Alpha Particles vs. Armor - gray tile]
:[Cueball, in his full suit of armor, has picked up the source from its table and is holding it directly in his hand. There is no sign of any detector activity occuring.]

:[Alpha Particles vs. Bio-Hazard Suit - gray tile]
:[Cueball, wearing the bio-hazard suit, looks impassively at the source on the top of its table. There are no beeps.]

:[Alpha Particles vs. Faraday Cage - yellow tile]
:[The table with the source has been moved to be right next to the mesh cage. Cueball, inside the cage, presses right up to the inside of the same mesh edge, putting his detector right next to it. There are three beeps:] Beep Beep Beep

:[Alpha Particles vs. Shark Cage - yellow tile]
:[Again, the source, on its table, is right next to the bars of the cage. And, again, Cueball is pressed right up against (and perhaps through) the inside edge of the cage. Three beeps sound:] Beep Beep Beep

:[In all of the light boxes, Megan points a brightly lit battery torch towards Cueball.]

:[Light vs. Air - yellow tile]
:[Megan points the torch towards Cueball. Rays of lights splay out over Cueball's face as he instinctively holds one arm protectively over his eyes.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Light vs. Lead - gray tile]
:[Megan points the torch towards Cueball, but only illuminates a lead wall that stands between them. Cueball makes no reaction.]

:[Light vs. Water - grayish-yellow tile]
:[Megan stands nose-deep in the giant glass of water, aiming her shining torch out through the water and out of the glass towards Cueball. Cueball shields his eyes with his arm, but is silent.]

:[Light vs. Glass - yellow tile]
:[Megan stands within a person-sized bell-jar, shining her torch towards Cueball, who is outside and shielding his eyes.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Light vs. Vacuum - yellow tile]
:[Megan and Cueball, in spacesuits (i.e. with 'fishbowl helmets'), are seen orbiting high above the planet below. Megan holds a torch, shining it towards Cueball.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Light vs. Oven Mitts - gray tile]
:[Megan points her torch towards Cueball. Cueball wears oven-gloves, and casually holds one begloved hand over the end of the torch, from which no light is seen.]

:[Light vs. Armor - grey tile]
:[Megan shones her torch upon the armored figure of Cueball, whose helmet visor is down.]
:[Cueball:] Nope.

:[Light vs. Bio-Hazard Suit - grey tile]
:[Megan makes to point her torch at Cueball, who is dressed in all but the hood of his bio-hazard suit. He holds the hood out, fully covering Megan's torch.]

:[Light vs. Faraday Cage - yellow tile]
:[The torch is pointed by Megan towards Cueball, arm across his eyes as he stands within in his mesh cage.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Light vs. Shark Cage - yellow tile]
:[Megan's torch shines through the bars of the cage at Cueball, his arm protectively held up.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[In most of the sound boxes, Megan appears to be screaming in Cueball's direction.]

:[Sound vs. Air - yellow tile]
:[Cueball stands with his hands over his ears, as a tensed-up Megan lets out a loud scream.]
:[Megan:] AAAAAAAAA!

:[Sound vs. Lead - yellow tile]
:[Between Megan and Cueball is a full-height thick lead wall. Megan is tapping on her side.]
:[Megan:] Knock Knock
:[Cueball:] Who is it?

:[Sound vs. Water - yellow tile]
:[An underwater scene, showing sea-floor with various corals/sea-plants. Just above is a dolphin, projecting sound waves towards two small fish.]

:[Sound vs. Glass - yellow tile]
:[Megan is stood within her person-sized bell-jar, screaming loudly. The bell-jar is vibrating. Cueball is covering his ears.]
:[Megan, in notably distorted text:] AAAAAAAA!

:[Sound vs. Vacuum - grey tile]
:[Megan and Cueball float in space, high above the planet. They are both wearing space helmets. An abortive speech-bubble emerges from Megan's helmet.]
:[Megan:] .....

:[Sound vs. Oven Mitts - grey tile]
:[Megan stands to the left of Cueball, wearing oven-gloves. Her hands are over her mouth, muffling her attempts to say anything.]
:[Megan:] <two lines of unintelligble sounds>

:[Sound vs. Armor - yellow tile]
:[Megan is holding her hands over her ears. Cueball is wearing his suit of armor, which is vibrating, while he emits a large scream.]
:[Cueball:] AAAAAAAAA!

:[Sound vs. Bio-Hazard Suit - yellow tile]
:[Megan has her hands over her ears. Cueball is screaming from within his bio-hazard suit.]
:[Cueball:] AAAAAAAAA!

:[Sound vs. Faraday Cage - yellow tile]
:[Megan is yelling at Cueball, standing within his mesh cage with his hands over his ears.]
:[Megan:] AAAAAAAA!

:[Sound vs. Shark Cage - yellow tile]
:[Megan yells, as Cueball holds his hands over his ears behind the bars of the cage.]
:[Megan:] AAAAAAAA!

:[All of the fire boxes show a small campfire, or other more expansive flames. In all but one case, Cueball is present. In most of these instances, he is holding a marshmallow, sometimes at the end of a long stick.]

:[Heat vs. Air - yellow tile]
:[There is a campfire, with Cueball extending a stick-speared marshmallow over it.]

:[Heat vs. Lead - yellow tile]
:[A campfire has a lead slab propped up above it. Cueball's marshmallow-stick is being held to its upper surface.]
:[Marshmallow:] TSSSSS
:[Voice from off-panel:] NO!

:[Heat vs. Water - yellow tile]
:[A campfire heats a cauldron/cooking-pot held over it. Cueball dips his stick with a marshmallow into the container as splashes/vapor emerge. Megan stands behind Cueball.]
:[Cueball:] They're better boiled.
:[Megan:] NO!

:[Heat vs. Glass - yellow tile]
:[With a campfire between them, Megan and Cueball stand with sticks in their hands, held close to the fire. Megan has speared her own marshmallow. Cueball holds something, that looks like a wine bottle, in a forked/looped end, a few small puffs of vapor emerging from open top of the bottle.]

:[Heat vs. Vacuum - greyish-yellow tile]
:[Surrounded by a general setting of flames, there appears to be a cross-section of a vacuum flask. The neck of the flask is plugged. The inside of the flask appears to be half full of liquid with some solid chunks floating in it.]
:[Arrowed label, pointing at the flask's chunks:] Ice

:[Heat vs. Oven Mitts - grey tile]
:[Megan and Cueball stand around the campfire, Megan holding her marshmallow-on-a-stick. Cueball is wearing oven gloves and, with one hand almost over the flames, is holding the handle of a frying pan that is actually in the flames. Something (possibly a marshmallow) seems to be sizzling in the pan.]

:[Heat vs. Armor - yellow tile]
:[Megan is holding her marshmallow stick over the campfire. Cueball is holding his marshmallow over the fire, directly in his gauntleted hand, as he wears the full armor.]
:[Cueball:] OW! OW!

:[Heat vs. Bio-Hazard Suit - yellow tile]
:[Around the campfire, Megan toasts her marshmallow normally. Cueball wears his biohazard suit, holding his gloved hand close to the flames whilst holding a marshmallow.]
:[Cueball:] Ow! Ow!

:[Heat vs. Faraday Cage - yellow tile]
:[The campfire is built just to the left of the mesh cage, within which Cueball is standing.]
:[Cueball:] Mmm, warm.

:[Heat vs. Shark Cage - yellow tile]
:[Cueball's cage has a campfire just outside its bars.]
:[Cueball:] Mmm, warm.



:[In all of the sword boxes, Megan is thrusting a sword rightwards, towards/into Cueball, in this row. Cueball also holds a sword, in all but one case, but lowered and not in a defensive manner.]

:[Swords vs. Air - yellow tile]
:[Megan is poking Cueball with a sword.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Swords vs. Lead - gray tile]
:[Cueball is standing in a lead container as Megan hits her sword against the outside of it, making a metallic sound:] Clank

:[Swords vs. Water - yellow tile]
:[Cueball and Megan are both underwater, wearing diving gear. Megan is poking Cueball with her sword.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Swords vs. Glass - yellow tile]
:[Megan is standing in her person-sized bell jar; however, she has smashed a hole in the side and is now poking Cueball with her sword through the hole.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Swords vs. Vacuum - yellow tile]
:[Cueball and Megan are floating in space, wearing spacesuits. Megan is poking Cueball with her sword.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Swords vs. Oven Mitts - yellow tile]
:[Cueball stands next to Megan, wearing oven mitts. Megan is poking him with her sword.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Swords vs. Armor - gray tile]
:[Cueball is standing in a suit of armor next to Megan. She tries to poke him but cannot penetrate the armor, instead producing a metallic "clink"]
:[Cueball:] Ha!

:[Swords vs. Bio-Hazard Suit - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is wearing his biohazard suit as Megan pokes him with her sword.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Swords vs. Faraday Cage - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is standing inside a person-sized Faraday cage as Megan pokes him with her sword through the mesh.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Swords vs. Shark Cage - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is standing inside of a shark cage as Megan pokes him with her sword through the bars.]
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[In all of the tiles in the Toxic Dust row, clouds, and further particulate specks, illustrate the toxic dust, in several cases, apparently being discharged by a burning brazier. All tiles have Cueball in the scene.]

:[Toxic Dust vs. Air - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is standing next to a container resembling a metal trash can, with flames visible on top and a cloud of smoke and particulates rising from the flames.]

:[Toxic Dust vs. Lead - grayish-yellow tile]
:[The burning trash can is encased in a rectangular lead box. Cueball is touching the outside of the lead box as a few particulates are coming off of it.]
:[Cueball:] This shield is also ''producing'' toxic dust.

:[Toxic Dust vs. Water - yellow tile]
:[Cueball and Megan are both standing (presumably) outside, watching as particulates hover in the air. There are a few clouds present as well.]
:[Cueball:] Don't worry, this will all be safely absorbed by the groundwater.

:[Toxic Dust vs. Glass - gray tile]
:[Cueball is standing in a person-sized bell jar as toxic dust floats around the outside of it.]

:[Toxic Dust vs. Vacuum - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is floating in space next to a satellite with an open hatch that is emitting toxic dust.]
:[Satellite:] Achoo!
:[Cueball:] My suit!

:[Toxic Dust vs. Oven Mitts - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is standing next to the burning trash can and covering his face with an oven-mitted hand.]
:[Cueball:] ''Cough''

:[Toxic Dust vs. Armor - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is standing next to the burning trash can in a suit of armor.]
:[Cueball:] ''Cough''

:[Toxic Dust vs. Bio-Hazard Suit - gray tile]
:[Cueball is standing next to the burning trash can while wearing his biohazard suit. He is unaffected by the toxic dust it is producing.]

:[Toxic Dust vs. Faraday Cage - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is standing next to the burning trash can in a person-sized Faraday cage.]
:[Cueball:] ''Cough''

:[Toxic Dust vs. Shark Cage - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is standing in a shark cage next to the burning trash can.]
:[Cueball:] ''Cough''

:[Most tiles in the radio row depict Cueball carrying a two-way radio handset, except where the transceiver appears to be part of the various protective suits that he is wearing.]

:[Radio vs. Air - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is holding a handheld two-way radio in his right hand, close to his face, and speaking into it. A voice from the radio is responding to him.]
:[Cueball:] Eagle Base, come in.
:[Radio:] Go ahead.

:[Radio vs. Lead - gray tile
:[Cueball is standing inside a lead box, again holding the radio close to his face.]
:[Cueball:] Eagle Base, come in? Hello?

:[Radio vs. Water - gray tile]
:[Cueball is underwater, in a diving suit. He is once again holding a hand radio. Bubbles are rising from his helmet and a shark is swimming underneath him.]
:[Cueball:] Hello?

:[Radio vs. Glass - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is standing inside a person-sized bell jar, holding the radio close to his face.]
:[Cueball:] Is this... part of the mission?
:[Radio:] Sure.

:[Radio vs. Vacuum - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is floating in space next to the satellite. He is not visibly holding a radio, implying that it is integrated into his spacesuit.]
:[Cueball:] Eagle Base, I have the package.

:[Radio vs. Oven Mitts - yellow tile
:[Cueball is wearing oven mitts while holding the radio close to his face.]
:[Cueball:] Eagle Base, tactical mitts acquired.
:[Radio:] Copy that.

:[Radio vs. Armor - gray tile]
:[Cueball is standing in a suit of armor. He is not visibly holding a radio.]
:[Cueball:] Repeat that? My suit radio is having issues.

:[Radio vs. Bio-Hazard Suit - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is wearing his biohazard suit. He is not visibly holding a radio.]
:[Cueball: Copy that.]

:[Radio vs. Faraday Cage - gray tile
:[Cueball is standing inside a person-sized Faraday cage, holding the radio close to his face.]
:[Cueball:] Eagle Base? Come in?

:[Radio vs. Shark Cage - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is standing in a shark cage, holding the radio close to his face.]
:[Cueball:] Eagle Base, why am I-
:[Radio:] Don't worry about it.

:[All tiles in the Shark row depict a shark, except when only the shark's fin is seen emerging from a body of water. Cueball is somehow present in each case.]

:[Sharks vs. Air - gray tile]
:[Cueball is standing on land next to a body of water. A shark fin is protruding from the surface of the water.]

:[Sharks vs. Lead - gray tile]
:[Cueball, wearing diving gear, is standing on the ocean floor in a person-sized lead container. A few small fish are swimming above and to the left of him and a shark is floating below the fish.]

:[Sharks vs. Water - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is again underwater, wearing diving gear. He is very close to a shark and seems to be pointing at it.]
:[Cueball:] Kitty!

:[Sharks vs. Glass - gray tile]
:[The shark is now in a water tank, behind a wall of glass. Cueball and Megan are standing next to the tank, looking at what is likely an informative plaque in front of it.]

:[Sharks vs. Vacuum - gray tile]
:[Cueball is floating in space. Earth is visible in the background, with a shark fin visibly protruding from a body of water.]

:[Sharks vs. Oven Mitts - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is underwater, wearing diving gear and oven mitts, he gently touches the shark's snout.]
:[Cueball:] ''Boop!''

:[Sharks vs. Armor - grayish-yellow tile]
:[Cueball is underwater, now wearing a suit of armor. The shark appears to be biting his armored right hand.]
:[Shark:] cronch cronch
:[Cueball:] Ow.

:[Sharks vs. Bio-Hazard Suit - yellow tile]
:[Cueball, underwater and wearing his biohazard suit, is now petting the shark on its snout.]
:[Cueball:] Good kitty!

:[Sharks vs. Faraday Cage - yellow tile]
:[Cueball is inside an underwater Faraday cage, which is suspended by a tether going straight up. The shark is in the process of tearing apart the cage.]
:[Cueball:] ''No! Bad kitty!''

:[Sharks vs. Shark Cage - gray tile]
:[Cueball is underwater, in a shark cage suspended from one side by a tether going straight up. The shark is swimming a short distance away from the cage.]

{{comic discussion}}<noinclude>
[[Category:Confusion matrices]]
[[Category:Sharks]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]

Talk:2552: The Last Molecule

2021-12-10T02:27:50Z

Slashme: a gigaton is a petagram

Unsuccessfully tried to search for a match to the image of the chemical compound. Did find this, which is difficult to use on a cellphone: OSRA: Optical Structure Recognition: https://cactus.nci.nih.gov/cgi-bin/osra/index.cgi [[Special:Contributions/172.70.211.172|1 not72.70.211.172]] 07:43, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
:I've tried to search for SMILES of the molecule, but also got nothing: https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/#query=C1(C2CC(CCC)C(CC)C2(CCCC))C%3DCC(C(%3DCCC(%3DC)CC)C(C)C)%3DC1 [[Special:Contributions/162.158.222.137|162.158.222.137]]

I truly don't understand the God part of the current explanation. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.110.121|172.68.110.121]] 07:55, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
:There is an article at [https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-make-110000th-earths-biomass-180969141/ Smithonian Magazine] that sums it up quite nicely: Of the 550 gigatons of biomass carbon on Earth, animals make up about 2 gigatons, with insects comprising half of that and fish taking up another 0.7 gigatons. Everything else, including mammals, birds, nematodes and mollusks are roughly 0.3 gigatons, with humans weighing in at 0.06 gigatons.
::About half of all known living species on earth are insects. Therefore if there was a god who created all life, it would be reasonable to assume he likes them. [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 08:26, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
::: 1 Ton = 10^3 kg = 1 Mg → 1 gigaton = 1 Pg (note, not pentagram!) --[[User:Slashme|Slashme]] ([[User talk:Slashme|talk]]) 02:27, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Chemistry. I love chemistry :-) There is a concept called "Chemical Space" that I learned about in school. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_space may help, in short: Chemical space is a huge but finite space of all possible atom arrangements in molecules. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.106|162.158.91.106]] 07:59, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

I've heard the claim, that we know less about our own ocean floor than we do about the surface of Mars several times before. Is there actually a credible source for this and how do we even quantify how much we know about either area? [[User:Bischoff|Bischoff]] ([[User talk:Bischoff|talk]]) 08:26, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
:This essay might shed some light on the question. [[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/just-how-little-do-we-know-about-the-ocean-floor/ Just How Little Do We Know about the Ocean Floor?]] From a geographical perspective, our maps of the ocean floor are much less detailed than those covering Mars. (5km resolution for ocean floor, 100m resolution for Mars - radar doesn't work underwater). [[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.18|162.158.107.18]] 09:25, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

The current explanation says that there are an infinite number of chemicals. Is that true? Source? Explanation how that is possible?
Obviously the number of possible molecules is huge, but is it actually a literal, mathematical infinite? Given a finite observable universe, with presumably a finite number of atoms in it. There appear to be a finite number of elements which are stable for any appreciable amount of time and capable of forming molecules.
It seems like there might be practical limitations to the size of a molecule, so that you can't keep making bigger and bigger ones just by adding more atoms/subunits?
If you just keep adding carbon atoms to a diamond will you eventually reach a point where forces such as gravitation become a factor and the molecular bonds fail? I can imagine that long chain molecules light years long might reach point where other forces overwhelm the bond strength? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.76|108.162.246.76]] 09:10, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
:For obvious reasons, as long as you limit the number of atoms involved the number of possible "molecules" is - in a mathematical sense - finite. (As there is only a finite number of reasonable stable elements.) But already simple things like polymers can bind millions of atoms in a single molecule. Together with the possible variations intrinsic to such polymers a simple "material" like phenolic resin [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenol_formaldehyde_resin]] is a mixture of more different chemical compounds (in a strict sense) than mankind can ever describe. For all practical application this compexity is not relevant, so no one really cares about.
Additionally there is no clear boundary between typical molecules and other types of condensed matter, like crystals. Same applies to biochemistry. Does chemistry include bio-molecules? If yes, the chemistry guy have to include all the gene sequencing in their to-do list.

"how fast does light travel in one direction?" is not a good example for incompleteness in physics, because this question was settled by Michelson and Morley in the 19th century (answer: it travels with the speed of light)
: It's not clear to me either what was meant here - seems out of place.
:We know how fast light travels when it goes somewhere and comes back – that's ''c'' – but we don't know how fast it goes when only traveling in one direction. For example, light going at ''c''/2 in one direction and returning instantaneously in the other would still match our observations. We also can't reliably synchronize clocks over a distance because we'd either have to do it with a speed-of-light delay, or separate two clocks and find that relativity changed the timings. Of course, Occam's razor indicates that a consistent speed is more likely, but that's not proof. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.87|172.70.126.87]] 12:42, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
:Observing two points (nominal source and nominal destination) from a third point perpendicularly off the mid-point between thoss two points, at an arbitrary distance, you ought to see if there's slowness or instaneity involved (at least make a comparison between bidirectional traversal). This does not remove a response bias in the signal from either end as sent towards the recorder at the observation point, but as the stand-off is increased it makes both observation paths nearer and nearer to parallel and so significantly removes the quantifiable initial 'sideways bias' that may exist.
:I leave it as an excercise to the reader to produce the reasons why this might not practically work to quash all such 'inbuilt universal asymmetry', but it's a good start! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.141|172.70.90.141]] 13:21, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
:I genuinely don't understand the confusion being proposed here; in practice it's trivial to synchronize a single photon emitter with a single photon detector (such as a PMT) and confirm the speed of light across a single path, with no return trip involved. As far as I know there is know precidence in QM to suspect bidirectional travel could be a special case.
:I like Veritasium as much as the next guy, but I don't think that this one is a serious debate like the other examples. If you're going to consider something like this a great unsolved mystery in physics, I'm sure there are countless other questions just like this for almost every topic in physics and not everything can be a great unsolved mystery.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.23|172.70.134.23]] 17:37, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

To quote Randall Munroe in https://what-if.xkcd.com/114/, "The whole universe is matter, as far as we can tell. No one is sure why there is more matter than antimatter, since the laws of physics are pretty symmetrical, and there's no reason to expect there to be more of one than the other. Although when it comes down to it, there's no reason to expect anything at all." Antimatter aside, this shows that the laws of the universe are sometimes asymmetrical. I also like the point that "when it comes down to it, there's no reason to expect anything." Why should we expect the speed of light to be symmetrical? There's no real reason to. [[User:Beret|Beret]] ([[User talk:Beret|talk]]) 14:53, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
:On the contrary, without any such thing as the æther (the fundament through which we would be passing) there is no reason to expect the speed of light (in any given frame of reference) to be asymmetrical. Relativistic frame-dragging and other distortions due to (or resulting in!) accelerative forces will act accordingly, but not change ''c'' itself, in proper calculations, as a function to direction. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.12|172.70.86.12]] 16:02, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

::https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One-way_speed_of_light In any case, the point is that there is no reason to expect light speed to be symmetrical, either. Asymmetry in this case is not due to frame dragging, it would be some fundamental feature of photons or the universe. There is currently no experimental way to test this. [[User:Beret|Beret]] ([[User talk:Beret|talk]]) 17:00, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

Maybe we can cite one of some famous declarations of physicist saying the physics is almost done [https://nautil.us/blog/the-comforting-certainty-of-unanswered-questions (taken from this site)] :

:The British scientist William Cecil Dampier recalled his apprenticeship at Cambridge in the 1890s: “It seemed as though the main framework had been put together once for all, and that little remained to be done but to measure physical constants to the increased accuracy represented by another decimal place.” British physicist J. J. Thomson: “All that was left was to alter a decimal or two in some physical constant.” American physicist Albert A. Michelson: “Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals.”
:My physics professor from freshman year: "If you're ever in a room with physicists who say that the physics of Earth are done, and there's nothing else left to calculate, ask them "what about turbulence?". You'll be sure to get some dirty looks."[[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.122|108.162.246.122]] 21:08, 9 December 2021 (UTC)
--[[User:Marceluda|Marceluda]] ([[User talk:Marceluda|talk]]) 15:32, 9 December 2021 (UTC)

User talk:Slashme

2021-08-29T08:30:32Z

Slashme: /* New section */ typo

==New section==
Just so that I don't look like a noob with a redlinked talkpage. --[[User:Slashme|Slashme]] ([[User talk:Slashme|talk]]) 08:30, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

User talk:Slashme

2021-08-29T08:30:09Z

Slashme: cosmetic edit

==New section==
Just so that I don't look like a noob with a relinked talkpage. --[[User:Slashme|Slashme]] ([[User talk:Slashme|talk]]) 08:30, 29 August 2021 (UTC)

User:Slashme

2021-08-29T08:28:36Z

Slashme: link Wikipedia

Can frequently be seen on enwiki at [[:wikipedia:User:Slashme|User:Slashme]].

2506: Projecting

2021-08-29T08:25:05Z

Slashme: not foreshortened

{{comic
| number = 2506
| date = August 23, 2021
| title = Projecting
| image = projecting.png
| titletext = This is something we all need to work on, but especially you all.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by SOMEONE ALMOST AS BAD AT MAKING EXPLANATIONS AS YOU ARE! Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, [[Cueball]] expresses his difficulty with {{w|psychological projection}}. Projection is taking qualities of the self and attributing these qualities to others.

[[Cueball]] actually admits he has a ''real'' problem with projecting, but while doing so, he is seemingly oblivious to the fact, that he is stating this in a way that projects his self-identified difficulty upon his friends: [[Ponytail]], [[Megan]] and [[White Hat]]. Of course, this could also just be a joke made by Cueball, as it is the joke in the comic. On the other hand, Cueball and [[Randall]] have serious issues with [[:Category:Social interactions|social interactions]], and this could just be another example of such a problem.

In the title text, Cueball continues his projections, stating that ''this is something we all need to work on''. So he continues to believe that all the others have the same problem, not just a lot of them as in his original statement, which left the possibility that not all of them had this issue. In the end, he also tops it by saying ''but especially you all'' indicating that he imagines his own case is a less serious issue of projection than that he actually projects the others as having.

Alternatively, [[Cueball]] expresses his difficulty with {{w|complex numbers}}. There exists a common {{w|Stereographic_projection#First_formulation|projection}} between the complex and reals, but it may {{w|Stereographic_projection#Other_conventions|not be clear}} to him about which method to use or how to do it. If he is projecting onto the real part of the complex line, then his issue is a many-to-one problem, which explains why it is everyone else's problem as well.

An alternative perspective might be that the characters, as stick figures, are represented as two dimensional projections of three dimensional objects, and this projection has an issue that depth information is not preserved, so for example, it isn't clear whether cueball is facing towards us it away from us. As his arms are not foreshortened by the projection, this indicates that he is standing in an unnatural pose, so the fact that he says that especially the other characters have a problem with projection would be a good example of psychological projection.

A further alternative read could be that Cueball is acting as the Randall surrogate, noting that the other characters are projections of Randall's conscious and subconscious self. The title text could then be read as either directed to those aspects as expressed as characters within the comic; or could be addressed to the reader who also has things to work on.

A [https://www.definitions.net/definition/voice%20projection different] meaning of the term "Projecting" is seen in the fields of public speaking and drama, being the way that a person clearly uses their voice to address an audience. If Cueball is not projecting well, then the characters listening to him may ignore him.

Projection is an ongoing issue. People from disparate communities can experience this all the time, where one person assumes out of habit that the other person has the traits of their community. On the end of the spectrum, projection can be completely delusional, as the comic hints at. It would make sense for that be more common for people who attend less to where others are at, such as introverted or powerful people, two groups that experienced engineers can land in.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, and White Hat are standing. Cueball is talking, with arms outstretched, palms up, while the other three are looking at him.]
:Cueball: Like a lot of you, I have a real problem with projection.

{{comic discussion}}

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

2506: Projecting

2021-08-29T08:23:09Z

Slashme: 3D to 2D projection

{{comic
| number = 2506
| date = August 23, 2021
| title = Projecting
| image = projecting.png
| titletext = This is something we all need to work on, but especially you all.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by SOMEONE ALMOST AS BAD AT MAKING EXPLANATIONS AS YOU ARE! Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, [[Cueball]] expresses his difficulty with {{w|psychological projection}}. Projection is taking qualities of the self and attributing these qualities to others.

[[Cueball]] actually admits he has a ''real'' problem with projecting, but while doing so, he is seemingly oblivious to the fact, that he is stating this in a way that projects his self-identified difficulty upon his friends: [[Ponytail]], [[Megan]] and [[White Hat]]. Of course, this could also just be a joke made by Cueball, as it is the joke in the comic. On the other hand, Cueball and [[Randall]] have serious issues with [[:Category:Social interactions|social interactions]], and this could just be another example of such a problem.

In the title text, Cueball continues his projections, stating that ''this is something we all need to work on''. So he continues to believe that all the others have the same problem, not just a lot of them as in his original statement, which left the possibility that not all of them had this issue. In the end, he also tops it by saying ''but especially you all'' indicating that he imagines his own case is a less serious issue of projection than that he actually projects the others as having.

Alternatively, [[Cueball]] expresses his difficulty with {{w|complex numbers}}. There exists a common {{w|Stereographic_projection#First_formulation|projection}} between the complex and reals, but it may {{w|Stereographic_projection#Other_conventions|not be clear}} to him about which method to use or how to do it. If he is projecting onto the real part of the complex line, then his issue is a many-to-one problem, which explains why it is everyone else's problem as well.

An alternative perspective might be that the characters, as stick figures, are represented as two dimensional projections of three dimensional objects, and this projection has an issue that depth information is not preserved, so for example, it isn't clear whether cueball is facing towards us it away from us. As his arms are foreshortened by the projection, the fact that he says that especially the other characters have a problem with projection would be a good example of psychological projection.

A further alternative read could be that Cueball is acting as the Randall surrogate, noting that the other characters are projections of Randall's conscious and subconscious self. The title text could then be read as either directed to those aspects as expressed as characters within the comic; or could be addressed to the reader who also has things to work on.

A [https://www.definitions.net/definition/voice%20projection different] meaning of the term "Projecting" is seen in the fields of public speaking and drama, being the way that a person clearly uses their voice to address an audience. If Cueball is not projecting well, then the characters listening to him may ignore him.

Projection is an ongoing issue. People from disparate communities can experience this all the time, where one person assumes out of habit that the other person has the traits of their community. On the end of the spectrum, projection can be completely delusional, as the comic hints at. It would make sense for that be more common for people who attend less to where others are at, such as introverted or powerful people, two groups that experienced engineers can land in.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, and White Hat are standing. Cueball is talking, with arms outstretched, palms up, while the other three are looking at him.]
:Cueball: Like a lot of you, I have a real problem with projection.

{{comic discussion}}

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

2506: Projecting

2021-08-29T08:18:01Z

Slashme: ce

{{comic
| number = 2506
| date = August 23, 2021
| title = Projecting
| image = projecting.png
| titletext = This is something we all need to work on, but especially you all.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by SOMEONE ALMOST AS BAD AT MAKING EXPLANATIONS AS YOU ARE! Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In this comic, [[Cueball]] expresses his difficulty with {{w|psychological projection}}. Projection is taking qualities of the self and attributing these qualities to others.

[[Cueball]] actually admits he has a ''real'' problem with projecting, but while doing so, he is seemingly oblivious to the fact, that he is stating this in a way that projects his self-identified difficulty upon his friends: [[Ponytail]], [[Megan]] and [[White Hat]]. Of course, this could also just be a joke made by Cueball, as it is the joke in the comic. On the other hand, Cueball and [[Randall]] have serious issues with [[:Category:Social interactions|social interactions]], and this could just be another example of such a problem.

In the title text, Cueball continues his projections, stating that ''this is something we all need to work on''. So he continues to believe that all the others have the same problem, not just a lot of them as in his original statement, which left the possibility that not all of them had this issue. In the end, he also tops it by saying ''but especially you all'' indicating that he imagines his own case is a less serious issue of projection than that he actually projects the others as having.

Alternatively, [[Cueball]] expresses his difficulty with {{w|complex numbers}}. There exists a common {{w|Stereographic_projection#First_formulation|projection}} between the complex and reals, but it may {{w|Stereographic_projection#Other_conventions|not be clear}} to him about which method to use or how to do it. If he is projecting onto the real part of the complex line, then his issue is a many-to-one problem, which explains why it is everyone else's problem as well.

A further alternative read could be that Cueball is acting as the Randall surrogate, noting that the other characters are projections of Randall's conscious and subconscious self. The title text could then be read as either directed to those aspects as expressed as characters within the comic; or could be addressed to the reader who also has things to work on.

A [https://www.definitions.net/definition/voice%20projection different] meaning of the term "Projecting" is seen in the fields of public speaking and drama, being the way that a person clearly uses their voice to address an audience. If Cueball is not projecting well, then the characters listening to him may ignore him.

Projection is an ongoing issue. People from disparate communities can experience this all the time, where one person assumes out of habit that the other person has the traits of their community. On the end of the spectrum, projection can be completely delusional, as the comic hints at. It would make sense for that be more common for people who attend less to where others are at, such as introverted or powerful people, two groups that experienced engineers can land in.

==Transcript==
:[Ponytail, Cueball, Megan, and White Hat are standing. Cueball is talking, with arms outstretched, palms up, while the other three are looking at him.]
:Cueball: Like a lot of you, I have a real problem with projection.

{{comic discussion}}

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

2467: Wikipedia Caltrops

2021-05-24T20:24:28Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ iff is a bit strong here. There could be other reasons why it would work.

{{comic
| number = 2467
| date = May 24, 2021
| title = Wikipedia Caltrops
| image = wikipedia_caltrops.png
| titletext = Oh no, they set up a roadblock which is just a sign with the entire 'Czech hedgehog' article printed on it.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by A WIKIPEDIA CRAWL INEVITABLY REACHING "PHILOSOPHY". Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Wikipedia is a website that is notorious for having many links to other pages, which may result in a "wiki walk", a dilemma for [[Randall]] that has been discussed previously in [[214: The Problem with Wikipedia]] (and separately with TV Tropes in [[609: Tab Explosion]]).

The idea is that by dropping a series of interesting links, one could stop someone else's movement (provided that they are also easily distracted) as they take the time to go through them all. This is analogous to the {{w|caltrops}} mentioned in the title; caltrops are small, spiked implements that are scattered on a road to slow down someone pursuing you. Hence the title of ''Wikipedia Caltrops''.

This strategy is similar to a weaponized version of [[356: Nerd Sniping]], using the high levels of focus that tend to come along with nerdy interests against someone. Munroe apparently reasons that, because these links would stop him in his tracks, they might do the same for a given target.

[[Cueball|Cueball's]] car has a collection of Wikipedia links spilling out of the trunk, meant to stop [[Hairy]] who's in the following car. This will work, if Hairy is as easily distracted as Randall.

The links include:
* {{w|1808 mystery eruption}}: A conjectured volcanic eruption
* {{w|1916 Cumberland vs. Georgia Tech football game}}: The most uneven college football game in history
* {{w|1994 Caribbean Cup#Anomaly}}: A soccer game where group stage qualification rules had unintended consequences
* {{w|American death triangle}}: An unsafe type of rock climbing anchor
* {{w|AVE Mizar}}: A 1970s flying car
* {{w|Bald-hairy}}: A Russian political theory about state leaders' hairstyles
* {{w|Boeing YAL-1}}: A laser weapon mounted on a military aircraft
* {{w|Bubbly Creek}}: A stretch of river in Chicago featured in The Jungle
* {{w|Burned house horizon}}: An area where Neolithic people burned their settlements
* {{w|Defence Scheme No. 1}}: A 1920s plan for Canada to attack the USA
* {{w|Elsagate}}: A YouTube controversy involving inappropriate videos being categorised as child-friendly
* {{w|Fastest animals#Invertebrates}}: Very fast insects, and some squid
* {{w|Flying ice cube}}: An effect in molecular dynamics simulations
* {{w|Future of Earth#Introversion}}: A theory that the continents will all drift back together
* {{w|Hairy Hands}}: A ghost story in Dartmoor, England
* {{w|January 0}}: December 31st in some software programs
* {{w|List of fictional colors}}: Impossible colours in fiction
* {{w|List of unexplained sounds}}: Mostly detected by NOAA, includes the Bloop
* {{w|Talk:List of U.S. states and territories by elevation#Delaware - Ebright Azimuth}}: A user argues the highest point in Delaware isn't Ebright Azimuth, but a trailer park
* {{w|Mosquito laser}}: A proposed device for killing mosquitoes
* {{w|Pheasant Island}}: An island shared equally between France and Spain
* {{w|Time in Australia#Anomalies}}: Places in Australia which do not use the expected time zone
* {{w|Timeline of the far future}}: Scientific speculation
* {{w|Walkalong glider}}: A type of unpowered model aircraft

Mentioned in the title text, a "{{w|Czech hedgehog}}" is an anti-tank obstacle made of metal, and would be an effective roadblock, however a sign describing it would not impede most traffic, only for those distracted as easily as Randall.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball drives a car, followed by another car driven by Hairy. Cueball is leaning on the open window looking back as 24 large paper slips with Wikipedia links are flying out of the open trunk of the car. They extend to the front of Hairy's car, obscuring that all the way up to Hairy's position in the car. None of the links can be read in full, and only on a few can parts of the actual link be seen. Many has only part of the pages title visible, some parts are obstructed partly by other slips in front of them or they have not entirely left the trunk. In once case the link is so long that it has been split on two lines on a thicker slip. There is a large part of the link that cannot be seen after the first line, but the end of the second line can be seen as well. Here the (fairly) readable parts are give, roughly in normal reading order.]
:a.org/wiki/Elsagate
:wiki/Bubbly_Creek
:wiki/Pheasant_Island
:a.org/wiki/American_death_triangle
:List_of_fictional_colors
:/wiki/Future_of_Earth#Introversion
:pedia.org/wiki/Fastest_animals#Invertebrates
:ki/Defence_Scheme_No._1
:i/Boeing_YAL-1
:ki/Bald-hairy
:/Walkalong_glider
:Burned_house_horizon
:/wiki/AVE Mizar
:Flying_ice_cube
:Time in Australia#Anomalies:
:Unexplained_sounds
:Talk:List_of_U.S._states_and_
:::::Ebright_Azimuth
:Mosquito_laser
:January_0
:/1808_mystery_eruption
:/Hairy_Hands
:Cumberland_vs._Georgia_Tech_football_game
:Timeline_of_the_far_future
:/wiki/1994_Caribbean_Cup#Anomaly

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I have a collection of Wikipedia links to throw behind my car if I'm ever being chased by someone as easily distracted as me.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]

Talk:2347: Dependency

2020-08-19T21:50:47Z

Slashme: NTP

I worked for the Linux Foundation on the Core Infrastructure Initiative supporting OpenSSL and other projects. The one that scared me was Expat the XML parser maintained by two people on alternate Sunday afternoons assuming no other distractions. We did get funding for a test suite. Joe Biden was a supporter of LF and CII and was going to host a fund raiser for us at the White House until a perverse result.[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.222|141.101.98.222]] 22:46, 17 August 2020 (UTC)

== Relevance of Imagemagick? ==

Could someone perhaps add to the explanation an explanation of how this applies to Imagemagick (as mentioned in the title text)? —[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.174|108.162.219.174]] 22:58, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
:I don't use it myself, but it is a very versatile standalone utility that does a lot through command-line (batched) processing or can be accessed through actual API interface (I use GIMP tools that way, in automation, when not using it directly as a manual interface, but I understand there's a lot of love out there for IM). There's potentially untold uses for that, hidden in the background of other applications. If it disappeared or changed in just the wrong way, could perhaps half the CAPTCHA dialogues suddenly break? Could a self-driving car company find its vehicles are suddenly blind? We might suddenly have so many fewer Doge memes! (Wow! Much up-to-datedness! So topical!).
: In Randall's (or his characters') world, that is. In our world, I see someone mentioned Leftpad in the Explanation, which probably needs more Explanation (or else wikilinking) but is an interesting thing that actually happened in our world, albeit not ''quite'' armagg3don for society... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.131|162.158.154.131]] 23:22, 17 August 2020 (UTC)
: Imagemagick is the de-facto standard for Image processing. Since the 90's engineers were either adding support for new formats to ImageMagick or adding new language bindings for ImageMagick. This resulted in a single library that is available on almost every server and desktop platform and can read and write almost every image format. Using imageMagick is sometimes unwieldly. e.g. on nodeJS it actually spawns a sub-process to run imagemagick. But it is still the de-facto (and the only practical) choice in most cases.--[[User:Deepjoy|Deepjoy]] ([[User talk:Deepjoy|talk]]) 00:24, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
:: I would put emphasis on the "almost every image format" ... there are lot of alternative image libraries, but most only support handful of formats (often just jpeg, png and gif). Meanwhile, I suspect not even Gimp supports as many formats as ImageMagick ... and, of course, Gimp is not really usable as library OR for shelling-out. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:43, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

== from the late 2010s onwards? ==

I'm pretty sure re-use and modularization was a thing long before then. Maybe it got more popular in the 2010s, but it's been around since at least the '70s.
: The ideal of reusable code libraries has been around for nearly ever, but except for some popular Fortran statistics libraries I don't think it achieved widespread achievement until much later, e.g. CPAN. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 03:25, 18 August 2020 (UTC)p

The timezone database (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database#History) has been around since 1986. libc in various forms has been around as long as C has. Reuse and modularity is a fundamental principle of software engineering, and not an invention of the last few years. I'd just remove any mention of date.
: I think it's relatively recent that you can delete a file from one Web server and everything on the internet breaks. Dependencies are one thing, dependency on live updated resources is new. Because it's rather a bad idea. Incidentally overall... I think today's comic needs to be explained slower. Most people in the world are very unfamiliar with these concepts. Although coronavirus responses have taught a lot of us about "supply chains" that put stuff into shops for us to buy. Robert Carnegie rja.carnegie@excite.com [[Special:Contributions/141.101.69.87|141.101.69.87]] 10:18, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

:: While libc in various forms has been around as long as C has, it was never SINGULAR. Every version of C compiler had it's own version of C library maintained by different people. Even now there are alternatives to GNU libc. The timezone database might be better example. Also, reuse and modularity is fundamental principle, but reusing code maintained by someone else in project with bigger staff than that of such code is relatively recent. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:48, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

== This has happened before ==

It may be worth mentioning a case where this actually happened, like https://www.theregister.com/2016/03/23/npm_left_pad_chaos/ [[Special:Contributions/141.101.97.101|141.101.97.101]] 01:03, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

One particularly big risk that instantly came to mind is the timezone database, which is maintained by volunteers yet underpins basically everything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tz_database#Maintenance

I remember hearing about this a few years back at a Linux Foundation conference - the NTP daemon was underfunded (as I recall) and the one person maintaining it was struggling to pay bills. Losing NTP breaks an awful lot of things.... [[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.167|162.158.107.167]] 19:48, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

: I see this was [https://www.infoworld.com/article/3144546/time-is-running-out-for-ntp.html problem in 2016] ... I'm not able to find any update on the situation ... -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 00:10, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

:: [https://twit.tv/shows/floss-weekly/episodes/350 Nice long interview with Harlan Stenn, author/maintainer of NTP]. [[User:RandalSchwartz|RandalSchwartz]] ([[User talk:RandalSchwartz|talk]]) 05:56, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

== Some random person in Nebraska ==

Is the reference to a random person in Nebraska totally arbitrary, or is it a reference to someone in particular?

Also, it would be good to have examples of heavily used projects with very small (especially one person) maintainer teams. OpenSSL definitely comes to mind, from what I have read. [[User:Stevage|Stevage]] ([[User talk:Stevage|talk]]) 01:49, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

Nebraska came up in 1667, "Algorithms" as well.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.79.33|162.158.79.33]] 02:22, 18 August 2020 (UTC)
:Nebraska is... Well, I'm sure some Nebraskonians might have a more fully-fleshed out and accurate opinion of its subtleties, depth of culture(s?) and Diety-given geographic artisanship but viewed from further afield it is one of the contenders for "miles and miles of not much going on", or similar, peopled by people that largely live within that promise.
:It may be just a [https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Power_Cable meme of such a generality], as a brief look at a {{w|List_of_people_from_Nebraska|list of people from Nebraska}} tends to support the hypothesis that the ones who became significant (Astair, Brando, Carson...) probably did so only once they left.
:OTOH, there are (at least) four computing pioneers/developers mentioned among them, creator or authors of significant 'products', and maybe {{w|Sketchpad|one of these}} matches the (intellectual) dependency meme quite well - other than being written in Massachusetts. Or {{w|Blogger_(service)|this one}}, though that might have been LA-baked, maybe?
:I learnt [[1053|some interesting things]] when investigating this issue, just now. Cheers! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.142|108.162.229.142]] 09:54, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

== Microservices reference ==
Microservices reference is not related to this comic, as ImageMagick is monolith application. Also microservices are way of operating and deploying web services, not utility apps.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.103.177|162.158.103.177]] 07:56, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

:ImageMagick is a library. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 23:50, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

== The Thirty Million Line Problem ==
See [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZRE7HIO3vk The Thirty Million Line Problem]. Randall's drawing looks like a house of cards on the verge of collapse. In the video, Casey talks about how the lack of a "hardware ISA" causes critical software (like OS'es and browsers) to bloat like crazy (a "hardware ISA" would be a standard for how hardware works, just like the x86 ISA is a standard for how an x86 CPU works, that both AMD and Intel agrees on). Also, he mentions how fragile and broken software is due to this "Thirty Million Line" bloat.
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.167|162.158.107.167]] 19:48, 18 August 2020 (UTC)

:Based on [https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/8iyqk9/the_thirty_million_line_problem/ related discussion], that's a VERY bad video: he may have a point, but it takes VERY long time before he gets to it. I'm not going to watch it that long myself. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 00:03, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

:This reminds me of that old joke: If carpenters built buildings the same way programmers made programs, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

== "Famous" Left Pad Incident ==
The "famous" left-pad incident in JavaScript's package manager could use some elaboration for those of us for which it isn't. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.89|162.158.107.89]] 02:42, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

== Loadsharers ==
There is an initiative by Eric Raymond targeted specifically to mitigate this problem. 
Article: https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/loadsharers-funding-load-bearing-internet-person 
Website: https://esr.gitlab.io/loadsharers/ &emsp; — [[User:Smartchair|Smartchair]] ([[User talk:Smartchair|talk]]) 16:20, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

==NTP==
The [https://www.informationweek.com/it-life/ntp-harlan-stenn-and-an-uncertain-future-readers-react/d/d-id/1319521 Network Time Protocol] is also a great example. --[[User:Slashme|Slashme]] ([[User talk:Slashme|talk]]) 21:50, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

2171: Shadow Biosphere

2019-07-03T21:00:47Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ Desert varnish

{{comic
| number = 2171
| date = July 3, 2019
| title = Shadow Biosphere
| image = shadow_biosphere.png
| titletext = The typical Shadow Biology Department is housed in a building coated in a thin layer of desert varnish which renders it invisible to normal-world university staff.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by SCP-SHADOW BIOLOGIST. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A {{w|shadow biosphere}} is a hypothetical microbial {{w|biosphere}} of Earth that uses radically different biochemical and molecular processes than currently known life. Although life on Earth is relatively well-studied, the shadow biosphere may still remain unnoticed because the exploration of the microbial world targets primarily the biochemistry of the macro-organisms.

Because organisms based on RNA would not have ribosomes, which are usually used to detect living microorganisms, they would be difficult to find in normal circumstances.

The comic suggests that this hypothetical biosphere exists, and its study is funded by "shadow" biotech corporations, but anyone that studies it becomes undetectable.

The title text references {{w|desert varnish}}, an orange-yellow to black coating found on exposed rock surfaces in arid environments, which has been suggested as a potential candidate for a shadow biosphere. Although it is impossible to cover a building in desert varnish, the joke is that if a building were covered in desert varnish, it would be invisible to biologists who don't study the shadow biosphere.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball and Megan are standing opposite of each other. A shadowy figure is behind Megan.]
:Shadowy Figure: These days most of our funding comes in from the shadow biotech industry.
:Megan: Did you hear something?
:Cueball: I think it's the wind.
:Caption below panel: The shadow biosphere exists, but if you study it, you become a shadow biologist.

{{comic discussion}}

2171: Shadow Biosphere

2019-07-03T16:27:28Z

Slashme: Typo

{{comic
| number = 2171
| date = July 3, 2019
| title = Shadow Biosphere
| image = shadow_biosphere.png
| titletext = The typical Shadow Biology Department is housed in a building coated in a thin layer of desert varnish which renders it invisible to normal-world university staff.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by SCP-SHADOW BIOLOGIST. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
A shadow biosphere is a hypothetical microbial biosphere of Earth that uses radically different biochemical and molecular processes than currently known life. Although life on Earth is relatively well-studied, the shadow biosphere may still remain unnoticed because the exploration of the microbial world targets primarily the biochemistry of the macro-organisms.

Because organisms based on RNA would not have ribosomes, which are usually used to detect living microorganisms, they would be difficult to find in normal circumstances.

The comic suggests that this hypothetical biosphere exists, and its study is funded by shadow biotech corporations, but anyone that studies it becomes undetectable.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball and Megan are standing opposite of each other. A shadowy figure is behind Megan.]
:Figure: These days most of our funding comes in from the shadow biotech industry.
:Megan: Did you hear something?
:Cueball: I think it's the wind.
:The shadow biosphere exists, but if you study it, you become a shadow biologist.

{{comic discussion}}

1537: Types

2019-04-29T04:59:28Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ formatting

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

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

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

<code>> 2 + 3 5

> "123" + "abc" "123abc"</code>

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1836: Okeanos

2017-05-12T09:18:24Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ This has nothing to do with "fake news".

{{comic
| number = 1836
| date = May 12, 2017
| title = Okeanos
| image = okeanos.png
| titletext = WHEN I WAS ON A BOAT I DROPPED MY PHONE CAN U LOOK FOR IT
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete| First edit.}}
The {{w|NOAAS_Okeanos_Explorer_(R_337)|NOAAS Okeanos Explorer}}, named after the Greek (and Roman) personification of the sea {{w|Okeanos}}, is a vessel that is currently exploring the Central Pacific Basin. It livestreams the video feed [http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/okeanos/media/exstream/exstream.html] of its deep sea exploration online.

This comic seems to be a representation of the livestream on YouTube [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmVT36Axtn0]. The chat section for the actual livestream is disabled, but the comic adds some humoristic examples of what the chat section would look like.
Randall mentioned the ridiculousness of comments on YouTube before in [[202: YouTube]] and [[481: Listen to Yourself]].

Randall states that he likes to view the stream and commends them on disabling the chat section.

{| class="wikitable"
!Comment
!Explanation
|-
| Fake
| A very common YouTube comment expressing skepticism, for example saying that the content is edited or computer generated.
|-
| Who else is watching this in 2017?
| This type of comment appears frequently on videos, as a kind of community bonding over discovering or revisiting older content. It is not relevant here, as this is a live feed in 2017.
|-
| Is this prerendered or will these graphics be in the game?
| Commenter probably thinks this is a trailer for a game with hyperrealistic graphics.
|-
| That squid is neoliberal.
| Political commenter.
|-
| Why do the McElroy's never talk?
| (McElroy's is a seafood restaurant. ???) McElroy's brother are podcasters, and never talk about their mom?
|-
| Stop messing around and eat the fish already.
| Possibly a gamer or food vlog watcher.
|-
| This is why Trump won.
| Another political commenter.
|-
| Why do you never craft anything?
| Minecraft comment.
|-
| This is just a distraction
| Commenter thinks people should be focused on other things which are more important. Possibly political comment. Possibly conspiracy theorist.
|-
| Something is wrong with that baby giraffe.
| A video of a giraffe giving birth was viral in April 2017. This commenter is apparently confused about which video they're watching, and is concerned that the creature on screen (a jellyfish) looks unlike a healthy baby giraffe.
|}
The title text is a comment by someone who allegedly lost their phone in the ocean, which is not a small place{{Citation needed}} and wants to use Okeanos' resources to find it.

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

{{comic discussion}}

1827: Survivorship Bias

2017-04-25T05:44:30Z

Slashme: /* Trivia */ antecedent is clear

{{comic
| number = 1827
| date = April 21, 2017
| title = Survivorship Bias
| image = survivorship_bias.png
| titletext = They say you can't argue with results, but what kind of defeatist attitude is that? If you stick with it, you can argue with ANYTHING.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a parody of entrepreneurial speeches. Entrepreneurial speeches are talks, such as graduation commencements or motivational speeches. The idea behind graduation commencements is that the entrepreneur, having accumulated wisdom and experience in the process of becoming successful, will share his insights and experience to the students, in the hope that they learn lessons that will help them achieve success as well. Companies hire motivational speakers to motivate employees to work hard.

A common theme in these talks is that the entrepreneur succeeded by persisting through hardship, sometimes despite other people telling them they would be better off giving up. They advise students to do the same, and to keep pursuing their dreams even through subsequent failure. While this isn't necessarily bad business advice, this can give students a biased vision of reality, and lead them to imagine that they will succeed as long as they keep trying.

This comic makes a joke about survivorship bias, hence the title. {{w|Survivorship bias}}, or survival bias, is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently [[#Trivia|overlooking those]] that did not because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways. The survivors may be actual people, as in a medical study, or could be companies or research subjects or applicants for a job, or anything that must make it past some selection process to be considered further. They may also have "survived" on only some of their attempts. For example, although Donald Trump had many successful businesses, he also had some that went bankrupt.

In this comic [[Hairy]] is giving a talk encouraging people to "never stop buying {{w|lottery}} tickets". This is an unwise investment plan, because the chances of winning the lottery are mathematically very low and the total payout is usually less than the total ticket sales, meaning the expected return from buying a lottery ticket is ([[#Trivia|almost]]) always negative. Survivorship bias applies in this situation since people who eventually win (and, presumably, win more than they've spent on lottery tickets in the time that it took them to win) are much more likely to give inspirational speeches than someone who never won or didn't win enough to make the "investment" worthwhile.

The obvious bad strategy (keep buying lottery tickets) is a metaphor for strategies that successful entrepreneurs recommend (keep persisting and putting money into your start-up); these strategies may be bad on average, but people who pursued them and succeeded are much more likely to be invited and give speeches than people who pursued them and went bankrupt (or people who pursued safer strategies and kept their money), making it appear to students that taking high risks and persisting in the face of expensive failure is the optimal strategy. And those who have done both, such as Trump, are more likely to speak about the successes than the failures and bankruptcies.

[[Randall]] says in the caption below the panel that people should be informed about survivorship bias before hearing inspirational talks from successful people.

The title text says "They say you can't argue with results, but what kind of defeatist attitude is that? If you stick with it, you can argue with ANYTHING." In the comic, the speaker's "result" was winning the lottery. Pointing out the survivorship bias is Randall effectively arguing with results, by pointing out that they were obtained randomly, and that it ignores all the other people who may have (foolishly) followed this same process, but never won the lottery. Taken a step further, one could use the survivorship bias to argue against the results of any process, be it research (Any given research process is bound to produce SOME good results, and since those are the only ones published, it is difficult to determine if the research process itself contributed to the good results), business decisions (Some businesses fail, and others succeed, but since only the successful ones stick around, it can be difficult to determine WHY they failed or succeeded), etc..

==Transcript==
:[Hairy, holding an arm out towards an unseen crowd, is standing on a podium with five large bags around him, each having a dollar sign on it.]
:Hairy: Never stop buying lottery tickets, no matter what anyone tells you.
:Hairy: I failed again and again, but I never gave up. I took extra jobs and poured the money into tickets.
:Hairy: And here I am, proof that if you put in the time, it pays off!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Every inspirational speech by someone successful should have to start with a disclaimer about survivorship bias.

==Trivia==
*Lottery with '''positive return''':
**When item prizes are donated to a lottery (for charity or advertising purposes), sometimes the value of those items may actually be larger than the total price for all of the lottery tickets, if you otherwise would be willing to pay full price for all the prizes.
**In some lotteries, if the jackpot gets too big -- or goes for too many drawings -- without anyone winning it, the jackpot amount gets "rolled down" and distributed across the lower prize levels. These can have a positive return on average -- but ''only'' on the drawings where the jackpot rolls down. People have formed investment groups to buy hundreds of thousands of tickets to exploit these; several such groups repeatedly profited from Massachusetts's {{w|Massachusetts_Lottery#Cash Winfall|Cash WinFall}} game especially. (The Massachusetts State Lottery has an official report ([http://www.mass.gov/ig/publications/reports-and-recommendations/2012/lottery-cash-winfall-letter-july-2012.pdf PDF, 144 KB]) on how such high-volume betting affected the game.)
*'''Examples''' of survivorship bias:
**Diogenes was shown paintings of people who had escaped shipwreck: "Look, you who think the gods have no care of human things, what do you say to so many persons preserved from death by their especial favour?", to which he replied: "Why, I say that their pictures are not here who were cast away, who are by much the greater number."
**Many people {{w|Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act|were smoking}} back in the 1930-70s, thus almost everyone above 80 either smoked cigarettes or was at least subjected to massive passive smoking during those years. Thus anyone above that age could be claimed to prove that you can live a long life while smoking. But they consist of the small group of people that survived in spite of all the smoke, where large sections of those that would have been 80 today, died from cancer or heart disease caused by smoking, long ago, maybe even before they retired. But since these people are dead and gone many years ago, they do not speak up,{{Citation needed}} and are thus the silent majority that is not heard, which is the problem with survivorship bias.
**During World War II, there was a study of the damage done to aircraft, and the recommendation was to add armor to the areas that showed the most damage. The statistician {{w|Abraham Wald}} noticed that the study didn't take into account aircraft that ''didn't'' return: the holes in the returning aircraft thus represented areas where a bomber could take damage and still return home safely.
***Wald and his wife died in an airplane crash...
**Anything created by an Earth-human in this universe. We think it's because we're special, rather than being special because we're here/we survived.
*In the title text, "defeatist" was originally misspelled as "defeatest". This was later corrected.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Public speaking]]

1827: Survivorship Bias

2017-04-25T05:43:45Z

Slashme: /* Trivia */ oldest known description of survivor "ship" bias

{{comic
| number = 1827
| date = April 21, 2017
| title = Survivorship Bias
| image = survivorship_bias.png
| titletext = They say you can't argue with results, but what kind of defeatist attitude is that? If you stick with it, you can argue with ANYTHING.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a parody of entrepreneurial speeches. Entrepreneurial speeches are talks, such as graduation commencements or motivational speeches. The idea behind graduation commencements is that the entrepreneur, having accumulated wisdom and experience in the process of becoming successful, will share his insights and experience to the students, in the hope that they learn lessons that will help them achieve success as well. Companies hire motivational speakers to motivate employees to work hard.

A common theme in these talks is that the entrepreneur succeeded by persisting through hardship, sometimes despite other people telling them they would be better off giving up. They advise students to do the same, and to keep pursuing their dreams even through subsequent failure. While this isn't necessarily bad business advice, this can give students a biased vision of reality, and lead them to imagine that they will succeed as long as they keep trying.

This comic makes a joke about survivorship bias, hence the title. {{w|Survivorship bias}}, or survival bias, is the logical error of concentrating on the people or things that "survived" some process and inadvertently [[#Trivia|overlooking those]] that did not because of their lack of visibility. This can lead to false conclusions in several different ways. The survivors may be actual people, as in a medical study, or could be companies or research subjects or applicants for a job, or anything that must make it past some selection process to be considered further. They may also have "survived" on only some of their attempts. For example, although Donald Trump had many successful businesses, he also had some that went bankrupt.

In this comic [[Hairy]] is giving a talk encouraging people to "never stop buying {{w|lottery}} tickets". This is an unwise investment plan, because the chances of winning the lottery are mathematically very low and the total payout is usually less than the total ticket sales, meaning the expected return from buying a lottery ticket is ([[#Trivia|almost]]) always negative. Survivorship bias applies in this situation since people who eventually win (and, presumably, win more than they've spent on lottery tickets in the time that it took them to win) are much more likely to give inspirational speeches than someone who never won or didn't win enough to make the "investment" worthwhile.

The obvious bad strategy (keep buying lottery tickets) is a metaphor for strategies that successful entrepreneurs recommend (keep persisting and putting money into your start-up); these strategies may be bad on average, but people who pursued them and succeeded are much more likely to be invited and give speeches than people who pursued them and went bankrupt (or people who pursued safer strategies and kept their money), making it appear to students that taking high risks and persisting in the face of expensive failure is the optimal strategy. And those who have done both, such as Trump, are more likely to speak about the successes than the failures and bankruptcies.

[[Randall]] says in the caption below the panel that people should be informed about survivorship bias before hearing inspirational talks from successful people.

The title text says "They say you can't argue with results, but what kind of defeatist attitude is that? If you stick with it, you can argue with ANYTHING." In the comic, the speaker's "result" was winning the lottery. Pointing out the survivorship bias is Randall effectively arguing with results, by pointing out that they were obtained randomly, and that it ignores all the other people who may have (foolishly) followed this same process, but never won the lottery. Taken a step further, one could use the survivorship bias to argue against the results of any process, be it research (Any given research process is bound to produce SOME good results, and since those are the only ones published, it is difficult to determine if the research process itself contributed to the good results), business decisions (Some businesses fail, and others succeed, but since only the successful ones stick around, it can be difficult to determine WHY they failed or succeeded), etc..

==Transcript==
:[Hairy, holding an arm out towards an unseen crowd, is standing on a podium with five large bags around him, each having a dollar sign on it.]
:Hairy: Never stop buying lottery tickets, no matter what anyone tells you.
:Hairy: I failed again and again, but I never gave up. I took extra jobs and poured the money into tickets.
:Hairy: And here I am, proof that if you put in the time, it pays off!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Every inspirational speech by someone successful should have to start with a disclaimer about survivorship bias.

==Trivia==
*Lottery with '''positive return''':
**When item prizes are donated to a lottery (for charity or advertising purposes), sometimes the value of those items may actually be larger than the total price for all of the lottery tickets, if you otherwise would be willing to pay full price for all the prizes.
**In some lotteries, if the jackpot gets too big -- or goes for too many drawings -- without anyone winning it, the jackpot amount gets "rolled down" and distributed across the lower prize levels. These can have a positive return on average -- but ''only'' on the drawings where the jackpot rolls down. People have formed investment groups to buy hundreds of thousands of tickets to exploit these; several such groups repeatedly profited from Massachusetts's {{w|Massachusetts_Lottery#Cash Winfall|Cash WinFall}} game especially. (The Massachusetts State Lottery has an official report ([http://www.mass.gov/ig/publications/reports-and-recommendations/2012/lottery-cash-winfall-letter-july-2012.pdf PDF, 144 KB]) on how such high-volume betting affected the game.)
*'''Examples''' of survivorship bias:
**Diogenes was shown paintings of people who had escaped shipwreck: "Look, you who think the gods have no care of human things, what do you say to so many persons preserved from death by their especial favour?", to which Diogenes replied: "Why, I say that their pictures are not here who were cast away, who are by much the greater number."
**Many people {{w|Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act|were smoking}} back in the 1930-70s, thus almost everyone above 80 either smoked cigarettes or was at least subjected to massive passive smoking during those years. Thus anyone above that age could be claimed to prove that you can live a long life while smoking. But they consist of the small group of people that survived in spite of all the smoke, where large sections of those that would have been 80 today, died from cancer or heart disease caused by smoking, long ago, maybe even before they retired. But since these people are dead and gone many years ago, they do not speak up,{{Citation needed}} and are thus the silent majority that is not heard, which is the problem with survivorship bias.
**During World War II, there was a study of the damage done to aircraft, and the recommendation was to add armor to the areas that showed the most damage. The statistician {{w|Abraham Wald}} noticed that the study didn't take into account aircraft that ''didn't'' return: the holes in the returning aircraft thus represented areas where a bomber could take damage and still return home safely.
***Wald and his wife died in an airplane crash...
**Anything created by an Earth-human in this universe. We think it's because we're special, rather than being special because we're here/we survived.
*In the title text, "defeatist" was originally misspelled as "defeatest". This was later corrected.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Public speaking]]

1828: ISS Solar Transit

2017-04-25T05:37:35Z

Slashme: White balance is rather irrelevant if you're shooting raw.

{{comic
| number = 1828
| date = April 24, 2017
| title = ISS Solar Transit
| image = iss_solar_transit.png
| titletext = I guess it's also the right setting for pictures of the Moon at night.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[[Cueball]] is trying to take a photograph of the {{w|International Space Station}} moving in front of the sun ([https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/international-space-station-transits-the-sun example]).

A normal camera is not able to take a photograph of the sun due to the extreme brightness. This is why Cueball is using a {{w|Astronomical_filter|solar filter}}, which makes the sun look orange instead of white.

Digital cameras need to determine the color temperature of a photograph to correctly display colors. This is done using the {{w|Color_balance|white balance}} setting. The joke here is that Cueball selects the "direct sunlight" option, as he feels it is the option that best suits his unusual situation of directly photographing the sun, even though the "direct sunlight" setting is intended to be used for photographing objects directly illuminated by the sun and not for the sun itself.

The light that reaches the camera sensor from an object illuminated by "direct sunlight" is, in fact, ''indirect'' sunlight, so when photographing the sun itself, the camera receives sunlight that is even more direct than "direct".

The use of a solar filter influences the color temperature, so "custom" would probably be the correct option here. A camera using the "custom" option usually requires you to focus on a white or gray object first to determine the correct setting. The camera depicted in the comic seems to be a DSLR, which would be able to capture "raw" images, allowing the user to adjust the white balance afterwards in software.

The title text is pointing out that the sunlit side of the moon is also in direct sunlight, which is why we are able to see it, and so "direct sunlight" would actually be the correct setting in this case.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball is kneeling in front of a camera attached to a tripod, standing on a small platform, and angled sharply upward toward the sky.]
:Off-screen voice: What's going on?
:Cueball: ISS solar transit. From this spot, the space station should briefly line up with the sun. I got a sun filter and I'm trying to take a picture of it crossing.

:[Image of a very orange sun on a black background, as seen through the camera.]

:Cueball: Perfect. Hmm, I should set the white balance.

:[White balance menu is shown with the following options:]
: - Incandescent
: - Fluorescent
: - Direct sunlight
: - Flash
: - Cloudy
: - Shade
: - Custom

:[Cueball pauses to think.]
:[Selects Direct sunlight.]

{{comic discussion}}

1820: Security Advice

2017-04-06T09:18:54Z

Slashme: /* Security Tip Explanations */ Grammar / clarity

{{comic
| number = 1820
| date = April 5, 2017
| title = Security Advice
| image = security_advice.png
| titletext = Never give your password or bank account number to anyone who doesn't have a blue check mark next to their name.
}}

==Explanation==

The comic depicts a conversation between [[Cueball]] and [[Ponytail]], discussing the fact that giving people security advice in the past has failed to improve their internet security, and in some cases even made things worse. One such example is telling people to create complicated passwords containing numbers and symbols, which not only made the passwords harder to remember (leading people to create huge security risks by [https://arstechnica.com/security/2015/04/hacked-french-network-exposed-its-own-passwords-during-tv-interview/ leaving post-it notes with their passwords on their computer monitor]), but did not actually make those passwords harder to crack (see [[936: Password Strength]]).

As a result, Cueball suggests using {{w|reverse psychology}} and give out bad advice instead, in hopes of achieving a positive effect. The last panel contains a list these security tips, which are parodies of actual security tips.

===Security Tip Explanations===
{| class="wikitable"
!Security Tip
!Explanation
|-
|Print out this list and keep in in your bank safe deposit box (header)
|This is a standard recommendation for documents that must be kept secure because they are irreplaceable and/or contain sensitive information. However this list itself is easily replaceable and the contents will be well-known, so storing it in a safe place is totally unnecessary. Putting it in a safe deposit box would even be counterproductive since the list can only serve its purpose as a ready reminder if it's easily accessible to everyone.
|-
|Don't click links to websites
|The usual tip is "Don't click on ''suspicious'' website links" or "Don't click any links in suspicious emails". The comic's variation instead tells users not to click on any links to any websites, which essentially stops them from using the world wide web altogether.
|-
|Use prime numbers in your password
|It is usually recommended that one uses numbers in one's password, to increase its entropy, making it harder to {{w|Brute-force attack|brute force}}. In contrast the comic suggests using {{w|prime numbers}} in one's password. Large prime numbers are an essential part of modern cryptography and security systems, when used in algorithms that are computed by machines. They don't have any effect when used by humans in passwords, except for maybe making it harder to remember. In addition, if people were to regularly use prime numbers in their passwords, it would actually make passwords ''easier'' to guess, as it would substantially reduce the number of possible passwords people may choose from.
|-
|Change your password manager monthly
|It is often recommended to change passwords on a regular basis and to use a {{w|password manager}}. Password managers are programs which can help users create, store, and change their passwords easily and securely. Changing password managers monthly would involve copying all stored passwords from one manager to another, which would be quite impractical and has no security benefit.
|-
|Hold your breath while crossing the border
|At some border crossings, government agents may search computers, cell phones, and other electronic devices. The usual advice for such situations ranges from asserting your rights to resetting all devices and deleting all data prior to crossing a border. Holding one's breath can potentially prevent inhaling germs or poisons in some situations, though useless in the context of computer security. These two topics mixed in the same advice won't achieve anything, but if you hold your breath for too long you could pass out when crossing, or look stressed/suspicious and invite even more scrutiny. This could also be a reference to the superstition of holding one's breath when passing a graveyard.
|-
|Install a secure font
|A real tip might be "Install a secure browser" especially when many people used {{w|Internet Explorer 6}}. Using a different font on a computer would not help one's internet security. Reference to Turing-complete kerning specification language in OpenType fonts. May also refer to [https://www.proofpoint.com/us/threat-insight/post/EITest-Nabbing-Chrome-Users-Chrome-Font-Social-Engineering-Scheme Google Chrome "Install missing font" malware].
|-
|Use a 2-factor smoke detector
|{{w|Multi-factor authentication|Two factor authentication}} describes the practice of using two different identification factors (such as a password and a code from a secure token) to authenticate the user. A two factor smoke detector presumably uses two or more factors to identify ''smoke'' (such as {{w|Smoke_detector#Ionization|ionization}} and {{w|Smoke_detector#Photoelectric|photoelectric}}). Such devices [http://alarmspecs.com actually exist], but, while improving the users general safety, they do nothing to improve their internet security.

Also, the logic behind using two-factor authentication is that '''both''' types of credentials must match to grant access. Smoke detectors work otherwise - '''any''' of the sensors cause the alarm. If the smoke detector worked according to the authentication logic it will be less likely to detect smoke, effectively lessening fire safety as compared to a single sensor one.
|-
|Change your maiden name regularly
|The usual tip is to change your passwords regularly. Some password recovery procedures ask for a security question, like "what is your maiden name" (which is the family name that you were born with). Sometimes, maiden name of a parent of yours (typically your mother as your father's maiden name is most often your name too) is asked instead of one of yours. Since it acts as a second password, it should also be changed regularly. Changing it, however, would be very difficult or even impossible, even more so on a regular basis. Also, maiden names and other trivia typically asked by security questions are not secret, so they are inherently not secure.
A real tip for dealing with security questions would be to enter false data.
|-
|Put strange USB drives in a bag of rice overnight
|The usual security tip is "Don't plug strange USB drives into your computer," because sometimes attackers leave USB devices with malicious programs lying around, hoping that people will plug them into target computers out of curiosity. This tip states that you should "put USB drives in a bag of rice overnight" which is a common technique for drying out water damaged devices, due to rice's absorbent qualities. This would not clean the drive of viruses, and unless the drive was wet (perhaps because you found it outside due to it being called "strange") it would not do anything. In [[1598: Salvage]], another attempt is made to salvage something unconventional with rice.
|-
|Use special characters like & and %
|You can use special characters to increase the entropy/strength of your password, though as describe in [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/936:_Password_Strength xkcd 936], that often leads to passwords that are hard to remember but not particularly strong. The password context is missing here, and in everyday situations the characters & and % are not special. These two characters are often disallowed in passwords because of their relevance to {{w|SQL}} (a common database query language). If these characters were used in a password, a badly written security system using SQL could have severe bugs (and security vulnerabilities) similar to the security flaw in [[327: Exploits of a Mom]].
|-
|Only read content published through Tor.com
|[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tor_(anonymity_network) Tor] is a software solution to provide anonymity on the web for its users. The website [https://tor.com Tor.com] is the website of fantasy and sci-fi book publisher Tor, which has no relation to the Tor-network.
|-
|Use a burner's phone
|A play on using a burner phone (a cheap/disposable cell phone like those purchased at 7-11, often used for drug deals or other activity one might not want traced), and using the cell phone of a burner, i.e. a person who goes to the Burning Man festival.
|-
|Get an SSL certificate and store it in a safe place
|SSL/TLS is a protocol for securing connections on the internet. To check if someone is who he claims to be you can check the individual's certificate. Such a certificate has to be public, storing it in a safe place makes the certificate useless. You have to store the private key that matches the certificate in a safe place, else someone could steal the identity.
|-
|If a border guard asks to examine your laptop, you have a legal right to challenge them to a chess game for your soul.
|This tip is a reference to Ingmar Bergman's film {{w|The Seventh Seal#Synopsis| The Seventh Seal}}, in which the protagonist challenges Death to a game of chess. (This is also the theme of [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/393 393: Ultimate game]).
|-
|Never give your password or bank account number to anyone who doesn't have a blue check mark next to their name. (Title Text)
|The usual security tip here is ''"only trust twitter accounts claiming to be legitimate if they have a blue check mark next to their name"'', which means that the account is verified as legitimate. This tip suggests only giving your ''password'' to verified accounts, although you shouldn't give your password to ''any'' account. It also refers to problems especially visible in the US banking system, where there is very little security for direct account drafts, and because of that it is advised there to keep the account number as secret as possible. In contrast, in Europe giving your account number to someone is one of the most common ways to get paid.

A related tip might be ""Never give your password or bank details to a website that doesn't have a padlock icon next to the URL"". In some browsers, if you access a secure website, there will be a padlock icon in the browser indicating you've connected to a secure website using the secure https protocol. So this tip treats the verified account icon the same way you might treat a secure website icon.
|}

==Transcript==

:Ponytail: We've been trying for decades to give people good security advice.
:Ponytail: But in retrospect, lots of the tips actually made things worse.

:Cueball: Maybe we should try to give ''bad'' advice?
:Ponytail: I guess it's worth a shot.

:Security tips
:(Print out this list and keep it in your bank safe deposit box.)
* Don't click links to websites
* Use prime numbers in your password
* Change your password manager monthly
* Hold your breath while crossing the border
* Install a secure font
* Use a 2-factor smoke detector
* Change your maiden name regularly
* Put strange USB drives in a bag of rice overnight
* Use special characters like & and %
* Only read content published through Tor.com
* Use a burner's phone
* Get an SSL certificate and store it in a safe place
* If a border guard asks to examine your laptop, you have a legal right to challenge them to a chess game for your soul.

{{comic discussion}}

1808: Hacking

2017-03-08T13:04:49Z

Slashme: Typo

{{comic
| number = 1808
| date = March 8, 2017
| title = Hacking
| image = hacking.png
| titletext = The dump also contains a list of millions of prime factors, a 0-day Tamagotchi exploit, and a technique for getting gcc and bash to execute arbitrary code.
}}

==Explanation==
While publishing email addresses on websites, people often add space between parts of the email. For example, john.doe@example.org may be written as john dot doe at example dot org. This is to prevent the page scraping bots from harvesting email addresses, which may in turn be sold as address lists for email marketers.

In this comic, [[Ponytail]] tells [[Cueball]] that there is a tool which can delete such spaces. Such a tool can fix the space and most likely convert the words "dot" and "at" into their respective symbols. This will overcome the problems faced by such harvesting tools, and make these email addresses more prone to receive spam. Cueball is shocked to hear this news.

This comic is referencing a leak by {{w|WikiLeaks}} that compromises thousands of hacking exploits and programs from the CIA on the day before this comic was released, March 7 2017.

The title text references more interesting-sounding, but useless, parts of the dump:
* millions of prime factors: {{w|Prime factorization}} can be used to break a {{w|RSA (cryptosystem)|RSA cipher}} by turning a large number into prime factors: this is a very hard problem, which is what makes the cipher secure. A list with many prime factors, however, is easy to generate, and the chance of one of the numbers on the list being a prime factor for the number used in the RSA cipher is very slim.
* a 0-day exploit for {{w|Tamagotchi|Tamagotchis}}: a 0-day exploit is an exploit of which the manufacturer is not (yet) aware. While modern Tamagotchis do have some network functionality, this is likely useless because Tamagotchis are very low-end devices that do not contain microphones or cameras. There is some truly excellent work in this space on Natalie's page at http://natashenka.ca/ which is a must-read (and as this comic was published on International Women's day, today is a fine day to start if you have not already).
* a way to get {{w|GNU_Compiler_Collection|gcc}} and {{w|Bash_(Unix_shell)|bash}} to execute arbitrary code: gcc is a {{w|compiler}}, so preparing arbitrary code is its main purpose, and bash is a Unix shell, so executing {{w|Shell script|arbitrary code}} is one of its functions.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball looks over Ponytail's shoulder at her desk.]
:Ponytail: You know how sometimes people put a space in their email address to make it harder to harvest?
:Cueball: Yeah?
:Ponytail: ''They have a tool that can delete the space!''
:Cueball: Oh my god.

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Less-dramatic revelations from the CIA hacking dump

{{comic discussion}}

1732: Earth Temperature Timeline

2016-09-13T08:19:19Z

Slashme: Grammar

{{comic
| number = 1732
| date = September 12, 2016
| title = Earth Temperature Timeline
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = earth_temperature_timeline.png
| titletext = [After setting your car on fire] Listen, your car's temperature has changed before.
}}

==Explanation==
{{TOC}}
{{incomplete|[[#Table of all elements|Table for explanations]] now ready to be filled out. Please remove this tag only when everything is explained.}}
In the past 100 years, human action produced lots of {{w|CO₂ emissions}}, which have caused a rise in average global temperature through the {{w|greenhouse effect}}. This is called {{w|global warming}} and is part of a {{w|climate change}}, a subject that has become a [[:Category:Climate change|recurrent subject]] on xkcd. There are still many people who claim that this is not happening, or at least that it is not caused by any human actions, called "climate change deniers". One argument of theirs is that global warming is happening for natural causes, summarized with the phrase "temperature has changed before". This comic is a direct, but much more thorough, follow up on the previous global warming comic: [[1379: 4.5 Degrees]].

This comic shows that while temperature changes have indeed occurred before, the speed of the current temperature rise is much, much faster than those seen (actually: estimated) in the previous thousands of years.

This comic is a [[:Category:Timelines|timeline]] on how the temperature has changed since 20,000 BCE to the present day and extrapolated 84 years on from present day of the release of the comic (2016) to 2100 depending on the choice of actions to stop CO₂ emission that is taken now or never. It is meant to contrast the slow-paced natural changes with the rapid temperature rise in the recent years. The effect is achieved by forcing the reader to scroll endlessly through slow, building-up changes and then face them with an almost instantaneous, quick rise towards the end. The temperature curve is a dotted line most of the time, but from about 1850 to present day (2016) the measurement data is good enough to let the curve become a solid line indicating that this is not an estimate. Before 1850 the temperature is an estimate bases on the [[#Sources|sources]] given. And likewise into the future the curve is also dotted as this is predictions. And here there are even three possible outcomes depending on how seriously politicians and other influential people (and the population of Earth) take knowledge (and comics) like this.

Below in the [[#Table of all elements|table]] each entry will be noted and explained (in time). This is one of the comics where Randall cites his [[#Sources|sources]] like he did for one of his other very large comics [[980: Money]].

The title text compares the saying that "the temperature has changed before" comparing temperature changes over thousands of years to the rapid global warming over the last century with saying that the "small" changes to the temperature a car experiences over the years of normal usage should not make you worried over the rapid temperature increase that happens when someone burns your car. A related joke was used recently in [[1693: Oxidation]].

===Table of all elements===
*Here is table (to be filled out) of all elements with explanations including reading of temperature and year for each event from the curve.
*Table ready for use:
**The year group is just an easy way to find the section.
**The actual year of an event should be read off more precisely on the chart.
***Suggestion for doing this:
***Top part of element
***Central part of element
***Other?
**Element is a description mainly taken from the transcript. Feel free to remove redundant information, but the guess was that getting the table ready was the most important feature for getting the explanation started.
**T (°C) should be read of for the curve for every element.
**Explanation explains it self.
{| class="wikitable"
!Year group
!Element
!Year
!T (°C)
!Explanation
|-
| rowspan="2"| 20000 BCE
| [An arrow goes from the dotted line to the central line at 0°C. In the middle of the line there is a temperature label:] 4.3°C At the start of our timeline, 22,000 years ago, Earth is 4°C colder than during the late 20th century. || 20000 BCE || -4.3 || The temperature at the beginning of the chart compared to the average from 1961-1990 that we compare temperatures with today.
|-

| Boston is buried under almost a mile of ice, and the glaciers reach as far south as New York City. [The Statue of Liberty is shown in front of a glacier front. A guy with a white knit cap is seen walking in a snowy landscape. The skyline of Boston is shown under a half a mile of ice.] || 19700 BCE || -4.3 || The Boston image is directly taken from [[1225: Ice Sheets]] about the ice age glacier coverage and the guy with the white knit cap could be the guy from [[1321: Cold]] also about global warming. It shows what a difference 4 degree in global temperature means (massive effect), as opposed to what four degree means on a daily weather wise scale (nothing!).

|-
| rowspan="3"| 19500 BCE
| But the world is about to warm up. || || ||
|-
| By this time, humans have already spread across Africa, Eurasia, and Australia. || || ||
|-
| They’ve created painting, pottery, rope, and bows and arrows, but haven’t developed writing or farming. || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 19000 BCE
| Changes in the Earth’s orbit mean that more sunlight reaches the polar ice… || || || '''Last North American '''Pokémon go''' extinct — as prehistoric [[Megan]] states, this is not a real fact. Pokémon are still thriving throughout the entire world (see [[1705: Pokémon Go]]), and are most commonly found near regions of dense human habitation.
|-
| [A line chart with a labeled Y-axis "Summer sun W/m2 at 60°N" with three labeled ticks ranging from 450-550. The curve starts up and then goes down five times and up four times ending down. There is one plateau towards the end compared to the rest of the curve where the ups and downs are quite alike.] || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 18500 BCE
| [A map of the world. At the top is a light gray area covering North America, Greenland and northern Europe and most of the northern part of Russia. A similar gray area covers Antarctica. The gray areas are labeled as ice.] || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 18000 BCE
| …And the ice sheets start to melt. || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 17500 BCE
| Temperatures have been creeping upward, but around this point, CO2 levels start to climb…|| || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 17000 BCE
| …And then the warming speeds up. || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 16500 BCE
| [Cueball is standing with a spear just the right of the graph talking to a rabbit.] Cueball: Still pretty cold. || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 16000 BCE
| [Megan points to the graph to the right of her and between her and Ponytail standing on the other side. Mean is the first drawing on the left side of the dotted curve, which has hardly moved since the beginning, only to just on the other side of 4°C.] || || ||
|-
| [In the right part of the chart is an explanation of the data. Below the first two lines there are four drawings each showing possible temperature swings in reality compared to the smoothed data that represents the dotted curve of the entire chart. The dotted curve is shown in all four drawings and a thin line is shown running along it but with much more fluctuation left and right on the first two, a large spike right on the third and a large bump way right on the fourth. Above these there are two labels. The first labels is inside a bracket that covers the first three, and the last label is for the last drawing. Below is a list of sources.] Limits of this data: Short warming or cooling spikes might be “smoothed out” by these reconstructions but only if they’re small or brief enough. Possible Unlikely Reconstructions are from Shakun (2012) and Marcott (2013), scaled to Annan + Hargreaves (2013) estimate for the last glacial period. || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 15500 BCE
| In what is now France, humans paint murals on the walls of the Lascaux caves [Hairy paints three animals, two with horns, and two humans, Cueball holding hand with Hairy who has a spear. On the other side of the central line Megan writes three letters, the last of which is reversed:] NIИ || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 15000 BCE
| Ice sheets around Alaska shrink, exposing a land bridge between Asia and North America [From around the bottom if this section and down to 11500 BCE the dotted curve moved steadily to the right towards warmed temperature peaking close to -1.5°C. Before this the temperature had not moved much away from that at the start.] || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 14500 BCE
| [Cueball walks right looking back at the graph behind him. Megan walks in front of him pointing further right.] | Cueball: Cool. || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 14000 BCE
| The edge of the ice withdraws from New York City and retreats North. || || ||
|-
| [A large glacier front speaks in a speech bubble with an arrow pointing at it. Behind is there are four peaks in the horizon and in front of it three small melting pools and some rocks on the ground.] Glacier: ''That’s it1 I’m moving to Canada!'' || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 13500 BCE
| Humans domesticate dogs (Date uncertain, may be much earlier) || || ||
|-
|| [Megan and Cueball is watching a wolf looking at them.] Megan: Okay, you can live in our homes and we’ll feed you, but we’ll still get mad f you poop on the floor. Wolf: Deal. Cueball: And we get to breed you to be tiny and dress you in little costumes Wolf: …Wait. || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 13000 BCE
| Woolly Rhino goes extinct || || ||
|-
| Oregon is scoured by huge floods as glacial dams burst and lakes of meltwater flow to the sea || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 12500 BCE
| Ice sheets withdraw from Chicago || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 12000 BCE
| Humans settle Abu Hureyra in Syria || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 11500 BCE
| [An arrow on the left side of the dotted curve is pointing down along the dotted curve and to the left indicate temperature is declining again, meaning the dotted curve now moves left to colder temperatures. This only continues until 10500 BCE. It is only the second time something is noted on the left side after Megan at 16000 BCE] Temperatures start to decline, mainly in the Northern hemisphere This may be caused by changes in ocean circulation due to the floods of cold fresh meltwater flowing into the Atlantic as the North American ice sheet melts. This cooler period is called the Younger Dryas || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 11000 BCE
| [This is the first text to the left of the dotted curve:] Humans reach Argentina || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 10500 BCE
| [An arrow pointing down along the right side of the dotted curve and to the right indicate temperature is increasing again, meaning the dotted curve now moves right to hotter temperatures. This continues until 8000 BCE where it levels out just above 0°C.] Warming resumes || || ||
|-
| Human settlements at Jericho || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 10000 BCE
| First development of farming || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 9500 BCE
| Saber-toothed cat goes extinct || || ||
|-
| Horses disappear from North America || || ||

|-
| rowspan="4"| 9000 BCE
| | Last North American Pokémon go extinct [Cueball with a speak and Megan is looking up at this last “fact”.] Megan: That is not a real fact. || || ||
|-
| Temperatures reach modern levels || || ||
|-
| Rising seas cut off the land bridge between North America and Asia || || ||
|-
| Cattle domesticated || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 8500 BCE
| Ice sheets retreat across the Canadian border || || ||
|-
| Temperatures start to level out slightly above 1961-1990 levels || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 8000 BCE
| [The above sentence breaks over the 8000 BCE line. From here a maximum in temperature on the chart is reached at 0.5°C which will not be overtaken until 2000 CE. It stays almost constant here until 5000 BCE where a slight cooling begins.] || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 7500 BCE
| This warm, stable period is called the Holocene Climate Optimum || || ||
|-
| Jiahu settled in China || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 7000 BCE
| Final collapse of the North American ice sheet leads to rapid 2-4m sea level rise… || || ||
|-
| [A small arrow points down and left to the right of the dotted curve. There is a small decrease in temperature but it is very small and would have been missed without the arrow and label.] …And a period of cooling in the Northern hemisphere || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 6500 BCE
| As seas rise to near their modern levels, Britain is cut off from mainland Europe || || ||

|-
| rowspan="1"| 6000 BCE
| Humans develop copper metalworking || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 5500 BCE
| Massive volcanic eruption in Oregon creates crater lake || || ||
|-
| Gold metalworking || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 5000 BCE
| Invention of the wheel || || ||
|-
| [To the right of the dotted curve is an arrow pointing down and slightly left. From here temperature decreases very slowly but steadily from 0.5°C until 1000 BCE where a stable plateau is reached around 0°C.] Earth begins to cool slowly mainly due to regular cycles in its orbit || || ||

|-
| rowspan="3"| 4500 BCE
| Proto-Indo-European language develops || || ||
|-
| [To the right of the curve Ponytail holds up a hand towards Cueball.] Ponytail: Let’s make out language heavily inflected, so future students have to memorize a zillion verb endings! Cueball: Okay! || || ||[[Ponytail]] refers to [[1709: Inflection]].
|-
| Permanent settlements in the fertile crescent || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 4000 BCE
| Horses domesticated || || ||
|-
| Minoan culture arises on Crete || || ||

|-
| rowspan="4"| 3500 BCE
| Egyptian mummification || || ||
|-
| Rise of the Indus Valley civilization || || ||
|-
| Invention of writing in Sumer “prehistory” ends, “history” begins || || ||
|-
| Earliest human whose name we know (Pharaoh Iry-Hor in Egypt) || || ||

|-
| rowspan="5"| 3000 BCE
| ''Three Sovereigns and five emperors'' period in China || || ||
|-
| Glgamesh || || ||
|-
| Imhotep || || ||
|-
| Mayan culture emerges || || ||
|-
| Great Pyramid constructed || || ||

|-
| rowspan="3"| 2500 BCE
| Corded Ware culture in Europe || || ||
|-
| [To the left of the curve two rock musicians with long hair and electrical guitars are standing on either side of a small gate made of three slabs of stone, one on top of the other two standing stones.] Stonehenge completed || 2250 || || The drawing is a reference to the 1984 movie "This is Spinal Tap" (A documentary/parody featuring the fake metal band "Spinal Tap", http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088258/), the musicians order a Stone Henge prop for the stage, which turns out to be too small (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAXzzHM8zLw)
|-
| Chariots developed || || ||

|-
| rowspan="3"| 2000 BCE
| Alphabetic writing developed in Egypt || || ||
|-
| Last mammoths on a tiny Siberian island go extinct || || ||
|-
| Minoan eruption || || ||

|-
| rowspan="5"| 1500 BCE
| Iron smelting || || ||
|-
| Olmec civilization develops in Central America || || ||
|-
| [A Trojan horse with two Cueball-like guys in front and a third standing on its back. Its back is at three Cueball’s height and its head rises to the level of the Cueball on its back. It stands on a platform with four wheel on the visible side. There is text on the horse] Setting of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'' Text on horse: Not a trap || || ||
|-
| Invasion of the Sea peoples* * A real thing || || ||
|-
| Polynesians explore the Pacific Ocean || || ||

|-
| rowspan="8"| 1000 BCE
| [From 1000 BBC to 1000 CE the temperature is stable and very close to 0°C.] || || ||
|-
| Solomon || || ||
|-
| Iliad and Odyssey composed || || ||
|-
| Rise of Greek city-states || || ||
|-
| Neo-Assyrian empire || || ||
|-
| First Olympics || || ||
|-
| Zapotec writing in modern Mexico || || ||
|-
| Confucius || || ||

|-
| rowspan="10"| 500 BCE
| The stuff in the 300 (film)|movie ''300'', but regular speed and with more clothing || || ||
|-
| Buddha || || ||
|-
| Nazca Lines || || ||
|-
| Alexander the Great || || ||
|-
| Mayan hieroglyphics || || ||
|-
| Ashoka the Great || || ||
|-
| Paper invented || || ||
|-
| Asterix || || ||
|-
| Teotihuacán metropolis || || ||
|-
| Julius Caesar || || ||
|-

|-
| rowspan="8"|1 BCE 1 CE
| [At the year 0, there is instead two numbers for each of the two scales before (1 BCE) and after Christ (1 CE)] || || ||
|-
| Roman Empire || || ||
|-
| Jesus || || ||
|-
| [To the left and erupting volcano.] Pompeii || || ||
|-
| Three Kingdoms period || || ||
|-
| Gupta empire || || ||
|-
| Various groups take turns sacking Rome || || ||
|-
| Attila the Hun || || ||

|-
| rowspan="4"| 500 CE
| Muhammad || || ||
|-
| Tang Dynasty || || ||
|-
| [An arrow to the right of the dotted curve pointing down, takes a swing far out from the curve and then bends back again. The text label next to it breaks into the next 500 period. The dotted curve stays stable at 0°C along this arrow.] Medieval warm period in Europe and some northern regions (too regional to affect the global average much) || || ||
|-
| Leif Eriksson || || ||

|-
| rowspan="7"| 1000 CE
| [The dotted curve moves to the left towards lower temperature reaching a minimum around 1650 of about -0.6°C at the Little Ice Age.] || || ||
|-
| [To the left a drawing of a compass with needle pointing the black end towards north west. There are labels for the four main directions (N, S, E, W) and a label next to it:] Magnetic compass navigation || || ||
|-
| Ghengis Khan || || ||
|-
| Zheng He’s fleet explores Asia and Africa || || ||
|-
| Aztec Alliance || || ||
|-
| Printing press || || ||
|-
| Columbus || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 1500 CE
| European Renaissance || || ||
|-
| Shakespeare || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 1600
| Newton || || ||
|-
| [To the right of the dotted curve there is an arrow pointing down that makes a swing in towards the curve and then back out again. At -0.6°C this is the coldest it has been since 9500 BCE. It is labeled:] ”Little Ice Age” || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 1700
| Steam engines || || ||
|-
| Unites States Independence || || ||

|-
| rowspan="3"| 1800
| Industrial Revolution || || ||
|-
| Telegraphs || || ||
|-
| [After this the dotted curve becomes solid.] || || ||

|-
| rowspan="6"| 1900
| Airplanes || || ||
|-
| World Wars || || ||
|-
| [The solid line takes a step to the right close to 0°C. Over the rest of the 1900s it moves closer to 0°C crossing it before 2000 where it almost reaches the maximum temperature of 0.5 °C from earlier in 8000 BCE.] || || ||
|-
| Fossil fuel CO2 emissions start rapidly increasing || || ||
|-
| Nuclear weapons || || ||
|-
| Internet || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 2000
| Northwest Passage opens || || ||
|-
|[From here to present day the solid line increases rapidly and in 2016 present day is almost reaches 1°C, with about 0.8°C.] || || ||

|-
| rowspan="3"| 2016
| | Present day || || ||
|-
| [From here the curve once again becomes dotted as this is the future. After one dot it splits in two and after the first two dots another split between them occurs forming three possible future dotted curves.] || || ||
|-
|The first curve bending down before the others, and thus to the right of the other two reaches about 1.2°C and then goes straight down and stops at the 2100 line. An arrow points to it from the left and a label is written partly before and the rest after the 2100 line to the left of the curve:] Best-case scenario assuming immediate massive action to limit emissions || || ||

|-
| rowspan="2"| 2100
| [The middle curve bends a little down after reaching 1.3°C and then continues this path reaching 2°C in 2100. An arrow point from below to it and a label is written below the curve and below 2100 line:] Optimistic scenario|| || ||
|-
| [The last line continues along the path from the last 16 years of the solid line reaching 4.2°C at 2100, almost as far on the other side of 0°C in 150 years as it took 14000 years to move from the other side from the start of the chart. Another arrow point to this from below with a label below the curve and below 2100 line:] Current Path || || ||
|}

===Sources===
The image attributes climate data sources as "Shakun et al. (2012), Marcott et al. (2013), Annan and Hargreaves (2013), HadCRUT4, IPCC":
* Shakun et al. (2012) - [http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v484/n7392/full/nature10915.html Nature], [http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/mcintyre/shakun-co2-temp-lag-nat12.pdf (pdf)]
* Marcott et al. (2013) - [http://science.sciencemag.org/content/339/6124/1198 Science], [http://www.atm.damtp.cam.ac.uk/mcintyre/shakun-co2-temp-lag-nat12.pdf (pdf)]
* Annan and Hargreaves (2013) - [http://www.clim-past.net/9/367/2013/cp-9-367-2013.html Climate of the Past] [http://www.jamstec.go.jp/frsgc/research/d5/jdannan/LGM_temp.pdf (pdf)]
* {{w|HadCRUT#HadCRUT4 wikipedia|HadCRUT4}} - [http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcrut4/ Official site]
* {{w|Intergovernmental_Panel_on_Climate_Change|IPCC}} -[http://www.ipcc.ch/ Official site]

==Transcript==
'''Note''' there are several spelling errors in the comic, so please do only correct spelling errors that are not part of the comic! See more in the [[#Trivia|trivia section]].
:[A large heading, followed by a sub-caption. Below that two lines with a statement in between:]
:<big>A timeline of Earth’s average temperature</big>
:since the last ice age glaciation
:When people say “The climate has changed before,” these are the kinds of changes they’re talking about.

:[A very long chart below the headings above is headed with a label for the scale of the X-axis above the chart. Below that a sub-caption. To the left an arrow down to the top of the chart pointing to the dotted curves starting point (at -4.3°C) with a label above the arrow. And arrow pointing left to the left of the center and another pointing right to the right of the center has labels. Below these is the temperature scale of the X-axis, with 9 ticks between the borders each with a label ranging from -4 to +4°C, but with another step in each direction not labeled towards to axis so the chart covers -5 to +5°C.]
:'''Temperature'''
: Compared to the 1961-1990 average
:Start
:Colder
:Warmer
:-4°C -3°C -2°C -1°C 0°C +1°C +2°C +3°C +4°C

:[To the right of the chart is a gray text standing on the side down along the outer boarder of the chart with the sources for the chart:]
: Source: Shakun et. al. (2012) , Marcott et. al. (2013), Annan and Hargreaves (2013) , HadCRUT4, IPCC 

:[The chart is split in 10 columns by the temperature scale and the borders. The two central columns are white, and then from there to the left the background becomes a faded color that changes from light blue to blue at the edge in four steps. Similarly to the right the color changes from light red to red. To the left there is a time scale taking 500 years leaps from 20,000 BCE all the way to year 1, where there are two years, one for BBC and one for CE. The 500 year leaps continue until 1500 CE and from there the steps are down to 100 years until 2100 with also present day 2016 labeled. After 1500 the CE is omitted. The labels stop there, but there is space below covering down to 2200 CE. There is clearly visible division line across the chart on the level of each of the 500 step, and fainter lines for each of the 100 steps all the way even though only the last 5 of these 100 steps are labeled. There is a similar clear line at 2016. Below each step on the Y-axis is noted, and then any text starting before the next step is noted below indented. If there are extra image belonging to text this is indented once more. The graph that the whole chart is about is a dotted line that begins at the “start” point mentioned above at -4.3°C and then begins to go straight down. It will change left and right all the way down. To being with all text and most drawings are to right of the dotted curve. Whenever something is to the left it will be noted. When it says to the left above something, and then nothing over the next, then the next will be to the right. Only at the very bottom are there more entries to the left than right. ]
:20000 BCE
::[An arrow goes from the dotted line to the central line at 0°C. In the middle of the line there is a temperature label:]
::4.3°C
::At the start of our timeline, 22,000 years ago, Earth is 4°C colder than during the late 20th century.
::Boston is buried under almost a mile of ice, and the glaciers reach as far south as New York City.
:::[The Statue of Liberty is shown in front of a glacier front. A very tiny Cueball is on top of the glacier. The drawing is labeled and so is also the glacier.]
:::New York
:::Ice
:::[A guy with a white knit cap is seen walking in a snowy landscape leaving black footprints behind him. He walks through the white central part of the chart.]
:::[The skyline of Boston is shown with two clear buildings among all the other. Above it is a line and in between this area has been filled with thin lines. The drawing is labeled and so is this area. Also the skyline has an arrow pointing at it with a label:]
:::Boston
:::Ice
:::Modern skyline

:19500 BCE
::But the world is about to warm up.
::By this time, humans have already spread across Africa, Eurasia, and Australia.
::They’ve created painting, pottery, rope, and bows and arrows, but haven’t developed writing or farming.

:19000 BCE
::Changes in the Earth’s orbit mean that more sunlight reaches the polar ice…
:::[A line chart with a labeled Y-axis with three labeled ticks. The curve starts up and then goes down five times and up four times ending down. There is one plateau towards the end compared to the rest of the curve where the ups and downs are quite alike.]
:::Summer sun W/m2 at 60°N
:::550
:::500
:::450

:18500 BCE
::[A map of the world. At the top is a light gray area covering North America, Greenland and northern Europe and most of the northern part of Russia. A similar gray area covers Antarctica. There are two labels in the gray area above and one in the gray area below:]
::Ice Ice
::Ice

:18000 BCE
::…And the ice sheets start to melt.

:17500 BCE
::Temperatures have been creeping upward, but around this point, CO2 levels start to climb…

:17000 BCE
::…And then the warming speeds up.

:16500 BCE
::[Cueball is standing with a spear just the right of the graph talking to a rabbit.]
::Cueball: Still pretty cold.

:16000 BCE
::[Megan points to the graph to the right of her and between her and Ponytail standing on the other side. Mean is the first drawing on the left side of the dotted curve, which has hardly moved since the beginning, only to just on the other side of 4°C.]
::[In the right part of the chart is an explanation of the data. Below the first two lines there are four drawings each showing possible temperature swings in reality compared to the smoothed data that represents the dotted curve of the entire chart. The dotted curve is shown in all four drawings and a thin line is shown running along it but with much more fluctuation left and right on the first two, a large spike right on the third and a large bump way right on the fourth. Above these there are two labels. The first labels is inside a bracket that covers the first three, and the last label is for the last drawing. Below is a list of sources.]
::Limits of this data:
::Short warming or cooling spikes might be “smoothed out” by these reconstructions but only if they’re small or brief enough.
:::Possible Unlikely
::Reconstructions are from Shakun (2012) and Marcott (2013), scaled to Annan + Hargreaves (2013) estimate for the last glacial period.

:15500 BCE
::In what is now France, humans paint murals on the walls of the Lascaux caves
::[Hairy paints three animals, two with horns, and two humans, Cueball holding hand with Hairy who has a spear. On the other side of the central line Megan writes three letters, the last of which is reversed.]
:::NIИ

:15000 BCE
::Ice sheets around Alaska shrink, exposing a land bridge between Asia and North America
::[From around the bottom if this section and down to 11500 BCE the dotted curve moved steadily to the right towards warmed temperature peaking close to -1.5°C. Before this the temperature had not moved much away from that at the start.]

:14500 BCE
::[Cueball walks right looking back at the graph behind him. Megan walks in front of him pointing further right.]
::Cueball: Cool.

:14000 BCE
::The edge of the ice withdraws from New York City and retreats North.
::[A large glacier front speaks in a speech bubble with an arrow pointing at it. Behind is there are four peaks in the horizon and in front of it three small melting pools and some rocks on the ground.]
::''Glacier: That’s it1 I’m moving to Canada!''

:13500 BCE
::Humans domesticate dogs
::(Date uncertain, may be much earlier)
::[Megan and Cueball is watching a wolf looking at them.]
::Megan: Okay, you can live in our homes and we’ll feed you, but we’ll still get mad f you poop on the floor.
::Wolf: Deal.
::Cueball: And we get to breed you to be tiny and dress you in little costumes.
::Wolf: …Wait.

:13000 BCE
::[Randall did not use the normal spelling for Woolly Rhino, but this is an accepted alternative spelling:]
::Wooly Rhino goes extinct
::Oregon is scoured by huge floods as glacial dams burst and lakes of meltwater flow to the sea

:12500 BCE
::Ice sheets withdraw from Chicago

:12000 BCE
::Humans settle Abu Hureyra in Syria

:11500 BCE
::[An arrow on the left side of the dotted curve is pointing down along the dotted curve and to the left indicate temperature is declining again, meaning the dotted curve now moves left to colder temperatures. This only continues until 10500 BCE. It is only the second time something is noted on the left side after Megan at 16000 BCE]
::Temperatures start to decline, mainly in the Northern hemisphere
::This may be caused by changes in ocean circulation due to the floods of cold fresh meltwater flowing into the Atlantic as the North American ice sheet melts.
::This cooler period is called the Younger Dryas

:11000 BCE
::[This is the first text to the left of the dotted curve:]
::Humans reach Argentina

:10500 BCE
::[An arrow pointing down along the right side of the dotted curve and to the right indicate temperature is increasing again, meaning the dotted curve now moves right to hotter temperatures. This continues until 8000 BCE where it levels out just above 0°C.]
::Warming resumes
::Human settlements at Jericho

:10000 BCE
::First development of farming

:9500 BCE
::Saber-toothed cat goes extinct
::[To the left:]
::Horses disappear from North America

:9000 BCE
::[To the left, Randall spelled Pokémon wrong:]
:::Last North American Pokemon go extinct
:::[Cueball with a speak and Megan is looking up at this last “fact”.]
:::Megan: That is not a real fact.
::Temperatures reach modern levels
::Rising seas cut off the land bridge between North America and Asia
::Cattle domesticated

:8500 BCE
::Ice sheets retreat across the Canadian border
::Temperatures start to level out slightly above 1961-1990 levels

:8000 BCE
::[The above sentence breaks over the 8000 BCE line. From here a maximum in temperature on the chart is reached at 0.5°C which will not be overtaken until 2000 CE. It stays almost constant here until 5000 BCE where a slight cooling begins.]

:7500 BCE
::[To the left:]
::This warm, stable period is called the Holocene Climate Optimum
::[To the left:]
::Jiahu settled in China

:7000 BCE
::Final collapse of the North American ice sheet leads to rapid 2-4m sea level rise…
::[A small arrow points down and left to the right of the dotted curve. There is a small decrease in temperature but it is very small and would have been missed without the arrow and label.]
::…And a period of cooling in the Northern hemisphere

:6500 BCE
::[To the left:]
::As seas rise to near their modern levels, Britain is cut off from mainland Europe

:6000 BCE
::Humans develop copper metalworking

:5500 BCE
::[To the left:]
::Massive volcanic eruption in Oregon creates crater lake
::Gold metalworking

:5000 BCE
::[To the left:]
::Invention of the wheel
::[To the left. To the right of the dotted curve is an arrow pointing down and slightly left. From here temperature decreases very slowly but steadily from 0.5°C until 1000 BCE where a stable plateau is reached around 0°C.]
::Earth begins to cool slowly mainly due to regular cycles in its orbit

:4500 BCE
::[To the left:]
:: Proto-Indo-European language develops
:::[To the right of the curve Ponytail holds up a hand towards Cueball.]
:::Ponytail: Let’s make out language heavily inflected, so future students have to memorize a zillion verb endings!
:::Cueball: Okay!
::[To the left:]
::Permanent settlements in the fertile crescent

:4000 BCE
::Horses domesticated
::[To the left:]
::Minoan culture arises on Crete

:3500 BCE
::Egyptian mummification
::Rise of the Indus Valley civilization
::[To the left:]
::Invention of writing in Sumer “prehistory” ends, “history” begins
::Earliest human whose name we know
::(Pharaoh Iry-Hor in Egypt)

:3000 BCE
::''Three Sovereigns and five emperors'' period in China
::Glgamesh
::[To the left:]
::Imhotep
::Mayan culture emerges
::[To the left:]
::Great Pyramid constructed

:2500 BCE
::Corded Ware culture in Europe
::[To the left of the curve two rock musicians with long hair and electrical guitars are standing on either side of a small gate made of three slabs of stone, one on top of the other two standing stones.]
::Stonehenge completed
::Chariots developed

:2000 BCE
::[To the left:]
::Alphabetic writing developed in Egypt
::Last mammoths on a tiny Siberian island go extinct
::[To the left:]
::Minoan eruption

:1500 BCE
::[To the left:]
::Iron smelting
::Olmec civilization develops in Central America
::[A Trojan horse with two Cueball-like guys in front and a third standing on its back. Its back is at three Cueball’s height and its head rises to the level of the Cueball on its back. It stands on a platform with four wheel on the visible side. There is text on the horse]
:::Setting of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey''
:::Text on horse: Not a trap
::[To the left:]
::Invasion of the Sea peoples*
::* A real thing
::Polynesians explore the Pacific Ocean

:1000 BCE
::[From 1000 BBC to 1000 CE the temperature is stable and very close to 0°C.]
::[To the left:]
::Solomon
::[Randall spelled Iliad wrongly this time:]
::Illiad and Odyssey composed
::[To the left:]
::Rise of Greek city-states
::Neo-Assyrian empire
::[To the left:]
::First Olympics
::Zapotec writing in modern Mexico
::[To the left:]
::Confucius

:500 BCE
::[To the left:]
::The stuff in the 300 (film)|movie ''300'', but regular speed and with more clothing
::Buddha
::Nazca Lines
::[To the left:]
::Alexander the Great
::[To the left:]
::Mayan hieroglyphics
::Ashoka the Great
::[To the left:]
::Paper invented
::[To the left:]
::Asterix
::Teotihuacán metropolis
::[To the left:]
::Julius Caesar

:[At the year 0, there is instead two numbers for each of the two scales before and after Christ:]
:1 BCE
:1 CE
::[To the left:]
::Roman Empire
::Jesus
::[To the left and erupting volcano.]
::Pompeii
::Three Kingdoms period
::[To the left:]
::Gupta empire
::[To the left:]
::Various groups take turns sacking Rome
::[Randall spelled Attila wrong:]
::Atilla the Hun

:500 CE
::Muhammad
::[To the left:]
::Tang Dynasty
::[An arrow to the right of the dotted curve pointing down, takes a swing far out from the curve and then bends back again. The text label next to it breaks into the next 500 period. The dotted curve stays stable at 0°C along this arrow.]
::Medieval warm period in Europe and some northern regions (too regional to affect the global average much)
::[To the left:]
::Leif Eriksson

:1000 CE
::[The dotted curve moves to the left towards lower temperature reaching a minimum around 1650 of about -0.6°C at the Little Ice Age.]
::[To the left a drawing of a compass with needle pointing the black end towards north west. There are labels for the four main directions and a label next to it:]
:::N
:::E W
:::S
:::Magnetic compass navigation
::[To the left:]
::Ghengis Khan
::Zheng He’s fleet explores Asia and Africa
::[To the left:]
::Aztec Alliance
::[To the left:]
::Printing press
::[To the left:]
::Columbus

:1500 CE
::European Renaissance
::[To the left:]
::Shakespeare

:1600
::[To the left:]
::Newton
::[To the right of the dotted curve there is an arrow pointing down that makes a swing in towards the curve and then back out again. At -0.6°C this is the coldest it has been since 9500 BCE. It is labeled:]
::”Little Ice Age”

:1700
::Steam engines
::[To the left:]
::Unites States Independence

:1800
::Industrial Revolution
::[To the left:]
::Telegraphs
::[After this the dotted curve becomes solid.]

:1900
::[To the left, and on the line for 1900:]
::Airplanes
::[To the left:]
::World Wars
::[The solid line takes a step to the right close to 0°C. Over the rest of the 1900s it moves closer to 0°C crossing it before 2000 where it almost reaches the maximum temperature of 0.5 °C from earlier in 8000 BCE.]
::Fossil fuel CO2 emissions start rapidly increasing
::[To the left:]
::Nuclear weapons
::[To the left:]
::Internet

:2000
::Northwest Passage opens
:[From here to present day the solid line increases rapidly and in 2016 present day is almost reaches 1°C, with about 0.8°C.]
:2016
::[To the left on the line for 2016:]
::Present day
:[From here the curve once again becomes dotted as this is the future. After one dot it splits in two and after the first two dots another split between them occurs forming three possible future dotted curves. The first curve bending down before the others, and thus to the right of the other two reaches about 1.2°C and then goes straight down and stops at the 2100 line. An arrow points to it from the left and a label is written patly before and the rest after the 2100 line to the left of the curve:]
::Best-case scenario assuming immediate massive action to limit emissions

:2100
::[The middle curve bends a little down after reaching 1.3°C and then continues this path reaching 2°C in 2100. An arrow point from below to it and a label is written below the curve and below 2100 line:]
::Optimistic scenario
::[The last line continues along the path from the last 16 years of the solid line reaching 4.2°C at 2100, almost as far on the other side of 0°C in 150 years as it took 14000 years to move from the other side from the start of the chart. Another arrow point to this from below with a label below the curve and below 2100 line:]
::Current Path

==Trivia==
*The timeline starts at 20000BCE (22,000 years ago) and ends near 2200CE, thus covering 22,200 years.
**The colors used to represent temperature vary from blue (the perceived hue of a black body at 20000K) to pale red (perceived at 2200K).
**Since humans generally lack familiarity with extreme temperatures, blue is commonly associated with cold substances such as ice, while red is associated with hot obvious black body radiators, in contrast to the temperatures of objects which predominantly emit those wavelengths.
*There are several spelling mistakes.
**Most obvious is the second time Randall wrote the word "Iliad," because he just spelled it correctly at 1500 BCE and then spelled it ''Illiad'' at 1000 BCE with two "L"s.
**Attila the Hun becomes ''Atilla the Hun'' with only one t.
**Pokémon is spelled ''Pokemon'', but then again that is not so strange for Randall (see [[1647: Diacritics]]).
**Note that the fact that Woolly rhinoceros becomes ''Wooly rhino'' with only one l is not a spelling mistake but an alternative spelling of the word.
**Please add if you find more.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Large drawings]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Timelines]]
[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Maps]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]] 
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Climate change]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Music]] 
[[Category:Fiction]] 
[[Category:Sport]] 
[[Category:Religion]] 
[[Category:Internet]]
[[Category:Pokémon]]

141: Parody Week: Achewood

2016-09-12T05:53:46Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ copy-edits

{{comic
| number = 141
| date = August 14, 2006
| title = Parody Week: Achewood
| image = achewood.png
| titletext = I always wanted to impress them with how well I could hear, didn't you? Also, this sets the record for number of awkward-pause panels in one strip (previously held by Achewood)
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|The subject of beef and rays discussion about beef setting up ray and the program ray seems to be invited to has not been explained at all. There seems to be many things in that part of the comic - before the awkward pauses, that are not easily understood and need explanation. And what's with the food references in the last panel wit text?}}

This comic is a part of the [[:Category:Parody Week|Parody Week]], just joking about other {{w|webcomics}}. This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule and is comprised of the following five {{w|parodies}}:
*[[141: Parody Week: Achewood]]
*[[142: Parody Week: Megatokyo]]
*[[143: Parody Week: TFD and Natalie Dee]]
*[[144: Parody Week: A Softer World]]
*[[145: Parody Week: Dinosaur Comics]]

{{w|Achewood}} is a webcomic by {{w|Chris Onstad}}. It portrays the lives of a group of {{w|anthropomorphic}} stuffed toys, robots, and pets. The comic's humor often lacks a traditional punchline, and utilizes numerous {{w|Awkward silence|awkward pause}} panels.

This comic includes three of the prominent characters from the strip: {{w|Achewood#Philippe|Phillippe}} a [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/Achewood five year old stuffed otter], {{w|Achewood#Raymond_Quentin_Smuckles|Ray}}, and {{w|Achewood#Cassandra_.22Roast_Beef.22_Kazenzakis|Roast Beef}}. In the first panel, Phillippe is dreaming of having his ears checked. There's an eye chart on the wall behind him. The doctor informs him that because of his superhearing power he is needed at {{w|Hogwarts}}, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, from {{w|Harry Potter}}.

The comic then switches to Roast Beef and Ray discussing an invitation to a competition described only by its name (that dude is pretty awesome in most measurable ways I mean wow). Ray's strategy consists of highlighting his genitals. Roast Beef offers his take on the competition; that Ray is going to lose to the other, significantly more impressive, contestants. Roast Beef says that ray wouldn't fit in with that crowd. Rather, he would look "like the kind of dude that stays at home all night playing fleshlight tag". It is then revealed that Roast Beef was setting Ray up, but couldn't complete his plan. Ray is dismayed, and Roast Beef proceeds to further shut him down, comparing Ray (a "McD's" hamburger) to the other competitors (a 12 oz. sirloin steak). This leads to a lengthy awkward pause, spanning the rest of the comic.

The comic is written in the style of Onstad and his humor. The last 10 panels are "awkward-pause panels", which are used frequently in Achewood, in what appears to be a joke about overuse of dialogue-free panels (there are 11 of these but the first is a shock panel, then the pause begins). This joke is continued in the title-text, where [[Randall]] claims that this strip set the record for most panels of this kind, a record previously held by Achewood.

{{w|Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song}} is a 1971 {{w|Blaxploitation}} film that is generally regarded as an exemplar of its genre.

References to {{w|Fleshlight}}, such as this comment by beef in first panel in third row: ''You are gonna stand out as the sort of dude who stays at home all night playing fleshlight tag '', is a [[:Category:Fleshlights|recurring theme]] in xkcd, but this seems to be the first time.

==Transcript==
:[Unlike regular xkcd comics the text here seems to be typed on a machine, and the speech is in bubbles rather than just indicated with a thin line from the speaker. This is true for all spoken text. Also Beef almost never uses any punctuation in his sentences.]

:[Philippe, an anthropomorphic stuffed otter, is participating in a hearing aid test with headphones over his ears, and one arm raised. He is at a doctor and behind him on the wall There is an eye chart with six lines of E's, the large one on top a regular E, and then in the next two lines they are turned around in the four general directions. The last three lines are not readable. The doctor talks to Philippe from off-panel in a bubble going to the far right. Here it meets a thought bubble line going down and left from the upper right corner. On the right side the back ground is gray and Philippe can be seen lying in a bed, dreaming the scene to the left.]
:Doctor (off-panel): Philippe, your hearing is perfect! In fact, you heard ALL the beeps! You have super-hearing! You're needed at Hogwarts!
:Philippe: Oh boy!
:Eye chart:
::<big>E</big>
::E<big>ɯ</big>EMƎ
::ƎEƎMƎME

:[Roast Beef, an anthropomorphic thin cat with pointy ears and small eyes, is looking at Ray, an anthropomorphic fat cat with black glasses, he is reading from a piece of paper that has been folded out, holding it up in front of him with both hands. They are seen from the waist up. Most of the time below, their eyebrows are visible to show feelings, but Beef's is not shown here. When they speak their mouths are open, else it is closed. Beefs is closed in this panel. Above the drawing there is a line and in the thin frame formed by that and the top panel there is a caption:]
:Meanwhile . . .
:Ray: Beef, check this out. I got an invite to that The Dude Is Pretty Awesome In Most Measurable Ways I Mean Wow competition.

:[This panel pans up so less of their bodies can be seen, and more text be above them. It is clear that Ray has a medal hanging around his neck, which was partly covered by his hands in the previous panel, which are now down. Apart from this they look the same.]
:Beef: Alright that is pretty sweet dogg what is your strategy gonna consist of
:Ray: I'm thinkin' I need to point out my best features -- maybe go holdin' a sign with an arrow toward my junk.

:[Ray is seen almost in full figure, which reveals that he is only wearing big black underpants and the medal, his nipples are also clearly visible on each side of the medal (as they were already in the previous panel, but not the one before). He has one arm in his side, the other holding a large sign with big bold text and beneath this a large black arrow pointing first down and then across towards his pants waistband.]
:Sign: <big>'''Yes'''</big>

:[Back to same view as in the first panel, except a pan so Ray is in the center and Beef is partly cut off at the left frame so there is space for a speech bubble to the right of Ray. Ray holds up a drink glass in front of him with a cherry in the bottom. Beefs eyebrows are missing.]
:Beef: Yeah well I always said subtlety was your middle name dogg
:Beef: And also your first and last in case they didn't get the point
:Ray: How do you think I should play it?

:[Only Beef is shown in this panel to make room for his speech bubbles.]
:Beef: Well basically you got no chance as I see it these dudes are all lovers and fighters to the last
:Beef: All sprung fully formed from the head of Sweet Sweetback
:Beef: You are gonna stand out as the sort of dude who stays at home all night playing fleshlight tag

:[Both are again in this panel but has been panned up so only their heads are visible to place speech bubbles above them.]
:Ray: These words you got are crazy. Didn't I win the outdoor fight?
:Beef: Uh huh about the fight I wasn't gonna tell you but how could you miss that I was setting you up
:Ray: What?
:Beef: You got played dogg

:[Same but panned down to below the medal on Ray. Beefs eyebrows are missing.]
:Beef: I basically just didn't have the heart to go through with it in the end.

:[Only Beef is shown to the right, making space for five speech bubbles to his left.]
:Beef: Anyway the point is that you are gonna lose this thing so hard
:Beef: All cheap McD's hamburger to their slabs of steak
:Beef: A couple 12-oz sirloins garnished with nothing but pure manhood
:Beef: Maybe some sprigs of parsley
:Beef: You are pretty much going down

:[Closeup of a shocked Ray mouth hanging open.]

:[Silence 1. Both are shown from the waistline and up standing looking slightly down, arms down. Rays has closed his mouth. Generally their ears shift a bit from panel to panel the rest of the way, and also their head position. But else they stay the same distance from each other.]

:[Silence 2. Same view. Beef looks perturbed and his ear is twitching. Ray's mouth is open again.]

:[Silence 3. Same view. Beef looks sorry. Rays has closed his mouth.]

:[Silence 4. Same view. Beef looks sorry and Ray looks angry. Ray's mouth is open again.]

:[Silence 5. Same view. Rays has closed his mouth again. Beefs eyebrows are missing, but also Rays are gone, maybe hidden by the rim of the glasses. They do not reappear in the rest of the comic indicating he keeps his eyes downcast. ]

:[Silence 6. Same view. Beefs eyebrows are back]

:[Silence 7. The view has panned so low that it is possible to see the waistband of Ray's underpants. Beef is looking even more down and has moved closer to Ray who's mouth is open again.]

:[Silence 8. Same view, but a little less waistband visible. Beef has moved back again his eyebrows are missing and his mouth are open, and Ray looks even more down than before still mouth open.]

:[Silence 9. View paned so low that a large part of Rays underpants can be seen. Beef is looking down, mouth closes with eyebrows, Ray standing more straight still mouth open.]

:[Silence 10. Beef looks surprised and has moved close to Ray who has finally closed his mouth again.]

==Trivia==
*This was the [http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=08142006 Achewood strip] released the same day as this comic.
*According to Randall, it also mildly references to {{w|Athena#Birth|The birth of Greek Goddess Athena}}{{Citation needed}}.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Parody Week]]
[[Category:Fleshlights]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Food]]

141: Parody Week: Achewood

2016-09-12T05:51:41Z

Slashme: Oxford comma to reduce ambiguity

{{comic
| number = 141
| date = August 14, 2006
| title = Parody Week: Achewood
| image = achewood.png
| titletext = I always wanted to impress them with how well I could hear, didn't you? Also, this sets the record for number of awkward-pause panels in one strip (previously held by Achewood)
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|The subject of beef and rays discussion about beef setting up ray and the program ray seems to be invited to has not been explained at all. There seems to be many things in that part of the comic - before the awkward pauses, that are not easily understood and need explanation. And what's with the food references in the last panel wit text?}}

This comic is a part of the [[:Category:Parody Week|Parody Week]], just joking about other {{w|webcomics}}. This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule and is comprised of the following five {{w|parodies}}:
*[[141: Parody Week: Achewood]]
*[[142: Parody Week: Megatokyo]]
*[[143: Parody Week: TFD and Natalie Dee]]
*[[144: Parody Week: A Softer World]]
*[[145: Parody Week: Dinosaur Comics]]

{{w|Achewood}} is a webcomic by {{w|Chris Onstad}}. It portrays the lives of a group of {{w|anthropomorphic}} stuffed toys, robots, and pets. The comic's humor often lacks a traditional punchline, and utilizes numerous {{w|Awkward silence|awkward pause}} panels.

This comic includes three of the prominent characters from the strip: {{w|Achewood#Philippe|Phillippe}} a [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Webcomic/Achewood five year old stuffed otter], {{w|Achewood#Raymond_Quentin_Smuckles|Ray}}, and {{w|Achewood#Cassandra_.22Roast_Beef.22_Kazenzakis|Roast Beef}}. In the first panel, Phillippe is dreaming of having his ears checked. There's an eye chart on the wall behind him. The doctor informs him that because of his superhearing power he is needed at {{w|Hogwarts}}, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, from {{w|Harry Potter}}.

The comic then switches to Roast Beef and Ray discussing an invitation to a competition described only by its name (that dude is pretty awesome in most measurable ways I mean wow). Ray's strategy consists of highlighting his genitals. Roast Beef offers his take on the competition; that Ray is going to lost to the other, significantly more impressive, contestants. Roast Beef says that ray wouldn't fit in with that crowd. Rather, he would look "like the kind of dude that stays at home all night playing fleshlight tag". It is the nrevealed that Roast Beef was setting Ray up, but couldn't complete his plan. Ray is dismayed, and Roast Beef proceeds to further shut him down, comparing Ray (a "McD's" hamburger) to the other competitors (a 12 oz. sirloin steak). This leads to a lengthy awkward pause, spanning the rest of the comic.

The comic is written in the style of Onstad and his humor. The last 10 panels are "awkward-pause panels", which are used frequently in Achewood, in what appears to be a joke about overuse of dialogue-free panels (there are 11 of these but the first is a shock panel, then the pause begins). This joke is continued in the title-text, where [[Randall]] claims that this strip set the record for most panels of this kind, a record previously held by Achewood.

{{w|Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song}} is a 1971 {{w|Blaxploitation}} film that is generally regarded as an exemplar of its genre.

References to {{w|Fleshlight}}, such as this comment by beef in first panel in third row: ''You are gonna stand out as the sort of dude who stays at home all night playing fleshlight tag '', is a [[:Category:Fleshlights|recurring theme]] in xkcd, but this seems to be the first time.

==Transcript==
:[Unlike regular xkcd comics the text here seems to be typed on a machine, and the speech is in bubbles rather than just indicated with a thin line from the speaker. This is true for all spoken text. Also Beef almost never uses any punctuation in his sentences.]

:[Philippe, an anthropomorphic stuffed otter, is participating in a hearing aid test with headphones over his ears, and one arm raised. He is at a doctor and behind him on the wall There is an eye chart with six lines of E's, the large one on top a regular E, and then in the next two lines they are turned around in the four general directions. The last three lines are not readable. The doctor talks to Philippe from off-panel in a bubble going to the far right. Here it meets a thought bubble line going down and left from the upper right corner. On the right side the back ground is gray and Philippe can be seen lying in a bed, dreaming the scene to the left.]
:Doctor (off-panel): Philippe, your hearing is perfect! In fact, you heard ALL the beeps! You have super-hearing! You're needed at Hogwarts!
:Philippe: Oh boy!
:Eye chart:
::<big>E</big>
::E<big>ɯ</big>EMƎ
::ƎEƎMƎME

:[Roast Beef, an anthropomorphic thin cat with pointy ears and small eyes, is looking at Ray, an anthropomorphic fat cat with black glasses, he is reading from a piece of paper that has been folded out, holding it up in front of him with both hands. They are seen from the waist up. Most of the time below, their eyebrows are visible to show feelings, but Beef's is not shown here. When they speak their mouths are open, else it is closed. Beefs is closed in this panel. Above the drawing there is a line and in the thin frame formed by that and the top panel there is a caption:]
:Meanwhile . . .
:Ray: Beef, check this out. I got an invite to that The Dude Is Pretty Awesome In Most Measurable Ways I Mean Wow competition.

:[This panel pans up so less of their bodies can be seen, and more text be above them. It is clear that Ray has a medal hanging around his neck, which was partly covered by his hands in the previous panel, which are now down. Apart from this they look the same.]
:Beef: Alright that is pretty sweet dogg what is your strategy gonna consist of
:Ray: I'm thinkin' I need to point out my best features -- maybe go holdin' a sign with an arrow toward my junk.

:[Ray is seen almost in full figure, which reveals that he is only wearing big black underpants and the medal, his nipples are also clearly visible on each side of the medal (as they were already in the previous panel, but not the one before). He has one arm in his side, the other holding a large sign with big bold text and beneath this a large black arrow pointing first down and then across towards his pants waistband.]
:Sign: <big>'''Yes'''</big>

:[Back to same view as in the first panel, except a pan so Ray is in the center and Beef is partly cut off at the left frame so there is space for a speech bubble to the right of Ray. Ray holds up a drink glass in front of him with a cherry in the bottom. Beefs eyebrows are missing.]
:Beef: Yeah well I always said subtlety was your middle name dogg
:Beef: And also your first and last in case they didn't get the point
:Ray: How do you think I should play it?

:[Only Beef is shown in this panel to make room for his speech bubbles.]
:Beef: Well basically you got no chance as I see it these dudes are all lovers and fighters to the last
:Beef: All sprung fully formed from the head of Sweet Sweetback
:Beef: You are gonna stand out as the sort of dude who stays at home all night playing fleshlight tag

:[Both are again in this panel but has been panned up so only their heads are visible to place speech bubbles above them.]
:Ray: These words you got are crazy. Didn't I win the outdoor fight?
:Beef: Uh huh about the fight I wasn't gonna tell you but how could you miss that I was setting you up
:Ray: What?
:Beef: You got played dogg

:[Same but panned down to below the medal on Ray. Beefs eyebrows are missing.]
:Beef: I basically just didn't have the heart to go through with it in the end.

:[Only Beef is shown to the right, making space for five speech bubbles to his left.]
:Beef: Anyway the point is that you are gonna lose this thing so hard
:Beef: All cheap McD's hamburger to their slabs of steak
:Beef: A couple 12-oz sirloins garnished with nothing but pure manhood
:Beef: Maybe some sprigs of parsley
:Beef: You are pretty much going down

:[Closeup of a shocked Ray mouth hanging open.]

:[Silence 1. Both are shown from the waistline and up standing looking slightly down, arms down. Rays has closed his mouth. Generally their ears shift a bit from panel to panel the rest of the way, and also their head position. But else they stay the same distance from each other.]

:[Silence 2. Same view. Beef looks perturbed and his ear is twitching. Ray's mouth is open again.]

:[Silence 3. Same view. Beef looks sorry. Rays has closed his mouth.]

:[Silence 4. Same view. Beef looks sorry and Ray looks angry. Ray's mouth is open again.]

:[Silence 5. Same view. Rays has closed his mouth again. Beefs eyebrows are missing, but also Rays are gone, maybe hidden by the rim of the glasses. They do not reappear in the rest of the comic indicating he keeps his eyes downcast. ]

:[Silence 6. Same view. Beefs eyebrows are back]

:[Silence 7. The view has panned so low that it is possible to see the waistband of Ray's underpants. Beef is looking even more down and has moved closer to Ray who's mouth is open again.]

:[Silence 8. Same view, but a little less waistband visible. Beef has moved back again his eyebrows are missing and his mouth are open, and Ray looks even more down than before still mouth open.]

:[Silence 9. View paned so low that a large part of Rays underpants can be seen. Beef is looking down, mouth closes with eyebrows, Ray standing more straight still mouth open.]

:[Silence 10. Beef looks surprised and has moved close to Ray who has finally closed his mouth again.]

==Trivia==
*This was the [http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=08142006 Achewood strip] released the same day as this comic.
*According to Randall, it also mildly references to {{w|Athena#Birth|The birth of Greek Goddess Athena}}{{Citation needed}}.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Parody Week]]
[[Category:Fleshlights]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Food]]

1724: Proofs

2016-08-26T13:52:20Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ rm "the"

{{comic
| number = 1724
| date = August 24, 2016
| title = Proofs
| image = proofs.png
| titletext = Next, let's assume the decision of whether to take the Axiom of Choice is made by a deterministic process ...
}}

==Explanation==
[[Miss Lenhart]] is back teaching a math class. She begins a proof when one of her students ([[Cueball]]) interrupts her asking if this is one of those dark-magic (unclear, incomprehensible) proofs. She says no, but it soon turns out that it is; Cueball exclaims that he just knew it would be.

The proof she starts setting up resembles a {{w|proof by contradiction}}. This kind of proof assumes that a particular theorem is true, and shows that this assumption leads to a contradiction, which disproves the initial assumption. For example assumption that √2 is a {{w|rational number}} means that, for some natural ''a'' and ''b'', √2=''a/b'', where ''a/b'' is an {{w|irreducible fraction}}. Yet, multiplying this equation by itself, we get 2=''a²/b²'' which in turn rearranges to 2''b²''=''a²''. Therefore ''a²'' is even (as any integer multiplied by 2 is even), which means that ''a'' is an even number, as an even number squared is always even and an odd number squared is always odd. This means, that ''a=2k'' and ''2b²=(2k)²=4k²'', meaning ''b²''=2''k²'', so ''b'' must be even too. But if both ''a'' and ''b'' are even, ''a/b'' cannot be irreducible. Contradiction means that the initial assumption is false, and √2 cannot be a rational number.

Alternatively, instead of a proof by contradiction the setup could be for a one way function. For example, it is relatively easy to test that a solution to a differential equation is valid but choosing the correct solution to test can seem like black magic to students.

The way that Ms Lenhart's proof refers to the act of doing math itself, is characteristic of metamathematical proofs, for example {{w|Gödel's incompleteness theorems}}, which, at first sight, may indeed look like black magic, even if in the end they must be a "perfectly sensible chain of reasoning" like the rest of good mathematics. While standard mathematical theorems and their proofs deal with standard mathematical objects, like numbers, functions, points or lines, the metamathematical theorems treat other theorems as objects of interest. In this way you can propose and prove theorems about possibility of proving other theorems. For example, in 1931 {{w|Kurt Gödel}} was able to prove that any mathematical system based on arithmetics (that is using numbers) has statements that are true, but can be neither proved nor disproved. This kind of metamathematical reasoning is especially useful in {{w|set theory}}, where many statements become impossible to prove and disprove if the {{w|axiom of choice}} is not taken as a part of the axiomatic system.

Using a position on the blackboard as a part of the proof is a joke, but it bears a resemblance to {{w|Cantor's diagonal argument}} where a position in a sequence of digits of a real number was a tool in a proof that not all infinite sets have the same {{w|cardinality}} (rough equivalent of the number of elements). This "diagonal method" is also often used in metamathematical proofs.

The axiom of choice itself states that for every collection of nonempty sets, you can have a function that draws one element from each set of the collection. This axiom, once considered controversial, was added relatively late to the axiomatic set theory, and even contemporary mathematicians still study which theorems really require its inclusion. In the title text the decision of whether to take the axiom of choice is made by a deterministic process, that is a process which future states can be developed with no randomness involved. {{w|Determinacy}} of infinite games is used as a tool in the set theory, however the deterministic process is rather a term of the {{w|stochastic process|stochastic processes theory}}, and the {{w|dynamical systems theory}}, branches of mathematics far from the abstract set theory, which makes the proof even more exotic. The axiom of choice was mentioned earlier in [[804: Pumpkin Carving]].

Although Miss Lenhart did retire a year ago after [[1519: Venus]], she seems to have returned here for a math course at university level, but continues the trend she finished with in her prior class.

==Transcript==
:[Miss Lenhart is standing facing left in front of a whiteboard writing on it. Eleven left aligned lines of writing is shown as unreadable scribbles. A voice interrupts her from off-panel right.]
:Miss Lenhart: ... Let's assume there exists some function ''F''(''a,b,c''...) which produces the correct answer-
:Cueball (off-panel): Hang on.

:[In a frame-less panel Cueball is sitting on a chair at a desk with a pen in his hand taking notes.]
:Cueball: This is going to be one of those weird, dark magic proofs, isn't it? I can tell.

:[Miss Lenhart has turned right towards Cueball, who is again speaking off-panel. The white board is also off-panel.]
:Miss Lenhart: What? No, no, it's a perfectly sensible chain of reasoning.
:Cueball (off-panel): All right...

:[Miss Lenhart is facing the whiteboard again writing more scribbles behind some of the lines from before (the first line has disappeared). The lines that have more text added are now number three and five (four and six before). Cueball again speaks off-panel.]
:Miss Lenhart: Now, let's assume that the correct answer will eventually be written on the board at the coordinates (''x, y''). If we—
:Cueball (off-panel): I ''knew'' it!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Math]]

1724: Proofs

2016-08-26T13:51:48Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ "the set theory" -> "set theory"

{{comic
| number = 1724
| date = August 24, 2016
| title = Proofs
| image = proofs.png
| titletext = Next, let's assume the decision of whether to take the Axiom of Choice is made by a deterministic process ...
}}

==Explanation==
[[Miss Lenhart]] is back teaching a math class. She begins a proof when one of her students ([[Cueball]]) interrupts her asking if this is one of those dark-magic (unclear, incomprehensible) proofs. She says no, but it soon turns out that it is; Cueball exclaims that he just knew it would be.

The proof she starts setting up resembles a {{w|proof by contradiction}}. This kind of proof assumes that a particular theorem is true, and shows that this assumption leads to a contradiction, which disproves the initial assumption. For example assumption that √2 is a {{w|rational number}} means that, for some natural ''a'' and ''b'', √2=''a/b'', where ''a/b'' is an {{w|irreducible fraction}}. Yet, multiplying this equation by itself, we get 2=''a²/b²'' which in turn rearranges to 2''b²''=''a²''. Therefore ''a²'' is even (as any integer multiplied by 2 is even), which means that ''a'' is an even number, as an even number squared is always even and an odd number squared is always odd. This means, that ''a=2k'' and ''2b²=(2k)²=4k²'', meaning ''b²''=2''k²'', so ''b'' must be even too. But if both ''a'' and ''b'' are even, ''a/b'' cannot be irreducible. Contradiction means that the initial assumption is false, and √2 cannot be a rational number.

Alternatively, instead of a proof by contradiction the setup could be for a one way function. For example, it is relatively easy to test that a solution to a differential equation is valid but choosing the correct solution to test can seem like black magic to students.

The way that Ms Lenhart's proof refers to the act of doing math itself, is characteristic of metamathematical proofs, for example {{w|Gödel's incompleteness theorems}}, which, at first sight, may indeed look like black magic, even if in the end they must be a "perfectly sensible chain of reasoning" like the rest of good mathematics. While standard mathematical theorems and their proofs deal with standard mathematical objects, like numbers, functions, points or lines, the metamathematical theorems treat other theorems as objects of interest. In this way you can propose and prove theorems about possibility of proving other theorems. For example, in 1931 {{w|Kurt Gödel}} was able to prove that any mathematical system based on arithmetics (that is using numbers) has statements that are true, but can be neither proved nor disproved. This kind of metamathematical reasoning is especially useful in {{w|set theory}}, where many statements become impossible to prove and disprove if the {{w|axiom of choice}} is not taken as a part of the axiomatic system.

Using a position on the blackboard as a part of the proof is a joke, but it bears a resemblance to the {{w|Cantor's diagonal argument}} where a position in a sequence of digits of a real number was a tool in a proof that not all infinite sets have the same {{w|cardinality}} (rough equivalent of the number of elements). This "diagonal method" is also often used in metamathematical proofs.

The axiom of choice itself states that for every collection of nonempty sets, you can have a function that draws one element from each set of the collection. This axiom, once considered controversial, was added relatively late to the axiomatic set theory, and even contemporary mathematicians still study which theorems really require its inclusion. In the title text the decision of whether to take the axiom of choice is made by a deterministic process, that is a process which future states can be developed with no randomness involved. {{w|Determinacy}} of infinite games is used as a tool in the set theory, however the deterministic process is rather a term of the {{w|stochastic process|stochastic processes theory}}, and the {{w|dynamical systems theory}}, branches of mathematics far from the abstract set theory, which makes the proof even more exotic. The axiom of choice was mentioned earlier in [[804: Pumpkin Carving]].

Although Miss Lenhart did retire a year ago after [[1519: Venus]], she seems to have returned here for a math course at university level, but continues the trend she finished with in her prior class.

==Transcript==
:[Miss Lenhart is standing facing left in front of a whiteboard writing on it. Eleven left aligned lines of writing is shown as unreadable scribbles. A voice interrupts her from off-panel right.]
:Miss Lenhart: ... Let's assume there exists some function ''F''(''a,b,c''...) which produces the correct answer-
:Cueball (off-panel): Hang on.

:[In a frame-less panel Cueball is sitting on a chair at a desk with a pen in his hand taking notes.]
:Cueball: This is going to be one of those weird, dark magic proofs, isn't it? I can tell.

:[Miss Lenhart has turned right towards Cueball, who is again speaking off-panel. The white board is also off-panel.]
:Miss Lenhart: What? No, no, it's a perfectly sensible chain of reasoning.
:Cueball (off-panel): All right...

:[Miss Lenhart is facing the whiteboard again writing more scribbles behind some of the lines from before (the first line has disappeared). The lines that have more text added are now number three and five (four and six before). Cueball again speaks off-panel.]
:Miss Lenhart: Now, let's assume that the correct answer will eventually be written on the board at the coordinates (''x, y''). If we—
:Cueball (off-panel): I ''knew'' it!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Math]]

1724: Proofs

2016-08-26T13:50:54Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ copy-edit

{{comic
| number = 1724
| date = August 24, 2016
| title = Proofs
| image = proofs.png
| titletext = Next, let's assume the decision of whether to take the Axiom of Choice is made by a deterministic process ...
}}

==Explanation==
[[Miss Lenhart]] is back teaching a math class. She begins a proof when one of her students ([[Cueball]]) interrupts her asking if this is one of those dark-magic (unclear, incomprehensible) proofs. She says no, but it soon turns out that it is; Cueball exclaims that he just knew it would be.

The proof she starts setting up resembles a {{w|proof by contradiction}}. This kind of proof assumes that a particular theorem is true, and shows that this assumption leads to a contradiction, which disproves the initial assumption. For example assumption that √2 is a {{w|rational number}} means that, for some natural ''a'' and ''b'', √2=''a/b'', where ''a/b'' is an {{w|irreducible fraction}}. Yet, multiplying this equation by itself, we get 2=''a²/b²'' which in turn rearranges to 2''b²''=''a²''. Therefore ''a²'' is even (as any integer multiplied by 2 is even), which means that ''a'' is an even number, as an even number squared is always even and an odd number squared is always odd. This means, that ''a=2k'' and ''2b²=(2k)²=4k²'', meaning ''b²''=2''k²'', so ''b'' must be even too. But if both ''a'' and ''b'' are even, ''a/b'' cannot be irreducible. Contradiction means that the initial assumption is false, and √2 cannot be a rational number.

Alternatively, instead of a proof by contradiction the setup could be for a one way function. For example, it is relatively easy to test that a solution to a differential equation is valid but choosing the correct solution to test can seem like black magic to students.

The way that Ms Lenhart's proof refers to the act of doing math itself, is characteristic of metamathematical proofs, for example {{w|Gödel's incompleteness theorems}}, which, at first sight, may indeed look like black magic, even if in the end they must be a "perfectly sensible chain of reasoning" like the rest of good mathematics. While standard mathematical theorems and their proofs deal with standard mathematical objects, like numbers, functions, points or lines, the metamathematical theorems treat other theorems as objects of interest. In this way you can propose and prove theorems about possibility of proving other theorems. For example, in 1931 {{w|Kurt Gödel}} was able to prove that any mathematical system based on arithmetics (that is using numbers) has statements that are true, but can be neither proved nor disproved. This kind of metamathematical reasoning is especially useful in the {{w|set theory}}, where many statements become impossible to prove and disprove if the {{w|axiom of choice}} is not taken as a part of the axiomatic system.

Using a position on the blackboard as a part of the proof is a joke, but it bears a resemblance to the {{w|Cantor's diagonal argument}} where a position in a sequence of digits of a real number was a tool in a proof that not all infinite sets have the same {{w|cardinality}} (rough equivalent of the number of elements). This "diagonal method" is also often used in metamathematical proofs.

The axiom of choice itself states that for every collection of nonempty sets, you can have a function that draws one element from each set of the collection. This axiom, once considered controversial, was added relatively late to the axiomatic set theory, and even contemporary mathematicians still study which theorems really require its inclusion. In the title text the decision of whether to take the axiom of choice is made by a deterministic process, that is a process which future states can be developed with no randomness involved. {{w|Determinacy}} of infinite games is used as a tool in the set theory, however the deterministic process is rather a term of the {{w|stochastic process|stochastic processes theory}}, and the {{w|dynamical systems theory}}, branches of mathematics far from the abstract set theory, which makes the proof even more exotic. The axiom of choice was mentioned earlier in [[804: Pumpkin Carving]].

Although Miss Lenhart did retire a year ago after [[1519: Venus]], she seems to have returned here for a math course at university level, but continues the trend she finished with in her prior class.

==Transcript==
:[Miss Lenhart is standing facing left in front of a whiteboard writing on it. Eleven left aligned lines of writing is shown as unreadable scribbles. A voice interrupts her from off-panel right.]
:Miss Lenhart: ... Let's assume there exists some function ''F''(''a,b,c''...) which produces the correct answer-
:Cueball (off-panel): Hang on.

:[In a frame-less panel Cueball is sitting on a chair at a desk with a pen in his hand taking notes.]
:Cueball: This is going to be one of those weird, dark magic proofs, isn't it? I can tell.

:[Miss Lenhart has turned right towards Cueball, who is again speaking off-panel. The white board is also off-panel.]
:Miss Lenhart: What? No, no, it's a perfectly sensible chain of reasoning.
:Cueball (off-panel): All right...

:[Miss Lenhart is facing the whiteboard again writing more scribbles behind some of the lines from before (the first line has disappeared). The lines that have more text added are now number three and five (four and six before). Cueball again speaks off-panel.]
:Miss Lenhart: Now, let's assume that the correct answer will eventually be written on the board at the coordinates (''x, y''). If we—
:Cueball (off-panel): I ''knew'' it!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Math]]

1724: Proofs

2016-08-26T13:49:29Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ Copy-edit: remove comma splice and fix spelling.

{{comic
| number = 1724
| date = August 24, 2016
| title = Proofs
| image = proofs.png
| titletext = Next, let's assume the decision of whether to take the Axiom of Choice is made by a deterministic process ...
}}

==Explanation==
[[Miss Lenhart]] is back teaching a math class. She begins a proof when one of her students ([[Cueball]]) interrupts her asking if this is one of those dark-magic (unclear, incomprehensible) proofs. She says no, but it soon turns out that it is; Cueball exclaims that he just knew it would be.

The proof she starts setting up resembles a {{w|proof by contradiction}}. This kind of proof assumes that a particular theorem is true, and shows that this assumption leads to a contradiction, which disproves the initial assumption. For example assumption that √2 is a {{w|rational number}} means that, for some natural ''a'' and ''b'', √2=''a/b'', where ''a/b'' is an {{w|irreducible fraction}}. Yet, multiplying this equation by itself, we get 2=''a²/b²'' which in turn rearranges to 2''b²''=''a²''. Therefore ''a²'' is even (as any integer multiplied by 2 is even), which means that ''a'' is an even number, as an even number squared is always even and an odd number squared is always odd. This means, that ''a=2k'' and ''2b²=(2k)²=4k²'', meaning ''b²''=2''k²'', so ''b'' must be even too. But if both ''a'' and ''b'' are even, ''a/b'' cannot be irreducible. Contradiction means that the initial assumption is false, and √2 cannot be a rational number.

Alternatively, instead of a proof by contradiction the setup could be for a one way function. For example, it is relatively easy to test that a solution to a differential equation is valid but choosing the correct solution to test can seem like black magic to students.

The way, Ms Lenhart's proof refers to the act of doing math itself, is characteristic to metamathematical proofs, for example {{w|Gödel's incompleteness theorems}}, which, at first sight, may indeed look like black magic, even if in the end they must be a "perfectly sensible chain of reasoning" like the rest of good mathematics. While standard mathematical theorems and their proofs deal with standard mathematical objects, like numbers, functions, points or lines, the metamathematical theorems treat other theorems as objects of interest. In this way you can propose and prove theorems about possibility of proving other theorems. For example, in 1931 {{w|Kurt Gödel}} was able to prove that any mathematical system based on arithmetics (that is using numbers) has statements that are true, but can be neither proved nor disproved. This kind of metamathematical reasoning is especially useful in the {{w|set theory}}, where many statements become impossible to prove and disprove if the {{w|axiom of choice}} is not taken as a part of the axiomatic system.

Using a position on the blackboard as a part of the proof is a joke, but it bears a resemblance to the {{w|Cantor's diagonal argument}} where a position in a sequence of digits of a real number was a tool in a proof that not all infinite sets have the same {{w|cardinality}} (rough equivalent of the number of elements). This "diagonal method" is also often used in metamathematical proofs.

The axiom of choice itself states that for every collection of nonempty sets, you can have a function that draws one element from each set of the collection. This axiom, once considered controversial, was added relatively late to the axiomatic set theory, and even contemporary mathematicians still study which theorems really require its inclusion. In the title text the decision of whether to take the axiom of choice is made by a deterministic process, that is a process which future states can be developed with no randomness involved. {{w|Determinacy}} of infinite games is used as a tool in the set theory, however the deterministic process is rather a term of the {{w|stochastic process|stochastic processes theory}}, and the {{w|dynamical systems theory}}, branches of mathematics far from the abstract set theory, which makes the proof even more exotic. The axiom of choice was mentioned earlier in [[804: Pumpkin Carving]].

Although Miss Lenhart did retire a year ago after [[1519: Venus]], she seems to have returned here for a math course at university level, but continues the trend she finished with in her prior class.

==Transcript==
:[Miss Lenhart is standing facing left in front of a whiteboard writing on it. Eleven left aligned lines of writing is shown as unreadable scribbles. A voice interrupts her from off-panel right.]
:Miss Lenhart: ... Let's assume there exists some function ''F''(''a,b,c''...) which produces the correct answer-
:Cueball (off-panel): Hang on.

:[In a frame-less panel Cueball is sitting on a chair at a desk with a pen in his hand taking notes.]
:Cueball: This is going to be one of those weird, dark magic proofs, isn't it? I can tell.

:[Miss Lenhart has turned right towards Cueball, who is again speaking off-panel. The white board is also off-panel.]
:Miss Lenhart: What? No, no, it's a perfectly sensible chain of reasoning.
:Cueball (off-panel): All right...

:[Miss Lenhart is facing the whiteboard again writing more scribbles behind some of the lines from before (the first line has disappeared). The lines that have more text added are now number three and five (four and six before). Cueball again speaks off-panel.]
:Miss Lenhart: Now, let's assume that the correct answer will eventually be written on the board at the coordinates (''x, y''). If we—
:Cueball (off-panel): I ''knew'' it!

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Miss Lenhart]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Math]]

1678: Recent Searches

2016-05-10T08:52:30Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ autoexec.bat maybe

{{comic
| number = 1678
| date = May 9, 2016
| title = Recent Searches
| image = recent_searches.png
| titletext = autoexec code posted by verified twitter users
}}

==Explanation==
People often find answers to computer problems by searching on {{w|Google}}, which shows you recent search terms in a drop-down box when you go to search it. Here we see a list of search queries, each of which suggests the author is perversely misusing or overextending some computer technology. The overall impression is of someone technically sophisticated enough to shoot themselves in the foot, and who does not learn any larger lessons despite doing so repeatedly. The title text is another possible entry in this list.

The caption implies that from Randall's perspective, every computer he uses seems to be broken; he doesn't seem to realise this is because he's the one using them, not because the computers actually start off broken. (See also comics [[349]], [[1084]], [[1316]] and [[1586]] for similar themes.)

([[979|Dear people from the future]], if Google directed you here because it is the most popular result for a problem you are experiencing, this is not the page you were looking for).

{| class="wikitable" border="1" cellpadding="4" style="border-collapse: collapse;"
|-
! width=20% | Search
! Explanation
|-
| [https://www.google.com/search?q=Google+translate+syntax+highlighting Google translate syntax highlighting]
| {{w|Syntax highlighting}} can be used when editing {{w|source code}} to make the code more readable and easier to understand. It is not generally used for natural languages, but {{w|sentence diagram}}s of brief passages are used in language education. {{w|Google Translate}} is used to translate text from one {{w|natural language}} to another. It uses {{w|Javascript}} <tt>mouseover()</tt> to highlight words as an aid in matching phrases in the source with their translations, but does not apply different highlighting dependent on syntax.

Alternatively, this could imply that the user is attempting to translate code from one programming language to another using Google Translate. Success would be unlikely, since the service is not intended for this, {{Citation needed}} and syntactically valid output might further break the computer executing it.
|-
| Autodetect mixed bash zsh
| {{w|bash}} and {{w|Z_shell|zsh}} are two {{w|Command-line_interface|command line interfaces}} for {{w|Linux}}. The way to execute commands is almost identical, making detecting a script that contains a mixed syntax nearly impossible.
|-
| CPU temperature sensor limits
| The CPU's temperature sensors exist to tell you when your CPU is becoming dangerously overheated (normally because of a faulty fan or overclocking). Someone who searches for information about the limits of those sensors is presumably expecting to misuse their CPU. Probably also a reference to [[1172: Workflow]].
|-
| GIF to XLS
| .GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is a file extension used to store images and sequences of images to be displayed as an animation. .XLS is the file extension for Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. The joke is that the complete difference between the two types of file makes any kind of conversion seemingly impossible. However, since a pixel graphic can be thought of as a rectangular array of numerical values, a conversion is technically possible. [http://www.think-maths.co.uk/spreadsheet Here] is a webpage with an online converter. (Although, in fact, the actual search turns up a number of results along the lines of OCR programs that can convert a table in a GIF image to spreadsheet format.)
|-
| Clock speed jumper sample rate
| Jumper wire is a short circuit used for switching a certain function on an electronic circuit. On a motherboard, jumpers can be used to alter the clock speeds of various motherboard functions (such as the CPU or the front side bus). These jumpers should be modified when the computer is off. However, this search is asking how often the motherboard checks the status of the clock speed jumpers, implying that they intend to change these jumpers while the computer is powered on.
|-
| [https://www.google.com/search?q=clean+reinstall+keybinding Clean reinstall keybinding]
| This refers to keybinding, the practice of mapping a certain key to a certain function (e.g., pressing PRTSC will take a screenshot). Creating a keybinding for a task usually implies that the task is repeated often. A "clean reinstall" (presumably of an operating system) is however not generally something that should be repeated often, implying that the user is regularly breaking the OS with their tinkering. Alternatively, the user may have modified their default keybindings to such an extent that their [[1031|leopard]] has become unusable (similar to [[1284: Improved Keyboard]]), necessitating a "clean reinstall" of the bindings.
|-
| Cron job to update crontab
| {{w|Cron}} is a utility that allows you to schedule commands or scripts to be run periodically. These scheduled jobs are read from a ''crontab'' file. A job that updates the crontab (therefore creating new jobs, removing old ones or editing existing ones) is paramount to a {{w|Job scheduler}}, and trying to use cron for such functionality will result in highly unstable functionality.
|-
| [https://www.google.com/search?q=fsck+chrome+extension fsck Chrome extension]
|
This is probably a search for an interface to the Unix '''f'''ile'''s'''ystem che'''ck'''er {{w|fsck}} via third-party software added to Chrome. Repairing a filesystem this way would be inadvisable. {{Citation needed}} This might indicate confusion about the meaning of the term "online filesystem repair", in which "online" means "while the filesystem is in use" rather than "over the internet". Alternatively, the user might want to repair an installation of the operating system Chromium, in a manner less drastic than the {{w|factory reset}} preferred by Google.
|-
| Recursive font
| An idiosyncratic mix of {{w|Recursion}} and the font style ''{{w|cursive}}'', referring especially to text handwritten in a flowing manner. {{w|PostScript}} (the language {{w|PostScript fonts|some fonts}} are written in) is capable of recursion and PostScript Type 3 fonts are able to use the full language. This could create effects like fonts with complicated fractal borders and fill patterns - but the increase in processing time would contribute to seeming brokenness of the computer (or printer) rendering the font.

A true recursive font would be a form of {{w|Fractals}}.
|-
| Regex matching valid EBNF
| EBNF refers to {{w|Extended Backus–Naur Form}}, which is used to define {{w|Formal Language|formal languages}}. EBNF specifies recursive patterns that are impossible for a {{w|Regular_Expression|regular expression}} to determine whether it is valid or not. There is some irony in using regex to test the validity of something which ''defines'' the validity of things like regex.
|-
| [https://www.google.com/search?q=Hardlinks+Turing+complete Hardlinks Turing complete]
| In some filesystems, for example {{w|ext4}} and {{w|NTFS}}, a single file may be referenced by different names anywhere in the filesystem. These filenames are termed "hard links" to the file because they are automatically resolved by the operating system to the file metadata. "Soft" or "symbolic" links are resolved indirectly via a filename, which may reside anywhere. A file is deleted when the last hard link to it is unlinked; a soft link exists independently of its target.

{{w|Turing completeness}} is the {{w|computational complexity}} required to simulate any other Turing complete system (given an infinite amount of memory). Recently there have been cases where [http://beza1e1.tuxen.de/articles/accidentally_turing_complete.html unexpected mechanisms] from card games to text parsers were proved to be Turing complete. Hardlinks being Turing complete would imply that creating and deleting hardlinks alone is enough to statisfy the requirements of Turing completeness.
|-
| Opposite of safe mode
| {{w|Safe mode}} is a diagnostic mode of an operating system or application which allows the user to troubleshoot problems by disabling unnecessary functionality. The "opposite of safe mode" implies a "dangerous" mode where the purpose is to allow uselessly dangerous action, and even encourages you do so.

Alternatively, the user have somehow been dropped into safemode and is searching for how to get back to normal operation, which in itself is ridiculous as safemode is intended for the user to resolve the problem, and the user clearly does not understand why the system have been put in the state it has.
|-
| Predictive touchpad
| {{w|Predictive text}} is a feature of many smartphone keyboards that predicts the most likely word the user wishes to type, and then gives the user the option to place the word in the sentence without typing the whole word. A {{w|touchpad}} is a computer pointing device, similar to a {{w|computer mouse}}. The idea of a "predictive touchpad" seems absurd because, as opposed to typed words, there are not a limited number of swipe combinations that are possible on a touchpad. A "predictive touchpad" implies that a computer could predict where the user was going to move the mouse or click, which is clearly unreasonable. {{Citation needed}} - Beside all this it's a simple word play on techonlogies/names used for touchpads. Resistive or capacitive touchpads are quite common, while inductive touchpads are only used with special pens for drawing.

Interestingly, a version of Linux {{Citation needed}} had a predictive cursor option, where the cursor jumped to the nearest button (like window close) when it got moved near but not quite reached that button.
|-
| Google docs from bootloader
| Google docs relies on programs and libraries much more complex than a {{w|bootloader}} (a very small program running immediately after boot, mainly for loading the OS) could run.
|-
| Hardware acceleration red channel only
| {{w|Hardware acceleration}} means that certain calculations are not performed by the computer's {{w|CPU}} but by a "specialized" processor, e.g. a {{w|GPU}} which is part of the graphics adapter. This speeds up output, especially if complex 3D calculations are required and reduces CPU load. To use this function only on a single color channel seems pretty useless, but one may want to troubleshoot a program that displays only red when hardware acceleration is enabled.
|-
| autoexec code posted by verified twitter users
| Automatically executing code from the internet is generally a terrible idea, because it could be written by someone with malicious intent and harm your computer. The joke here is that the code would only be executed if written by someone who has been "verified" on Twitter. Twitter's verification service only serves to show that a user is who they claim to be, not whether or not their code can be trusted, so this would provide little protection. Usually, twitter verification matters so that celebrities can identify themselves, so this line implies that Randall is only interested in running code posted by celebrities. It might also refer to autoexec.bat, the script that is automatically executed when a DOS computer boots up.
|-
|}

==Trivia==
* This is one of the comics with colours.

==Transcript==
:[Coloured and styled as the logo]
:Google

:[Google Search bar, with a drop down box with faded text, implying recent searches]
:Google translate syntax highlighting
:Autodetect mixed bash zsh
:CPU temperature sensor limits
:GIF to XLS
:Clock speed jumper sample rate
:Clean reinstall keybinding
:Cron job to update crontab
:fsck Chrome extension
:Recursive font
:Regex matching valid EBNF
:Hardlinks Turing complete
:Opposite of safe mode
:Predictive touchpad
:Google docs from bootloader
:Hardware acceleration red channel only

:[Bold, below page outline]
:I have no idea why my computers are always broken

{{comic discussion}}

1638: Backslashes

2016-02-03T17:04:52Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ slight clarification

{{comic
| number = 1638
| date = February 3, 2016
| title = Backslashes
| image = backslashes.png
| titletext = I searched my .bash_history for the line with the highest ratio of special characters to regular alphanumeric characters, and the winner was: cat out.txt | grep -o "\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$" ... I have no memory of this and no idea what I was trying to do, but I sure hope it worked.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Could use examples like the one posted in the comment. Also more on the title text expression. What could it have done? There is doubt in the comments if it is actually wrong, as currently expressed in the explanation. Is this "[^)\]" wrong because there is no "(" bracket to match it, or is it not part of the "real" text? If it was wrong would it have mattered if another "(" had been put in the right place?}}

{{w|Regular expressions}} are often used to search large bodies of text for strings that match a particular pattern; this topic has previously been the subject in [[:Category:Regex|other comics]].

Several characters in regular expressions are "{{w|special characters}}", which by default do not match the literal character, but instead help define the pattern. To find a special character literally, you must "escape" it, by preceding it with a {{w|backslash}} (\). This, of course, means that the backslash is a special character, so to search for a literal backslash character, you need to type two '''backslashes''' -- \\ (hence the title).

Occasionally, however, the text being searched will itself contain a regular expression. Or the regular expression must be embedded in another language like {{w|script Shell_(computing)|a shell script}} or {{w|Java (programming language)|Java}} that contains its own special characters. If you need to search for an escaped backslash in an embeeded expression you will need to "escape" the escape by using two backslashes -- \\\\, one for the original backslash and one for the original escape character. This gets very silly, very quickly, which is the joke of the comic. This entry with four is dubbed: ''Actual backslash, for real this time'', as if "I really mean it this time". Figuring out how many backslashes are needed to make the regular expression work through many layers is a source of unending frustration for programmers.

The first three entries with 1-3 backslashes make sense: a "real backslash" is when the program is told to find one of these using two backslashes. And if you need to find such a double "real backslash" you would need a third, hence the first ''real'' is written in italic.

Using 5-7 backslashes continues the trend, first with five a reference to {{w|Elder}} which has many meanings. It has become known through the {{w|Harry Potter}} universe with the {{w| Magical_objects_in_Harry_Potter#Deathly_Hallows|Elder wand}} made from {{w|Sambucus|Elder wood}}. The {{w|Elder Days}} is also the first Ages of Middle-earth in {{w|The Lord of the Rings}}. It is probably in reference to the {{w|Elder Gods}} of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Using 6 backslashes will cause them to escape the computer and enter your brain and using 7 backslashes makes it ''so real it {{w|Transcendence (philosophy)|transcends}} {{w|Spacetime|time and space}}.''

Things get even worse when you have to embed a regular expressions in a language like {{w|Java (programming language)|Java}}, which both lacks {{w|perl}}'s syntactic sugar to demarcate the beginning and end of a regular expressions, and uses the backslash for its own special characters. So, to create the regular expressions "\\\\" in Java, you'd have to use the string "\\\\\\\\", since each backslash needs to be quoted to get through the Java string parser before it can then be considered as a regular expression. 8 backslashes is the second last entry: ''to end all other text.''

The list gives names for all numbers of backslashes from 1 up to 8, but then the last entry has 11 slashes followed by "..." to indicate they continue forever. This is: ''The true name of {{w|Baal (demon)|Ba'al}}, the {{w|Soul eater (folklore)|Soul-Eater}}''. This indicates that if you continue misusing backslashes like this you will end up devoured by a demon, for instance {{w|Beelzebub}}, for being so thoughtless... Ba'al has been [[:Category:Ba'al|mentioned before]] in {{xkcd}}.

It's unclear whether the regular expression in the title text is valid or not. A long discussion about the validity of the expression has occurred here on explainxkcd.com. The fact that many editors of the site, often themselves extremely technically qualified, can't determine whether the expression is valid or not adds a meta layer to the joke of the comic.

==Transcript==
:[A list of the names of different numbers of backslashes. After each "item" there is a gray line to the text describing each item. As the text is aligned above each other, the lines becomes shorter as the sequence of backslashes becomes longer until there is just a line with the length of a single hyphen for the last item. There are 1 to 8 backslashes and then 11 plus "..." in the last entry.]
:\------------ Backslash
:\\----------- Real backslash
:\\\---------- ''Real'' real backslash
:\\\\---------- Actual backslash, for real this time
:\\\\\--------- Elder backslash
:\\\\\\-------- Backslash which escapes the screen and enters your brain
:\\\\\\\------- Backslash so real it transcends time and space
:\\\\\\\\------ Backslash to end all other text
:\\\\\\\\\\\...- The true name of Ba'al, the Soul-Eater

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Regex]]
[[Category:Programming]]

1638: Backslashes

2016-02-03T16:59:01Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ Fix grammar by specifying subject.

{{comic
| number = 1638
| date = February 3, 2016
| title = Backslashes
| image = backslashes.png
| titletext = I searched my .bash_history for the line with the highest ratio of special characters to regular alphanumeric characters, and the winner was: cat out.txt | grep -o "\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$" ... I have no memory of this and no idea what I was trying to do, but I sure hope it worked.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Could use examples like the one posted in the comment. Also more on the title text expression. What could it have done? There is doubt in the comments if it is actually wrong, as currently expressed in the explanation. Is this "[^)\]" wrong because there is no "(" bracket to match it, or is it not part of the "real" text? If it was wrong would it have mattered if another "(" had been put in the right place?}}

{{w|Regular expressions}} are often used to search large bodies of text for strings that match a particular pattern; this topic has previously been the subject in [[:Category:Regex|other comics]].

Several characters in regular expressions are "{{w|special characters}}", which by default do not match the literal character, but instead help define the pattern. To find a special character literally, you must "escape" it, by preceding it with a {{w|backslash}} (\). This, of course, means that the backslash is a special character, so to search for a literal backslash character, you need to type two '''backslashes''' -- \\ (hence the title).

Occasionally, however, the text being searched will itself contain a regular expression. Or the regular expression must be embedded in another language like {{w|script Shell_(computing)|a shell script}} or {{w|Java (programming language)|Java}} that contains its own special characters. If you need to search for an escaped backslash in an embeeded expression you will need to "escape" the escape by using two backslashes -- \\\\, one for the original backslash and one for the original escape character. This gets very silly, very quickly, which is the joke of the comic. This entry with four is dubbed: ''Actual backslash, for real this time'', as if "I really mean it this time". Figuring out how many backslashes are needed to make the regular expression work through many layers is a source of unending frustration for programmers.

The first three entries with 1-3 backslashes makes sense as a real backslash is when the program is told to find one of these using two backslashes. And if you need to find such a double "real backslash" you would need a third, hence the first ''real'' is written in italic.

Using 5-7 backslashes continues the trend, first with five a reference to {{w|Elder}} which has many meanings. It has become known through the {{w|Harry Potter}} universe with the {{w| Magical_objects_in_Harry_Potter#Deathly_Hallows|Elder wand}} made from {{w|Sambucus|Elder wood}}. The {{w|Elder Days}} is also the first Ages of Middle-earth in {{w|The Lord of the Rings}}. It is probably in reference to the {{w|Elder Gods}} of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Using 6 backslashes will cause them to escape the computer and enter your brain and using 7 backslashes makes it ''so real it {{w|Transcendence (philosophy)|transcends}} {{w|Spacetime|time and space}}.''

Things get even worse when you have to embed a regular expressions in a language like {{w|Java (programming language)|Java}}, which both lacks {{w|perl}}'s syntactic sugar to demarcate the beginning and end of a regular expressions, and uses the backslash for its own special characters. So, to create the regular expressions "\\\\" in Java, you'd have to use the string "\\\\\\\\", since each backslash needs to be quoted to get through the Java string parser before it can then be considered as a regular expression. 8 backslashes is the second last entry: ''to end all other text.''

The list gives names for all numbers of backslashes from 1 up to 8, but then the last entry has 11 slashes followed by "..." to indicate they continue forever. This is: ''The true name of {{w|Baal (demon)|Ba'al}}, the {{w|Soul eater (folklore)|Soul-Eater}}''. This indicates that if you continue misusing backslashes like this you will end up devoured by a demon, for instance {{w|Beelzebub}}, for being so thoughtless... Ba'al has been [[:Category:Ba'al|mentioned before]] in {{xkcd}}.

It's unclear whether the regular expression in the title text is valid or not. A long discussion about the validity of the expression has occurred here on explainxkcd.com. The fact that many editors of the site, often themselves extremely technically qualified, can't determine whether the expression is valid or not adds a meta layer to the joke of the comic.

==Transcript==
:[A list of the names of different numbers of backslashes. After each "item" there is a gray line to the text describing each item. As the text is aligned above each other, the lines becomes shorter as the sequence of backslashes becomes longer until there is just a line with the length of a single hyphen for the last item. There are 1 to 8 backslashes and then 11 plus "..." in the last entry.]
:\------------ Backslash
:\\----------- Real backslash
:\\\---------- ''Real'' real backslash
:\\\\---------- Actual backslash, for real this time
:\\\\\--------- Elder backslash
:\\\\\\-------- Backslash which escapes the screen and enters your brain
:\\\\\\\------- Backslash so real it transcends time and space
:\\\\\\\\------ Backslash to end all other text
:\\\\\\\\\\\...- The true name of Ba'al, the Soul-Eater

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Regex]]
[[Category:Programming]]

1638: Backslashes

2016-02-03T08:47:28Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ singular parenthesis

1602: Linguistics Club

2015-11-11T13:57:54Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ "whilst" -> "while"

{{comic
| number = 1602
| date = November 11, 2015
| title = Linguistics Club
| image = linguistics_club.png
| titletext = If that's too easy, you could try joining Tautology Club, which meets on the date of the Tautology Club meeting.
}}

==Explanation==
A "[[wiktionary:sesquiannual|sesquiannual]]" meeting is one that occurs one and a half times every year, or once every 8 months. It comes from the Latin root "[[wiktionary:sesqui|sesqui-]]", which means "half and...", and "[[wiktionary:annual|-annual]]", which is "...one per year". A linguist or Latin scholar, the joke suggests, should be able to figure that out as "half-plus-one every year". This is an extension of the common confusion between "biannual," meaning "twice a year", and "biennial", meaning "once every two years". Compare with the {{w|Sesquicentennial Exposition}} celebrating the first 1½ centuries of the United States.

On the other hand [and the crux of the comic in general], 'sesqui' can be interpreted as a prefix meaning '1.5'. For example, the US sesquicentennial was celebrated on July 4, 1926 (after 150 years), so the confusion comes from people who think the meetings would be every 8 months (as above) or every 18 months (here). The confusion is related to the distinction between 'biweekly' (once every two weeks) and 'semiweekly' (twice a week). 'Biannual' and 'biennial' only furthers this confusion (as in this case, 'biannual' and 'semiannual' are synonymous when the prefixes usually are not).

Regarding the title text, a {{w|tautology (rhetoric)|tautology}} is a statement that is true because of its logical form, such as "all birds are birds" or "A = A." As such, the statement "the Tautology Club meets on the date of the Tautology Club's meeting" is itself tautological.

While the membership requirement for the original club is merely to know the intended frequency (presumably then a successful applicant to be told at least one meeting date in the cycle so that an attendance can be made; or perhaps the member is supposed to guess that by reasoning that every third meeting must extend across the beginning of a new year), Tautology Club's stipulation appears to require an eligible member to derive a valid meeting date from thin air without any clue at all (and no indication that there is even a regular cycle of any kind). This would definitely be more of a challenge.

The title text has a connection to [[703: Honor Societies]] in which Cueball announces that "the first rule of Tautology Club is the first rule of Tautology Club."

==Transcript==
Megan: You should come to our Linguistic Club's sesquiannual meeting. Membership is open to anyone who can figure out how often we meet.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Language]]

Talk:1597: Git

2015-11-01T00:12:03Z

Slashme: Agree; removed the overlong discussion.

If someone is interested, the best book I've read on it is [http://www.git-scm.com/book/en/v2 Pro Git]. The chapters 2 and 3 explain pretty well this mess of branching and merging. But it's true that it takes a bit of patience to go over it all. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.228.35|108.162.228.35]] 08:47, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Also take a look at [http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/ GitFlow: A Successful Git Branching Model]. Though Randall is correct there usually comes a time when it is easier to give up and "start again". [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.147|162.158.34.147]] 08:53, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I never liked the name of this piece of software; in British English, the name "git" is mildly rude :-)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(slang) . [[User:Gearoid|Gearóid]] ([[User talk:Gearoid|talk]]) 09:20, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
:According to word of god it was on purpose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git_(software)#History [[Special:Contributions/162.158.22.46|162.158.22.46]] 11:41, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

'Internally, Git works by saving the differences between various versions of the files, rather than creating a new copy each time the user "commits" the current version of the code.' - It is exactly the opposite. It stores whole files, or rather all committed pieces of data (blobs). See http://gitready.com/beginner/2009/02/17/how-git-stores-your-data.html [[Special:Contributions/141.101.88.202|141.101.88.202]] 09:38, 30 October 2015 (UTC)TK

: It is stored as diffs in pack file. Whole file (loose object) are packed automatically by default.
:
: See https://schacon.github.io/gitbook/7_the_packfile.html and https://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-pack-objects.html

[[Special:Contributions/162.158.177.59|162.158.177.59]] 10:15, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

::Not sure what pack files are used for, but data is stored as is and named by the SHA-1 of its contents. See [https://schacon.github.io/gitbook/1_the_git_object_model.html object model] in the same reference. [[User:Walenc|Walenc]] ([[User talk:Walenc|talk]]) 16:02, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I feel like this article should end with a quick guide to git commands. {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.27}}

Well, I feel this article focuses on explaning git too much that it loses the point of the joke. We have Wikipedia to refer readers to ... The thing is, not just users who are unable to use git beyond a few basic commands, but also those who understand git often use some sort of "start over" method because an action looking perfectly legit got the repository into unusable state, where recovery is much more difficult than reapplying patches. For one of the most common, search for "detached head", for example - especially funny when git insists on falling into that state after checking out master which is in direct contradiction to what docs say when it happens. But I don't feel like rewriting that, sorry :-/ --kavol, [[Special:Contributions/141.101.96.206|141.101.96.206]] 16:04, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

I feel you've all been nerd-sniped. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.8|108.162.216.8]] 19:33, 30 October 2015 (UTC)Pat

The problem is not about the working copy and about the branching tree structure and some git internals that is quite confusing.
This 4 years old reddit post can be used as a funny reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/embdf/git_complicated_of_course_not_commits_map_to/

http://tartley.com/?p=1267
"One of the things that tripped me up as a novice user was the way Git handles branches. Unlike more primitive version control systems, git repositories are not linear, they support branching, and are thus best visualised as trees, upon the nodes of which your current commit may add new leaf nodes. To visualise this, it’s simplest to think of the state of your repository as a point in a high-dimensional ‘code-space’, in which branches are represented as n-dimensional membranes, mapping the spatial loci of successive commits onto the projected manifold of each cloned repository." {{unsigned ip|108.162.210.212}}

Should someone mention how git is by default used through a terminal - which is often more confusing than a GUI for most people - and that while there are graphical shells for git, some people refuse to use them because they're not fully-featured? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.36|108.162.221.36]] 11:43, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Shit. I use git for almost a year and I delete my repos more often than I'd like to admit. I'm going to read [https://www.git-scm.com/book/en/v2] and (hopefully) fix this once and for all. [[User:Kripmo|Kripmo]] ([[User talk:Kripmo|talk]]) 02:04, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
:It was way easier than I thought. This is what I needed: git reset --hard <commit before fuck up>. Its alias will be fu. [[User:Kripmo|Kripmo]] ([[User talk:Kripmo|talk]]) 08:10, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

The really sad part of all this is that if you work in a multi-dev environment and anyone on the team is doing what Cueball suggests, it negates every other user's ability to use the main trunk properly. [[User:Ericm301|Ericm301]] ([[User talk:Ericm301|talk]]) 02:26, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

Hasn't it got too extensive about git? I've never used git but quite understood the comedy. I just visited this page to know about git.txt and there's nothing about it but just long text that doesn't help whatsoever to understand the comic. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.84.125|141.101.84.125]] 08:45, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

:I agree completely! I've stripped out the overlong discussion of git's features. --[[User:Slashme|Slashme]] ([[User talk:Slashme|talk]]) 00:12, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

AFAIK, the git.txt is not the part of the Git itself. I just added it to explanation. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.231|162.158.114.231]] 20:21, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

1597: Git

2015-11-01T00:11:00Z

Slashme: Remove overlong description of what git does: that's what Wikipedia is for (as discussed)

1597: Git

2015-11-01T00:00:59Z

Slashme: Git -> git

{{comic
| number = 1597
| date = October 30, 2015
| title = Git
| image = git.png
| titletext = If that doesn't fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of 'It's really pretty simple, just think of branches as...' and eventually you'll learn the commands that will fix everything.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic is a play on how git, a popular version control system, is misused by people who have a very poor understanding of its inner workings. Git is a particularly apt target for such a joke due to its widespread use and the significant discrepancy between its perceived complexity and its simple underlying design. Tutorials for git tend to make extensive use of a cozy bootstrap layout and deal only with the most basic commands to get started, which can create the misleading impression that git can be used effectively without extensive study. As this is rarely the case, a large group of git users (including Cueball) have a knowledge of git that extends to memorizing a set of commands rather than a conceptual understanding of what those commands actually do. As this behaviour can easily lead to a corrupt repository, Cueball suggests that Ponytail keeps an alternative copy of her project outside git which, of course, defeats the purpose of employing a version control system to begin with.

{{w|Git (software)|Git}} is a {{w|Version control|version control}} system often used to track changes to (usually) plain text files, such as computer code. Within a folder and its subfolders, the user can tell git which files to keep track of changes for. All the files that are being tracked in this manner make up a repository. Internally, git works by saving the differences between different versions of the files, so that the same file content is only stored once, rather than creating a new copy each time the user "commits" the current version of the code. This approach allows the user to switch between various versions of the code fairly quickly. However, this can be confusing for new users because when changing between versions, git effectively rewrites the files under its control to match that version - one file may have several different versions depending on which state git has set it to, but only one of these versions is visible at any given moment. The others are not hidden or moved: any given version of a file does not exist as a single, complete file unless that version is currently active.

In addition to allowing the user to track changes to the files over time using "commits" (versions of the files stored by the user), git also allows the user to develop several versions of the files in parallel using "branches" (mentioned in the title text). This allows a programmer to, for example, keep a stable, functioning version of their code in one branch, while developing a new feature in a separate branch. When the new feature is ready, git provides tools to efficiently "merge" the changes from the development branch back into the main branch. While powerful, there are also several pitfalls which can confuse users. For example, a file may have only been committed in one branch (so it is only visible in that branch), causing a user who has switched to a different branch to think that file was lost somehow.

Although git is completely distributed in principle, so that every "clone" (full working copy) of a repository is independent of all others, many programming teams use remote repositories, sometimes hosted on services like {{w|GitHub}} or {{w|GitLab}}, or on private servers, to collaborate on projects. This remote repository acts as a central location through which collaborators share their work. Changes do not automatically propagate between users; instead, once someone has changes they are ready to share, they must upload ("push" in git terminology) their changes to the remote repository. Other users can then download ("pull") those changes. This allows each user complete control over when changes are applied to their version of the files. Once one user has pushed his or her changes, all other users will need to merge those changes into their code before they can push. Depending on how much the changes conflict, git may be able to automatically combine both users' versions, or the user may need to do so manually. Problems often arise when, for example, one programmer attempts to upload changes to a file someone else has already edited.

One way of simplifying collaboration is to work in a private "branch" that is not used by other collaborators. All branches independently track their changes and can be viewed independently of each other. Only when you successfully "merge" individual branches together will you see other collaborators' "commits" in your working set of files.

Due to the complex nature of git (and its notoriously counter-intuitively named commands), a large proportion of its users are unable to use it beyond basic commands, and might try to avoid problems by saving their code outside git, downloading a newer copy, and then re-applying their changes to the new copy instead of trying to understand and use the features that exist in git to simplify this task.

The git.txt refers probably to a habit of some development teams to put readme-like instructions into a simple text file into the project. These are usually helpful for special tasks like creating databases, or dealing with unusual quirks of the project. Its use here is ironic because git should be well understood by developers, as it is a basic tool. Moreover, you have to use git to get the file to be able to read it in the first place.

Putting a telephone number of someone who "understands git" into such a file is humorous because:
* software teams would more normally use electronic means of communication
* explaining git over the phone to team members should not be necessary, as there is extensive help available online, and
* in the situation where many team members would need phone support to avoid or fix basic git problems, this would be extremely distracting to the person whose phone number was given in the file.

Git was originally created by {{w|Linus Torvalds}}, the same person who originally created {{w|Linux}}.

==={{w|Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read|tl;dr}}===

The explanation above was written by that friend whose name is in git.txt, and gives a good idea of what you need to wait through before he tells you the commands you need. In short: programmers use {{w|Version control|version control systems}} to track changes to code. Most of these version control systems are quite similar and easy to learn if you already know another one. Git is a version control system based on completely different principles, and most programmers find it difficult to wrap their heads around it. Cueball is one of those programmers.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball points to a computer on a desk while Ponytail and Hairy are standing further away behind an office chair.]
:Cueball: This is git. It tracks collaborative work on projects through a beautiful distributed graph theory tree model.
:Ponytail: Cool. How do we use it?
:Cueball: No idea. Just memorize these shell commands and type them to sync up. If you get errors, save your work elsewhere, delete the project, and download a fresh copy.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]

1597: Git

2015-10-31T23:10:58Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ More copy-edit for coherent prose; change some text about pushing and pulling.

{{comic
| number = 1597
| date = October 30, 2015
| title = Git
| image = git.png
| titletext = If that doesn't fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of 'It's really pretty simple, just think of branches as...' and eventually you'll learn the commands that will fix everything.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic is a play on how git, a popular version control system, is misused by people who have a very poor understanding of its inner workings. Git is a particularly apt target for such a joke due to its widespread use and the significant discrepancy between its perceived complexity and its simple underlying design. Tutorials for git tend to make extensive use of a cozy bootstrap layout and deal only with the most basic commands to get started, which can create the misleading impression that git can be used effectively without extensive study. As this is rarely the case, a large group of git users (including Cueball) have a knowledge of git that extends to memorizing a set of commands rather than a conceptual understanding of what those commands actually do. As this behaviour can easily lead to a corrupt repository, Cueball suggests that Ponytail keeps an alternative copy of her project outside git which, of course, defeats the purpose of employing a version control system to begin with.

{{w|Git (software)|Git}} is a {{w|Version control|version control}} system often used to track changes to (usually) plain text files, such as computer code. Within a folder and its subfolders, the user can tell git which files to keep track of changes for. All the files that are being tracked in this manner make up a repository. Internally, git works by saving the differences between different versions of the files, so that the same file content is only stored once, rather than creating a new copy each time the user "commits" the current version of the code. This approach allows the user to switch between various versions of the code fairly quickly. However, this can be confusing for new users because when changing between versions, git effectively rewrites the files under its control to match that version - one file may have several different versions depending on which state Git has set it to, but only one of these versions is visible at any given moment. The others are not hidden or moved: any given version of a file does not exist as a single, complete file unless that version is currently active.

In addition to allowing the user to track changes to the files over time using "commits" (versions of the files stored by the user), Git also allows the user to develop several versions of the files in parallel using "branches" (mentioned in the title text). This allows a programmer to, for example, keep a stable, functioning version of their code in one branch, while developing a new feature in a separate branch. When the new feature is ready, Git provides tools to efficiently "merge" the changes from the development branch back into the main branch. While powerful, there are also several pitfalls which can confuse users. For example, a file may have only been committed in one branch (so it is only visible in that branch), causing a user who has switched to a different branch to think that file was lost somehow.

Although git is completely distributed in principle, so that every "clone" (full working copy) of a repository is independent of all others, many programming teams use remote repositories, sometimes hosted on services like {{w|GitHub}} or {{w|GitLab}}, or on private servers, to collaborate on projects. This remote repository acts as a central location through which collaborators share their work. Changes do not automatically propagate between users; instead, once someone has changes they are ready to share, they must upload ("push" in Git terminology) their changes to the remote repository. Other users can then download ("pull") those changes. This allows each user complete control over when changes are applied to their version of the files. Once one user has pushed his or her changes, all other users will need to merge those changes into their code before they can push. Depending on how much the changes conflict, Git may be able to automatically combine both users' versions, or the user may need to do so manually. Problems often arise when, for example, one programmer attempts to upload changes to a file someone else has already edited.

One way of simplifying collaboration is to work in a private "branch" that is not used by other collaborators. All branches independently track their changes and can be viewed independently of each other. Only when you successfully "merge" individual branches together will you see other collaborators' "commits" in your working set of files.

Due to the complex nature of Git (and its notoriously counter-intuitively named commands), a large proportion of its users are unable to use it beyond basic commands, and might try to avoid problems by saving their code outside git, downloading a newer copy, and then re-applying their changes to the new copy instead of trying to understand and use the features that exist in git to simplify this task.

The git.txt refers probably to a habit of some development teams to put readme-like instructions into a simple text file into the project. These are usually helpful for special tasks like creating databases, or dealing with unusual quirks of the project. Its use here is ironic because Git should be well understood by developers, as it is a basic tool. Moreover, you have to use Git to get the file to be able to read it in the first place.

Putting a telephone number of someone who "understands git" into such a file is humorous because:
* software teams would more normally use electronic means of communication
* explaining git over the phone to team members should not be necessary, as there is extensive help available online, and
* in the situation where many team members would need phone support to avoid or fix basic git problems, this would be extremely distracting to the person whose phone number was given in the file.

Git was originally created by {{w|Linus Torvalds}}, the same person who originally created {{w|Linux}}.

==={{w|Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read|tl;dr}}===

The explanation above was written by that friend whose name is in git.txt, and gives a good idea of what you need to wait through before he tells you the commands you need. In short: programmers use {{w|Version control|version control systems}} to track changes to code. Most of these version control systems are quite similar and easy to learn if you already know another one. Git is a version control system based on completely different principles, and most programmers find it difficult to wrap their heads around it. Cueball is one of those programmers.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball points to a computer on a desk while Ponytail and Hairy are standing further away behind an office chair.]
:Cueball: This is Git. It tracks collaborative work on projects through a beautiful distributed graph theory tree model.
:Ponytail: Cool. How do we use it?
:Cueball: No idea. Just memorize these shell commands and type them to sync up. If you get errors, save your work elsewhere, delete the project, and download a fresh copy.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]

1597: Git

2015-10-31T22:55:41Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ More copy-edit for coherent prose.

{{comic
| number = 1597
| date = October 30, 2015
| title = Git
| image = git.png
| titletext = If that doesn't fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of 'It's really pretty simple, just think of branches as...' and eventually you'll learn the commands that will fix everything.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic is a play on how git, a popular version control system, is misused by people who have a very poor understanding of its inner workings. Git is a particularly apt target for such a joke due to its widespread use and the significant discrepancy between its perceived complexity and its simple underlying design. Tutorials for git tend to make extensive use of a cozy bootstrap layout and deal only with the most basic commands to get started, which can create the misleading impression that git can be used effectively without extensive study. As this is rarely the case, a large group of git users (including Cueball) have a knowledge of git that extends to memorizing a set of commands rather than a conceptual understanding of what those commands actually do. As this behaviour can easily lead to a corrupt repository, Cueball suggests that Ponytail keeps an alternative copy of her project outside git which, of course, defeats the purpose of employing a version control system to begin with.

{{w|Git (software)|Git}} is a {{w|Version control|version control}} system often used to track changes to (usually) plain text files, such as computer code. Within a folder and its subfolders, the user can tell git which files to keep track of changes for. All the files that are being tracked in this manner make up a repository. Internally, git works by saving the differences between different versions of the files, so that the same file content is only stored once, rather than creating a new copy each time the user "commits" the current version of the code. This approach allows the user to switch between various versions of the code fairly quickly. However, this can be confusing for new users because when changing between versions, git effectively rewrites the files under its control to match that version - one file may have several different versions depending on which state Git has set it to, but only one of these versions is visible at any given moment. The others are not hidden or moved: any given version of a file does not exist as a single, complete file unless that version is currently active.

In addition to allowing the user to track changes to the files over time using "commits" (versions of the files stored by the user), Git also allows the user to develop several versions of the files in parallel using "branches" (mentioned in the title text). This allows a programmer to, for example, keep a stable, functioning version of their code in one branch, while developing a new feature in a separate branch. When the new feature is ready, Git provides tools to efficiently "merge" the changes from the development branch back into the main branch. While powerful, there are also several pitfalls which can confuse users. For example, a file may have only been committed in one branch (so it is only visible in that branch), causing a user who has switched to a different branch to think that file was lost somehow.

Sharing a Git repository with other users is done through a remote repository, such as [https://github.com/ GitHub], [https://about.gitlab.com/ GitLab], or one set up by the user themselves. This remote repository acts as a central location through which collaborators share their work. Changes do not automatically propagate between users; instead, once someone has changes they are ready to share, they must upload ("push" in Git terminology) their changes to the remote repository. Other users can then download ("pull") those changes. This allows each user complete control over when changes are applied to their version of the files. Once one user has pushed his or her changes, all other users will need to merge those changes into their code before they can push. Depending on how much the changes conflict, Git may be able to automatically combine both users' versions, or the user may need to do so manually.

In programming, Git is a very popular way to share source code of programs between computers and users and thus work on projects collaboratively.

However, problems often arise when, for example, one attempts to upload code to a file someone else has already edited.
Git has quite a few tricks to handle "merging" itself.

One way of simplifying collaboration is to work in a different "branch" than other collaborators. All branches independently track their changes and can be viewed independently of each other. Only when you successfully "merge" (there we go again) individual branches together will you see other collaborators' "commits" in your working set of files.

But, due to the complex nature of Git (and its notoriously counter-intuitively named commands), a large portion of users are unable to use it beyond basic commands. They consider it usually much more efficient just to save the code to a different file, download a newer copy, and then re-apply their original changes to the new copy than to try and understand and use Git's own convoluted built-in commands to attempt to fix it properly.

The git.txt refers probably to a habit of some development teams to put readme-like instructions into a simple text file into the project. These are usually helpful for special tasks like creating databases, or deal with unusual quirks of the project. It's use here is ironical because Git should be well understood by the team members as one of main tools. Moreover, you have to use Git to get the file to be able to read it in the first place.
Putting a telephone number of someone into such file can really make the friend quite busy (with all consequences), depending on the number of cargo cult Git users in the project team.

Git was originally created by {{w|Linus Torvalds}}, the same person who originally created {{w|Linux}}.

==={{w|Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read|tl;dr}}===

The explanation above was written by that friend whose name is in git.txt, and gives a good idea of what you need to wait through before he tells you the commands you need. In short: programmers use {{w|Version control|version control systems}} to track changes to code. Most of these version control systems are quite similar and easy to learn if you already know another one. Git is a version control system based on completely different principles, and most programmers find it difficult to wrap their heads around it. Cueball is one of those programmers.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball points to a computer on a desk while Ponytail and Hairy are standing further away behind an office chair.]
:Cueball: This is Git. It tracks collaborative work on projects through a beautiful distributed graph theory tree model.
:Ponytail: Cool. How do we use it?
:Cueball: No idea. Just memorize these shell commands and type them to sync up. If you get errors, save your work elsewhere, delete the project, and download a fresh copy.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]

1597: Git

2015-10-31T22:51:47Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ Copy-edit, try to make description consistent.

{{comic
| number = 1597
| date = October 30, 2015
| title = Git
| image = git.png
| titletext = If that doesn't fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of 'It's really pretty simple, just think of branches as...' and eventually you'll learn the commands that will fix everything.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic is a play on how git, a popular version control system, is misused by people who have a very poor understanding of its inner workings. Git is a particularly apt target for such a joke due to its widespread use and the significant discrepancy between its perceived complexity and its simple underlying design. Tutorials for git tend to make extensive use of a cozy bootstrap layout and deal only with the most basic commands to get started, which can create the misleading impression that git can be used effectively without extensive study. As this is rarely the case, a large group of git users (including Cueball) have a knowledge of git that extends to memorizing a set of commands rather than a conceptual understanding of what those commands actually do. As this behaviour can easily lead to a corrupt repository, Cueball suggests that Ponytail keeps an alternative copy of her project outside git which, of course, defeats the purpose of employing a version control system to begin with.

{{w|Git (software)|Git}} is a {{w|Version control|version control}} system often used to track changes to (usually) plain text files, such as computer code. Within a folder and its subfolders, the user can tell Git which files to keep track of changes for. All the files that are being tracked in this manner make up a repository. Internally, Git works by saving the differences between different versions of the files, so that the same file content is only stored once, rather than creating a new copy each time the user "commits" the current version of the code. This approach allows the user to switch between various versions of the code fairly quickly. However, this can be confusing for new users because when changing between versions, Git effectively rewrites the files under its control to match that version - one file may have several different versions depending on which state Git has set it to, but only one of these versions is visible at any given moment. The others are not hidden or moved, they do not exist until Git modifies the file to match that version.

In addition to allowing the user to track changes to the files over time using "commits" (versions of the files stored by the user), Git also allows the user to develop several versions of the files in parallel using "branches" (mentioned in the title text). This allows a programmer to, for example, keep a stable, functioning version of their code in one branch, while developing a new feature in a separate branch. When the new feature is ready, Git provides tools to efficiently "merge" the changes from the development branch back into the main branch. While powerful, there are also several pitfalls which can confuse users. For example, a file may have only been committed in one branch (so it is only visible in that branch), causing a user who has switched to a different branch to think that file was lost somehow.

Sharing a Git repository with other users is done through a remote repository, such as [https://github.com/ GitHub], [https://about.gitlab.com/ GitLab], or one set up by the user themselves. This remote repository acts as a central location through which collaborators share their work. Changes do not automatically propagate between users; instead, once someone has changes they are ready to share, they must upload ("push" in Git terminology) their changes to the remote repository. Other users can then download ("pull") those changes. This allows each user complete control over when changes are applied to their version of the files. Once one user has pushed his or her changes, all other users will need to merge those changes into their code before they can push. Depending on how much the changes conflict, Git may be able to automatically combine both users' versions, or the user may need to do so manually.

In programming, Git is a very popular way to share source code of programs between computers and users and thus work on projects collaboratively.

However, problems often arise when, for example, one attempts to upload code to a file someone else has already edited.
Git has quite a few tricks to handle "merging" itself.

One way of simplifying collaboration is to work in a different "branch" than other collaborators. All branches independently track their changes and can be viewed independently of each other. Only when you successfully "merge" (there we go again) individual branches together will you see other collaborators' "commits" in your working set of files.

But, due to the complex nature of Git (and its notoriously counter-intuitively named commands), a large portion of users are unable to use it beyond basic commands. They consider it usually much more efficient just to save the code to a different file, download a newer copy, and then re-apply their original changes to the new copy than to try and understand and use Git's own convoluted built-in commands to attempt to fix it properly.

The git.txt refers probably to a habit of some development teams to put readme-like instructions into a simple text file into the project. These are usually helpful for special tasks like creating databases, or deal with unusual quirks of the project. It's use here is ironical because Git should be well understood by the team members as one of main tools. Moreover, you have to use Git to get the file to be able to read it in the first place.
Putting a telephone number of someone into such file can really make the friend quite busy (with all consequences), depending on the number of cargo cult Git users in the project team.

Git was originally created by {{w|Linus Torvalds}}, the same person who originally created {{w|Linux}}.

==={{w|Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read|tl;dr}}===

The explanation above was written by that friend whose name is in git.txt, and gives a good idea of what you need to wait through before he tells you the commands you need. In short: programmers use {{w|Version control|version control systems}} to track changes to code. Most of these version control systems are quite similar and easy to learn if you already know another one. Git is a version control system based on completely different principles, and most programmers find it difficult to wrap their heads around it. Cueball is one of those programmers.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball points to a computer on a desk while Ponytail and Hairy are standing further away behind an office chair.]
:Cueball: This is Git. It tracks collaborative work on projects through a beautiful distributed graph theory tree model.
:Ponytail: Cool. How do we use it?
:Cueball: No idea. Just memorize these shell commands and type them to sync up. If you get errors, save your work elsewhere, delete the project, and download a fresh copy.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]

1597: Git

2015-10-31T22:47:10Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ copy-edit

{{comic
| number = 1597
| date = October 30, 2015
| title = Git
| image = git.png
| titletext = If that doesn't fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of 'It's really pretty simple, just think of branches as...' and eventually you'll learn the commands that will fix everything.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic is a play on how git, a popular version control system, is misused by people who have a very poor understanding of its inner workings. Git is a particularly apt target for such a joke due to its widespread use and the significant discrepancy between its perceived complexity and its simple underlying design. Tutorials for git tend to make extensive use of a cozy bootstrap layout and deal only with the most basic commands to get started, which can fool a novice to believe that git can be used effectively without extensive study. As this is rarely the case, a large group of git users (including Cueball) have a knowledge of git that extends to memorizing a set of commands rather than a conceptual understanding of what those commands actually do. As this habit eventually will lead to a corrupt working tree, Cueball suggests that Ponytail keeps an alternative copy of her project outside git which, of course, defeats the purpose of employing a version control system to begin with.

{{w|Git (software)|Git}} is a {{w|Version control|version control}} system often used to track changes to (usually) plain text files, such as computer code. Within a folder and its subfolders, the user can tell Git which files to keep track of changes for. All the files that are being tracked in this manner make up a repository. Internally, Git works by saving entire snapshots of the files hashed by contents so that the same file content is only stored once, rather than creating a new copy each time the user "commits" the current version of the code. This approach allows the user to switch between various versions of the code fairly quickly. However, this can be confusing for new users because when changing between versions, Git effectively rewrites the files under its control to match that version - one file may have several different versions depending on which state Git has set it to, but only one of these versions is visible at any given moment. The others are not hidden or moved, they do not exist until Git modifies the file to match that version.

In addition to allowing the user to track changes to the files over time using "commits" (versions of the files stored by the user), Git also allows the user to develop several versions of the files in parallel using "branches" (mentioned in the title text). This allows a programmer to, for example, keep a stable, functioning version of their code in one branch, while developing a new feature in a separate branch. When the new feature is ready, Git provides tools to efficiently "merge" the changes from the development branch back into the main branch. While powerful, there are also several pitfalls which can confuse users. For example, a file may have only been committed in one branch (so it is only visible in that branch), causing a user who has switched to a different branch to think that file was lost somehow.

Sharing a Git repository with other users is done through a remote repository, such as [https://github.com/ GitHub], [https://about.gitlab.com/ GitLab], or one set up by the user themselves. This remote repository acts as a central location through which collaborators share their work. Changes do not automatically propagate between users; instead, once someone has changes they are ready to share, they must upload ("push" in Git terminology) their changes to the remote repository. Other users can then download ("pull") those changes. This allows each user complete control over when changes are applied to their version of the files. Once one user has pushed his or her changes, all other users will need to merge those changes into their code before they can push. Depending on how much the changes conflict, Git may be able to automatically combine both users' versions, or the user may need to do so manually.

In programming, Git is a very popular way to share source code of programs between computers and users and thus work on projects collaboratively.

However, problems often arise when, for example, one attempts to upload code to a file someone else has already edited.
Git has quite a few tricks to handle "merging" itself.

One way of simplifying collaboration is to work in a different "branch" than other collaborators. All branches independently track their changes and can be viewed independently of each other. Only when you successfully "merge" (there we go again) individual branches together will you see other collaborators' "commits" in your working set of files.

But, due to the complex nature of Git (and its notoriously counter-intuitively named commands), a large portion of users are unable to use it beyond basic commands. They consider it usually much more efficient just to save the code to a different file, download a newer copy, and then re-apply their original changes to the new copy than to try and understand and use Git's own convoluted built-in commands to attempt to fix it properly.

The git.txt refers probably to a habit of some development teams to put readme-like instructions into a simple text file into the project. These are usually helpful for special tasks like creating databases, or deal with unusual quirks of the project. It's use here is ironical because Git should be well understood by the team members as one of main tools. Moreover, you have to use Git to get the file to be able to read it in the first place.
Putting a telephone number of someone into such file can really make the friend quite busy (with all consequences), depending on the number of cargo cult Git users in the project team.

Git was originally created by {{w|Linus Torvalds}}, the same person who originally created {{w|Linux}}.

==={{w|Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read|tl;dr}}===

The explanation above was written by that friend whose name is in git.txt, and gives a good idea of what you need to wait through before he tells you the commands you need. In short: programmers use {{w|Version control|version control systems}} to track changes to code. Most of these version control systems are quite similar and easy to learn if you already know another one. Git is a version control system based on completely different principles, and most programmers find it difficult to wrap their heads around it. Cueball is one of those programmers.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball points to a computer on a desk while Ponytail and Hairy are standing further away behind an office chair.]
:Cueball: This is Git. It tracks collaborative work on projects through a beautiful distributed graph theory tree model.
:Ponytail: Cool. How do we use it?
:Cueball: No idea. Just memorize these shell commands and type them to sync up. If you get errors, save your work elsewhere, delete the project, and download a fresh copy.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]

1597: Git

2015-10-31T22:45:02Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ copy-edit

{{comic
| number = 1597
| date = October 30, 2015
| title = Git
| image = git.png
| titletext = If that doesn't fix it, git.txt contains the phone number of a friend of mine who understands git. Just wait through a few minutes of 'It's really pretty simple, just think of branches as...' and eventually you'll learn the commands that will fix everything.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic is a play on how git, a popular version control system, is misused by people who have a very poor understanding of its inner workings. Git is a particularly apt target for such a joke due to its widespread use and significant discrepancy between perceived complexity and simple underlying design. Tutorials for git tend to make extensive use of a cozy bootstrap layout and deal only with the most basic commands to get started, which can fool a novice to believe that git can be used appropriately without extensive study. As this is rarely the case, a large group of git users (including Cueball) have a knowledge of git that extends to memorizing a set of commands rather than a conceptual understanding of what those commands actually do. As this habit eventually will lead to a corrupt working tree, Cueball suggests that Ponytail keeps an alternative copy of her project outside git which, of course, defeats the purpose of employing a version control system to begin with.

{{w|Git (software)|Git}} is a {{w|Version control|version control}} system often used to track changes to (usually) plain text files, such as computer code. Within a folder and its subfolders, the user can tell Git which files to keep track of changes for. All the files that are being tracked in this manner make up a repository. Internally, Git works by saving entire snapshots of the files hashed by contents so that the same file content is only stored once, rather than creating a new copy each time the user "commits" the current version of the code. This approach allows the user to switch between various versions of the code fairly quickly. However, this can be confusing for new users because when changing between versions, Git effectively rewrites the files under its control to match that version - one file may have several different versions depending on which state Git has set it to, but only one of these versions is visible at any given moment. The others are not hidden or moved, they do not exist until Git modifies the file to match that version.

In addition to allowing the user to track changes to the files over time using "commits" (versions of the files stored by the user), Git also allows the user to develop several versions of the files in parallel using "branches" (mentioned in the title text). This allows a programmer to, for example, keep a stable, functioning version of their code in one branch, while developing a new feature in a separate branch. When the new feature is ready, Git provides tools to efficiently "merge" the changes from the development branch back into the main branch. While powerful, there are also several pitfalls which can confuse users. For example, a file may have only been committed in one branch (so it is only visible in that branch), causing a user who has switched to a different branch to think that file was lost somehow.

Sharing a Git repository with other users is done through a remote repository, such as [https://github.com/ GitHub], [https://about.gitlab.com/ GitLab], or one set up by the user themselves. This remote repository acts as a central location through which collaborators share their work. Changes do not automatically propagate between users; instead, once someone has changes they are ready to share, they must upload ("push" in Git terminology) their changes to the remote repository. Other users can then download ("pull") those changes. This allows each user complete control over when changes are applied to their version of the files. Once one user has pushed his or her changes, all other users will need to merge those changes into their code before they can push. Depending on how much the changes conflict, Git may be able to automatically combine both users' versions, or the user may need to do so manually.

In programming, Git is a very popular way to share source code of programs between computers and users and thus work on projects collaboratively.

However, problems often arise when, for example, one attempts to upload code to a file someone else has already edited.
Git has quite a few tricks to handle "merging" itself.

One way of simplifying collaboration is to work in a different "branch" than other collaborators. All branches independently track their changes and can be viewed independently of each other. Only when you successfully "merge" (there we go again) individual branches together will you see other collaborators' "commits" in your working set of files.

But, due to the complex nature of Git (and its notoriously counter-intuitively named commands), a large portion of users are unable to use it beyond basic commands. They consider it usually much more efficient just to save the code to a different file, download a newer copy, and then re-apply their original changes to the new copy than to try and understand and use Git's own convoluted built-in commands to attempt to fix it properly.

The git.txt refers probably to a habit of some development teams to put readme-like instructions into a simple text file into the project. These are usually helpful for special tasks like creating databases, or deal with unusual quirks of the project. It's use here is ironical because Git should be well understood by the team members as one of main tools. Moreover, you have to use Git to get the file to be able to read it in the first place.
Putting a telephone number of someone into such file can really make the friend quite busy (with all consequences), depending on the number of cargo cult Git users in the project team.

Git was originally created by {{w|Linus Torvalds}}, the same person who originally created {{w|Linux}}.

==={{w|Wikipedia:Too long; didn't read|tl;dr}}===

The explanation above was written by that friend whose name is in git.txt, and gives a good idea of what you need to wait through before he tells you the commands you need. In short: programmers use {{w|Version control|version control systems}} to track changes to code. Most of these version control systems are quite similar and easy to learn if you already know another one. Git is a version control system based on completely different principles, and most programmers find it difficult to wrap their heads around it. Cueball is one of those programmers.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball points to a computer on a desk while Ponytail and Hairy are standing further away behind an office chair.]
:Cueball: This is Git. It tracks collaborative work on projects through a beautiful distributed graph theory tree model.
:Ponytail: Cool. How do we use it?
:Cueball: No idea. Just memorize these shell commands and type them to sync up. If you get errors, save your work elsewhere, delete the project, and download a fresh copy.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
[[Category:Programming]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]

1565: Back Seat

2015-08-19T07:32:35Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ copy-editing, rewording

{{comic
| number = 1565
| date = August 17, 2015
| title = Back Seat
| image = back_seat.png
| titletext = Hang on, let me scare the live raccoon over to the same side as the dead one.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic makes fun of the common situation of a messy car, using a hyperbolic scenario of that car containing decaying animals, in this case a {{w|raccoon}}. The joke being that such a car is so disgusting that a dead raccoon is not the worst thing that one might encounter. The humor comes from the car owner seeming to be used to a dead raccoon and the implications of what might be worse than a dead raccoon.

This is the polar opposite of [[1267: Mess]], where the person apologizes for a nearly non-existent mess. Here, the person minimizes a completely atrocious mess into a quick fix situation. The form of the comic is that of a pro-tip, which tells the reader what the phrase "I just have to clear a few things out of the back" really means.

'{{w|Protips}}' are used to give snarky, obvious or inadequate advice, in order to either humor a well-learnt audience or to prank a naïve audience. This phenomenon originated in a gaming magazine column offering advice on ''Doom'': "To defeat the Cyberdemon, shoot at it until it dies." [[Randall]] has given us several [[:Category:Protip|Protips]] in the past as well.

The title text further exposes the reality of the person's knowledge of how bad the situation really is when he acknowledges the existence of the dead raccoon while trying to usher the live one to the same side. Sitting next to a dead '''and''' a live raccoon is not an improved scenario.

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the panel]:
:Protip:

:[Cueball is holding the back door of his car open. Wiggly lines emanate from the back seat area. Megan and another Cueball-like guy are stand next to the car, looking at each other.]
:Cueball: Hang on, I just have to clear a few things out of the back.:

:[Caption below the panel:]
:When you hear "I just have to clear a few things out of the back," you are about to see, at minimum, a decaying raccoon.

==Trivia==
*The title text originally contained a grammatical error, "same side of the dead one", which was later corrected by Randall.
*Raccoons also feature in a disgusting situation in [[1025: Tumblr]].

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Protip]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Animals]]

1561: Water Phase Diagram

2015-08-09T07:10:47Z

Slashme: /* Related comics */ 210: 90's Flowchart is very relevant as well...

{{comic
| number = 1561
| date = August 7, 2015
| title = Water Phase Diagram
| image = water_phase_diagram.png
| titletext = Vanilla Ice was produced in small quantities for years, but it wasn't until the 90s that experimenters collaborated to produce a sample that could survive at room temperature for several months.
}}

==Explanation==
This is a modified version of the {{w|phase diagram}} for {{w|water}}. A "phase diagram" is a chart that shows the states, or "phases", that a substance will be in under various temperatures and pressures. {{w|Ice#Phases|Water's phases}} are particularly well-studied; on the [http://ergodic.ugr.es/termo/lecciones/water1.html real phase diagram for water], there are a great many phases listed.

Most people are familiar with three phases of water — solid ({{w|ice}}), liquid (water), and gas ({{w|Water vapor|vapour}}) — and with the fact that an increase in temperature will cause water to change from one state to another. The gas and liquid phases are quite straightforward; however, there is in fact not one single solid phase of water, but a variety of numbered phases ("ice I" through "ice XV" are currently recognized), several of which are divided into sub-categories. Ordinary, everyday ice is known as "{{w|Ice Ih|ice Ih}}" ("ice one-h"). Most of the more unusual forms of ice only form under very {{w|high pressure}}.

[[Randall|Randall's]] phase diagram starts out realistically, though slightly simplified in several ways. For one, it simply uses the name "ice" for the usual form(s). It is focused in on a narrower area than the more complete diagram linked earlier; on that version, the "ice V" region is quite small, and "ice III" is barely visible, whereas both are quite plain to see on Randall's diagram. Lastly, where most phase diagrams have pressure increase upwards, Randall has the pressure scale increase downwards, this has been chosen to make it possible for the jokes to appear at the bottom of the chart. Else the comic would not be funny for the average reader.

Because, as the diagram continues downwards and the pressure increases, the jokes begin. Beyond the moderately high-pressure forms of ice (ice II, III and V), a real phase diagram has ice VI; Randall has "Vanilla Ice (ice VI)". {{w|Vanilla Ice}} is the stage name of a white rap/hip-hop artist from the 1990s; the initials of Vanilla Ice, and the Roman numeral six, are both VI.

Vanilla Ice's biggest hit, "{{w|Ice Ice Baby}}", used samples from the earlier song "{{w|Under Pressure}}", by {{w|David Bowie}} and {{w|Queen (band)|Queen}}; accordingly, on Randall's diagram, the "Vanilla Ice" region transitions to "David Bowie & Queen" when it is under (even higher) pressure.

Further references to "Ice Ice Baby" are found in the title text. Near the beginning of the song, Vanilla Ice raps the line, "All right stop, collaborate and listen". The unusual choice of "collaborate" in this line has made it memorable, and the word is used in the title text (in a more typical context). The phrase "survive at room temperature for several months" is likely a reference to "Ice Ice Baby" being Vanilla Ice's only major hit, humorously suggesting he faded out of the public view after a few months of fame. Finally, even the word "sample" may be deliberately chosen as a reference to the sampling of "Under Pressure".

===Original version===
[[File:WaterPhaseEdit.png|frame| The original comic, with a lower contrast, showing [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phase_diagram_of_water.svg the real phase diagram for water] from Wikipedia]]
When originally published, another image was faintly visible just below and to the right of the "Water vapor" label. It appeared to be a copy of [http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Phase_diagram_of_water.svg an actual phase diagram for water from Wikipedia]. The image has since been removed, lending support to speculation that it was an error (perhaps an image Randall referred to in drawing the comic, but accidentally left in the final result). Alternatively, it may have been deliberate—suggestions include its presence being a ''water''mark, or a reference to the "Full text of the Wikipedia article on pareidolia" joke in the [[1551: Pluto]] comic.

===Related comics===
Randall has referenced "Ice Ice Baby" and "Under Pressure", separately and together, on many previous occasions, notably in [[159: Boombox]] and [[210: 90's Flowchart]]. The gag of having the performers of "Under Pressure" also being literally under pressure was also used in [[1040: Lakes and Oceans]].

The [[what if?]] that was current at the time of this comic's publication was [http://what-if.xkcd.com/138/ 138: Jupiter Submarine], which began with an even more fanciful phase diagram: that of a submarine. It also contains a reference to the songs "Under Pressure" and "Ice Ice Baby" in one figure.

The title text of [[1434: Where Do Birds Go]] whimsically suggests another possible phase of water/ice.

As mentioned above, the small image on the [[#Original version|original version]] could be a reference to the "Full text of the Wikipedia article on pareidolia" joke in the [[1551: Pluto]] comic.

==Transcript==
:[A phase diagram is shown with eight labeled regions]

:[The horizontal axis, increasing in value to the the right is labeled:]
:Temperature

:[The vertical axis, increasing in value downwards is labeled:]
:Pressure

:[Region alongside the "Pressure" axis covering about half of its length is labeled:]
:Ice

:[Region spanning top-right corner of graph, i.e. higher temperatures and lower pressures. The region is labeled:]
:Water vapor

:[Region below "Water vapor" and to the right of "Ice" is labeled:]
:Liquid water

:[Three small regions below "Ice" are going from left to right on the same pressure region, the last ending just under "Liquid water". They are each labeled:]
:Ice II
:Ice III
:Ice V

:[Region below "Ice II", "Ice III", "Ice V" and "Liquid water" is labeled:]
:Vanilla Ice
:(Ice VI)

:[Below "Vanilla Ice" there is a dashed line with two arrows pointing downwards. The region below the dashed line is labeled:]
:David Bowie & Queen

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category: Charts]]
[[Category: Music]]
[[Category: Science]]

785: Open Mic Night

2015-07-31T05:44:23Z

Slashme: /* Panel 2 */ fix typo

{{comic
| number = 785
| date = August 27, 2010
| title = Open Mic Night
| image = open_mic_night.png
| titletext = Ever notice how the more successful observational comics become, the more their jokes focus on flying and hotels?
}}

==Explanation==
The comic depicts four acts at an {{w|Open mic|open mic night}}, where performances typically include comedy, poetry, music and other similar performance arts.

===Panel 1===
[[Megan]] confidently introduces herself as M.C. Aphasia, and starts to talk to the audience. Mid way through her sentence however, she appears unable to continue to talk, ending with a sheepish "Hi?". {{w|Aphasia}} is a language disorder, symptomized by disturbance in formulation and comprehension of language. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write. M. C. stands for {{w|Master of Ceremonies}} - in the context of hip-hop performance, it means a rapper. Because a rapper's delivery depends on the ability to deliver lyrics fluently at high speed, aphasia would render an MC unable to perform.

===Panel 2===
The second panel shows [[Black Hat]] on the stage, just after a {{w|heckler}} in the audience fired a 'Yo Mama' joke at Black Hat (probably "when yo mama sits around the house, she sits ''around'' the house"). A heckler's aim is usually to put the performer off of their routine, and appear funny themselves. Responses from the performer vary from simply ignoring the heckler to replying with a witty put down to get the audience back on the comedian's side and dissuade the heckler from continuing. Rather than a short witty over-the-top reply in the typical style of {{w|Yo Mama}} jokes, Black Hat's response is a dark, detailed, realistic insult, implying that the heckler's mother is a failure and isn't proud of the heckler.

===Panel 3===
The third panel is a reference to the {{w|Quine paradox}}, whereby a sentence repeated twice in succession proves to be paradoxical. For example:
:"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.
The sentence is another way of saying "this statement is false" but without the explicit self-reference. Named after the paradox, a {{w|quine (computing)|quine}} is also a computer program which outputs its own source code.

The first sentence uses the word "say" in the normal way, as a transitive verb, with the second sentence in quotation marks as its object. The second sentence has the same words as the first, but now the word "say" is used as an intransitive verb: a non-standard usage approximately meaning "speak impressively".

===Panel 4===
In the fourth panel, [[Beret Guy]]'s speech begins as if with the common observation, "Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in groups", but somehow gets derailed through the use of the word hordes instead of groups, and a confusion between women and orcs. When an audience member (or heckler) points this out, Beret Guy's response shows that his observations weren't intended as comedy in the first place.

The title text continues the riff on different kinds of stand-up comedians, commonly referred to as comics. {{w|Observational humor}} is a joke that presents a typical real-life situation humorously, often with a touch of exaggeration. The title text is likely referring to stand-up comedians, like {{w|Jerry Seinfeld}}, who use observational humor. When an observational comic becomes more successful, they will probably "go on tour" resulting in a great deal of travel. This gives him or her lots of experience with airplanes and hotels, and more jokes about them will show up in the routine. Furthermore, the title text is itself an observational joke.

==Transcript==
:[Megan on stage, holding microphone, hip-hop stance.]
:Megan: Yo, I'm M.C. Aphasia and I'm here to say that, I... Uh...
:Megan: ...Um...
:Megan: ...Hi?

:[Black Hat on stage, holding microphone.]
:Black Hat: So I... oh? Does she? Well, when ''yo'' mama sits around the house, she finds herself wishing she'd finished her degree instead of having kids right away, maybe started that business. Then she might have created something she's ''proud'' of.

:[Cueball on stage, holding microphone, fist pumping toward audience.]
:Cueball:
:Yo, I'm M.C. Quine
:and I'm here to say,
:"Yo, I'm M.C. Quine
:and I'm here to say!"

:[Beret Guy on stage, holding microphone.]
:Beret Guy: Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in hordes ten thousand strong, clad all in sable armor and bristling with swords and spears?
:Audience member (off-screen): Those are orcs.
:Beret Guy: Oh.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Your Mom]]

785: Open Mic Night

2015-07-31T05:42:19Z

Slashme: /* Panel 3 */ explain how intransitive "say" leads to a quine.

{{comic
| number = 785
| date = August 27, 2010
| title = Open Mic Night
| image = open_mic_night.png
| titletext = Ever notice how the more successful observational comics become, the more their jokes focus on flying and hotels?
}}

==Explanation==
The comic depicts four acts at an {{w|Open mic|open mic night}}, where performances typically include comedy, poetry, music and other similar performance arts.

===Panel 1===
[[Megan]] confidently introduces herself as M.C. Aphasia, and starts to talk to the audience. Mid way through her sentence however, she appears unable to continue to talk, ending with a sheepish "Hi?". {{w|Aphasia}} is a language disorder, symptomized by disturbance in formulation and comprehension of language. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write. M. C. stands for {{w|Master of Ceremonies}} - in the context of hip-hop performance, it means a rapper. Because a rapper's delivery depends on the ability to deliver lyrics fluently at high speed, aphasia would render an MC unable to perform.

===Panel 2===
The second panel shows [[Black Hat]] on the stage, just after a {{w|heckler}} in the audience fired a 'Yo Mama' joke at Black Hat (probably "when yo mama sits around the house, she sits ''around'' the house"). A heckler's aim is usually to put the performer off of their routine, and appear funny themselves. Responses from the performer vary from simply ignoring the heckler to replying with a witty put down to get the audience back on the comedian's side and dissuade the heckler from continuing. Rather than a short witty over-the-top reply in the typical style of {{w|Yo Mama}} jokes, Black Hat's response is a dark, detailed, realistic insult, implying that the hecklers mother is a failure and isn't proud of the heckler.

===Panel 3===
The third panel is a reference to the {{w|Quine paradox}}, whereby a sentence repeated twice in succession proves to be paradoxical. For example:
:"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.
The sentence is another way of saying "this statement is false" but without the explicit self-reference. Named after the paradox, a {{w|quine (computing)|quine}} is also a computer program which outputs its own source code.

The first sentence uses the word "say" in the normal way, as a transitive verb, with the second sentence in quotation marks as its object. The second sentence has the same words as the first, but now the word "say" is used as an intransitive verb: a non-standard usage approximately meaning "speak impressively".

===Panel 4===
In the fourth panel, [[Beret Guy]]'s speech begins as if with the common observation, "Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in groups", but somehow gets derailed through the use of the word hordes instead of groups, and a confusion between women and orcs. When an audience member (or heckler) points this out, Beret Guy's response shows that his observations weren't intended as comedy in the first place.

The title text continues the riff on different kinds of stand-up comedians, commonly referred to as comics. {{w|Observational humor}} is a joke that presents a typical real-life situation humorously, often with a touch of exaggeration. The title text is likely referring to stand-up comedians, like {{w|Jerry Seinfeld}}, who use observational humor. When an observational comic becomes more successful, they will probably "go on tour" resulting in a great deal of travel. This gives him or her lots of experience with airplanes and hotels, and more jokes about them will show up in the routine. Furthermore, the title text is itself an observational joke.

==Transcript==
:[Megan on stage, holding microphone, hip-hop stance.]
:Megan: Yo, I'm M.C. Aphasia and I'm here to say that, I... Uh...
:Megan: ...Um...
:Megan: ...Hi?

:[Black Hat on stage, holding microphone.]
:Black Hat: So I... oh? Does she? Well, when ''yo'' mama sits around the house, she finds herself wishing she'd finished her degree instead of having kids right away, maybe started that business. Then she might have created something she's ''proud'' of.

:[Cueball on stage, holding microphone, fist pumping toward audience.]
:Cueball:
:Yo, I'm M.C. Quine
:and I'm here to say,
:"Yo, I'm M.C. Quine
:and I'm here to say!"

:[Beret Guy on stage, holding microphone.]
:Beret Guy: Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in hordes ten thousand strong, clad all in sable armor and bristling with swords and spears?
:Audience member (off-screen): Those are orcs.
:Beret Guy: Oh.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Your Mom]]

785: Open Mic Night

2015-07-31T05:29:06Z

Slashme: /* Panel 2 */ simplify; explain incongruity.

{{comic
| number = 785
| date = August 27, 2010
| title = Open Mic Night
| image = open_mic_night.png
| titletext = Ever notice how the more successful observational comics become, the more their jokes focus on flying and hotels?
}}

==Explanation==
The comic depicts four acts at an {{w|Open mic|open mic night}}, where performances typically include comedy, poetry, music and other similar performance arts.

===Panel 1===
[[Megan]] confidently introduces herself as M.C. Aphasia, and starts to talk to the audience. Mid way through her sentence however, she appears unable to continue to talk, ending with a sheepish "Hi?". {{w|Aphasia}} is a language disorder, symptomized by disturbance in formulation and comprehension of language. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write. M. C. stands for {{w|Master of Ceremonies}} - in the context of hip-hop performance, it means a rapper. Because a rapper's delivery depends on the ability to deliver lyrics fluently at high speed, aphasia would render an MC unable to perform.

===Panel 2===
The second panel shows [[Black Hat]] on the stage, just after a {{w|heckler}} in the audience fired a 'Yo Mama' joke at Black Hat (probably "when yo mama sits around the house, she sits ''around'' the house"). A heckler's aim is usually to put the performer off of their routine, and appear funny themselves. Responses from the performer vary from simply ignoring the heckler to replying with a witty put down to get the audience back on the comedian's side and dissuade the heckler from continuing. Rather than a short witty over-the-top reply in the typical style of {{w|Yo Mama}} jokes, Black Hat's response is a dark, detailed, realistic insult, implying that the hecklers mother is a failure and isn't proud of the heckler.

===Panel 3===
The third panel is a reference to the {{w|Quine paradox}}, whereby a sentence repeated twice in succession proves to be paradoxical. For example:
:"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.
The sentence is another way of saying "this statement is false" but without the explicit self-reference. Named after the paradox, a {{w|quine (computing)|quine}} is also a computer program which outputs its own source code.

===Panel 4===
In the fourth panel, [[Beret Guy]]'s speech begins as if with the common observation, "Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in groups", but somehow gets derailed through the use of the word hordes instead of groups, and a confusion between women and orcs. When an audience member (or heckler) points this out, Beret Guy's response shows that his observations weren't intended as comedy in the first place.

The title text continues the riff on different kinds of stand-up comedians, commonly referred to as comics. {{w|Observational humor}} is a joke that presents a typical real-life situation humorously, often with a touch of exaggeration. The title text is likely referring to stand-up comedians, like {{w|Jerry Seinfeld}}, who use observational humor. When an observational comic becomes more successful, they will probably "go on tour" resulting in a great deal of travel. This gives him or her lots of experience with airplanes and hotels, and more jokes about them will show up in the routine. Furthermore, the title text is itself an observational joke.

==Transcript==
:[Megan on stage, holding microphone, hip-hop stance.]
:Megan: Yo, I'm M.C. Aphasia and I'm here to say that, I... Uh...
:Megan: ...Um...
:Megan: ...Hi?

:[Black Hat on stage, holding microphone.]
:Black Hat: So I... oh? Does she? Well, when ''yo'' mama sits around the house, she finds herself wishing she'd finished her degree instead of having kids right away, maybe started that business. Then she might have created something she's ''proud'' of.

:[Cueball on stage, holding microphone, fist pumping toward audience.]
:Cueball:
:Yo, I'm M.C. Quine
:and I'm here to say,
:"Yo, I'm M.C. Quine
:and I'm here to say!"

:[Beret Guy on stage, holding microphone.]
:Beret Guy: Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in hordes ten thousand strong, clad all in sable armor and bristling with swords and spears?
:Audience member (off-screen): Those are orcs.
:Beret Guy: Oh.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Your Mom]]

785: Open Mic Night

2015-07-31T05:23:20Z

Slashme: /* Panel 1 */ MC in the sense of rap; explain irony.

{{comic
| number = 785
| date = August 27, 2010
| title = Open Mic Night
| image = open_mic_night.png
| titletext = Ever notice how the more successful observational comics become, the more their jokes focus on flying and hotels?
}}

==Explanation==
The comic depicts four acts at an {{w|Open mic|open mic night}}, where performances typically include comedy, poetry, music and other similar performance arts.

===Panel 1===
[[Megan]] confidently introduces herself as M.C. Aphasia, and starts to talk to the audience. Mid way through her sentence however, she appears unable to continue to talk, ending with a sheepish "Hi?". {{w|Aphasia}} is a language disorder, symptomized by disturbance in formulation and comprehension of language. This class of language disorder ranges from having difficulty remembering words to being completely unable to speak, read, or write. M. C. stands for {{w|Master of Ceremonies}} - in the context of hip-hop performance, it means a rapper. Because a rapper's delivery depends on the ability to deliver lyrics fluently at high speed, aphasia would render an MC unable to perform.

===Panel 2===
The second panel shows [[Black Hat]] on the stage, just after a {{w|heckler}} in the audience fired a 'Yo Mama' joke at Black Hat (probably "when yo mama sits around the house, she sits ''around'' the house"). A heckler's aim is usually to put the performer off of their routine, and appear funny themselves. Responses from the performer vary from simply ignoring the heckler to getting enraged and violent. Good comedians are able to quickly fire back a witty put down (either off the cuff or pre-planned), which will get the audience back on side and dissuade the heckler from continuing. Rather than a short witty reply, Black Hat's response is a little less direct, implying that the hecklers mother isn't proud of him.

===Panel 3===
The third panel is a reference to the {{w|Quine paradox}}, whereby a sentence repeated twice in succession proves to be paradoxical. For example:
:"Yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation.
The sentence is another way of saying "this statement is false" but without the explicit self-reference. Named after the paradox, a {{w|quine (computing)|quine}} is also a computer program which outputs its own source code.

===Panel 4===
In the fourth panel, [[Beret Guy]]'s speech begins as if with the common observation, "Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in groups", but somehow gets derailed through the use of the word hordes instead of groups, and a confusion between women and orcs. When an audience member (or heckler) points this out, Beret Guy's response shows that his observations weren't intended as comedy in the first place.

The title text continues the riff on different kinds of stand-up comedians, commonly referred to as comics. {{w|Observational humor}} is a joke that presents a typical real-life situation humorously, often with a touch of exaggeration. The title text is likely referring to stand-up comedians, like {{w|Jerry Seinfeld}}, who use observational humor. When an observational comic becomes more successful, they will probably "go on tour" resulting in a great deal of travel. This gives him or her lots of experience with airplanes and hotels, and more jokes about them will show up in the routine. Furthermore, the title text is itself an observational joke.

==Transcript==
:[Megan on stage, holding microphone, hip-hop stance.]
:Megan: Yo, I'm M.C. Aphasia and I'm here to say that, I... Uh...
:Megan: ...Um...
:Megan: ...Hi?

:[Black Hat on stage, holding microphone.]
:Black Hat: So I... oh? Does she? Well, when ''yo'' mama sits around the house, she finds herself wishing she'd finished her degree instead of having kids right away, maybe started that business. Then she might have created something she's ''proud'' of.

:[Cueball on stage, holding microphone, fist pumping toward audience.]
:Cueball:
:Yo, I'm M.C. Quine
:and I'm here to say,
:"Yo, I'm M.C. Quine
:and I'm here to say!"

:[Beret Guy on stage, holding microphone.]
:Beret Guy: Ever notice how men go to the restroom alone, while women go in hordes ten thousand strong, clad all in sable armor and bristling with swords and spears?
:Audience member (off-screen): Those are orcs.
:Beret Guy: Oh.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Your Mom]]

1386: People are Stupid

2014-06-26T23:26:05Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ fmt: iq -> IQ

{{comic
| number = 1386
| date = June 25, 2014
| title = People are Stupid
| image = people_are_stupid.png
| titletext = To everyone who responds to everything by saying they've 'lost their faith in humanity': Thanks--I'll let humanity know. I'm sure they'll be crushed.
}}

==Explanation==
It is a common thing for people on the Internet (on forums and comments sections of various websites) to make vague generalizations about the "stupidity of all people" or "losing faith in {{W|human|humanity}}," for instance when the topic is actually the stupidity or irrational/extreme behavior of one individual or group of individuals. Also the comment can come in any type of Internet forum, disregarding the subject.

However, the overall {{w|world population}} ("people") is not more stupid than the average - by definition. There is also no other human population to compare to to draw the conclusion this population is stupid. So it is a ''stupid'' comment that [[White Hat]] makes. The award being given to him by [[Cueball]] is thus a very sarcastic one.

Cueball is also being hypocritical because he is making fun of White Hat's feeling of superiority by exhibiting superiority over White Hat. Cueball assumes a normal distribution on IQ to found his critique. However, it is possible that the median person is less intelligent than mean while a large group is above mean. This assumed superiority assumes white hat is stupider than him.

White Hat's {{W|Illusory superiority|self-perceived superiority}} may be an example of the {{w|Lake_Wobegon#The_Lake_Wobegon_effect|Lake Wobegon effect}}, so named because {{w|Lake Wobegon}} (a fictional city) is "where all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average".

The last panel may be a reference to the ''First Annual Montgomery Burns Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence'' which is a fictional award in the story of {{w|The Simpsons}} episode ''{{w|Brother, Can You Spare Two Dimes?}}'' where it is presented to {{w|Homer Simpson}}.

In the title text the other phrase about having ''lost their faith in humanity'' also gets a comment on the way from Cueball. There are people who use this phrase every time someone disagrees with them or say something they think is stupid. He jokes that he will let humanity (everyone other than the guy who makes the comment) know that he has lost faith in them - and very sarcastically remarks that humanity will probably be crushed (i.e. the rest of the world does not care if a single guy has lost faith in them).

==Transcript==
:[White Hat and Cueball are standing next to each other]
:White Hat: Well, you know, people are stupid.
:Cueball: *Sigh*

:[They have moved a little further apart]
:Cueball: No, people aren't stupid. On average, people are of average intelligence. When you say "people are stupid," you mean stupid compared to ''your'' expectations.

:[Close up of Cueball]
:Cueball: What you're really saying is "other people aren't as smart as '''me.'''"
:Cueball: And maybe you're right! In which case

:[White Hat is presented with a trophy by Cueball.]
:Cueball: I'd like to bestow upon you the
:[In the panel there is a close up of the trophy plaque (the text is in a frame):]
:First Annual Award for Excellence in Being Very Smart
:Cueball: May you continue to grace our internet with your wisdom

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

1084: Server Problem

2014-01-14T10:54:37Z

Slashme: /* Explanation */ general copy-edit and modification of TL;DR version.

{{comic
| number = 1084
| date = July 20, 2012
| title = Server Problem
| image = server_problem.png
| titletext = Protip: Annoy Ray Kurzweil by always referring to it as the 'Cybersingularity'.
}}

== Explanation ==

{{incomplete|The title text is not explained. Why is this a Protip: '''Annoy Ray Kurzweil by always referring to it as the 'Cybersingularity'?''' And why does referring the The Singularity as '''Cybersingularity''' annoy {{W|Ray Kurzweil}}? Cybersingularity is also usually written in two words as Cyber singularity. Does this have anything to do with the annoying?}}

[[Cueball]] has messed up his Linux server, apparently not for the first time. [[Megan]] offers to take a look at the PC, and she casually types in 'ls' — a very basic command that lists the files in the current directory. The computer returns a bizarre error message — it trips over one of the simplest commands, indicating that Cueball's system is messed up. ''Really'' messed up.

The {{w|Filesystem Hierarchy Standard#Directory structure|/usr/share}} path should indicate "architecture-independent shared data". Adobe is a software company that produces Acrobat, Flash and Photoshop. Android VM would be a virtual machine for the mobile Operating System created by Google called Android. The .jar extension suggests a Java-language program. None of Adobe, Android, or Java are needed to run 'ls'. All of the above have nothing to do with each other. Also, basic system executables like 'ls' would never be placed within /usr/share or within some 'example' or 'doc' directory. On Linux, executables don't have filename extensions like ".exe" or ".jar". Additionally, it would require the folder to be within {{w|PATH (variable)|$PATH}}. In other words, the error message implies that the server is in a very bad state.

[[Megan]] is bewildered by this result and tells Cueball to "shut down the system and wait for the {{w|technological singularity|singularity}}," referring to a hypothetical future event when superintelligence can be artificially created. Since future superintelligent humans/computers transcend our comprehension, we can't predict or even understand what will happen after the singularity. One interpretation is that Megan is telling Cueball that his system is such a mess that it will take a post-singularity superintelligence to fix it.

The last frame has Cueball recommending a course of action which mimics a common error message: "______ is busy, please try again later." Obviously he has seen this type of message frequently enough to try it as a general cure in all similar cases.

In the title text, {{W|Ray Kurzweil}} is an author and futurist who has {{W|Singularity Summit|talked}} and {{W|The Singularity Is Near|written}} much about ''{{W|The singularity}}''.

==Transcript==
:Cueball: I, um, messed up my server again.
:Megan: I'll take a look. You have the ''weirdest'' tech problems

:[Megan uses the root prompt.]
:<code>~# ls</code>

:[Computer returns the following.]
:<code>/usr/share/Adobe/doc/example/android_vm/root/sbin/ls.jar:</code>
:<code>Error: Device is not responding.</code>

:Megan: What did you ''do!?''
:Cueball: Maybe the device is busy. Should I try it later?
:Megan: You should shut down this system and wait for the Singularity.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Linux]]
[[Category:Protip]]