https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=108.162.250.130&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T01:14:49ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1063:_Kill_Hitler&diff=2161511063: Kill Hitler2021-08-06T01:33:32Z<p>108.162.250.130: /* Explanation */</p>
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<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1063<br />
| date = June 1, 2012<br />
| title = Kill Hitler<br />
| image = kill_hitler.png<br />
| titletext = Revised directive: It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history until you've at least taken a class on it.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
[[Black Hat]] creates a one-use time machine. [[Cueball]] selects a common suggestion for using a time machine: killing {{w|Adolf Hitler}}, the Austrian-born dictator who famously led the {{w|Nazi Party}} to a hostile takeover of the German government, followed by a military invasion of several other European countries and a genocidal campaign known as {{w|the Holocaust}}, which then led to {{w|World War II}}. Even though Black Hat has other (and probably better) ideas about how to use his time machine, he relents to Cueball's pleas and goes off to kill Hitler, comically using the casual phrase "BRB" which is an abbreviation for "be right back". He soon returns, commenting that he found Hitler in a very noisy bunker in the year 1945.<br />
<br />
In the real world, Hitler and his wife Eva Braun {{w|Death of Adolf Hitler|committed suicide}} on April 30, 1945, in the {{w|Führerbunker}} in Berlin. Berlin was under assault by Soviet forces and it was clear that the city would soon be taken. Nazi Germany surrendered to Allied forces almost immediately afterward, bringing an end to the War in the European theater (the Pacific theater of the War, which was fought mostly between the United States and Imperial Japan, would linger on for a few more months until Japan was defeated). The fact that Black Hat killed Hitler in the Führerbunker in 1945 means that the War and the Holocaust had already resulted in the deaths of millions, and history would not be significantly changed by murdering Hitler at that point; also, Black Hat's comment that "1945 was loud!" suggests that Berlin was already under attack when he emerged in the Führerbunker, implying that the killing took place around the time Hitler would have taken his own life anyway, possibly by just a few moments. Cueball's intent was clearly for Black Hat to kill Hitler before the latter's rise to power (possibly several years before) in the hopes of preventing both the War and the Holocaust, and he's therefore horrified by the realization that Black Hat had used his sole opportunity for time travel and probably made little difference at all.<br />
<br />
This is typical Black Hat behavior, going out of his way just to troll people like Cueball and cause horrible things to happen, in this case deliberately ''not'' changing any history or avoiding any of the atrocities carried out by Nazi Germany. That might be for the best, however, since killing Hitler early {{tvtropes|HitlersTimeTravelExemptionAct|might cause more problems than it would solve}}.<br />
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Sure enough, there are some conspiracy theories claiming that Hitler had no intention of taking his own life and was actually shot dead by someone else, most of them relying on some kind of "evidence" that Hitler and Braun weren't alone in the room when they died. If this comic was meant to be taken as a serious theory on Hitler's death, it would suggest that Black Hat was directly responsible, but because he used a time machine to reach Hitler, historians would have no knowledge that he was ever there and therefore could only conclude that Hitler and Braun killed themselves instead. Also, if the {{w|Novikov self-consistency principle}} is true, it means that Hitler's suicide was interrupted by Black Hat in the first place, and Black Hat was merely going back in time to do the thing he already did.<br />
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The title text refers to the time travel theme from the {{w|Superman}} movie in which Jor-El states, "It is forbidden for you to interfere with human history." Here it is suggested that Black Hat needs to know some history before going back in time to interfere with it, perhaps so that he would do the right thing and kill Hitler ''before'' the Holocaust and World War II.<br />
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==Trivia==<br />
* Hitler was also the subject of Black Hat's [[29| third appearance]].<br />
* In [[1617: Time Capsule]], [[Beret Guy]] has the same mission, but has instead "traveled" forward in time, and when he arrives Hitler is long dead.<br />
* There is an episode of Love, Death and Robots that is entirely about going back in time to kill Hitler.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Black Hat and Cueball stand in front of a double door, which bears the label 'TIME door'. Black Hat has his hands on his hips.]<br />
:Black Hat: I finished my time machine, but it's one-use-only.<br />
:Cueball: You ''gotta'' kill Hitler.<br />
<br />
:[Close-up of Black Hat, one hand palm upward.]<br />
:Black Hat: Why are you so obsessed with this Hitler guy? We have ''all'' of ''time'' we could explore!<br />
<br />
:[Close-up of Cueball with both hands palm upward.]<br />
:Cueball: He's evil incarnate! He murdered millions and sparked global war! ''Everyone'' agrees—if you get a time machine, you kill Hitler.<br />
<br />
:[Black Hat enters the now open Time door as the other man looks on..]<br />
:Black Hat: Fine, fine, I get it! Calm down. BRB, killing Hitler.<br />
<br />
:[Black Hat returns, shutting the door with one hand. Cueball has outstretched arms.]<br />
:Black Hat: There. Done. Are you happy? <br />
:Cueball: ''Thank'' you.<br />
:Black Hat: He was in some kind of bunker. 1945 was ''loud!''<br />
:Cueball: '''''NO!'''''<br />
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{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Hitler]]<br />
[[Category:Time travel]]</div>108.162.250.130https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1997:_Business_Update&diff=2161461997: Business Update2021-08-05T23:24:10Z<p>108.162.250.130: /* Explanation */</p>
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<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1997<br />
| date = May 23, 2018<br />
| title = Business Update<br />
| image = business_update.png<br />
| titletext = Our customers keep sending us their personal information, even though we've repeatedly asked them to stop. The EU told me I'm the heir to some ancient European throne that makes me exempt from the GDPR, but we should probably still try to fix that.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
This comic shows a meeting at [[Beret Guy]]'s business (as seen in [[:Category:Beret Guy's Business|these other comics]]). As usual, those in the business demonstrate a misuse of business terminology and take strange happenings within the business in stride.<br />
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Though maintaining a semblance of business-savviness through the use of many corporate buzzwords, it becomes clear that what is normally metaphorical in a usual boardroom meeting is here quite likely meant literally. The Quarterly Reports, described as "looking good," may be literally physically attractive (rather than recording successful business dealings). Beret Guy's comment that "the office is full of cash" is superficially positive, but knowing Beret Guy, it seems likely that the office is literally full of money, like coins, dollar bills, twenty dollar bills, etc. and not simply economically well-off. Most businesses keep their money in banks, and any business that keeps all their money insecurely in the office is either criminally shady or incompetent. <br />
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Stocks (as in the stock market, a.k.a. shares) are being manufactured. Stocks are valuable, so from an outside perspective making more of them would create value. However, the humor of this situation is that in real life, creating shares from nothing would reduce the value of existing shares (as the combined value of stocks should add up to the total value of the company... so creating more stocks means each has to be worth less to make the addition balance out). This is ironic in that typically stocks represent the value of the company, rather than being the product being created.<br />
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Alternatively, the company may be producing the leg restraints known as {{w|Stocks|stocks}}. It's unlikely that there would be many people wishing to buy these stocks. Conversely, if what they are making is ''soup'' stocks, then it could be related to the 'rapid growth' (i.e., obesity) of the customers.<br />
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"Rapid growth" is something a business is supposed to attain for itself or its userbase, not its individual customers. If the customers are not children they are likely very concerned by this rapid growth, as should be Beret Guy if the rapid growth is being caused by his business and its products.<br />
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"Liquidating assets" typically means that assets are being sold off for money rather than being retained or used. Assets "liquidated" in a thermostat glitch, meanwhile, may have been literally melted ("turned into liquid"). It could also mean that their infrastructure is so hilariously messed up (and/or the assets so bizarre) that a simple glitch in a thermostat somehow resulted in the loss of a large amount of the company's assets. Note that this type of thing is not entirely unheard of, as shown by [https://thehackernews.com/2018/04/iot-hacking-thermometer.html a hack of a thermostat in a casino that led to massive data loss in 2017].<br />
<br />
"Original content" is a catch-all term for unique creative products created by a website, e.g. articles, videos or TV shows. However, it is not typically used to describe sinks, which only provide water. Since the business team regards it as a problem, this means the sink is likely leaking or backing up, possibly with polluted water or rotting food waste, or perhaps creating things one would not expect a sink to dispense or even to exist (depending on how "original" this original content is).<br />
<br />
Transmuting lead into gold was a {{w|Nuclear transmutation#Alchemy|goal of alchemists}} for many centuries. With modern nuclear technology, it is actually now possible to accomplish transmutation of lead into gold, and gold into lead. While the expense far exceeds the value of the gold produced by such methods, it seems plausible that, given Beret Guy's surpassing strangeness, his company may be successfully and cheaply transmuting large quantities of lead into gold and back again. Since gold is worth much more than lead in today's market, the first transmutation could indeed result in major profit, while the reverse would obviously result in major losses, and be a rather pointless undertaking for a typical, profit-oriented business.<br />
<br />
It is also worth noting that the "largest source of revenue" may not be producing much if any revenue at all; it can still be the biggest if there are no others. On the other hand, past experience with Beret Guy's business would indicate that this company is [[1032: Networking|making plenty of money]], though they aren't necessarily sure [[1493: Meeting|how]].<br />
<br />
Alternately, Beret Guy may be speaking literally about their "biggest source of revenue," referring not to the amount of revenue generated, but to the physical size of the source itself. A facility capable of transmutating heavy elements would most likely be constructed around a large particle accelerator such as a synchrotron, and accelerators of this type commonly measure several kilometers in diameter. Such a facility would likely be the largest physical structure owned by a commercial entity. <br />
<br />
In the last panel, "the girl from ''The Ring''" refers to Sadako Yamamura, the antagonist of {{w|The Ring (film series)|the ''Ring'' series by Koji Suzuki}}, or her counterpart Samara Morgan from the {{w|The_Ring_(2002_film)|American remake}}, who has been referenced by xkcd several times in the past as in [[396: The Ring]]. One of Sadako/Samara's supernatural abilities is to appear in television screens as well as exit from them into the real world. Beret Guy claims she has done this several times in their video conferences, which may be possible if someone has hacked their video feed to play footage from the 2002 movie. However, some of Beret Guy's employees then proceed to remark that she has made contributions to the meetings in question, implying that the image of Sadako/Samara is not only alive but sentient and communicating with the employees, rather than killing them as she typically does in her movies. It's also possible that Sadako/Samara is simply the recording from the series, and her contributions are just in keeping with the general tone of the company's video conferences. Either way, it would appear that Beret Guy's sheer eccentricity has affected his staff to the point that a digital spectre would not be an abnormal employee; they're also oddly nonchalant about a movie character appearing in the real world, and at Sadako/Samara's out-of-character behavior.<br />
<br />
The title text refers to the May 25 deadline to implement the European Union's {{w|GDPR|General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)}}; this comic parodies a business meeting about what the company is doing to prepare for it. However, while normally the problem would be how to handle the customers' personal information that the company requires to retain in order to do business, in this case it seems the company does not require personal information at all, and instead, customers are sending them theirs on their own (and they refuse to stop doing it!). Even more bizarrely, Beret Guy was told by the EU (or at least, he thinks he was) that he is exempt because he is European royalty of some kind, which would give him {{w|sovereign immunity}}, but he wants to fix this problem anyway, just to be on the safe side.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Beret Guy, Ponytail, Hairy, Hairbun and Megan sit around a table, left to right. Beret Guy and Megan are sitting on chairs at the ends. All others are behind the table with no visible chairs. All characters face Beret Guy.]<br />
:Beret Guy: Quarterly reports are looking good. <br />
:Beret Guy: Our office is full of cash, we're producing stocks faster than ever before, and our customers are experiencing rapid growth.<br />
:Beret Guy: Any updates?<br />
<br />
:[Closeup on Ponytail, facing left.]<br />
:Ponytail: Bad news: many of our assets were liquidated this morning due to a thermostat glitch.<br />
:Ponytail: Good news: the sink in the kitchen has stopped producing original content.<br />
<br />
:[Same as panel one, but characters are facing Megan.]<br />
:Beret Guy: How are our finances?<br />
:Megan: Our biggest source of revenue is our ongoing project to transmute lead into gold.<br />
:Megan: Our biggest expense is our project to transmute it back.<br />
<br />
:[Closeup on Beret Guy, facing right, offset to the left of the panel. Two characters speak from off-panel right.]<br />
:Beret Guy: Lastly, any luck getting the girl from ''The Ring'' to stop showing up in our video conferences?<br />
:Off-panel person 1: No, but honestly, she's made some good contributions.<br />
:Off-panel person 2: Yeah, I think we should hire her.<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairbun]]<br />
[[Category:Beret Guy's Business]]<br />
[[Category:Stock Market]]</div>108.162.250.130https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2492:_Commonly_Mispronounced_Equations&diff=215397Talk:2492: Commonly Mispronounced Equations2021-07-22T05:00:07Z<p>108.162.250.130: Comment on soft G</p>
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<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--><br />
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I think the wave equation is wrong based on units, but it's been a while. The wave speed ought to be squared. Of course, ''c'' could be a squared speed, but it's usually not. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.34.164|172.70.34.164]] 01:22, 22 July 2021 (UTC)<br />
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:I agree, normally it's written as C squared... The equations in order are 1: Gravitational Attraction, 2: Einstein's Mass / Energy Conversion, 3: Pythagorean Theorem (triangle side relations), 4: Area of a Circle, 5: Entropy equation, 6: Ideal Gas Law, 7: Euler's Identity, 8: Newtons Second law, 9: Wave equation, 10: The derivative of a function f, and, 11: The Quadratic Equation... I don't understand the linguistic rules being applied to the names, but they seem to be visual as much as anything [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.66|108.162.237.66]] 02:04, 22 July 2021 (UTC)<br />
::You should turn that into a table in the explanation. We can have a column where we try to come up with the pronunciation rule. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 04:10, 22 July 2021 (UTC)<br />
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The equation for the thing I have as what it was made by is <br />
L<br />
=<br />
i<br />
ψ<br />
¯<br />
γ<br />
μ<br />
∂<br />
μ<br />
ψ<br />
−<br />
e<br />
ψ<br />
¯<br />
γ<br />
μ<br />
(<br />
A<br />
μ<br />
+<br />
B<br />
μ<br />
)<br />
ψ<br />
−<br />
m<br />
ψ<br />
¯<br />
ψ<br />
1<br />
4<br />
F<br />
μ<br />
ν<br />
F<br />
μ<br />
ν<br />
.<br />
{\displaystyle {\mathcal {L}}=i{\bar {\psi }}\gamma ^{\mu }\partial _{\mu }\psi -e{\bar {\psi }}\gamma ^{\mu }(A_{\mu }+B_{\mu })\psi -m{\bar {\psi }}\psi -{\frac {1}{4}}F_{\mu \nu }F^{\mu \nu }.}<br />
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when copy-pasted from Wikipedia. {{w|Quantum electrodynamics#Equations_of_motion|here is the link:}} [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_electrodynamics#Equations_of_motion These are both the links.] <br />
For archival, this is the thing: LAGRONJ EYSIBARYMOODMOOSIOYLERSIBRYMOOAMOOBAMOOSIMASIBRSIQORTFAHMOOVYFAHMOOVY. <br />
[[User:4D4850|4D4850]] ([[User talk:4D4850|talk]]) 02:22, 22 July 2021 (UTC)<br />
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My friends and I actually pretty often say "PəV-nert" for the ideal gas law. First syllable is kind of vowel-less, sort of a schwa if anything. But also stressed? Didn't know you could stress a schwa but, guess I did.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.160|172.70.130.160]] 02:36, 22 July 2021 (UTC)<br />
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I think this is the XKCD that has made me laugh the most, out of all 2492.<br />
:I'd say it might be the one that made me laugh the most, out of all {{LATESTCOMIC}}. I won't, because it didn't, but I could. --[[User:4D4850|4D4850]] ([[User talk:4D4850|talk]]) 03:23, 22 July 2021 (UTC)<br />
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I tried to transcribe these pronunciations into IPA, because reading them like this is kind of ambiguous. I probably got a bunch of stuff wrong though.<br />
fəˈdʒæmɚ |<br />
ˈɛmkɑˌtu |<br />
ætˈbutkut |<br />
ˈæpɚˌtu |<br />
həˈsplɒgpi |<br />
ˈpævnɚt |<br />
ˈaɪpɪn |<br />
ˈfimɑ |<br />
dut kəˈduks |<br />
ˈfækslɪmˌoʊ ˈfæksəˌfɒx |<br />
zəˈbɔbə fækˈtoʊɑ |<br />
ˌɛpsɪˈhutəˌmu ˈdupsɪˌkwɔrps<br />
<br />
Why is it a soft G in the gravity equation? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 04:10, 22 July 2021 (UTC)<br />
:I believe it's a reference to the "gif" pronunciation debate. "Fuh-gam-er" is the obvious pronunciation, Randal is facetiously asserting "Fuh-jam-er" is correct.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.130|108.162.250.130]] 05:00, 22 July 2021 (UTC)</div>108.162.250.130