https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=141.101.104.154&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-28T11:01:50ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1680:_Black_Hole&diff=120067Talk:1680: Black Hole2016-05-13T11:28:22Z<p>141.101.104.154: animation for the effects of a small black hole</p>
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<div><!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~--><br />
IF the explanation of "Milkshake" being a coded message is correct, then I like how Melis plays with it. I always thought the more sexual way, Milkshake meaning shaking her milk bags. Sure, that brings boys to the yard.... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.151|141.101.104.151]]<br />
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It's not clear what exactly in the comic is a reference to the Big Lebowski movie. This needs clarification. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 06:48, 13 May 2016 (UTC)<br />
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:In the Big Lebowski, The Dude's reasoning for wanting the rug replaced was that "It really tied the room together" [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.80|108.162.219.80]] 07:50, 13 May 2016 (UTC)<br />
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The event horizon of the black hole in the cartoon appears to be roughly an inch across, which using the formula linking Schwarzschild radius to mass (r = 2MG/c^2) gives a black hole of about 3 earth masses. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.138|162.158.34.138]] 08:06, 13 May 2016 (UTC)<br />
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:OMG. That would mean it also excerts 3 times the gravitational force of earth. As a result people near (also as far away as earth orbits) would only be comfortable standing at a significant angle. Time may also appear to progress slower near the black hole due to the time dilation effect. But I am unsure how pronounced this effect will be from a black hole that size. Audible and visible effects of this would be people talking slower (but not lower as you have with the doppler effect, i beleive that to be a sci-fi misconception), and peoples movements seeming slower. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 08:50, 13 May 2016 (UTC)<br />
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:That strong a pull would mean the hole would not only collect air and particles, but also pull furniture into it. Seing as both people are standing upright I'm guessing the pull can not be more than say one fifth of earths. Maybe it has a visible accretion disc? If you were to run the formula in reverse what diameter would that give you of the hole itself? [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 09:23, 13 May 2016 (UTC)<br />
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There's only 5 years between the Big Lebowski and Milkshake (1998 vs 2003) so while "more contemporary" is technically correct, I think it underestimates how old Milkshake is. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.21|141.101.98.21]] 08:15, 13 May 2016 (UTC)<br />
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Perhaps this comic is in reference to [http://gizmodo.com/were-one-step-closer-to-better-tabletop-particle-accele-1775501374 this article referencing tabletop particle accelerators]? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.74|141.101.104.74]] 08:38, 13 May 2016 (UTC)<br />
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I once read a short story about this situation where the hole kept feeding and eventually swallowed the whole Galaxy. I thought it was a Stephen King, but my Google Fu can't find it... [[User:Supachris28|Supachris28]] ([[User talk:Supachris28|talk]]) 09:22, 13 May 2016 (UTC)<br />
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:It was one of the scare-stories surrounding the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), where a micro-black hole would form and end-of-the-world scenario would ensue. Apparently such a hole could form but would immediately destabilize. On a related note, this brings into question as to how stable the hole in the comic would be, since it seems rather small. If it were to destabilize it would have enough energy to blow the earth to pieces, despite its deceivingly innocent size. [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 09:48, 13 May 2016 (UTC)<br />
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Was I right to add a little about hawking radiation?[[User:Transuranium|Transuranium]] ([[User talk:Transuranium|talk]]) 10:07, 13 May 2016 (UTC)Transuranium<br />
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: Hawking radiation from a black hole with "neutron bullet" mass (equivalent to the Empire State Building) would be ''vicious'', equivalent to .78 megatons of TNT per second. However, it could spew out increasingly intense radiation for ''96 years''. [http://xaonon.dyndns.org/hawking/] A lunar mass black hole would be colder than interstellar space and could outlive most of the universe. [[User:.42|.42]] ([[User talk:.42|talk]]) 10:28, 13 May 2016 (UTC)<br />
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::As deduced above I guess the hole would not be strong enough to pull them in. But you're saying a black hole with a mass smaller than earth would essentially fry them both and set their house on fire IRL? And that would only be if it was stable enough not to destabilize and blow up. Some best-case scenario that is. :) [[User:Todor|Todor]] ([[User talk:Todor|talk]]) 11:07, 13 May 2016 (UTC)<br />
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The [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nHBGFKLHZQ effects of a small black hole] the size of a coin, animation by "Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell" [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.154|141.101.104.154]] 11:28, 13 May 2016 (UTC)</div>141.101.104.154https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1538:_Lyrics&diff=956491538: Lyrics2015-06-15T10:30:05Z<p>141.101.104.154: /* Explanation */</p>
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<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1538<br />
| date = June 15, 2015<br />
| title = Lyrics<br />
| image = lyrics.png<br />
| titletext = To me, trying to understand song lyrics feels like when I see text in a dream but it𝔰 hอᵣd t₀ ᵣeₐd aกd 𝒾 canٖt fཱྀcu༧༦࿐༄<br />
}}<br />
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==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|This is a stub. There is probably a more thorough explanation.}}<br />
The comic is illustrating (in text form) how listening to a song feels before you have learned what the actual lyrics are. The lyrics are represented in an indecipherable way, with a few mildly recognizable words. This represents the auditory experience of being able to hear and understand some words, but not all of them.<br />
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==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript}}<br />
:[Cueball sits in a chair holding a phone. A speaker on a counter behind him is transmitting music. Four lines of wavey undecipherable lyrics eminate from the speaker. The lyrics are surrounded by musical notes.]<br />
:I can't even tell her<br />
:And I one the wanna<br />
:Had be is annoying or I'll<br />
:Forgetting Loooveee?<br />
:[Caption below the frame:] <br />
:'''Sometimes I wonder what it would'''<br />
:'''be like to be able to understand'''<br />
:'''song lyrics without looking them up.'''<br />
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{{comic discussion}}</div>141.101.104.154https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1538:_Lyrics&diff=956471538: Lyrics2015-06-15T10:17:15Z<p>141.101.104.154: /* Explanation */</p>
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<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1538<br />
| date = June 15, 2015<br />
| title = Lyrics<br />
| image = lyrics.png<br />
| titletext = To me, trying to understand song lyrics feels like when I see text in a dream but it𝔰 hอᵣd t₀ ᵣeₐd aกd 𝒾 canٖt fཱྀcu༧༦࿐༄<br />
}}<br />
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==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|This is a stub. There is probably a more thorough explanation.}}<br />
The comic is illustrating (in text form) how listening to a song feels before you have learned what the actual lyrics are. The lyrics are represented in an indecipherable way, with a few mildly recognizable words. This represents the auditory experience of being able to hear some words, but not all of them.<br />
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==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript}}<br />
:[Cueball sits in a chair holding a phone. A speaker on a counter behind him is transmitting music. Four lines of wavey undecipherable lyrics eminate from the speaker. The lyrics are surrounded by musical notes.]<br />
:(Here should be the best possible version of the lyrics as they are written)<br />
:[Caption below the frame:] <br />
:'''Sometimes I wonder what it would'''<br />
:'''be like to be able to understand'''<br />
:'''song lyrics without looking them up.'''<br />
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{{comic discussion}}</div>141.101.104.154https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1530:_Keyboard_Mash&diff=94375Talk:1530: Keyboard Mash2015-05-27T19:43:45Z<p>141.101.104.154: </p>
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<div>Spiders. We knew this would happen someday.<br />
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So, the plot seems to be that he went outside to deal with his dog, and the spider got inside, perhaps lurking in his room and striking when he sat down at his computer, hence the keyboard smash. <br />
It could be him being taken, or perhaps the spider getting adjusted to the keyboard rather clumsily, what would you see as more feasible?<br />
And from then on, it's the spider typing? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.168|108.162.238.168]] 06:23, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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"All your hands" were on the home row? Surely he means *both* hands or all *fingers* - unless he's already aware of the spider? Plot hole? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.121|141.101.99.121]] 06:43, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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: Good catch. May be he always was aware he was talking with a spider. And the las comment from the spider is just sarcastic. [[User:Arturotena|Arturotena]] ([[User talk:Arturotena|talk]]) 07:46, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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: Yes, that had me wondering too. Perhaps the spider didn't realise she needed to turn the webcam off? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.159|108.162.250.159]] 09:20, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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The comment "I am a normal Human typing with my Human hands." seems like something Beret Guy would say. Perhaps his time with Beret Guy has desensitized Cueball to those kind of comments? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.9|108.162.219.9]] 09:08, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
:On the other hand, beret guy wouldn't accuse someone of being "weird" or "bizarre" [[User:Zeimusu|Zeimusu]] ([[User talk:Zeimusu|talk]]) 09:13, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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;Internal skeleton<br />
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In the title text, the spider invite to “CHAT ABOUT OUR INTERNAL SKELETONS.” Of course, the spiders, being arachnid, are invertebrate and don't have internal skeletons. Humans have. My guess is the spider is trying to fool the human. :-) [[User:Arturotena|Arturotena]] ([[User talk:Arturotena|talk]]) 07:34, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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Thanks, Mr. skeletal.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.86|108.162.219.86]] 11:08, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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;Number of "Fingers"<br />
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It is 7 keys - "fingers" that are used for the smash on the home row. Spiders have 8 legs. Anybody else notice that? lg tier666 [[Special:Contributions/141.101.92.43|141.101.92.43]] 07:44, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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:I count 8 keys: 7 letters and the digit "7". Bit, since the letters are repeated, the spider couldn't press all of the with its legs at the same time. All of this make me think that a spider could be an awesome typist. [[User:Arturotena|Arturotena]] ([[User talk:Arturotena|talk]]) 07:51, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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;Turing test<br />
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The spider passed the Turing test. Of course, the test were for machines, not arachnids. [[User:Arturotena|Arturotena]] ([[User talk:Arturotena|talk]]) 07:54, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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;What if?<br />
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Coincidentally, or perhaps not, the current "What if?" at http://what-if.xkcd.com/136/ is also spider related. It comes with a health warning: "If you're a serious arachnophobe, you might want to skip this one." :-) . [[User:Gearoid|Gearoid]] ([[User talk:Gearoid|talk]]) 08:09, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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What should be the name of the picture of White Hat? White Hat/Spider or White Hat Chat Avatar or Spider with the acces of White Hats Avatar or spider who seems to be White Hat or Spider who replaced White Hat in the Interweb of better Names I couldn't think of yet. And how do we know, that Cueball is Cueball as well maybe this is the invasion of the spiders who come through the web!! [[User:ẞ qwertz|ẞ qwertz]] ([[User talk:ẞ qwertz|talk]]) 10:32, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/310959549243301172/ That is all. - [[User:Frankie|Frankie]] ([[User talk:Frankie|talk]]) 11:51, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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;Possible reference by the title?<br />
{{w|Monster_Mash|A keyboard '''mash''' by a '''monster'''ous spider...}} {{unsigned ip|141.101.99.110}}<br />
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; Where's your dog now?<br />
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Maybe the dog keeps barking because of the Spider. We should totally think of many different ways, how the spider got inside the house and when.<br />
[[User:ẞ qwertz|ẞ qwertz]] ([[User talk:ẞ qwertz|talk]]) 10:12, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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The dog is probably a reference to Terminator 2 where a barking dog reveals the terminator identity. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.222|141.101.98.222]] 12:45, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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[[wikipedia:On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you%27re_a_dog|On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.]] [[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.131|108.162.254.131]] 16:29, 27 May 2015 (UTC)<br />
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;Keystroke Dynamics<br />
I see a hint to keystroke dynamics in this comic, which is being increasingly used to assert someone's identity online. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.230.68|198.41.230.68]] 16:55, 27 May 2015 (UTC)xquestion<br />
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Spiders FTW![[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.154|141.101.104.154]]</div>141.101.104.154https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1500:_Upside-Down_Map&diff=88501Talk:1500: Upside-Down Map2015-04-05T17:57:38Z<p>141.101.104.154: </p>
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<div>What's the point? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.173|108.162.249.173]] 09:59, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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:In my opinion, part of the joke which is hinted at but never explicitly stated in the explanation, is that normal south-up orientation maps are just as "correct" as their north-up counterparts, but they still appear "wrong" to us. The fact that correctly projected south-up maps feel "wrong" supposedly reveals some deep-seeded biases about how we view the world, or at least shows that we have very limited and rigid worldviews. The joke here is that this map isn't just showing the world differently, it's blatantly distorting the geography of the entire planet. At a glance, you may think it's a typical south-up map, but the humor is revealed as you notice all the new associations created by the rotation. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.194|173.245.54.194]] 14:13, 19 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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Australia is still the "right" way up! {{unsigned|Thematkinson}}<br />
:No it is not. But Tasmania stays put as it is an island. Maybe that has caused some confusion? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:What sort of projection have you been looking at if you think these three look the same when rotated 180 degrees? I'd forgive someone for thinking that about New Guinea, but for the other three it just seems laughable. Especially if you know what "map of Tasmamia" is slang for. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.190|108.162.249.190]] 14:13, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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"People often say that maps with the south pole at the top will change your perspective." Is this really something that people ''often'' say? I've never heard anyone say it... --[[User:Pudder|Pudder]] ([[User talk:Pudder|talk]]) 10:06, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:I have heard it... --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:I agree with Pudder. Who are these people and how often to they say it? Explanation edited. - Equinox [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.120|199.27.128.120]] 15:23, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:I disagree, I NEVER heard it until NOW in XKCD. ([[Special:Contributions/141.101.103.208|141.101.103.208]] 21:18, 23 March 2015 (UTC))<br />
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Is perhaps the comic's explanation about a previous map version? The comment about Australia being the normal way is wrong. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.80|108.162.254.80]] 10:10, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:could be - I see Australia as being pivoted just like all the other continents (?) {{unsigned|Brettpeirce}}<br />
::Agreed - see my comment above when this was first mentioned here. Now it has been corrected in the explain. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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Should the title text not say South Korea, rather than North Korea? [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.101|141.101.106.101]] 10:41, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Well it is North Korea we have issues with today. But maybe it is not the former South Korea instead...? --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:46, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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UK was rotated, Japan was not rotated. Sardinia, Cyprus and other are missing. Hmm... is it a pre-alpha release?<br />
[[Special:Contributions/188.114.103.245|188.114.103.245]] 13:18, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Japan sure looks rotated. Maybe it just looks similar upside-down? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.180|108.162.237.180]] 13:45, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Japan is rotated. As a Sardinian, I noticed the absence of Sardinia (and Sicily) and now I'm wondering whether I'd live near Japan (my sister would be extremely happy about it) or near China [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.246|108.162.229.246]] 14:59, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
::Then why northern Hokkaido is towards north, and only Honshu is rotated? [[Special:Contributions/188.114.103.245|188.114.103.245]] 16:19, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:::It is not that Japan is rotated. It is the individual island that are rotated. So the island to the north would still be to the north. And also this map is not so detailed that you can expect to see the difference if some fairly rotational symmetric islands are rotated. Also - thee are many islands that are not included. But for Sardinia and Cyprus. Since they are islands they will not be rotated with the Mediterranean Sea. So they would stay far away from Japan. Progably under some part of Asia where there is no seas to show them. The fact that many island must disappear after the rotation, and also the likeliness that some islands that are shown should have disappeared is mentioned in the explain --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:33, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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The explanation is inaccurate in a few spots in the "jokes" section. Specifically, all the points that say "X is now on the east/west (formerly west/east) of Y" are inaccurate. The whole point is that the spatial relationships of the land masses are unchanged with respect to the cardinal directions. In other words, Cuba is still off the east coast of the US, it's just that Seattle is where Miami used to be. {{unsigned ip|173.245.54.193}}<br />
:Well someone changed this back from the true version. I have changed this back. Also the main part of this "joke" was that it was now next to the Canada. It would just be wrong to say it was only next to the Canada as was written originally, since it is next to the border between US and Canada. Made a small correction also for this to be more clear. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:37, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I always wanted a height-inverted map (ocean trenches are mountain ridges, and vice-versa), with realistic national boundaries set upon the land (that was sea) based on where they might have existed in the sea (that, for us, is land). But I suppose one could go ''too'' far in such fripperies... ;) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.63|141.101.98.63]] 14:44, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Hey, that would be pretty neat! Would your aim be to preserve the same total volume of seawater (ie., same km^3 quantity of water), or to preserve the same total land area? Because I think if you inverted the height, you'd wind up with a few extremely high mountainous landmasses and plateaus, and much of the rest would be pretty shallow seas. The highest mountain range would be the Marianas. :) -[[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.232|108.162.210.232]] 19:12, 2 April 2015 (UTC)<br />
I thought this was a reference to clickbait based on the caption, where you are told it will change your perspective, and it didn't, it was just a stupid map. [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.173|199.27.128.173]] 16:19, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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Yay comic 1500!<br />
17:48, 18 March 2015 (UTC) or 12:48, 18 March 2015 (EDT)<br />
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It's not on the map, but I'm curious what happens to Antarctica in this little exercise? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.53|108.162.216.53]] 17:05, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:Not that much probably since it is faily centered on the pole and except for one "tail" it is rather rotational symmetric. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 18:40, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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What's the island southwest of Newfoundland? It looks large for Prince Edward Island, and most of Nova Scotia isn't an island. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.160|173.245.52.160]] 19:08, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
:While Randall will know which squiggles arise from which real-world features, I reckon there'll be some contention regarding the small islands, given the resolution of the 'pen and ink' sketch doesn't do justice to the smallest (and often least familiar, to start with) perimiter-shapes. I've just gone and edited the bit about "The Falkland Islands" (mainly because I didn't like the technical "''it'' is", grammatically... maybe the better solution would have been for me to just to have made it "The Falkland Islands group|archipelago", though) and while I was there allowed for the fact that it's actually hard to say what that single island blob is precisely intended to be representative of. Note all the other little rocks also out there (but not generally lumped into the same island group), like South Georgia, and the nigh-on numberless ones of similar scale elsewhere around the planet, like the Canaries. Or the Hawaiian islands (if those aren't represented by the above-questioned blob).[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.63|141.101.98.63]] 19:18, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
::Wouldn't it be rather Colombia and maybe Venezuela that could claim the Falklands? Ecuador and especially Peru are way too in the North I think. --[[User:Nezmo|Nezmo]] ([[User talk:Nezmo|talk]]) 21:02, 18 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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Can someone explain why an upside down map changes your perspective? I've seen many before but no explanation of why it is any different. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.222|141.101.98.222]] 07:19, 19 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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There are three main reasons I have heard for upside down maps changing one's perspective, although only the first one is inherently a question of vertical orientation. 1) We associate up-ness with superiority. Because we read top down and therefore habitually see what's at the top of a page as being first, but also as evidenced by phrases like "things are looking up", "at the top of her field", "coming out on top", "high up in the organisation", "top of the food chain", etc. etc. Wikipedia mention this in their page on South-up Map Orientations, and cite a paper "Spatial Metaphor and Real Estate North–South Location Biases Housing Preference", which claims to have demonstrated it with various studies. You can google the paper and read its abstract for free. 2) The fact that most maps one sees in Europe put Europe in the centre makes everything else seem a bit peripheral. 3) The projection increases the size of countries towards the top and bottom of the map, relative to those in the middle, so that, for example, Greenland and Africa look about the same size, when really Africa is 14 times larger (that factoid comes from an article in The Economist entitled "The True True Size of Africa"). Although this doesn't significantly increase the relative size of Europe and America, because they're about in the middle, it does make e.g. Canada and Russia seem much larger than they are, and massively diminish the relative size of Africa. I imagine, speculatively, that this could be a big deal for Africans who feel that the importance of their continent is overlooked. (I'm not familiar with the protocol on this page, so I haven't included links to the articles I mentioned, but anyone who wants to can easily do so.) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.165|108.162.229.165]] 10:53, 19 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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In my opinion, the point of this comic is an observation of a fact how much of our deep-rooted and regarded as inevitable inter-human dealings and problems are utterly determined by purely random factors such as Earth plate tectonics and the actual nick of time (in the geological scale) at which human civilization developed into a global one. -- [[Special:Contributions/141.101.88.225|141.101.88.225]] 12:50, 19 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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I interpreted it as a reference to the book by (recently deceased) Terry Pratchett, 'Nation', one of the messages of which was "changing the way you look at the map changes your perspective". {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.32}}<br />
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Chile is rotated, but "Tierra del fuego" part of Chile and Argentina is not moved, and missing the divition on Chile and Argentina sides, and named "Tierra del fuego" rater than "chile" "argentina", so there is either Randall not remmember that "tierra del Fuego" is either that island and to some extent a liitle of the sourth cone of Chile/Argentina after the Patagonia or think in it a a holw different countrie or something else. ([[Special:Contributions/141.101.103.208|141.101.103.208]] 21:18, 23 March 2015 (UTC))<br />
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I also note that we have acquired a new set of islands off the (now) west coast of Florida, perhaps these were the San Juan and other Seattle-area islands? OTOH, we seem to have lost the Florida Keys entirely, which is a shame ... I enjoy thinking about what Key West would be like if it were way at the end of 150 miles of bridges from Seattle. [[User:Miamiclay|Miamiclay]] ([[User talk:Miamiclay|talk]]) 15:53, 26 March 2015 (UTC)<br />
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Did anyone else have problems understanding upsidedown as rotated 180 degrees? For me, upsidedown would be flipped, that is, left / right would stay but up /down would switch (with the "back" side now being to the front). (Imagine the continents as puzzle pieces.) I looked at this, and was confused by why in addition to being upsidedown, the continents were also flipped left to right... {{unsigned ip|198.41.242.240}}<br />
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A few Indonesian Islands are still the right way up![[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.154|141.101.104.154]]</div>141.101.104.154https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1052:_Every_Major%27s_Terrible&diff=84096Talk:1052: Every Major's Terrible2015-02-04T19:38:54Z<p>141.101.104.154: </p>
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<div>Panel 1's cueball is in the same pose as Rodin's "The Thinker"<br />
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Panel 4 background is the periodic table of elements.<br />
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Panel 5, Fowler's Toad emits a noxious secretion that irritates skin and mucous membranes (it was previously thought to cause warts)<br />
<br />
Panel 6, Psychology = a serial killer with a chainsaw, Sociology = hobo; Social Psych = hobo serial killer with chainsaw.<br />
<br />
Panel 15, LISP, Scheme, and other computer languages with an excess of parentheses.<br />
<br />
Panel 16, biohazard symbol<br />
<br />
Panel 19, bongos were played by Richard Feynman<br />
<br />
Panel 27, fear of snakes, study of reptiles<br />
<br />
Panel 28, a picture of a stomach, pun on "stomach" being slang for "tolerate"<br />
<br />
Panel 30, words in all lowercase like e.e.cummings<br />
<br />
-- [[Special:Contributions/75.103.23.206| 75.103.23.206 ]] 22:04, 7 December 2012<br />
:Hobo serial killer with chainsaw? Social psych sounds awesome!<br />
:[[Special:Contributions/24.2.217.188|24.2.217.188]] 22:42, 22 October 2013 (UTC)<br />
----<br />
In panel 22 (History), what's the theme connecting the years 1935, 1969, and 1991?<br />
[[User:Wwoods|Wwoods]] ([[User talk:Wwoods|talk]]) 15:40, 21 May 2013 (UTC)<br />
<br />
----<br />
This explanation is very small for that big comic. I am starting to add the transcript and after that I will do more investigations to that opera. This should be the key to explain all the panels.--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 19:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:The answer won't lie in the song, trust me. Pirates of Penzance is probably my favorite comic opera out there. Plus Randall gives that the lie in saying you can use the tune from the elements song (a well-known parody) or even Marry Poppins (similar tune, but not exactly the same). I think each panel is just a reference to the words, I don't think that Randall is actually involving The Pirates of Penzance in any way other than the tune. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.211|173.245.52.211]] 20:53, 9 December 2013 (UTC)<br />
----<br />
Feynman was also known for being a ladies' man, so the two girls in panel 19 are significant IMHO.<br />
--[[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.117|141.101.80.117]] 13:51, 25 December 2013 (UTC)<br />
----<br />
Needs explanation what does it mean to '''choose a major''', and what '''major''' is in this context. Note every reader is from U.S.A.; different countries have different higher education systems. --[[User:JakubNarebski|JakubNarebski]] ([[User talk:JakubNarebski|talk]]) 10:56, 9 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
:True that. 'Graduation' in Brazil means 'Undergraduation' in the US. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.254.105|108.162.254.105]] 03:51, 1 February 2014 (UTC)<br />
----<br />
"Math's just physics unconstrained by precepts of reality" - that isn't a binary tree, its a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bifurcation_diagram bifurcation diagram] from chaos theory. And, sorry, it has nothing to do with the Banach–Tarski paradox - that's just mindless name-dropping.<br />
[[User:Davidbak|Davidbak]] ([[User talk:Davidbak|talk]]) 20:54, 10 February 2014 (UTC)<br />
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRexBMPeRTo[[User:Halfhat|Halfhat]] ([[User talk:Halfhat|talk]]) 18:59, 3 April 2014 (UTC)<br />
<br />
<br />
Panel 30: possibly iambic septameter[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.154|141.101.104.154]]</div>141.101.104.154https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=256:_Online_Communities&diff=83276256: Online Communities2015-01-22T23:45:13Z<p>141.101.104.154: /* Ocean of Subculture and Sea of Memes (East) */ Changed "anthromorphic" to "anthropomorphic"</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 256<br />
| date = May 2, 2007<br />
| title = Online Communities<br />
| image = online_communities_small.png<br />
| titletext = I'm waiting for the day when, if you tell someone 'I'm from the internet', instead of laughing they just ask 'oh, what part?'<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
'''''Note:''' This comic dates from Spring 2007. The internet changed a lot since that time. A larger version of the image is available [http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/online_communities.png here].''<br />
<br />
<br />
This is Randall's first map of online communities, with a successor (showing some zoomed-in highlights of the map) at [[802: Online Communities 2]]. As Randall says on the map, the area of each "country" is roughly proportional to its membership, at least in 2007. Geographic location means a bit more, however, as the '''Compass-Rose-Shaped Island''' points out. North-south corresponds to a spectrum from practical to intellectual, and east-west corresponds to one from web-focused to real-life-focused. The map also bears a slight resemblance to {{w|South East Asia}}.<br />
<br />
Randall likes to draw maps in a manner like this. Each "Country" is represented by size and related points of interest. We also have a "Sea of memes" and a small "Straits of WEB 2.0".<br />
<br />
===Compass Rose-shaped Island===<br />
A joke located near the middle of the map, that nonetheless serves to organize the illustration. A Compass Rose —the name for the multi-pointed star that shows where North is on the map— appears on most maps; however, here, it's actually land that just coincidentally looks like a compass rose.<br />
<br />
The "points" of the island do, however, roughly organize the map. Left is "Focus on Real Life", labelled "IRL", an abbreviation for "In Real Life". Right is "Focus on Web", labelled ".com". Up is Practicals, labelled "N", as in "North", but with small letters making it spell "Noob", slang for a "Newbie" or "New user" — a person less experienced with the internet, as many of the sites to the top of the map are ones infamous for having large numbers of largely computer-illiterate people. Down is "Intellectuals", labelled ''"&pi;"'', an important constant in mathematics approximately equal to 3.14.<br />
<br />
===The Icy North===<br />
Communities which were once major players, but now in a much reduced role. While some are still fairly large, they're somewhat relics of older times, hence the "Mountains of Web 1.0" that run through them — Web 1.0 is the first major generation of websites.<br />
* '''[http://yahoo.com Yahoo!]''' was the most popular search engine around 1998, but lost out to Google. It remains in business due to diversification (it now owns Tumblr, for instance).<br />
* '''Windows Live''', particularly ''Windows Live Messenger'', used to be a particularly major way for friends to communicate, now taken over by Skype and the like. Once a more-or-less ubiquitous branding, now used much less. https://home.live.com/ is one remnant.<br />
* '''[http://aol.com AOL]''' was once a huge player in the internet service provider market, noted for sending out millions of floppy disks and CD-ROMs in the 1980s and '90s offering a month or so free internet service (followed by high fees and difficult cancellation). Notably, AOL was the first company to sign up large numbers of people to internet access throughout the year, whereas before then internet was mainly provided by colleges and universities, fundamentally changing internet culture (see {{w|Eternal September}}). This influx of new users or "Noobs" (short for "newbies") names the ''Noob Sea'' south of AOL. The ''Chat Rooms'' nearby were a selling feature of early ISPs — ways to communicate with other people from that ISP. They are largely dying now, but were a major selling point in the early days.<br />
* '''[http://classmates.com Classmates.com]''' and '''[http://reunion.com Reunion.com]''' are early sites that offered to help you find your former classmates from school, a role largely taken over by the big, more generalised social media sites. Classmates.com is probably best known by its memetic advertisement that said "She married him??!! And they've got 7 kids??"<br />
* '''[http://friendster.com Friendster]''' was the first big social media site. It was later outpaced by ''Myspace'' and ''Facebook'' (see Social Media below). It has survived by rebranding itself as social gaming site, now used primarily is Southeast Asia.<br />
* '''Qwghlm''': A reference to ''{{w|The Baroque Cycle}}'', a series of science fiction books by Neal Stephenson. In them, Qwghlm is a group of islands in the icy north. See [http://baroquecycle.wikia.com/wiki/Qwghlm http://baroquecycle.wikia.com/wiki/Qwghlm].<br />
* '''Chasm''': A barely-readable note just below the "O" of "NORTH". This may simply be a reference to a lot of fantasy series containing a chasm. (For example, the One Ring is destroyed by flinging it into a fiery chasm in The Lord of the Rings.)<br />
<br />
===Dating sites (Northwest coastal regions)===<br />
* '''[http://eharmony.com E-Harmony]''' and '''[http://okcupid.com OkCupid]''' are dating sites; the other, larger sites near them are mostly social media sites.<br />
* '''The Lonely Island''' label appears to be a joke: Surrounded by, but separate from dating sites and social media sites, it would be a rather lonely place. Possibly named after "[http://lotr.wikia.com/wiki/Tol_Eress%C3%ABa Tol Eressëa]" (Translation: The Lonely Island) a somewhat obscure location in J. R. R. Tolkien's books, but there are {{w|The Lonely Island|other possibilities}}.<br />
<br />
===Social Media (West)===<br />
Sites mainly used to communicate with friends, such as Facebook and Myspace. The first large one was ''Friendster'', but this has largely become a social gaming site primarily used in Southeast Asia, as discussed in The Icy North, above. Other social media sites listed are:<br />
<br />
* '''[http://faceparty.com Faceparty]''': A UK social media site started in 1999.<br />
* '''[http://myspace.com Myspace]''': A social media site partially owned by, of all people, Justin Timberlake. Started in 2003, and peaking around the time this comic was made, it nonetheless still remains popular for bands (hence "Myspace Bands" in the southwest). It was never known for having a particularly attractive web design (partly because users could extensively customize the look and feel of their profile pages), hence only a very small part of it labelled "Attractive Myspace Pages".<br />
** The '''Series of Tubes''': A reference to an internet meme. In 2006, U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, while arguing for the end of "Network neutrality", a concept that keeps ISPs from favouring or charging more for high-speed access to sites, claimed that such regulation was needed because the Internet was "not a truck" you could just load up with as much as you want, but a "series of tubes". This was fairly accurate, but his arguments were poor and badly phrases, and his speech subsequently received widespread derision (originally from Jon Stewart's The Daily Show), and became a running gag on the internet.<br />
* '''[http://facebook.com Facebook]''': Generally considered (at least in the West) the "modern" social media network, and the most popular. However, this comic is from 2007, and Facebook did not catch up to Myspace until 2008-2009. [Source: {{w|Myspace}}]<br />
* '''[http://orkut.com Orkut]''': A social media network launched in 2004 by Google, it became hugely popular in Brazil, India, and, to a lesser extent, Japan.<br />
* '''[http://xanga.com Xanga]''': A blogging and social media site launched in 1998.<br />
* '''[http://livejournal.com LJ]''': LiveJournal, a blogging site, more or less, but one that allows an internet forum-like structure where anyone, or selected people, can all start new posts on a community. Noted for a large number of teenagers, fanfic authors, and the like in its heyday, hence the "Bay of Angst" to its south.<br />
* '''[http://www.blurty.com/ Blurty]''': LiveJournal's software is Open Access, meaning anyone can use it to set up a site. {{w|Blurty}} is, according to Wikipedia, an 18+ general community using this software.<br />
* '''[http://cyworld.com Cyworld]''': A South Korean social media site featuring avatars and "mini-rooms".<br />
<br />
===The Blogipelago (Southwest)===<br />
Portmanteau of blog and archipelago. Sulawesi is a real island in the Indonesian archipelago, implying that this region's similarity to Indonesia is probably intentional.<br />
<br />
* '''[http://www.huffingtonpost.com Huffington Post]''': ''The Huffington Post'' is a web-only news site, named after its founder, Arianna Huffington. It's noted for attracting notable people to do very good write-ups of politics and news, generally with a liberal slant, but also for having a medicine section that supports every sort of quackery and nonsense, including a regular column by {{w|Dana Ullman}} promoting {{w|homeopathy}} (see [[765: Dilution]]).<br />
* '''Shipwreck of the SS Howard Dean''': In the 2004 U.S. Presidential election, Howard Dean raised funds mainly over the internet, and was doing very well, until a gaffe caused him to crash and burn just before the primaries began. See {{w|Howard Dean presidential campaign, 2004}}.<br />
* '''Cory Doctrow's Balloon''': Reference to [[239: Blagofaire]].<br />
* '''[http://boingboing.net Boing Boing]''': An occasional trend is for a smallish magazine to get a website, have the website become vastly more popular than its print edition, and become a successful website. Examples include [http://cracked.com Cracked.com], [http://theonion.com The Onion] (which only stopped being a print publication in ''December 2013''), and, the subject of this label, [http://boingboing.net Boing Boing]. Boing Boing is not easy to define — it's a group blog, with focuses including futurism, intellectual property, science fiction, technology, and cyberpunk — the latter of which it was rather influential in developing.<br />
* '''[http://technorati.com Technorati]''': A site for searching blogs.<br />
* '''Sulawesi''': As mentioned above, a real island that is part of the Indonesian archipelago.<br />
* '''{{w|Xu Jinglei}}''': Chinese actress. According to Wikipedia: "In mid-2006, her Chinese-language blog had the most incoming links of any blog in any language on the Internet, according to Technorati."<br />
* '''[http://postsecret.com/ PostSecret]''': A website which people send postcards to, describing their secrets. Some are little secrets (like swigging milk directly from the jug or carton); some are old, deep-seated traumas; and some are just things that they could never admit to anyone publicly. Worth a look.<br />
* '''The Wet Sea''': Perhaps a reference to a West Sea, but not sure what that would be. Maybe just a simple joke, as what else would a sea be but wet?<br />
* ''TWB'' or ''TMZ'': A very-hard-to-read label, south of Technorati.<br />
** '''TWB''' is short for "{{w|Translators Without Borders}}", a charitable project that tries to translate necessary texts into the languages of the people who need them for free. This ''might'' be it, if it's meant to relate to Wikipedia, to the east of it. On the other hand...<br />
** '''[http://TMZ.com TMZ]''' is a major celebrity gossip blog, rated #15 in the "[http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2008/mar/09/blogs World's 50 most powerful blogs]" by ''The Guardian'', and, at time of writing, rating #11 in the [http://technorati.com/blogs/top100/ Technorati top 100].<br />
<br />
===Sea of Culture (Central region) ===<br />
Sites for sharing and showing off music and images, most focusing on self-created content<br />
<br />
* '''Gulf of YouTube''': [http://youtube.com YouTube] is the definitive video website where people can upload videos with the purpose of public viewing, ranging from home movies through official music videos through Let's Plays of people playing video games to questionably-legal uploads of cartoons and films. Google has since purchased YouTube.<br />
* '''Piczo''': Teen-oriented website that allowed one to make a profile and put up pictures. The site has been dead since late 2012, due to the rise of Facebook. See {{w|Piczo}}.<br />
* '''Broadcaster''': Another dead site, almost lost to the web. Only a few scraps of information remain on the web. [http://www.seomastering.com/wiki/Broadcaster.com One of the rare scraps of remaining information] indicates it was a webcam broadcasting service that also allowed YouTube-like sharing of videos.<br />
* '''The Bit Torrent''' and the '''P2P Shoals''': Reference to file sharing (passing around often copyright-infringing files, such as movies, CDs, and the like), often done with the {{w|BitTorrent}} protocol. A "Torrent" can also be a flood of water, hence it being used to name a river. "P2P" stands for "{{w|Peer-to-peer}}", the basis for the BitTorrent protocol.<br />
* '''[http://flickr.com Flickr]''': a website where people can upload and share photographs they took.<br />
* '''[http://lastfm.com LastFM]''': a music website that is notable of its "scrobbling" feature.<br />
* '''[http://deviantart.com DeviantArt]''': the largest art website, where people can upload, sell, and buy not only art itself, but also video, audio, Flash-work, and even skins (the original purpose of deviantArt). While many big-name/professional people and organizations have their works in deviantArt, the site is more infamous for the large amount of people who upload low-quality fan-art and fan-characters, most notably of media from Japan. Another point of infamy is the large amount of drama that can happen in the website.<br />
<br />
'''Straits of Web 2.0''': A ''strait'' is a narrow passage between two outcroppings. Web 2.0 is a term used to describe new internet architectures, which these programs and Wikipedia (the other side of the strait) are examples of. '''Gays of Web 2.0''' is a pun: The opposite of a gay person (homosexual) is a straight person (heterosexual).<br />
<br />
===User-created content and discussions (Southeast)===<br />
Sites such as {{w|Wikipedia}} and chat programs such as IRC.<br />
* '''[http://en.wikipedia.org Wikipedia]''': The world's largest encyclopedia, collaboratively edited by its users. It's labelled as "The Wikipedia Project" (actually called ''{{w|Wikimedia}}''), since Wikipedia has generalised to cover a number of separate web sites, though, at the time of this comic, none near the size of Wikipedia (excepting, possibly, Wikimedia Commons, which is partly an image repository for Wikipedia), perhaps explaining the small size of all the other vertexes of the "web".<br />
* '''Usenet''': The predecessor of most modern forums. A set of discussion groups that dominated the early internet. It also predates the standard web architecture to some extent — there's no standard weblink for it, for instance. See {{w|Usenet}}.<br />
* '''IRC isles''': IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, a simple, low-bandwidth program for chatting. Common uses include Dungeons and Dragons games and other geeky pursuits.<br />
* '''[http://sourceforge.net SourceForge]''': A code repository. Basically, a place for programmers to meet up and work together on a variety of free and open source projects. See {{w|sourceforge}}. Has become less respectable since this comic was created in 2007, due to [http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/11/08/gimp_dumps_sourceforge_over_dodgy_ads_and_installer/ allowing misleading advertisements intended to trick people into installing questionable software.]<br />
* '''[http://mit.edu MIT]''': The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the most respected universities for Engineering, Robotics, and other such fields.<br />
* '''[http://www.engadget.com/ Engadget]''': A blog/online magazine, in multiple languages, reviewing tech products and commenting on technology news.<br />
* '''[http://gizmodo.com/ Gizmodo]''': A blog about technology and design.<br />
* '''[http://makezine.com/blog/ MakeBlog]''': A blog highlighting bizarre and interesting do-it-yourself projects, often with a geeky theme.<br />
* '''Google's Volcano Fortress''': A volcano fortress is one traditional dwelling place of evil geniuses in fiction, and Google has quietly taken over huge chunks of people's interaction with the web. Perhaps this provides some background for [[254: Comic Fragment]]?<br />
* '''Stallman's Airship''': A joke, perhaps in line with Cory Doctorow's Balloon ([[239: Blagofaire]], also referenced in this strip)<br />
<br />
===Ocean of Subculture and Sea of Memes (East)===<br />
:'''Need descriptions'''<br />
Sites related to smaller internet communities, a.k.a. "Subcultures". Also, a whole lot of internet memes, unsurprisingly. The "Viral Straits" references the idea of something "going viral", e.g. spreading quickly to huge numbers of people on the internet. These sites are often responsible for things going viral, and the memes listed are ones that went viral in the past.<br />
<br />
;Sites<br />
* '''[http://www.2ch.net/ 2Channel]''': a Japanese imageboard that was actually the original inspiration for...<br />
* '''[http://4chan.org 4Chan]''': an imageboard in which people can upload pictures while others comment on them. The website is infamous for its loose/often non-existent rules, incredibly vulgar userbase, source of new memes, and spawning of trolls. 4chan's random board, known internally as /b/, is almost constantly flooded with porn and image macros.<br />
**The fact that 4chan is a very small island on this map (to the far right on the map - left of "dragons" in the sentence ''Here there be anthropomorphic dragons'') made quite a fuss for Randall. And this caused the comic to be mentioned in [http://blog.xkcd.com/2008/02/25/fruit-opinions/ FRUIT OPINIONS!] on the [http://blog.xkcd.com/ Blag]. Although this comic was one of the more controversial, it had nothing on the impact of [[388: Fuck Grapefruit]] which was the cause of the Blag entry as that became the most controversial comic written to that point (i.e. 2008): ''...beating out comics about cunnilingus, the Obama endorsement, and my making 4chan tiny on the map of the internet''. (See the grapefruit comic for more details).<br />
* '''[http://reddit.com Reddit]''': the self-described "front page of the Internet" in which users submit stories, photos and videos and the best are "up-voted" to the top of the page.<br />
* '''[http://digg.com Digg]''': a former competitor to Reddit in the social-news sphere, but has been sold since this map was drawn and restarted as an aggregator of news stories.<br />
* '''[http://fark.com Fark]''': A website that writes humorous commentary on various news reports, especially the strange, bizarre, or things from the political far-left and far-right.<br />
* '''[http://somethingawful.com Something Awful]''': a website that is meant to showcase all things "awful". SomethingAwful also has a large trollbase, but they tend to be more honorable than the ones from ''Encyclopedia Dramatica'' and 4chan. One example is there being a spotty holding of the no-furries rule in the forums. The forums themselves are famous because of the holding of the "Let's Plays" of ''Dangan Ronpa'' and ''Super Dangan Ronpa 2'', which had cooked up public interest to the point of there being an English-language release of the games.<br />
* '''[http://slashdot.org /.]''': ''Slashdot'', a news site for technology-related news stories, which are submitted by its users. The "{{w|Slashdot effect}}" is named after this site.<br />
* '''[http://ytmnd.com YTMND]''': a community in which users can create meme-type nonsense by playing music over an image (either static or animated). Its name is an acronym for "You're The Man Now, Dog!"<br />
* '''[http://StumbleUpon.com Stumble Upon]''': A website that attempts to develop a profile for users in order to recommend which websites they might enjoy.<br />
* '''[http://delicious.com/ Del.icio.us]''': Another image and website aggregator, linking to various things of interest. It uses tags to let people find specific types of content. ('''Note''': Since this comic, this website was renamed as "Delicious".)<br />
<br />
;Memes and related<br />
* '''Isle of Slash''': "{{w|Slash fiction}}" is a type of {{w|fanfiction}} that takes two male characters from another work of fiction and puts them in a plot where they have lots of sex with each other. Named because of a common way of writing pairings in fanfiction, "X/Y", with the / being pronounced "slash". Adding to this, "Isle of" sounds like "I love".<br />
* '''Numa''': A reference to the viral video "Numa Numa", consisting to a fat guy dancing and lip-syncing to the song "Dragostea din tei" (Romanian for "Love from the lindens").<br />
* '''Your Base''': A reference to the "{{w|All your base are belong to us}}" meme, a line from the game ''{{w|Zero Wing}}'', a game with a huge amount of hilariously badly translated {{w|Engrish}} dialogue. See [[286: All Your Base]] for more discussion of the meme.<br />
* '''Bay of Trolls''': {{w|Troll (Internet)|Trolls}} are people who attempt to stir up controversy by intentionally saying statements meant to annoy others into responding. "Bay" can refer to both a sheltered port, and to an animal's cry, so "Bay of Trolls" can be read as "Shelter for Trolls" or "Angry Shouting of Trolls". Given the communities surrounding it, both would make sense.<br />
* '''Soviet Russia''': {{w|Russian reversal|"In Soviet Russia" jokes}} are a style of joke commonly associated with -comedian {{w|Yakov Smirnoff}}, which has since become an internet meme. Example: "In America, you always find a party. In Russia, Party will always find ''you''." — playing off of the idea that "Party" can also refer to the Communist Party. The meme version usually isn't as clever as that, though. See "[http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/in-soviet-russia in soviet russia]".<br />
* '''SPAAARTA''': As in, "THIS! IS! SPAAARTA!!!", A famously over-the-top line from the movie ''{{w|300 (film)|300}}''.<br />
<br />
===MMORPGs and related games (Northeast by East)===<br />
An area dedicated to MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games), large-scale games with huge numbers of players put into the same world. The label "Here there be anthromorphic dragons" references a common marking on old maps ("Here there be dragons") but updates it to joke about the more humanoid dragons seen in many games, or again, how dragons, especilally anthropomorphic dragons, are very-very popular in the furry community.<br />
<br />
* '''[http://games.yahoo.com Yahoo Games]''': A branch of Yahoo (see "The Icy North") dedicated to games (mainly boardgames).<br />
* '''[http://uo.com UO]''': ''Ultima Online'', one of the first MMORPGs, and the first to grow to any size. Based on the long-running ''Ultima'' RPG computer games. Started 1997.<br />
* '''[http://www.everquest.com/ EQ]''': ''EverQuest'', another important early MMORPG, started 1999. UO and EQ have declined significantly since then; for a while, they were each the iconic MMORPG, but that role has been taken over by...<br />
* '''[http://www.warcraft.com/ WoW]''': ''World of Warcraft'', an MMORPG launched in 2004, again based on a previously-existing RPG series, and by far the largest and most iconic at the time of this comic's creation. A few others have attempted to challenge it since.<br />
* '''[http://www.runescape.com/ Runescape]''': Free-to-play fantasy MMORPG; the largest in existence.<br />
* '''[http://www.finalfantasyxi.com/ FFXI]''': ''Final Fantasy XI'', the eleventh installment in the ''Final Fantasy'' series of video games, and the first to be a MMORPG. It didn't really take off until after this comic was made.<br />
* '''[http://www.lineage.com/ Lineage]''': 1998 MMORPG. Particularly popular in South Korea, a country with somewhat of a cultural obsession with video games.<br />
* '''[http://secondlife.com Second Life]''': A virtual world, noted for largely working from user-generated content, which can be sold by users for real money. See {{w|Second Life}}. ''Third Life'' is a joke based on Second Life — if it existed it would presumably be a game people play to escape Second Life, which they play to escape their first, real life.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Hand-drawn fantasy style map with land and sea areas representing populations of online communities. Each area or item is labeled.]<br />
:Map of Online Communities and related points of interest<br />
:Geographic area represents estimated size of membership<br />
<br />
:[Land Area Labels:]<br />
:The Icy North (Yahoo, Windows Live),<br />
:AOL,<br />
::Chat Rooms<br />
:Reunion dot com,<br />
:Classmates dot com,<br />
:E-harmony,<br />
:Friendster,<br />
:Faceparty,<br />
:Chasm,<br />
:Qwghlm,<br />
:Yahoo Games,<br />
:Mountains of Web 1.0,<br />
:The Lonely Island,<br />
:MySpace,<br />
:Attractive MySpace Pages,<br />
:The Series of Tubes,<br />
:Myspace Bands,<br />
:WOW,<br />
:Lineage,<br />
:Second Life,<br />
:Third Life,<br />
:UO,<br />
:EQ,<br />
:FFXI,<br />
:2channel,<br />
:4chan,<br />
:LJ,<br />
:Xanga,<br />
:Orkut,<br />
:Cyworld,<br />
:Blurty,<br />
:OK Cupid,<br />
:Facebook,<br />
:Piczo,<br />
:The Compass-Rose-Shaped Island,<br />
::Practicals (Noob)<br />
::Focus on Real Life (IRL)<br />
::Focus on Web (.com)<br />
::Intellectuals (&pi;)<br />
:Broadcaster,<br />
:The Bit Torrent,<br />
:Flickr,<br />
:Last.fm,<br />
:DeviantArt,<br />
:Isle of Slash,<br />
:Numa,<br />
:Digg,<br />
:Fark,<br />
:Reddit,<br />
:Something Awful,<br />
:Your Base,<br />
:Soviet Russia,<br />
:/. [Slashdot],<br />
:Spaaarta (YTMND),<br />
:StumbleUpon,<br />
:Del.icio.us,<br />
:The Blogipelago,<br />
:Sulawesi,<br />
:Xu Jinglei,<br />
:Post Secret,<br />
:Technocrati,<br />
:[Hard to read label: Probably JWB, TWB, or TMZ]<br />
:BoingBoing,<br />
:Huffington Post,<br />
:Gays of Web 2.0,<br />
:The Wikipedia project,<br />
:MIT,<br />
:Engadget,<br />
:Gizmodo,<br />
:Usenet,<br />
:MAKE Blog,<br />
:IRC Isles,<br />
:Sourceforge.<br />
<br />
:[Sea Area Labels:]<br />
:NOOB Sea,<br />
:Gulf of YouTube,<br />
:Bay of Angst,<br />
:Sea of Culture,<br />
:Ocean of Subculture,<br />
:P2P Shoals,<br />
:Straits of Web 2.0,<br />
:Here Be Anthropomorphic Dragons,<br />
:Bay of Trolls,<br />
:Viral Straits,<br />
:Sea of Memes,<br />
:The Wet Sea<br />
:Item Labels: Shipwreck of the SS Howard Dean, Cory Doctrow's Balloon, Stallman's airship, Google's volcano fortress<br />
<br />
:(Not a complete survey. Sizes based on the best figures I could find but involved some guesswork. Do not use for navigation.)<br />
:Spring 2007<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Internet]]<br />
[[Category:Comics with color]]<br />
[[Category:Large drawings]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Richard Stallman]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]<br />
[[Category:Maps]]</div>141.101.104.154https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=User_talk:141.101.104.154&diff=79682User talk:141.101.104.1542014-11-23T22:00:59Z<p>141.101.104.154: Created page with "..."</p>
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<div>...</div>141.101.104.154https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1347:_t_Distribution&diff=796811347: t Distribution2014-11-23T20:16:27Z<p>141.101.104.154: /* Explanation */</p>
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<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1347<br />
| date = March 26, 2014<br />
| title = t Distribution<br />
| image = t_distribution.png<br />
| titletext = If data fails the Teacher's t test, you can just force it to take the test again until it passes.<br />
}}<br />
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==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|Please don't remove this tag until language issues are solved. This is not International, please stop repeating the letter S.}}<br />
The {{w|Student's t-distribution}} is a class of {{w|probability distribution}} used in statistics to model small sample sizes. "Student" was the pseudonym of {{w|William Gosset}}, an employee of Guinness Brewery who discovered it.<br />
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A Student's t distribution is similar to a normal symmetric bell curve distribution, but has "fatter tails"; thus, the one shown in the comic is roughly the right shape. A "Teacher's" t-distribution is a joke (pun) made up by Randall.<br />
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The comic is a play on the name "Student", the pseudonym of the creator, versus the "Teacher". The idea is that a "teacher's" distribution would be more complex, and that it would be used for fitting data when the student's distribution wasn't sophisticated enough. Of course, in actuality, such a complex distribution as the one shown in the comic would have many parameters, and in practice would probably lead to overfitting and/or bias. Thus, the comic (and the title text) can be seen as making fun of the idea that more complex is always better, or perhaps of the idea that a statistician's job is to use more and more sophisticated tools to force the data to yield a "publishable" result, rather than to use the simplest appropriate tool and let the chips fall where they may. <br />
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[[Cueball]] tries to "fit" a distribution to the data on the paper. This is the usual jargon for when a statistician is trying to model his/her data as coming from some underlying probability distribution, and the comic makes a pun with the physical meaning of "fit". In the second panel, Cueball decides that the Student's T distribution does not fit his data well (the data failed the Student t-test), and decides to pull out the more complex Teachers t-distribution instead (the teachers t-test - which the data is not allowed to continue to fail). Note that "test" is what statisticians do to data to see if it fits some distribution, but it is also another word for "examination."<br />
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The Students t distribution relates the average of a small sample to the "true" population average, under the assumptions, unobjectionable in many contexts, that there is such a "true" value, and that the samples are independent and normally distributed with equal variance. As such, unless the data on Cueball's paper contain many small groups which radically violate these assumptions somehow, there is no way Cueball's data could falsify the t distribution. In particular, a single number (for the average of one group) or a small set of numbers (for the averages of several numbers) will never make a nice smooth curve, but an average statistician would see that as normal statistical noise that would even out over time, not as a reason to prefer a complex, spiky curve such as the supposed "teacher's" distribution. But of course, Cueball's access to a secret, cooler-looking distribution makes them more badass than a mere average statistician... or does it?<br />
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Ironically, the Teacher's T Distribution shows equal variance, itself proving the appropriateness of the Student's T Distribution.<br />
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The title text plays on the word "test". The first part of the sentence refers to a potential "Teacher t-test" which would be used in a statistical context to test for the significance of some observation, as opposed to the real "Student's t-test" which is used to determine if two sets of data differ by a statistically significant amount. On the other hand, the second part of the sentence refers to the possibility for students to take tests (or exams) until they pass - or to teachers who forces students to take the test again and again until they pass. The resulting sentence may refer to statistical fallacy, or the (conscious or unconscious) action of manipulating observations or misconducting experiments to give statistical significance to a false fact.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[A physical bell-curve-shaped object labeled "Student's t distribution" is resting on a table. Cueball is working with it and a piece of paper.]<br />
:Cueball: hmm <br />
:[Cueball looks at the piece of paper.]<br />
:Cueball: ...nope.<br />
:[Cueball picks up the object and begins to walk off the panel with it.]<br />
:[Cueball comes back onto the panel, now carrying an object shaped like a much more complex curve, with many symmetric spikes and dips, labeled "Teacher's t distribution".]<br />
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{{comic discussion}}<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]</div>141.101.104.154https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:521:_2008_Christmas_Special&diff=79458Talk:521: 2008 Christmas Special2014-11-18T19:59:26Z<p>141.101.104.154: </p>
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<div>Santa actually really is Muslim. Saint Nicholas was from Turkey, although his remains have been somewhere in Italy for the past millennium.{{unsigned ip|121.222.232.156}}<br />
: Yeah, right. Living in what was later to be Turkey makes him a muslim. Islam was not even invented yet. [[User:Undee|Undee]] ([[User talk:Undee|talk]]) 11:44, 5 November 2013 (UTC)<br />
Of course you have to explain how St Nick who died in 343 CE could have been following a religion whose founder was born in 570 CE. But you knew that. I also think we can do somewhat better than "somewhere in Italy". His tomb is at Basilica di San Nicola in Bari, Italy. {{unsigned ip|108.162.237.11}}<br />
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And also, equating Santa with St Nicholas is problematic at best. Santa came about as an amalgamation of many different figures from folklore, so even if St Nick were Muslim, at best you could call Santa part-Muslim.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.171|108.162.216.171]] 18:31, 8 November 2014 (UTC)<br />
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I always thought Black Hat was talking to Danish. The hair's longer and it makes a modicum more sense that way (at least to me) Anonymous 03:34, 4 December 2013 (UTC) {{unsigned ip|173.245.54.91}}<br />
:I see what you are saying (although I couldn't comment on whether the hair is longer) but the question sounds like something Megan would ask. Danish would have built the laser chainsaw. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.223|108.162.219.223]] 19:20, 10 January 2014 (UTC)<br />
::True... Anonymous 20:14, 13 February 2014 (UTC)<br />
:I don't see Black Hat in any of the panels... [[Special:Contributions/173.245.55.83|173.245.55.83]] 14:50, 22 May 2014 (UTC)<br />
::He is at the bottom line, first panel from left. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 20:48, 23 May 2014 (UTC)<br />
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Just checked this image for any data in the black frames (like in [[SOPA]]). There is nothing; all pixels read #000000. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.53|108.162.216.53]] 20:52, 5 March 2014 (UTC)<br />
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I'm don't think "sublimate" means vaporize... And neither would vaporize fit with the rest the story... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.89.208|141.101.89.208]] 14:08, 14 May 2014 (UTC)<br />
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Sublimation is a specific type of vaporization. I don't think the exact nature of the board's destruction is important to the comic.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.171|108.162.216.171]] 18:31, 8 November 2014 (UTC)<br />
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Of all the black panels, i'm most curious about the contents of number 32. It would have made more sense if panel 31 read something like "From all of us to all of you, we wish you..."[[User:Mumiemonstret|Mumiemonstret]] ([[User talk:Mumiemonstret|talk]]) 09:37, 12 August 2014 (UTC)<br />
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Clones (cloned raptors) vs droids (cyborgs), and then victorious clones turning against their masters... Well, this raptors seem to be more independent then altered clones of Jango Fett but may be lightsabers aren't the only SW quote here.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/141.101.92.202|141.101.92.202]] 16:53, 24 October 2014 (UTC)<br />
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I feel like there should be some sort of way to view them probably via Easter egg [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.154|141.101.104.154]]</div>141.101.104.154