https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&user=162.158.152.89&feedformat=atomexplain xkcd - User contributions [en]2024-03-29T15:58:23ZUser contributionsMediaWiki 1.30.0https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1645:_Toasts&diff=1128671645: Toasts2016-02-19T18:08:36Z<p>162.158.152.89: /* The toasts */ "Hexahedron" isn't an oft-used term, so added ''some'' clarification.</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1645<br />
| date = February 19, 2016<br />
| title = Toasts<br />
| image = toasts.png<br />
| titletext = Platonic solids for my real friends and real solids for my platonic friends!<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|There may be more jokes and more on the different words.}}<br />
A {{w|Toast (honor)|toast}} is a ritual in which a drink is taken as an expression of honor or goodwill. The term may be applied to the person or thing so honored, the drink taken, or the verbal expression accompanying the drink. Thus, a person could be "the toast of the evening," for whom someone "proposes a toast" to congratulate and for whom a third person "toasts" in agreement<br />
<br />
The comic is based on the quote {{w|Champagne for My Real Friends, Real Pain for My Sham Friends}} which, though often attributed to the painter {{w|Francis Bacon (artist)|Francis Bacon}} or to {{w|Tom Waits}}, is a toast dating back to at least the nineteenth century. It is also the entire title of a [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7q9i6KYmzQ song], the {{w|From_Under_the_Cork_Tree#Track_listing|ninth track}} on {{w|From Under the Cork Tree}}, a 2005 album by {{w|Fall Out Boy}}. <br />
<br />
The comic plays on a permutation structure between two words (a [[wikipedia:Spoonerism|Spoonerism]]), yielding puns with various effects <br />
In this comic eight persons drink a '''toast''' for their "real friends" and then for some other type of "friends". For the real friend they wish them to have one specific thing. This something is a word (X-Y) that can be split up in two meanings (X and Y), where one of them are then put in front the word friend, to explain what type of friends they are now toasting (often a bad/false type of friend) and then these friends get a wish for having what the word that are left of the original word means: "X-Y for my real friends and real Y for my X friends"<br />
<br />
The first example is a typical toast, in Champagne, where this word can be split in the two phonetically similar words Sham and Pain, and the sham friends then get pain. [[#The toasts|Below]] all examples (including the ninth from the title text) are listed with explanation for all words.<br />
<br />
<br />
===The toasts===<br />
*''Champagne'' sounds like a combination of the two words ''sham'' and ''pain''.<br />
**{{w|Champagne}} is an expensive sparkling wine.<br />
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sham Sham] friends means false friends.<br />
**{{w|Pain}} is not so nice to hand out.<br />
***So [[Cueball]] toast his real friends in Champagne and wishes real pain to his false friends.<br />
*''Pseudopods'' can be divided into ''pseudo-'' and ''pods''.<br />
**{{w|Pseudopods}} (which translates to "false feet") are temporary cytoplasm-filled parts of the cell wall that are able to change their form in order to move. They are used in some eukaryotic cells to move around or to eat. Most cells that do this are called {{w|Amoeba|amoeboids}}. The {{w|Amoeba (genus)|amoeba}} is a common example.<br />
**{{w|Pseudo-}} (lying, false) is used to mark something that superficially appears to be (or behaves like) one thing, but actually is another.<br />
**{{w|Pods}} or {{w|pod}} is not clearly defined. It could refer to {{w|Glossary_of_plant_morphology#Fruit_types|seedpod}} – a dry dehiscent fruit containing many seeds. Pods, both malevolent and benignant, appear in many works of SF and Fantasy. In this toast, it could refer to the pods in {{w|Invasion of the Body Snatchers}}, which take over or replace humans with alien creatures. It might refer to the dangerous podracers in {{w|Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace}}. It could also refer to the [http://thehungergames.wikia.com/wiki/Pod pods] from {{w|The Hunger Games}} where they are specifically used as the city defense in the last book {{w|Mockingjay}}. <br />
***So the blonde girl will give her real friends a special part/adaptation of the amoeba (Doesn't everyone wish they had pseudopods? I'm sure Randall does.), while her pseudo-friends receive real pods with intricate ways to kill them.<br />
*''Petticoats'' sounds like a combination of the two words ''petty'' and ''coats''<br />
**{{w|Petticoats}} or underskirt is an article of clothing; specifically an undergarment to be worn under a skirt or a dress.<br />
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/petty Petty] means small (in rank of importance), insignificant or narrow-minded. See for instance {{w|petty crime}}.<br />
**A {{w|Coat (clothing)|coat}} is a garment worn by both men and women, for warmth or fashion. <br />
***So [[Megan]] will hand out undergarments for her real friends (a very personal gift) and coats for her less important/insignificant or narrow-minded friends (they seem to be the luckier ones here).<br />
*''Loosestrife'' can be divided into ''loose'' and ''strife''.<br />
**{{w|Loosestrife}} is a common name for plants within two different genera (which are not related): {{w|Lythrum}} (example: {{w|Lythrum salicaria|purple loosestrife}}) and {{w|Lysimachia}} (example: {{w|Lysimachia ciliata|Fringed Loosestrife}})<br />
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/loose Loose] in this case means free from restraints, as the opposite of {{w|close friend}}. Loose can also refer to being sexually promiscuous, especially when used as an adjective for people. <br />
**[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/strife Strife] refers to bitter, sometimes violent, conflict or discord.<br />
***So the "brunette" girl (i.e. similar hair but less dark than Megan) will give her real friends flowers and her promiscuous friend she wishes to end up in a real violent conflict.<br />
*''Ladybugs'' can be divided into ''lady'' and ''bugs''.<br />
**{{w|Ladybugs}} (or Ladybird) is a family of insects common all over the world. They are considered cute: [https://pinterest.com/lisalynnburns/lady-bugs-so-cute/], [http://photobucket.com/images/cute%20ladybug], [http://www.zazzle.com/cute+ladybug].<br />
**{{w|Lady}} is a civil term of respect for a woman, specifically the female equivalent to {{w|gentleman}} or {{w|lord}}, but in many contexts a term for any adult woman.<br />
**{{w|Bugs}} in this case refer to to {{w|insects}} or {{w|arachnids}}<br />
***[[Hair Bun Girl]] will give ladybugs for her real friends (a cute type of bug that most people are not afraid of), and real bugs (beetles, flies or spiders) to her lady friends. This is not necessarily all her female friends, it could be only those that are {{w|Lady#British_nobility|noble}} or at least think they are more important and thus would like to be called lady. No matter what most ladies dislike most types of animals that are commonly referred to as bugs.<br />
*''Single-payer'' can be divided into ''single,'' and payer, a word that rhymes with ''player''. In this case this word is then put together with real to form the word ''RealPlayer''.<br />
**{{w|Single-payer}} refers to single-payer healthcare, a system in which the state, rather than private insurers, pays for all {{w|healthcare}} costs, a system used in several countries, but not so far in the US, although {{w|Barack Obama}} has gone some of the way with {{w|Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act}}.<br />
**{{w|Single person|Single}} refers to a person who is not in a relationship or is unmarried.<br />
**{{w|RealPlayer}} is a cross-platform media player app, developed by RealNetworks. It is compatible with numerous container file formats of the multimedia realm. In the past it has been {{w|RealPlayer#Reviews_and_critiques|criticized}} for containing adware and spyware. This was back from 1999 and up to the 2004 version.<br />
**It is specifically not the word ''{{w|Single-player video game|single-player}}'' that is used! this word could refer to video games that only one player can play at a time, or when choosing to play single-player in a game where more could have played. ''RealPayer'' is not a word in use.<br />
***[[White Hat]] thus wishes that his real friends have access to state-funded health care, and all his single friends will get RealPlayer. Since [[White Hat]] is normally benevolent, if naïve, he may imagine that RealPlayer will help his single friends enjoy Internet media, when they are home alone. Maybe he wishes to impress these singles with a free app as a present in the hope that he {{w|Get Lucky (Daft Punk song)|gets lucky}}. (If it has been [[Hairy]] this would have seemed very likely… see [[1178: Pickup Artists]]. White Hat has not previously displayed these tendencies too clearly). As mentioned there have been some issues with RealPlayer in the past, but it has stayed on the market for more than a decade. However, since it has {{w|RealPlayer#Current_Status|recently been change}} into ''RealTimes'' it may not be so cool a gift anyway. Also White Hat might wish to give away the old spy ware version of RealPlayer. But as opposed to most of the special friends, single-friends is not in it self negative, especially not if you are yourself single. So no direct reason to make bad wished for single friends as opposed to sham friends.<br />
*''Tumbleweeds'' sounds like a combination of the two words ''Tumblr'' and ''weed''.<br />
**{{w|Tumbleweed}} is a structural part of the above-ground anatomy of a number of species of plants, a {{w|Diaspore (botany)|diaspore}} (of seeds) that, once it is mature and dry, detaches from its root or stem, and tumbles away in the wind. The tumbleweed's {{w| Tumbleweed#Symbolism|association}} with the Western film genre has led to a highly symbolic meaning in visual media.<br />
**{{w|tumblr}} is a microblogging platform and social networking website<br />
**{{w|Weed}} is a plant considered undesirable in a particular situation but in this case it refers to {{w|Cannabis (drug)|Cannabis}} also known as marijuana and many other names including weed and would be used (again in this comic) as a {{w|psychoactive drug}}, i.e. to {{w|getting high|get high}}.<br />
***[[Ponytail]] thus gives her "real" friends a western movie symbol, that will spread seeds over their house, but with her friends on her favorite blogsite Tumblr she will share her expensive weed.<br />
*''Fauxhawks'' can be divided into ''faux'' and ''hawks''<br />
**{{w|Mohawk_hairstyle#Fauxhawk_variants |Fauxhawks}} copies the style of a {{w|Mohawk hairstyle}}, but without shaving the sides of the head and not extending past the peak of the cranium.<br />
**{{w|Faux}} is a French word for "false".<br />
**{{w|Hawks}} is a common name for some small to medium-sized diurnal birds of prey, widely distributed and varying greatly in size.<br />
***[[Beret Guy]] thus wishes to cut his real friends hair in a very special way, maybe to his liking and thought of as a favor, but not necessarily liked by all his friends, cause although Beret Guy is weird, it seems that those around him are not. His false friends can have a predatory bird (maybe coming after them), but rather knowing Beret Guys love of all things, just as a present of something he likes, like animals.<br />
*'''Title text:'''<br />
*''Platonic solids'' can be divided into ''platonic'' and ''solids''<br />
**{{w|Platonic solids}}: In three-dimensional space, a platonic solid is a regular, convex polyhedron. It is constructed by congruent regular polygonal faces with the same number of faces meeting at each vertex. Five solids meet those criteria, and each is named after its number of faces: Tetrahedron (a.k.a. "Regular triangle-based pyramid"), Hexahedron ("Cube"), Octahedron (can be considered the union of two square-based pyramids, base-to-base), Dodecahedron and Icosahedron.<br />
**[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/platonic Platonic] means ''not sexual in nature'' as in {{w|platonic love}}, which is a type of love that is celibate and non-sexual. Typically friends would not be called platonic, but they are normally also not the opposite.<br />
**{{w|Solid}} is one of the three fundamental states of matter (the others being liquid and gas). ''Doing someone a solid'' can also mean ''doing someone a favor''.<br />
***[[Randall]], must be speaking the title text and he wishes his real friends to have material in regular, convex polyhedron shape where as his {{w|platonic friends}} can get any other kind of solid material.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[There are two rows of 4 panels each. Each panel shows a different person offering a toast. Each one has some kind of drink in one hand which they hold up.<br />
<br />
:[Cueball holding up a wine glass to the right:]<br />
:Cueball : Champaign for my real friends and real pain for my sham friends!<br />
<br />
:[A blonde girl holding up a regular glass to the left:]<br />
:Blonde girl: Pseudopods for my real friends and real pods for my pseudo-friends!<br />
<br />
:[Megan holding up a drinks glass to the right:]<br />
:Megan : Petticoats for my real friends and real coats for my petty friends.<br />
<br />
:[A "brunette" girl (i.e. similar hair but less dark than Megan) holding up a normal glass with a small umbrella in it to the right:]<br />
:Brunette girl: Loosestrife for my real friends and real strife for my loose friends!<br />
<br />
:[Hair Bun Girl holding up a wine glass to the left:]<br />
:Hair Bun Girl: Ladybugs for my real friends and real bugs for my lady friends!<br />
<br />
:[White Hat holding up a regular glass to the right:]<br />
:White Hat: Single-payer for my real friends and RealPlayer for my single friends.<br />
<br />
:[Ponytail holding up a regular glass to the right:]<br />
:Ponytail: Tumbleweeds for my real friends and real weed for my Tumblr friends!<br />
<br />
:[Beret Guy holding up a wine glass to the left:]<br />
:Beret Guy: Fauxhawks for my real friends and real hawks for my faux friends!<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Hair Bun Girl]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]<br />
[[Category:Language]]<br />
[[Category:Animals]] <!--Ladybug and hawk--><br />
[[Category:Food]] <!--Drinks--><br />
[[Category:Music]] <!--RealPlayer--><br />
[[Category:Social networking]] <!--Tumblr--></div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1644:_Stargazing&diff=112535Talk:1644: Stargazing2016-02-18T12:48:05Z<p>162.158.152.89: Doh!</p>
<hr />
<div>?.. is this Brian Cox??? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.155|162.158.152.155]] 06:07, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
My first thought was that it was a pisstake of Brian Cox, except I wasn't sure if they had Stargazing Live in America. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.143|162.158.152.143]] 08:33, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: Brian Cox seems like a nice guy and I applaud his enthusiasm, but if you want to see a truly awesome science broadcaster look for a set of broadcasts from the 70s/80s by James Burke titled "The Day the Universe Changed", Mr. Cox's programmes seem to be as much about how many airmiles the production team can accumulate as they are about the science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.147|162.158.34.147]] 09:10, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:: The airmiles comment above applies to Cox's "Wonders Of The Universe" series, certainly, but my first thought was either that Randall knew of the BBC's semi-regular programme-cluster "{{w|Stargazing Live}}", here in the UK, that Cox co-presents - perhaps via BBC America? - or else there's an equivalent US version (precursor or postcursor) of the same name that perhaps has a celebrity-based core team.<br />
:: (Brian's primary co-host in the programme ''is'' an Irish comedian, but one with a accredited science background who knows what they're talking about. They also have 'guest celebrities' for internal and external segments (from just outside the studio, under the night sky, to a pieces filmed/livecast at some space-relevant location, usually featured across all episodes of that season as a theme so not so much 'gratuitous globe-trotting) but they are all ''interested'' in space-stuff, and many ''also'' have an actual background expertise in physics/astronomy even if that's not what they're publicly known for.)<br />
:: Quickly looking around, I can't see any ''obvious'' astronomy programmes(/programs!) in the US that aren't similarly expert-led, but that's possibly because any that are don't feature as 'proper' programmes on any of the lists I've checked. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 14:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:: The title text does imply it is in reference to Brian Cox. He is well known for his very philosophical comments referencing physics in that way. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.70.151|141.101.70.151]] 20:05, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:: Hmmm... intentional reference to The Infinite Monkey Cage, with infinite choices of branches, then? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 12:46, 18 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I also thought this might be poking fun at the "Celebrity" presenters of TV astronomy programs. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.173|141.101.106.173]] 13:16, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I believe the title text may be referring to the fact that several people think that the sun is the brightest star simply because it's the closest to us, completely disregarding absolute magnitude? I'd change the explanation if I knew how. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.181|108.162.245.181]] 06:39, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The original statement in the comic is about which star is the brightest *in our sky*, i.e. most visible radiation per square meter hitting Earth, not the star with the most total radiation. You can change the explanation just by hitting the little edit button to the top right of the "Explanation" section.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.91|108.162.237.91]] 06:57, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I still don't get the main comic, unless its just situational comedy of someone acting like they know what they are talking about, when really they don't even know the meaning of the word "astronomer". [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.91|108.162.237.91]] 07:01, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I put my best understanding of the comic in the explanation - I'm not sure I really get it, but I figured it was better than nothing. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.91|108.162.237.91]] 07:14, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This is exactly how I feel about looking at stars and hard core astronomy. I look for the brightest stars, and would like to know something about them, but just the basic facts. I have had a course on astronomy and it was boring to do the math for star formation and cosmology. I learnt that way that I was only interested in the results and conclusions, not in trying to calculate it my self, or counting all the other smaller stars to gain the data needed. I really like Megan here ;-) Space is awesome, astronomy is boring :-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:08, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I am pretty sure the last line in the first panel used to read "I'm doctor '''of''' whatever", but now it's clearly "... doctor '''or''' whatever". Has Randall changed the comic? -- [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.11|141.101.106.11]] 13:06, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:I wrote the original transcript based on the comic on this site. This has since been corrected to or, which makes sense. But the image file for the comic has not been changed here on xkcd, so had it not been for your comment here, I would just have put it down to a typo on my behalf. I still think so, as I believed she said ''or whatever'' when I wrote about it in the explanation. But the "or" can look a little as "of". It is, however, not unheard of that Randall changes a comic if he spots a mistake after the first release. This has happened several times. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 14:50, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
From now on I plan to present Sirius as the brightest star that can be seen at night, just to take the wind out of the jokers sails... [[User:Andyd273|Andyd273]] ([[User talk:Andyd273|talk]]) 14:34, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I wonder if the style of speaking is a reference to Donald Trump.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.90|108.162.237.90]] 19:31, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
She'd reminding me an awful lot of [[Beret Guy]] here, kind of scattered and . Is it just me? [[User:N0lqu|-boB]] ([[User talk:N0lqu|talk]]) 20:42, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:It's not just you... and from that point of view the title text doesn't read like sarcasm to me. Perhaps more a reference to choosing branches of science to explore? Then again, at least one person thought it was sarcastic, and I don't feel strongly enough to change the explanation over it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.161|108.162.250.161]] 01:35, 18 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Not true there is nothing in interstellar space. Dust, vacuum, photons, even heat energy. 08:02, 18 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Could the final "Space!" be a reference to the ending of Portal 2? [[User:Condor70|Condor70]] ([[User talk:Condor70|talk]]) 11:02, 18 February 2016 (UTC)</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1644:_Stargazing&diff=112534Talk:1644: Stargazing2016-02-18T12:46:38Z<p>162.158.152.89: </p>
<hr />
<div>?.. is this Brian Cox??? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.155|162.158.152.155]] 06:07, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
My first thought was that it was a pisstake of Brian Cox, except I wasn't sure if they had Stargazing Live in America. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.143|162.158.152.143]] 08:33, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: Brian Cox seems like a nice guy and I applaud his enthusiasm, but if you want to see a truly awesome science broadcaster look for a set of broadcasts from the 70s/80s by James Burke titled "The Day the Universe Changed", Mr. Cox's programmes seem to be as much about how many airmiles the production team can accumulate as they are about the science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.147|162.158.34.147]] 09:10, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:: The airmiles comment above applies to Cox's "Wonders Of The Universe" series, certainly, but my first thought was either that Randall knew of the BBC's semi-regular programme-cluster "{{w|Stargazing Live}}", here in the UK, that Cox co-presents - perhaps via BBC America? - or else there's an equivalent US version (precursor or postcursor) of the same name that perhaps has a celebrity-based core team.<br />
:: (Brian's primary co-host in the programme ''is'' an Irish comedian, but one with a accredited science background who knows what they're talking about. They also have 'guest celebrities' for internal and external segments (from just outside the studio, under the night sky, to a pieces filmed/livecast at some space-relevant location, usually featured across all episodes of that season as a theme so not so much 'gratuitous globe-trotting) but they are all ''interested'' in space-stuff, and many ''also'' have an actual background expertise in physics/astronomy even if that's not what they're publicly known for.)<br />
:: Quickly looking around, I can't see any ''obvious'' astronomy programmes(/programs!) in the US that aren't similarly expert-led, but that's possibly because any that are don't feature as 'proper' programmes on any of the lists I've checked. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 14:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:: The title text does imply it is in reference to Brian Cox. He is well known for his very philosophical comments referencing physics in that way. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.70.151|141.101.70.151]] 20:05, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:: Hmmm... intentional reference to The Infinite Monkey Tree, with infinite choices of branches, then? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 12:46, 18 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I also thought this might be poking fun at the "Celebrity" presenters of TV astronomy programs. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.173|141.101.106.173]] 13:16, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I believe the title text may be referring to the fact that several people think that the sun is the brightest star simply because it's the closest to us, completely disregarding absolute magnitude? I'd change the explanation if I knew how. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.181|108.162.245.181]] 06:39, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The original statement in the comic is about which star is the brightest *in our sky*, i.e. most visible radiation per square meter hitting Earth, not the star with the most total radiation. You can change the explanation just by hitting the little edit button to the top right of the "Explanation" section.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.91|108.162.237.91]] 06:57, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I still don't get the main comic, unless its just situational comedy of someone acting like they know what they are talking about, when really they don't even know the meaning of the word "astronomer". [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.91|108.162.237.91]] 07:01, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I put my best understanding of the comic in the explanation - I'm not sure I really get it, but I figured it was better than nothing. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.91|108.162.237.91]] 07:14, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This is exactly how I feel about looking at stars and hard core astronomy. I look for the brightest stars, and would like to know something about them, but just the basic facts. I have had a course on astronomy and it was boring to do the math for star formation and cosmology. I learnt that way that I was only interested in the results and conclusions, not in trying to calculate it my self, or counting all the other smaller stars to gain the data needed. I really like Megan here ;-) Space is awesome, astronomy is boring :-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:08, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I am pretty sure the last line in the first panel used to read "I'm doctor '''of''' whatever", but now it's clearly "... doctor '''or''' whatever". Has Randall changed the comic? -- [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.11|141.101.106.11]] 13:06, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:I wrote the original transcript based on the comic on this site. This has since been corrected to or, which makes sense. But the image file for the comic has not been changed here on xkcd, so had it not been for your comment here, I would just have put it down to a typo on my behalf. I still think so, as I believed she said ''or whatever'' when I wrote about it in the explanation. But the "or" can look a little as "of". It is, however, not unheard of that Randall changes a comic if he spots a mistake after the first release. This has happened several times. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 14:50, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
From now on I plan to present Sirius as the brightest star that can be seen at night, just to take the wind out of the jokers sails... [[User:Andyd273|Andyd273]] ([[User talk:Andyd273|talk]]) 14:34, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I wonder if the style of speaking is a reference to Donald Trump.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.90|108.162.237.90]] 19:31, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
She'd reminding me an awful lot of [[Beret Guy]] here, kind of scattered and . Is it just me? [[User:N0lqu|-boB]] ([[User talk:N0lqu|talk]]) 20:42, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:It's not just you... and from that point of view the title text doesn't read like sarcasm to me. Perhaps more a reference to choosing branches of science to explore? Then again, at least one person thought it was sarcastic, and I don't feel strongly enough to change the explanation over it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.161|108.162.250.161]] 01:35, 18 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Not true there is nothing in interstellar space. Dust, vacuum, photons, even heat energy. 08:02, 18 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Could the final "Space!" be a reference to the ending of Portal 2? [[User:Condor70|Condor70]] ([[User talk:Condor70|talk]]) 11:02, 18 February 2016 (UTC)</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1644:_Stargazing&diff=112221Talk:1644: Stargazing2016-02-17T14:25:16Z<p>162.158.152.89: </p>
<hr />
<div>?.. is this Brian Cox??? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.155|162.158.152.155]] 06:07, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
My first thought was that it was a pisstake of Brian Cox, except I wasn't sure if they had Stargazing Live in America. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.143|162.158.152.143]] 08:33, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: Brian Cox seems like a nice guy and I applaud his enthusiasm, but if you want to see a truly awesome science broadcaster look for a set of broadcasts from the 70s/80s by James Burke titled "The Day the Universe Changed", Mr. Cox's programmes seem to be as much about how many airmiles the production team can accumulate as they are about the science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.147|162.158.34.147]] 09:10, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:: The airmiles comment above applies to Cox's "Wonders Of The Universe" series, certainly, but my first thought was either that Randall knew of the BBC's semi-regular programme-cluster "{{w|Stargazing Live}}", here in the UK, that Cox co-presents - perhaps via BBC America? - or else there's an equivalent US version (precursor or postcursor) of the same name that perhaps has a celebrity-based core team.<br />
:: (Brian's primary co-host in the programme ''is'' an Irish comedian, but one with a accredited science background who knows what they're talking about. They also have 'guest celebrities' for internal and external segments (from just outside the studio, under the night sky, to a pieces filmed/livecast at some space-relevant location, usually featured across all episodes of that season as a theme so not so much 'gratuitous globe-trotting) but they are all ''interested'' in space-stuff, and many ''also'' have an actual background expertise in physics/astronomy even if that's not what they're publicly known for.)<br />
:: Quickly looking around, I can't see any ''obvious'' astronomy programmes(/programs!) in the US that aren't similarly expert-led, but that's possibly because any that are don't feature as 'proper' programmes on any of the lists I've checked. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 14:25, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I also thought this might be poking fun at the "Celebrity" presenters of TV astronomy programs. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.173|141.101.106.173]] 13:16, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I believe the title text may be referring to the fact that several people think that the sun is the brightest star simply because it's the closest to us, completely disregarding absolute magnitude? I'd change the explanation if I knew how. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.181|108.162.245.181]] 06:39, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The original statement in the comic is about which star is the brightest *in our sky*, i.e. most visible radiation per square meter hitting Earth, not the star with the most total radiation. You can change the explanation just by hitting the little edit button to the top right of the "Explanation" section.<br />
[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.91|108.162.237.91]] 06:57, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I still don't get the main comic, unless its just situational comedy of someone acting like they know what they are talking about, when really they don't even know the meaning of the word "astronomer". [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.91|108.162.237.91]] 07:01, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I put my best understanding of the comic in the explanation - I'm not sure I really get it, but I figured it was better than nothing. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.91|108.162.237.91]] 07:14, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This is exactly how I feel about looking at stars and hard core astronomy. I look for the brightest stars, and would like to know something about them, but just the basic facts. I have had a course on astronomy and it was boring to do the math for star formation and cosmology. I learnt that way that I was only interested in the results and conclusions, not in trying to calculate it my self, or counting all the other smaller stars to gain the data needed. I really like Megan here ;-) Space is awesome, astronomy is boring :-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:08, 17 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I am pretty sure the last line in the first panel used to read "I'm doctor '''of''' whatever", but now it's clearly "... doctor '''or''' whatever". Has Randall changed the comic? -- [[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.11|141.101.106.11]] 13:06, 17 February 2016 (UTC)</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1643:_Degrees&diff=1118081643: Degrees2016-02-15T15:02:29Z<p>162.158.152.89: /* Explanation */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1643<br />
| date = February 15, 2016<br />
| title = Degrees<br />
| image = degrees.png<br />
| titletext = "Radians Fahrenheit or radians Celsius?" "Uh, sorry, gotta go!"<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|First explanation}}<br />
[[Cueball]] is being asked by a friend for the temperature. There are two common ways to give this in the US: in degrees Celsius and degrees Fahrenheit. The former is the {{w |Metric_system|metric system}}, most often not used in America although it is {{w|Metric_Conversion_Act|the preferred system for trade and commerce}}. The latter is the {{w|Imperial_units|Imperial system}}. Cueball weighs up the benefits of both, but is rushed by his friend to give an answer, so he gives the answer in radians (which can be given the superscript <sup>c</sup>, or <sup>rad</sup> lest it be confused with the ° for angular degrees), which is a system used to measure <i>angular</i> measure, not temperature gradations of whichever scale. Thus, this answer is unhelpful.<br />
<br />
The title text indicates that Cueball's friend still wants to know whether the answer is in radians Fahrenheit or radians Celsius, which, despite being a silly way to express temperature, makes Cueball nervous, and he runs off. The answer Cueball gives is 0.173 radians, which is around 9.912 degrees.<br />
<br />
The title text continues to put Cueball on the spot by asking "Radians Fahrenheit or radians Celsius?" Cueball, likely realizing his initial answer has caused even ''more'' trouble, avoids answering.<br />
<br />
===Summary of Reasons===<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
| | <b >Reason</b><br />
| | <b >Explanation</b><br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
International Standard<br />
| |<br />
Degrees Celsius is the unit in the SI system of units used in most countries today. Using the SI system would allow Cueball to be easily understood in most countries and is by far the most recognized system, but it is not the most commonly used in the United States, his actually location in the comic.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
Helps Reduce America's Weird Isolationism<br />
| |<br />
The United States uses its own set of units, including Degrees Fahrenheit, based on the English Customary System, in contrast to most of the rest of the world which uses the SI system. The US's system of units is therefore considered "weird" as make the US different from most of the world for no real reason, but previous efforts to convert the US to the SI system have failed. Cueball evidently believes that by using SI units he will help to eventually convert the US to the SI system,bringing considerable trade and tourism benefits and reducing confusion when dealing with foreigners.<br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
Nice How "Negative" Means Below Freezing<br />
| |<br />
On the Celsius scale, the freeing point of water is 0 degrees C, and any temperature below that is "below" the freezing point. On the Fahrenheit scale, the freezing point is a less intuitive 32 degrees F.<br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
Physics major Loyalty<br />
| |<br />
Cueball is apparently a physics major, like Randall, and SI units are always used for scientific work, even in the US. By using the Celsius scale in casual conversation he would show his loyalty to the system used by actual physicists. <br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
Easier to Spell<br />
| |<br />
"Celsius" is generally considered to be an easier word to spell than "Fahrenheit." In this case the word is being spoken and the point is not immediately relevant, but part of the joke is that Cueball is overthinking things and worrying about the general use of the word when an answer is needed in this specific case.<br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
We lost a Mars probe over this crap<br />
| |<br />
The {{w|Mars_Climate_Orbiter|Mars Climate Orbiter}} disintegrate in Mars' atmosphere because Lockheed used Imperial units instead of the contractually specified metric units.<br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
Unit-aware computing makes Imperial less annoying<br />
| |<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Cueball is looking at his phone]<br />
:Off-screen person: Hey, what's the temperature outside?<br />
:Cueball [thinks]: Should I give it in °F or °C?<br />
<br />
:<u>Degrees Celcius</u><br />
:* International standard<br />
:* Helps reduce America's wierd isolationism<br />
:* Nice how "negative" means below freezing<br />
:* Physics major loyalty<br />
:* Easier to spell<br />
:* {{w|Mars_Climate_Orbiter|We lost a Mars probe over this crap}}<br />
<br />
:<u>Degrees Fahrenheit</u><br />
:* 0°F to 100°F good match for temperature range in which most humans live<br />
:* Rounds more usefully (70's, 90's)<br />
:* Unit-aware computing makes imperial less annoying<br />
:* SI prefixes are less relevant for temperatures<br />
:* Fahrenheit is likely more clear in this context<br />
:* Valuing unit standardization over being helpful possibly makes me a bad friend<br />
<br />
:Cueball [thinks]: Crap, gotta pick something. Uhh...<br />
:Cueball: ...0.173 radians.<br />
:Off-screen person: I'll just go check myself<br />
{{comic discussion}}</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1643:_Degrees&diff=1118031643: Degrees2016-02-15T14:42:21Z<p>162.158.152.89: /* Explanation */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1643<br />
| date = February 15, 2016<br />
| title = Degrees<br />
| image = degrees.png<br />
| titletext = "Radians Fahrenheit or radians Celsius?" "Uh, sorry, gotta go!"<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|First explanation}}<br />
[[Cueball]] is being asked by a friend for the temperature. There are two common ways to give this in the US: in degrees Celsius and degrees Fahrenheit. The former is the {{w |Metric_system|metric system}}, most often not used in America although it is {{w|Metric_Conversion_Act|the preferred system for trade and commerce}}. The latter is the {{w|Imperial_units|Imperial system}}. Cueball weighs up the benefits of both, but is rushed by his friend to give an answer to give the answer in radians (having the superscript <sup>c</sup>, or <sup>rad</sup> lest it be confused with the ° for angular degrees), which is a system used to measure <i>angular</i> measure, not temperature gradations of whichever scale. Thus, this answer is unhelpful.<br />
<br />
The title text indicates that Cueball's friend still wants to know whether the answer is in radians Fahrenheit or radians Celsius, which, despite being a silly way to express temperature, makes Cueball nervous, and he runs off. The answer Cueball gives is 0.173 radians, which is around 9.912 degrees.<br />
<br />
The title text continues to put Cueball on the spot by asking "Radians Fahrenheit or radians Celsius?" Cueball, likely realizing his initial answer has caused even ''more'' trouble, avoids answering.<br />
<br />
===Summary of Reasons===<br />
{| class="wikitable"<br />
| | <b >Reason</b><br />
| | <b >Explanation</b><br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
International Standard<br />
| |<br />
Degrees Celsius is the unit in the SI system of units used in most countries today. Using the SI system would allow Cueball to be easily understood in most countries and is by far the most recognized system, but it is not the most commonly used in the United States, his actually location in the comic.<br />
<br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
Helps Reduce America's Weird Isolationism<br />
| |<br />
The United States uses its own set of units, including Degrees Fahrenheit, based on the English Customary System, in contrast to most of the rest of the world which uses the SI system. The US's system of units is therefore considered "weird" as make the US different from most of the world for no real reason, but previous efforts to convert the US to the SI system have failed. Cueball evidently believes that by using SI units he will help to eventually convert the US to the SI system,bringing considerable trade and tourism benefits and reducing confusion when dealing with foreigners.<br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
Nice How "Negetive" Means Below Freezing<br />
| |<br />
On the Celsius scale, the freeing point of water is 0 degrees C, and any temperature below that is "below" the freezing point. On the Fahrenheit scale, the freezing point is a less intuitive 32 degrees F.<br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
Physics major Loyalty<br />
| |<br />
Cueball is apparently a physics major, like Randall, and SI units are always used for scientific work, even in the US. By using the Celsius scale in casual conversation he would show his loyalty to the system used by actual physicists. <br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
Easier to Spell<br />
| |<br />
"Celsius" is generally considered to be an easier word to spell than "Fahrenheit." In this case the word is being spoken and the point is not immediately relevant, but part of the joke is that Cueball is overthinking things and worrying about the general use of the word when an answer is needed in this specific case.<br />
|-<br />
| |<br />
We lost a Mars probe over this crap<br />
| |<br />
The {{w|Mars_Climate_Orbiter|We lost a Mars probe over this crap}} disintegrate in Mars' atmosphere because Lockheed used Imperial units instead of the contractually specified metric units.<br />
|}<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[Cueball is looking at his phone]<br />
:Off-screen person: Hey, what's the temperature outside?<br />
:Cueball [thinks]: Should I give it in °F or °C?<br />
<br />
:<u>Degrees Celcius</u><br />
:* International standard<br />
:* Helps reduce America's wierd isolationism<br />
:* Nice how "negative" means below freezing<br />
:* Physics major loyalty<br />
:* Easier to spell<br />
:* {{w|Mars_Climate_Orbiter|We lost a Mars probe over this crap}}<br />
<br />
:<u>Degrees Fahrenheit</u><br />
:* 0°F to 100°F good match for temperature range in which most humans live<br />
:* Rounds more usefully (70's, 90's)<br />
:* Unit-aware computing makes imperial less annoying<br />
:* SI prefixes are less relevant for temperatures<br />
:* Fahrenheit is likely more clear in this context<br />
:* Valuing unit standardization over being helpful possibly makes me a bad friend<br />
<br />
:Cueball [thinks]: Crap, gotta pick something. Uhh...<br />
:Cueball: ...0.173 radians.<br />
:Off-screen person: I'll just go check myself<br />
{{comic discussion}}</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1639:_To_Taste&diff=111089Talk:1639: To Taste2016-02-10T12:40:22Z<p>162.158.152.89: </p>
<hr />
<div>Seasoning is not an intermediate process which can't be repaired/re-done. you're left with an edible dish before and after. You add seasoning in small incremental steps, and the quality of the dish, or appropriateness of the taste improves monotonically, and additively. On the other hand, baking something for 5 minutes, and then another 5 minutes isn't the same as baking it for 10 minutes. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.49.78|162.158.49.78]] 09:54, 5 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: Yeah, but a beginner should be given an idea of what a basic incremental step is supposed to be, based on the number of servings in the recipe. One pinch? One (tea/table)spoon? One cup? One jug? One crate? - [[Special:Contributions/141.101.70.23|141.101.70.23]] 11:38, 5 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: Usually when it's said ''to taste'', which I guess corresponds to the Italian ''quanto basta'', it's referring to small amounts, so a beginner could just add a pinch per time until he finds the flavor is good. Whenever it's unnecessary, recipes shouldn't be specific; you don't have to grill a steak for exactly 5 or 10 minutes, just until it has the color and looks of a steak you think you may like; if you boil pasta, you taste a bit once a minute until the texture is good. --[[Special:Contributions/188.114.102.249|188.114.102.249]] 12:25, 5 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
::: The joke is that this kind of knowledge is implied in recipes, it isn't spelled out. Which can be a problem for beginners. And good luck trying that approach when baking spiced bread. Or manufacturing soufflé. ;) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.138|162.158.114.138]] 13:15, 5 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
::: Luckily, there are pastas which specify how long you are supposed to cook them on the package. Especially useful in case of those "fast" ones. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 13:57, 5 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: "Appropriateness" increases "monotonically" ... until it decreases again. :D [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.138|162.158.114.138]] 13:15, 5 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: Try preparing two slow cook dishes but in one add all the seasoning at the end before serving. You will now know that seasoning can be very integral to the process and if added in wrong quantities at the wrong time can ruin a dish.--[[User:R0hrshach|R0hrshach]] ([[User talk:R0hrshach|talk]]) 17:11, 5 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: '''''De gustibus non disputandum est.''''' [[User:RAGBRAIvet|RAGBRAIvet]] ([[User talk:RAGBRAIvet|talk]]) 16:46, 6 February 2016 (UTC) — [[RAGBRAIvet]] {{unsigned|RAGBRAIvet}}<br />
'''''De gustibus non disputandum est''''' This is Joda-Latin, isn't it? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.225|162.158.91.225]] 13:26, 6 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: I prefer to binary search instead of linearly searching. O(log n) versus O(n)! --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.37|162.158.255.37]] 21:31, 9 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I can't tell if Randall is reading too many cookbooks or if he just has... Too many cooks[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.54|108.162.221.54]] 13:46, 5 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: It does take a lot to make a stew, after all. A lot of sugar, in this case. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.29|173.245.54.29]] 07:19, 6 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: That's only 3 cubes. Totally reasonable. [[User:Elvenivle|Elvenivle]] ([[User talk:Elvenivle|talk]]) 20:24, 7 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Maybe he obtained enough sugar so his sample size would be sufficient for scientific experimentation on what to taste means.[[User:Thaledison|Thaledison]] ([[User talk:Thaledison|talk]]) 14:02, 5 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
In my experience, the instructions "add _____ to taste" usually are referring to salt, not sugar. And from comic #1637, we all know Cueball has access to virtually an unlimited quantity of salt! [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.252|173.245.54.252]] 14:55, 5 February 2016 (UTC)Sam<br />
:As a non-USAian, it's interesting that Randall has chosen to show excessive amounts of sugar. I've used many great recipes of US origin and the first thing I do is ignore everything that the recipe says about sugar, in pretty much every case (not baking though) our (British taste) is satisfied by removing all added sugar. Perhaps he's highlighting the US "sweet tooth"?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.147|162.158.34.147]] 08:39, 8 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Why is he bringing in the sugar backwards? Perhaps he doesn't know how to properly use a dolly?<br />
[[User:Bsellnow|Bsellnow]] ([[User talk:Bsellnow|talk]]) 19:37, 5 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:Maybe he just came up the stairs? There's loads of houses that have stairs (or, frequently, a single stair) between the kitchen and the back porch/food storage area/front porch/garage/attic/wherever else you'll get sugar from. Plus, since the sugar was stacked so high it was leaning against his face, there's no way he'd be able to see if he was walking forwards. I think, really, his biggest sin is that he stacked the boxes to an unsafe level. [[User:Jeudi Violist|Jeudi Violist]] ([[User talk:Jeudi Violist|talk]]) 00:34, 6 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
::No kidding that's an unsafe level. He's holding them up with his face! [[User:Jkshapiro|Jkshapiro]] ([[User talk:Jkshapiro|talk]]) 03:37, 7 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:::The framing of the comic was such that if he had pushed the dolly in, we would not have seen cueball in the last panel, and might have been confused as to where the crates of sugar were coming from, and if they were just falling in, or dollying in, or what. Randall knows how to draw in a manner that conveys the meaning, and we really don't need to look into it so deeply. {{unsigned ip|173.245.54.55}}<br />
::::But looking into comics far too deeply is what we ''do''! :) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 12:40, 10 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This is strongly reminiscent of episode 5 of Astrid Lindgren's Seacrow Island (original title Vi På Saltkråkan) where Melker adds salt to taste. {{unsigned ip|141.101.79.55}}</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1639:_To_Taste&diff=1107061639: To Taste2016-02-05T11:46:05Z<p>162.158.152.89: /* Explanation */</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1639<br />
| date = February 5, 2016<br />
| title = To Taste<br />
| image = to_taste.png<br />
| titletext = Look, recipe, if I knew how much was gonna taste good, I wouldn't need you.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|First draft}}<br />
Some recipes tell you to add an ingredient "to taste". This gives you some freedom to pick how exactly you'd like the end result to taste. In this comic, [[Cueball]] is shown as possibly having a massive sweet tooth, and adding large crates of sugar to a small pot, because sugar tastes good. However, this would most likely make the recipe very overly sweet.<br />
<br />
Alternatively he just brings in enough sugar so he will not run out of his ingredient before it reaches the correct level of sweetness for his taste.<br />
<br />
The title text indicates that bringing in this much sugar is out of ignorance: Cueball ([[Randall]]) does not know how much sugar he would like in this dish, and usually relies on the recipe specifying an exact amount.<br />
<br />
The usual cliché in recepies is "add ''salt'' to taste", for savoury dishes, but perhaps we've already had [[1637|too much salt]], and/or we're skipping straight to the pudding.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript}}<br />
<br />
[Cueball is standing near a pot on a stove. He is reading a recipe.]<br />
<br />
Recipe: ...and add sugar to taste.<br />
<br />
Cueball: ??<br />
<br />
[Cueball walks off-panel. He returns with a dolly loaded with boxes labeled "SUGAR".]<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1638:_Backslashes&diff=110563Talk:1638: Backslashes2016-02-03T14:23:27Z<p>162.158.152.89: A little editing... Might be more readable. Might not be.</p>
<hr />
<div>It should be noted that this also occurs in almost every programming language where "\" is the escape character. i.e.<br />
print("Hello")<br />
> Hello<br />
print("\"Hello\"")<br />
> "Hello"<br />
print("\\Hello\\")<br />
> \Hello\<br />
Oh, and by the way, isn't this the third comic to mention "Ba'al, the Soul Eater"? Maybe we should start a category. (Others are [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1246:_Pale_Blue_Dot 1246] (title text) and [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1419:_On_the_Phone 1419].)<br />
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.29|173.245.54.29]] 06:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:[[:Category:Ba'al|Did that]] before seeing you comment, so yes I agree. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
;I don't think the regex is invalid<br />
<br />
According to <tt>man grep</tt> you need to specify the <tt>-E</tt> option to use extended regex; without it unescaped parentheses are not interpreted, so they don't need to match.<br />
<br />
My - very wild - guess is that it was the command he used to find the line with the most special characters, but I am not confident enough to edit the article (if someone can confirm?). {{unsigned ip|141.101.66.83}}<br />
<br />
If it was supposed to do that, it doesn't work. Running it on my bash history matches no lines, and I have lots of special characters in there [[Special:Contributions/197.234.242.243|197.234.242.243]] 07:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Explain it to me like I'm dumb. What is this comic going on about? I think the explanation needs more examples like that hello, above, because that's almost understandable. --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.231|198.41.238.231]] 07:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:I agree. But I cannot help either.--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This is the third time Randall has mentioned Ba'al the Soul Eater xD [[User:International Space Station|International Space Station]] ([[User talk:International Space Station|talk]]) 08:26, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:Yes, that was already mentioned a few hours before you comment, see the first comment. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
After passing the regex through bash, you get <nowiki>\\[[(].*\\[\])][^)\]]*$</nowiki> That is, the literal character \, followed by [ or (, followed by any number of any characters, followed by \, followed by ] or ), followed by any number of characters that aren't ) or ], until the end of the line. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.44|108.162.216.44]] 08:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:It sounds like you know what you are talking about. Anyone who can explain it good enough for the explanation, and correct the explanation of the title text if it is wrong to say that it would not work. I have added this as the reason for incomplete. But maybe also examples are needed for people with not programming skills/knowledge. We also enjoy xkcd ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
For fun: <br />
cat ~/.bash_history | xargs -d "\n" -n 1 -I {} bash -c 'chars="$(echo "$1" | grep -o "[a-zA-Z0-9 ]" | wc -l)"; echo "$(( 100 - $(( $chars * 100 / ${#1} )) )) $1"' _ {} | sort -nrk 1 | less<br />
<br />
Outputs your bash_history, ordered by relative gibberishness. This was copied by hand from desktop to mobile, might well have a few typos.--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.208|162.158.90.208]] 10:04, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The problem in the comic is not with regexes per se but with situations when the entered text or expression passes through several interpreters, like bash -> grep/sed/awk, or program text -> external shell command. In such cases, you have to escape backslashes for each program in the sequence, and it gets worse if you have 'real' backslashes in the final text that you're processing with the utilities (Windows' file paths, for example). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_toothpick_syndrome.<br />
Feel free to lift this to the explanation page, since I'm not good at longer and more careful explanations than this one.<br />
Also, gotta notice that Feedly stripped paired backslashes in the title text (probably passed it through some 'interpreter' embedded in its scripts). [[User:Aasasd|Aasasd]] ([[User talk:Aasasd|talk]]) 10:13, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:A funny comment about the MediaWiki software, which is even worse than this comic: <code><nowiki><Nikerabbit> I looked the code for rlike and didn't find where it does this. Can you point me to it? <vvv> $pattern = preg_replace( '!(\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\)*(\\\\\\\\)?/!', '$1\\/', $pattern ); <Nikerabbit> I thought that was ascii art :)</nowiki></code> ([https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P110$275 source]) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.215|162.158.91.215]] 10:18, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Interestingly, I first looked at this on my phone (using <strike>Chrome</strike> Feedly for Android), but the title text did not display correctly in that the backslashes didn't appear (which was a little confusing!). In Chrome on my Windows desktop, the title text appeared correctly. [[User:Jdluk|Jdluk]] ([[User talk:Jdluk|talk]]) 11:36, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
enough with the harry potter fancruft. "elder" is a [[Wiktionary:elder|perfectly good word]]. just because you came across it for the first time in harry potter means you are *typing carefully* the kind of person that likes harry potter. unless this is a ''harry potter reference'' wiki, of course. in which case i'll prepare a complete list of every word that appears both here and there and put a list on every page. oh, right, no i won't. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.161|141.101.106.161]] 12:41, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Remember that "Elder" is used in a lot of RPGs to denote high level enemies or items. I feel like that's what Randall's referring to here, more than Harry Potter or the general sense of the term "Elder."<br />
<br />
Attempting to add to the discussion: This regex is not necessarily invalid or incomprehensible. It looks like he was looking for a line with a regular expression or definitely some code. You just have to work your way through the backslashes. Although it might be invalid depending on the precise rules. He has some unescaped closing brackets and closing parenthesis. If these have to always be escaped then the regex is invalid. If however you don't have to escape a closing bracket with no opening bracket, then things are fine. I'm not familiar enough with grep's regex parser to know how it handles that edge case. Presuming those unescaped paren and brackets are fine, his regex searches for:<br />
<br />
1. A backslash<br />
<br />
2. An opening bracket<br />
<br />
3. An opening parenthesis (this is a character set but the only character in it is an opening paren)<br />
<br />
4. Any number of any characters<br />
<br />
5. A backslash<br />
<br />
6. An opening bracket<br />
<br />
7. A closing bracket<br />
<br />
8. A closing paren (presuming it doesn't have to be escaped when there is no opening paren)<br />
<br />
9. A closing bracket (presuming it doesn't have to be escaped when there is no opening bracket)<br />
<br />
10. Any number of character that are not a closing paren or closing bracket<br />
<br />
11. The end of the line<br />
<br />
<br />
Basically he is looking for a string that looks like:<br />
<br />
\[(AAAAA\[])]AAAAA<br />
<br />
Looks like a regex to me, and it looks like this regex also doesn't escape closing paren/brackets that don't have an opening paren/bracket, so I'm guessing that he knows what he is doing and his regex is fine. Maybe he was playing regex golf?<br />
[[User:Cmancone|Cmancone]] ([[User talk:Cmancone|talk]])cmancone<br />
<br />
Ninjaed by Cmancone, above. I agree with that result in every respect except for the start-of-string being potentially anything, but putting my own analysis in here because it took long enough to type!<br />
Depth-of-backslash might depend upon depth of utility. In Perl, <nowiki>''</nowiki>-quotes (among others) treat everything within as literal whilst ""-quotes (and variations) interpolates any special characters, variables, etc that you put in it. (Search for "Quote and Quote-like operators" in your favourite PerlDocs source.) '\sss' is a literal backslash followed by three 's' characters , while "\sss" is the special \s escape (a whitespace) followed by two further regular characters. You might need to define the first when you need to use it to provide a not-previously-escaped \s so that it might be escaped within another context. ''Or'' you define it as "\\sss" (escaped-\) the first time, as equivalent to '\sss'. But '\\sss' would be a literal that, later, could be interpreted as an escaped-\ to the input of a further context where the \s finally becomes 'match a whitespace'.<br />
<br />
'\\\sss' would be literal, whilst "\\\sss" could be equivalent to '\ ss' (literal backslash, literal space, rest of characters). Then, instead of literal '\\sss', for some purpose, you could interpolate two escaped-backslashes "\\\\sss"... and so on.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile I ''think'', just from visual inspection, "'''\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$'''" in Bash should obey the interpolation rules quite nicely. The first two characters must be a literal backslash (from the escaped-backslash) and a literal open-square bracket (again, escaped). The next open-square and the close-square shortly after depict a character class that contains only an open-parenthesis, and could have been written as '''\('''.<br />
<br />
The '''.*''' indicates zero-or-more (the asterix) instances of ''any'' character (the dot). There is then a literal backslash (from the next '''\\''' duo) and a literal open-square (the '''\[''' pair) and close-square (the '''\]''' pair). The ''')''' is literal and does not need escaping (as a parenthesis group had not yet been opened), as is the next ''']''' character. To be sure, I would have written these two as the pair escapes '''\)\]''', but horses for courses...<br />
<br />
Then there's another character class (the next '''[''' and the final ''']''') required zero-or-more times (the asterix) to use up all the rest of the characters to the end (the ending '''$''' character). As there was no '''^''' character (a.k.a. caret/circumflex/etc) at the start, the match isn't bothered about what unmatched characters appear before the original '''\('''. This character class, however, starts with a '''^''' which in this context (the very first character of a character-class definition, not somewhere where an entire match-string starts) indicates negation of the following selection, so it is all characters ''but'' those specified, which is the regular close-parenthesis and (because it needs to be contained within a '''[]''' pair) the escaped close-square.<br />
<br />
So, all matching strings must start with '''\[(''', i.e. the backslash, open-square and open-paren. They can continue with ''any'' further text, before then having a '''\[])]''', i.e. backslash, open-and-close-squares and close-paren, close-square. After this, the match continues just as long as there are no non-closing square/classic brackets before the ending.<br />
<br />
The minimum matching literal string would be '''\[(\[])]''' with longer variants being of the form '''X\[(Y\[])]Z''' where X and Y can be replaced by anything (or be absent), and Z can be replaced by anything (or absent!) ''so long as it doesn't contain possibly relevent close-brackets!''. The latter stipulation is likely because the Y (and X) ''is'' allowed to contain these characters, and for some reason you don't want to confuse the test by finding some other '''\[])]''' segment within the X/Y-zones. (In this context, it doesn't actually seem to matter too much. But it might do in ways I haven't spotted or just be a hang-over from a prior permutation of the test.)<br />
<br />
The "grep -o" function is working on the output to the file being '''cat'''ed (there are alternate ways of doing this that some people might prefer), to only accept the lines in the file that match the '''X\[(Y\[])]Z''' string. These lines would appear to be lines of out.txt (a fairly generic name that reveals little to its original purpose) that are well-formed for some other purpose. A safety-escaped (i.e. not to be taken literally by any simple parser) '''[]'''-grouping containing a '''()'''-group (''not'' escaped, perhaps reasonably in context) containing potentially random text followed by an empty '''[]''' pair (again, safety-escaped). Depending on the source, the empty '''[]'''-pair could mean many things, as with the other layers. And the lines may end with any further text.<br />
<br />
The "out.txt" file might be the result of a prior Grep (string-search function) quote possibly scanning code for lines of particular importance by another pattern and dumping the results to out.txt for further perusal. And then Randall finds the need to dig further into the first result by extracting just those already selected that all have the '''X\[(Y\[])Z]'''-ish pattern to them.<br />
<br />
But I could be wrong, and that's way too long for an official explanation.<br />
(Perhaps just something like the penultimate paragraph, if we're not entirely mistaken?) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 14:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC)</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1638:_Backslashes&diff=110561Talk:1638: Backslashes2016-02-03T14:14:02Z<p>162.158.152.89: </p>
<hr />
<div>It should be noted that this also occurs in almost every programming language where "\" is the escape character. i.e.<br />
print("Hello")<br />
> Hello<br />
print("\"Hello\"")<br />
> "Hello"<br />
print("\\Hello\\")<br />
> \Hello\<br />
Oh, and by the way, isn't this the third comic to mention "Ba'al, the Soul Eater"? Maybe we should start a category. (Others are [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1246:_Pale_Blue_Dot 1246] (title text) and [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1419:_On_the_Phone 1419].)<br />
[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.29|173.245.54.29]] 06:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:[[:Category:Ba'al|Did that]] before seeing you comment, so yes I agree. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
;I don't think the regex is invalid<br />
<br />
According to <tt>man grep</tt> you need to specify the <tt>-E</tt> option to use extended regex; without it unescaped parentheses are not interpreted, so they don't need to match.<br />
<br />
My - very wild - guess is that it was the command he used to find the line with the most special characters, but I am not confident enough to edit the article (if someone can confirm?). {{unsigned ip|141.101.66.83}}<br />
<br />
If it was supposed to do that, it doesn't work. Running it on my bash history matches no lines, and I have lots of special characters in there [[Special:Contributions/197.234.242.243|197.234.242.243]] 07:12, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Explain it to me like I'm dumb. What is this comic going on about? I think the explanation needs more examples like that hello, above, because that's almost understandable. --[[Special:Contributions/198.41.238.231|198.41.238.231]] 07:47, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:I agree. But I cannot help either.--[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This is the third time Randall has mentioned Ba'al the Soul Eater xD [[User:International Space Station|International Space Station]] ([[User talk:International Space Station|talk]]) 08:26, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:Yes, that was already mentioned a few hours before you comment, see the first comment. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
After passing the regex through bash, you get <nowiki>\\[[(].*\\[\])][^)\]]*$</nowiki> That is, the literal character \, followed by [ or (, followed by any number of any characters, followed by \, followed by ] or ), followed by any number of characters that aren't ) or ], until the end of the line. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.44|108.162.216.44]] 08:33, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
:It sounds like you know what you are talking about. Anyone who can explain it good enough for the explanation, and correct the explanation of the title text if it is wrong to say that it would not work. I have added this as the reason for incomplete. But maybe also examples are needed for people with not programming skills/knowledge. We also enjoy xkcd ;-) --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:51, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
For fun: <br />
cat ~/.bash_history | xargs -d "\n" -n 1 -I {} bash -c 'chars="$(echo "$1" | grep -o "[a-zA-Z0-9 ]" | wc -l)"; echo "$(( 100 - $(( $chars * 100 / ${#1} )) )) $1"' _ {} | sort -nrk 1 | less<br />
<br />
Outputs your bash_history, ordered by relative gibberishness. This was copied by hand from desktop to mobile, might well have a few typos.--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.90.208|162.158.90.208]] 10:04, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The problem in the comic is not with regexes per se but with situations when the entered text or expression passes through several interpreters, like bash -> grep/sed/awk, or program text -> external shell command. In such cases, you have to escape backslashes for each program in the sequence, and it gets worse if you have 'real' backslashes in the final text that you're processing with the utilities (Windows' file paths, for example). See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leaning_toothpick_syndrome.<br />
Feel free to lift this to the explanation page, since I'm not good at longer and more careful explanations than this one.<br />
Also, gotta notice that Feedly stripped paired backslashes in the title text (probably passed it through some 'interpreter' embedded in its scripts). [[User:Aasasd|Aasasd]] ([[User talk:Aasasd|talk]]) 10:13, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:A funny comment about the MediaWiki software, which is even worse than this comic: <code><nowiki><Nikerabbit> I looked the code for rlike and didn't find where it does this. Can you point me to it? <vvv> $pattern = preg_replace( '!(\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\)*(\\\\\\\\)?/!', '$1\\/', $pattern ); <Nikerabbit> I thought that was ascii art :)</nowiki></code> ([https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/P110$275 source]) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.215|162.158.91.215]] 10:18, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Interestingly, I first looked at this on my phone (using <strike>Chrome</strike> Feedly for Android), but the title text did not display correctly in that the backslashes didn't appear (which was a little confusing!). In Chrome on my Windows desktop, the title text appeared correctly. [[User:Jdluk|Jdluk]] ([[User talk:Jdluk|talk]]) 11:36, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
enough with the harry potter fancruft. "elder" is a [[Wiktionary:elder|perfectly good word]]. just because you came across it for the first time in harry potter means you are *typing carefully* the kind of person that likes harry potter. unless this is a ''harry potter reference'' wiki, of course. in which case i'll prepare a complete list of every word that appears both here and there and put a list on every page. oh, right, no i won't. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.106.161|141.101.106.161]] 12:41, 3 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Remember that "Elder" is used in a lot of RPGs to denote high level enemies or items. I feel like that's what Randall's referring to here, more than Harry Potter or the general sense of the term "Elder."<br />
<br />
Attempting to add to the discussion: This regex is not necessarily invalid or incomprehensible. It looks like he was looking for a line with a regular expression or definitely some code. You just have to work your way through the backslashes. Although it might be invalid depending on the precise rules. He has some unescaped closing brackets and closing parenthesis. If these have to always be escaped then the regex is invalid. If however you don't have to escape a closing bracket with no opening bracket, then things are fine. I'm not familiar enough with grep's regex parser to know how it handles that edge case. Presuming those unescaped paren and brackets are fine, his regex searches for:<br />
<br />
1. A backslash<br />
<br />
2. An opening bracket<br />
<br />
3. An opening parenthesis (this is a character set but the only character in it is an opening paren)<br />
<br />
4. Any number of any characters<br />
<br />
5. A backslash<br />
<br />
6. An opening bracket<br />
<br />
7. A closing bracket<br />
<br />
8. A closing paren (presuming it doesn't have to be escaped when there is no opening paren)<br />
<br />
9. A closing bracket (presuming it doesn't have to be escaped when there is no opening bracket)<br />
<br />
10. Any number of character that are not a closing paren or closing bracket<br />
<br />
11. The end of the line<br />
<br />
<br />
Basically he is looking for a string that looks like:<br />
<br />
\[(AAAAA\[])]AAAAA<br />
<br />
Looks like a regex to me, and it looks like this regex also doesn't escape closing paren/brackets that don't have an opening paren/bracket, so I'm guessing that he knows what he is doing and his regex is fine. Maybe he was playing regex golf?<br />
[[User:Cmancone|Cmancone]] ([[User talk:Cmancone|talk]])cmancone<br />
<br />
Ninjaed by Cmancone, above. I agree with that result in every respect except for the start-of-string being potentially anything, but putting my own analysis in here because it took long enough to type!<br />
Depth-of-backslash might depend upon depth of utility. In Perl, <nowiki>''</nowiki>-quotes (among others) treat everything within as literal whilst ""-quotes (and variations) interpolates any special characters, variables, etc that you put in it. (Search for "Quote and Quote-like operators" in your favourite PerlDocs source.) '\sss' is a literal backslash followed by three 's' characters , while "\sss" is the special \s escape (a whitespace) followed by two further regular characters. You might need to define the first when you need to use it to provide a not-previously-escaped \s so that it might be escaped within another context. ''Or'' you define it as "\\sss" (escaped-\) the first time, as equivalent to '\sss'. But '\\sss' would be a literal that, later, could be interpreted as an escaped-\ to the input of a further context where the \s finally becomes 'match a whitespace'.<br />
<br />
'\\\sss' would be literal, whilst "\\\sss" could be equivalent to '\ ss' (literal backslash, literal space, rest of characters). Then, instead of literal '\\sss', for some purpose, you could interpolate two escaped-backslashes "\\\\sss"... and so on.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile I ''think'', just from visual inspection, "\\\[[(].*\\\[\])][^)\]]*$" in Bash should obey the interpolation rules quite nicely. The first two characters must be a literal backslash (from the escaped-backslash) and a literal open-square bracket (again, escaped). The next open-square and the close-square shortly after depict a character class that contains only an open-parenthesis, and could have been written as "\(".<br />
<br />
The .* indicates zero-or-more (the asterix) instances of ''any'' character (the dot). There is then a literal backslash (from the next \\ duo) and a literal open-square (the \[ pair) and close-square (the \] pair). The ) is literal and does not need escaping (as a parenthesis group had not yet been opened), as is the next ] character. To be sure, I would have written these two as the pair escapes \)\]<br />
<br />
Then there's another character class (the next [ and the final ]) required zero-or-more times (the asterix) to use up all the rest of the characters to the end (the ending $ character). As there was no ^ character (a.k.a. caret/circumflex/etc) at the start, the match isn't bothered about what unmatched characters appear. This character class, however, starts with a ^ which in this context (the very first character of a charactr-class definition, not somewhere where an entire match-string starts) indicates negation of the following selection, so it is all characters ''but'' those specified, which is the regular close-parenthesis and (because it needs to be contained within a [] pair) the escaped close-square.<br />
<br />
So, all matching strings must start with '\[(', i.e. the backslash, open-square and open-paren. They can continue with ''any'' further text, before then having a '\[])]', i.e. backslash, open-and-close-squares and close-paren, close-square. After this, the match continues just as long as there are no non-closing square/classic brackets before the ending.<br />
<br />
The minimum matching literal string would be '\[(\[])]' with longer variants being of the form 'X\[(Y\[])]Z' where X and Y can be replaced by anything, and Z can be replaced by anything ''so long as it doesn't contain possibly relevent close-brackets!''. The latter stipulation is likely because the Y (and X) ''is'' allowed to contain these characters, and for some reason you don't want to confuse the test by finding some other '\[])]' segment within the X/Y-zones. (In this context, it doesn't actually seem to matter too much. But it might do in ways I haven't spotted or just be a hang-over from a prior permutation of the test.)<br />
<br />
The "grep -o" function is working on the output to the file being 'cat'ed (there are alternate ways of doing this that some people might prefer), to only accept the lines in the file that match the 'X\[(Y\[])]Z' string. These lines would appear to be lines of out.txt (a fairly generic name that reveals little to its original purpose) that are well-formed for some other purpose. A safety-escaped (i.e. not to be taken literally by any simple parser) []-grouping containing a ()-group (''not'' escaped) containing potentially random text followed by an empty [] pair (again, safety-escaped). Depending on the source, the empty []-pair could mean many things, as with the other layers. And the lines may end with any further text.<br />
<br />
The "out.txt" file might be the result of a prior Grep (string-search function) quote possibly scanning code for lines of particular importance by another pattern and dumping the results to out.txt for further perusal. And then Randall finds the need to dig further into the first result by extracting just those with the "X\[(Y\[])Z]"-ish pattern to them.<br />
<br />
But I could be wrong, and that's way too long for an official explanation.<br />
(Perhaps just something like the penultimate paragraph, if we're not entirely mistaken?) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 14:14, 3 February 2016 (UTC)</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1637:_Salt_Mine&diff=110393Talk:1637: Salt Mine2016-02-01T16:42:33Z<p>162.158.152.89: </p>
<hr />
<div>I don't think that the exotic restaurants relate, here. As well, I think that Ponytail says "Yes, that is definitely why" because she is saying "Yes, we definitely built the detector here to block out cosmic rays, and definitely *not* to eat the delicious salt." You know what I mean? Thoughts? [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.21|173.245.54.21]] 06:46, 1 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
: I agree. The comment about restaurants only adds to the potential confusion around the comic. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.59|108.162.216.59]] 08:05, 1 February 2016 (UTC)BK201<br />
The science facility in a salt mine made me think of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal_2 Portal 2]. Now i'm wondering if the IMB served as an inspiration for Portal 2. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.25|141.101.104.25]] 08:36, 1 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
"The title text is intended to be absurd, and thus humorous." GLaDOS, is that you? (I can't help. As I read this sentence I imagined it spoken by GLaDOS...) [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 08:49, 1 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Could the salt eating be a reference to TOS: The Man Trap? {{unsigned ip|162.158.90.159}}<br />
<br />
Maybe "salt" should taste somewhat appropriate about flavor of subatomic particles and randomness (cryptography) too. [[Rotten Brain]] [[Special:Contributions/162.158.150.221|162.158.150.221]] 14:35, 1 February 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Even assuming that's 'low grade' rock-salt, mostly inert rock, the intake would probably exceed the regulatory advice (6g/day over here, I think, but I'd have to look it up to be sure - and that's mostly used up/exceeded with the ''hidden'' salt in prepared meals!). I think that's because of the danger of the sodium excess (hence sodium-free salts, sometimes called "salt-free salt" as it has a different formula to NaCl, sold as being a healthier option). But raw salt ingestion like this would (assuming it doesn't already overload the tastebuds, perhaps because of an extremely over-riding craving?) likely also create problems of extreme and ''active'' dehydration... i.e. like being mummified from the inside-out.<br />
<br />
I do know that there ''are'' cravings for minerals (coal, clays, chalk, etc), which can be life-long habits without too many apparent ill effects (perhaps tooth-wearing, primarily) - if not just a strange reaction to pregnancy. If anyone knows of a similarly extreme salt-craving, though, it would probably be worth linking it in so I'm not left thinking that it's a typical "taken to extremes" XKCD comic. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 16:42, 1 February 2016 (UTC)</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1637:_Salt_Mine&diff=1103921637: Salt Mine2016-02-01T16:32:53Z<p>162.158.152.89: /* Explanation */ Post-conflict re-intergration of the original edit I tried. (Moved slightly, due to the interim change.)</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1637<br />
| date = February 1, 2016<br />
| title = Salt Mine<br />
| image = salt_mine.png<br />
| titletext = This one is a little bland. Pass the saltshaker?<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
{{incomplete|This is a summary, not an explanation}}<br />
Ponytail has built a particle detector (An expensive device used in experimental physics) in a salt mine. Hair Bun Girl assumes that this is to block out cosmic rays, as is the case with the real life the {{w|Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven (detector)|Irvine-Michigan-Brookhaven detector}} (IMB), started in Lake Erie in 1979. Ponytail affirms Hair Bun Girl's assumption; however, based on the wording of her response, it is clear that Ponytail and her colleagues have an ulterior motive of using the mine to get access to an enormous supply of salt for eating. This is absurd, since salt is already plentifully available in grocery stores, the cost of the particle detector far exceeds the value of the salt and their intake appears to be ''far'' beyond any medically-advised healthy limit (and likely to be sickening in other regards).<br />
<br />
The IMB detector was initially used to search for proton decay in very pure water kept in the mine. Although the IMB became famous for detecting neutrinos from a supernova 1987a, it never observed a single proton decay out of 10^31 protons. At the time, even a single observation would have contributed to the Grand Unified Theory, predicting that protons eventually decay. In the comic, when Ponytail says "Yes, That's definitely why" it could refer to the large expectations that such detectors had promised.<br />
<br />
The title text is intended to be absurd, and thus humorous. Salt is normally used to add flavor to otherwise bland foods. However, the "bland" food that the speaker is eating is itself a chunk of salt, and they wish to season their salt with yet more salt. The substance they are eating could be bland salt rock (a mixture of rock and salt in raw form resulting in a lower salt content).<br />
<br />
This explanation should be taken with a grain of salt. This comic should be taken with a grain of salt. Salt.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
{{incomplete transcript}}<br />
[Hair Bun Girl, Ponytail, Cueball, and Megan are in a salt mine. Cueball and Megan are eating salt, while Hair Bun Girl and Ponytail talk in front of what appears to be a control console for a particle detector.]<br />
<br />
Hair Bun Girl: So you've built this particle detector in a salt mine to block out cosmic rays?<br />
<br />
Ponytail: Yes. That is definitely why.<br />
<br />
Cueball and Megan [eating salt]: Homf Nomf Nomf<br />
<br />
==Trivia==<br />
*In real life salt mines are also used for exotic restaurants, such as the 'Wieliczka' Salt Mine, in Poland - a use for mines which is more rare than particle detectors. The Wieliczka mine contains a complete bar, hardwood seating, and gourmet chefs located 125m below ground. Dishes are seasoned with Wieliczka salt mine salt, and is used liberally in the selections. In the comic, Cueball and Megan and show as possible employees of the particle detector, but are instead eating something with salt, which could be a humorous reference to the lack of proton decay results. <br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}<br />
<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Hair Bun Girl]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]<br />
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br />
[[Category:Science]]</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1635:_Birdsong&diff=110062Talk:1635: Birdsong2016-01-27T13:58:27Z<p>162.158.152.89: </p>
<hr />
<div>Cueball could instead be trying to capture it to figure out how what appears to be a regular bird can sing human lyrics, seeing as birds do not have anything resembling the human pharynx or diaphragm, as birds use a system of air sacs to push air into their lungs, analogous to how a mammalian heart moves blood. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.250.161|108.162.250.161]] 13:09, 27 January 2016 (UTC) Dom Vasta<br />
:However, birds split the actions of each side of their trachea to vocalise two notes at once, which gives those already capable of imitating human speech (or other anthropogenic sounds) ''more'' capability than a human to sing lyrics. That they lack understanding of what they are hearing (certain study parrots possibly excepted) deprives them of the ability to sing ''meaningful'' duets with themselves, but those capable of mimicry clearly have the basic ability to sing two independent voices at once, or a single distinctive voice with at least a simple musical accompaniment of an appropriate register, were they so inclined to separate the 'channels' and not just squish it as if into a mono 'recording' of composite sounds anyway. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 13:58, 27 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Am I the only one who thought of Undertale from the first panel? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.47|108.162.216.47]] 13:56, 27 January 2016 (UTC)</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=1634:_In_Case_of_Emergency&diff=1100581634: In Case of Emergency2016-01-27T13:43:31Z<p>162.158.152.89: /* Explanation */ Started off not liking a spread of commas. Became a mini-re-write.</p>
<hr />
<div>{{comic<br />
| number = 1634<br />
| date = January 25, 2016<br />
| title = In Case of Emergency<br />
| image = in_case_of_emergency.png<br />
| titletext = I keep first aid kits in those emergency lockers. Sure, it's expensive to have them installed in the wall, but at least for those ones there's no need to pay extra for safety glass.<br />
}}<br />
<br />
==Explanation==<br />
<br />
Sometimes in order to deter vandalism or avoid accidentally moving/setting off something of importance, an important item like a {{w|Fire_extinguisher|fire extinguisher}} will be [http://static1.squarespace.com/static/50d8d693e4b039551290ba60/t/511e4f80e4b06f6f68aadf79/1360940930288/Screen+Shot+2013-02-15+at+7.00.10+AM.png covered behind a wall of glass]. [https://img1.etsystatic.com/061/1/10935090/il_570xN.750954961_qucc.jpg In case of emergency, break glass] - and retrieve the tool.<br />
<br />
However the depicted situation is funny, because the thing behind the breakable glass is a glass repair kit. This is ironic, considering that the only way to reach it is by breaking the glass. One might even use it to fix the glass broken to get it... This joke is similar in nature to a {{w|Useless machine}}. However, the broken glass that needs to be repaired is an emergency situation, so it is important to have some less important glass to break, to be able to get to the important ''emergency glass repair kit''. In this way it is not necessarily useless, just ironic.<br />
<br />
In the title text [[Randall]] notes that he keeps his {{w|first aid kit}} in just such a type of emergency locker as shown in the comic. He complains that it is expensive to have them installed in the wall. But then the title text takes a gruesome turn when he continues by saying that at least for those lockers with first aid in them there is no need to pay extra for using {{w|safety glass}} for the cover. Safety glass doesn't break into sharp shards, so would be used for the cover of such an above-mentioned fire extinguisher cabinet, for instance, ensuring that the user will not cut themselves when breaking the glass to retrieve it. But Randall indirectly says that since the person breaking the glass will soon have access to a first aid kit then, if wounded in the process of breaking the normal window glass, they can as well be treated on the spot - so it will be OK to let them get injured while trying to help others.<br />
<br />
First aid kits and for instance {{w|defibrillators}} can be found at frequent places such as bus stations and shopping malls, but never behind a glass that needs to be broken.<br />
<br />
==Transcript==<br />
:[On a box behind a panel of glass, with a hammer hung below the panel, is written:]<br />
:Glass repair kit<br />
<br />
{{comic discussion}}</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1633:_Possible_Undiscovered_Planets&diff=109799Talk:1633: Possible Undiscovered Planets2016-01-23T00:29:51Z<p>162.158.152.89: </p>
<hr />
<div>Why is it late? &mdash; ''[[User:Tbc|tbc]] ([[User talk:Tbc|talk]]) 16:57, 22 January 2016 (UTC)''<br />
:No idea but it's weird. [[User:SuperSupermario24|<span style="color: #c21aff;">Just some random derp</span>]] 18:08, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Why is Earth's "Distance from me" 10000km? -- ''19:26, 22 January 2016 (UTC)''<br />
:The diameter of Earth is ~12000km and distances are measured from the center of the object (that why there is a "Planet ruled out because I would be inside them" zone). I suppose Earth should be placed at a distance of 6000km instead of 12000k (as it is the radius, not the diameter that matter here). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.66.11|141.101.66.11]] 19:43, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
::Earth's distance seems to be to the left of the 10Mm marker on the distance line, to me, although it's hard to tell without a straightedge. Remember the plot is diameter to distance. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.71|108.162.238.71]] 19:52, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This comic bothers me because the diagonal line with Earth on it cannot possibly represent what it claims. Zero cannot be plotted on the X-axis with this log scale. The entire "I would be inside of them" region is bogus. [[Special:Contributions/188.114.106.83|188.114.106.83]] 19:42, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
:Not if you're measuring to the center of the planet. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.71|108.162.238.71]] 19:52, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
:Also, please sign your comments. I had to sign this one for you. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.71|108.162.238.71]] 19:54, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
:OK, it does make sense if you take the normal convention of arrival and turn it into total core penetration. Sorry about the signing thing. I never use this and wondered where the input for it was. I see now from googling around that you just put it at the end. [[Special:Contributions/188.114.106.83|188.114.106.83]] 20:00, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Planets ruled out because we could see them during the day = Stars? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.56.5|162.158.56.5]] 21:10, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
: Only stars that are close enough to see during the day. Actually, there's one star that ''is'' close enough that we can see it during the day, although for some reason Randall did not mark it on the chart: our Sun. (Every other star is so far away that it's off the chart.) —[[User:TobyBartels|TobyBartels]] ([[User talk:TobyBartels|talk]]) 21:34, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
::I added the stars statement before reading your comment. Feel free to edit it.<br />
::And I agree that it's strange that Randall didn't mark the Sun. Furthermore, the Sun fits the Greek definition of planet. In fact, it fits any definition of planet better than birds or planes.--[[User:Pere prlpz|Pere prlpz]] ([[User talk:Pere prlpz|talk]]) 21:57, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: No not stars, this is just about planets -- you can see the moon in the day when in the right position compared to the sun. You would be able to see any planet during the day if the circular surface was sufficiently big, and with a planetary body that is a function of the size over the distance squared -- the moon is just so close that it does not have to that big [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.109|162.158.255.109]] 22:25, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:: So shouldn't the "during the day" section be sloped, and include the moon? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.252.227|162.158.252.227]] 23:41, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I think Randall means "TENTH planet". 22:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The subtitling of planes as "Fool's Planets" is clearly intended to be analogous to "Fool's Gold", the mineral that looks a lot like gold to the (non-expert) eye. That is, if there's a bright spot of light in the sky (usually just before dusk or just after dawn) then it might be mistaken for a planet like Venus, but instead just be the glimmer of near-horizontal sunlight off of a wing-front or body-edge of plane too high to discern a shape/silhouette against the sky, too far away to see coloured navigation lights and just happens not to be leaving a contrail. At a glance, you might assume it was something astronomical. Only by keeping an eye on it could you be sure to discern relatively rapid (perhaps non-ecliptic) movement and other details that would at least suggest it was no higher than a satellite. (Of course, it would be techncally be a UFO, leastways until you actually identified it sufficiently.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 00:24, 23 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Also, note the implication that Randall would keep Giant Bugs at least 100m away from him, at all times. Doubtless by running away. (Or else by closing the doors and windows of his 100m-radius house and hiding himself away under blankets in its centre???) 00:29, 23 January 2016 (UTC)</div>162.158.152.89https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:1633:_Possible_Undiscovered_Planets&diff=109798Talk:1633: Possible Undiscovered Planets2016-01-23T00:24:46Z<p>162.158.152.89: </p>
<hr />
<div>Why is it late? &mdash; ''[[User:Tbc|tbc]] ([[User talk:Tbc|talk]]) 16:57, 22 January 2016 (UTC)''<br />
:No idea but it's weird. [[User:SuperSupermario24|<span style="color: #c21aff;">Just some random derp</span>]] 18:08, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Why is Earth's "Distance from me" 10000km? -- ''19:26, 22 January 2016 (UTC)''<br />
:The diameter of Earth is ~12000km and distances are measured from the center of the object (that why there is a "Planet ruled out because I would be inside them" zone). I suppose Earth should be placed at a distance of 6000km instead of 12000k (as it is the radius, not the diameter that matter here). [[Special:Contributions/141.101.66.11|141.101.66.11]] 19:43, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
::Earth's distance seems to be to the left of the 10Mm marker on the distance line, to me, although it's hard to tell without a straightedge. Remember the plot is diameter to distance. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.71|108.162.238.71]] 19:52, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
This comic bothers me because the diagonal line with Earth on it cannot possibly represent what it claims. Zero cannot be plotted on the X-axis with this log scale. The entire "I would be inside of them" region is bogus. [[Special:Contributions/188.114.106.83|188.114.106.83]] 19:42, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
:Not if you're measuring to the center of the planet. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.71|108.162.238.71]] 19:52, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
:Also, please sign your comments. I had to sign this one for you. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.71|108.162.238.71]] 19:54, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
:OK, it does make sense if you take the normal convention of arrival and turn it into total core penetration. Sorry about the signing thing. I never use this and wondered where the input for it was. I see now from googling around that you just put it at the end. [[Special:Contributions/188.114.106.83|188.114.106.83]] 20:00, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
Planets ruled out because we could see them during the day = Stars? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.56.5|162.158.56.5]] 21:10, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
: Only stars that are close enough to see during the day. Actually, there's one star that ''is'' close enough that we can see it during the day, although for some reason Randall did not mark it on the chart: our Sun. (Every other star is so far away that it's off the chart.) —[[User:TobyBartels|TobyBartels]] ([[User talk:TobyBartels|talk]]) 21:34, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
::I added the stars statement before reading your comment. Feel free to edit it.<br />
::And I agree that it's strange that Randall didn't mark the Sun. Furthermore, the Sun fits the Greek definition of planet. In fact, it fits any definition of planet better than birds or planes.--[[User:Pere prlpz|Pere prlpz]] ([[User talk:Pere prlpz|talk]]) 21:57, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
: No not stars, this is just about planets -- you can see the moon in the day when in the right position compared to the sun. You would be able to see any planet during the day if the circular surface was sufficiently big, and with a planetary body that is a function of the size over the distance squared -- the moon is just so close that it does not have to that big [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.109|162.158.255.109]] 22:25, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
:: So shouldn't the "during the day" section be sloped, and include the moon? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.252.227|162.158.252.227]] 23:41, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
I think Randall means "TENTH planet". 22:58, 22 January 2016 (UTC)<br />
<br />
The subtitling of planes as "Fool's Planets" is clearly intended to be analogous to "Fool's Gold", the mineral that looks a lot like gold to the (non-expert) eye. That is, if there's a bright spot of light in the sky (usually just before dusk or just after dawn) then it might be mistaken for a planet like Venus, but instead just be the glimmer of near-horizontal sunlight off of a wing-front or body-edge of plane too high to discern a shape/silhouette against the sky, too far away to see coloured navigation lights and just happens not to be leaving a contrail. At a glance, you might assume it was something astronomical. Only by keeping an eye on it could you be sure to discern relatively rapid (perhaps non-ecliptic) movement and other details that would at least suggest it was no higher than a satellite. (Of course, it would be techncally be a UFO, leastways until you actually identified it sufficiently.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.152.89|162.158.152.89]] 00:24, 23 January 2016 (UTC)</div>162.158.152.89