Lettherebedarklight: /* Transcript */ add Category:Comics with a Spanish translation

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 In the comic, the invention of a time machine was commissioned with the intent of preventing a robot apocalypse like in {{w|Terminator (franchise)|Terminator}} movies, a [[:Category:Terminator|recurring theme]] on xkcd. However, the [[Cueball]] that built and used the machine is an electrical engineer with misplaced priorities, believing that reversing Franklin's "mistake" takes precedence over eliminating a more immediate threat to the human race.
-Cueball tells Franklin that the charge left on a glass rod by rubbing it with silk should be the ''negative'' charge, not the positive charge, because the friction ''removes'' electrons from the rod. This would not have been intuitive to Franklin, because the electron had not as of yet been discovered. Yet by telling Franklin to reverse the positive and negative conventions, this would ultimately result in an alternate universe where electrons are assigned a positive charge. One can only speculate what other changes this reversal of convention would lead to, {{tvtropes|ForWantOfANail|as small changes tend to cascade into huge ones}}. Would the positron have been instead named the negatron? And would this affect the success of the {{w|Transformers}} franchise?
+Cueball tells Franklin that the charge left on a glass rod by rubbing it with silk should be the ''negative'' charge, not the positive charge, because the friction ''removes'' charge-carrying electrons from the rod. This would not have been intuitive to Franklin, because the electron had not as of yet been discovered. Yet by telling Franklin to reverse the positive and negative conventions, this would ultimately result in an alternate universe where electrons are assigned a positive charge. One can only speculate what other changes this reversal of convention would lead to, {{tvtropes|ForWantOfANail|as small changes tend to cascade into huge ones}}. Would the positron have been instead named the negatron? And would this affect the success of the {{w|Transformers}} franchise?
 In the title text, Cueball defends his actions, stating that preventing the rise of {{w|dictators}} or {{w|pandemics}} is a fine idea, but here they have a chance of making the signs on "every damn diagram" make sense, which to him seems so much more important. Cueball is likely voicing [[Randall]]'s frustration with this breach of logic, albeit exaggerated to comedic levels.

567: Urgent Mission - Revision history

Lettherebedarklight: /* Transcript */ add Category:Comics with a Spanish translation

172.70.162.79: /* Explanation */ added a bit of an explanation, since the phrasing doesn't make sense within our current paradigm of "electron = negative"

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