Difference between pages "496: Secretary: Part 3" and "2156: Ufo"

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
(Difference between pages)
Jump to: navigation, search
(β†’β€ŽExplanation: ce, cleanup)
 
m (Reverted edits by πŸ‘–πŸ”₯ (talk) to last revision by Jacky720)
 
Line 1: Line 1:
 
{{comic
 
{{comic
βˆ’
| number    = 496
+
| number    = 2156
βˆ’
| date      = October 29, 2008
+
| date      = May 29, 2019
βˆ’
| title    = Secretary: Part 3
+
| title    = Ufo
βˆ’
| image    = secretary part 3.png
+
| image    = ufo.png
βˆ’
| titletext = He actually installed each piece in a different car in the lot, then built a new car in the spot from the displaced pieces.  It's a confusing maneuver known as the auto-troll shuffle.
+
| titletext = "It's a little low for a weather balloon; it might be some other kind." "Yeah. Besides, I know I'm the alien conspiracy guy, but come on--the idea that the government would care about hiding something so mundane as atmospheric temperature measurement is too ridiculous even for me."
 
}}
 
}}
  
 
==Explanation==
 
==Explanation==
βˆ’
When a person has been appointed to one of certain positions by the {{w|POTUS|President}}, they must first go through a confirmation hearing in front of the {{w|United States Senate|Senate}}, the upper house of {{w|United States Congress|Congress}} where they find if the person is qualified to be in the position they have been appointed to. Of course, [[Black Hat]] is not the cleanest of characters, so Congress has a lot of reservations about his {{w|rΓ©sumΓ©}}.
+
This cartoon makes fun of {{rw|conspiracy|conspiracy theories}}, by suggesting that authorities, like the Navy, could be promoting mysterious explanations for mundane phenomena (such as a {{w|weather balloon}}).  UFO is an acronym for an {{w|unidentified flying object}}. This comic is most likely inspired by [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/26/us/politics/ufo-sightings-navy-pilots.html reports of US Navy pilots] seeing unexplained objects. The "History Channel thing" could refer to this [https://www.history.com/shows/unidentified-inside-americas-ufo-investigation upcoming series].  
  
βˆ’
*{{w|Starbucks}} is an American coffee shop chain.
+
By a weather balloon, it is possible they could mean [[Cory Doctorow]]'s balloon, which he has appeared in [[:Category:Comics featuring Cory Doctorow|past comics]] with.  
βˆ’
**He hasn't yet, but in [[562: Parking]], Black Hat will cut someone's car in half to make it fit in a single space. Not quite as dramatic as completely disassembling a car and, as the title text says, putting a single piece in another car parked in the lot, and building a car out of the displaced parts, which could almost be considered subtle; but, it is quite dramatic.
 
βˆ’
**The title text refers to the Starbucks incident. Taking all the parts from different cars to build in a new car in the same spot parallels the idea in philosophy of the {{w|Ship of Theseus}} in which a question arises of whether a ship is the same ship if it is replaced piece by piece by identical pieces.
 
βˆ’
*{{w|Charles M. Schulz}} drew a comic called {{w|Peanuts}}. One of the recurring characters was {{w|Snoopy}} who would often use his doghouse as an imaginary {{w|Sopwith Camel}} in many battles with {{w|Manfred von Richthofen|The Red Baron}} who piloted a {{w|Fokker Dr.I|Red Fokker}} {{w|Triplane}}.
 
βˆ’
**The {{w|Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade}} is a parade that happens on {{w|Thanksgiving (United States)|Thanksgiving Day}} in the US. There are many giant balloons of pop-culture icons. Snoopy has made many appearances. Being the [[classhole]] that he is, Black Hat has shot up the Snoopy float with a stolen Red Fokker triplane, which would be disturbing, especially to the kids watching the parade, who would get the impression that Snoopy has died. His statement that he "Got three mimes, too" just proves his casual disregard for collateral damage.
 
βˆ’
*{{w|9/11 Truth movement|9/11 Truthers}} believe that the terrorist attack on the {{w|World Trade Center}} towers on September 11, 2001 (thus 9/11) was not actually organized by terrorists, but by the United States government. Black Hat interrupts their conspiracy theory gathering, insisting on a comedically exaggerated version of this conspiracy theory in which the attacks did not happen ''at all'' and the World Trade Center is presumably still standing. Such a conspiracy is extremely implausible, as it would require either the involvement of every single person to ever set foot in one of the world's largest cities, or some way to conceal a pair of hundred story tall buildings, which is obviously impossible.{{Citation needed}} Whether Black Hat actually believes this, or is just trying to troll conspiracy theorists is unknown.
 
βˆ’
**Black Hat uses a common refrain [[:Category:Sheeple|Wake up, Sheeple]] to insult the senators.
 
βˆ’
*{{w|RadioShack}} is a chain of consumer electronics shops that sold parts to build electronics with: resistors, transistors, etc. Apparently Black Hat managed to build a death ray from the parts there and accidentally vaporized a customer. His line "Figures that'd be the one day that there'd be a customer in the aisle" refers to the fact that RadioShack stores have been in steady decline over the years, largely propped up by momentum.
 
βˆ’
*{{w|Microsoft}} is the company that makes {{w|Microsoft Windows|Windows}}, and {{w|Steve Ballmer}} was its {{w|Chief executive officer|CEO}} until being replaced in 2014 by {{w|Satya Nadella}}. {{w|Windows Vista}} is an {{w|operating system}} released in 2007; it was widely panned by software critics. It is unclear how feeding a squirrel through a fax machine could possibly contribute to winning an argument about it, but given Black Hat's almost superhuman abilities to troll and avoid the consequences, it's possible that it could happen.
 
βˆ’
*{{w|Ruth Bader Ginsburg}} is the second female justice on the {{w|Supreme Court of the United States|Supreme Court}}, appointed by President Clinton. The relevance here is that during her own confirmation hearings, she refused to answer many questions about her personal views, frustrating many Senators (nevertheless, she was confirmed, 96-3). {{w|John Roberts}}, the current Chief Justice, was similarly evasive in his hearings, citing the "Ginsburg Precedent."
 
βˆ’
*Black Hat stole a nuclear submarine in xkcd [[405: Journal 3]] to get his hat back from [[Danish]]. However, that one was a Russian submarine, and the US Senate would probably not take that into account. Perhaps they are indeed referencing that incident, or it could be that he has also stolen an American submarine. Stealing one navy submarine would be impossibly hard, stealing nuclear submarines from not one but two different navies would be practically impossible.
 
βˆ’
*"Pleading the fifth" is to invoke the {{w|Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution|Fifth Amendment}} of the {{w|United States Bill of Rights}}. Specifically, when someone pleads the fifth, they mean that they cannot be compelled to give testimony against themselves. That is, they do not have to say anything that could be taken as an admission of guilt. The {{w|Third Amendment to the United States Constitution|third amendment}} states that no homeowner has to keep troops of the United States Army in their house against their will in peacetime. Either Black Hat
 
βˆ’
**Doesn't understand the 3rd Amendment,
 
βˆ’
**Just chooses this amendment over the 5th to confuse the committee which seems to forget the question,
 
βˆ’
**Believes the nuclear submarine to be his property, and rather than stealing it he was simply expelling military personnel who were "quartered" in his nuclear sub without his permission,
 
βˆ’
**Stole the submarine in order to have a convenient place other than his house to quarter troops
 
  
βˆ’
The final panels show Ron Paul's blimp finally approaching Washington DC. The balloon spotted on their radar is presumably piloted by blogger {{w|Cory Doctorow}}, as revealed in the next installment, Secretary: Part 4.
+
This comic features {{w|Fox Mulder}} and {{w|Dana Scully}}, two fictional FBI agents from the television show ''{{w|The X-Files}}''. In the show, Mulder is usually a believer in all manner of conspiracies and supernatural phenomena, whereas his partner, Scully, is reflexively skeptical of any claims of the paranormal.
  
βˆ’
All comics in the [[:Category:Secretary|Secretary]] series:
+
A fighter aircraft's {{w|head-up display}} (HUD) projects information about the aircraft and its surroundings on a glass panel in front of the pilot. This allows the pilot to fly and fight without looking down at gauges and panels in the cockpit. When the pilot selects a radar contact to track, information including the angle and range to that contact is displayed on the HUD. The HUD is also overlaid on video recorded by the airplane's on-board camera. Scully has examined the tracking information recorded in one video and concluded that the unidentified object was relatively stationary. Her opinion is that the object is likely a mundane weather balloon, rather than an extraterrestrial craft.
βˆ’
*[[494: Secretary: Part 1]]
 
βˆ’
*[[495: Secretary: Part 2]]
 
βˆ’
*496: Secretary: Part 3 (this one)
 
βˆ’
*[[497: Secretary: Part 4]]
 
βˆ’
*[[498: Secretary: Part 5]]
 
  
βˆ’
This series was released on 5 consecutive days (Monday-Friday) and not over the usual Monday/Wednesday/Friday schedule.
+
"Maybe the shadowy forces that control the world just want to believe" is an allusion to "I Want to Believe", a phrase from the ''The X-Files'' associated with Mulder and [https://images.newrepublic.com/82a6d0770aeaafbae8f26bf40a822b9b79a5c412.png his iconic UFO poster.]
  
βˆ’
It is possible that this series is a continuation of [[493: Actuarial]], in which Black Hat demonstrates great power over even Internet trolls via his sociopathic ways. This would explain why Black Hat was chosen as Internet secretary.
+
The title text also contains critique about governments that fail to acknowledge the severity of humanity-induced (anthropogenic) climate change and use their influence to actively hide evidence (such as the US government till 2021 [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/27/us/politics/trump-climate-science.html that ordered US government agencies to stop or minimize research and reporting on climate change]), which even by Mulder's standards seems too crazy for a conspiracy, yet happens in reality.
 +
 
 +
The government wanting to cover up a balloon to the point of allowing people to think it was aliens supposedly did happen, as documents declassified in the 90's revealed the existence of a top secret project to use high altitude spy balloons to detect evidence of Soviet nuclear tests, known as "{{w|Project Mogul}}."  One of these balloons was the source of the debris in the famous {{w|Roswell UFO incident|Roswell incident}}.  To maintain secrecy, the government claimed it was instead a weather balloon despite this not being quite consistent with the descriptions of the debris, and how they didn't make an effort to properly refute things when 30 years later UFO enthusiasts started claiming it was an alien spaceship (the whole incident was quite obscure and quickly forgotten until someone published some claims about the events decades later, in 1978).
  
 
==Transcript==
 
==Transcript==
βˆ’
:[The confirmation hearings begin.]
+
:[Mulder from The X-Files depicted as Hairy sits in his office chair at his desk and points to his computer screen while looking over his shoulder and addressing Scully off-panel, who replies.]
βˆ’
:Senator: It appears you have quite an arrest record.
+
:Mulder: Hey Scully, have you seen these Navy UFO videos?
βˆ’
 
+
:Scully (off-panel): Oh, the History Channel thing?
βˆ’
:Senator: Is it true you completely disassembled someone's car outside a Starbucks?
 
βˆ’
:Black Hat: It was parked across two spaces.
 
βˆ’
 
 
βˆ’
:Senator: You stole a red Fokker triplane and strafed the snoopy float at the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade?
 
βˆ’
 
 
βˆ’
:Black Hat: Got three mimes, too.
 
βˆ’
 
 
βˆ’
:Senator: You disrupted a 9/11 truth meeting, insisting the Twin Towers never actually collapsed?
 
βˆ’
:Black Hat: I have evidence! Don't trust the media! Wake up, sheeple!
 
βˆ’
 
 
βˆ’
:Senator: You were fired from Radio Shack after you built a death ray and vaporized a customer?
 
βˆ’
 
 
βˆ’
:Black Hat: I was just testing it! Figures that'd be the one day there was a shopper in the aisle.
 
βˆ’
 
 
βˆ’
:Senator: And you were thrown out of Microsoft headquarters for... trying to feed a squirrel through a fax machine?
 
βˆ’
 
 
βˆ’
:Black Hat: I forgot about that! it was part of an argument with Steve Ballmer about Vista.
 
βˆ’
::Which I won, by the way.
 
βˆ’
 
 
βˆ’
:[Senators look down at their notes.]
 
βˆ’
 
 
βˆ’
:Senator: This is the worst history of vandalism, gleeful mayhem, and general recalcitrance we've seen in a nominee since Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
 
βˆ’
 
 
βˆ’
:Senator: And this-you stole a nuclear submarine?
 
βˆ’
:Black Hat: I plead the third.
 
βˆ’
 
 
βˆ’
:Senator: You mean the fifth?
 
βˆ’
:Black Hat: No, the third.
 
  
βˆ’
:Senator: You refuse to quarter troops in your house?
+
:[In a frame-less panel, Scully walks in from the right towards Mulder, who has turned around in his chair facing towards her (the desk is not included). He is leaning on the back of the chair with one arm. Scully has shoulder length hair, not similar to any of the regular women in xkcd.]
βˆ’
:Black Hat: I have few principles, but I stick to them.
+
:Scully: I don't know about the other two videos, but in one of them, if you take the angles and ranges on the HUD and do a little geometry, it kind of suggests the object isn't really moving.  It just looks like it because the plane's camera is panning.
  
βˆ’
:Meanwhile...
+
:[Zoom in on Scully.]
βˆ’
:[Aboard Ron Paul's blimp.]
+
:Scully: The pilots got excited for the same reason we did.  Then the media got into it.
βˆ’
:Ponytail: We're nearing Washington, sir.
+
:Scully: But I think what they saw was a round, white object floating at 13,000 feet.
βˆ’
::Wait... There's something ahead on the sensors.
 
  
βˆ’
:Ponytail: It's a balloon.
+
:[Zoom out again to shown that Mulder sits straight up in his chair with hands in his lap and the desk with computer behind him. Scully stand in front of him.]
βˆ’
:Ron Paul: ...Oh, no.
+
:Mulder: So your theory is that the military '''''claims''''' to have footage of aliens, but you think it's a giant cover-up to hide that it's a weather balloon?
 +
:Scully: Some kind of balloon, yes.
 +
:Mulder: Pretty weird conspiracy.
 +
:Scully: Maybe the shadowy forces that control the world just want to believe, too.
  
 
{{comic discussion}}
 
{{comic discussion}}
  
βˆ’
[[Category:Secretary|03]]
+
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]
βˆ’
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Secretary]]
+
[[Category:Conspiracy theory]]
βˆ’
[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
+
[[Category:Climate change]] <!-- Title text -->
βˆ’
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
+
[[Category:Aliens]]
βˆ’
[[Category:Comics featuring Ron Paul]]
 
βˆ’
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
 
βˆ’
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
 
βˆ’
[[Category:Sheeple]]
 

Revision as of 18:43, 11 May 2022

Ufo
"It's a little low for a weather balloon; it might be some other kind." "Yeah. Besides, I know I'm the alien conspiracy guy, but come on--the idea that the government would care about hiding something so mundane as atmospheric temperature measurement is too ridiculous even for me."
Title text: "It's a little low for a weather balloon; it might be some other kind." "Yeah. Besides, I know I'm the alien conspiracy guy, but come on--the idea that the government would care about hiding something so mundane as atmospheric temperature measurement is too ridiculous even for me."

    Explanation

    This cartoon makes fun of conspiracy theories, by suggesting that authorities, like the Navy, could be promoting mysterious explanations for mundane phenomena (such as a weather balloon). UFO is an acronym for an unidentified flying object. This comic is most likely inspired by reports of US Navy pilots seeing unexplained objects. The "History Channel thing" could refer to this upcoming series.

    By a weather balloon, it is possible they could mean Cory Doctorow's balloon, which he has appeared in past comics with.

    This comic features Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, two fictional FBI agents from the television show The X-Files. In the show, Mulder is usually a believer in all manner of conspiracies and supernatural phenomena, whereas his partner, Scully, is reflexively skeptical of any claims of the paranormal.

    A fighter aircraft's head-up display (HUD) projects information about the aircraft and its surroundings on a glass panel in front of the pilot. This allows the pilot to fly and fight without looking down at gauges and panels in the cockpit. When the pilot selects a radar contact to track, information including the angle and range to that contact is displayed on the HUD. The HUD is also overlaid on video recorded by the airplane's on-board camera. Scully has examined the tracking information recorded in one video and concluded that the unidentified object was relatively stationary. Her opinion is that the object is likely a mundane weather balloon, rather than an extraterrestrial craft.

    "Maybe the shadowy forces that control the world just want to believe" is an allusion to "I Want to Believe", a phrase from the The X-Files associated with Mulder and his iconic UFO poster.

    The title text also contains critique about governments that fail to acknowledge the severity of humanity-induced (anthropogenic) climate change and use their influence to actively hide evidence (such as the US government till 2021 that ordered US government agencies to stop or minimize research and reporting on climate change), which even by Mulder's standards seems too crazy for a conspiracy, yet happens in reality.

    The government wanting to cover up a balloon to the point of allowing people to think it was aliens supposedly did happen, as documents declassified in the 90's revealed the existence of a top secret project to use high altitude spy balloons to detect evidence of Soviet nuclear tests, known as "Project Mogul." One of these balloons was the source of the debris in the famous Roswell incident. To maintain secrecy, the government claimed it was instead a weather balloon despite this not being quite consistent with the descriptions of the debris, and how they didn't make an effort to properly refute things when 30 years later UFO enthusiasts started claiming it was an alien spaceship (the whole incident was quite obscure and quickly forgotten until someone published some claims about the events decades later, in 1978).

    Transcript

    [Mulder from The X-Files depicted as Hairy sits in his office chair at his desk and points to his computer screen while looking over his shoulder and addressing Scully off-panel, who replies.]
    Mulder: Hey Scully, have you seen these Navy UFO videos?
    Scully (off-panel): Oh, the History Channel thing?
    [In a frame-less panel, Scully walks in from the right towards Mulder, who has turned around in his chair facing towards her (the desk is not included). He is leaning on the back of the chair with one arm. Scully has shoulder length hair, not similar to any of the regular women in xkcd.]
    Scully: I don't know about the other two videos, but in one of them, if you take the angles and ranges on the HUD and do a little geometry, it kind of suggests the object isn't really moving. It just looks like it because the plane's camera is panning.
    [Zoom in on Scully.]
    Scully: The pilots got excited for the same reason we did. Then the media got into it.
    Scully: But I think what they saw was a round, white object floating at 13,000 feet.
    [Zoom out again to shown that Mulder sits straight up in his chair with hands in his lap and the desk with computer behind him. Scully stand in front of him.]
    Mulder: So your theory is that the military claims to have footage of aliens, but you think it's a giant cover-up to hide that it's a weather balloon?
    Scully: Some kind of balloon, yes.
    Mulder: Pretty weird conspiracy.
    Scully: Maybe the shadowy forces that control the world just want to believe, too.

    comment.png  Add comment      new topic.png  Create topic (use sparingly)     refresh discuss.png  Refresh 

    Discussion

    Am I the only one now hearing the iconic opening music of the series in my head? :-) --Kynde (talk) 13:41, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

    I wasn't until you mentioned it :-( 141.101.99.131 13:57, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

    May be related to this news released yesterday:[1] Seebert (talk) 14:41, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

    Yep, slow news day.OhFFS (talk) 15:19, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

    The title text is probably a reference to US government restrictions placed on their departments (such as NOAA), preventing them from releasing details which might support the idea of climate change. JamesCurran (talk) 18:27, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

    Most likely this or the more recent budgetary cuts and reallocations that have forced closure of some programs. Kinda surprised it wasn't noted on the main page actually 172.69.68.143 20:39, 29 May 2019 (UTC)

    Of course the shadowy forces that control the world want to believe ... or at least want YOU to believe in UFO. The idea is simple: 1) make you believe in UFO 2) blame UFO for problems they caused. -- Hkmaly (talk) 02:46, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

    How does the title text makes it "clear" in any way that this is a reference to Trump policy? 162.158.154.127 07:29, 30 May 2019 (UTC)

    Clear only after reading it :-) (And even then it would make no sense for the Trump administration to suppress facts. Since when do facts still play a role in today's politics? ;-)
    Of course it is clear, especially knowing about Randall's political inclination, and I am pretty disappointed to see these parts of the explanation removed, however I don't want to be part of the edit war myself. --141.101.104.5 12:05, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
    I would add that if someone thinks it's not about Trump policy, then at least replace it with something else. As it stands right now, there's no mention of the title text at all! Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 12:16, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
    Right; it is totally not about Trump's policy, but about... ah, I dunno, let's just omit it. -.- --141.101.105.222 12:58, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
    My read on this was that it was a reference to the Roswell UFO Incident, where the US Government actually did try to hide the purpose of a Project Mogul nuclear test detection balloon by claiming that it was a conventional temperature-measuring weather balloon. This also lines up with Scully's "some kind of balloon" comment in the main strip.--172.68.54.46 18:39, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
    Ah whatever, edit war, here I come. :D --141.101.105.222 13:07, 30 May 2019 (UTC)
    My two cents: on it's own, I would just understand the title text as a reference to the age-old concept of governments, especially American, covering things up, hiding them from the public. It's such a cliche that said X-Files was largely based on the idea. However, factoring in Randall's very vocal support of Hillary and very vocal opposition of Trump, I find this becomes a very clear shot at Trump's administration. :) NiceGuy1 (talk) 03:28, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

    Anyone else bumped by the fact that UFO is an acronym, therefore all caps, yet the title of this comic is "Ufo"? No? Just me? Okay then. NiceGuy1 (talk) 03:22, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

    Probably time that it loses the ALL CAPS. Do you write RADAR or LASER? No? Same thing exactly.

    Somebody didn't take the time to read the eyewitness testimonies...For Shame! "iLB" (talk) 23:33, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

    Looks like Randall was right on the money. 162.158.154.151 04:21, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
          comment.png  Add comment
    Retrieved from "https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=496:_Secretary:_Part_3&oldid=267402"