Talk:3004: Wells

We definitely need some funny explanation for wells and boreholes. Come on, people, you know the drill! 172.70.85.139 14:50, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

insert laugh track here P?sych??otic?pot??at???o (talk) 14:59, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Who're you calling a borehole? Barmar (talk) 15:15, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

plot convenience 💔 Caliban (talk) 17:56, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Fortunately there aren't many Hg wells. 162.158.134.243 18:05, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The only ones that existed are gone now, although they did survive an alien attack. P?sych??otic?pot??at???o (talk) 01:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

FYI: the "Random" button currently seems to be broken. 162.158.154.244 18:08, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Aaaaaaaaaand it's back again. huh. 162.158.159.5 18:15, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The similarity with C&H is a bit superficial. Baby humans instinctively drink from their mother's breast, baby calves go to cow udders, and the similarity between the two fluids is pretty obvious. So it's not as random as drinking whatever clear liquid you find underground. Barmar (talk) 19:15, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

While your logic does make sense on the surface, once you actally aply it.... the similarity between animals mating and humans is pretty obvious.... We stop drinking milk from our mothers as a child and drinking it again is considered very strange, so it would be even more strange to start drinking a different "mothers" milk. -- Apollo11 (talk) 22:39, 28 October 2024 (UTC)) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

It's the same with the joke about eggs, if predators eat them, it's not far-fetched to think we might be able to as well 141.101.98.104

Seriously though, how did people discover wells? Some internet says from animals that dig for water, but it's still impressive 141.101.98.104

I imagine it started with an effort to "improve" on a natural spring, perhaps in desperation after the surface flow of one stopped. But that's conjecture. The Wikipedia article provides much information on what happened next. But not all clear liquids that come out of a well are potable (brines, for example). And it's fun, sort of, to conjecture what would have happened if 19th-century US rigs, drilling for oil, had hit methane instead.108.162.245.66 23:17, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Reminds me of the first discovery of a "helium well". Traditionally, to mark the discovery of a gas-well you would chuck a burning bale of straw into the (closable) outlet to get a demonstrative flame. Then they found one where the bale was extinguished, instead of the gas lit. Eventually they realised that there was helium in it (though incidental amounts, compared to the majority nitrogen that actually rendered the actual methane a slightly-below-combustable proportion), and it attained a new usefulness after the disappointment of not being the usually lucrative gas-strike they originally thought it was. 172.71.26.55 00:13, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe we need a category for "stuff that seems like it should not work"? I can recall 2540: TTSLTSWBD, 2775: Siphon, 2115: Plutonium. Anything else? 172.70.86.22 10:21, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

I agree, theres been a few comics with simaliar punchlines, "the siphon glitch" for example Apollo11 (talk) 15:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

The current explanation seems to have an awful lot of preamble on things that aren't about the comic before you get to the stuff that is about it (in the third paragraph. Feels like that could be significantly cut down, if not simply removed/moved to trivia.172.70.162.2 16:50, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Could be, but the original was basically "to get water, you dig a well (unless there's a river)". When the truth is that it's more complicated than that, and wells sort of fill in a gap in supply when natural water is unavailable or inappropriate (see also qanats, etc, which I would have mentioned myself).

I wouldn't know what to cut out from what's there without ignoring a significant bit of relevant explanation. It'd be a lot of little bits of streamlining, but some people much prefer just deleting chunks of paragraph and not reading what's left to make sure it still makes narrative sense. Yes, a completer history could by given in Trivia, but then I think it'd get even longer. 172.71.26.55 17:16, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Anyone noticed how the comic's frame appears thinner than usual on the top and the sides? 172.69.22.243 17:12, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Saying that something shouldn't be "surprising" because of the "complex systems" underlying it seems downright contradictory. It's surprising exactly because it is complex. 172.70.46.108 08:45, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I mean, if the underlying mechaninism were simple, it would still be surprising. I think it should be made more clear that the phenomena itself is surprising, not the systems behind the phenomena.172.71.166.19 15:18, 30 October 2024 (UTC)