3269: Airport Meeting

Airport Meeting

|< < Prev #3269 (July 8, 2026)

Title text: Although it was a setback for physics, I'm glad the particle naming rights issue led to the cancelation of Pizza Hut's Superconducting Super Collider in the early 90s, so the Double Stuffed Extra Cheese Topping Quark ended up just being named 'top quark.'

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Explanation

This is one of 41 incomplete explanations: This page was created by a Red Bull collaboration. Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

Michelin is a company that manufacture tires for cars and heavy machinery. However, they have also created the Michelin Guide, originally a guide for motorists in France that eventually branched out into dining and travel and spread across the world.

Red Bull is a company that manufactures the eponymous energy drink. However, they have also invested heavily in motorsport events, competing as a team in NASCAR and Formula One.

THis comic jokes that this is because two employees accidentally swapped briefcases at an airport, suggesting that originally one had information that Michelin was using in support of the motorsport business and other possessed information that Red Bull was meant to identify restaurants, which better fits with the companies' existing specialties. By leaving with each other's paperwork, perhaps even remaining unaware of the confusion, both companies found themselves with departments pursuing opportunities to pivot into the technically quite different fields more closely related to the other.

The title text introduces the concept of even stranger specialization-swapping between a fast-food franchise and particle physics. There are six types of quarks: up, down, left, right, top, and bottom. This makes a joke on the top quark, claiming that it was originally named the Double Stuffed Extra Cheese Extra Topping quark before being shortened to top quark.

Transcript

This is one of 31 incomplete transcripts: Don't remove this notice too soon. If you can fix this issue, edit the page!

[Cueball and Ponytail are standing together and talking to each other. Cueball holds a black briefcase, while Ponytail has a grey briefcase next to her.]

Cueball: I do restaurant analysis for a beverage company.

Ponytail: Neat! I work in the automotive industry, developing parts for specialized vehicles.

[Same as first panel, but Cueball has put down his briefcase next to Ponytail's and pulled out his boarding card]

Cueball: Oh, my flight is boarding. It was nice to meet you!

Ponytail: You too!

[Ponytail and Cueball walk off in opposite directions, carrying each other's original briefcase]

Header: Years Later:

[A book with a star on it that reads:]

Michelin Tire Company

Star Restaurant Guide

[A fancy sports car, facing to the right. On the body of the car, it says:]

Red Bull Supercar

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Discussion

Since there's no explanation text yet, the joke is that they left with the wrong suitcases. :) SevenTheGamingKitty (talk) 00:52, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Why can i not make first comment on last comic... also... what happened to the website??? 216.25.182.141 02:48, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

The site was having problems for several days. It wasn't picking up the new comics, and we couldn't login. See the box at the top about some community members working on a replacement site, since the original maintainer isn't interested any more. Barmar (talk) 02:56, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Ah, so that's why the site felt so unstable recently. SevenTheGamingKitty (talk) 03:31, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Midwest America has been a bit unstable in terms of Internet since last Friday (Jul 3rd), brought on by a particularly bad storm. My home internet, usually pretty stable, has been out for a couple hours every day since the power came back on. Microsoft Azure has also had some issues recently. This may have either caused or exacerbated the recent site instability to a point where everyone noticed it this week. Not to say that the original maintainers lack of maintenance didn't contribute, but I don't think it was the whole story. (Dartania) 2601:40D:4283:28E0:2587:5B61:A9FE:1A87 15:52, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

I didn't realise this was a sinking ship. Very sad. Hopefully someone is able to export all the explanations at least so that they can be ported over to a new site. And who is paying for the servers if the admins have all vanished? Alcatraz ii (talk) 03:46, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Not really a sinking ship, though might have been lacking the steersman necessary to carefully weave it around any inconveniently appearing icebergs (which could finally sink it; and looked like it had, until the reprieve just now).

Multiple exports seem to have been made. And the absolute worst case for the recent problems was always likely to have been just a site frozen in aspic without further modification (at least until the server crashes, or stops being paid for, maybe due to entirely other reasons).

In fact, I think I might blame several 'full site exports' from creating some of the (not utterly blocking) instability. Perhaps not all of them, but I've seen several people announce (elsewhere) that they've decided to make "a full copy", and only one of them directly suggested that they were doing so in a 'nicer' rate-limiting manner. Which suggests that the rest may not have realised they could/should. 82.132.236.148 11:38, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

Is there any specific information about the new fork, who are creating it and is there any information on it? I'd like to help. Mouse 15:24, 10 Jul 20206 (CEST)

You can join User:42.book.addict's explainxkcd Discord server for more information about the new fork. Capycapybara (talk) 17:16, 10 July 2026 (UTC)
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