2669: Things You Should Not Do

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 00:32, 8 September 2022 by 172.70.131.44 (talk) (Transcript)
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Things You Should Not Do
Now I'm tempted to start telling people that I secretly don't actually know how to do any physics calculations, and so all the answers in What If are based on me actually trying to do the thing and then reporting what happened, but phrased as if it's hypothetical.
Title text: Now I'm tempted to start telling people that I secretly don't actually know how to do any physics calculations, and so all the answers in What If are based on me actually trying to do the thing and then reporting what happened, but phrased as if it's hypothetical.

Explanation

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This comic references various questions submitted to the what if? blog. This comic has a list of things not to do, an extension of a previous list.

Transcript

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[Caption:]
Updates to my "Things You Should Not Do" list, based on what I learned writing What If? 2
(out 9/13, xkcd.com/whatif2)
[The rest of the text appears in a box.]
Things You Should Not Do
(part 3647 of ????)
[A numbered list, the first four items in a lighter grey]
#156,812 Eat Tide pods
#156,813 Walk on stilts in a thunderstorm
#156,814 Set off fireworks at a gas station
#156,815 Feed your cat treats that are the exact shape and texture of a human hand
[A horizontal divider with the text "New!" in the middle in black. The remaining items on the list are also in black.]
#156,816 Lean over a geyser vent and try to look down into it
#156,817 Fly a hot air balloon over a firing range
#156,818 Peel away the Earth's crust
#156,819 Try to paint the Sahara Desert by hand
#156,820 Remove someone's bones without asking
#156,821 Spend 100% of your governments budget on mobile game in-app purchases
#156,822 Fill a lava lamp with actual lava
#156,823 Drink the blood of someone with a viral hemorraghic fever
#156,824 Eat meat from rabid animals
#156,825 Perform your own laser eye surgery
#156,826 Tell California poultry regulators that your farm is selling Pokemon eggs
#156,827 Funnel the entire flow of Niagara Falls into the open window of a physics lab
#156,828 Pump ammonia into your abdomen
#156,829 Suspend yourself inside a 10-meter ball of sunscreen and fall into the sun


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Discussion

Seems like this could become a series. 172.68.210.31 20:42, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

Maybe. But I don't think it will be.
What I was thinking was that there are clearly, on average, around 43 items per 'page', up to this point. This page shows only 19 items (both pre-New and New, or 20 if the "New" line counts as one, don't know if multilines reduce the number of numbered items ler page), so either it's been[citation needed] manually split/new-paged (for changing aesthetics) or else it is highly varying according to the font-height/multiline-wrappings in use beforehand. Or perhaps we should expect around the same number of 'newer New' items to complete this page before the next page number is automatically started to be populated. 172.70.86.8 20:53, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

#156,819 looks like a reference to the Phineas and Ferb title sequence, and the episode Oil on Candace and probably more relevant here, What If 84. 108.162.210.233 21:49, 7 September 2022 (UTC)

It's true that it could be a reference, but I think I recognized most of the topics on the list as being mentioned in some what-if article from the archives--in the case of the "painting" one, https://what-if.xkcd.com/84/. Dextrous Fred (talk) 22:13, 7 September 2022 (UTC)
I think that given that he learned about this doing his new book that has not been released yet most of the new items would first be clear when we read the book, and hence all references to old what if seems moot to me... In my opinion it seems that those writing the current explanation failed to read this sentence: Updates to my "Things You Should Not Do" list, based on what I learned writing What If? 2!!! Taking this into acount nothing on the new list should be from the old what if blog/book. --Kynde (talk) 13:02, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
Many articles (roughly half) in the blog were published after the first book was written, so those references are fair game to be included in the new book, and thus valid references as things he learned in the interim. Take a look at the archive thumbnails for the articles in 2014. Dextrous Fred (talk) 22:52, 12 September 2022 (UTC)
Do you guys realize that in What If 2, small "Things You Should Not Do" charts appear throughout the book, and this is just a compilation of them? Trogdor147 (talk) 18:49, 19 July 2023 (UTC)
I think #156,819 is confusing because it's been done. -- Ken g6 (talk) 17:01, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
He meant using the Sahara as a canvas, covering the entire desert with paint. Trogdor147 (talk) 18:49, 19 July 2023 (UTC)


Added a transcript, hopefully it isn't too terrible. (also first explainxkcd edit!) Merrybot (talk) 21:52, 7 September 2022 (UTC)


Any indication what the purpose of the misspelling of hemorrhagic as *hemorraghic might be? XKCD is usually typo-free, which makes this look deliberate – but why? 172.71.94.3 00:29, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

I assume just a typo by Randall Munroe. 172.70.214.79 02:11, 8 September 2022 (UTC)
"XKCD is usually typo-free" Oh, they do happen every now and then but usually get corrected eventually by Randall. Nothing too special about this. Elektrizikekswerk (talk) 07:13, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

#156,823 is actually a subplot in the movie "Only Lovers left Alive" by Jim Jarmusch. 162.158.129.163 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

#156,820 sounds like a reference to TF2's "Meet the medic" which starts off with The Medic describing how he lost his medical licence by stealing a patient's skeleton 108.162.241.103 (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

The last item suggests to me that the new book has a question like "What SPF would the sunscreen need to be if you were falling into the sun?" Barmar (talk) 21:10, 8 September 2022 (UTC)

Far more than any SPF a terrestrial chemical could attain, which is essentially equivalent to positive infinity in this case, barring any new extremely unlikely physics. 172.70.214.79 04:08, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

Is the maximum jail sentence for telling California poultry regulators that your farm is selling Pokemon eggs eight or ten years? 172.70.206.213 04:06, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

We need a more practical approach to legal advice. For example, how realistically could there ever be any compensatory damages? If a government regulator ever took a claim that a farm was producing Pokemon eggs seriously, wouldn't their liability for waste, fraud, and abuse damages to the public overwhelm that of the supposed defendant? 172.70.206.163 07:26, 9 September 2022 (UTC)

I'm assuming that a Sun-sized ball of sunscreen would collapse and ignite as a star, right? 172.70.214.79 10:47, 11 September 2022 (UTC)

#156,816 was also in the news. I'm wondering if all of these up to some point have actually happened. 172.69.134.131 (talk) 02:39, 13 September 2022 (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

"Remove someone's bones without asking"

I believe this may actually be a tf2 reference. In "Meet The Medic", a short animation made by valve, the medic implies he removed someone's bones without killing them, resulting in the loss of his medical license. Link to the video I'm talking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36lSzUMBJnc&ab_channel=teamfortress