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| House Inputs and Outputs |
 Title text: People think power over ethernet is so great, and yet when I try to do water over ethernet everyone yells at me. |
Explanation
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This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a possible reference to 1037: Umwelt in panel 16 - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. |
This is another comic in a series depicting confusion matrices, similar to 2813: What To Do, 2420: Appliances, and 1890: What to Bring. It is arranged as a table of five columns of conduits to and from a house, by five rows of resources and people, each of which typically enter, exit or both enter and exit the house via at least one of the identified conduits. The table cells have a green background for compatible methods of transit; a red tint is used for the more problematic pairings. Each panel can be read as "[row label] [entering and/or exiting] the house via the [column label]", for example, "Fresh water entering the house via the well".
| Well | Garage | Power lines | Front door | Septic tank | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fresh water (Input) | The purpose of a well is usually to supply fresh water into the home, primarily for drinking or washing. It may be unnecessary in many places if a reliable water supply network is available. | Long gone are the days of having to clean up after your primary mode of transportation, for most people. A source of water may be useful to clean a vehicle itself, although this would perhaps be more commonly done outside. | Power lines conduct electricity, not water. The two functions are inherently dangerous if carelessly combined. Water can be used to cool high-energy lines, such as fast battery charger cables[1] and cables supplying electric arc furnaces, but not overhead residential power lines. | Many people prefer to control the amount of water they get, and the water may damage things inside the house. | Pumping water into a septic tank could cause it to back up, resulting in the unpleasant contents being forced back in to the house. Also, if this were the only supply of water, most people would prefer anything they drink not to contain (or go through pipes that have contained) sewage. |
| Cars (Input/Output) | Most cars can't fit inside most wells. Storing them in a well is also likely to be inconvenient when you come to need to use them again. | Garages are in fact built for the storage of cars and other similarly-sized vehicles. Placing a car in one will both help protect it from the elements and make it easier to access from inside your own home. | As of yet, cars cannot be transferred through power lines and require roads to travel on. This could significantly reduce travel costs. However, the illustration here has the car actually balancing upon the strained wire, indicating a more mundane (but still not easy!) method of transit. | Most cars can’t fit through a typical front door, and are likely to cause damage if forced. | Comedian Garrison Keillor's 2008 More News from Lake Wobegon includes a story where an old septic tank is discovered to actually be a buried car.[2] |
| Electricity (Input) | Wells are not designed to safely and effectively transfer power to the devices that require it. The water would mostly just conduct the electricity into the surrounding construction. | In the United States, lightning is responsible for causing around 24,600 structure fires annually, resulting in $8 to $10 billion in losses. It is possible, though, for the house's junction box (where the main utility line terminates in order to supply the house's own wiring) to be located in or on the outside wall of the garage, so, in a sense, this may be workable. | Power lines are designed to facilitate the connection of individual homes to the broader local power network. Randall omits the fact that electricity can also be an output; e.g. houses with solar panels regularly export electricity too. | Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod to prevent lightning strike damage to structures. | As Knit Cap observes, septic tanks are not a source of electric power. |
| People (Input/Output) | Inserting people into wells can be very dangerous.[citation needed] The comic depicts a view from inside a well (as a dark scene, it is drawn red-on-black). The motif resembles poster art for the 2002 horror movie remake The Ring, which involves a girl left to die in a well who becomes a vengeful ghost (see also 396: The Ring). | A person can enter and exit their home through a garage door, provided the garage has an internal door to the rest of the home. Not the best way to welcome unfamiliar guests though. | Overhead power lines to homes are generally not strong enough to climb, and attempting to do so incurs a very serious risk of electrocution. | The front door of a home is designed for entry and exit of humans and similarly sized items. | In general, people find crawling through waste unpleasant. Also, the septic tank is not connected to the street. |
| Sewage (Output) | Sewage in drinking water can cause disease. It is/was the main cause for most cholera epidemics. | Sewage spills are smelly, disgusting and hard to clean. They can destroy carpets, floors, drywall and property value. | A septic tank is an underground chamber through which wastewater flows for basic sewage treatment. | ||
The title text references power over ethernet (PoE), first implemented in the early 2000s, to provide electric power along with data on twisted-pair Ethernet cabling. A welcome development, it removed the need for many separate power supplies. While networked water delivery ("running water") is also a welcome development, doing so over ethernet cables would be extremely problematic, risking the several top points of failure, while providing limited amounts of water. However, again, electric vehicle fast charging cables and arc furnace power inputs are sometimes water-cooled.
Transcript
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This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks. |
- [A 5x5 grid of squares. The columns are labeled: Well, Garage, Power lines, Front door, Septic tank. Each row's label has an arrow and a basic house icon next to it. The rows are: Fresh water (horizontal arrow towards house), Cars (two-directional horizontal arrow and house), Electricity (horizontal arrow into house), People (two-directional horizontal arrow and house), Sewage (vertical arrow out of bottom of house).]
- Well, Fresh water: [green]
- [A many-featured house front and cross-sectional subsurface infrastructure, with various aspects that recur throughout most further grid-squares in one or other form. This particular one is distinguished by an arrow indicating movement up through a pipe leading inwards from an adjacent external borehole]
- Voice from house: Mmm! Refreshing!
- Garage, Fresh water: [red]
- [An obliquely off-frontal view of the house, featuring a set of Cueball-like figures directing a hosepipe's stream of water into the open garage-port doorway]
- Fwoosh
- Power lines, Fresh water: [red]
- [A different oblique angle concentrated upon the edge of the house upon which the overhead powerlines connect to, from a pole with transformer box and other wire coming from off-frame; the house wire appears to be dripping liquid]
- Front door, Fresh water: [red]
- [Normal frontal view of the house, featuring the hosepipe cueballs directing water into the front door]
- Voice from house: Stop it!
- Fwoosh!
- Septic tank, Fresh water: [red]
- [Normal frontal view; The subsurface septic tank feature has an arrow leading up from it through the diagonal pipe that connects to the house itself]
- Voice from house: Eww.
- Well, Cars: [red]
- [A view only of a ground pipe/borehole-head; A car seemingly upended and balanced atop on a front corner, being manhandled by Cueball and Megan figures]
- Garage, Cars: [green]
- [Normal frontal view; Garage door open, car seen parked inside]
- Power lines, Cars: [red]
- [Two power-line poles, the rightmost with transformer, having cables from off-left, between the poles and off-right; Two cueballs stand on the ground below, looking at a car heavily balanced mid-way along the central stretch of wire]
- Front door, Cars: [red]
- [Frontal view of house; Front doorway has surrounding damage and a car tightly wedged into it with two figures (Beret Guy and a Cueball) visible through the windows]
- Beret Guy, from car: Do you think I scratched the paint?
- Septic tank, Cars: [red]
- [Frontal view of the house; Within the underground sceptic tank, displacing some of the shallow dark liquid, is a car with two occupants]
- Well, Electricity: [red]
- [Borehole pipe-head; Cueball holds a laptop with a power lead trailing down into the pipe]
- Cueball's laptop: ⚠Low battery
- Garage, Electricity: [red]
- [Frontal view of house, with lightning strike explosively hitting the area of the garage door]
- BOOM
- Power lines, Electricity: [green]
- [Frontal view of house, arrow leading down the power-cable and several 'electricity' symbols scattered around]
- Front door, Electricity: [red]
- [Frontal view of house, with lightning strike explosively hitting the area of the front door]
- BOOM
- Septic tank, Electricity: [red]
- [Toilet and cistern, seat raised, with Knit Cap looking at a computer system, set up nearby on the floor, with a power lead draped into the toilet-bowl and (sic) a single 'electricity' symbol indicating power flow]
- Knit Cap: Why won't my console turn on?
- Well, People: [red (though overwhelmingly black)]
- [A mostly black tile with a rough circular outline of sketchy red lines]
- Garage, People: [green]
- [Frontal view of house; A Cueball exits the open (darkened) garage doorway, waving]
- Cueball: Bye!
- Power lines, People: [red]
- [Oblique side view of house; A Cueball is climbing up the power-line towards the top of the pole]
- Cueball: Bye!
- Front door, People: [green]
- [Frontal view of house; A cueball exits the open front doorway, waving]
- Cueball: Bye!
- Septic tank, People: [red]
- [Frontal view of house; A Cueball crawls into the elbow-deep dark liquid of the subsurface septic tank, emerging from the house-draining pipes]
- Cueball: Bye!
- Well, Sewage: [red]
- [Frontal view of house; Speech-line emerges from the house]
- Voice from house: Why do I keep getting sick???
- Garage, Sewage: [red]
- [Frontal view of house; Garage door is open, revealing Cueball knee-deep in dark liquid]
- Cueball: Oh no.
- Power lines, Sewage: [red]
- [Oblique side view of house; Wide pipe-end emerges from the roof, disgorging a stream of dark liquid out onto the rising power-cable]
- Cueball: Eww.
- Front door, Sewage: [red]
- [Frontal view of house; Front door is open, revealing Cueball knee-deep in dark liquid]
- Cueball: Oh no.
- Septic tank, Sewage: [green]
- [Frontal view of house; Dark liquid drains down drain-pipes into sceptic tank, with an arrow indicating the direction of flow]
- Flush
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