Talk:2161: An Apple a Day

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
Revision as of 19:58, 11 June 2019 by 162.158.107.25 (talk) (DEET insensitive mosquitos)
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I get that I shouldn't, but after the first sentence in the second paragrsph, I really wanted to say: "For example, if an opponent controls a thief of sanity and you have a sharktocrab, you may adapt the sharktocrab to tap down the thief." (This is a Magic: The Gathering reference.) 172.68.142.197 18:05, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

The title text contains a subtle pun with Gran-negative, where the bacterial term is Gram-negative, but instead is referring to Granny-Smith apples - hence, gran-negative. Ianrbibtitlht (talk) 18:06, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

And this is why I come to explainxkcd even when I think I have understood the comic! Thanks!172.69.55.178 18:22, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

I felt parts of the explanation were worded a bit clunkily. I'm not strongly attached to my edit, so if others disagree, feel free to revert ;-) -- //gir.st/ (talk) 19:10, 10 June 2019 (U

I feel I must take issue with the statement in the explanation that Granny Smith Apples are 'sour' and agree with the title text that they are 'tart' or possibly 'sharp'. RIIW - Ponder it (talk) 21:21, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

I've found that one apple a day will keep the doctor away, providing you can throw it hard enough and accurately enough at him. RAGBRAIvet (talk) 01:41, 11 June 2019 (UTC). Or her...

Antibiotics weren't my first thought on reading this comic, but rather mosquitoes, which have an amazing tendency to overcome everything we throw at them. There was an article a day or two ago about introducing spider venom into fungus to try a new approach against them. I'm sure there are other examples that occur to others, as resistance increase is a common enough concept. Like many xkcd, it works on multiple levels. Daemonik (talk) 08:58, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

In looking for that, I found interesting item about how some mosquitos are insensitive to DEET (added to explanation). Thanks for the pointer. 162.158.107.25 19:58, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

We could put our apples on a messaging site that posts to an uncensorable blockchain like https://memo.sv/ so that everybody can reuse others on doctors that haven't seen them yet. What do you think? I was also thinking if a strong AI were developed, it could build new apples as needed. Maybe an AI could be made rapidly by having it learn to predict its own behavior from its code. But you wouldn't want it to accidentally take over the world, so it could have a primary task of being interviewed in an empathic way, answering for example, "are you happy with how fulfilled your need to nurture and empower life is?" Answering this question in depth might stimulate it to understand these concepts, and the response would give the interviewer lots of avenues to understand and verify it further. By the way, there's a 30-page booklet on a technique used to resolve wars rapidly here. 172.69.68.143 02:08, 11 June 2019 (UTC)

J Milstein (talk) 13:01, 11 June 2019 (UTC) Apples keeping doctors away seems analogous to garlic keeping vampires away J Milstein (talk) 13:01, 11 June 2019 (UTC)