721: Flatland

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're dumb.
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Flatland
Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest.
Title text: Also, I apologize for the time I climbed down into your world and everyone freaked out about the lesbian orgy overseen by a priest.

Explanation

Ambox notice.png This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: I just added the information on unixkcd from https://vimeo.com/78912850. There are a lot of other commands available. Could somebody dissect the javascript file?
If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.
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This comic is a reference to the satirical novel Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, in which a society of flat shapes live in a 2D world. Half the book is a direct satire of Victorian society, and the other half explores the experience of discovering a new dimension, where a sphere introduces a square (named A. Square) to 3D. Cueball appears to have taken the place of this sphere, and the comic takes place after the square knows the third dimension exists.

Humans will never fully be able to grasp the concept of a four spatial dimensions (at least not in the foreseeable future), but there are ways of squashing or slicing four dimensions to create partial visualizations of 4D space. Miegakure is a 4D game that uses cross-sections of 4D space. Cueball attempted to play it, but after having his mind blown, he gained more sympathy for A. Square, who'd had similar trouble understanding 3D. A. Square accepts his apology.

The joke here is that Cueball was being silly and drew lines on A. Square to make him look like SpongeBob, which did not make the square happy. Cueball apologizes again.

The title text is a third apology for when Cueball crawled down into the second dimension. Being a stick figure, he is comprised of a circle and straight lines. In Flatland, circles are priests (Flatland's highest social level), and all women are lines; thus, to a watcher in Flatland, Cueball would look very much like a priest above many connected women, which may look like a lesbian orgy.

Unixkcd

This comic was released on March 31, 2010 and was still up on April 1st, 2010. On April Fools' Day Randall altered the website to mimic a Unix command line interface. This interface is still available on uni.xkcd.com. The terminal lists a few available commands, but there are several undocumented commands as well.

  • display [number] Shows the comic with the specified number.
  • next Shows the previous comic.
  • prev Shows the next comic. Shows the error "Time travel mode not enabled" on the last comic.
  • first Shows the first comic.
  • last Shows the last comic.
  • random Shows a random comic.
  • dir or ls Shows the content of the current directory.
  • cat (without a filename) will show You're a kitty! referencing 231: Cat Proximity.
  • cat [filename] Shows the content of the file. cat [number]/alt.txt displays the alt-text of the specified comic.
  • cheat Promotes the xkcd store.
  • cd [directory] Changes to the specified directory.
  • rm [filename] will make it seem like you deleted the file.
  • reddit [number] shows the Reddit voting bar for the specified comic (or xkcd when not number is specified).
  • irc or write Starts an IRC session to the xkcd channel on irc.foonetic.net.
  • clear clears the screen.
  • man [command] Show unhelpful information about the command (only last, help, next, cat or no command are support).
  • locate [filename] Normally used to locate a file in a directory. It will give humorous results when searching for ninja, keys, joke, problem and raptor.
  • wget [url] shows the content of the specified url.
  • unixkcd opens a new terminal window.
  • sudo [command] executes the command with root privileges.
  • sudo shutdown or sudo poweroff will shutdown the system.
  • sudo restart or sudo reboot will restart the system.
  • sudo apt-get update Refreshes the package list so the system knows which updates are available.
  • sudo apt-get upgrade On Internet Explorer and Firefox (pre-version 3) it shows a link to A Better Browser. On all other browsers it doesn't complain.
  • sudo apt-get dist-upgrade Returns "You are already running [OS].".
  • sudo apt-get moo Returns "Have you mooed today?" (Debian Easter egg).
  • make me a sandwich and sudo make me a sandwich behave like 149: Sandwich.
  • logout, exit and quit will end the terminal session.
  • help or halp says "That would be cheating!".
  • goto [any] Shows comic 292: goto and asks if you meant display instead.
  • make love Replies "I put on my robe and wizard hat.".
  • i read the source code Replies "<3".
  • pwd Replies "You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.".
  • lpr Replies "PC LOAD LETTER".
  • hello joshua Replies "How about a nice game of Global Thermonuclear War?".
  • xyzzy Replies "Nothing happens.".
  • date Replies "March 32nd".
  • hello Replies "Why hello there!".
  • who Replies "Doctor Who?".
  • xkcd Replies "Yes?".
  • su Replies "God mode activated. Remember, with great power comes great ... aw, screw it, go have fun.".
  • fuck Replies "I have a headache.".
  • whoami Replies "You are Richard Stallman.".
  • nano Replies "Seriously? Why don't you just use Notepad.exe? Or MS Paint?".
  • top Replies "It's up there --^".
  • moo Replies "moo".
  • ping Replies "There is another submarine three miles ahead, bearing 225, forty fathoms down.".
  • find Replies "What do you want to find? Kitten would be nice.".
  • hello Replies "Hello.".
  • more Replies "Oh, yes! More! More!".
  • your gay Replies "Keep your hands off it!".
  • hi Replies "Hi.".
  • echo Replies "Echo ... echo ... echo ...".
  • bash Replies "You bash your head against the wall. It's not very effective.".
  • ssh Replies "ssh, this is a library.".
  • uname Replies "Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator".
  • finger Replies "Mmmmmm...".
  • kill Replies "Terminator deployed to 1984.".
  • use the force luke Replies "I believe you mean source.".
  • use the source luke Replies "I'm not luke, you're luke!".
  • serenity Replies "You can't take the sky from me.".
  • enable time travel Replies "TARDIS error: Time Lord missing.".
  • ed Replies "You are not a diety.".
  • emacs Replies "You should really use vim.".
  • vi or vim Replies "You should really use emacs.".
  • asl or a/s/l Randomly replies "2/AMD64/Server Rack", "328/M/Transylvania", "6/M/Battle School", "48/M/The White House", "7/F/Rapture", "Exactly your age/A gender you're attracted to/Far far away.", "7,831/F/Lothlórien" or "42/M/FBI Field Office".
  • hint Randomly replies "We offer some really nice polos.", "This terminal will remain available at xkcd.com/unixkcd/</a>", "Use the source, Luke!" or "There are cheat codes.".
  • find kitten Showed the Robotfindskitten game (no longer works).
  • buy stuff same as cd store.
  • time travel displays 630: Time Travel.

There are also some other commands borrowed from a Zork like text based adventure game.

  • look describes your current surroundings.
  • go [direction] moves you in the specified direction (down is also supported).
  • light lamp lights your lamp.
  • sleep [seconds] sleeps for the specified time.

You will be killed by a grue if you didn't light your lamp when going south. Going west repeatedly will list the refrain from the song Go west.

The terminal also responds to the Konami code Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A. Entering this code repeatedly will transform all characters to upper case, add a gray text shadow, add an orange text shadow, shake the screen and add a background image of Richard Stallman from 344: 1337: Part 4.

Trivia

There is actually a SpongeBob episode featuring a flat creature that resembles a crude drawing of SpongeBob.

Transcript

[Cueball encounters a square on the ground.]
Cueball: Hey, A. Square. How's Flatland?
Square: Still flat. What's up?
Cueball: I just spent an hour playing a demo of this 4D game called Miegakure.
[A character in Miegakure jumps around the 4D landscape.]
Trying to jump from block to block in four dimensions hurt my brain.
Cueball: So I apologize for giving you a hard time when you were slow to understand 3D space. I sympathize now.
Square: It's okay.
Cueball: Also, I apologize for drawing arms, legs, and eyes on you to make you look like SpongeBob. That was out of line.
Square: Yes, it was.


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Discussion

There might be another comic in this joke with Cueball's last line "That was out of line." Where a line would be a 2-dimensional object. lcarsos (talk) 21:58, 29 October 2012 (UTC)
Point of order - a line is a ONE dimensional object (and a point is a zero dimensional object) -- mwburden 70.91.188.49 14:32, 12 December 2012 (UTC)

True, but in the book "lines" were in fact extremely flat triangles. 184.66.160.91 21:33, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Also, how has nobody noticed the "What's up?" line from the square? This could be a double - or even a triple entendre, meaning "What is the nature of 'up'?", "What is located in the upward direction?" or "What's going on?". The first two would be plays on the square's inability to sense 'up', which is the general idea of the Flatland story. 193.88.197.67 07:35, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

It might be worth noting that there isn't a playable demo yet (unfortunately :P ) 199.27.128.188 18:18, 20 February 2015 (UTC)VectorLightning (Guest)

Hidden DoodleBob reference!! -- JayRulesXKCD (talk) 8:17, 11 September 2016 (EDT)

sudo sudo is another undocumented command and says "Too much recursion" if entered. 162.158.165.154 16:05, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Should the UniXKCD section be put on its own page? It has nearly nothing to do with the actual comic. 625571b7-aa66-4f98-ac5c-92464cfb4ed8 (talk) 21:09, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes it should. I have done so. --Kynde (talk) 12:06, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

Wait, he played a demo in 2010? It's 2019 and there's still no full release, so where the hell can I find this demo? 172.68.65.90 02:09, 16 October 2019 (UTC)

This was just after PAX East (Boston, 26-28 March 2010), one of the only times Miegakure was shown publicly; Randall probably had a chance to play it then. 172.68.174.82 02:34, 12 March 2020 (UTC)