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| Slab Graveyard |
 Title text: It's ok if you want to close close your eyes for the slab graveyard, so you can still have fun riding the mantle plume back up afterward! |
Explanation
A popular Halloween activity is visiting cemeteries and telling ghost stories.
However, "graveyard" is also often used figuratively to refer to a place where obsolete or unused objects are kept; for instance, a junkyard might be called an "automobile graveyard" because junked cars end up there. In the comic, Beret Guy refers to one of the terms used for the area where portions of the Earth's crust end up after subduction. Him being Beret Guy, he confuses it for a real graveyard, conflating these two kinds of cemeteries, and says that he and his friends are going to go there on Halloween. But tectonic processes are really slow, so this will take millions of years if they just ride the slab down. However, Beret Guy is fine with this, reasoning it would mean more time to tell ghost stories.
There are further difficulties with this, as the bottom of the mantle is far too hot for humans to withstand. Beret Guy being him, he would likely be fine with this, though Cueball and the friends going with Beret Guy would have more of a problem - Unless said friends also have Beret Guy's heat abilities.
The title text has more of Beret Guy trying to persuade Cueball to see the graveyard. Believing Cueball is just scared, he encourages him by saying they will ride a mantle plume back to the surface. This falls in with a typical trait of his, to naively go about not realising that the centre of the earth is far too hot for human survival, similarly with the mantle plumes.
Transcript
- [Cueball is on the left, facing Beret Guy on the right.]
- Cueball: Any plans for Halloween?
- Beret Guy: Me and my friends are gonna check out a slab graveyard!
- [Diagram of a portion of the Earth at the bottom, showing a subduction zone with portions of the crust falling down into the mantle. There are clouds above the surface. Cueball and Beret Guy are not shown; their voices come from outside the panel.]
- Cueball: What's that?
- Beret Guy: When dense crust subducts, geologists think it might pile up at the bottom of the mantle.
- [Cueball and Beret Guy are shown again. Beret Guy has his arms spread.]
- Beret Guy: We're going to hide in the crust and ride it down to see.
- Beret Guy: Wanna come?
- Beret Guy: It's gonna be spooky!
- [Cueball and Beret Guy are shown again.]
- Cueball: Won't that take millions of years?
- Beret Guy: Lots of time for ghost stories!
- Cueball: I think I'm good.
- Beret Guy: Too spooky? I understand.
Trivia
There is a typo in the title text: the word "close" is repeated twice.
This Week's Explanation for Improvement
As part of the Explanation Improvement Project, each week the community selects one older, stagnant, or otherwise neglected explanation to expand and polish together. This week's pick is comic 1066: Laundry, you can help us by editing its explanation!
To get involved with the project, you can also nominate an explanation that you think should be improved, or vote on current nominations!
| Laundry |
 Title text: During the second semester, the path is briefly routed through the dishwasher. |
Explanation
|
Welcome to This Week's Explanation for Improvement! Anyone is encouraged to help explain comic 1066: Laundry; click here to get started! If you are new to wiki editing, you can read our editing FAQ for guidance. Here are some suggestions for improving this explanation: .svg){kind=icon} We could go way deeper into washing clothes and adjacent habits
.svg){kind=icon} Improve the #Transcript by describing the visual aspect of the comic.
.svg){kind=icon} Improve the explanations of each stage
.svg){kind=icon} Copyedit the methods "Not represented in the comic" (below the table)
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In the United States of America, college (or university) is the usual form of education following secondary education (e.g. high school). College life typically offers the student much more freedom in their habits, especially if they live in a dormitory. For many college students, this represents the first time they have had to do their own laundry, or at least the first time a parent isn't there to nag them into doing it properly. This comic is about how the laundry habits of such independent college students degrade over the course of time. In each panel, circles represent certain locations for clothes, while directed paths connect the locations, representing the movement of clothes. As such, each panel is a kind of graph. The black paths appear to represent the regular or usual movement of clothes, while the grey paths show the change from the previous graph and may represent the occasional/less frequent movement of (some) clothes.
| Time | Graph | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| First week of semester | A black circular path connecting body, hamper, washer & dryer, folding area, dresser & closet, back to body. The floor is not part of the path. | In the first week, the student undertakes a proper laundry routine, using the clothes, putting them in a hamper, washing and drying them, folding them in a designated folding area, and then putting them in the dresser. |
| Second week | A grey path has been added, connecting washer & dryer via dresser & closet to body. The main black path now connects body, hamper, and washer & dryer, back to body. | By the second week, due to increasing laziness or workload, they have largely abandoned folding their clothes and shove them straight in the dresser & closet. This is a common practice to save time, though it will make the clothes take up more space and may leave them wrinkled. |
| Third week | The grey path connects washer & dryer via dresser & closet to body. The main black path connects body, hamper, and washer & dryer in a loop. | By the third week, they no longer bother with hanging them in the closet, and simply leave clean clothes on the floor before they are worn. This is not good practice, as clothes left on the floor are very likely to get dirty before they are even worn, as well as taking up floor space. Another common practice is to leave clean clothes on a table or chair, or in the container used to transfer them from the laundry to the student's room. |
| Second month | The grey path now connects body via hamper to washer & dryer. The main black path connects body and washer & dryer in a loop, with the floor also part of the return path from washer & dryer to body. | After the first month, dirty clothes are no longer stored in a laundry hamper and are just dumped on the floor. This takes up floor space, makes the clothes dirtier, and may create an unpleasant stench in the room. In addition, if both dirty and clean clothing is stored the same way, then it would be possible to confuse which clothing is clean. |
| End of first semester | The black path connects body to itself via the floor. The grey path connects body and washer & dryer in a loop. | By the end of the semester, clothes are not washed at all — instead rotating between the floor and the student's body. This may stain or otherwise ruin the clothes over time, typically gives the student a bad odour, and may be a health hazard: however, it cuts out all the effort of laundering clothes. |
| Second semester | Title text | The title text seems to indicate that the student has a brainwave during the start of the second semester to wash their clothes in the dishwasher along with the dishes, presumably as a timesaver. The experiment was brief because dishwashers aren't actually any good at washing clothes: they wouldn't move the clothes about in order to effectively free the dirt. Unsubstantiated life hacks do recommend putting certain pieces of clothing (baseball caps in particular) in the dishwasher. |
An unmentioned possibility is that, when the student can't be bothered, they can simply continue to wear the same pair of clothes. This would decrease the work to zero, but would increase odor problems and be a detriment to personal hygiene. Another work-eliminating trend not mentioned is saving dirty laundry until visiting parents; however, this runs the risk of either being forced to wash all the garments at the parents' residence or getting a lecture.
Transcript
- College Laundry Habits
- [Panel labeled "First Week". 5 ovals arranged in a rough circle, with a clockwise path connecting them: "Dresser & Closet", "On Body", "Hamper", "Washer & Dryer", "Folding Area" (and back to the first). The area outside the ovals is labeled "Floor."]
- [Panel labeled "Second Week". The path has been modified so that it does not go through "Folding Area" - only through the other 4 ovals.]
- [Panel labeled "Third Week". The path has been modified so that it does not go through "Dresser & Closet". Only "On Body", "Hamper", and "Washer & Dryer" remain.]
- [Panel labeled "Second Month". The path no longer passes through "Hamper" - only "On Body" and "Washer & Dryer".]
- [Panel labeled "End of Semester". The path no longer goes to "Washer & Dryer", instead just looping back around from "On Body" to "On Body" again after passing through the "Floor."]
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