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| House Majority |
 Title text: For the first time in history, it will be possible for a Democratic Senator from Kansas to see a programmable automatic digital computer. |
Explanation
This comic was posted the day after the 2026 midterm elections in the United States. This election is notable for one of the largest flips in control of Congress in modern history: before the election Republicans had a narrow 218 to 214 majority over Democrats in the House of Representatives; at the time of this post, Democrats have won 253 seats compared to 157 for Republicans, with 25 races still waiting to be called. Based on polling, it's expected that the Democratic party will win about 260 seats, giving them a majority of about 85 seats. In addition, the Democrats also regained control of the Senate, and won many gubernatorial races.
Megan's comment that "this is the first time in history that a news website has shown a majority that big" refers to the fact that the last time any party won at least 260 seats in the House was in the time of the internet before national news websites existed. While the internet as a whole was around for a decade or two, web-pages did not yet exist. The last time any party held more than 260 in the House was in the session starting in 1991, when Democrats controlled 267 seats; there were a few small newspaper websites starting in 1993, but the New York Times didn't launch their website until 1996. This means that there were no websites showing election result projections in 1990.
There were 18 prior occurrences of a House majority that was as big or bigger than 260 seats (from as early as 1913 until the aforementioned 1991 session; the all-time biggest being in 1935, with 334 seats under Democratic control). All of those predated the world wide web era, and a number of them even before even the internet.
This may also be a commentary on the way that the coverage of the elections looks for any 'first' that they can find, such as the first Latina governor of Texas, the first openly gay man in the US Senate, first female black governor, first female Native Americans to be governor and senator, first Muslim senator and potentially the first black Speaker of the House. This tendency was also noted in 1122: Electoral Precedent, and its updated follow-up comic 2383: Electoral Precedent 2020.
The joke is that the way Megan has worded her statement in a way that makes this major political event seem more dramatic and historical than it is (even though it is already a considerably historical and dramatic event) by putting it in the perspective of "the first time in history that a news website has shown a majority this big". The title text (read last paragraph) takes this a step further by pointing out that this is the first time a Democratic Senator from Kansas will see a modern computer. The last time Kansas voted for a Democrat in a U.S. Senate election before 2026 was in 1932, while the first digital computers only came about a few years later. Putting these two facts next to each other puts into perspective the true significance of the 2026 blue tsunami.
This election also saw a surprising number of long-held Republican Senate seats won by Democrats (seven seats have been confirmed flipped, with one or two more likely). The title text notes that it is the first time a Democratic Senator from Kansas could have seen a computer, since the last such person was George McGill, whose term ended in 1939. This was about two years before the completion of the Zuse Z3, considered by some to be the world's first working programmable, fully-automatic, electromechanical, digital computer, slightly predating the Colossus computer ("the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer") and ENIAC ("the first programmable, electronic, general-purpose digital computer"), among other possible candidates for the exact qualification stipulated by the title text.
Transcript
- [Cueball is seated in front of a desk. There's a laptop on the desk, and he's pointing to the screen. Megan is standing behind him.]
- Cueball: It says here they're on track to win about 260 House seats.
- Megan: You know, this is the first time in history that a news website has shown a majority that big.
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 301: Limerick, 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!
| Limerick |
 Title text: Fun game: try to post a YouTube comment so stupid that people realize you must be joking. (Hint: this is impossible) |
Explanation
|
Welcome to This Week's Explanation for Improvement! Anyone is encouraged to help explain comic 301: Limerick; 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} Explain the title text about idiotic YouTube comments. This was also covered in comic 202: YouTube.
.svg){kind=icon} Why do the upvoted sarcastic comments make Cueball spiteful?
.svg){kind=icon} This comic's number (#301) is a reference to YouTube views getting stuck at 301. Learn what caused this bug and help explain it!
.svg){kind=icon} Make the explanation of a limerick more understandable.
.svg){kind=icon} The reference to Poe's law is interesting, expand on it.
.svg){kind=icon} Slashdot is no longer relevant after almost 20 years. Explain what it was and its eventual downfall (see Slashdot on Wikipedia)
|
A limerick is a well-known type of poem that is usually humorous or bawdy. A limerick is five lines long and has the rhyme scheme AABBA; the first, second, and fifth lines share one rhyme, while the third and fourth lines share another rhyme. The third and fourth lines are also usually shorter. Limericks, like the one written in this comic, primarily feature amphibrachic (◡–◡) trimeters, but they can also include anapestic trimeters (◡◡–), as well. Almost anyone can instantly recognize a limerick after hearing the first line.[citation needed]
In poetry, a foot is a pattern unit of stressed (–) and unstressed (◡) syllables in a line. A meter measures the amount of feet per line. In this case, an 'anapestic trimeter' is a line of three anapests, where an 'anapest' is a foot that consists of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable.
Slashdot is one of the oldest forum and social news websites focused on science and technology. It was launched in 1997 and is still active to this day, although with much deterioration and little activity. The decline of Slashdot may have been caused by the lack of newer updates, and the rise of newer competitors, like Reddit and Hacker News.
In Slashdot, each article submitted by a user has a threaded comments section where other users can discuss the article. On many comments sections of forum websites, the user base can vote comments using an upvote/downvote system, however in Slashdot, only moderators have this privilege. Slashdot moderators are drawn from the pool of registered users based on their good amount of karma. They are also given 'moderation points', where each point is spent on voting a comment. All users have at least one chance to be a moderator, but they have a limited time to be one, with a limit of three days.
A moderator can also choose to cast a predefined descriptor for their upvote/downvote towards a comment. For example, instead of a simple +1, a comment may be voted "+1 (Funny)". Similarly, instead of -1, a comment may be voted "-1 (Off-topic)". Comments have a maximum positive score of five; a comment voted "+5 (Insightful)" means it was upvoted at least five times and has a plurality of 'Insightful' votes.
Cueball's limerick states that he does not like Slashdot any more because his sarcastic comments are being treated as insightful by its moderators. The line "the iconoclastic / keep modding to plus five (Insightful)" state that the moderators strongly oppose the views of Cueball, but since they misinterpret his sarcasm as sincere, they translate his criticisms as insightful opinions that reinforce their own, which would warrant an upvote. This would frustrate Cueball if his goal was to mock the behavior of Slashdotters.
This is an example of Poe's law, which is an Internet adage that states that a sarcastic expression without clarification can be mistaken by readers as sincere. This can be especially true if the expression mocks extreme beliefs and the readers who mistake it share those same beliefs; you can't mock the extremists without looking like an extremist yourself.
A scansion for this poem (in the macron and breve notation) is as follows:
| Line (w/ highlighted stress) | Scansion | Term |
|---|---|---|
| I used to find Slashdot delightful | ◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡ | amphibrachic trimeter |
| but my feelings of late are more spiteful; | ◡◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡ | amphibrachic trimeter with a "pickup" (or brachycatalectic amphibrachic tetrameter scanning as ◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡) |
| my comments sarcastic | ◡–◡ ◡–◡ | amphibrachic dimeter |
| the iconoclastic | ◡–◡ ◡–◡ | amphibrachic dimeter |
| keep modding to plus five (Insightful) | ◡–◡ ◡–◡ ◡–◡ | amphibrachic trimeter |
The title text refers to the notoriously awful comments on YouTube, many of which are so idiotic that they're interpreted as jokes.
301, the number of this comic, is also a number often associated with YouTube. At the time this comic was published, view counts on YouTube videos would often freeze at 301, as YouTube would switch between view-counting algorithms when the number of views exceeded 300. Therefore, the comic number itself may be a reference to the title text.
Transcript
- [Cueball sits at a computer, typing.]
- Cueball (typing): I used to find Slashdot delightful,
- Cueball (typing): but my feelings of late are more spiteful;
- Cueball (typing): my comments sarcastic
- Cueball (typing): the iconoclastic
- Cueball (typing): keep modding to plus five (Insightful).
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