explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2600: Rejected Question Categories

2022-04-04T12:39:11Z

162.158.103.224:

{{comic
| number = 2600
| date = March 30, 2022
| title = Rejected Question Categories
| image = rejected_question_categories.png
| titletext = You can click to preorder to get a copy of What If? 2 when it comes out 9/13, assuming we all make it past the spider situation(?) on Tuesday(?).
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a HANGING ROCK OF MASS DESTRUCTION LAUNCHED AT A VOLCANO BY HOT SINGLES IN YOUR AREA- Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[[Randall]] recently announced, in [[2575: What If? 2]], that he is publishing a new ''[[what if?]]'' book based on reader-submitted questions. This comic is another [[:Category:Book promotion|promotion]] of the book, and the entire comic is a link to his [https://xkcd.com/what-if-2/ what if? 2] page on xkcd.

This comic shows the [[#Question categories|categories of questions]] he claims to have received, but rejected to use in his book, giving an example question for each category. In typical xkcd fashion, these begin out by being plausible, although often unlikely to have been submitted as a ''what if?'' question, moving in to more and more absurd types of questions, especially with the last question, that appears to be a combination of all previous categories and is therefore marked "?????"

The title text refers to the launch date of the book September 13, rendered in the American style 9/13. This format can be confusing to non-Americans, although usually not when the date is larger than 12, since it would then appear to reference the 9th day of the 13th month. This "13th month" was, however, referenced in the first comic about the book: [[2575: What If? 2]]. See also Randall's take on the date format, {{w|ISO 8601}}, in [[1179: ISO 8601]].

Randall then continues the title text by referencing the second to last category with vague ominous questions. The example question here asks if there is need to worry about spiders after Tuesday. So Randall notes that the release date, 5.5 months after the release of this comic, is of course assuming anyone will survive past next Tuesday (2022-04-05).

Tuesday has been notably referenced in [[277: Long Light]], [[564: Crossbows]], [[1099: Tuesdays]] and most notably in [[1245: 10-Day Forecast]], where it seems that the last day ever will be a Tuesday. Normally Tuesday is the second day of the week, however the Tuesday of the week following the publication of this cartoon will be the final day of the final week ever.

==Question categories==
{| class="wikitable"
|'''Category'''
|'''Question'''
|'''Explanation'''
|-
| People cheating on homework
| What if I made a pendulum by hanging a rock on a 2.75 meter string? What would its period be in seconds? (Show your work!)
| This appears to be a physics student trying to get out of doing their work by presenting the question for Randall to answer in ''What If'' (which is a common occurrence on question-and-answer sites such as Stack Overflow). Most school homework requires the student to "show their work", i.e. write out their process of solving the question. Making students show their work serves two purposes: it allows students to score partial credit on an incorrect answer if they show the right methodology and basic understanding even if they make a wrong turn along the way; it also prevents students from simply cheating by looking up the right answer without showing how they got that answer — the student including this caveat in their email is a giveaway as to their tactic (along with the boring nature of their inquiry).
|-
| Medical advice
| What if you got a scratch and the next day your hand looked like this [''📎 attachment'']? Should you see a doctor or what?
| Randall is not a physician, is not qualified to give medical advice, and will not answer medical questions. This was a problem on early Wikipedia which, for a time, required all articles covering medical topics to point to a {{w|WP:MEDICAL|Medical Disclaimer}}. This was also an issue covered in the 1st ''what if?'' book, under Weird and Worrying Questions from the Inbox, where a reader asks about the effects of a toxin on the excretory system. If your body is not behaving in the way you expect, consulting with a medical professional is, in general, a good idea.
|-
| Personal
| Why don't the squirrels in my yard like me???
| Randall has no way of knowing why the wildlife in a given area dislike a specific person, especially if this hints at a specific animosity/belligerence and not just general avoidance of humans as a perceived threat. These kind of questions are common on sites like reddit, and are usually covered by general explanation of animal behaviors unless the asker supplies more information in the comments. However, the choice of squirrels are likely not random since [[:Category:Squirrels|Squirrels]] are a recurring theme on xkcd and has often been [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/Category:Squirrels#Uses_in_other_xkcd_media: used in what if?] (sometimes as {{what if|105|placeholder}} for a potentially horrible image).
|-
| Spam
| Do you want to meet lonely singles in your area tonight?
| This is a common online popup advertisement and is generally considered undesirable. An unavoidable side effect of Randall having an email address published where the public can find it is that spammers have just as much access to it. Most people do not respond to spam emails, and Randall is no exception.
|-
| Phishing
| Have you recently been the victim of phishing? To check, log in to your account by clicking here.
| Again, because Randall's What-If email is publicly available, phishers have access to it and can probe the recipient for information. Randall is experienced enough to recognize a phishing attempt and ignore it. This type of phishing scam, in which the scammer requests your personal data for the purported purpose of checking if it has been "stolen" thereby "stealing" it himself, has become more common as people have become aware of phishing, and phishers have thus embraced the possibility of exploiting a new niche in the layers of naivete.
|-
| Requests for help with a crime
| Using modern science, what would be the fastest way to get through this bank vault door? [''📎'' blueprints]
| No, Randall is ''not'' going to help a criminal commit breaking and entering or robbery, thank you very much. A common problem with heist movies is that they show a believable{{Citation needed}} method for breaking in to a vault which people then try to replicate in real life. Such movies often portray an expert in some other field being "smart enough" to craft the plan, sometimes unwittingly.
|-
| Unanswerable
| Why am I me and not someone else
| There is a lot in this question that could be unpacked, and Randall doesn't want to touch on any of it.

At face value the question is asking about {{w|Philosophy of mind}}, a branch of philosophy with many questions that are unanswerable due to our own imperfect understanding of mind. The asker is inquiring as to what process is responsible for designating that their consciousness be tied to the body in which they currently reside, as opposed to another body presumed to have consciousness; furthermore, they likely wish to know the mechanics behind how this process works. There is as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

It's also quite possible the asker is feeling melancholic and unsatisfied with their life. Randall doesn't feel qualified to try diagnosing or treating someone's existential depression.
|-
| Vague
| What is going to happen? (Be specific)
| Some humor is derived from the request for specificity in the question, which completely lacks any sort of specificity of its own.
|-
| Vague and ominous
| Will I have to start worrying about spiders after Tuesday?
| This implies some event that occurs on a (possibly next?) Tuesday. This event may relate to spiders in some way, and cause those who do not currently worry about spiders to do so. If you do not currently worry about spiders, this question does not give enough specifics for Randall to intelligently answer whether or not you should start.
Possibly a [[:Category:Red Spiders|red spiders]] reference. Could also be a reference to [[1688: Map Age Guide]] where some dangerous event involving spiders is set to happen in 2022.
|-
| ?????
| Hi, we're lonely singles in your area, and we're wondering what would happen if we shot a nuclear bomb into a volcano! Click here to log in and tell us ...
| If nothing else, this entry is clearly made up by Randall, as it appears to be a combination of as many prior categories as he has room for, specifically Spam, Phishing, and an already-answered question, before getting cut off by the bottom of the panel.

"Would it be possible to stop a volcano eruption by placing a bomb (thermobaric or nuclear) underneath the surface?" was a question featured in the first ''what if'' book. Randall answered with an emphatic "No!"
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
In ''What If? 2'' (xkcd.com/whatif2), I answer ridiculous questions sent in by readers about everything from volcanoes to spaceships to soup.

Here are a few of the common types of questions that I did ''not'' answer:

[In separate boxes for each category]

[In row 1:]

People cheating on homework: What if I made a pendulum by hanging a rock on a 2.75 meter string? What would its period be in seconds? (Show your work!)

Medical advice: What if you got a scratch and the next day your hand looks like this [''📎 attachment'']? Should you see a doctor or what?

Personal: Why don't the squirrels in my yard like me???

[In row 2:]

Spam: Do you want to meet lonely singles in your area tonight?

Phishing: Have you recently been the victim of phishing? To check, log in to your account by clicking here.

Requests for help with a crime: Using modern science, what would be the fastest way to get through this bank vault door? [''📎'' blueprints]

[In row 3:]

Unanswerable: Why am I me and not someone else

Vague: What is going to happen? (Be specific)

Vague+Ominous: Will I have to start worrying about spiders after Tuesday?

?????: Hi, we're lonely singles in your area, and we're wondering what would happen if we shot a nuclear bomb into a volcano! [partially cut off horizontally:] Click here to log in and tell us

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Book promotion]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Squirrels]]
[[Category:Spiders]]
[[Category:Nuclear weapons]]

1540: Hemingway

2022-03-26T05:30:24Z

162.158.103.224:

{{comic
| number = 1540
| date = June 19, 2015
| title = Hemingway
| image = hemingway.png
| titletext = Instead of bobcat, package contained chair.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a reference to the six-word short story ''{{w|For sale: baby shoes, never worn}}'', which has been commonly attributed to famous author {{w|Ernest Hemingway}} (the disputed authorship of the story is referenced several times in the comic).

The comic plays on the fact that the original story takes the form of a short advertisement that might have been seen in a newspaper, and makes up alternate versions that use various modern 'standards' that did not exist in Hemingway's time. In keeping with the original, each example remains six words long. The title text obeys this rule, too. Many of the drafts poke fun at the tragedy that the original story suggests. With the original ("For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn"), readers could infer that the baby who would have worn the shoes must have died. Randall tries to make the reader infer other, more absurd things instead.

The comic also alludes to Hemingway's practice of repeatedly re-working drafts of his novels before publication. For example, he is [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/books/a-farewell-to-arms-with-hemingways-alternate-endings.html reported] to have rewritten the final passage of [https://en.wikipedia.org/?title=A_Farewell_to_Arms A Farewell To Arms] 39 times. Later editions of his works include these rough drafts, allowing the devoted reader to understand how the work developed.

The following are the various drafts offered in the comic.
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! width="305" | Draft
! Explanation
|-
| For Sale: This gullible baby's shoes
| This suggests the seller somehow tricked the baby out of its shoes.
|-
| Baby shoes for sale by owner
| This suggests that a very intelligent baby is somehow selling its own shoes, or that someone is selling an old pair of shoes they had as a baby. This style represents the typical automobile or house sales ads, differentiating the sale by owner from the sale by a professional middleman (a car dealer or a realtor) and thus bypassing the extra expense of middleman's fee.
|-
| <strike>Actually, there’s no evidence Hemingway wrote</strike>
| A fragment of a preemptive rebuttal to the comic’s premise (or at least its title). This sentence was stopped at the sixth word, in keeping with the premise.
|-
| Free shoes, provided you overpower baby
| This suggests the person posting the ad is asking people to forcibly steal shoes from a baby. This alludes to the common expression "[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/like_taking_candy_from_a_baby like taking candy from a baby]", meaning a task is extremely simple and effortless. One doesn't necessarily need to overpower a baby to steal its shoes either; there are other methods such as annoying the baby until it throws its shoes or tricking the baby (see the first example above).
|-
| For Sale: Weird baby's toe shoes
| Randall once again displays his distaste for [[1065: Shoes|weird toe shoes]], that is, shoes with individual toes. Rather than the tragedy implied by the original story, this instead implies that the baby has odd taste in shoes, and perhaps the parents would rather their child wear regular shoes.
|-
| For Sale: Baby shoes ✓Prime Eligible
| This is a reference to {{w|Amazon.com|Amazon}}, which offers Prime as a paid service to expedite shipping of items ordered on its website.
|-
| <strike>Though popularly attributed to Hemingway, the</strike>
| Another fragment of a rebuttal, written in an encyclopedic style, and also stopped at the sixth word.
|-
| This weird trick covers baby feet!
| This is modeled after common 'click bait' wording designed to get users to visit web pages, typically using words such as "this weird trick" or "secrets they don't want you to know" to artificially increase its apparent appeal. xkcd has previously parodied click bait in [[1283: Headlines]], [[1307: Buzzfeed Christmas]] and [[1426: Reduce Your Payments]].
|-
| For Sale: Baby shoes, just hatched
| This plays on the meaning of the phrase "baby shoes", reframing it to mean a newly-born shoe (similar to "baby bird"), rather than its typical meaning of footwear designed for babies.
|-
| Sale: Seven-league boots (expedited shipping)
| {{w|Seven-league boots}} are mythical boots that allow their user to move seven leagues (21 miles) per step. The "expedited shipping" part suggests that the people delivering these boots may be wearing seven-league boots themselves, allowing them to reach the customer much faster than if by airplane (except, of course, if the boots had to be shipped overseas).
|-
| Complete this survey for free shoes
| This is another reference to common internet marketing campaigns, where users are incentivized to take surveys in exchange for small compensation such as free samples or coupons.
|-
| ''Shoes'', by Ernest Hemingway {{Citation needed}}
| This is a reference to Wikipedia. "{{w|Citation needed}}" is used to mark claims that require additional evidence to justify as true. In this case, Randall is using this to question whether the short story was really written by Hemingway.
|-
| This is my greatest short story
| This is a completely different style that could also have been used to write a short story in six words. Rather than telling a story about shoes, this is more "meta" by referencing itself and being a self-fulfilling (or self-defeating) prophecy. (The sequel was titled "Don't bother reading my other stories").
|-
| For Sale: Baby shoes (-1) [Cursed]
| This is written like a description of a virtual item typically found in Roguelike games or MMOs. "-1" typically means the item will reduce its wearer's stats (such as defense or speed rating) by one point. "Cursed" usually means the item cannot be taken off the wearer's body once it is put on. It might also reference the fact the original story suggests the baby died, perhaps because of the cursed shoes.

"-1" in this context is usually read aloud as "minus one"; this would break the six word pattern.
|-
| <blink><marquee>Baby shoes!</marquee></blink>
| This is reminiscent of the style of HTML widely used in the 1990s. Both the <blink> and <marquee> tags make the text content ("Baby shoes!") appear more prominent and attention-grabbing. The blink tag makes a blinking effect in Netscape, whereas the marquee tag makes a scroll effect in Internet Explorer. On a normal web page, these tags only affect how the text content is displayed on screen and aren't directly shown to visitors. However they are shown here to make the six words count, albeit in a lighter shade of gray to reinforce the fact that they're not part of the text content. An interesting note: When this comic was first posted to xkcd.com, the '/' in the </blink> tag was missing. This was fixed between the 19th and 20th of June, 2015, showing that the omission was, indeed, unintentional.
|-
| For Sale: Baby-sized saddle, bobcat
| This is a reference to [[A-Minus-Minus|325: A-Minus-Minus]] in which [[Cueball]] says: 'Instead of office chair, package contained bobcat'. A 'baby-sized saddle' is presumably a very small saddle that's only usable if the user was a baby and was trying to ride a small animal such as a bobcat.
|-
| Hemingway busted for Craigslist shoe scam
| This is written like a news headline where Hemingway supposedly wrote about shoes in order to perpetrate a scam. {{w|Craigslist}} is a website where users can advertise and seek goods and services.
|}
The title text continues the reference to [[A-Minus-Minus|325: A-Minus-Minus]], but inverts the situation. Rather than unexpectedly receiving a bobcat by package, this time the package contains a regular item instead of the expected bobcat. In keeping with the theme of the comic, the review is written in only six words.

==Transcript==
:Hemingway's Rough Drafts

:[A list of rough draft stories.]
:For sale: This Gullible Baby's Shoes
:Baby Shoes For Sale By Owner
:<strike>Actually, there's no evidence Hemingway wrote</strike>
:Free Shoes, Provided You Overpower Baby
:For Sale: Weird Baby's Toe Shoes
:For Sale: Baby Shoes ✓ Prime eligible
:<strike>Though popularly attributed to Hemingway, the</strike>
:This Weird Trick Covers Baby Feet!
:For Sale: Baby Shoes, Just Hatched
:Sale: Seven-League Boots (Expedited Shipping)
:Complete this survey for free shoes!
:''Shoes'', by Ernest Hemingway [citation needed]
:This is my greatest short story.
:For sale: Baby shoes (-1) [cursed]
:<blink><marquee>Baby Shoes!</marquee></blink>
:For Sale: Baby-sized Saddle, Bobcat
:Hemingway Busted for Craigslist Shoe Scam

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Bobcats]]

Talk:2586: Greek Letters

2022-02-26T08:59:09Z

162.158.103.224: Related: https://xkcd.com/2520/ ~~~~

Pi also shows up in lots of extremely advanced equations as pi, not as something else, adding edit. 123.456.7890

zeta_0 is also used for the first transfinite ordinal that is unreachable through addition, multiplication, exponentiation, and epsilons subscripting. [[User:GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e|GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e]] ([[User talk:GcGYSF(asterisk)P(vertical line)e|talk]]) 05:11, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Don't you have an English saying: '''simple/easy as π'''? [[User:Nukio|Nukio]] ([[User talk:Nukio|talk]]) 05:51, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
:the saying is '''easy as pie''' as in the dessert. sometimes we write it '''easy as π''' as a nerdy joke. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.230|162.158.107.230]] 08:08, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Related: https://xkcd.com/2520/ [[Special:Contributions/162.158.103.224|162.158.103.224]] 08:59, 26 February 2022 (UTC)