2288: Collector's Edition

2020-04-03T16:56:52Z

162.158.122.126: /* Hints */ Add image filename for soda bottle

{{comic
| number = 2288
| date = April 3, 2020
| title = Collectors Edition
| image = collectors_edition.png
| titletext = I'm sure you can find some suitable worldbuilding material if you scavenge through the archives.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This is an April 1st comic. It is a large image, of which only part is visible, but it can be dragged around. This Space acts as a virtual common sandbox where viewers can interact. "Items" (small, often humorous images) can be 'collected' from other comics and then placed in this image by viewers. The collection then updates for all viewers in real-time. Multiples of the same item are often seen.

There is a "backpack" at the bottom, similar to "backpacks" in video games containing items collected by the player. Items can be found by visiting different XKCD comics/pages. Randomly, some pages will have a treasure chest which will contain the sticker related to the page. It is believed that the hint represents what page currently has a chest.

The sticker images can be seen at https://xkcd.com/2288/collectors/static/loot/loot_XXX.png, where XXX is a number from 001-253. Additionally, some images can be found at custom urls, for example the periodic elements can be found at https://xkcd.com/2288/collectors/static/loot/element-XX.png, where XX is the element, and text loot at https://xkcd.com/2288/collectors/static/loot/loot-words-X.png, where X is the sentence.

===Hints===

{| class="wikitable"
!Hint
!Comic
!Unlocked item
!Item image
!Notes
|-
|Doctors in a row||[[1529: Bracket]] ||Cory Doctorow || loot_019.png ||
|-
|Get out the (US) vote|| [[2224: Software Updates]] || Statue of liberty || loot_246.png ||
|-
|Find a box of nice stuff on a picture with words like these|| [[1133: Up Goer Five]] || Signpost || loot_126.png ||
|-
|Plug in or find another power source||[[1373: Screenshot]] || || loot_228.png ||
|-
|Sweet dreams, kitty||[[729: Laser Pointer]] || Cat licking laser point || ||
|-
|What is this hint pointing to? Hell if I know.||[[28: Elefino]] || || ||
|-
|Somebody set up us the bomb||[[286: All Your Base]] ||Exploding rock || ||
|-
|Cowabunga||[[1412: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles]] ||Women Science Fiction Authors || loot_175.png || [[197: Ninja Turtles]] also works
|-
|I want to believe||[[2156: Ufo]] ||Ufo || ||
|-
|Bleeped|| || || ||
|-
|why waste time say few word when lot word do trick||[[1022: So It Has Come To This]] || First Annual Award for Excellence in Being Very Smart || ||
|-
|Cooler than electric scooters||[[409: Electric Skateboard (Double Comic)]]||An electric scooter|| loot_006.png ||
|-
|Take it from the top||[[1: Barrel - Part 1]] ||I am a turtle || loot_095.png ||
|-
|I accept the yucca gnocchi, this meal is a success!||[[1713: 50 ccs]] ||Man carrying parentheses from [[297: Lisp Cycles]] || loot_031.png ||
|-
|Catch up on the news|| [[1699: Local News]] || || ||
|-
|Participation trophy|| [[2288: Collectors Edition]] || Server rack || ||
|-
|Find an opportunity for a sojourn||[[1504: Opportunity]] ||Opportunity Mars rover || ||
|-
|Tastier than tau day||[[179: e to the pi times i]] ||First annual award for excellence in being very smart || ||
|-
|418 I'm a teapot||[[1866: Russell's Teapot]] ||S.S. NASA: Space is Hard || ||
|-
|26th September, 1983||[[2052: Stanislav Petrov Day]] ||White dove || ||
|-
|There are 4241 as of Apr 1, 2020|| [[1071: Exoplanets]] || Little girl from [[2264: Satellite]] || ||
|-
|asableiK|| [[645: RPS]] || A reverse Polish hotdog || || "Kielbasa" backwards, which is "sausage" in Polish
|-
|Critical mass elements|| [[235: Kite]] || || loot_203.png ||
|-
|Some Februarys are more equal than others|| [[390: Nightmares]]? || Cueball wheelie from [[272: Linux User at Best Buy]] || || Comic-hint connection largely conjectural; 390 was the first comic published on a leap day.
|-
|Five spice||[[1554: Spice Girls]]|| Rock guitarist || ||
|-
|Call the plumber|| [[290: Fucking Blue Shells]] || || loot_058.png ||
|-
|Was it a rat I saw?|| [[1632: Palindrome]] || Cueball with a large sack, pulling a wagon || || or [[1503: Squirrel Plan]] for cueball holding a balloon caught in a ceiling fan.
|-
|Churchill's gonna have to seriously rehydrate||[[1148: Nothing to Offer]]|| Bottle of soda || loot_045.png ||
|-
|Keep coming back|| || || ||
|-
|A new model released each year|| || || || https://xkcd.com/1363/ ? and/or other XKCD Phone comics?
|-
|Tea Time||[[581: The Race: Part 5]] ||Floor tea ||loot_232.png|| Also [[479: Tones]] ? Also [[578: The Race: Part 2]] ?
|-
|Try pattern-matching! Look for comic 'bout alphabet?||[[1045: Constraints]] || || ||
|-
|Where's Hilbert?||[[195: Map of the Internet]] ||maze || loot_021.png ||
|-
|Science fiction fetish|| || || ||
|-
|The first one was funnier||[[11: Barrel - Part 2]]||Falling feather || ||
|-
|It's up to over 260 million cycles!|| || || ||
|-
|Sleeping Beauty is the same everywhere though||[[2233: Aurora Meaning]] || || ||
|-
|On the internet, nobody knows you're an arachnid|| [[1530: Keyboard Mash]] || Cobwebbed frame || ||
|-
|Did James Cameron pay for the rice cooker too?||[[1598: Salvage]] ||Rice bowl || ||
|-
|Never going to give you up||[[351: Trolling]] || || ||
|-
|If red touches yellow, that's 24 ohms||[[1604: Snakes]]|| Yoda with an mp3 player from What If || ||
|-
|An enthusiastic but questionable business opportunity||[[1533: Antique Factory]] or [[1021: Business Plan]]|| Beret guy with a goat on leash || ||
|-
|Read the fine manual|| [[1343: Manuals]] or [[293: RTFM]] || "Configure the network" window with a prompt for hostname || ||
|-
|That thing's undecimodal!||[[1347: t Distribution]] || Floating tentacled alien || ||
|-
|Actually, it's Myanmar-Shave now||[[491: Twitter]]||Expensive bottle || ||
|-
|You don't have to find all 99|| [[121: Balloon]] ||Balloon copter || loot_002.png || Or [[51: Malaria]] ?
|-
|Going in circles|| || || ||
|-
|Couldn't you try knitting, or maybe stamp collecting?||[[2123: Meta Collecting]]||Phishing License sign|| loot_158.png ||
|-
|It's the ciiiiircle of HONK||[[537: Ducklings]] ||DUCKLOOP'D? || ||
|-
|Fool me twice|| [[880: Headache]] || Raptor Attack || loot_033.png ||The second April fools' comic
|-
|oOOOoooo|| || || || https://xkcd.com/316/ ? definitely not https://xkcd.com/1393/- I got that hint while On that page. ?
|-
|Maybe we can ask for new wishes||[[879: Lamp]] ||Genie and his bottle ||loot_004.png ||
|-
|HACK THE PLANET||[[1337: Hack]] || || ||
|-
|Monetization haute couteur||[[20: Ferret]]||Two bags of money ||loot_162.png||
|-
|Maybe writing a script would help||[[1319: Automation]]|| || ||
|-
|Go big to go small|| [[1365: Inflation]] || || loot_245.png ||
|-
|Are you projecting||[[850: World According to Americans]] or [[977: Map Projections]]||Squirrel on a gun||loot_237.png||
|-
|Do spiders really have six legs||[[8: Red spiders]] || || ||
|-
|Istanbul or Constantinople or St. Trimble's Island?||[[1688: Map Age Guide]] ||Cephalopod || ||
|-
|Another rulebook?||[[393: Ultimate Game]]||Wizard in a chair || loot_037.png ||
|-
|Moooooon|| [[1300: Galilean Moons]] || MOOOOOON || ||
|-
|Take a flight from LOL to FFS|| [[1937: IATA Airport Abbreviations]] || || ||
|-
|Everyone deserves a second chnace|| || || ||
|-
|Community contribution|| [[826: Guest Week: Zach Weiner (SMBC)]] || [Citation Needed] protester || loot_035.png ||
|-
|On the other side of the wardrobe|| [[665: Prudence]] or [[969: Delta-P]] or [[2218: Wardrobe]] ||Authentic Reindeer pulling sled || ||
|-
|Today's your lucky day|| [[1053: Ten Thousand]] || Ms. Frizzle || loot_105.png ||
|-
|[This hint has been redacted due to a copyright claim]|| [[1005: SOPA]] || || ||
|-
|Try a different approach|| [[55: Useless]] || || loot_times.png ||
|-
|The cake is a lie!|| [[606: Cutting Edge]] || Cake || ||
|-
|Joanna, fire.||[[322: Pix Plz]] || Joanna with EMP cannon || loot_026.png ||
|-
|Everything changes from time to time when the fire nation attacks|| [[965: Elements]] || Symposium || ||
|-
|90KG x 300M|| [[382: Trebuchet]] || Trebuchet || ||
|-
|Copyright Enforcement Brigade|| [[344: 1337: Part 4]] || || loot_046.png ||
|-
|Where Cape Town meets Chukotka||[[1500: Upside-Down Map]] || || ||
|-
|Take a ride in a barrel|| || || || ('''not''' any of the comics in the barrel series)
|}

==Trivia==
* This comic is the 2020 April Fools comic and was supposed to be released April 1st. However, the below message was displayed on the top of the page until early Friday (April 3rd) morning, when the comic finally went live. It remains to be seen if Friday's intended comic will be published later.
<blockquote>
Note: For technical reasons Wednesday's comic will be posted Thursday instead. Apologies for the delay!
</blockquote>
* Placement is limited to 10,000 units from the origin. Users will receive no messages if they try placing something outside the boundary.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Cueball stands to the left of a vibrating box.]
:[The words "Collector's Edition" are written above him and boxed.]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:April fools' comics]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Interactive comics]]

2278: Scientific Briefing

2020-03-10T17:35:03Z

162.158.122.126: Removed an edit from the middle of the explanation

{{comic
| number = 2278
| date = March 9, 2020
| title = Scientific Briefing
| image = scientific_briefing.png
| titletext = "I actually came in in the middle so I don't know which topic we're briefing on; the same slides work for like half of them."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete| Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

Things are not good, and are getting worse. The only way for things to not be bad is for someone to do something about it. [[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] are presenting these things to [[White Hat]], presumably hoping to encourage him to do something about things, but he instead chooses to wait for things to become bad, to which Megan replies that this is exactly the bad thing she and Cueball were hoping to avoid.

What things? Any number of things, because, as the title text remarks, this is true of "like half of" bad things facing society. The three comics preceding this one have been about COVID-19 ("the coronavirus"), so "things" could refer to cases of infections, but more likely a comment on the numerous world catastrophes that get sidelined until the very last moment, such as unemployment, crime, water quality, road systems, rising extremism and wars between groups with similar needs, lack of responsible oversight in majorly impactful international decisions, corruption and lack of trust for those with power, or climate change and related extinction of most species and cultures.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Megan and Cueball are showing a graph on a projected screen. The graph is labeled "Things", with "Time" advancing to the right on the ''x''-axis. The level of "Things" has been rising over time to a point labeled "Now". The current level of "Things" is above a level labeled "Good", and about as far below a level labeled "Bad". Megan is pointing to the line of "Things" with a pointer stick, while Cueball is pointing up to the "Bad" level with a pointer stick.]

:Megan: Here's the situation:
:Megan: This line is here.
:Cueball: But it's going up toward ''here''.

:[White Hat enters the scene. His hand is on his chin. Cueball is no longer holding a pointer stick.]

:White Hat: So things will be bad?
:Megan: Unless someone does something to stop it.
:White Hat: Will anyone do that?
:Megan: ...We don't know.
:Megan: That's why we're showing you this.

:[A narrow panel focusing only on Megan and Cueball.]

:White Hat (off-panel, left): So you don't know,
:White Hat: And the graph says things are '''''not''''' bad.
:Cueball: But if no one acts, they'll '''''become''''' bad.

:[White Hat is back inside the frame. He is gesturing to Megan and Cueball with his palm up.]

:White Hat: Well, please let me know if that happens!
:Megan: Based on this conversation, it already has.

==Trivia==
*Poorly labeled graphs were already the topic of [[833: Convincing]].
*This comic was initially missing the speech line to Cueball in panel 3.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Charts]]

Talk:1773: Negativity

2016-12-19T12:55:50Z

162.158.122.126:

Any chance that 'the pain and negativity of the internet' is a reference to [http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-talk-4 this recent SMBC comic] where SMBC's artist Zach challenges Randall to 'out-nerd him now' (seen when you click the red button just below the comic).
I've been wondering whether the first XKCD after that (that is: today's XKCD comic) would refer to it.
[[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.173|141.101.104.173]] 14:55, 16 December 2016 (UTC)
: I kinda doubt it. SMBC wasn't being "negative" or objectionable - if anything it was a challenge - and even a kind of complement. An adequate response to that kind of a challenge might take longer than a few days to prepare. If we're going to see anything in response, I suspect it'll be more obvious. [[User:SteveBaker|SteveBaker]] ([[User talk:SteveBaker|talk]]) 14:02, 17 December 2016 (UTC)
:: We better be seeing a string theory joke sometime in the next week... [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.226|108.162.216.226]] 02:38, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
::: [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=171 Here you go.] [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.126|162.158.122.126]] 12:55, 19 December 2016 (UTC)
:: @SteveBaker That was my doubt too. Looking forward to an adequate response from Randall though :) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.173|141.101.104.173]] 07:44, 19 December 2016 (UTC)

explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2288: Collector's Edition

2278: Scientific Briefing

Talk:1773: Negativity