https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/api.php?action=feedcontributions&feedformat=atom&user=162.158.122.156 2026-04-16T01:06:10Z User contributions MediaWiki 1.30.0 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2286:_6-Foot_Zone&diff=189242 2020-03-28T04:06:00Z

<p>162.158.122.156: </p> <hr /> <div>&lt;!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--&gt;<br /> Ok... 34 feet, in total, but how many hands? (All of which you should wash!) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.34.210|162.158.34.210]] 23:34, 27 March 2020 (UTC)<br /> <br /> : Love it. Given the extra 1.7 feet for the person, a radius of 20.53 hands. If it were just 6 feet, 18 hands -- brad --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.122|108.162.216.122]] 00:55, 28 March 2020 (UTC)<br /> <br /> So Randall is figuring about 1.7 feet diameter for the person. --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.70|172.68.174.70]] 00:40, 28 March 2020 (UTC)<br /> <br /> The 190,000 people / mile^2 assumes (I'm guessing) flat ground. Skyscrapers make a difference [citation needed] -- brad --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.122|108.162.216.122]] 00:55, 28 March 2020 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Interesting that the population density he gives ignores circle packing. Population should be 174,000. -- coyne -- [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:06, 28 March 2020 (UTC)</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2271:_Grandpa_Jason_and_Grandpa_Chad&diff=188060 2020-03-03T14:31:32Z

<p>162.158.122.156: </p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2271<br /> | date = February 21, 2020<br /> | title = Grandpa Jason and Grandpa Chad<br /> | image = grandpa_jason_and_grandpa_chad.png<br /> | titletext = The AARP puts the average age of a first-time grandparent close to 50, and the CDC has some data. But I don't have first-parent age distributions for specific names, or generational first-child age correlations, so the dotted line is just a guess. Still, let's be honest: No further research is really *needed.*<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> {{incomplete|Created by THE '''CHAD''' GRANDPA. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br /> <br /> The comic contains three separate curves, with the x-axis being the date and the y-axis being the frequency of three separate sets of data:<br /> * The number of people in the US with the name &quot;Jason&quot;, a curve that reaches its maximum in 1977, when Jason became the [http://www.babynames.it/top100/1/year-1977.html second most common name] and reached the [https://www.everything-birthday.com/name/m/Jason maximum number of babies born with that name]<br /> * The number of people in the US with the name &quot;Chad,&quot; a similar curve that reaches its maximum in 1973, when [https://www.everything-birthday.com/name/m/Chad the number of babies named Chad reached ''its'' maximum]<br /> * An estimate of the birth years of people that are becoming grandparents, with its maximum in 1968, 52 years ago. The title text explains this is the age at which, on average, most people become grandparents, citing an [https://www.aarp.org/content/dam/aarp/research/surveys_statistics/life-leisure/2019/aarp-grandparenting-study.doi.10.26419-2Fres.00289.001.pdf AARP study]<br /> <br /> The graph shows that the names &quot;Jason&quot; and &quot;Chad&quot; were extremely uncommon in the US prior to the 1960's, but then experienced a surge in popularity, peaking in the late 1970's, and falling off thereafter. There are a couple of interesting effects when certain names become temporarily trendy. It means that those names become closely associated with a particular age cohort, so one can guess a person's age range based solely on their first name, and therefore predict other tendencies associated with age (this is also explored in [[1950: Chicken Pox and Name Statistics]]). A side effect of this is that, when this cohort first comes of age, those names enter the public consciousness as being associated with youth, trendiness and irresponsibility. Of course, that cohort continues to age, and eventually becomes the adult cohort, then the senior cohort, but stereotypes are often slow to change. [[2165: Millennials]] is similarly about how a label has outlived the demographic that it was used to describe, while the people described by the label have outgrown the traits that the label entails.<br /> <br /> In addition to dealing with with the inertia of our assumptions and stereotype, this comic also continues a long XKCD tradition of [[:Category:Comics to make one feel old|pointing out how quickly time is passing, and how slow we often are to realize it.]] In this case, those of us in Randall's general age range are used to thinking of &quot;Jason&quot; and &quot;Chad&quot; as names for young, trendy, party animals. The fact that only a small fraction of people with these names are under the age of 30, and a growing number of them are now grandparents (and that trend is likely to increase rapidly in the next few years), forces us to acknowledge that quite a bit of time has passed since we first formed our world views, and that means we've aged, even if we haven't noticed it. <br /> <br /> The title text adds a caveat to the assertion, mentioning the lack of any real evidence for the distribution of ages of Grandparents, but tacitly admits that the matter is not sufficiently important to seek any further precision. <br /> <br /> Other possible caveats of the data:<br /> * The Y-axis is in percent of the highest year, not absolute numbers. So while it jokingly implies that, in a few years, all grandparents will be named Jason and Chad, in actuality it will probably be in the order of the hundreds of thousands of people (less than 2% of [https://www.aarp.org/home-family/friends-family/info-2017/record-number-grandparents.html all grandparents]), but still common enough compared to other &quot;ages&quot; to be &quot;the age of Grandpa Jason and Grandpa Chad&quot;<br /> * There are many fewer [https://www.mynamestats.com/First-Names/C/CH/CHAD/index.html people whose legal name is Chad] than [https://www.mynamestats.com/First-Names/J/JA/JASON/index.html people who's legal name is Jason], so &quot;Grandpa Jason&quot; will probably be much more common than &quot;Grandpa Chad&quot;<br /> * Chad is really more of a {{w|Chad_(name)|nickname}}, so data on people assigned the name Chad at birth may be meaningless<br /> <br /> The title text ends with the text &quot;No further research is really *needed,*&quot; referencing [[2268: Further Research is Needed]]. This is also a joke in itself. The emphasis on *needed* is an admission that although more research is *possible*, it's simply not warranted, given the fairly trivial nature of the topic.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br /> <br /> :[A progression chart covering the period of years between 1950 to 1995. One line, representing the birth years of people becoming grandparents, is dotted and begins low at the start, climbs, then steeply declines. Two solid lines, representing the birth years of people named &quot;Chad&quot; or &quot;Jason&quot;, begin in the early 1960s, rise almost concurrently, however one declines steadily while the other has a curve almost before the end of the chart. The overlapping area between the dotted and solid lines is shaded. The lines show the following data:]<br /> <br /> :Birth years of people becoming grandparents this year (United States, very rough estimate) <br /> :[A dotted line which begins at 1950, rises to its peak at 1970, then steeply declines to zero by the late '70s.]<br /> <br /> :Birth years of people named &quot;Jason&quot; and &quot;Chad&quot; (Social Security data)<br /> :[Chad: A solid line beginning at 1962, rises to its peak by 1975, then drops through the '80s and '90s. Jason crosses underneath it in 1985, but then re-crosses it in 1993.]<br /> :[Jason: A solid line beginning at 1963, rises to its peak between 1977-80, then declines, dropping beneath Chad around 1985 but climbing above it again in 1993.]<br /> <br /> :[Caption below the comic:]<br /> :Fun fact: We have now entered the era of &quot;Grandpa Jason&quot; and &quot;Grandpa Chad.&quot;<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> [[Category:Charts]]<br /> [[Category:Fun fact]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168817 2019-01-30T05:37:29Z

<p>162.158.122.156: Undo revision 168815 by 162.158.122.156 (talk) damn addon</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> ;''Back to the Future II''<br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the {{w|DeLorean time machine|time machine}}, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back soon after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of {{w|Chalk outline|those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground}}, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ;Counterfactuals<br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been thrown at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> ;''Hillbilly Elegy''<br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> ;White Hat’s reaction<br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *Because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *There is a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy''. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by {{w|Time travel|time traveling}}.<br /> *After seeing the similarity alluded to by Cueball between our current reality and a reality where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy'' is written, he might imagine that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was {{w|Determinism|predetermined}}, just as Biff’s rise to power was predetermined by time travel. If he opposes Donald Trump politically, it would probably frustrate him to imagine that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as any social change he might hope for may be simply predetermined not to happen, perhaps by time travellers.<br /> <br /> ;Relationship to political events<br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *Randall may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the {{w|Dystopia|dystopian}} 1985A universe, where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe, where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural societal issues, that may have acted indirectly, while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168815 2019-01-30T05:35:32Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ minor</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> ;''Back to the Future II’'<br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character {{w|Biff Tannen}} steals the {{w|DeLorean time machine|time machine}}, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back soon after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of {{w|Chalk outline|those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground}}, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ;Counterfactuals<br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future’' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals’' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would’' be true if something ''were’' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been thrown at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals’', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> ;''Hillbilly Elegy’'<br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book’s theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II’' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy’'.<br /> <br /> ;White Hat’s reaction<br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *Because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *There is a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy’'. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by {{w|Time travel|time traveling}}.<br /> *After seeing the similarity alluded to by Cueball between our current reality and a reality where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy’' is written, he might imagine that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was {{w|Determinism|predetermined}}, just as Biff’s rise to power was predetermined by time travel. If he opposes Donald Trump politically, it would probably frustrate him to imagine that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as any social change he might hope for may be simply predetermined not to happen, perhaps by time travellers.<br /> <br /> ;Relationship to political events<br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I’m With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *Randall may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the {{w|Dystopia|dystopian}} 1985A universe, where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe, where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump’s rise to power to any set of structural societal issues, that may have acted indirectly, while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen’s rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II’' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168814 2019-01-30T05:28:14Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Subheads */ new section</p> <hr /> <div>I thought Biff jumped from 2015 to 1955, not 1985...? Young Biff had the Almanac in his pocket at the High School dance and the tower he built was already in place in 1985.<br /> :This is an old unsigned comment. I would like to add for posterity that this has been fixed already. This guy tried to fix this information while the article was young and edits were happening super fast, so his edit got reversed as someone tried to add his edit over someone else's. It has since been fixed for good.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> &lt;!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--&gt;<br /> <br /> Collusion with a time traveler would bring a few things into focus. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.25|173.245.54.25]] 15:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :You inspire ''one'' house painter to change careers &amp; suddenly everyone blames you for everything. <br /> :[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy<br /> [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]] 15:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Do we keep the “cheat at sports betting” wording? I don’t know if this is cheating. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Cheating is generally heald to be using something unavailable to anyone else in the normal course of play to gain an advantage. I'd say using the almanac towards those ends definitely applies. [[User:Mjm87|Mjm87]] ([[User talk:Mjm87|talk]]) 19:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If anyone questions the fact that newspapers in real life did attempt to assert that the rise of Trump was inevitable, various newspaper articles may easily be found as proof with a Google Search for [Donald Trump inevitable], preferably restricted to results before 2017, so as to remove results about things he did later. I don't know how best to incorporate such results as a source in the article, as the number of citations could easily be made too big, and also I don't know if anyone cares. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I am from Europe, and I do not understand the issue. If event X happens while you predicted Y, isn't researching and hypothising a good way to find out why, possibly learning new things in the process? Saying you don't want to debate the issue is like hating politics. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.131|141.101.104.131]] 18:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> : Many people who understand politics hate it. On behalf of my fellow continenteans, I apologize for 141.101.104.131, who apparently believes that politics overlaps with political science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.40|162.158.114.40]] 18:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> :Note that ''Hillbilly Elegy'' could not have been intended to explain the Trump election, having been written before it. However, it was interpreted this way. I have attempted to make this clear in the explanation.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.179|108.162.212.179]] 18:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If I'm not mistaken, Biff is based off of Donald Trump, so the Donald Trump analogy may be more likely than not. I can't quite recall where I read this, but there are quite a few similarities between the two. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.138|162.158.186.138]] 19:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Added [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 19:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Why does this article go out of its way to avoid mentioning Hillary Clinton by name?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.19|162.158.107.19]] 20:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)KingLeary<br /> : Beats me. Fixed it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> XKCD on XKCD: &quot;The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.&quot; [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.233|172.69.33.233]] 01:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> The explanation should include info on what a &quot;counterfactual&quot; is. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Done [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 12:33, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> So I guess we're just construing this as a polarized editorial now. Appropriate context or no.<br /> <br /> Seems fun.<br /> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 01:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Isn't the title text making a reference to Orwell?<br /> <br /> ''Back to the Future'' is such a nice movie trilogy. If anyone is discouraged by the discussions over possible relations to Donald Trump, don't be. Those relations are pretty dim and do not worsen enjoyment of the movies, neither for Democrats nor for Republicans. I recommend that everyone here who hasn't watched these movies watch all three. They are a lot of fun. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:58, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == Regarding politics ==<br /> <br /> Wow, all this Trump stuff feels like a real stretch... [[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.95|172.68.132.95]] 21:00, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Nah21:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :It's pretty obvious to me, personally, that this is an analogy to the idea that if Trump rose to power via means nobody was aware of at the time, the book would seem a little humorous. I guess that seems like a huge stretch to some and obvious to others. The references to the roughly-two views on this in the article feel painful to read, controversial, and like the issues aren't really honestly and fairly laid out. I wish there were some way to really give respect to both views. Even if many disagree with Randall, I think for many it is clear this is the subject of the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]]<br /> <br /> Note there is a (joke?) conspiracy theory that Trump is a time traveler, using technology provided by his uncle John Trump...<br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.22|162.158.255.22]] 23:06, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :That would explain why he was able to do so well in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. He knew which states would be close, so he could focus his efforts on narrowly winning those instead of narrowing losing them, and not worry about states like CA that would have such wide margins of victory that campaigning wouldn't affect who won them.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.23|172.69.33.23]] 07:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :I think if Trump were a time traveller, he should be much richer, because he would have bet on sports, or invested in big companies while they were small. Instead, he invested in real estate, which was not a good option if he knew about the housing crisis beforehand. The only way I can think of to attribute his life choices to time travel meddling is: if the general public knew that time travel exists, this is the best way not to draw suspicion. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 13:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Or to provide reasonable doubt for a super-secret Temporal Court that recognizes the right to presumed innocence. I think I would enjoy reading that story.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 21:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == List layout ==<br /> <br /> In the two instances where the article considered alternative reasons for a feature of the comic, I have turned these reasons into a list, as this makes it easier to understand and cuts down on the repetitive &quot;Alternatively&quot; and such. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == 1985A ==<br /> <br /> I have changed instances of &quot;the universe where BiffCo exists&quot; to &quot;the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline&quot;, or simply &quot;1985A&quot; for short. This is for three reasons:<br /> <br /> *To keep the article cleaner.<br /> *To keep future misreaders of the article from either:<br /> **cutting down on the words because they seem unnecessary<br /> **adding a comma between &quot;universe&quot; and &quot;where&quot;, which would ruin the construct.<br /> *To be consistent with the terminology used by Doc Brown himself.<br /> <br /> I have established this wording at the beginning of the article.<br /> <br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:19, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == Subheads ==<br /> <br /> I have added subheadings. If you don't like subheadings then remove them. This wiki has no style guide. I think they help distinguish the structure of the document. The guy who removed the part about counterfactuals can now more easily skip that part, and we can now more easily talk about specific parts of the article here in the talk page.<br /> <br /> Also I know that this is the third topic I have added in a row and that the button says &quot;use sparingly&quot;, but these are major changes to the article, and therefore I expect someone to come by and complain and make a huge thread out of it.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 05:28, 30 January 2019 (UTC)</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168813 2019-01-30T05:25:48Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ minor</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> ;''Back to the Future II''<br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the {{w|DeLorean time machine|time machine}}, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back soon after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of {{w|Chalk outline|those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground}}, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ;Counterfactuals<br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been thrown at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> ;''Hillbilly Elegy''<br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> ;White Hat’s reaction<br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *Because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *There is a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy''. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by {{w|Time travel|time traveling}}.<br /> *After seeing the similarity alluded to by Cueball between our current reality and a reality where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy'' is written, he might imagine that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was {{w|Determinism|predetermined}}, just as Biff’s rise to power was predetermined by time travel. If he opposes Donald Trump politically, it would probably frustrate him to imagine that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as any social change he might hope for may be simply predetermined not to happen, perhaps by time travellers.<br /> <br /> ;Relationship to political events<br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *Randall may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the {{w|Dystopia|dystopian}} 1985A universe, where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe, where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural societal issues, that may have acted indirectly, while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168812 2019-01-30T05:25:18Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ subhead changes</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> ;''Back to the Future II''<br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the {{w|DeLorean time machine|time machine}}, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back soon after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of {{w|Chalk outline|those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground}}, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ;Counterfactuals<br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been thrown at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> ;''Hillbilly Elegy''<br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> ;White Hat’s reaction<br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *Because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *There is a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy''. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by {{w|Time travel|time traveling}}.<br /> *After seeing the similarity alluded to by Cueball between our current reality and a reality where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy'' is written, he might imagine that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was {{w|Determinism|predetermined}}, just as Biff’s rise to power was predetermined by time travel. If he opposes Donald Trump politically, it would probably frustrate him to imagine that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as any social change he might hope for may be simply predetermined not to happen, perhaps by time travellers.<br /> <br /> <br /> ;Relationship to political events<br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *Randall may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the {{w|Dystopia|dystopian}} 1985A universe, where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe, where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural societal issues, that may have acted indirectly, while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168811 2019-01-30T05:18:36Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ whoops</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the {{w|DeLorean time machine|time machine}}, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back soon after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of {{w|Chalk outline|those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground}}, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ;Counterfactuals<br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been thrown at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> ;''Hillbilly Elegy''<br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> ;White Hat’s reaction<br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *Because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *There is a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy''. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by {{w|Time travel|time traveling}}.<br /> *After seeing the similarity alluded to by Cueball between our current reality and a reality where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy'' is written, he might imagine that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was {{w|Determinism|predetermined}}, just as Biff’s rise to power was predetermined by time travel. If he opposes Donald Trump politically, it would probably frustrate him to imagine that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as any social change he might hope for may be simply predetermined not to happen, perhaps by time travellers.<br /> <br /> ;Relationship to political events<br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *Randall may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the {{w|Dystopia|dystopian}} 1985A universe, where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe, where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural societal issues, that may have acted indirectly, while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168810 2019-01-30T05:15:38Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ minor redundancy removal</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the {{w|DeLorean time machine|time machine}}, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back soon after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ;Counterfactuals<br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been thrown at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> ;''Hillbilly Elegy''<br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> ;White Hat’s reaction<br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *Because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *There is a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy''. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by {{w|Time travel|time traveling}}.<br /> *After seeing the similarity alluded to by Cueball between our current reality and a reality where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy'' is written, he might imagine that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was {{w|Determinism|predetermined}}, just as Biff’s rise to power was predetermined by time travel. If he opposes Donald Trump politically, it would probably frustrate him to imagine that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as any social change he might hope for may be simply predetermined not to happen, perhaps by time travellers.<br /> <br /> ;Relationship to political events<br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *Randall may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the {{w|Dystopia|dystopian}} 1985A universe, where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe, where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural societal issues, that may have acted indirectly, while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168809 2019-01-30T05:08:04Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ Added subheads. If you don't like subheads then undo this. This wiki has no style guide.</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the {{w|DeLorean time machine|time machine}}, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back soon after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, and whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ;Counterfactuals<br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been thrown at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> ;''Hillbilly Elegy''<br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> ;White Hat’s reaction<br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *Because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *There is a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy''. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by {{w|Time travel|time traveling}}.<br /> *After seeing the similarity alluded to by Cueball between our current reality and a reality where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy'' is written, he might imagine that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was {{w|Determinism|predetermined}}, just as Biff’s rise to power was predetermined by time travel. If he opposes Donald Trump politically, it would probably frustrate him to imagine that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as any social change he might hope for may be simply predetermined not to happen, perhaps by time travellers.<br /> <br /> ;Relationship to political events<br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *Randall may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the {{w|Dystopia|dystopian}} 1985A universe, where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe, where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural societal issues, that may have acted indirectly, while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168808 2019-01-30T04:58:38Z

<p>162.158.122.156: Since it seems we can comment about just anything, I want to get people to watch these movies.</p> <hr /> <div>I thought Biff jumped from 2015 to 1955, not 1985...? Young Biff had the Almanac in his pocket at the High School dance and the tower he built was already in place in 1985.<br /> :This is an old unsigned comment. I would like to add for posterity that this has been fixed already. This guy tried to fix this information while the article was young and edits were happening super fast, so his edit got reversed as someone tried to add his edit over someone else's. It has since been fixed for good.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> &lt;!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--&gt;<br /> <br /> Collusion with a time traveler would bring a few things into focus. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.25|173.245.54.25]] 15:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :You inspire ''one'' house painter to change careers &amp; suddenly everyone blames you for everything. <br /> :[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy<br /> [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]] 15:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Do we keep the “cheat at sports betting” wording? I don’t know if this is cheating. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Cheating is generally heald to be using something unavailable to anyone else in the normal course of play to gain an advantage. I'd say using the almanac towards those ends definitely applies. [[User:Mjm87|Mjm87]] ([[User talk:Mjm87|talk]]) 19:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If anyone questions the fact that newspapers in real life did attempt to assert that the rise of Trump was inevitable, various newspaper articles may easily be found as proof with a Google Search for [Donald Trump inevitable], preferably restricted to results before 2017, so as to remove results about things he did later. I don't know how best to incorporate such results as a source in the article, as the number of citations could easily be made too big, and also I don't know if anyone cares. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I am from Europe, and I do not understand the issue. If event X happens while you predicted Y, isn't researching and hypothising a good way to find out why, possibly learning new things in the process? Saying you don't want to debate the issue is like hating politics. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.131|141.101.104.131]] 18:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> : Many people who understand politics hate it. On behalf of my fellow continenteans, I apologize for 141.101.104.131, who apparently believes that politics overlaps with political science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.40|162.158.114.40]] 18:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> :Note that ''Hillbilly Elegy'' could not have been intended to explain the Trump election, having been written before it. However, it was interpreted this way. I have attempted to make this clear in the explanation.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.179|108.162.212.179]] 18:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If I'm not mistaken, Biff is based off of Donald Trump, so the Donald Trump analogy may be more likely than not. I can't quite recall where I read this, but there are quite a few similarities between the two. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.138|162.158.186.138]] 19:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Added [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 19:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Why does this article go out of its way to avoid mentioning Hillary Clinton by name?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.19|162.158.107.19]] 20:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)KingLeary<br /> : Beats me. Fixed it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> XKCD on XKCD: &quot;The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.&quot; [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.233|172.69.33.233]] 01:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> The explanation should include info on what a &quot;counterfactual&quot; is. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Done [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 12:33, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> So I guess we're just construing this as a polarized editorial now. Appropriate context or no.<br /> <br /> Seems fun.<br /> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 01:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Isn't the title text making a reference to Orwell?<br /> <br /> ''Back to the Future'' is such a nice movie trilogy. If anyone is discouraged by the discussions over possible relations to Donald Trump, don't be. Those relations are pretty dim and do not worsen enjoyment of the movies, neither for Democrats nor for Republicans. I recommend that everyone here who hasn't watched these movies watch all three. They are a lot of fun. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:58, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == Regarding politics ==<br /> <br /> Wow, all this Trump stuff feels like a real stretch... [[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.95|172.68.132.95]] 21:00, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Nah21:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :It's pretty obvious to me, personally, that this is an analogy to the idea that if Trump rose to power via means nobody was aware of at the time, the book would seem a little humorous. I guess that seems like a huge stretch to some and obvious to others. The references to the roughly-two views on this in the article feel painful to read, controversial, and like the issues aren't really honestly and fairly laid out. I wish there were some way to really give respect to both views. Even if many disagree with Randall, I think for many it is clear this is the subject of the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]]<br /> <br /> Note there is a (joke?) conspiracy theory that Trump is a time traveler, using technology provided by his uncle John Trump...<br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.22|162.158.255.22]] 23:06, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :That would explain why he was able to do so well in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. He knew which states would be close, so he could focus his efforts on narrowly winning those instead of narrowing losing them, and not worry about states like CA that would have such wide margins of victory that campaigning wouldn't affect who won them.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.23|172.69.33.23]] 07:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :I think if Trump were a time traveller, he should be much richer, because he would have bet on sports, or invested in big companies while they were small. Instead, he invested in real estate, which was not a good option if he knew about the housing crisis beforehand. The only way I can think of to attribute his life choices to time travel meddling is: if the general public knew that time travel exists, this is the best way not to draw suspicion. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 13:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Or to provide reasonable doubt for a super-secret Temporal Court that recognizes the right to presumed innocence. I think I would enjoy reading that story.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 21:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == List layout ==<br /> <br /> In the two instances where the article considered alternative reasons for a feature of the comic, I have turned these reasons into a list, as this makes it easier to understand and cuts down on the repetitive &quot;Alternatively&quot; and such. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == 1985A ==<br /> <br /> I have changed instances of &quot;the universe where BiffCo exists&quot; to &quot;the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline&quot;, or simply &quot;1985A&quot; for short. This is for three reasons:<br /> <br /> *To keep the article cleaner.<br /> *To keep future misreaders of the article from either:<br /> **cutting down on the words because they seem unnecessary<br /> **adding a comma between &quot;universe&quot; and &quot;where&quot;, which would ruin the construct.<br /> *To be consistent with the terminology used by Doc Brown himself.<br /> <br /> I have established this wording at the beginning of the article.<br /> <br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:19, 30 January 2019 (UTC)</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168800 2019-01-30T04:52:12Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ well, not RIGHT after, Marty was locked in the garage for many hours.</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the {{w|DeLorean time machine|time machine}}, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back soon after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been thrown at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, and whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *Because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *There is a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy''. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by {{w|Time travel|time traveling}}.<br /> *After seeing the similarity alluded to by Cueball between our current reality and a reality where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy'' is written, he might imagine that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was {{w|Determinism|predetermined}}, just as Biff’s rise to power was predetermined by time travel. If he opposes Donald Trump politically, it would probably frustrate him to imagine that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as any social change he might hope for may be simply predetermined not to happen, perhaps by time travellers.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *Randall may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the {{w|Dystopia|dystopian}} 1985A universe, where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe, where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural societal issues, that may have acted indirectly, while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168799 2019-01-30T04:50:01Z

<p>162.158.122.156: </p> <hr /> <div>I thought Biff jumped from 2015 to 1955, not 1985...? Young Biff had the Almanac in his pocket at the High School dance and the tower he built was already in place in 1985.<br /> :This is an old unsigned comment. I would like to add for posterity that this has been fixed already. This guy tried to fix this information while the article was young and edits were happening super fast, so his edit got reversed as someone tried to add his edit over someone else's. It has since been fixed for good.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> &lt;!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--&gt;<br /> <br /> Collusion with a time traveler would bring a few things into focus. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.25|173.245.54.25]] 15:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :You inspire ''one'' house painter to change careers &amp; suddenly everyone blames you for everything. <br /> :[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy<br /> [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]] 15:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Do we keep the “cheat at sports betting” wording? I don’t know if this is cheating. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Cheating is generally heald to be using something unavailable to anyone else in the normal course of play to gain an advantage. I'd say using the almanac towards those ends definitely applies. [[User:Mjm87|Mjm87]] ([[User talk:Mjm87|talk]]) 19:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If anyone questions the fact that newspapers in real life did attempt to assert that the rise of Trump was inevitable, various newspaper articles may easily be found as proof with a Google Search for [Donald Trump inevitable], preferably restricted to results before 2017, so as to remove results about things he did later. I don't know how best to incorporate such results as a source in the article, as the number of citations could easily be made too big, and also I don't know if anyone cares. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I am from Europe, and I do not understand the issue. If event X happens while you predicted Y, isn't researching and hypothising a good way to find out why, possibly learning new things in the process? Saying you don't want to debate the issue is like hating politics. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.131|141.101.104.131]] 18:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> : Many people who understand politics hate it. On behalf of my fellow continenteans, I apologize for 141.101.104.131, who apparently believes that politics overlaps with political science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.40|162.158.114.40]] 18:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> :Note that ''Hillbilly Elegy'' could not have been intended to explain the Trump election, having been written before it. However, it was interpreted this way. I have attempted to make this clear in the explanation.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.179|108.162.212.179]] 18:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If I'm not mistaken, Biff is based off of Donald Trump, so the Donald Trump analogy may be more likely than not. I can't quite recall where I read this, but there are quite a few similarities between the two. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.138|162.158.186.138]] 19:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Added [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 19:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Why does this article go out of its way to avoid mentioning Hillary Clinton by name?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.19|162.158.107.19]] 20:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)KingLeary<br /> : Beats me. Fixed it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> XKCD on XKCD: &quot;The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.&quot; [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.233|172.69.33.233]] 01:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> The explanation should include info on what a &quot;counterfactual&quot; is. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Done [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 12:33, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> So I guess we're just construing this as a polarized editorial now. Appropriate context or no.<br /> <br /> Seems fun.<br /> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 01:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Isn't the title text making a reference to Orwell?<br /> == Regarding politics ==<br /> <br /> Wow, all this Trump stuff feels like a real stretch... [[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.95|172.68.132.95]] 21:00, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Nah21:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :It's pretty obvious to me, personally, that this is an analogy to the idea that if Trump rose to power via means nobody was aware of at the time, the book would seem a little humorous. I guess that seems like a huge stretch to some and obvious to others. The references to the roughly-two views on this in the article feel painful to read, controversial, and like the issues aren't really honestly and fairly laid out. I wish there were some way to really give respect to both views. Even if many disagree with Randall, I think for many it is clear this is the subject of the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]]<br /> <br /> Note there is a (joke?) conspiracy theory that Trump is a time traveler, using technology provided by his uncle John Trump...<br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.22|162.158.255.22]] 23:06, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :That would explain why he was able to do so well in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. He knew which states would be close, so he could focus his efforts on narrowly winning those instead of narrowing losing them, and not worry about states like CA that would have such wide margins of victory that campaigning wouldn't affect who won them.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.23|172.69.33.23]] 07:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :I think if Trump were a time traveller, he should be much richer, because he would have bet on sports, or invested in big companies while they were small. Instead, he invested in real estate, which was not a good option if he knew about the housing crisis beforehand. The only way I can think of to attribute his life choices to time travel meddling is: if the general public knew that time travel exists, this is the best way not to draw suspicion. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 13:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Or to provide reasonable doubt for a super-secret Temporal Court that recognizes the right to presumed innocence. I think I would enjoy reading that story.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 21:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == List layout ==<br /> <br /> In the two instances where the article considered alternative reasons for a feature of the comic, I have turned these reasons into a list, as this makes it easier to understand and cuts down on the repetitive &quot;Alternatively&quot; and such. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == 1985A ==<br /> <br /> I have changed instances of &quot;the universe where BiffCo exists&quot; to &quot;the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline&quot;, or simply &quot;1985A&quot; for short. This is for three reasons:<br /> <br /> *To keep the article cleaner.<br /> *To keep future misreaders of the article from either:<br /> **cutting down on the words because they seem unnecessary<br /> **adding a comma between &quot;universe&quot; and &quot;where&quot;, which would ruin the construct.<br /> *To be consistent with the terminology used by Doc Brown himself.<br /> <br /> I have established this wording at the beginning of the article.<br /> <br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:19, 30 January 2019 (UTC)</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168798 2019-01-30T04:46:32Z

<p>162.158.122.156: I have tried to help by moving a comment that was added at the top to the bottom. If this is an illegal operation then please undo it.</p> <hr /> <div>I thought Biff jumped from 2015 to 1955, not 1985...? Young Biff had the Almanac in his pocket at the High School dance and the tower he built was already in place in 1985.<br /> <br /> &lt;!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--&gt;<br /> <br /> Collusion with a time traveler would bring a few things into focus. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.25|173.245.54.25]] 15:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :You inspire ''one'' house painter to change careers &amp; suddenly everyone blames you for everything. <br /> :[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy<br /> [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]] 15:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Do we keep the “cheat at sports betting” wording? I don’t know if this is cheating. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Cheating is generally heald to be using something unavailable to anyone else in the normal course of play to gain an advantage. I'd say using the almanac towards those ends definitely applies. [[User:Mjm87|Mjm87]] ([[User talk:Mjm87|talk]]) 19:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If anyone questions the fact that newspapers in real life did attempt to assert that the rise of Trump was inevitable, various newspaper articles may easily be found as proof with a Google Search for [Donald Trump inevitable], preferably restricted to results before 2017, so as to remove results about things he did later. I don't know how best to incorporate such results as a source in the article, as the number of citations could easily be made too big, and also I don't know if anyone cares. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I am from Europe, and I do not understand the issue. If event X happens while you predicted Y, isn't researching and hypothising a good way to find out why, possibly learning new things in the process? Saying you don't want to debate the issue is like hating politics. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.131|141.101.104.131]] 18:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> : Many people who understand politics hate it. On behalf of my fellow continenteans, I apologize for 141.101.104.131, who apparently believes that politics overlaps with political science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.40|162.158.114.40]] 18:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> :Note that ''Hillbilly Elegy'' could not have been intended to explain the Trump election, having been written before it. However, it was interpreted this way. I have attempted to make this clear in the explanation.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.179|108.162.212.179]] 18:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If I'm not mistaken, Biff is based off of Donald Trump, so the Donald Trump analogy may be more likely than not. I can't quite recall where I read this, but there are quite a few similarities between the two. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.138|162.158.186.138]] 19:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Added [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 19:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Why does this article go out of its way to avoid mentioning Hillary Clinton by name?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.19|162.158.107.19]] 20:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)KingLeary<br /> : Beats me. Fixed it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> XKCD on XKCD: &quot;The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.&quot; [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.233|172.69.33.233]] 01:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> The explanation should include info on what a &quot;counterfactual&quot; is. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Done [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 12:33, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> So I guess we're just construing this as a polarized editorial now. Appropriate context or no.<br /> <br /> Seems fun.<br /> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 01:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Isn't the title text making a reference to Orwell?<br /> == Regarding politics ==<br /> <br /> Wow, all this Trump stuff feels like a real stretch... [[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.95|172.68.132.95]] 21:00, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Nah21:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :It's pretty obvious to me, personally, that this is an analogy to the idea that if Trump rose to power via means nobody was aware of at the time, the book would seem a little humorous. I guess that seems like a huge stretch to some and obvious to others. The references to the roughly-two views on this in the article feel painful to read, controversial, and like the issues aren't really honestly and fairly laid out. I wish there were some way to really give respect to both views. Even if many disagree with Randall, I think for many it is clear this is the subject of the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]]<br /> <br /> Note there is a (joke?) conspiracy theory that Trump is a time traveler, using technology provided by his uncle John Trump...<br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.22|162.158.255.22]] 23:06, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :That would explain why he was able to do so well in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. He knew which states would be close, so he could focus his efforts on narrowly winning those instead of narrowing losing them, and not worry about states like CA that would have such wide margins of victory that campaigning wouldn't affect who won them.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.23|172.69.33.23]] 07:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :I think if Trump were a time traveller, he should be much richer, because he would have bet on sports, or invested in big companies while they were small. Instead, he invested in real estate, which was not a good option if he knew about the housing crisis beforehand. The only way I can think of to attribute his life choices to time travel meddling is: if the general public knew that time travel exists, this is the best way not to draw suspicion. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 13:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Or to provide reasonable doubt for a super-secret Temporal Court that recognizes the right to presumed innocence. I think I would enjoy reading that story.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 21:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == List layout ==<br /> <br /> In the two instances where the article considered alternative reasons for a feature of the comic, I have turned these reasons into a list, as this makes it easier to understand and cuts down on the repetitive &quot;Alternatively&quot; and such. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == 1985A ==<br /> <br /> I have changed instances of &quot;the universe where BiffCo exists&quot; to &quot;the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline&quot;, or simply &quot;1985A&quot; for short. This is for three reasons:<br /> <br /> *To keep the article cleaner.<br /> *To keep future misreaders of the article from either:<br /> **cutting down on the words because they seem unnecessary<br /> **adding a comma between &quot;universe&quot; and &quot;where&quot;, which would ruin the construct.<br /> *To be consistent with the terminology used by Doc Brown himself.<br /> <br /> I have established this wording at the beginning of the article.<br /> <br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:19, 30 January 2019 (UTC)</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168797 2019-01-30T04:41:19Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ minor</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the {{w|DeLorean time machine|time machine}}, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back right after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been thrown at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, and whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *Because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *There is a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy''. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by {{w|Time travel|time traveling}}.<br /> *After seeing the similarity alluded to by Cueball between our current reality and a reality where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy'' is written, he might imagine that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was {{w|Determinism|predetermined}}, just as Biff’s rise to power was predetermined by time travel. If he opposes Donald Trump politically, it would probably frustrate him to imagine that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as any social change he might hope for may be simply predetermined not to happen, perhaps by time travellers.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *Randall may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the {{w|Dystopia|dystopian}} 1985A universe, where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe, where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural societal issues, that may have acted indirectly, while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168796 2019-01-30T04:39:46Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* 1985A */ In case someone reads my comment before looking at the article</p> <hr /> <div>So I guess we're just construing this as a polarized editorial now. Appropriate context or no.<br /> <br /> Seems fun.<br /> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 01:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I thought Biff jumped from 2015 to 1955, not 1985...? Young Biff had the Almanac in his pocket at the High School dance and the tower he built was already in place in 1985.<br /> <br /> &lt;!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--&gt;<br /> Collusion with a time traveler would bring a few things into focus. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.25|173.245.54.25]] 15:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :You inspire ''one'' house painter to change careers &amp; suddenly everyone blames you for everything. <br /> :[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy<br /> [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]] 15:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Do we keep the “cheat at sports betting” wording? I don’t know if this is cheating. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Cheating is generally heald to be using something unavailable to anyone else in the normal course of play to gain an advantage. I'd say using the almanac towards those ends definitely applies. [[User:Mjm87|Mjm87]] ([[User talk:Mjm87|talk]]) 19:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If anyone questions the fact that newspapers in real life did attempt to assert that the rise of Trump was inevitable, various newspaper articles may easily be found as proof with a Google Search for [Donald Trump inevitable], preferably restricted to results before 2017, so as to remove results about things he did later. I don't know how best to incorporate such results as a source in the article, as the number of citations could easily be made too big, and also I don't know if anyone cares. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I am from Europe, and I do not understand the issue. If event X happens while you predicted Y, isn't researching and hypothising a good way to find out why, possibly learning new things in the process? Saying you don't want to debate the issue is like hating politics. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.131|141.101.104.131]] 18:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> : Many people who understand politics hate it. On behalf of my fellow continenteans, I apologize for 141.101.104.131, who apparently believes that politics overlaps with political science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.40|162.158.114.40]] 18:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> :Note that ''Hillbilly Elegy'' could not have been intended to explain the Trump election, having been written before it. However, it was interpreted this way. I have attempted to make this clear in the explanation.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.179|108.162.212.179]] 18:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If I'm not mistaken, Biff is based off of Donald Trump, so the Donald Trump analogy may be more likely than not. I can't quite recall where I read this, but there are quite a few similarities between the two. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.138|162.158.186.138]] 19:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Added [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 19:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Why does this article go out of its way to avoid mentioning Hillary Clinton by name?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.19|162.158.107.19]] 20:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)KingLeary<br /> : Beats me. Fixed it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> XKCD on XKCD: &quot;The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.&quot; [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.233|172.69.33.233]] 01:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> The explanation should include info on what a &quot;counterfactual&quot; is. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Done [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 12:33, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Isn't the title text making a reference to Orwell?<br /> <br /> == Regarding politics ==<br /> <br /> Wow, all this Trump stuff feels like a real stretch... [[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.95|172.68.132.95]] 21:00, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Nah21:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :It's pretty obvious to me, personally, that this is an analogy to the idea that if Trump rose to power via means nobody was aware of at the time, the book would seem a little humorous. I guess that seems like a huge stretch to some and obvious to others. The references to the roughly-two views on this in the article feel painful to read, controversial, and like the issues aren't really honestly and fairly laid out. I wish there were some way to really give respect to both views. Even if many disagree with Randall, I think for many it is clear this is the subject of the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]]<br /> <br /> Note there is a (joke?) conspiracy theory that Trump is a time traveler, using technology provided by his uncle John Trump...<br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.22|162.158.255.22]] 23:06, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :That would explain why he was able to do so well in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. He knew which states would be close, so he could focus his efforts on narrowly winning those instead of narrowing losing them, and not worry about states like CA that would have such wide margins of victory that campaigning wouldn't affect who won them.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.23|172.69.33.23]] 07:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :I think if Trump were a time traveller, he should be much richer, because he would have bet on sports, or invested in big companies while they were small. Instead, he invested in real estate, which was not a good option if he knew about the housing crisis beforehand. The only way I can think of to attribute his life choices to time travel meddling is: if the general public knew that time travel exists, this is the best way not to draw suspicion. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 13:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Or to provide reasonable doubt for a super-secret Temporal Court that recognizes the right to presumed innocence. I think I would enjoy reading that story.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 21:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == List layout ==<br /> <br /> In the two instances where the article considered alternative reasons for a feature of the comic, I have turned these reasons into a list, as this makes it easier to understand and cuts down on the repetitive &quot;Alternatively&quot; and such. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == 1985A ==<br /> <br /> I have changed instances of &quot;the universe where BiffCo exists&quot; to &quot;the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline&quot;, or simply &quot;1985A&quot; for short. This is for three reasons:<br /> <br /> *To keep the article cleaner.<br /> *To keep future misreaders of the article from either:<br /> **cutting down on the words because they seem unnecessary<br /> **adding a comma between &quot;universe&quot; and &quot;where&quot;, which would ruin the construct.<br /> *To be consistent with the terminology used by Doc Brown himself.<br /> <br /> I have established this wording at the beginning of the article.<br /> <br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:19, 30 January 2019 (UTC)</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168795 2019-01-30T04:38:16Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* 1985A */ Fixed my grammatical and mathematical failures</p> <hr /> <div>So I guess we're just construing this as a polarized editorial now. Appropriate context or no.<br /> <br /> Seems fun.<br /> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 01:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I thought Biff jumped from 2015 to 1955, not 1985...? Young Biff had the Almanac in his pocket at the High School dance and the tower he built was already in place in 1985.<br /> <br /> &lt;!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--&gt;<br /> Collusion with a time traveler would bring a few things into focus. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.25|173.245.54.25]] 15:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :You inspire ''one'' house painter to change careers &amp; suddenly everyone blames you for everything. <br /> :[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy<br /> [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]] 15:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Do we keep the “cheat at sports betting” wording? I don’t know if this is cheating. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Cheating is generally heald to be using something unavailable to anyone else in the normal course of play to gain an advantage. I'd say using the almanac towards those ends definitely applies. [[User:Mjm87|Mjm87]] ([[User talk:Mjm87|talk]]) 19:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If anyone questions the fact that newspapers in real life did attempt to assert that the rise of Trump was inevitable, various newspaper articles may easily be found as proof with a Google Search for [Donald Trump inevitable], preferably restricted to results before 2017, so as to remove results about things he did later. I don't know how best to incorporate such results as a source in the article, as the number of citations could easily be made too big, and also I don't know if anyone cares. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I am from Europe, and I do not understand the issue. If event X happens while you predicted Y, isn't researching and hypothising a good way to find out why, possibly learning new things in the process? Saying you don't want to debate the issue is like hating politics. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.131|141.101.104.131]] 18:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> : Many people who understand politics hate it. On behalf of my fellow continenteans, I apologize for 141.101.104.131, who apparently believes that politics overlaps with political science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.40|162.158.114.40]] 18:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> :Note that ''Hillbilly Elegy'' could not have been intended to explain the Trump election, having been written before it. However, it was interpreted this way. I have attempted to make this clear in the explanation.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.179|108.162.212.179]] 18:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If I'm not mistaken, Biff is based off of Donald Trump, so the Donald Trump analogy may be more likely than not. I can't quite recall where I read this, but there are quite a few similarities between the two. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.138|162.158.186.138]] 19:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Added [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 19:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Why does this article go out of its way to avoid mentioning Hillary Clinton by name?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.19|162.158.107.19]] 20:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)KingLeary<br /> : Beats me. Fixed it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> XKCD on XKCD: &quot;The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.&quot; [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.233|172.69.33.233]] 01:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> The explanation should include info on what a &quot;counterfactual&quot; is. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Done [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 12:33, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Isn't the title text making a reference to Orwell?<br /> <br /> == Regarding politics ==<br /> <br /> Wow, all this Trump stuff feels like a real stretch... [[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.95|172.68.132.95]] 21:00, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Nah21:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :It's pretty obvious to me, personally, that this is an analogy to the idea that if Trump rose to power via means nobody was aware of at the time, the book would seem a little humorous. I guess that seems like a huge stretch to some and obvious to others. The references to the roughly-two views on this in the article feel painful to read, controversial, and like the issues aren't really honestly and fairly laid out. I wish there were some way to really give respect to both views. Even if many disagree with Randall, I think for many it is clear this is the subject of the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]]<br /> <br /> Note there is a (joke?) conspiracy theory that Trump is a time traveler, using technology provided by his uncle John Trump...<br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.22|162.158.255.22]] 23:06, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :That would explain why he was able to do so well in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. He knew which states would be close, so he could focus his efforts on narrowly winning those instead of narrowing losing them, and not worry about states like CA that would have such wide margins of victory that campaigning wouldn't affect who won them.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.23|172.69.33.23]] 07:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :I think if Trump were a time traveller, he should be much richer, because he would have bet on sports, or invested in big companies while they were small. Instead, he invested in real estate, which was not a good option if he knew about the housing crisis beforehand. The only way I can think of to attribute his life choices to time travel meddling is: if the general public knew that time travel exists, this is the best way not to draw suspicion. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 13:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Or to provide reasonable doubt for a super-secret Temporal Court that recognizes the right to presumed innocence. I think I would enjoy reading that story.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 21:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == List layout ==<br /> <br /> In the two instances where the article considered alternative reasons for a feature of the comic, I have turned these reasons into a list, as this makes it easier to understand and cuts down on the repetitive &quot;Alternatively&quot; and such. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == 1985A ==<br /> <br /> I have changed instances of &quot;the universe where BiffCo exists&quot; to &quot;the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline&quot;, or simply &quot;1985A&quot; for short. This is for three reasons:<br /> <br /> *To keep the article cleaner.<br /> *To keep future misreaders of the article from either:<br /> **cutting down on the words because they seem unnecessary<br /> **adding a comma between &quot;universe&quot; and &quot;where&quot;, which would ruin the construct.<br /> *To be consistent with the terminology used by Doc Brown himself.<br /> <br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:19, 30 January 2019 (UTC)</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168794 2019-01-30T04:37:31Z

<p>162.158.122.156: More list improvements and more Wikipedia.</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the {{w|DeLorean time machine|time machine}}, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back right after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been hit at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, and whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *Because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *There is a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy''. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by {{w|Time travel|time traveling}}.<br /> *After seeing the similarity alluded to by Cueball between our current reality and a reality where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy'' is written, he might imagine that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was {{w|Determinism|predetermined}}, just as Biff’s rise to power was predetermined by time travel. If he opposes Donald Trump politically, it would probably frustrate him to imagine that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as any social change he might hope for may be simply predetermined not to happen, perhaps by time travellers.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *Randall may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the {{w|Dystopia|dystopian}} 1985A universe, where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe, where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural societal issues, that may have acted indirectly, while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168793 2019-01-30T04:26:28Z

<p>162.158.122.156: List improvements.</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back right after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been hit at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, and whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *Because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *There is also a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy''. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling.<br /> *After seeing the similarity alluded to by Cueball between our current reality and a reality where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy'' is written, he might imagine that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was predetermined, just as Biff’s rise to power was predetermined by time travel. If he opposes Donald Trump politically, it would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as time travellers could stop any societal change he might hope for from happening.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *He may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural, societal issues that may have acted indirectly while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168792 2019-01-30T04:20:11Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* 1985A */ fixed my italics</p> <hr /> <div>So I guess we're just construing this as a polarized editorial now. Appropriate context or no.<br /> <br /> Seems fun.<br /> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 01:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I thought Biff jumped from 2015 to 1955, not 1985...? Young Biff had the Almanac in his pocket at the High School dance and the tower he built was already in place in 1985.<br /> <br /> &lt;!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--&gt;<br /> Collusion with a time traveler would bring a few things into focus. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.25|173.245.54.25]] 15:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :You inspire ''one'' house painter to change careers &amp; suddenly everyone blames you for everything. <br /> :[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy<br /> [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]] 15:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Do we keep the “cheat at sports betting” wording? I don’t know if this is cheating. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Cheating is generally heald to be using something unavailable to anyone else in the normal course of play to gain an advantage. I'd say using the almanac towards those ends definitely applies. [[User:Mjm87|Mjm87]] ([[User talk:Mjm87|talk]]) 19:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If anyone questions the fact that newspapers in real life did attempt to assert that the rise of Trump was inevitable, various newspaper articles may easily be found as proof with a Google Search for [Donald Trump inevitable], preferably restricted to results before 2017, so as to remove results about things he did later. I don't know how best to incorporate such results as a source in the article, as the number of citations could easily be made too big, and also I don't know if anyone cares. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I am from Europe, and I do not understand the issue. If event X happens while you predicted Y, isn't researching and hypothising a good way to find out why, possibly learning new things in the process? Saying you don't want to debate the issue is like hating politics. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.131|141.101.104.131]] 18:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> : Many people who understand politics hate it. On behalf of my fellow continenteans, I apologize for 141.101.104.131, who apparently believes that politics overlaps with political science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.40|162.158.114.40]] 18:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> :Note that ''Hillbilly Elegy'' could not have been intended to explain the Trump election, having been written before it. However, it was interpreted this way. I have attempted to make this clear in the explanation.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.179|108.162.212.179]] 18:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If I'm not mistaken, Biff is based off of Donald Trump, so the Donald Trump analogy may be more likely than not. I can't quite recall where I read this, but there are quite a few similarities between the two. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.138|162.158.186.138]] 19:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Added [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 19:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Why does this article go out of its way to avoid mentioning Hillary Clinton by name?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.19|162.158.107.19]] 20:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)KingLeary<br /> : Beats me. Fixed it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> XKCD on XKCD: &quot;The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.&quot; [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.233|172.69.33.233]] 01:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> The explanation should include info on what a &quot;counterfactual&quot; is. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Done [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 12:33, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Isn't the title text making a reference to Orwell?<br /> <br /> == Regarding politics ==<br /> <br /> Wow, all this Trump stuff feels like a real stretch... [[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.95|172.68.132.95]] 21:00, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Nah21:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :It's pretty obvious to me, personally, that this is an analogy to the idea that if Trump rose to power via means nobody was aware of at the time, the book would seem a little humorous. I guess that seems like a huge stretch to some and obvious to others. The references to the roughly-two views on this in the article feel painful to read, controversial, and like the issues aren't really honestly and fairly laid out. I wish there were some way to really give respect to both views. Even if many disagree with Randall, I think for many it is clear this is the subject of the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]]<br /> <br /> Note there is a (joke?) conspiracy theory that Trump is a time traveler, using technology provided by his uncle John Trump...<br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.22|162.158.255.22]] 23:06, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :That would explain why he was able to do so well in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. He knew which states would be close, so he could focus his efforts on narrowly winning those instead of narrowing losing them, and not worry about states like CA that would have such wide margins of victory that campaigning wouldn't affect who won them.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.23|172.69.33.23]] 07:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :I think if Trump were a time traveller, he should be much richer, because he would have bet on sports, or invested in big companies while they were small. Instead, he invested in real estate, which was not a good option if he knew about the housing crisis beforehand. The only way I can think of to attribute his life choices to time travel meddling is: if the general public knew that time travel exists, this is the best way not to draw suspicion. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 13:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Or to provide reasonable doubt for a super-secret Temporal Court that recognizes the right to presumed innocence. I think I would enjoy reading that story.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 21:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == List layout ==<br /> <br /> In the two instances where the article considered alternative reasons for a feature of the comic, I have turned these reasons into a list, as this makes it easier to understand and cuts down on the repetitive &quot;Alternatively&quot; and such. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == 1985A ==<br /> <br /> I have changed instances of &quot;the universe where BiffCo exists&quot; to &quot;the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline&quot;, or simply &quot;1985A&quot; for short. This is for two reasons:<br /> <br /> *To keep the article cleaner.<br /> *To keep future misreaders the article from either:<br /> **cutting down on the words because they seem unnecessary<br /> **adding a comma between &quot;universe&quot; and &quot;where&quot;, which would ruin the construct.<br /> *To be consistent with the terminology used by Doc Brown himself.<br /> <br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:19, 30 January 2019 (UTC)</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168791 2019-01-30T04:19:36Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* 1985A */ new section</p> <hr /> <div>So I guess we're just construing this as a polarized editorial now. Appropriate context or no.<br /> <br /> Seems fun.<br /> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 01:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I thought Biff jumped from 2015 to 1955, not 1985...? Young Biff had the Almanac in his pocket at the High School dance and the tower he built was already in place in 1985.<br /> <br /> &lt;!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--&gt;<br /> Collusion with a time traveler would bring a few things into focus. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.25|173.245.54.25]] 15:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :You inspire ''one'' house painter to change careers &amp; suddenly everyone blames you for everything. <br /> :[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy<br /> [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]] 15:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Do we keep the “cheat at sports betting” wording? I don’t know if this is cheating. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Cheating is generally heald to be using something unavailable to anyone else in the normal course of play to gain an advantage. I'd say using the almanac towards those ends definitely applies. [[User:Mjm87|Mjm87]] ([[User talk:Mjm87|talk]]) 19:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If anyone questions the fact that newspapers in real life did attempt to assert that the rise of Trump was inevitable, various newspaper articles may easily be found as proof with a Google Search for [Donald Trump inevitable], preferably restricted to results before 2017, so as to remove results about things he did later. I don't know how best to incorporate such results as a source in the article, as the number of citations could easily be made too big, and also I don't know if anyone cares. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I am from Europe, and I do not understand the issue. If event X happens while you predicted Y, isn't researching and hypothising a good way to find out why, possibly learning new things in the process? Saying you don't want to debate the issue is like hating politics. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.131|141.101.104.131]] 18:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> : Many people who understand politics hate it. On behalf of my fellow continenteans, I apologize for 141.101.104.131, who apparently believes that politics overlaps with political science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.40|162.158.114.40]] 18:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> :Note that ''Hillbilly Elegy'' could not have been intended to explain the Trump election, having been written before it. However, it was interpreted this way. I have attempted to make this clear in the explanation.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.179|108.162.212.179]] 18:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If I'm not mistaken, Biff is based off of Donald Trump, so the Donald Trump analogy may be more likely than not. I can't quite recall where I read this, but there are quite a few similarities between the two. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.138|162.158.186.138]] 19:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Added [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 19:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Why does this article go out of its way to avoid mentioning Hillary Clinton by name?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.19|162.158.107.19]] 20:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)KingLeary<br /> : Beats me. Fixed it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> XKCD on XKCD: &quot;The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.&quot; [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.233|172.69.33.233]] 01:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> The explanation should include info on what a &quot;counterfactual&quot; is. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Done [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 12:33, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Isn't the title text making a reference to Orwell?<br /> <br /> == Regarding politics ==<br /> <br /> Wow, all this Trump stuff feels like a real stretch... [[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.95|172.68.132.95]] 21:00, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Nah21:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :It's pretty obvious to me, personally, that this is an analogy to the idea that if Trump rose to power via means nobody was aware of at the time, the book would seem a little humorous. I guess that seems like a huge stretch to some and obvious to others. The references to the roughly-two views on this in the article feel painful to read, controversial, and like the issues aren't really honestly and fairly laid out. I wish there were some way to really give respect to both views. Even if many disagree with Randall, I think for many it is clear this is the subject of the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]]<br /> <br /> Note there is a (joke?) conspiracy theory that Trump is a time traveler, using technology provided by his uncle John Trump...<br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.22|162.158.255.22]] 23:06, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :That would explain why he was able to do so well in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. He knew which states would be close, so he could focus his efforts on narrowly winning those instead of narrowing losing them, and not worry about states like CA that would have such wide margins of victory that campaigning wouldn't affect who won them.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.23|172.69.33.23]] 07:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :I think if Trump were a time traveller, he should be much richer, because he would have bet on sports, or invested in big companies while they were small. Instead, he invested in real estate, which was not a good option if he knew about the housing crisis beforehand. The only way I can think of to attribute his life choices to time travel meddling is: if the general public knew that time travel exists, this is the best way not to draw suspicion. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 13:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Or to provide reasonable doubt for a super-secret Temporal Court that recognizes the right to presumed innocence. I think I would enjoy reading that story.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 21:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == List layout ==<br /> <br /> In the two instances where the article considered alternative reasons for a feature of the comic, I have turned these reasons into a list, as this makes it easier to understand and cuts down on the repetitive &quot;Alternatively&quot; and such. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == 1985A ==<br /> <br /> I have changed instances of &quot;the universe where BiffCo exists&quot; to &quot;the 1985A ''Back to the Future timeline''&quot;, or simply &quot;1985A&quot; for short. This is for two reasons:<br /> <br /> *To keep the article cleaner.<br /> *To keep future misreaders the article from either:<br /> **cutting down on the words because they seem unnecessary<br /> **adding a comma between &quot;universe&quot; and &quot;where&quot;, which would ruin the construct.<br /> *To be consistent with the terminology used by Doc Brown himself.<br /> <br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:19, 30 January 2019 (UTC)</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168790 2019-01-30T04:15:43Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* List layout */ new section</p> <hr /> <div>So I guess we're just construing this as a polarized editorial now. Appropriate context or no.<br /> <br /> Seems fun.<br /> [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 01:50, 30 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I thought Biff jumped from 2015 to 1955, not 1985...? Young Biff had the Almanac in his pocket at the High School dance and the tower he built was already in place in 1985.<br /> <br /> &lt;!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--&gt;<br /> Collusion with a time traveler would bring a few things into focus. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.25|173.245.54.25]] 15:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :You inspire ''one'' house painter to change careers &amp; suddenly everyone blames you for everything. <br /> :[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy<br /> [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]] 15:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Do we keep the “cheat at sports betting” wording? I don’t know if this is cheating. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Cheating is generally heald to be using something unavailable to anyone else in the normal course of play to gain an advantage. I'd say using the almanac towards those ends definitely applies. [[User:Mjm87|Mjm87]] ([[User talk:Mjm87|talk]]) 19:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If anyone questions the fact that newspapers in real life did attempt to assert that the rise of Trump was inevitable, various newspaper articles may easily be found as proof with a Google Search for [Donald Trump inevitable], preferably restricted to results before 2017, so as to remove results about things he did later. I don't know how best to incorporate such results as a source in the article, as the number of citations could easily be made too big, and also I don't know if anyone cares. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I am from Europe, and I do not understand the issue. If event X happens while you predicted Y, isn't researching and hypothising a good way to find out why, possibly learning new things in the process? Saying you don't want to debate the issue is like hating politics. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.131|141.101.104.131]] 18:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> : Many people who understand politics hate it. On behalf of my fellow continenteans, I apologize for 141.101.104.131, who apparently believes that politics overlaps with political science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.40|162.158.114.40]] 18:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> :Note that ''Hillbilly Elegy'' could not have been intended to explain the Trump election, having been written before it. However, it was interpreted this way. I have attempted to make this clear in the explanation.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.179|108.162.212.179]] 18:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If I'm not mistaken, Biff is based off of Donald Trump, so the Donald Trump analogy may be more likely than not. I can't quite recall where I read this, but there are quite a few similarities between the two. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.138|162.158.186.138]] 19:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Added [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 19:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Why does this article go out of its way to avoid mentioning Hillary Clinton by name?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.107.19|162.158.107.19]] 20:25, 28 January 2019 (UTC)KingLeary<br /> : Beats me. Fixed it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:47, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> XKCD on XKCD: &quot;The word 'thinkpiece' sounds like a word made up by someone who didn't know about the word 'brain'.&quot; [[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.233|172.69.33.233]] 01:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> The explanation should include info on what a &quot;counterfactual&quot; is. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.95|108.162.246.95]] 04:49, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Done [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 12:33, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Isn't the title text making a reference to Orwell?<br /> <br /> == Regarding politics ==<br /> <br /> Wow, all this Trump stuff feels like a real stretch... [[Special:Contributions/172.68.132.95|172.68.132.95]] 21:00, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Nah21:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :It's pretty obvious to me, personally, that this is an analogy to the idea that if Trump rose to power via means nobody was aware of at the time, the book would seem a little humorous. I guess that seems like a huge stretch to some and obvious to others. The references to the roughly-two views on this in the article feel painful to read, controversial, and like the issues aren't really honestly and fairly laid out. I wish there were some way to really give respect to both views. Even if many disagree with Randall, I think for many it is clear this is the subject of the comic. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]]<br /> <br /> Note there is a (joke?) conspiracy theory that Trump is a time traveler, using technology provided by his uncle John Trump...<br /> [[Special:Contributions/162.158.255.22|162.158.255.22]] 23:06, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :That would explain why he was able to do so well in the electoral college despite losing the popular vote. He knew which states would be close, so he could focus his efforts on narrowly winning those instead of narrowing losing them, and not worry about states like CA that would have such wide margins of victory that campaigning wouldn't affect who won them.[[Special:Contributions/172.69.33.23|172.69.33.23]] 07:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :I think if Trump were a time traveller, he should be much richer, because he would have bet on sports, or invested in big companies while they were small. Instead, he invested in real estate, which was not a good option if he knew about the housing crisis beforehand. The only way I can think of to attribute his life choices to time travel meddling is: if the general public knew that time travel exists, this is the best way not to draw suspicion. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.131|108.162.212.131]] 13:06, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Or to provide reasonable doubt for a super-secret Temporal Court that recognizes the right to presumed innocence. I think I would enjoy reading that story.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.167|108.162.221.167]] 21:58, 29 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> == List layout ==<br /> <br /> In the two instances where the article considered alternative reasons for a feature of the comic, I have turned these reasons into a list, as this makes it easier to understand and cuts down on the repetitive &quot;Alternatively&quot; and such. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 04:15, 30 January 2019 (UTC)</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168789 2019-01-30T04:14:02Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ Attempt to cut down on &quot;Alternatively&quot; via lists.</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back right after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been hit at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, and whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry. This may be for various reasons:<br /> <br /> *because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun.<br /> *there is also a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy''. If he is enjoying it, this would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling.<br /> *after seeing the similarity of our society to the reality described by Cueball (where the book ''Hill Valley Elegy'' is written), he might consider that we may be living in a world where Trump’s election was predetermined, just as Biff’s rise was predetermined by time travel. If he is against Donald Trump, it would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future would be in vain, as time travellers could stop any change he might hope for from happening.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump’s election. This may add to explaining the comic in the following ways:<br /> <br /> *He may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing.<br /> *The comic may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.<br /> *The comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural, societal issues that may have acted indirectly while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues the comparison to the election situation by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168788 2019-01-30T04:04:29Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ Everything must be in Wikipedia! For posterity! And other minor changes</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back right after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, [[Cueball]] imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, the 1985A ''Back to the Future'' timeline – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been hit at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, and whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the {{w|2016 United States presidential election|election}} of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. {{w|Netflix}} had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes [[White Hat]] angry, because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun. There is also a decent chance that the book White Hat is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy'', which would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling. After seeing similar symptoms in our society, perhaps he would consider that we are living in such a world predetermined to negative effects. It would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future and hoping for a changing society would be an effort in vain, when the universe is similarly tampered with by time-travellers. Alternatively, he is enjoying the book and is angry at the insult to it.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump's election. Therefore, he may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing. It may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.<br /> <br /> Alternatively, the comic may be an allusion to {{w|Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections|alleged Russian tampering}} of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall may be proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural, societal issues that may have acted indirectly while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues this comparison by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, {{w|Bob Gale}}, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor {{w|Thomas F. Wilson|Tom Wilson}} has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168787 2019-01-30T03:55:45Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ various improvements</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Grays_Sports_Almanac sports almanac], containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back right after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, Cueball imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, 1985A – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short, in {{w|epistemology}}, for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, since it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first “what if?” post, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been hit at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, and whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor {{w|Rust Belt}} town, and gives a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. Netflix had [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes White Hat Guy angry, because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun. There is also a decent chance that the book White Hat Guy is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy'', which would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling. After seeing similar symptoms in our society, perhaps he would consider that we are living in such a world predetermined to negative effects. It would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future and hoping for a changing society would be an effort in vain, when the universe is similarly tampered with by time-travellers. Alternatively, he is enjoying the book and is angry at the insult to it.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump's election. Therefore, he may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing. It may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.<br /> <br /> Alternatively, the comic may be an allusion to alleged Russian tampering of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall is proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural, societal issues that may have acted indirectly while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues this comparison by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/October_21 October 2015] setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, Bob Gale, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor Tom Wilson has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168786 2019-01-30T03:46:35Z

<p>162.158.122.156: </p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s sports almanac, containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back right after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, Cueball imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, 1985A – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short in epistemology for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, for it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first post in that series, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been hit at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various dangerous biker gangs, and whorehouses, an adult toy shop, and a couple of those crime scene shilhouette lines on the ground, likely indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town, and offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. Netflix [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes White Hat Guy angry, because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun. There is also a decent chance that the book White Hat Guy is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy'', which would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling. After seeing similar symptoms in our society, perhaps he would consider that we are living in such a world predetermined to negative effects. It would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future and hoping for a changing society would be an effort in vain, when the universe is similarly tampered with by time-travellers. Alternatively, he is enjoying the book and is angry at the insult to it.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump's election. Therefore, he may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing. It may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.<br /> <br /> Alternatively, the comic may be an allusion to alleged Russian tampering of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall is proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural, societal issues that may have acted indirectly while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues this comparison by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important October 2015 setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, Bob Gale, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor Tom Wilson has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168785 2019-01-30T03:43:53Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ improved counterfactuals paragraph and added why society decayed</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s sports almanac, containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back right after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, Cueball imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, 1985A – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short in epistemology for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, for it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. For example, the first post in that series, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been hit at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/Timeline_1 what would happen] if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. In the neighbourhood of the casino, there can be seen various biker gangs and whorehouses, as well as police lines on the ground indicating murders. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town, and offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. Netflix [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes White Hat Guy angry, because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun. There is also a decent chance that the book White Hat Guy is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy'', which would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling. After seeing similar symptoms in our society, perhaps he would consider that we are living in such a world predetermined to negative effects. It would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future and hoping for a changing society would be an effort in vain, when the universe is similarly tampered with by time-travellers. Alternatively, he is enjoying the book and is angry at the insult to it.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump's election. Therefore, he may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing. It may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.<br /> <br /> Alternatively, the comic may be an allusion to alleged Russian tampering of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall is proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural, societal issues that may have acted indirectly while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues this comparison by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important October 2015 setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, Bob Gale, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor Tom Wilson has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168784 2019-01-30T03:35:19Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ Changing to the new wording. Hopefully people who read the old version will not be confused. &quot;The universe where BiffCo exists&quot; was a bit long and people kept trying to change the grammar.</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s sports almanac, containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back right after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “[https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/1985A 1985A]” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, Cueball imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball mentions that this universe – that is, 1985A – would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short in epistemology for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. For instance, Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, for it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. The first post in that series, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been hit at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the 1985A universe, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about what would happen if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town, and offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. Netflix [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A timeline, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes White Hat Guy angry, because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun. There is also a decent chance that the book White Hat Guy is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy'', which would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling. After seeing similar symptoms in our society, perhaps he would consider that we are living in such a world predetermined to negative effects. It would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future and hoping for a changing society would be an effort in vain, when the universe is similarly tampered with by time-travellers. Alternatively, he is enjoying the book and is angry at the insult to it.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump's election. Therefore, he may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing. It may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.<br /> <br /> Alternatively, the comic may be an allusion to alleged Russian tampering of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall is proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural, societal issues that may have acted indirectly while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues this comparison by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' 1985A universe where Biff has taken over. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important October 2015 setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, Bob Gale, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor Tom Wilson has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168783 2019-01-30T03:30:11Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */ Explained the BiffCo situation further. I actually went back to look at the movie now – I had been working from summaries yesterday.</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty McFly’s sports almanac, containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events to his own younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. In the movie, the protagonists reverse this, by going back to 1955 and stealing the almanac back right after Biff delivered it. It is heavily implied that the universe where BiffCo exists, also called “1985A” in the movie, stops existing after this change, since the Biff from 1985A tries to kill Marty to stop him from doing this. However, Cueball imagines the 1985A timeline as continuing to exist in parallel, rather than being destroyed by the almanac heist as the movie seems to imply. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball mentions that this universe would not have any ''counterfactuals'' to work with. This is often short in epistemology for {{w|counterfactual conditionals}}, that is, conditional statements about what ''would'' be true if something ''were'' true that we know for a fact is not true. For instance, Randall’s “[[what if?]]” series is based on counterfactuals, for it explores hypotheticals—conditionals which are contrary to fact. The first post in that series, about what would happen if you tried to hit a baseball that was thrown at 90% the speed of light, is a counterfactual, because we know for a fact that a baseball has never been hit at such a speed{{Citation needed}}. In the case of the universe where BiffCo exists, they would not have any information on the ''counterfactuals'', that is, the facts about what would happen if Biff did not have this almanac.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town, and offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened. Netflix [https://deadline.com/2019/01/netflix-hillbilly-elegy-ron-howard-movie-deal-40m-1202541118/ purchased the rights] to an upcoming film adaptation of the book three days before this comic, prompting another wave of criticism of the book's theories.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' universe where BiffCo exists, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes White Hat Guy angry, because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun. There is also a decent chance that the book White Hat Guy is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy'', which would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling. After seeing similar symptoms in our society, perhaps he would consider that we are living in such a world predetermined to negative effects. It would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future and hoping for a changing society would be an effort in vain, when the universe is similarly tampered with by time-travellers. Alternatively, he is enjoying the book and is angry at the insult to it.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported Hillary Clinton]], the opposing candidate, in the 2016 election, having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following Trump's election. Therefore, he may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing. It may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.<br /> <br /> Alternatively, the comic may be an allusion to alleged Russian tampering of the 2016 U.S. elections: Randall is proposing that it is futile to attribute Donald Trump's rise to power to any set of structural, societal issues that may have acted indirectly while ignoring the hidden, speculated, but far more direct cause of foul play, just as it would be futile to analyze Biff Tannen's rise to power by similar means, ignoring the impact of foul play via time travel and a sports almanac.<br /> <br /> The title text continues this comparison by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' universe where BiffCo exists. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important October 2015 setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, Bob Gale, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# claimed] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall. That being said, actor Tom Wilson has [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4lYCaFx3Og denied] that his performance of the role was in any way based on Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> :Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> :Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> :[White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> :Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> :Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> :Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> :[White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> :White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]<br /> [[Category:Fiction]]<br /> [[Category:Time travel]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=Talk:2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168721 2019-01-28T19:24:32Z

<p>162.158.122.156: ADDED</p> <hr /> <div>I thought Biff jumped from 2015 to 1955, not 1985...? Young Biff had the Almanac in his pocket at the High School dance and the tower he built was already in place in 1985.<br /> <br /> &lt;!--Please sign your posts with ~~~~ and don't delete this text. New comments should be added at the bottom.--&gt;<br /> Collusion with a time traveler would bring a few things into focus. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.25|173.245.54.25]] 15:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :You inspire ''one'' house painter to change careers &amp; suddenly everyone blames you for everything. <br /> :[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 16:23, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillbilly_Elegy<br /> [[Special:Contributions/172.68.65.198|172.68.65.198]] 15:39, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> Do we keep the “cheat at sports betting” wording? I don’t know if this is cheating. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:22, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Cheating is generally heald to be using something unavailable to anyone else in the normal course of play to gain an advantage. I'd say using the almanac towards those ends definitely applies. [[User:Mjm87|Mjm87]] ([[User talk:Mjm87|talk]]) 19:07, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If anyone questions the fact that newspapers in real life did attempt to assert that the rise of Trump was inevitable, various newspaper articles may easily be found as proof with a Google Search for [Donald Trump inevitable], preferably restricted to results before 2017, so as to remove results about things he did later. I don't know how best to incorporate such results as a source in the article, as the number of citations could easily be made too big, and also I don't know if anyone cares. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.136|108.162.210.136]] 17:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> I am from Europe, and I do not understand the issue. If event X happens while you predicted Y, isn't researching and hypothising a good way to find out why, possibly learning new things in the process? Saying you don't want to debate the issue is like hating politics. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.131|141.101.104.131]] 18:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> : Many people who understand politics hate it. On behalf of my fellow continenteans, I apologize for 141.101.104.131, who apparently believes that politics overlaps with political science. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.114.40|162.158.114.40]] 18:51, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> :Note that ''Hillbilly Elegy'' could not have been intended to explain the Trump election, having been written before it. However, it was interpreted this way. I have attempted to make this clear in the explanation.[[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.179|108.162.212.179]] 18:53, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> <br /> If I'm not mistaken, Biff is based off of Donald Trump, so the Donald Trump analogy may be more likely than not. I can't quite recall where I read this, but there are quite a few similarities between the two. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.138|162.158.186.138]] 19:14, 28 January 2019 (UTC)<br /> :Added [[Special:Contributions/162.158.122.156|162.158.122.156]] 19:24, 28 January 2019 (UTC)</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168720 2019-01-28T19:23:59Z

<p>162.158.122.156: TIED CONNECTION IN TO THE COMIC</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty MacFly’s sports almanac, containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. While in the movie the protagonists reverse this, by stealing the almanac back, Cueball imagines the universe where BiffCo exists as continuing to exist in parallel. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Elegy-Memoir-Family-Culture/dp/0062300547 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town, and offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' universe where BiffCo exists, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes White Hat Guy angry, because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun. There is also a decent chance that the book White Hat Guy is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy'', which would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling. After seeing similar symptoms in our society, perhaps he would consider that we are living in such a world predetermined to negative effects. It would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future and hoping for a changing society would be an effort in vain, when the universe is similarly tampered with by time-travellers. Alternatively, he is enjoying the book and is angry at the insult to it.<br /> <br /> [[Randall]] is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported the opposing candidate before Trump was elected]], having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following his election. Therefore, he may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing. It may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.<br /> <br /> The title text continues this comparison by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' universe where BiffCo exists. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important October 2015 setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, Bob Gale, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# stated] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump. This supports the comparison between the two made by Randall.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> [Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> <br /> Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> <br /> Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> [White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> <br /> Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> <br /> Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> <br /> [White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> <br /> White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168719 2019-01-28T19:22:33Z

<p>162.158.122.156: </p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty MacFly’s sports almanac, containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. While in the movie the protagonists reverse this, by stealing the almanac back, Cueball imagines the universe where BiffCo exists as continuing to exist in parallel. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Elegy-Memoir-Family-Culture/dp/0062300547 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town, and offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' universe where BiffCo exists, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes White Hat Guy angry, because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun. There is also a decent chance that the book White Hat Guy is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy'', which would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling. After seeing similar symptoms in our society, perhaps he would consider that we are living in such a world predetermined to negative effects. It would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future and hoping for a changing society would be an effort in vain, when the universe is similarly tampered with by time-travellers. Alternatively, he is enjoying the book and is angry at the insult to it.<br /> <br /> Randall is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported the opposing candidate before Trump was elected]], having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following his election. Therefore, he may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing. It may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.<br /> <br /> The title text continues this comparison by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' universe where BiffCo exists. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''’s important October 2015 setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, Bob Gale, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# stated] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> [Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> <br /> Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> <br /> Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> [White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> <br /> Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> <br /> Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> <br /> [White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> <br /> White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2104:_Biff_Tannen&diff=168718 2019-01-28T19:21:08Z

<p>162.158.122.156: ADDED THE TRUMP–TANNEN CONNECTION AS POINTED OUT BY 162.158.186.138</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2104<br /> | date = January 28, 2019<br /> | title = Biff Tannen<br /> | image = biff_tannen.png<br /> | titletext = I can't help myself; now I want to read a bunch of thinkpieces from newspapers in Biff's 1985 arguing over whether the growth of the region into a corporate dystopia was inevitable.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> This comic is based on ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}''. In this movie, the character Biff Tannen steals the time machine, which is the main plot device, and uses it to go back in time from 2015 to 1955. He then gives Marty MacFly’s sports almanac, containing the outcomes of 50 years (1950–2000) worth of sporting events, to his younger self. His younger self uses this sports almanac to make millions by successfully betting on {{w|horse races}}. He then forms a company, and calls it [https://backtothefuture.fandom.com/wiki/BiffCo BiffCo]. While in the movie the protagonists reverse this, by stealing the almanac back, Cueball imagines the universe where BiffCo exists as continuing to exist in parallel. This is consistent with the {{w|multiverse}} theory.<br /> <br /> The movie is set in the fictional town of Hill Valley, California. When the protagonists return to 1985, they find that Biff has turned the town’s “Courthouse Square” into a 27-story casino, and generally taken over Hill Valley. Cueball interprets this as “the decline of the city, and general social decay”.<br /> <br /> ''[https://www.amazon.com/Hillbilly-Elegy-Memoir-Family-Culture/dp/0062300547 Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis.]'' is a book, published in June 2016, that gives an account of growing up in a poor Rust Belt town, and offers a broader, probing look at the struggles of America’s white working class. This comic is a play on the title of this book, which has been described as explaining the “social, regional, and class” issues in white working-class America. The white American working class was a key factor in the election of U.S. President Donald Trump, and many critics have interpreted the book as an explanation of his election, which was deemed improbable by many analysts before it happened.<br /> <br /> Cueball is proposing a similarly-titled book, set in the ''Back to the Future II'' universe where BiffCo exists, that would describe the supposed factors leading to the rise of Biff Tannen in Hill Valley. In that universe, while the rise of Biff—and the subsequent decay of the city—is the result of his using a future sports almanac to cheat at sports betting, the rest of the population would have to guess at the structural societal issues that might have caused Biff’s otherwise inexplicable success. Thus, Cueball compares such blind guessing with the analysis contained in ''Hillbilly Elegy''.<br /> <br /> This makes White Hat Guy angry, because it’s such a painfully long setup for a really stupid pun. There is also a decent chance that the book White Hat Guy is currently reading is ''Hillbilly Elegy'', which would make the joke more insulting to him, as it compares the book to useless theorizing about an event which was really caused by time traveling. After seeing similar symptoms in our society, perhaps he would consider that we are living in such a world predetermined to negative effects. It would probably frustrate him that being optimistic for the future and hoping for a changing society would be an effort in vain, when the universe is similarly tampered with by time-travellers. Alternatively, he is enjoying the book and is angry at the insult to it.<br /> <br /> Randall is known to have [[1756: I'm With Her|supported the opposing candidate before Trump was elected]], having made a comic just to promote her, and particularly [[1779: 2017|sad comics]] following his election. Therefore, he may have made this comic as an insult to a book which supposedly explains the election of the candidate he opposed, by comparing it to useless (and wrong) theorizing. It may also be intended as an insult to Trump himself, by comparing the dystopian universe where Biff rose to power (albeit not as President) to the actual universe where Trump rose to power.<br /> <br /> The title text continues this comparison by mentioning thinkpieces from newspapers that would appear in the ''Back to the Future II'' universe where BiffCo exists. Various thinkpieces did appear in real life newspapers in an attempt to explain Trump’s rise to power after his election, and asking whether it was inevitable.<br /> <br /> As ''{{w|Back to the Future II}}'' important October 2015 setting date approached, commentators began noting the similarities between the older version of the character Biff Tannen and then presidential candidate Donald Trump. When the comparison was brought to the attention of the film’s writer, Bob Gale, in an interview, he [https://www.thedailybeast.com/back-to-the-future-writer-biff-tannen-is-based-on-donald-trump# stated] that elements of Tannen’s personality were actually based on Trump, who was already well known in the late 1980s for his work in real estate and tabloid controversies. Thus, there is a real connection between Biff Tannen and Donald Trump.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> [Cueball talks while walking up behind White Hat, who is reading in an armchair.]<br /> <br /> Cueball: You know, in the universe where Biff Tannen took Marty McFly’s sports almanac back in time, the people wouldn’t have any counterfactuals to work with. <br /> <br /> Cueball: Their world would be ''the'' world.<br /> <br /> [White Hat turns his head to look at Cueball as he keeps talking.]<br /> <br /> Cueball: They would have spent decades debating which structural problems enabled the rise of BiffCo, the decline of the city, and general social decay. <br /> <br /> Cueball: Everyone would find reasons it confirmed their pet theory.<br /> <br /> Cueball: I'm going to write a book set in that universe. I'll call it ''Hill Valley Elegy''.<br /> <br /> [White Hat turns his head back to his book in disgust.]<br /> <br /> White Hat: ... I ''hate'' you.<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2096:_Mattresses&diff=168488 2019-01-22T17:54:44Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2096<br /> | date = January 9, 2019<br /> | title = Mattresses<br /> | image = mattresses.png<br /> | titletext = After reading that &quot;The War To Sell You A Mattress Is An Internet Nightmare&quot; article, I've decided it's safer and less complicated to just sleep on the floor. DISCLOSURE: THE AUTHOR OF THIS MOUSEOVER TEXT RECEIVED FINANCIAL COMPENSATION FROM THE FLOOR INDUSTRY FOR THIS MESSAGE.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> <br /> Cueball is talking to Ponytail about his mattress, in what appears to be just a casual conversation. Cueball suddenly offers to take any questions from listeners, as though the conversation were part of a podcast; this confuses Ponytail. The subtitle explains that Randall has heard so many advertisements for certain products on podcasts that he can't discuss them without feeling as though he's in a podcast himself. <br /> <br /> {{w|Podcast}}s are typically audio-only programs available online, which frequently generate income through advertisements. Ads are often read by the podcast host. Hosts will often include segues or personal anecdotes to further reduce the &quot;topical whiplash&quot; caused by abruptly switching subjects from that of the podcast to an unrelated brand plug, and back.<br /> <br /> In 2018, many podcasts (or at least many podcasts that Randall listens to) contained ads by {{w|Casper Sleep|Casper}} or {{w|Helix Sleep|Helix Sleep}} (both mattress brands), MeUndies or Tommy John (both underwear brands), and {{w|Stamps.com}} (an internet-based mailing/shipping service).<br /> <br /> The title text refers to [https://www.fastcompany.com/3065928/sleepopolis-casper-bloggers-lawsuits-underside-of-the-mattress-wars &quot;The War To Sell You A Mattress Is An Internet Nightmare&quot;], about the pressures companies put on reviewers, and the legal battle between a mattress review site that makes money through affiliate sales, and a mattress company, which was unhappy with a review. Since saying anything unfavorable about mattresses might open one to legal action, the title text author opted to avoid them entirely. However, that could be seen as an endorsement of sleeping on the floor, thus requiring a disclaimer. It also references the way that podcast hosts will often note when they intentionally or unintentionally endorse a product sponsor in an attempt to remain transparent about their financial supporters.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> <br /> :[Cueball and Ponytail are talking to each other]<br /> :Cueball: ...It's firmer than my old mattress, which I thought I wouldn't like, but it's actually really nice.<br /> :Ponytail: Cool, maybe I should get one.<br /> :Cueball: Now let's take some listener questions!<br /> :Ponytail: What?<br /> <br /> :[Caption below the panel:]<br /> :I can't talk about mattresses, underwear, or the Post Office anymore without feeling the urge to segue back into a podcast.<br /> <br /> ==Trivia==<br /> The image was originally posted as an indexed image with only a 3-color map (white, black, and grey), leading to graphical artifacts in place of a smooth blur between black and white. Most of Randall's comic images are indexed images with over 200 different grayscale colors. The original image can be seen [https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/archive/8/84/20190109163710%21mattresses.png here].<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]<br /> [[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]</div>

162.158.122.156 https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php?title=2031:_Pie_Charts&diff=161096 2018-08-11T22:15:49Z

<p>162.158.122.156: /* Explanation */</p> <hr /> <div>{{comic<br /> | number = 2031<br /> | date = August 10, 2018<br /> | title = Pie Charts<br /> | image = pie_charts.png<br /> | titletext = If you can't get your graphing tool to do the shading, just add some clip art of cosmologists discussing the unusual curvature of space in the area.<br /> }}<br /> <br /> ==Explanation==<br /> {{incomplete|Created by ''a cosmologist discussing the unusual curvature of space in the area'' - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br /> <br /> {{w|Pie_chart|Pie Charts}} graph quantities as &quot;slices&quot; of a circle, like a pie that you cut into slices. The circle, or Pie, represents the whole sum of the slices, or 100% of the data. As such, if the data represented by the slices is expressed as percentages, the total of all the slices, by definition, must total 100%. This comic introduces a new technique for getting around that rule by &quot;warping&quot; the circle to allow more than 100% of the data to exist in the graph. Thus the total amount of 130% is represented with a shape presumably 30% larger in area than the circle.<br /> <br /> The resulting warped circle is then actually part of a [[wikipedia:Hyperbolic geometry#Circles and disks|hyperbolic plane]], while a normal circle is part of a flat plane. Of course, it doesn't matter if the geometric shape is a circle or a hyperbolic plane: A changed graphic doesn't magically solve the misrepresentation of percentages. At best, it serves to highlight the methodical error. Regarding doctored statistics: If the same numbers were presented as absolute values instead of percentages, the error would still remain but would be less obvious, especially if you omit the total count of the sample (''Of '''all''' people asked, 40 selected green as favorite color, 45 selected red, 30 yellow and 15 blue.'' This statement omits that you surveyed only 100 people and several of them named several colors, and readers will assume a larger sample.)<br /> <br /> Percentages that add up to more than 100% are often a sign that a math error has occurred, whether a typo somewhere or a sloppy case of taking numbers from different sources. However, they can arise naturally in cases where each item can belong to more than one group, such as [[wikipedia:approval voting|approval voting]] (40% of the people like green 45% like red etc., however there may be some that like both green and red). In such cases, a more accurate depiction would have some form of overlap of the pie pieces, not a warping of the space which they occupy, or a completely different representation, such as a bar chart. Minor cases can also occur if the percentages of the pieces have been rounded for readability - summing the rounded numbers can result in them adding to 99% or 101%.<br /> <br /> Percentages don't ''need'' to add up to 100% to be correct. For example, if ten people wear blue t-shirts and ten wear red t-shirts, then 50% of them wear each color for a total of 100%. Now if one of each joins the group, 55% of the ''original'' population wears each color, for a total of 110%, as the total population risen by 10%. That said, this change should be represented by something like a bar graph, not by pie chart. If percentages are represented by a pie chart, the assumption is that the total should be 100%, independently of the math behind it.<br /> <br /> In this case, the right image appears to be what happens when you cut the pie chart segments out of fabric, stitch them together, and let the resultant fabric flop around a bit.<br /> <br /> ==Transcript==<br /> {{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}<br /> :[Two colored circles are shown. The circle on the right is fuzzy in shape and shows some shadows from the middle to the outer edges, like a round piece of cloth with wrinkles going out from the center.]<br /> <br /> :[The left circle:]<br /> :Wrong:<br /> :45% (red)<br /> :15% (blue)<br /> :30% (yellow)<br /> :40% (green)<br /> <br /> :[The right fuzzy circle with shadows:]<br /> :Right:<br /> :45% (red)<br /> :15% (blue)<br /> :30% (yellow)<br /> :40% (green)<br /> <br /> :[Caption below the frame:]<br /> :How to make a pie chart if your percentages don't add up to 100<br /> <br /> {{comic discussion}}<br /> <br /> [[Category:Pie charts]]<br /> [[Category:Comics with color]]</div>

162.158.122.156