explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

2215: Faculty:Student Ratio

2019-10-14T23:57:03Z

162.158.74.105:

{{comic
| number = 2215
| date = October 15, 2019
| title = Faculty:Student Ratio
| image = faculty_student_ratio.png
| titletext = They managed to briefly hit the top of the rankings when they rejected everyone except one applicant, published 5 billion research papers that just said "Hi," and hired one of their graduates for $50 trillion/year (then fired them after 10 microseconds.)
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a GRADUATE. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
Schools are usually rated for students to pick which one to attend. One of the metrics that schools use is a ratio between the number of faculty members to the number of students. Normally, this determines how much teachers get to spend individual time with students. The lower the ratio, the smaller classes teachers have to teach, and thus notice individual students more.
However, having more teachers than students is a bad idea, as many people trying to teach one person is normally a bad idea, as an individual student would not be that much help, and that one teacher would suffice for the job. {{Citation needed}}

In the title text, other metrics are skewed to be in the school's favor.

Having a high standard for entry (which is usually associated with high prestige or better schools) is subverted by the fact that it is near impossible for one to get in, thus making the school undesirable to try and apply to.

A high amount of research papers would normally indicate a high number of scientific studies conducted at the school, however the messages are devoid of any sort of useful information.

A high hiring rate (percentage of students that have gotten a job after education) is favorable, as it is the endgame for many students attending these types of schools. However, the school in question artificially inflated it by having 1 out of their one students be hired by them (having a 100% hiring rate) and giving them a starting salary that is very high, but not giving them enough time to actually reasonably gain that amount.

$50 trillion/year for 10 microseconds is approximately $15.85 (= 10 / 10^6 / 3600 / 24 / 365 * 50*10^12).

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

{{comic discussion}}

2047: Beverages

2018-09-17T17:23:25Z

162.158.74.105: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2047
| date = September 17, 2018
| title = Beverages
| image = beverages.png
| titletext = If I wait a while, it's not so bad, because then it's just shaped like me, plus some pipes and tanks and probably eventually all of Earth's oceans.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a cup, or possibly a bottle. Maybe even a teapot. Should be expanded upon. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic is about how a beverage traveling through the {{w|Human digestive system|human digestive tract}} may look unsettling without any visible guidance for its flow.

The title text references how the liquid will dilute through the human body or pass through the water treatment process and finally most particles from any ingested liquid will mix with all water on Earth. But by the time a beverage is diluted enough to take the shape of Earth's oceans, the molecules will be so dispersed that the beverage effectively becomes invisible.

==Transcript==
:[Inside a single frame, liquid pouring out of a glass through mouth, the esophagus, and to the stomach is shown. The surrounding bodies like the organs or the glass are not pictured and only visible by its shape. Further two small organs with no connection to the rest are also wetted.]
:[Caption below the frame:]
:It freaks me out to imagine what a beverage is shaped like when I’m in the middle of drinking it.

==Trivia==
*A similar imagery is used in the 2000 film {{w|Hollow Man}}.
*Radiotopia's recently released [https://www.everythingisalive.com/about "Everything is alive"] podcast's premiere episode, [https://www.everythingisalive.com/episodes/louis-can-of-cola Louis Can of Cola], features a discussion of between the beverage and the host who {spoiler alert} drinks the beverage during their discussion.

{{comic discussion}}

2037: Supreme Court Bracket

2018-08-24T15:38:26Z

162.158.74.105: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2037
| date = August 24, 2018
| title = Supreme Court Bracket
| image = supreme_court_bracket.png
| titletext = My bracket was busted in the first round; I had Massachusetts v. Connecticut in the final, probably in a case over who gets to annex Rhode Island.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Each court case needs its own explanation, preferably a small paragraph instead of a sentence in parentheses. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The {{w|Supreme Court of the United States}} is the highest federal court of the United States. A {{w|Bracket (tournament)|tournament bracket}} is a tree diagram that represents the series of games played during a knockout tournament. [[Randall]] suggests that the winners of the 16 listed court cases will file against each other and then again until the final winner is selected.

Court cases are typically titled as plaintiff versus defendant. Randall is spoofing this idea by imagining famous United States Supreme Court cases as though they were games in the first round of a single-elimination tournament, similar to college basketball's March Madness, complete with a ranking bracket. "Sweet 16" in the context of a tournament refers to the stage in a tournament where 16 competitors remain. This comic's concept is thus a word play on "court" (court of law / basketball court).

The cases are, with the winners in bold:

*{{w|Marbury v. Madison|Marbury v. '''Madison'''}}
(declared a provision of the Judiciary Act unconstitutional; first time that U.S. Supreme Court overturned a law)

*{{w|McCulloch v. Maryland|'''McCulloch''' v. Maryland}}
(prohibited states from taxing the federal government)

*{{w|Gibbons v. Ogden|'''Gibbons''' v. Ogden}}
This case established that interstate commerce is regulated by the U.S. Congress according to the U.S. Constitution, that interstate navigation is fundamental to interstate commerce, and that therefore the power to regulate interstate navigation in this way rests with the U.S. Congress, not with any state legislature.

On 01 March 1824, the US Supreme Court decided in favor of Thomas Gibbons in his appeal of a case brought against him by Aaron Ogden in an attempt to prevent Gibbons from operating steamboats to transport goods and passengers between New York City, New York and Elizabethtown, New Jersey. The US Supreme Court decision reversed a prior injunction against Gibbons issued by a New York State court deciding that Ogden held exclusive navigational rights by way of having licensed them from two men to whom the New York State Legislature had granted the navigation rights in several acts between 1798 and 1807.

*{{w|Near v. Minnesota|'''Near''' v. Minnesota}}
(found that prior restraints on publication violate freedom of the press as protected under the First Amendment)

*{{w|NLRB v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corp.|'''NLRB''' v. Jones & Laughlin}}
(declared that the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 was constitutional)

*{{w|Brown v. Board of Education|'''Brown''' v. Board of Education}}
(declared that racially segregated schools were inherently unequal and ordered them integrated)

*{{w|Gideon v. Wainwright|'''Gideon''' v. Wainwright}}
(gave defendants unable to afford lawyers the right to have the government provide them with defense lawyers)

*{{w|Griswold v. Connecticut|'''Griswold''' v. Connecticut}}
(right to birth control)

*{{w|Miranda v. Arizona|'''Miranda''' v. Arizona}}
(required police to inform suspects of their rights)

*{{w|Loving v. Virginia|'''Loving''' v. Virginia}}
(overturned a ban on interracial marriage)

*{{w|Roe v. Wade|'''Roe''' v. Wade}}
(right to abortion)

*{{w|United States v. Nixon|'''United States''' v. Nixon}}
(ordered president Nixon to turn over Watergate tapes)

*{{w|Bush v. Gore|'''Bush''' v. Gore}}
(disputed 2000 Presidential election)

*{{w|Lawrence v. Texas|'''Lawrence''' v. Texas}}
(invalidated sodomy laws)

*{{w|Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency|'''Massachusetts''' v. EPA}}
(decided that the state of Massachusetts has standing to sue the EPA for not doing enough against global warming)

*{{w|Obergefell v. Hodges|'''Obergefell''' v. Hodges}}
(allowing same-sex marriage)

The title text refers to a practice of filling out a March Madness bracket, predicting a winner for each game up to the championship. A bracket is "busted" when the result of a game is not as predicted; because future matchups depend on previous results, the whole bracket is worthless at that point. Randall "had Massachusetts v. Connecticut in the final", predicting both parties would win all previous rounds and advance to the final game/case. Because Connecticut lost its first-round case to Griswold, his bracket is busted in the first round.

In the second part of the title text, Randall writes: "I had Massachusetts v. Connecticut in the final, probably in a case over who gets to annex Rhode Island." In fact, there actually was a Supreme Court case ''Massachusetts v. Connecticut'' (summary at [https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/282/660/ Justia.com], full text at [https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=17012735467934830012&q=Connecticut+v.+Massachusetts&hl=en&as_sdt=2006 Google Scholar]) dealing with water rights on the Connecticut River, which flows between the two states.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[A tournament bracket tree is shown with 16 participants each on the left and right side. From both sides toward the middle the brackets reduce to eight, then four, two, and one line where the latter join to a rectangle in the middle.]

:[Left side:]
:Marbury - Madison
:McCulloch - Maryland
:Gibbons - Ogden
:Near - Minnesota
:NLRB - Jones & Laughlin
:Brown - Board of Education
:Gideon - Wainwright
:Griswold - Connecticut

:[Right side:]
:Miranda - Arizona
:Loving - Virginia
:Roe - Wade
:United States - Nixon
:Bush - Gore
:Lawrence - Texas
:Massachusetts - Environmental Protection Agency
:Obergefell - Hodges

:[Caption below the frame:]
:Now that we've finished the round of 32, the Supreme court will be moving on to the Sweet 16.

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1503: Squirrel Plan

2018-08-21T23:15:04Z

162.158.74.105:

Reminds me of the Ice Age squirrel [[User:Mikemk|Mikemk]] ([[User talk:Mikemk|talk]]) 06:02, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
:Also reminiscent of the star wars scene in Kingmen [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.162|108.162.249.162]] 06:16, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
::Um ya, like why didn't those balloons have a pressure release valve instead of blowing up? A relatively cheap device could have aided that character immensely.[[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 12:47, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
:::Clunky prototype? (And/or they want the maximum amount of elevation. Any presseure release valve would give a safe(r) ceiling of operation lower than the "just before the pop" one they theoretically have, as is. It's still a design-flaw, though, if there's no effective warning of balloon failure, and you're now left swinging on the other, on-the-edge-of-failing, one. And now with only half the lift. Yeah, clunky. Yeah, I've thought about this a little, already.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.192|141.101.98.192]] 13:06, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
::::Though as soon as the first balloon popped you'd start loosing altitude - due to half of your lift disappearing. So the question comes up - '''how did the second balloon pop'''? ;) And as a side note - if you catch the pan around the control room right after our hero dispatches the nerd villain, you'll see a corpse with a head. [[User:Jarod997|Jarod997]] ([[User talk:Jarod997|talk]]) 13:27, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
:::::'''Obviously there was a squirrel...''' ;) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.192|141.101.98.192]] 21:40, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
I think the squirrels are just a vehicle for the joke, which is poking fun at "obvious" conclusions based on personal beliefs. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.249.162|108.162.249.162]] 06:48, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
:Absolutely - the current first line of explanation fails, as squirrels being stupid is not a joke. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.49|141.101.99.49]] 07:18, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
"...due to the expansion of the acorns inside." I love you guys. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.104.89|141.101.104.89]] 07:57, 25 March 2015 (UTC)
: We know [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.39|108.162.216.39]] 08:54, 25 March 2015 (UTC)BK201

This comic puts me in mind of the simplistic plot points and devices of a lot of modern scifi movies ... poking fun at them the same way as "Scorcher" from Tropic Thunder does ...--[[Special:Contributions/198.41.239.38|198.41.239.38]] 09:30, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I'd say the squirrels are a stand-in for ancient humans. Their understanding of the world and what is obvious reflects their pre-scientific state of knowledge. Their interests as squirrels have affected their conclusions, just as humans have projected their interests on what they interpret the sun to be (source of acorns instead of a sun god). I'm pretty sure the "halfway to the sun" part refers to a point where they think they're halfway but probably aren't even close to leaving the atmosphere, drawing parallels again to ancient human assumptions (the sun and moon are small orbs that are just high in the sky). {{unsigned ip|108.162.225.80}}
: Alternatively, it might be referring to people assuming the sun is golden in some literal fashion. What else could the sun be made of, if it's so gloriously radiant and stuff? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.109|108.162.216.109]] 13:02, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. Or possibly replace "ancient" with "superstitious" - or even nothing at all for that matter to apply to humans in general - and I'll agree with you even more. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.80.70|141.101.80.70]] 09:47, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I think it's also worth mentioning that the real sun is "full of" hydrogen and helium. The same is true for real squirrel lifting balloons.{{unsigned ip|108.162.230.161}}

It's possible that the comic is a commentary on the human condition, constantly reaching out for some grand goal, that is both unreachable, and even if reached is shown to be far less grand then previously thought. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.237|108.162.210.237]] 15:26, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I don't think the squirrel in the picture is actually halfway to the sun. I think the title text is a hypothetical future event, and that the description is overthinking things. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.106|108.162.216.106]] 16:50, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

Is it a possibility that the squirrels represent the government or similar entity? {{unsigned|Mikemk}}

Not quite sure i like the explanation about acorns obviously not being able to contribute to flying. Not because i think they can, but because the exact same argument could be used for a jet engine on a plane as those are also heavy. {{unsigned ip|141.101.75.53}}
: maybe the acorns are pushing on the quantum vacuum virtual plasma? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.18|108.162.241.18]] 23:34, 25 March 2015 (UTC)

I seriously suspect this has something to do with [[1356: Orbital Mechanics]] [[Special:Contributions/173.245.56.185|173.245.56.185]] 10:06, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I think that the balloon of the title text is a reference to earth herself : the analogy must be natural to a squirrel believing the sun is an accorn field... {{unsigned ip|108.162.229.250}}

I am fairly sure this comic is to mock humanity's tendency to assume what they first think of to be fact. This could also be about religion but I probably shouldn't mention that. Too many fights. [[User:YourLifeisaLie|The Goyim speaks]] ([[User talk:YourLifeisaLie|talk]]) 14:18, 26 March 2015 (UTC)

I think Randall's squirrels are cute. A Montrealer [[Special:Contributions/173.245.52.191|173.245.52.191]] 00:35, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Dropping squirrel research I haven't found. Dropping cats I found here: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RtWbpyjJqrU And freefalling astronauts, too! http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VJcno_XL4RU [[User:NoniMausa|NoniMausa]] ([[User talk:NoniMausa|talk]]) 12:12, 28 March 2015 (UTC)

What scene in Kingsman: TSS is this similar to? I've seen the movie but durned if I can recall anything remotely like this comic happening in it. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.192|108.162.216.192]]
:Read the very first cascade of comments at the top of this page to jog your memory, perhaps? It may have been a technical sideline to the main action, at that point, but it wasn't Blink And You'd Miss It, either.... (For the record, I don't think it's an intended reference. Because all the meme really shares is the balloon bit. But I won't say it definitely isn't, either.) [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.131|141.101.98.131]] 18:52, 30 March 2015 (UTC)

Alternate Explanation: The two landed squirrels are trying to get rid of the squirrel attached to the balloon.

Talk:2035: Dark Matter Candidates

2018-08-21T03:31:03Z

162.158.74.105: Pickiness about direction of gravitational bending.

"thin patina of grime covering the whole universe" is a reference to the "International prototype kilogram" and the necessity to keep it dust-free to preserve its reference status. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.229.100|108.162.229.100]] 11:14, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
:I think it's just referring to how your room or furniture can get super dirty and completely covered in dust, but you don't really notice it getting dirty because it happens so gradually. But once you actually get around to cleaning your room and you remove all the dust you realize how insanely filthy your room was, now that you can compare it to clean. Since there hasn't been a massive universe cleaning within human history, we wouldn't really be able to tell if the universe was coated in dirt because we wouldn't remember what it looks like clean. [[User:Yosho27|Yosho27]] ([[User talk:Yosho27|talk]]) 12:53, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
::I concur, my thought upon reading the "thin patina of grime" was when I helped a friend power wash his back deck and we realized it was far more dirty than we thought; as the newly washed sections stood out in stark contrast to the grimy parts.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.186.246|162.158.186.246]] 19:29, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
One can only hope that the solution for dealing with space cows involves space cowboys. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.75.136|162.158.75.136]] 20:40, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
;109 kg - 1033 kg black holes
Not sure if it's a mistake by Randall or he has something other in mind. But most of his black holes are far too lightweight:
*109 kg is a million tons, the Great Pyramid of Giza wights six times of that
*6x1024 kg Earth
*2x1030 kg Sun
*1031 kg smallest known stellar black hole
*1040 kg the real big black holes with a diameter in the size of our solar system
Everything except the Buzzkill is below a single solar mass. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 16:24, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
: The theoretical lower limit for black hole mass is the planck mass (22 µg), although such micro black holes would evaporate very quickly under standard models. However, larger black holes were excluded fairly early by gravitational lensing searches ('buzzkill' cases), so smaller black holes had to be considered separately as dark matter candidates. --[[User:Quantum7|Quantum7]] ([[User talk:Quantum7|talk]]) 20:40, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
::You misunderstand my point: Those not discovered smaller black holes would need an explanation how they did form but more important here how they could be ruled out as Randall states. A nano black hole at 1010 kg disproved by gamma rays? What's Randall's point? He was more accurate in the past. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:18, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

; Axon pun?
My first thought upon reading 'axion' was that it was a pun on axon. Neurons have typical membrane potentials in the mV range, which lines up nicely with the meV energy of axions. Coincidence? --[[User:Quantum7|Quantum7]] ([[User talk:Quantum7|talk]]) 20:44, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
:An axion is a suggested subatomic particle. I'm not a biologist but if one meV is enough energy to trigger an axon our biology wouldn't work that smoothly. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:18, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
:: It's mV (electrical potential), not meV (energy/mass). It's a stretch, but Randall's included more distant puns before in XKCD. Source for action potential strength: [http://understandingcontext.com/2014/01/ei-electric-potential-curve/] --[[User:Quantum7|Quantum7]] ([[User talk:Quantum7|talk]]) 23:15, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

While this comic is about Dark Matter, does the explanation really need to include a justification on why Dark Matter really exists as a "substance" instead of being some error in our understanding of gravity? It seems a little excessive and unnecessary to me. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 21:46, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
:I'm with you but this comic is about that "substance" like most astronomers are. This always reminds me to aether - also a famous "substance" in space more than hundred years ago which nobody could explain. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:32, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
::Thanks for the laugh - my thoughts exactly! In fact, part of me wonders if Randall is actually making fun of the whole idea that there's a dark matter particle at all, since there's such a wide range of possible sizes for such a particle. His humor can be so subtle at times that someone may not realize when they're actually the butt of his joke. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 23:55, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Furthermore, while space cowboys were mentioned earlier in the discussion, I suspect Randall included space cows in the chart specifically as a reference to the movie Space Cowboys. Also, I think the point about Neutron Star Data ruling out black holes in that mass range is because you can't have both of them with the same mass, since the current theory is that they both form from a star collapse, but at different masses. You're always going to get one or the other from that size star, and since we find neutron stars in that range, we can't have black holes there too. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 21:59, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
:The mass of neutron stars is well understood. A smaller star ends at a white dwarf and the big ones produce a black hole. Nonetheless our sun will end up into a white dwarf and the others require higher masses as in the buzzkill range at the graph. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 22:32, 20 August 2018 (UTC)
::My point exactly - we now know quite a bit about the mass needed and process required to form a neutron star, making it unlikely the same mass would be able to form a black hole. I think that's what Randall meant in that part of the chart, but that's not what the explanation states. (Unfortunately, I've reached the point where I no longer want to argue with other editors over correct explanations.) [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 23:55, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

; The Mysterious Eight Ball
How many of you remember the 8 Ball as a funny toy that you would ask questions and then turn over to receive an answer. Could that be the joke referred to in the 8 ball as a possible source of mysterious dark matter? --[[User:ProfKrueger|ProfKrueger]] ([[User talk:ProfKrueger|talk]]) 00:41, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Explain xkcd: It's 'cause you're being physics-nerd-sniped! [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 00:09, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Sorry to be picky, but I'm having trouble with "a star which was nearly in line with the sun appeared closer to the sun than usual." Doesn't a distant star's apparent position move away from the sun compared to the direct path? The light ray we see has been bent toward us, so it appears further away than an unaffected ray would, no?[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.105|162.158.74.105]] 03:31, 21 August 2018 (UTC)

Talk:2034: Equations

2018-08-17T19:57:32Z

162.158.74.105:

Is the joke that all of the equations are actually wrong/malformed/meaningless but they sort of look like typical equations for that field? {{unsigned ip|172.68.133.66}}
:Sort of. A bit of dimensional analysis would have helped. ;-) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.221|162.158.91.221]] 07:28, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Should we add a column with examples of similar correct equations from the respective fields? Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/172.68.110.4|172.68.110.4]] 09:33, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
:That would definitely tidy up my attempts to provide context for Randall's versions. The challenge then is working in explanations for the correct equations as well as arguing over which examples should be used. [[User:Exxi|Exxi]] ([[User talk:Exxi|talk]]) 09:45, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

I don't think the part in parentheses about OH in the Chemistry equation explanation is correct. OH- would mean that it's negatively charged and has nothing to do with unpaired electrons of Oxygen. It would add another horror to the equation, though, as it wouldn't be charge preserving anymore. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.230|162.158.88.230]] 09:58, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

"Redshit". Best typo ever. Please keep it. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.54.177|172.69.54.177]] 10:13, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

;Deep physics equations
The transcript is wrong here, the last letter is not a <math>\mu</math>, but a "u" with a cedilla: u̧. The math parser refuses to render it, though. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.88.230|162.158.88.230]] 05:54, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
:Looks like it. But I don't think that letter exists even. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.91.221|162.158.91.221]] 07:28, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
:Is this equation a sort of nod to a Theory Of Everything which unifies quantum mechanics and gravity... H-hat (a Hamiltonian, which in quantum mechanics describes the total energy of a system, and usually runs in to problems describing large systems - such as the entire universe - where gravity or spacetime curvature effects matter) *minus* u0 (the relativistic mass of the whole system at time zero ie. the big bang) gives 0 (no energy everywhere always). Since mass is energy (e=mc^2) and mass is also the sole cause of gravity the two theories cleanly collapse together when mass is zero, and figuring out how to extend the theory to other less clean points on the mass axis is obviously a job for less profound physics? I've no ideas to explain the cedilla. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.28|141.101.98.28]] 08:49, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
:It looks to me a little like a parody of the {{w|Wheeler-DeWitt_equation#Hamiltonian_constraint|Wheeler-DeWitt equation}} which (in theory) describes a wavefunction for the entire Universe. [[User:Exxi|Exxi]] ([[User talk:Exxi|talk]]) 09:06, 17 August 2018 (UTC)一
: I'm just thrilled someone found the right character for it. I spent 20 minutes looking for the right u symbol without any luck at all. {{unsigned ip|172.68.143.132}}
Is this poking fun at equation-filled blackboards in movies and cartoons? {{unsigned ip|172.68.254.42}}
:Doesn't seem like it. These equations actually do look like the kinds of equations you would see in these fields. On blackboards in movies you tend to get equations that are pure nonsense. {{unsigned ip|172.68.143.132}}
I think this may also be a reference to Feynman's unworldliness equation, http://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/II_25.html#Ch25-S6 . [[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.220|108.162.219.220]] 17:02, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

;Table layout at the explanation
That oversized table is really bad layout. We've had this discussion many times before - tables should only be used for small contents. Right now I would run into too many edit conflicts but I'll change it to a proper floating text with small headers for each section. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 11:51, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
:Done, looks much more like a real paper... --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 12:58, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

;All number theory equation
The explanation for math doesn't seem entirely correct. You can in fact extend the ring of integers (as well as rational and real numbers) with positive and negative infinity, but it won't be a ring anymore. Specifically, the infinities don't have an additive or multiplicative inverse (but 1/infinity = 0); and addition of positive and negative infinity, as well as the product of 0 and either infinity is undefined. However, these properties are not used in the above equation. What we ''can'' use is that <math>\forall n < \infty: n - \infty= -\infty </math>. We would thus have <math>K_n = \sum_{i=0}^{\infty}\sum_{\pi=0}^{\infty}(n-\pi)(i-e^{\pi-\infty}) = \sum_{i=0}^{\infty}\sum_{\pi=0}^{\infty}(n-\pi)(i-0) = \sum_{i=0}^{\infty}\sum_{\pi=0}^{\infty}(n-\pi)i= \sum_{i=0}^{\infty}i\sum_{\pi=n}^{\infty}-\pi= \sum_{i=0}^{\infty}i\cdot(-\infty)=-\infty</math>. Also, how often does one use e and pi in number theory? --[[User:Ycthiognass|Ycthiognass]] ([[User talk:Ycthiognass|talk]]) 12:11, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
:Pi (or any other number) minus infinite is just absurd. You can use the infinite symbol only as a limit but NOT as number in calculations. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 12:33, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
::It is not absurd. Adding the rules <math>n+\infty=\infty\text{ for }n>-\infty,n-\infty=-\infty\text{ for }n<\infty, \pm n\cdot\infty = \pm\infty\text{ for }n>0, \pm n\cdot(-\infty) = \mp\infty\text{ for }n>0,\frac1{\pm\infty}=0</math> gives you a consistent theory that is especially useful when talking about infinite sums and integrals. Would you say the term <math>n-\sum_{i=1}^\infty i</math> is absurd? --[[User:Ycthiognass|Ycthiognass]] ([[User talk:Ycthiognass|talk]]) 14:35, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
:::Of course it's absurd. It is <math>\infty-\infty \neq 0</math> because it could be everything between <math>\infty</math> and <math>-\infty</math>. {{w|Infinity}} is a concept describing something without any bound... And, as you can't divide by zero you can't do the same for infinity. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 17:24, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
:::One more: It is
::::<math>\sum_{i=1}^\infty a_i = \lim_{n\to\infty} \sum_{i=1}^n a_i.</math>
:::When this limit exists, one says that the series is ''convergent'' or ''summable''. Otherwise it's called ''divergent'' and has no solution like this one:
::::<math>\sum_{i=1}^\infty i</math>
:::Infinite is NO number! --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 17:33, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Completely separate from the above, it's probably worth noting that i is also a constant, and as such has the same misconception as <math>\pi</math>. Computer scientists are happy using i for loops/summations, but mathematicians prefer using n. Based off that, it's probably another misconception/joke that n is treated as a constant, while known-constants are used as variables. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.246.149|108.162.246.149]] 17:28, 17 August 2018 (UTC)
:There is nothing non-standard about using i as an index variable. Often as part of the series i,j,k.
Searching for summation convention will give plenty of examples.

There are fewer letters than mathematical concepts in need of letters, so most letters are used for multiple purposes. Occasionally this causes difficulty. You can be halfway through a linear algebra problem before you discover you need i for an imaginary number despite already using it as an index. Hilarity ensues. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.105|162.158.74.105]] 19:57, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

;Chemistry equation
OH should have a charge symbol: OH-. The actual reaction would be:

CH4 + OH- + heat -> CH3- + H2O

The methyl group can dissolve in water, and this is presumably happening in water, so this equation can work, just not the one provided by Randell. Reacting longer alkanes with bases is a way to make soaps, but the methyl group would be too reactive to be used this way. [[User:Nutster|Nutster]] ([[User talk:Nutster|talk]]) 13:13, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

;Fluid Dynamics equation
I believe the fraction 8/23 in the Fluid Dynamics equation is a Randallesque reference to the fractional approximation of pi = 22/7. It's probably not a coincidence that you get 8/23 from 22/7 if you invert it and add 1 to both the numerator and denominator. [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 15:19, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

;Gauge theory equation
<s>I think the transcript is missing a left superscript 0 before the turned xi. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.226.16|172.68.226.16]] 16:50, 17 August 2018 (UTC)</s> Ah no, sorry. False alarm. It's just that Randall writes the xi with a funny tail. The same tail is on the non-turned xi earlier. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.226.10|172.68.226.10]] 16:52, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

If explainxkcd.com is to make XKCD comics more understandable then this explanation is failing that. I assumed from the beginning that the joke was about the equations being wrong, but the description of the joke is making my head hurt.

;All truly deep physics equations
In the description paragraph, the last sentence starting "The principle of least action says allows..." does not scan. If someone can fix this (copy&paste?) error, please delete this comment. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.58.171|162.158.58.171]] 19:33, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

928: Mimic Octopus

2018-07-16T10:28:09Z

162.158.74.105: Removal of an incorrect label

{{comic
| number = 928
| date = July 22, 2011
| title = Mimic Octopus
| image = mimic_octopus.png
| titletext = Even if the dictionaries are starting to give in, I refuse to accept 'octopi' as a word mainly because--I'm not making this up--there's a really satisfying climactic scene in the Orson Scott Card horror novel 'Lost Boys' which hinges on it being an incorrect pluralization.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a parody of fish and sea-life identification charts, referencing the {{w|mimic octopus}} which, as the name implies, is able to mimic other animals, so all animals and objects found in the sea could actually just be such an animal.

The identification chart for South East Asian sea life shows 13 creatures mimicked including eight individual fish (two of which are not yet recognized) and other objects and animals. In order, top-to-bottom, left-to-right: A {{w|Moorish idol}} (Gill, from ''{{w|Finding Nemo}})'', unknown, A {{w|tuna}}, a {{w|clownfish}}, unknown, a {{w|lionfish}}, a {{w|shark}}, a {{w|crinoid|sea lily}}, an {{w|angler fish}}, an {{w|anchor}}, a {{w|submarine}}, a {{w|scuba diver}} and {{w|Shoaling and schooling|school of 11 fish}}. Finally there is an {{w|octopus}}, but rather than being the mimic octopus in its natural form it's actually two of them each mimicing part of an octupus.

The {{w|Orson Scott Card}} novel that the title text refers to is ''{{w|Lost Boys (novel)|Lost Boys}}'': "A withdrawn eight-year-old in a troubled family invents imaginary friends who bear the names of missing children" (Publisher's Weekly). The part of the story that [[Randall]] is referring to (Chapter 7, Crickets) involves a situation where the protagonist, Stewie, is given a C grade for an otherwise impeccable diorama featuring underwater animals involving clay sculptures (when only a poster would have sufficed) and a well-written presentation supposedly because the other children had destroyed the diorama before the end of the day. To make matters worse, his teacher, Ms. Jones, had made fun of his project and given the ribbon for first prize to someone else.

On inquiring about, his father, Step, found out that the principal, Dr. Mariner, had already made the decision to hand Stewie the blue ribbon for first prize as she had reviewed the project before it had been destroyed, but Ms. Jones had secretly overruled her behind her back by announcing that another child (JJ) would receive the ribbon. So, the next day he met up with Ms Jones after school to have a word on the grading of his project. Needless to say, they ended up arguing about minor issues, with Mrs. Jones justifying the reason for her decision on, among other things, the definition of a 'depiction', whether or not the amount of content was defined by the word count or the number of pages and of the importance of putting the report in a plastic cover. The argument finally comes to a head when Step points out that there was only one red mark on the project report, and that concerned an 'incorrect' pluralization of the word 'octopus'

:“But Mrs. Jones, surely you know that the plural of “octopus” is either ‘octopus’, with nothing added, or ‘octopuses’.”
:“I think not,” said Mrs. Jones.
:“Think again, Mrs. Jones.”
:She must have realized that she was not on firm ground here. “Perhaps ‘octopuses’ is an alternate plural, but I’m sure that ‘octopi’ is the preferred.”
:“No, Mrs. Jones. If you had looked it up, you would have discovered that ‘octopi’ is not the preferred spelling. It is not a spelling at all. '''The word does not exist, except in the mouths of those who are pretending to be educated but in fact are not.''' This is because the ‘us’ ending of ‘octopus’ is not a Latin nominative singular ending, which would form its plural by changing to the letter ‘i’. Instead, the syllable ‘pus’ in ‘octopus’ is the Greek word for ‘foot.’ And it forms its plural the Greek way. Therefore ‘octopoda’, not ‘octopi’. Never ‘octopi’.”
:“Well, then, octopoda. Your son’s paper said octopuses.”
:“I know,” said Step. “When he asked me the correct plural, I told him octopoda. But then he was still uncertain, because my son doesn’t think he knows something until he knows it, and so he looked it up. And to my surprise, octopoda is only used when referring to more than one species of octopus, rather than when referring to more than one actual octopus. What Stevie put in his paper is in fact the preferred dictionary usage. Which you would have known, too, if you had looked it up.”

After proving his case that his son did indeed deserve an A grade, he then threatened to bring the matter to the attention of the principal. He then warned Mrs Jones that while he wanted the grade to remain unchanged, he wanted her to inform the class that the ribbon would be awarded to Stewie, before revealing that he had been recording the conversation all along. And, after this, after Mrs Jones came crying for forgiveness before leaving, Step realized how vulnerable she was and how she was channeling her frustration at one particular student in each class to find some relief from that.

According to the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFyY2mK8pxk Merriam-Webster Dictionary], 'octopi', 'octopuses', and 'octopodes' (UK English) are all correct plural versions of "octopus." Supposedly, Randall would very much like the word 'octopi' to remain unrecognized by major dictionaries as otherwise it would lessen the magnitude of the climactic conclusion of this argument by rendering Step's mockery of Ms. Jones' perceived intellectual superiority factually invalid. This also offers another reason why the octopus in the chart is named ''two mimic octopuses'', so Randall can use the correct pluralization of the word in the comic. This is an example of a comic where the title text seems more important to Randall than the actual comic.

It should be noted that, at least according to [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=octopus Etymology Dictonary], Octopi is wrong for exactly the reasons that Step lists and first appears over 60 years later.

==Transcript==
:[Captions above the panel:]
:<big>Southeast Asian Sea Life</big>
:Identification Chart
:[The chart consist of 14 black silhouettes which includes eight individual fish and several other object/animals. From top left: A fish, a fish, a tuna, a clownfish, a fish, a lionfish, a shark, a sea lilies, an angler fish, an anchor with chain, a submarine, a scuba diver, a school of seven large and four small fish, and and at the bottom right a silhouette of an octopus displaying eight arms and a tilted head with large white eyes. All 14 are labeled the same except the octopus:]
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Mimic Octopus
:Two Mimic Octopuses

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Animals]]
[[Category:Sharks]]

1396: Actors

2017-11-24T02:34:06Z

162.158.74.105: /* Explanation */ addded Justin "I like 2 suk cox" Beiber to the list of Justins.

{{comic
| number = 1396
| date = July 18, 2014
| title = Actors
| image = actors.png
| titletext = Once again topping the list of tonight's hottest rising stars in Hollywood is ξ Persei!
}}

==Explanation==
This comic plays on different meanings of the word "hottest". In the opening question, "Who are today's 10 hottest actors?" the word "hottest" would typically refer to an actor's popularity, success, demand, or attractiveness. Cueball and Megan interpret the word "hottest" as asking them to list the 10 actors who have the highest surface temperature, and we see them measuring "Justin's" (possibly referring to {{w|Justin Long|Long}}, {{w|Justin Theroux|Theroux}}, {{w|Justin|Beiber|Beiber}} or {{w|Justin Timberlake|Timberlake}} or any of the several other ''Justin''s in show business[http://www.imdb.com/search/name?count=100&gender=male&name=justin&sort=starmeter,asc]) surface temperature using an {{w|infrared thermometer}} (the thermometer typically has a laser pointer to know the approximate location where the radiometric temperature comes from). The measured temperature of 81.5 is presumably reported in degrees {{w|Fahrenheit}}, corresponding to 27.5 {{w|°C}}. This temperature is below the {{w|Human_body_temperature|average human internal body temperature}} of 98.6 {{w|°F}}/37 {{w|°C}} as skin is cooler; Megan also believes that another object (Justin's shirt) was also measured within the infrared thermometer field of view, lowering the reported measurement. With such a measurement of ''hotness'', the hottest actor on any given day would probably be whoever is exercising, sick with a fever, or whoever has been outside in the sun the longest and/or has been sunburned, since this typically causes skin to be hot. Or, an animal actor, of a species with a higher body temperature than humans. ({{w|Category:Films about birds}})

Randall here excludes the fact that accurately deriving surface temperature from bright (radiance) temperature requires knowing the emissivity of the object. Since not all objects radiate with the same efficiency, two objects with the same surface temperature will emit different thermal radiance, but if emissivity is not taken into account they will report different surface temperatures.

The title-text references the temperatures of Hollywood's rising stars, this time interpreting ''stars'' as actual stars, not famous people. In this case, the star {{w|Xi Persei|ξ Persei}} in the Perseus constellation (which is located in, and responsible for the fluorescence of, an object called the {{w|California Nebula}}), one of the hottest stars (35,000 {{w|kelvin}}s, {{w|Sun}}: 5,800 K) visible to the naked eye. The star also has similar declination (+35° 47′) as the latitude of Hollywood (34° N) so it is literally rising there every night. They are shooting stars with a laser beam and mid-July is the start of the shooting stars known as the {{w|Perseids}} that appear in the Perseus constellation.

Comic [[1111: Premiere]] is another comic based on "star" puns.

==Transcript==
:Who are today's 10 hottest actors?
:[Cueball is holding a clipboard, taking notes, while Megan aims an infrared thermometer off screen.]
:Megan: 81.5, but I think it got part of his shirt. ''HEY JUSTIN — HOLD STILL!''
:''We grab an infrared thermometer and find out!''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Language]]

1812: Onboarding

2017-07-10T03:23:03Z

162.158.74.105: /* Lin-Manuel Miranda */

{{comic
| number = 1812
| date = March 17, 2017
| title = Onboarding
| image = onboarding.png
| titletext = 'So we just have a steady flow of metal piling up in our server room? Isn't that a problem?' 'Yeah, you should bring that up at our next bismuth meeting.'
}}

==Explanation==
This is another one of [[Beret Guy|Beret Guy's]] mysterious [[:Category:Beret Guy's Business|businesses]], in which he shows new employee [[Ponytail]] around the building in which the company resides. The process of showing a new employee around the business and starting to get them introduced to people and systems and procedures is often referred to as "{{w|onboarding}}" - hence the title of the comic.

=== Existential Welcome ===

The first panel starts out as a typical welcoming of the new employee to a small indie business. Very quickly, however, Beret Guy's explanation jumps to an existential viewpoint. Very rarely do conversations or introductions involve discussing the eventual fate of our bodies, and certainly not in a professional light as in this comic. Beret Guy, however, has no problem with discussing death and decay as just part of his business. This seemingly contradicts the title text in [[1493: Meeting]], where it is claimed that employees of the company can not physically die. However, this could be a new company he has started since then. Alternatively, this is a literal statement, perhaps related to the cursed Wi-Fi mentioned later in the comic.

=== Bikeshare ===

In the second panel, Beret Guy shows Ponytail the free bikeshare system this business apparently has in place. {{w|Bicycle-sharing system|Bikesharing}} is a system in which many users share one or more bikes among themselves. Typically the bikes belong to some of the members of the group who are allowing them to be used by other members who may not have one, but Beret Guy calmly remarks that this system will only exist "until whoever owns those bikes finds out", implying that they were not donated or shared by any member of the group, but are being used without permission or the knowledge of the true owner of the bikes. This is, thus, not actually a bikeshare, and would be more properly described as theft.

=== Printer ===

In the third panel, Beret Guy shows Ponytail that the laserjet is over there '''and''' the printer is over there, thus indicating that the ''laserjet'' is not a printer. This is a bit disconcerting, since the {{w|HP LaserJet}} is in fact a common brand of {{w|laser printer}}, suggesting that his laserjet may be some rather more exotic device, such as a {{w|Laser propulsion|laser-propelled}} {{w|jet aircraft}}.''<nowiki>[</nowiki>[[1051|relevant xkcd title text]]]'' In any case, however, the printer is not available, as it's been printing an infinite-scroll web page since 2013.

An [[wikt:infinite scroll|infinite-scrolling web page]] is a web page that, as the name implies, seems to have no end. This style of webpage typically has no definite pages or sections, but instead continues to feed data to the screen as the user scrolls. In reality, trying to print one of these would only print the current section the user was viewing, and even if it was somehow able to infinitely print, the operator could theoretically cancel the operation at any time. Either this continuous printing serves some useful purpose, e.g. prints latest news, or he doesn't know how to stop it/does not care. Mistaken print jobs are sometimes notoriously difficult to stop due to many levels of buffering (application, printer driver, OS spooler, print server, printer device) and lapses in job control software.

Infinite scrolling (in the sense of an annoying UI design style for browsing large but finite documents) was previously covered in [[1309: Infinite Scrolling]]. A similar separation of the phrase "laserjet printer" has been explored in [[1681: Laser Products]].

=== Infrastructure Buzzwords ===

In the fourth panel, Beret Guy makes three more remarks.

'''Restrooms are all-digital—no pipes.''' While many technology standards nowadays are entirely digital, one's restroom is one of the things that most definitely should not be. A restroom without pipes would have no way to transfer bodily waste, and would most certainly be at the very least an unpleasant encounter. This could also be a pun joking with the fact that a common (in the past and reappearing recently) technology in sound amplifiers is the use of tubes, but nowadays most sound amplifiers are all-digital. So a "latest technology" restroom cannot have pipes (synonym of tubes) and has to be all-digital.

'''The Wi-Fi is very fast, but cursed.''' Fast Wi-Fi is certainly desirable, but in this case, he claims it is also cursed. Whether the curse is a side-effect of the fast Wi-Fi or totally unrelated is left unsaid, as well as what the curse is. This could possibly be a joke relating to American slang: all technology can behave inexplicably from time to time, and Wi-Fi is notorious for randomly losing connection -- this is often exaggerated and called "cursed". Knowing Beret Guy, though, [[1772: Startup Opportunity|it's probably literal]].

'''Our server room is carbon-neutral but produces bismuth constantly.''' Normally, {{w|carbon neutrality|carbon-neutral}} would mean that it is designed to be environmentally friendly by reducing and offsetting its carbon emissions enough that it has no net effect on the environment. The term is a little bit confusing because the meaning is of course carbon-dioxide-neutral. But while carbon is not a common material used in servers, {{w|Bismuth|bismuth}} is used as lead replacement in some {{w|solder}}s. While this replacement is often used because of the toxicity of {{w|lead}}, in this case it refers to an IBM mainframe computer where the Bi58Sn42 alloy is used because of its low temperature soldering characteristics. So producing bismuth would destroy all the electric connections in the server. An alternative explanation is a {{w|Lead-cooled fast reactor|compact nuclear reactor}} in the server room which can both make the server room carbon-neutral ''and'' leak bismuth (by creating it in the reactor).

=== Lin-Manuel Miranda ===

In the last two panels, Beret Guy explains that Ponytail will be working on the infrastructure, which is apparently maintained by {{w|Lin-Manuel Miranda}}. He is among other things a songwriter but certainly not an engineer or anyone qualified to be responsible for an entire infrastructure. Ponytail knows about his songs and thus surprised asks if he is also an engineer. (This echoes [[1665: City Talk Pages]], which includes a train station designed by {{w|Andrew Lloyd Webber}}, a composer best known for writing ''{{w|The Phantom of the Opera}}'').

It is worth noting that Beret Guy actually acknowledges the mistake here, claiming the mistake "cost a fortune." This is unusual for Beret Guy, as he has of yet failed to acknowledge or recognize the oddity of every other aspect of his mysterious business, many of which are certainly stranger than this. However, he doesn't seem to mind this at all and does not wish to fire him. Instead he plans on fixing the mistake by hiring a real network engineer, Ponytail, to do the work alongside Miranda. Because, as Beret Guy continues to explain, the bright side of having Lin-Manuel Miranda in his business overshadows the lost fortune. Apparently Lin-Manuel Miranda is really nice and he makes {{w|karaoke}} nights fun, a clear reference to his songwriting ability.

Off screen, Lin-Manuel Miranda is heard singing "{{w|How Far I'll Go}}", which is a song that he composed for the recent Disney movie ''{{w|Moana (2016 film)|Moana}}''. It was nominated for an {{w|Academy Awards|Oscar}} for {{w|Academy Award for Best Original Song|Best Original Song}} in the {{w|89th Academy Awards|2017 show}} just a few weeks prior to this comic.

=== Title Text ===

The title text mentions the potential dangers of having your server room constantly produce bismuth, but only as a prelude to a bismuth/business pun. Because of the earlier carbon reference, it could also be a parallel to the difficulty in convincing businesses to become more energy efficient and reduce greenhouse gas emissions, even though climate change is accelerating and these things are becoming urgent to the survival of life as we know it, as [[Randall]] has [[:Category:Climate change|often referred]] to in xkcd most vividly with [[1732: Earth Temperature Timeline]].

==Transcript==
:[Beret Guy shakes hands with Ponytail in front of a building while he points at the two large double doors under an unreadable sign.]
:Beret Guy: Hi! Welcome to the team!
:Beret Guy: We do business here and we'll turn into dirt later.

:[Beret Guy and Ponytail walk by three bikes.]
:Beret Guy: This is our main campus.
:Beret Guy: We have a free bikeshare system, at least until whoever owns those bikes finds out.

:[Beret Guy points forward as they walk on.]
:Beret Guy: The LaserJet is over there, and the printer is over there.
:Beret Guy: You can't use it right now; it's been printing an infinite-scroll webpage since 2013.

:[Zoom in on their heads.]
:Beret Guy: Restrooms are all-digital - no pipes.
:Beret Guy: The WiFi is very fast, but cursed.
:Beret Guy: Our server room is carbon-neutral but produces bismuth constantly.

:[Beret Guy has turned towards an off-panel Ponytail holding a hand out towards her.]
:Beret Guy: You'll be working on our infrastructure, which is currently maintained by Lin-Manuel Miranda.

:[Zoom out to both facing each other. From the right singing is heard from off-panel, as indicated with two musical notes.]
:Ponytail: ...The songwriter? Is he also an engineer?
:Beret Guy: Nope, huge misunderstanding on our part. Cost a fortune. But he's really nice and it makes karaoke nights fun.
:Lin-Manuel Miranda (off-panel): ''How far I'll gooo''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]] 
[[Category:Beret Guy's Business]]
[[Category:Puns]]
[[Category:Songs]]
[[Category:Climate change]]

1762: Moving Boxes

2017-07-10T02:57:10Z

162.158.74.105: /* Explanation of boxes */

{{comic
| number = 1762
| date = November 21, 2016
| title = Moving Boxes
| image = moving_boxes.png
| titletext = Later, when I remember that I'm calling movers, I frantically scribble over the labels and write 'NORMAL HOUSE STUFF' on all of them, which actually makes things worse.
}}

==Explanation==

[[Randall]] talks about moving boxes and not labeling them until he forgets what's in them. Since he doesn't know what's in them, he writes silly things on the boxes as a joke. Some things are unusual/unlikely (e.g. sand, hydrants, peat) and some are abstract/impossible (e.g. elves, taupe, dark matter). Several of the categories overlap confusingly; for instance, "sand" and "silt" and "dark matter" are all generally considered as "particles"; "membranes", "edges", and "shawls" are all kinds of "manifolds"; "hooves" are part of "bison"; "fog" contains "water"; and "triangles" consist of three "edges". Another way to interpret this comic is that Randall actually has these items (or at least some of them) in the boxes and has simply forgotten which boxes contain what.

According to the title text, when Randall remembers that he is calling movers, he frantically scribbles "Normal House Stuff" on all the boxes. He says this makes the situation worse, possibly because the movers see the scribble and become suspicious. Alternatively, labeling every box with the exact same phrase will make it even harder to figure out what they contain and where they should go in the new dwelling.

===Explanation of boxes===
{| class="wikitable" width="100%"
!Label
!Explanation
|-
!Box 1
|-
|Grids|| [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/grid Grids] are mathematical drawings; they would be constructed by drawing them, not stored in a box (though {{w|graph paper}} might be). May refer to a classic {{w|snipe hunt}} where a hazing victim is tasked with finding "a box of grid squares".
|-
|Bison||{{w|Bison}}, sometimes mistakenly called buffalo, are large animals that would probably not fit in the box{{Citation needed}}.
|-
|Checkerboards||The tabletop gaming boards on which one plays {{w|English draughts|Checkers}}. It is also the name of the corresponding pattern, and thus can be interpreted as an abstract term like many other "objects" in this comic.
|-
|Fog||{{w|Fog}} is essentially low-lying clouds which, being gaseous, are hard to box using only cardboard.
|-
!Box 2
|-
|Beacons||Beacons are devices designed to draw attention to themselves, for various reasons. From the generic term "beacon" this could mean anything from electronic GPS locator beacons to miniature replicas of naval lighthouses. Or, alternatively, it could be like what is referenced in the 7th panel of [[921: Delivery Notification]], which is used to summon elves (which happen to be in the same box).
|-
|Elves||Elves are a fictional race (or rather, many, many fictional races) of human-like magical creatures.
|-
|Sand||Sand grains are fine particles of rock. While it's not unheard of for people to need to store sand, it's usually not stored along with your personal belongings on moving day.
|-
!Box 3 - Blood
|-
|Hemoglobin||{{w|Hemoglobin}} is the protein found in red blood cells that carries oxygen around the body. This may be a solution of hemoglobin protein, but one human generally would not need a full box of it{{Citation needed}}.
|-
!Box 4
|-
|Water||As with sand, it's not unheard of for, say, a laboratory to store water samples for testing. But again, these wouldn't be stored along with your personal belongings on moving day. And if this is meant to be drinking water, it would be a waste of effort; it's taken as read that any house you're moving into has its own plumbing. Unless, of course, they insist on drinking bottled water (which some people do).
|-
|Hooves||{{w|Hooves}} are possibly best-known as horse and cow 'feet'. This could also be read as a compound word, Water-Hooves akin to water-wings.
|-
!Box 5 - Charadriiformes
|-
|Charadriiformes||{{w|Charadriiformes}} are a type of bird that contains (mostly) waterfowl. There are about 350 different species.
|-
|Shorebirds|| Also known as {{w|Wader|Waders}}, these are an order of birds that wade in littoral waters.
|-
!Box 6
|-
|Oil|| This could mean anything from cooking oil to petroleum; either way, most of a box full of oil bottles is unusual, but for different reasons (that's a lot of cooking oil, a ''lot'' of motor oil, and a comically small amount of crude oil).
|-
|Vectors||{{w|Vector}}s are properties with magnitude and direction, such as velocity, momentum, acceleration, etc., but can depend on the context. In any situation, they are not physical objects, so they cannot be put in boxes. Alternatively "vector" could mean a carrier of a disease, such as ticks or mosquitoes, but while more possible to box they would still not be practical to keep with common household goods and the intent of moving them as such would be dubious at best.
|-
|Silt|| Material between sand and clay size-wise. A sediment. See sand and water above for why this is unusual. Randall has a special place in his heart for rock particles of various sizes; see [https://what-if.xkcd.com/83/ What If #83].
|-
!Box 7
|-
|Membranes||Delicate thin pliable sheet or skin of various kinds. Usually fragile or cut easily. Not something you would expect to be packed with something sharp, which shards are likely to be, although these labels are incorrect.
|-
|Shards||These are broken pieces of smooth and hard objects, e.g. ceramic, glass, crystal. Something you would normally expect to be thrown out, rather than packed up for moving house.
|-
!Box 8
|-
|Shawls||{{w|Shawls}} are a simple item of clothing, worn loosely over one's shoulders. Also being of rectangular shape, they are supposed to be worn in colder weather.
|-
|Glucose||{{w|Glucose}} is possibly best-known as the sugar plants produce for energy, but can be manufactured.
|-
|Kits||A {{w|kit}} is any set of tools, supplies, and/or instructions for a specific purpose. These could be first aid kits, software development kits, bomb-making kits, sewing kits... It can also refer to juveniles of some mammals, such as foxes or rabbits (it is not very likely that such animals would be packed in a box - though compare [[325: A-Minus-Minus]]). Alternatively, this may be a compound word "Glucose Kits", diabetic assay tools to help the patient regulate their blood sugar.
|-
!Box 9
|-
|Hydrants||{{w|Fire hydrant}}s are likely too big to fit in boxes, and are also simply odd objects to be packing into a box.
|-
|Particles||As almost all matter is composed of {{w|particles}}, it is hard to find exceptions. Thus, this is very vague.
|-
|Knots||{{w|Knot}}s are things tied in ropes; they can hold things or just be there. This would be hard to put in a box without rope{{Citation needed}}. Could also refer to knots in a piece of {{w|wood}}, which are hard to put in the box without the rest of the wood. Knots could also refer to the {{w|Knot_(unit)|unit of speed}}, usually used in meteorology, and in maritime and air navigation which would be impossible to box as it is not a physical object.
|-
!Box 10 - Palette
|-
|Graphite||{{w|Graphite}} is a crystalline form of carbon, where the atoms are arranged in sheets. It is found in some household products (pencils and lubricant oil), though in either case the name of the end product would be a more likely box label. Graphite is also a color.
|-
|Taupe|| {{w|Taupe}} is a dark tan color in between brown and gray, again, not an object. May be a reference to Gliese 581f (a.k.a. Taupe Mars) from [[1253|xkcd #1253]].
|-
!Box 11 - Gaussian surface?
|-
|Field Lines||This could refer to {{w|field line}}s as used to depict electromagnetic fields, or possibly to the lines painted on an athletic field to mark the boundaries of play. The former are a visualization tool rather than physical objects; the latter consist of streaks of paint on grass or artificial turf, and thus neither kind of field line is the kind of physical object that could be packed into a box.
|-
!Box 12
|-
|Traps||May be a reference to 'My house is full of traps' from [https://what-if.xkcd.com/34// What-If #34]
|-
!Box 13
|-
|Edges||{{w|Edge_(geometry)|Edge}} is a line segment joining two vertices. Even though physical objects do have edges, you cannot store edges themselves as they are just mathematical constructs.
|-
|Tribes||{{w|Tribe}} is a social group of people, tribes existed before states were formed. It is impossible to store a group of people in the box{{Citation needed}}.
|-
|Dough||{{w|Dough}} is a thick, malleable, sometimes elastic, paste made out of any grains, leguminous or chestnut crops. It is used in the process of cooking, but it doesn't make sense to pack it while moving.
|-
!Box 14
|-
|Dark Matter||{{w|Dark matter}} is what is believed to be a big part of the mass of galaxies, but we have never observed it, so it is not possible to pack it {{Citation needed}}. Alternatively, if all dark matter were permanently packed in boxes like this, it would explain why it has never been observed. According to the Copenhagen interpretation of the uncertainty principle, dark matter may both be in the box and somewhere else in the universe until somebody opens the box.
|-
!Box 15
|-
|Manifolds||In topology, {{w|Manifold|Manifolds}} are spaces with certain "nice" properties (i.e. they are locally Euclidean). This is yet another mathematical construct which is impossible to pack into a box. Manifold could also refer to a pipe or chamber branching into several openings, for example an engine exhaust manifold. While physical, it's unlikely that multiple are put in a box for moving.
|-
!Box 16
|-
|Triangles||Within the context of this comic, the reference is likely to the shape. On the other hand, it would not be unusual to pack one or more {{w|Triangle (musical instrument)}}s into a box.
|-
|Peat|| {{w|Peat}} is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation that forms in wetland bogs, moors, mires, and swamps.
|-
|Crowns|| These may be royal crowns, or may be the coin worth five shillings in UK pre-decimal currency.
|-
!Box 17
|-
|Scrolls||A {{w|scroll}} is a roll of papyrus, paper, or parchment that contains writing. It is a common item in fantasy games (as elves and traps).
|}

==Transcript==
:[A bunch of cardboard boxes stacked up, each labeled]
:{| class="wikitable" style="background:white" align=center
| style="visibility:hidden" |
| colspan="2" height="80px" width="80px" style="background:#CFBC92"|
Grids 
Bison 
Checkerboards 
Fog
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92"|
Beacons 
Elves 
Sand
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Hemoglobin
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Water 
Hooves
| style="visibility:hidden" |
|-|
| style="visibility:hidden" |
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Shorebirds
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Oil 
Vectors 
Silt
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Membranes 
Shards
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Shawls 
Glucose 
Kits
| style="visibility:hidden" |
|-|
| style="visibility:hidden" |
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Hydrants 
Particles 
Knots
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Graphite 
Taupe
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Field Lines
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Traps
| style="visibility:hidden" |
|-|
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Edges 
Tribes 
Dough
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Dark Matter
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Manifolds
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Triangles 
Peat 
Crowns
| colspan="2" width="80px" height="80px" style="background:#CFBC92" |
Scrolls
|}

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I always forget to label my moving boxes until they're sealed up and I've forgotten what's in them.
{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Biology]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Science]]

1754: Tornado Safety Tips

2017-07-10T02:51:09Z

162.158.74.105: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1754
| date = November 2, 2016
| title = Tornado Safety Tips
| image = tornado_safety_tips.png
| titletext = It's a myth that you can never cross mountains safely, but be sure you understand how the climatic situation there will affect your parent thunderstorm.
}}
==Explanation==
The comic features a {{w|Public Service Announcement}} (PSA) poster, which generally contain public-interest messages aimed at raising awareness or steering behavior around a specific issue of concern, that in this case contains tips for {{w|tornado}} safety. Typically, a poster labeled "Tornado Safety Tips" would be filled with instructions for how humans can stay safe in the event of a tornado, such as "stay away from windows," "go to the lowest floor of your home," "if in the open, take shelter in a ditch," and so on, see these examples: [https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/b3/ba/02/b3ba0231f99bf14622a347b65ad30ea7.jpg Example 1] (with same title as comic), [https://www.weather.gov/images/oun/wxevents/20130531/socialmedia/torsafety.png example 2] and [https://www.weather.gov/images/oun/wxevents/20130531/socialmedia/carsafety.png example 3].

[[Black Hat]] on the other hand, has flipped this on its head by publishing a poster that contains safety tips for the tornado itself and contains information for how tornadoes can stay safe, i.e. continue to exist, see the [[#Table of tips|table of tips]] below. The joke is that just as, for example, a "climber safety" poster is directed at climbers, the "tornado safety" poster is directed at tornadoes.

It is thus in no way helpful for people who actually live in an area that experiences tornadoes {{tvtropes|CrazyPrepared|or even for people that don't live in tornado-prone areas but want to be ready for their possible occurence}}. It is not possible to follow most of the guidelines, as they are intended for tornadoes. But the advice a human could follow would only take you towards places which can sustain tornadoes. Instead they should choose to use an app like the one in [[937: TornadoGuard]].

The title text simply adds more tornado advice for tornadoes, bringing up the common myth about tornadoes not crossing mountains, except from the tornado's perspective.

Although this is clearly not a tip for humans, the idea of ''tornado safety tip'' is yet another [[:Category:Tips|tips comic]].

Tornadoes are a [[:Category:Tornadoes|recurring subject]] on xkcd. The tornado in this comic is similar to the [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/images/5/52/umwelt_disasters_tornado.png picture used] in the [[1037:_Umwelt#Tornado|Tornado version]] of [[1037: Umwelt]].

===Table of tips===
{|class="wikitable"
! Tornado Safety Tips
! Explanation
|-
|Avoid low-lying cool air || {{w|Supercells}}, and particularly {{w|tornadogenesis}}, requires highly {{w|buoyant}} air near the surface to, put simply, provide the energy and rapid upward motion for to their growth and maintenance. Tornadoes, being small scale features on the scale of the atmosphere and requiring fairly extreme conditions to form, are particularly sensitive to shallow layers, perhaps even a few hundred meters of less buoyant (i.e. cooler/dryer) air near the surface. If a tornado encountered such a layer of air, it would be quite "dangerous" to its survival, as sufficient depth and exposure would likely disrupt the tornado's circulation and perhaps even dissipate it completely.
|-
|Keep your downdrafts and updrafts from mixing || Strictly speaking, this statement is only entirely true on the larger scales of a tornadic storm (though to some extent {{w|updraft}}/{{w|downdraft}} interaction is crucial to the process on the scale of the actual tornado). Generally, it is for exactly the lack of this that tornadic supercells are able to gain such intensity and last many hours, whereas a typical individual storm cell has a life-cycle on the order of less than an hour. Any given storm cell is composed of an updraft, warm, moist air moving upward and forming clouds, and a downdraft, the corresponding movement of cooler air downward, often bringing heavy rain with it. If this downdraft is superimposed directly over the parent updraft, as would occur in a calm atmosphere with no substantial differences in wind with height, it will suppress the storm's updraft very quickly, and the cell will die a rapid death. However, if the winds change quickly enough with height (vertical wind shear), this displaces the updraft and downdraft so they don't interfere as directly, resulting in a longer lived storm. Nevertheless, the cold air moved downward by the downdraft will eventually spread along the surface and choke off the flow of warm air to the original updraft, however, this denser air may force more warm air to rise, starting the cycle anew, albeit with a new storm cell. This is how squall lines work (see below), along with more typical multi-cell clusters. Still, this results in no one cell being "dominant," remaining strong for any great length of time, and growing past a certain point, all factors that preclude significant tornado formation.

However, if the vertical wind shear is particularly strong, with very strong winds aloft going in near the opposite direction as winds near the surface, this causes horizontal rotation in the atmosphere (think a pencil rolled between two hands). A particularly strong updraft can lift this rotation into the vertical, and soon the entire storm begins to rotate. Through rather complex physics, this allows the storm to more cleanly separate its updraft and downdraft, and continuously propagate into warm, buoyant air. This process and the updraft/downdraft separation it creates is associated with nearly all dangerous tornadoes, and is what distinguishes a supercell from other types of thunderstorms, and if such separation is not properly maintained, it will likely "kill" the storm's tornado chances including any currently in progress. However, it bears pointing out that a specific type of downdraft interacting with a tornado, called {{w|Rear flank downdraft}} (RFD), actually may play a crucial role in tornado formation, carrying this rotating motion (vorticity) down from higher levels of the storm and feeding it into the tornado. Therefore, if a storm's RFD is too weak or does not interact with the core of the storm's updraft, a tornado is not likely to form or maintain itself. However, if the RFD is too cold/strong, it will indeed cut off the tornado's supply of warm air (see below), and regardless of type the RFD does eventually tend to "kill" the tornado after some length of time, which is why any individual tornado only lasts for a short amount of time.
|-
|Seek out warm and humid surface air layers || Hot, humid air near the surface is vital for tornadoes to form, as it provides the "fuel" for their parent storms as well as tornadoes themselves. Any {{w|thunderstorm}}, large or small, begins as an updraft, a column of warm, moist air moving upward due to its positive buoyancy (i.e. lower density, think a balloon or heat rising from the pavement on a hot summer day). Due (mostly) to its temperature, once the air is less dense than its environment, it will start moving upward, and will continue to do so as long as it stays that way. However, air cools as it rises as it expands under lower pressure, generally speaking at a faster rate than the surrounding environment does. This is where the moisture comes in, as once the air cools to the saturation point, where it can hold no more water vapor, water begins to condense into tiny liquid droplets to form clouds. This process releases latent heat to the surrounding air parcel, and thus in a suitable environment with sufficient cooling with height, this rising air starts to cool slower than its surroundings, and continues to rise on its own. The warmer and wetter the air relative to its surroundings, the faster it can rise, and thus the more intense storms it can feed. Further, once a storm forms and begins to rotate (see above), the tornado itself, being an extremely intense, rotating updraft near the ground, is "fed" by very warm and moist air at the surface and thus would want to seek it out to survive.
|-
|Don't let rain-cooled air choke off your circulation || As discussed above, if a storm's downdrafts are too strong, they can block the supply of warm, moist, buoyant (rising) air that feeds a tornado which will cause it to dissipate or never fully form in the first place. On the storm scale, this type of supercell is termed "outflow dominant", it generally maintains itself but too much rain cooled air present at the surface is preclusive to tornado formation. On the tornado scale, the buoyancy of the storm's Rear Flank Downdraft, RFD, is believed to play a crucial role in tornadogenesis. It is this air that carries high-vorticity, i.e. rotating air down from aloft to enable the tornado to have such an intense circulation near the surface, as updraft parcels beginning near the surface otherwise have little preexisting rotation. However, if this air is too cold and dense, which is typically a result of evaporative cooling and water loading from rain, it can choke off the supply of warm air to the tornado's circulation, and reduce its overall buoyancy, this "killing" the tornado, which is generally why they dissipate.
|-
|Avoid letting your supercell merge with a squall line || Supercells, the powerful, rotating thunderstorms that produce nearly all strong tornadoes, generally like being left alone. Other storms compete for the same warm, moist air that the supercell needs to fuel its continued development, and the cold downdrafts produced by such storms can also choke off a supercell's supply. Furthermore, interaction with other storms, particularly strong ones can disrupt the complex physical processes that keep a supercell going, particularly those delicate ones that lead to and sustain tornadogenesis. A {{w|squall line}} is a particularly potent threat in this regard, and probably the biggest "killer" of supercells in this specific regard. Squall lines, well known as the culprit behind most of the violent derecho windstorms, are long lines of thunderstorms that can, as a larger-scale feature, last many hours and travel thousands of kilometers. They generally occur when environmental conditions allow one or a few storms to combine the cold, dense air in their respective downdrafts in such a fashion that it moves rapidly and spreads out in a linear fashion, forcing warm air up right ahead of it to form clouds and additional storms. This then creates new downdrafts that contribute to this "cold pool", as its called, continuing the process. While squall lines can occasionally produce weak, short-lived tornadoes along their leading edge, they generally lack the rotation and individual persistence necessary to form proper "twisters". Their fast motion, large size, sizable cold pool, and all-consuming hunger for warm, moist air and resultant tendency to gobble up storms in their path make them a mortal threat to the generally slower-moving, freedom-loving supercells, and their resultant tornadoes. An encounter with a squall line almost never ends well for tornado and they should avoid such a meeting if they strive for longevity. However, it is interesting to note that storm interactions, occasionally even with squall lines, can briefly enhance tornadogenesis if conditions are just right, but this rarely has a sustained positive impact on the tornado's long-term survival prospects.
|-
|'''Title text''': It's a myth that you can never cross mountains safely, but be sure you understand how the climatic situation there will affect your parent thunderstorm. || In a style perhaps evoking that of a safety warning for a pharmaceutical drug, the title text reminds tornadoes that while it is indeed {{w|Tornado_myths#Near_rivers.2C_valleys.2C_mountains.2C_or_other_terrain_features|false that tornadoes are not able to cross mountains}} (while rough terrain can sometimes disrupt the very low-level circulation, there is nothing intrinsic to mountains areas that prevent tornadoes from moving over them), the tornado should be cautious that the environment on the other side of the mountain should still be supportive of the parent supercell and the broader processes keeping the tornado "alive." This is a valid concern because, generally speaking, the more mountainous areas of the United States generally tend to have less favorable environments for supercells and tornadoes, but this isn't always the case as the title text notes, particularly for more local-scale terrain.
|}

==Transcript==
:[Beneath a large caption there are two pictures above each other to the left and a bullet list with five points to the right of the pictures. The top picture shows a black tornado beneath a white cloud. It is destroying something on the ground. To the right of the debris is a house and to the left some trees. The picture below shows Black Hat from the waist and up.]
:<big>'''Tornado Safety Tips'''</big>
:* Avoid low-lying cool air
:* Keep your downdrafts and updrafts from mixing
:* Seek out warm and humid surface air layers
:* Don't let rain-cooled air choke off your circulation
:* Avoid letting your supercell merge with a squall line

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Black Hat]]
[[Category:Tips]]
[[Category:Tornadoes]]

1859: Sports Knowledge

2017-07-07T01:59:12Z

162.158.74.105: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1859
| date = July 5, 2017
| title = Sports Knowledge
| image = sports_knowledge.png
| titletext = I heard they might make the wild card game, which would be cool. Do you know when that is? I have a wedding next weekend, but if it's after that we could try to go!
}}

==Explanation==
[[Cueball]], representing [[Randall]], demonstrates that he has some knowledge about {{w|Mike Trout}}, a {{w|baseball}} player for the {{w|Los Angeles Angels}}. However, he mixes up the LA baseball team for one of the city's {{w|basketball}} teams when he mentions the {{w|Los Angeles Lakers|Lakers}}. [[White Hat]] questions his mentioning of the Lakers, after which Cueball takes another wild guess, this time mentioning an {{w|American football}} team, the {{w|Denver Broncos}}, based in Denver, Colorado, not even close to LA, indicating even poorer knowledge about sports.

{{w|On-base plus slugging}} (OPS) is a baseball statistic calculated as the sum of the {{w|on-base percentage}} (the number of times a player reaches base divided by the number of plate appearances) and {{w|slugging percentage}} (singles + 2 times the doubles + 3 times the triples + 4 times the home runs divided by at bats). It is useful for figuring out how well he reaches base and hits for power. As of the date this cartoon was published, Trout's OPS for the 2017 season [http://www.espn.com/mlb/player/stats/_/id/30836/mike-trout at 1.203] was indeed higher than in any of his previous seasons, albeit over a smaller number of games because [https://www.si.com/mlb/2017/05/29/los-angeles-angels-mike-trout-thumb-injury Trout indeed suffered a thumb injury in late May] and has not played since then. (He is expected to return to play later in July.)

At the end of the season, the teams leading each division make the playoffs, along with a certain number of other teams. In the NFL and MLB, 4 extra teams make the playoffs, and, in the NBA, 10 teams beside the division winners qualify for the playoffs. {{w|Major League Baseball wild-card game|In baseball}} the two teams in the American League play a ''Wild Card game'' against each other, as do the two in the National League, and {{w|NFL playoffs|in American football}}, there are ''Wild Card games'' in which the two wild card teams per conference play the two lower seeded division winners.

At the time of publication, the Los Angeles Angels were, indeed, in the running for a wild-card spot (2½ games out of the playoffs). With the baseball season being halfway over and both football and basketball being in the off-season, Cueball further shows his lack of sports knowledge in asking whether it is next week, and assuming that he could spontaneously decide, at game time, to just go. He could make a decision to go now, but he would have to wait until the season is almost over when the seeding for the playoffs and wild card spots are decided. Sometimes the wild card spots aren't decided until the last game of the season, which would make buying tickets very difficult considering the location could change (the team with the better record is the home team in baseball).

To compensate for his lack of interest and knowledge in sport Randall made the comic [[1107: Sports Cheat Sheet]], and he has before directly mentioned his missing knowledge in [[1480: Super Bowl]]. (See more comics linked in those two).

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and White Hat are walking together.]
:Cueball: Mike Trout's on-base plus slugging has been at career highs. After this injury, the Lakers will be lucky if he can hit even ''close'' to that.
:White Hat: ...Lakers?
:Cueball: I forget which team he is. Broncos?

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I know a handful of very specific things, but after that my sports knowledge falls apart quickly.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Baseball]]
[[Category:Basketball]]
[[Category:American football]]
[[Category:Sport]]

1854: Refresh Types

2017-06-23T22:14:14Z

162.158.74.105: Fixed "contend/content" typo

{{comic
| number = 1854
| date = June 23, 2017
| title = Refresh Types
| image = refresh_types.png
| titletext = The hardest refresh requires both a Mac keyboard and a Windows keyboard as a security measure, like how missile launch systems require two keys to be turned at once.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|This is chaos - multiple explanations should be merged and condensed. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In this comic [[Randall]] presents five different levels of refresh operations for web applications. The first three (''soft refresh'', ''normal refresh'', and ''hard refresh'') are common operations to keep the content in the browser retrieved from the server up to date. The other two (''harder refresh'' and ''hardest refresh'') are fictional operations to perform ''refresh'' operations on remote resources. The terms are probably adopted from {{w|Reboot (computing)|soft}} and {{w|Hardware reset|hard reset}} operations used to restart broken computers or e.g. smartphones.

=== Soft refresh ===

Soft refresh refers to an operation in a web page that requests new information without reloading the page. The given example, {{w|Gmail}}, includes a feature that allows users to pull down new emails without reloading the inbox interface. It is a command given to the web page using {{w|Javascript}}, rather than to the browser.

=== Normal refresh ===

A "normal refresh" is a browser operation that reloads portions of a web page that have changed since the original load. It is the refresh operation triggered by refresh buttons in browsers, though can also be activated using the three common keyboard commands listed by [[Randall]], and will generally accomplish the same thing as a soft refresh, with the additional cost of reloading the web page.

=== Hard refresh ===

Hard refresh is a less common browser operation that clears any cached files associated with the page before requesting a new copy. Browser caching is a way to store webpage resources locally in order to decrease load time and data transmitted. Hard refreshes are usually used when a webapp has changed in such a way that the cached data is interfering with the proper display of the page. A hard refresh is slower because it forces the browser to download the entire page, but it ensures that the page is displayed as it is currently being served.

Interestingly, hard refresh HTTP request contains special headers (associated metadata) that command all intermediate proxy servers to drop their caches too. These headers can be seen by end application running on the web server, that can choose to reload some data from database and redo some long-running calculations in this case, even though this is not mandated by HTTP standard. In {{w|Orchestration (computing)|orchestrated}} environment it may indirectly cause some virtual machines to be rebooted. Rebooting actual physical server upon web page hard refresh is of course not normal, but additional processing may trigger some hardware or operating system bug that will cause exactly this.

=== Harder refresh ===

"Harder refresh" is a joke that extends the existing naming scheme. The joke is that if a "hard refresh" resets the browser display and cache, a harder refresh should reset the source of the data by cycling power in the data center. Assuming no damage was done, this would reset the memory on the server, erasing any information that had not been written to disk, and setting the server to the state it was in at launch. This would cause considerable downtime, and would be unlikely to help the user at all.

The "harder refresh" uses six keys, including the non-standard '[https://askubuntu.com/questions/19558/what-are-the-meta-super-and-hyper-keys HYPER]' key, a feature of the {{w|Space cadet keyboard}}.

=== Hardest refresh ===

The fifth option, "hardest refresh", moves beyond resetting the source of the data and resets the entire internet back to {{w|ARPANET}}, an early military network which was a forerunner to the modern internet. The implications of this are not made clear, but it should be noted that it wouldn't help to fix any problems a user is experiencing in-browser, as {{w|HTTP}}, the protocol by which web pages are sent, was not developed until late 1990, the year ARPANET was decommissioned.

The "hardest refresh" shortcut uses fifteen keys, including non-standard ones such as Ø and ⏏. (The latter is the "eject" key found on [older?] Mac keyboards.) The shortcut makes amusing comparisons about a shortcut that includes not only the F5 function key, but also the keys for the letter "F" and the digit "5", as well as the similarity in appearance between O, 0, and Ø.

The title text suggests that the inclusion of both the {{w|Windows key}} and {{w|Command key}} in the "Hardest refresh" shortcut is a security measure akin to the {{w|Two-man rule}}, as it would require two keyboards to enter.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon. No table is the preferred version, just describe what's in the picture including the special keys.}}
:{| class=wikitable
! Refresh Type
! Example Shortcuts
! Effect
|-
| Soft Refresh
| Gmail REFRESH Button
| Requests update within Javascript
|-
| Normal Refresh
| F5, CTRL-R, ⌘R
|Refreshes page
|-
|Hard Refresh
| CTRL-F5, CTRL-⇧, ⌘⇧R
| Refreshes page including cached files
|-
|Harder Refresh
| CTRL-⇧-HYPER-ESC-R-F5
| Remotely cycles power to datacenter
|-
|Hardest Refresh
|CTRL- ⌘⊞⇧#-R-F5-F-5-ESC-O-0-Ø-⏏-SCROLL LOCK
|Internet starts over from Arpanet
|}

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Internet]]

Talk:1854: Refresh Types

2017-06-23T19:12:24Z

162.158.74.105: Note about harder refresh

Similar to [https://xkcd.com/1638/ this comic]. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.83|108.162.212.83]] 14:55, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Aren't you supposed to use Shift-F5 (at least in chrome) for a hard refresh - not Ctrl - F5. https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/157179?visit_id=1-636338263045956762-2405452703&hl=en&rd=2 {{unsigned ip|108.162.219.136}}
:I believe that's correct. It is likely browser dependent. --[[User:Arccos|Arccos]] ([[User talk:Arccos|talk]]) 15:27, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

:Erratum: The middle hard-refresh option is missing something - it lists only modifier keys. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.142.185|172.68.142.185]] 15:32, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

:It appears that the "hard refresh" option is a real option, but that the keyboard shortcuts in the comic may not be correct. The above user's linked material suggests that the keyboard shortcut for a hard refresh, labeled "Reload the current page, ignoring cached content", is, in Chrome, SHIFT-F5 or CTRL-Shift-R on Windows and APPLE-Shift-R on a keyboard for MacOS. This is in contrast to the comic, which currently lists CTRL-F5, CTRL-Up, and APPLE-UP-R as the shortcuts. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.105|162.158.74.105]] 15:33, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

::That's not an "UP," the symbol ⇧ represents the SHIFT key. Indeed it appears Randall omitted the 'R' inadvertently. [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 15:46, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

:Randall says the keys are examples, meaning some may missing. But for me it looks like the most common shortcuts. Except the hard refresh by pressing CTRL+SHIFT, that's nonsense because a F5 or R should follow. I'm sure we will see a picture update soon. Stay tuned...--[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 15:44, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

The missile launch keys can be totally identical for the two-man rule to work; the thing is not that they are interchangeable, but that the locks are too far apart for one person to operate both. [[User:Chrullrich|Chrullrich]] ([[User talk:Chrullrich|talk]]) 18:49, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

It looks like the "harder refresh" shortcut also requires two keyboards to work, since the "hyper" key seems to only exist on the space-cadet keyboard, which does not have an F5 key. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.105|162.158.74.105]] 19:12, 23 June 2017 (UTC)

Talk:1854: Refresh Types

2017-06-23T15:33:08Z

162.158.74.105:

1854: Refresh Types

2017-06-23T15:25:01Z

162.158.74.105: /* Explanation */ Added note about shortcuts

{{comic
| number = 1854
| date = June 23, 2017
| title = Refresh Types
| image = refresh_types.png
| titletext = The hardest refresh requires both a Mac keyboard and a Windows keyboard as a security measure, like how missile launch systems require two keys to be turned at once.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BOT - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This lists five different ways of refreshing a page. The first three are real ways to refresh a page. The last two are absurd options that would give an ordinary user the power to make large changes to the places where data is hosted and/or the internet as a whole.

The difference between the first two options: "soft refresh" and "normal refresh," is that Gmail (Google's email service) allows a user to "refresh" (update) their inbox with a "refresh" button accessed while at a web address, while a "normal refresh" involves pushing the browser's refresh button. The latter option is basically equivalent to closing the web page, then opening up a new window/tab in the browser and going to the same IP address; different websites would handle retaining a user's "logged in" status differently when this is done (often based on options the user selected), while any well-designed webpage would probably not log a user out for using a "soft refresh" on something like an e-mail inbox.

The third option, "hard refresh," refers to a keyboard shortcut to "refresh" their cached files associated with a webpage (now discontinued in many browsers?)

The fourth option, "harder refresh," exaggerates the trend to a silly level by suggesting that a web page user would be allowed to press an increasingly implausible combination of buttons on their keyboard (including the non-standard '[https://askubuntu.com/questions/19558/what-are-the-meta-super-and-hyper-keys HYPER]' key, a feature of the {{w|Space cadet keyboard}}) to reset the power at the entire data center where the web server for the page they are viewing is hosted.

The fifth option, "hardest refresh," implies that if the user activated it, somehow the entire internet would start over from ARPANET, a network funded by the United States Department of Defense that predates the World Wide Web and is important when studying the early history of the internet. (ARPA stands for Advanced Research Projects Agency.) Obviously, this is impossible.

The displayed keyboard shortcuts get longer for the "harder" options. Although probably intended for humor, this makes some sense, as options that are used less often might be assigned less convenient keyboard shortcuts, and the more drastic options (if they existed) might have very long keyboard shortcuts to prevent them from being activated by accident. The first few displayed shortcuts would actually work on many systems.

The title text envisions a security measure for the hypothetical godlike power of the "hardest refresh" that is like the security on missile launch systems. It references the comically long keyboard shortcut for listed for the "hardest refresh" that involves both the Windows key and the Apple key, which would not normally be located on the same keyboard.

Web page developers must keep in mind an ever-increasing number of shortcuts to force a page to refresh more or less thoroughly, i.e. causing cached local resources to be deleted and re-set.

The first option (soft refresh) uses the "refresh" button present as part of the Gmail interface to retrieve new messages from the server without reloading the whole webpage itself.

The second option (normal refresh) uses a browser refresh button which causes the entire page to reload. This will inherently retrieve new messages from the server, but also must do other tasks required to present the page for the first time.

Randall jokingly proposes a fictional "harder still" refresh option is a fictional refresh that sends a command to the Google Gmail server causing the entire data center where the server lives to power down and reboot everything, the Gmail equivalent of "turning it off and on again." This command would be extremely inconvenient for other users, who would be locked out of their emails until the datacenter reboots.

He goes on to propose a "hardest" refresh with a key combination resembling a 'cheat code' that causes the entire internet to be build anew from its origins in {{w|Arpanet}}.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon. No table is the preferred version, just describe what's in the picture including the special keys.}}
:{| class=wikitable
! Refresh Type
! Example Shortcuts
! Effect
|-
| Soft Refresh
| Gmail REFRESH Button
| Requests update within Javascript
|-
| Normal Refresh
| F5, CTRL-R, ⌘-R
|Refreshes page
|-
|Hard Refresh
| CTRL-F5, CTRL-⇧, ⌘-⇧-R
| Refreshes page including cached files
|-
|Harder Refresh
| CTRL-⇧-HYPER-ESC-R-F5
| Remotely cycles power to datacenter
|-
|Hardest Refresh
|CTRL- ⌘ÿ⇧#-R-F5-F-5-ESC-O-0-Ø-⏏-SCROLL LOCK
|Internet starts over from Arpanet
|}

{{comic discussion}}

1854: Refresh Types

2017-06-23T15:17:22Z

162.158.74.105: /* Explanation */ Created first draft of explanation

1854: Refresh Types

2017-06-23T15:03:49Z

162.158.74.105: /* Transcript */ Fixed formatting

1854: Refresh Types

2017-06-23T15:02:46Z

162.158.74.105: Added first draft of transcript

1832: Photo Library Management

2017-05-05T13:20:08Z

162.158.74.105: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1832
| date = May 3, 2017
| title = Photo Library Management
| image = photo_library_management.png
| titletext = A good lifehack is to use messy and unstable systems to organize your photos. That way, every five years or so it becomes obsolete and/or collapses, and you have to open it up and pick only your favorite pictures to salvage.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|More explanation needed on what the comic is about, and the transcript is incomplete. The title text also needs to be explained.}}

The comic is split into 6 sectors as described below:
{| class="wikitable"
!Sector
!Caption
!Explanation
|-
| Left sector / Low Amount of Photos Taken, more than a little amount of time to sort
| No problems
| With only a few photos to sort, and lots of time to do so, Randall is able to maintain his photo library efficiently.
|-
| Bottom sector / Area under line increasing where more time is spent as more photos are taken
| Can't find the good photos among the thousands of bad ones
| The amount of photos being taken is too high for Randall to adequately sort in the small amount of time he has.
|-
| Top sector / Area above line of negative gradient, as number of photos increases and time decreases
| Can't sleep, too busy sifting through photos to find the best ones
| Randall has taken too many photos, but has dedicated the time to sorting them. As a result, he is lacking sleep through his determination to complete the task.
|-
| Middle sector / Area in between both side lines, after No Problems but before cloud storage
| Photo library fits on most devices as long as they're not too old
| Randall takes quite a few photos, but still enough to fit on a more modern hard drive.
|-
| Middle-right sector / Area in between both side lines, after 'not too old' but before 'Moore's Law'
| Need cloud storage, external hard drives, or frequent upgrades
| Randall takes so many photos that he needs more storage than is on his computer to hold them.
|-
| Right sector / Area after 'cloud storage', going off until the two side lines meet
| Photo library grows faster than Moore's Law
| {{w|Moore's Law}} is a law that states that technology will keep getting better exponentially. However, Randall's photos take up so much space that even Moore's law can't catch up to the number of photos stored.
|}

The title text states "A good lifehack is to use messy and unstable systems to organize your photos. That way, every five years or so it becomes obsolete and/or collapses, and you have to open it up and pick only your favorite pictures to salvage." This would suggest using storage that is likely to fail is a good way to ensure you have only your favorite pictures saved.

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

A graph with the x axis being number of photos taken per day and y axis being the time spent going through photos per day, divided into six sections:

Section 1: Few photos taken per day, no limit to time spent: "No Problems"

Section 2: Some photos taken per day, a limited amount of time spent going through: "Photo Library Fits On Most Devices As Long As They're Not Too Old"

Section 3: More photos taken per day, less time spent going through: "Need Cloud Storage, External Hard Drive, Or Frequent Upgrades"

Section 4: A lot of photos taken per day, and even less time spent going through: "Photo Library Grows Faster Than [http://www.mooreslaw.org/ Moore's Law]."

Section 5: Above line increasing where more time is spent as more photos are taken: "Can't Find The Good Photos Among The Thousands Of Bad Ones"

Section 6: Below line of negative gradient, as number of photos increases and time decreases: "Can't Sleep, Too Busy Sifting Through Photos To Find The Best One"
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Line graphs]]

Talk:1819: Sweet 16

2017-04-03T13:20:20Z

162.158.74.105: "at the season"?

I checked it out, if this truly is a basketball comp, then the 1988 Los Angeles Lakers win hands-down. [[User:Themanhimself11|Themanhimself11]] ([[User talk:Themanhimself11|talk]]) 10:25, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
:This being Randall, they'll probably be playing basketball by Marquess of Queensberry rules. [[User:Nialpxe|Nialpxe]] ([[User talk:Nialpxe|talk]]) 11:22, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
:A lot of people who play NBA 2K17 are actually good in real life, so they should have a pretty good chance.

WHERE IS MY APRIL FOOLS DAY COMIC?? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.238.130|162.158.238.130]] 11:04, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Minor detail - NBA 2K17 is made by 2K Games, rather than EA. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.107.36|141.101.107.36]] 12:43, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

The additional text says, "Every year I make my bracket at the season ...." Should that say "at the end of the season"? --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.105|162.158.74.105]] 13:20, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Talk:1152: Communion

2016-12-06T02:35:54Z

162.158.74.105:

Should the page include a section on the {{w|Blood libel}}? I think he's riffing off that too.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.105|162.158.74.105]] 02:35, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

This was one of the reasons early Christians were persecuted by the Romans. They thought the Christians were cannibals. [[Special:Contributions/76.20.159.250|76.20.159.250]] 00:53, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

:Did they actually though that or did they only used it as pretext for persecution? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 09:20, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Isn't he making fun of that doctrine?[[User:Guru-45|Guru-45]] ([[User talk:Guru-45|talk]]) 07:16, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Transubstantiation isn't about bread literally turning into flesh. I don't know how to explain it properly, but it is based on Middle Age Christian philosophy (scholastic, St. Thomas, I think) that differentiates the accidents (appearance, taste etc.) of a thing from its true substance. Transubstantiation means that the bread becomes flesh (acquires the substance of Jesus' flesh) even though it retains the appearance and all qualities of bread.
This doctrine is of course highly outdated and I can't think of why the Catholics haven't dropped it yet. It also causes a lot of confusion. --[[User:Artod|Artod]] ([[User talk:Artod|talk]]) 09:07, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

:If it's middle age Christian, what was the explanation before that? -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 09:20, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

::I would think that the original interpretation is symbolism. Jesus and his diciples were eating the {{w|passover}} meal, and the central piece was a {{w|Korban Pesach|sacrifical lamb}}. I think that it's a way for Jesus to say that the purpouse of the lamb is becoming dated, cause I'm about to be murdered, and that is what will save you in the end, not sacrifices. From start christians have called him the {{w|Lamb of God}}. Hope you had a merry Christmas! -- [[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 10:14, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

:::The "lamb of God" is thought to be a malpropism from one ancient language to another. I don't have my source material to hand, but it seems likely that the original was "word of God", and "lamb" had a similar sound and so became entangled in the confusion

::::As a New Testament student, I would be interested in seeing a source for that. There are two Greek words translated as "Lamb" in the New Testament. Are you saying that one or both of them sound like an Aramaic word for "word", for instance? Both are used in contexts where "Lamb" makes sense and "Word" does not (i.e. referring to Jesus as a sin-bearing sacrifice). Also, John's Gospel has called Jesus "the Word" several times just before quoting John the Baptist as referring to Jesus as "the Lamb of God" twice. Seems strange that a mistake would be made twice on one page (for instance) when it was avoided five times on the previous page.[[Special:Contributions/75.157.92.41|75.157.92.41]] 08:53, 10 January 2013 (UTC)

::Thomism (the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas) is built on Aristotle's thought and thus this understanding has always been applied to the Eucharist, albeit possibly not as explicitly as through Thomism.

:::In fact, Wikipedia does have a pretty good article about transubstantiation.--[[User:Artod|Artod]] ([[User talk:Artod|talk]]) 11:53, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

::::It does seem quite good. Were you thinking about anything in particular? -- [[User:St.nerol|St.nerol]] ([[User talk:St.nerol|talk]]) 19:25, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

:[http://www.wftv.com/news/news/body-of-christ-snatched-from-church-held-hostage-b/nD9rH/ Are you sure?] Note the "kidnapping" line about halfway down. The literalness of the belief seems a bit vague to me in practice. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.117|108.162.238.117]] 03:42, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

The 'punchline' and title text are two of the most macabre things I've ever seen Randall write in this comic - and the hilarity still comes across!--[[User:Dangerkeith3000|Dangerkeith3000]] ([[User talk:Dangerkeith3000|talk]]) 16:22, 27 December 2012 (UTC)

Has anybody figured out what the '1970s murder victim' reference in the hovertext is referring to? Lot of people died then - I have no idea how to even start narrowing it down [[Special:Contributions/76.116.83.55|76.116.83.55]] 16:39, 27 December 2012 (UTC)
:Will it referring to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_in_the_Box_(Philadelphia) [[User:Ykliu|Ykliu]] ([[User talk:Ykliu|talk]]) 06:58, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Just remind me of a film: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baby_of_Mâcon

Speaking as a Catholic, my first reaction was "Oy, I've never heard ''that one'' before (eye roll)". It is a pretty old gag, but Randall definitely has a gift for putting comedic timing into 2-dimensional comic panels; I still laughed. [[User:Tractarian|Tractarian]] ([[User talk:Tractarian|talk]]) 16:06, 28 December 2012 (UTC)

Randall misspelled "parishioner". [[Special:Contributions/87.189.145.75|87.189.145.75]] 12:00, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

The last sentence of the explanation is is really awkward to me. I want to rewrite it but I'm not too smart on theology so I'm not sure if this is the right way. What do you think?

: ''Protestant denominations (e.g., Baptists, Mennonites, Anabaptists, Pentecostals) reject the doctrine of Transubstantiation, with some taking the words as wholly symbolic of Jesus' sacrificial death. Others (e.g, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist) believe Christ is actually present in the bread and wine although the bread and wine are not changed in any physical way .'' --[[User:Smartin|Smartin]] ([[User talk:Smartin|talk]]) 03:35, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Hold on a minute. The church in the title text is evidently ritually sacrificing/apotheosizing persons and then transubstantiating their flesh and blood for consumption in order to redeem their sins. (Presumably ritual sacrifice is kosher.) Now the police have a blood sample from a 1970 murder victim as a result of confiscating the transubstantiated materials. How did they get the blood from the victim for comparison if he was killed by the church and they disposed of the remains? I hope Dexter isn't involved on this one. [[Special:Contributions/98.225.182.131|98.225.182.131]] 09:15, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

note that some presbyterian churches share the opinion that the Lords Supper is only "sign and seal of the covenant of grace". So they don't believe that Jezus is spiritual in the bread and wine.

Folks, I updated the theological explanation a bit to make it more accurate without hopefully getting too theologically geeky, but given the wonderfully geeky nature of this site (and comic), I'll go deeper in the comments. Full disclosure that I am Protestant but studied this stuff a lot in Divinity School (and love this new Pope). The Catholic belief in transubstantiation was developed within a world-view based on Plato & Aristotle, which is how the thinkers of the time understood reality and the world. Thomas Aquinas, probably the most influential of Catholic theologians, was a big fan of Aristotle, and that philosophical understanding of the nature of things fit well into an explanation of the Eucharist that makes a little more sense than how it is commonly understood. The change in the elements (bread/wine) happens when the priest consecrates them, not when they enter the mouth or stomach, and it was pretty obvious to everyone that they don't taste or look like flesh and blood. But Aristotle argued that the true nature--what something really was--could be and often was different from its simple outward appearance. Good example is that most anyone would say that each of us is more than simply our biological mechanisms. When someone dies, they look exactly the same as when they are sleeping, but there is obviously something fundamentally different about who/what they are. I don't say that to start a debate about the soul or anything but just for some context. What the Catholics argued was that there was an actual change in the substance--what the bread and wine REALLY were--when the priest blessed them, and that change gave them special salvific and "soul-cleansing" abilities. I had a theology prof who described it as the scrubbing bubbles of the spiritual world...they don't return your toilet back to its pristine condition, but they run all over cleaning it up. So enter the Reformation, and Luther (a Catholic priest) did not want to give up the significance of the Eucharist but was more focused on interpretation of the Bible (where most would think it seems pretty clear that Jesus isn't speaking literally). Perhaps more importantly though, he felt the centrality of the Catholic-ordained clergy in the process of salvation and access to God created abuses and stumbling blocks for the faithful. So he argued basically that there was still a scrubbing bubbles-type affect from the Eucharist, but that was not because the substance of the bread and wine changed when blessed but because the ritual, prayer, and remembrance created a special and unique spiritual connection to Christ. Calvin took it a step further and made a more symbolic claim, but as with Luther, didn't want to veer too far from the universal ideal that there was a real spiritual impact. The Anabaptists said it was purely symbolic. Modern Protestants pretty much all believe that it is symbolic, if special, and a reminder of our covenant with God and Christ's sacrifice...and few Christians know or bother with the more detailed theological reasoning behind this whole debate. As noted by someone above, Presbyterians use "sign and seal," and as someone who went through the rather rigorous ordination exams for the Presbyterian Church, I know we would not have been passed without providing that framing of symbol and promise. Most Catholics don't understand what it is they are supposed to believe about Transubstantiation, but the Church fathers worked very hard to make the details of their theology actually make sense and fit the world they knew and saw around them. The Bible does the same, and it is a shame that many Christians come to believe that faith calls on them to accept things they know not to be true as a test. As an aside, it has always struck me as ironic and tragic that there is such a fight over the creation narrative when the progression laid out in Gen 1 matches up so perfectly with what science now believes, and is how one might try to describe what we know about the history of the earth to a young child--or to people thousands of years ago who knew nothing of science, dinosaurs, etc. It is also frustrating how hard some fight to deny science when Genesis 1 is unique among the ancient creation myths in saying life started in the water and that plants and then birds came before animals, and people came last. As Randall is so fond of pointing out, "birds" did come first and ruled the earth for millions of years. Anyway, the more detailed explanation on the Eucharist and this little mini-rant against some of my fellow evangelicals on creationism stems from my strong agreement with St. Augustine's quote I'll conclude this comment with. I wish more Christians paid as much attention to Augustine's teachings like this as they do to the sex parts. “Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge is held to as being certain from reason and experience. It is therefore a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a non-believer to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics. If non-believers finds a Christian mistaken and maintaining foolish positions supposedly because of Scripture in a field which they themselves know well, how are they going to believe Scripture in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when it appears the pages of Scripture are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, and will bring untold trouble and sorrow on the faithful.”--St. Augustine of Hippo, around 400 AD.
[[User:Sapper14|Sapper14]] ([[User talk:Sapper14|talk]]) 14:59, 18 December 2013 (UTC)Eric
:tl;dr or tl;nwr! (nobody will read!). My 2 cents. --[[User:Dgbrt|Dgbrt]] ([[User talk:Dgbrt|talk]]) 21:11, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
:Paragraphs, please. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.117|108.162.238.117]] 03:33, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Isn't the title text's date (1970) an epoch pun ? They would have killed a baby on year 0, but not on the right calendar... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.238|141.101.98.238]] 03:19, 9 August 2014 (UTC)
: I like this interpretation, but it does say 1970s, not 1970. {{unsigned ip|108.162.246.213}}

1748: Future Archaeology

2016-11-01T17:23:31Z

162.158.74.105: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1748
| date = October 19, 2016
| title = Future Archaeology
| image = future_archaeology.png
| titletext = "The only link we've found between the two documents is that a fragment of the Noah one mentions Aaron's brother Moses parting an ocean. Is that right?" "... yes. Yes, exactly."
}}

==Explanation==
This Wednesday comic is a direct continuation of the previous comic [[1747: Spider Paleontology]] from Monday about a {{w|time travel|time-traveler}} (the black floating energy Sphere) who has come back from far in to the future to see {{w|spiders}} (only known from {{w|fossils}} in their time). See [[1747: Spider Paleontology]] for a more complete explanation of this part of the joke. This series ended with this comic. Both comic in this series have titles of a noun followed by a field of research. It was a so far unused release schedule and it was the first time in six years two related comics were released in the same week. See more under the [[:Category:Time traveling Sphere|Time traveling Sphere]] series.

Since [[Megan]] and [[Cueball]] now have access to the Sphere from the future they ask if it knows who will win the election. This is a reference to the {{w|United States elections, 2016}} where the ''very'' controversial {{w|Donald Trump}} was up against former United States first lady {{w|Hillary Clinton}}, who also had several {{w|Hillary_Clinton#Email_controversy|controversies}} going on. This comic was released about three weeks before election day. It is likely one of the most discussed elections ever, especially in the rest of the world outside the US, where especially Europe leaders have made it clear that they are against Trump. That was mainly earlier on, before they realized he might actually stand a chance. Of course anyone interested in any election would be interested to hear from the future how it went, but this particular election may interest a larger proportion of the world population than any prior election.

Sadly for Megan and Cueball, the sphere has come back from so far in to the future, that even spiders have gone extinct. (Whether humans also have is unclear, see discussion about this in [[1747: Spider Paleontology]]). The Sphere makes this clear by stating that its civilization hardly know anything about our era and they know little about our history and culture. (And by the way it only came back for the spiders, anyway).

The idea is that history is filtered in similar fashion to fossils. What is contemporaneously important, like a {{w|spider web|spider's web}}, {{w|Feathered dinosaur|dinosaur feathers}} (see previous comic), or the United States presidential election may not survive. The Sphere tells them that only two written accounts have been reconstructed (note that they are not found in their entirety). And they do not know if they even represents real events or myths. One of the two is indeed a myth, as it is about a man building a boat to survive a great flood. Megan recognizes this as being about {{w|Noah}} and his famous {{w|Noah's Ark|Ark}} from the {{w|Genesis flood narrative}}, as Cueball refers to. The other is a reference to a popular pop song.

The joke is that, in the future, the 2000 {{w|Aaron Carter}} hip hop song "{{w|That's How I Beat Shaq}}" ([http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/aaroncarter/thatshowibeatshaq.html lyrics] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfhhWA9GF0M video]) is considered as valuable a historical document when researching humans as parts of the {{w|Bible}}.

While secular historians consider the story of the Flood to be mythical, they still use it to infer facts about the early history of the Middle East, simply because there are a fairly small number of texts surviving from that era. "That's How I Beat Shaq" is, likewise, a fictional story including some true elements; it's just that as long as there are abundant sources documenting life in the year 2000, there's no reason to consult the song in any historical context. Yet it is the latter story that the time traveler assumes to be a clearly religious one, while seeing the former as a relatively straightforward survival story. A further layer of humor is that "That's How I Beat Shaq" is an archetypal {{w|David and Goliath}} story—the story of David and Goliath of course being a Biblical one as well.

In fact the Spheres civilization believes Shaq ({{w|Shaquille O'Neal}} a professional basketball player 2.16 m (7 ft 1 in) tall) to refer to a God, which was then defeated by Aaron, a 14 year old (and rather small kid) at the time of the release of his single in 2001. He beats Shaq on the basketball court one on one, so although this is a David vs. Goliath story it is not a fight till death. But to Aaron and his basketball fan friends, Shaq is probably seen as kind of God. Megan comments that the pop song may have been mangled by the {{w|Aeon|eons}}.

The title text expands on the joke by letting the Sphere explain that the only connection they have found between their two historical documents is via the biblical story of {{w|Moses}}. As Moses is also one of God's chosen prophets and leaders, like Noah and {{w|Abraham}} before him, these two stories appear close together in the Bible, though not close together chronologically, and it would be likely that their document with the Flood story also has some parts about Moses. Moses had an older biological brother named {{w|Aaron}} and the Sphere's civilization has hastily concluded that Moses' brother and Aaron Carter are one and the same. According to the Bible, God {{w|parting of the Red Sea|parted the Red Sea}} for Moses and the {{w|Israelites}}. This is often referred to, either erroneously or out of simplification, as Moses having parted the Red Sea. Along with Noah's Flood, this is one of the two major times in the Bible that God effects grand change on a body or bodies of water.

The Sphere asks Megan and Cueball if it is true that Aaron (Carter's) brother Moses did part an ocean. Megan decides to refrain from trying to explain this, having already in the previous comic realized how hard it is to explain spiders to someone who is a fan, but has never heard of spider web, and thus just states yes, yes exactly. Of course according to the bible she can say yes to the question about Moses parting the water, as long as she do not say anything about the connection with Aaron Carter.

There appears to be a major flaw in the comic on the fact that the Sphere speaks perfect English, and understands Megan and Cueball. If they only have two written accounts from our time, why do they then speak English? Especially since they seem to come from another planet and are thus likely not humans (see discussion of the sphere in the previous comic). Of course if they are humans and have come from Earth (maybe traveled away), they may just have retained the English language. But given the fact that more young people today probably would not understand their own grandparents grandparents, and that the Sphere is from so long into the future that Megan calls it eons, spiders are extinct, and only two text have survived, it should be impossible for the language to have stayed the same. Alternatively they have also recovered some video clips, but then it would be strange the Sphere did not mention this. A final solution is that the Sphere's civilization is so advanced that it can learn the language instantly by just being in the room with other beings, simply reading it from their mind. Given the fact that it seems the Sphere has come to Earth from another planet, and has the ability to travel in time, this last option may not even be so far fetched.

This comic was published the day after the [[what if?]] ''{{what if|152|Flood Death Valley}}'', thus referring indirectly to a new possible flood history. It was the first what if? post in almost three months, the longest break between two post during 2016 (and third longest of all time at the time of its release), and it thus seems realistic that there should be some kind of connection between that and this comic. The next two comics [[1749: Mushrooms]] and [[1750: Life Goals]] also referenced this what if? post more or less directly.

In this comic Randall manages to combine no less than four of his favorite recurring subjects with [[:Category:Time travel|time travel]], [[:Category:Spiders|spiders]], [[:Category:Politics|politics]] and [[:Category:Religion|religion]].

==Transcript==
:[The Sphere, a time-traveler depicted as a solid floating black energy sphere surrounded by six outwardly-curved segments (first seen in the previous comic), is floating in front of Megan and Cueball who is walking after it towards the right part of the panel. The Sphere looks like this in all panels, but in the zoom in from panel two more details can be seen. A voice emanates from the Sphere.]
:Megan: Since you're from the future, do you know who wins the election?
:Sphere: Haven't the faintest idea. Hardly any text has been recovered from your era, so we know little about your history and culture.
:Sphere: We're mostly here for the spiders, anyway. 

:[A close-up of the Sphere, still depicted as a black sphere, but not perfectly round at this zoom level and also clearly with some white dots in the dark area. It is still surrounded by six narrow rays with irregular dots between the rays.]
:Sphere: There are only two written accounts we've reconstructed.
:Sphere: We don't know whether they describe real events or myths.

:[The Sphere is now on the left side of Megan and Cueball who has stopped walking and has turned to look at the Sphere.]
:Sphere: One is a story about a man who built a boat to survive a great flood.
:Megan: Oh yeah. Noah.
:Cueball: We do like our flood narratives.

:[The Sphere has drifted further away from Megan and Cueball.]
:Sphere: The other is an account of how a man named Aaron Carter defeated a god named Shaq.
:Megan: That one may have been mangled a bit by the eons.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Time traveling Sphere]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Comics featuring real people]] 
[[Category:Time travel]]
[[Category:Spiders]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Religion]]
[[Category:Basketball]] 
[[Category:Songs]]

1751: Movie Folder

2016-10-26T15:21:01Z

162.158.74.105:

{{comic
| number = 1751
| date = October 26, 2016
| title = Movie Folder
| image = movie_folder.png
| titletext = That's actually the original Japanese version of A Million Random Digits, which is much better than the American remake the book was based on.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|First draft}}

[[Cueball]] is looking through [[Black Hat]]'s downloaded movies, which are all adaptations of non-literary works, improbable sequels, and/or crossovers between very disparate properties. Cueball reacts with increasing incredulity to Black Hat's collection, while Black Hat casually responds with equally unlikely (non-)explanations. Knowing Black Hat, his movie folder is deliberately weird just to provoke this kind of reaction.

=== Black Hat's downloaded movies ===
{|class="wikitable"
! Title
! Explanation
|-
| ''Lorem Ipsum: The Movie'' || ''Lorem Ipsum'' are the first two words of a common block of Latin filler text used by typesetters to layout pages before real text is available. This title implies that this movie is entirely random filler with no meaningful content.
|
|-
| ''Titanic XCVIII'' || Implies that there were 98 Titanics which all sank, creating an artificial reef
|
|-
| ''Debbie Did 9/11'' || A combination of ''Debbie Does Dallas'' and a 9/11 conspiracy theory
|
|-
| ''Time Jam: A Connecticut Huskie on King Arthur's Court'' || A combination of ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Author's Court'' and ''Space Jam''
|
|-
| ''Harold and Kumar Go to Howl's Moving Castle'' || A combination of ''Harold and Kumar go to White Castle'' and ''Howl's Moving Castle''
|
|-
| ''A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates'' || This is actually [https://www.amazon.com/Million-Random-Digits-Normal-Deviates/dp/0833030477 a real book]
|
|-
| ''Michael Bay's The Vagina Monologues'' || ''The Vagina Monologues'' as directed by Michael Bay (who is known for over-doing explosions in the movies he directs)
|
|}

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript}}

:[Black Hat is sitting in a chair reading his phone.]
:Cueball (off-panel): Your movie folder is so ''weird''. Where do you find all this stuff?
:Black Hat: Dunno.
:Black Hat: Around.

:[Cueball is sitting at a computer.]
:Cueball: ''Lorem Ipsum: The Movie?''
:Cueball: ''Titanic XCVIII?''
:Black Hat (off-panel): That series gets good when they start hitting the reef created by all the previous wrecks.

:[Cueball leans in closer to the screen.]
:Cueball: ''Debbie Did 9/11?''
:Cueball: ''Time Jam: A Connecticut Huskie on King Arthur's Court?''
:Black Hat: Really underrated ''Space Jam'' sequel.

:[Close-up of Cueball's head and the monitor.]
:Cueball: ''Harold and Kumar Go to Howl's Moving Castle?''
:Cueball: ''A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates?''
:Black Hat: That's the original--the book was a novelization.

:[Back to Black Hat sitting in the chair.]
:Cueball (off-panel): ''Michael Bay's The Vagina Monologues!?''
:Black Hat: It's pretty good, despite all the CGI explosions.

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1749: Mushrooms

2016-10-21T21:35:31Z

162.158.74.105:

;Meaning of the title text?

The way I'm reading this comic, there are several possible meanings to the title text. One definition of "ghost" is "a faint trace of something" - it's possible that mushrooms are a faint trace of whatever other species bridged the gap between plants and animals.

Alternately, it could just be Randall's way of saying not to trust any sentence beginning with the phrase "Evolutionarily speaking" (see comics [[1240]], [[1475]]). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.61|108.162.216.61]] 13:55, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

C-C-C-Combo Breaker! [[User:PeanutVendor|PeanutVendor]] ([[User talk:PeanutVendor|talk]]) 14:08, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Disagree with stated meaning. Yes, fungi consume dead matter but that would relate them to zombies not ghosts. Suggest that its a reference to asexual reproduction in fungi, that new fungi are born from the broken bodies of its parents. [[User:Kev|Kev]] ([[User talk:Kev|talk]]) 17:05, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

;Growl
Not sure I agree with the explanation of the growl. In the first frame cueball insults the mushroom as Megan explains they are more like animals; the casual/layperson implication there is that, while not necessarily sentient, they are more able to respond to surrounding stimuli (like being aware of being called weird.) So the punchline in the penultimate frame has this not-vegetable more-like-animal mushroom "animate" ... growl [[User:IronyChef|IronyChef]] ([[User talk:IronyChef|talk]]) 15:03, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

;Differences mushroom/plants

Just for a quick overview:
* cell walls in mushrooms consist of chitin (like the exoskeletons of insects) and polysaccharids. Plants have cells walls made from cellulose, animals have cell walls made of protein.
* mushrooms are heterotrophic (they need to take up chemical energy from outside of the body) like animals; while plants use sunlight. Though, some fungi have turned to sunlight or gamma rays (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus).
* each fungal cell is simple in structure and function, unlike plants which have much more specialized "organs" (leaves, flowers, roots)
--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.150.228|162.158.150.228]] 16:16, 21 October 2016 (UTC)
: Animals do not have cell walls. All cells (including Plant, fungi and animals) have cell membranes made of lipids with embedded proteins. As above, plants and fungi have cell walls in addition to a cell membrane. Some other things such as bacteria (which are not animals) also have cell walls made of various substances.--[[Special:Contributions/108.162.219.11|108.162.219.11]] 16:55, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Also note plants are eukaryotic so it's not fair to say "(eukaryotic organisms do not use photosynthesis)". The definition of a eukaryote is the presence of a nucleus not anything to do with heterotrophs (eat others for food) vs. autotrophs (produce their own food).
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.105|162.158.74.105]] 21:35, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

Talk:1749: Mushrooms

2016-10-21T21:34:13Z

162.158.74.105:

Talk:1743: Coffee

2016-10-07T19:28:13Z

162.158.74.105:

For me as a non-native speaker this XKCD looks like the guests ordered Ground Coffee and Cueball didn't realize that ground might come von "grind". [[User:Gunterkoenigsmann|Gunterkoenigsmann]] ([[User talk:Gunterkoenigsmann|talk]])--
: I hadn't even noticed that pun, thanks! [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.87|108.162.221.87]] 10:16, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

With "I'm a regular Starbuck" Megan says, she is a regular visitor of Starbuck and has learned her skills there watching. Sebastian --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.83.168|162.158.83.168]] 08:10, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
: Since the Starbucks coffee chain writes their name as a plural, I just assumed it was a cross-referential joke about the Starbuck character on Battlestar Galactica. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.87|108.162.221.87]] 10:16, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
: I also like to think "Starbuck" here refers as much to the Battlestar Galactica character here as to the coffee shop. I'm pretty sure he is the one who explained how things worked in the show. Being from another time & planet, his explanations were usually a crude interpretation of actuality and were funnier for being mostly right but decidedly odd. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.89|173.245.48.89]] 19:04, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

The expensive coffee filter comment might be a reference to the ridiculously high prices for vacuum cleaner bags. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.85.249|162.158.85.249]] 08:12, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
: Ironic, since Dyson vacuums are "bagless" & use a canister instead. (Which is disgusting, by the way.) [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.87|108.162.221.87]] 10:16, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
:: Actually even Dyson vacuums have at least two filters in them. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.127|141.101.98.127]] 10:21, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
::: Filters, but not bags. Emptying & subsequently cleaning the removable canister on a bagless vacuum can be hazardous for anyone with allergies (or just anyone, if the canister contains toxic or noxious materials); Not that most vacuum-cleaners aren't basically big dust blowers anyway. Inboard HEPA filters mitigate the dust issue during use, but emptying the canister itself can be a delicate & irritatingly messy task. Aside from the bag material wasted during disposal, bag-vacuums are in some respects very much preferable to bagless. Personally, I recommend eschewing vacuum-cleaners entirely, avoiding wall-to-wall carpeting like the plague, & using area rugs which can be removed for a thorough cleaning (on BOTH sides). [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.87|108.162.221.87]] 11:17, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
:::::why don't you just vacuum out the canister?
Can you actually "hoover" something up with a Dyson? ;-) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.22.72|162.158.22.72]] 08:37, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
: Decidedly not! That's like saying you are "rollerblading" when you are actually just inline-skating, or calling any cola a "Coke". You don't go toyotaing in your Chevrolet & you don't Colgate your teeth; such branding idioms really annoy me. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to gutenberg some compuserve post-its before my redenbachers are done kenmoring. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.87|108.162.221.87]] 10:16, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

megan explicitly calls them "grounds," probably because that's what they're called on the packet. no one mentioned beans. what made you think of beans? also, she's heard of "starbucks" and thinks it's a collection, and, since she is just one person she calls herself a starbuck. oh well. --[[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.84|141.101.98.84]] 11:54, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

''are made of plastic and would melt or ignite if placed over direct heat from a stove'' – no, they wouldn’t; not as long as there is liquid water in it. You can even use a paper-cup to boil water. --[[User:DaB.|DaB.]] ([[User talk:DaB.|talk]]) 17:03, 7 October 2016 (UTC)