2236: Is it Christmas?

2019-12-06T23:31:06Z

162.158.74.15: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2236
| date = December 2, 2019
| title = Is it Christmas?
| image = is_it_christmas.png
| titletext = We've tested it on 30 different days and it hasn't gotten one wrong yet.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Should probably wait for Christmas to see if the comic changes or not}}
https://isitchristmas.com/ is a popular simplistic website that informs the visitor whether or not it's {{w|Christmas}}. Christmas is a holiday observed in many parts of the world on December 25 of each year. At the top on the tab of the site in the browser it says "Is it Christmas?" with a large '''NO''' printed if it is not December 25, and a '''YES''' if it is December 25. This website does a check on the computer's current date, and updates accordingly if it is indeed Christmas. In addition, isitchristmas.com gives the answer in the language of your region (i.e. for a visitor from Canada, the site gives the answer in English and French to account for Canada's bilingularity, and in most other countries just their word for No will be shown). Since the page uses the computer's time setting, it is possible to easily check that the page works by changing the date on the computer used to access the page to see the text change to Yes (or No if you are reading it on December 25). This also means that the page is only as correct as the time setting on the computer used to view the page (so in case of connection problems, you may check your computer's calendar instead).

Here [[Randall]] spoofs the website. He claims to have made a competitor to isitchristmas.com which nearly always correctly tells if it is Christmas. The joke is, that the comic will always display a static image reading '''NO''', even on Christmas Day, and that the rare incorrect answer is rare enough to not cause any concern.

Randall lists a rounded calculation of 99.73% for the precision of his prediction of whether or not it is Christmas. This number is accurate with or without including leap year. An average year is 365.25 days, meaning that he is only wrong 1 out of 365.25 days. So only 1/365.25 = 0.2737% of the days would the prediction be wrong, resulting in a correct reply rate of 99.726%, which he has rounded to 99.73%. Using or not using the leap year will give the same result to three decimal places.

This precision rate is only true for a definition of Christmas, which lasts only one day, regardless of which day that is (see trivia). For any definition of more than one day of Christmas, the error rate would be higher than 0.2737%. (If one considered the traditional {{w|Twelve Days of Christmas}} to all be Christmas, then Randall's website would be wrong on all 12 days, or 3.29% of the year.) However, in the US, where [[Randall]] lives, Christmas is usually defined as the single day of December 25th.

Although Randall's claim on {{w|Accuracy and precision#In binary classification|accuracy}} is true, accuracy alone doesn't make a predictive device useful. In this case, the page {{w|False positives and false_negatives#false negative rate|miss rate}} or false negative rate, that is, the percent of positive condition days (it's Christmas) that are predicted by the comic not to be Christmas, is 100%. In other words, it misses all actual events of Christmas.

When building a model for rare events, a common mistake is to ignore the implicit cost function built into the standard prediction accuracy validity statistic for binary events. Prediction accuracy (# correct guesses/total guesses) assumes that false positives and false negatives are equally bad. Given the implicit cost function of this performance statistic, the best-performing model is commonly a persistence forecast model--i.e., the optimal prediction model returns the most common value whatever the model inputs are. It's probably a better choice to optimize a model using a performance statistic which relies on a cost function that penalizes missing correct prediction of rare events more than it penalizes missing correct prediction of common events.

In fact, in most settings where a single outcome is a lot more common than any other one, predicting always that most common outcome would yield very high accuracy without any usefulness. It isn't hard to find examples even more accurate than Randall's:

* A useless test for AIDS giving always negative results would have an accuracy about 99.95% when applied to a random human, and even more if used in countries with low prevalence of AIDS.
* A website saying "You are not the cartoonist Randall Munroe" would be right for 99.9999999857% of humans.
* [https://knowyourphrase.com/even-a-broken-clock-is-right-twice A stopped watch is accurate twice a day] while a running watch is almost never accurate (and oddly, is more frequently correct the faster/slower it runs).

The title text is a "proof" that his service works. He claims to have tested this on 30 different days and confirmed that NO is the correct result. Any date except Christmas would result in a correct result, and the comic was the first to be released in December 2019, so unless the test had run for almost a year, he would not even have had a chance to test this on Christmas Day. Since this is a joke, the comic will of course not change to Yes on Christmas Day, because then it would be 100% accurate, as is the page the comic mocks.

Being right on most days, but not the one that mattered was also the subject of [[937: TornadoGuard]].

At the same time this Christmas comic came out, the [[xkcd Header text]] was [[xkcd_Header_text#2019-12-02_-_Into_Science|changed]] to ask if there were someone that would like Randall's new book ''[[How To]]'' as a Christmas present.

==Transcript==
:[A large square white panel with one large word in the middle, plus a footnote:]
:'''<big><big><big>No*</big></big></big>'''
:<nowiki>*</nowiki>99.73% accurate

:[Caption below the panel:]
:xkcd.com presents a new "Is It Christmas" service to compete with isitchristmas.com

==Trivia==
*Randall usually makes [[:Category:Christmas|Christmas comics]] around Christmas Day, but this year he has made two comics mentioning Christmas already by the 2nd of December 2019.
**The first came two comics before this with [[2234: How To Deliver Christmas Presents]].
**Only two times before has there been released any Christmas related comics so close to Christmas without being released in the few days around Christmas Day (22-26 of December). See the explanation for Christmas comics.
*The calendar used by most of the world for civil purposes is the Gregorian calendar, instituted by Pope Gregory XIII of the Roman Catholic Church in 1582. However, most Eastern Orthodox churches continue to use the Julian calendar for the purpose of their holidays; December 25th in the Julian calendar is January 7th in the Gregorian calendar for years between 1900 and 2100, so that is the civil date when those countries observe Christmas. The author of isitchristmas.com is [https://github.com/isitchristmas/web/issues/67#issuecomment-29585160 aware that this is the case], but has chosen to recognize a single date (December 25th in the Gregorian calendar) as Christmas for the sake of simplicity.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Christmas]]

2236: Is it Christmas?

2019-12-06T23:26:25Z

162.158.74.15: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2236
| date = December 2, 2019
| title = Is it Christmas?
| image = is_it_christmas.png
| titletext = We've tested it on 30 different days and it hasn't gotten one wrong yet.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Should probably wait for Christmas to see if the comic changes or not}}
https://isitchristmas.com/ is a popular simplistic website that informs the visitor whether or not it's {{w|Christmas}}. Christmas is a holiday observed in many parts of the world on December 25 of each year. At the top on the tab of the site in the browser it says "Is it Christmas?" with a large '''NO''' printed if it is not December 25, and a '''YES''' if it is December 25. This website does a check on the computer's current date, and updates accordingly if it is indeed Christmas. In addition, isitchristmas.com gives the answer in the language of your region (i.e. for a visitor from Canada, the site gives the answer in English and French to account for Canada's bilingularity, and in most other countries just their word for No will be shown). Since the page uses the computer's time setting, it is possible to easily check that the page works by changing the date on the computer used to access the page to see the text change to Yes (or No if you are reading it on December 25). This also means that the page is only as correct as the time setting on the computer used to view the page (so in case of connection problems, you may check your computer's calendar instead).

Here [[Randall]] spoofs the website. He claims to have made a competitor to isitchristmas.com which nearly always correctly tells if it is Christmas. The joke is, that the comic will always display a static image reading '''NO''', even on Christmas Day, and that the rare incorrect answer is rare enough to not cause any concern.

Randall lists a rounded calculation of 99.73% for the precision of his prediction of whether or not it is Christmas. This number is accurate with or without including leap year. An average year is 365.25 days, meaning that he is only wrong 1 out of 365.25 days. So only 1/365.25 = 0.2737% of the days would the prediction be wrong, resulting in a correct reply rate of 99.726%, which he has rounded to 99.73%. Using or not using the leap year will give the same result to three decimal places.

This precision rate is only true for a definition of Christmas, which lasts only one day, regardless of which day that is (see trivia). For any definition of more than one day of Christmas, the error rate would be higher than 0.2737%. In the US, where [[Randall]] lives, Christmas is usually defined as the single day of December 25th.

Although Randall's claim on {{w|Accuracy and precision#In binary classification|accuracy}} is true, accuracy alone doesn't make a predictive device useful. In this case, the page {{w|False positives and false_negatives#false negative rate|miss rate}} or false negative rate, that is, the percent of positive condition days (it's Christmas) that are predicted by the comic not to be Christmas, is 100%. In other words, it misses all actual events of Christmas.

When building a model for rare events, a common mistake is to ignore the implicit cost function built into the standard prediction accuracy validity statistic for binary events. Prediction accuracy (# correct guesses/total guesses) assumes that false positives and false negatives are equally bad. Given the implicit cost function of this performance statistic, the best-performing model is commonly a persistence forecast model--i.e., the optimal prediction model returns the most common value whatever the model inputs are. It's probably a better choice to optimize a model using a performance statistic which relies on a cost function that penalizes missing correct prediction of rare events more than it penalizes missing correct prediction of common events.

In fact, in most settings where a single outcome is a lot more common than any other one, predicting always that most common outcome would yield very high accuracy without any usefulness. It isn't hard to find examples even more accurate than Randall's:

* A useless test for AIDS giving always negative results would have an accuracy about 99.95% when applied to a random human, and even more if used in countries with low prevalence of AIDS.
* A website saying "You are not the cartoonist Randall Munroe" would be right for 99.9999999857% of humans.
* [https://knowyourphrase.com/even-a-broken-clock-is-right-twice A stopped watch is accurate twice a day] while a running watch is almost never accurate (and oddly, is more frequently correct the faster/slower it runs).

The title text is a "proof" that his service works. He claims to have tested this on 30 different days and confirmed that NO is the correct result. Any date except Christmas would result in a correct result, and the comic was the first to be released in December 2019, so unless the test had run for almost a year, he would not even have had a chance to test this on Christmas Day. Since this is a joke, the comic will of course not change to Yes on Christmas Day, because then it would be 100% accurate, as is the page the comic mocks.

Being right on most days, but not the one that mattered was also the subject of [[937: TornadoGuard]].

At the same time this Christmas comic came out, the [[xkcd Header text]] was [[xkcd_Header_text#2019-12-02_-_Into_Science|changed]] to ask if there were someone that would like Randall's new book ''[[How To]]'' as a Christmas present.

==Transcript==
:[A large square white panel with one large word in the middle, plus a footnote:]
:'''<big><big><big>No*</big></big></big>'''
:<nowiki>*</nowiki>99.73% accurate

:[Caption below the panel:]
:xkcd.com presents a new "Is It Christmas" service to compete with isitchristmas.com

==Trivia==
*Randall usually makes [[:Category:Christmas|Christmas comics]] around Christmas Day, but this year he has made two comics mentioning Christmas already by the 2nd of December 2019.
**The first came two comics before this with [[2234: How To Deliver Christmas Presents]].
**Only two times before has there been released any Christmas related comics so close to Christmas without being released in the few days around Christmas Day (22-26 of December). See the explanation for Christmas comics.
*The calendar used by most of the world for civil purposes is the Gregorian calendar, instituted by Pope Gregory XIII of the Roman Catholic Church in 1582. However, most Eastern Orthodox churches continue to use the Julian calendar for the purpose of their holidays; December 25th in the Julian calendar is January 7th in the Gregorian calendar for years between 1900 and 2100, so that is the civil date when those countries observe Christmas. The author of isitchristmas.com is [https://github.com/isitchristmas/web/issues/67#issuecomment-29585160 aware that this is the case], but has chosen to recognize a single date (December 25th in the Gregorian calendar) as Christmas for the sake of simplicity.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Christmas]]

2238: Flu Shot

2019-12-06T23:24:28Z

162.158.74.15: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2238
| date = December 6, 2019
| title = Flu Shot
| image = flu_shot.png
| titletext = "Wait, how often are you getting bitten by snakes? And why are you boiling water?" "Dunno, the CDC people keep showing up with complicated questions about the 'history of the property' and 'possible curses' but I kinda tune them out. At least one of them offered me the flu shot."
}}

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

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

:Megan (walking into frame from the left): Yesss, I got my flu shot.
:Cueball (off panel): Nice! I got mine a few weeks ago. Immunity Buddies!

:Megan (spreading her arms wide): Now I can finally get bitten by all the bats I want!
:Cueball: No, that's rabies, that's not what—

:(closeup of Megan's head)
:Megan: I'll be able to roll and play in the poison ivy without a care in the world!
:Cueball (off screen): Why would you do that even if the shot ''did''—

:Megan (flexing her arms): No more slathering on sunscreen. No more rushing for antivenom after a snakebite. And now I can stop wasting time boiling contaminated water before drinking it!

:Megan (running off toward the right): Gonna click on every URL in every email I get, even the ones with IP addresses and weird Unicode in them!
:Cueball: You know what, sure, go for it.

{{comic discussion}}

2238: Flu Shot

2019-12-06T23:24:02Z

162.158.74.15: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 2238
| date = December 6, 2019
| title = Flu Shot
| image = flu_shot.png
| titletext = "Wait, how often are you getting bitten by snakes? And why are you boiling water?" "Dunno, the CDC people keep showing up with complicated questions about the 'history of the property' and 'possible curses' but I kinda tune them out. At least one of them offered me the flu shot."
}}

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

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

:Megan (walking into frame from the left): Yesss, I got my flu shot.
:Cueball (off panel): Nice! I got mine a few weeks ago. Immunity Buddies!

:Megan (spreading her arms wide): Now I can finally get bitten by all the bats I want!
:Cueball: No, that's rabies, that's not what—

:(closeup of Megan's head)
:Megan: I'll be able to roll and play in the poison ivy without a care in the world!
:Cueball (off screen): Why would you do that even if the shot ''did''—

:Megan (flexing her arms): No more slathering on sunscreen. No more rushing for antivenom after a snakebite. And now I can stop wasting time boiling contaminated water before drinking it!

:Megan (running off toward the right): Gonna click on every URL in every email I get, even the ones with IP addresses and weird Unicode in them!
:Cueball: You know what, sure, go for it.

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1296: Git Commit

2018-12-04T21:18:45Z

162.158.74.15: my hands are typeing words!

Note that in most (all?) graphical history viewers for Git time flows from bottom up, i.e. newest commits are on top, not on bottom as in this comics --[[User:JakubNarebski|JakubNarebski]] ([[User talk:JakubNarebski|talk]]) 07:21, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
* This was bothering me. I was starting to doubt my own experience, and intended to switch to an old project to check. — [[User:Kazvorpal|Kazvorpal]] ([[User talk:Kazvorpal|talk]]) 22:16, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

I can relate. While I start with reasonable commit messages every day, working on one feature often results in
:(good description of feature)
:bugfixes for (description of feature)
:another bugfix
:damn
:should work now
:grrr
:typo
:I hate (some used library)
when I either need commit to deploy or I'm so sure it will work I don't test it deeply enough. If I would be using git, these could be merged, but I'm not. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 10:51, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Once I made a commit titled "lotsa shit" {{unsigned ip|108.162.245.130}}

What does the line graphic in the left-most column represent? [[User:Smperron|Smperron]] ([[User talk:Smperron|talk]]) 13:03, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
: This is the Git commit graph, in various ways of looking at a commit history git draws a graph like that to show branching and merging. {{unsigned ip|141.101.98.229}}

Nice explanation folks. Makes the comic understandable/humorous to a non-coder. (unless you count VBScript) --[[User:DanB|DanB]] ([[User talk:DanB|talk]]) 13:16, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
: Nothing wrong with VBScript, though "coder" could be stretching the definition by a bit. (''git'' it?) [[User:JChrisCompton|JChrisCompton]] ([[User talk:JChrisCompton|talk]]) 19:41, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

: You seem to understand it pretty well now, DanB, judging by your edit history. --[[User:Aaron of Mpls|Aaron of Mpls]] ([[User talk:Aaron of Mpls|talk]]) 07:56, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

[http://lightswitch05.github.io/commit-cloud/ Commit Cloud] is a relevant tool to read commit messages from Github and build a word cloud from the most-used words. {{unsigned ip|108.162.214.41}}
:Mine actually lists a link to this comic. I'm laughing so hard right now. [[User:Okofish|Okofish]] ([[User talk:Okofish|talk]]) 09:35, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

I'm very glad I'm not the only person this happens to. --[[User:Okofish|Okofish]] ([[User talk:Okofish|talk]]) 15:23, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Regarding "although he seems to have avoided the ; key for some reason": A likely reason is that messages are passed on the command line with -m and without surrounding quotes to save time, and the ; ends the command line. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.221.54|108.162.221.54]] 06:03, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

haaaaaaands [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.15|162.158.74.15]] 21:18, 4 December 2018 (UTC)u2603

1883: Supervillain Plan

2017-08-30T13:31:11Z

162.158.74.15: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1883
| date = August 30, 2017
| title = Supervillain Plan
| image = supervillain_plan.png
| titletext = Someday, some big historical event will happen during the DST changeover, and all the tick-tock articles chronicling how it unfolded will have to include a really annoying explanation next to their timelines.
}}

==Explanation==

In computer programming, working with dates and times is often considered one of the more complicated tasks.

Introducing daylight savings time and moving land masses similar changes further complicate an already complicated subject.

California is currently located entirely within the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%E2%88%9208:00 UTC-8] time zone. In the comic, California floats West into the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%E2%88%9209:00 UTC-9] time zone.

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

==Transcript==

... Then, after our drones take control of the cities, we will detonate the devices. California will break off from the mainland and drift out to sea!

How far out to sea? Will it put any of the cities in the UTC-9 time zone?

What? I don't know.

One request: can we make sure this doesn't happen during the Daylight Saving changeover?

xx

You can tell when someone's been a programmer for a while because they develop a deep-seated fear of time zone problems.

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

{{comic discussion}}

1883: Supervillain Plan

2017-08-30T13:28:07Z

162.158.74.15: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1883
| date = August 30, 2017
| title = Supervillain Plan
| image = supervillain_plan.png
| titletext = Someday, some big historical event will happen during the DST changeover, and all the tick-tock articles chronicling how it unfolded will have to include a really annoying explanation next to their timelines.
}}

==Explanation==

In computer programming, working with dates and times is often considered one of the more complicated tasks.

Introducing daylight savings time and moving land masses similar changes further complicate an already complicated subject.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UTC%E2%88%9209:00 Wikipedia UTC-9]

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

==Transcript==

... Then, after our drones take control of the cities, we will detonate the devices. California will break off from the mainland and drift out to sea!

How far out to sea? Will it put any of the cities in the UTC-9 time zone?

What? I don't know.

One request: can we make sure this doesn't happen during the Daylight Saving changeover?

xx

You can tell when someone's been a programmer for a while because they develop a deep-seated fear of time zone problems.

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

{{comic discussion}}

2017-01-17T19:41:48Z

162.158.74.15: Grammatical fixes, phrasing.

{{comic
| number = 915
| date = June 22, 2011
| title = Connoisseur
| image = connoisseur.png
| titletext = Our brains have just one scale, and we resize our experiences to fit.
}}

==Explanation==
[[White Hat]] is fond of good {{w|wine}}, and he can probably distinguish slight differences in different types of wine, perhaps being the type that attends {{w|wine tasting}} parties. He doesn't like the cheap wine that Cueball has served for him (implying a cheap wine cannot be a good one, a statement most wine enthusiasts passionately agree with), looking with disgust at the label of the offending bottle.

On the other hand, [[Cueball]] doesn't have a preference; all of them taste the same for him, so presumably he gets the cheaper ones. White Hat tells Cueball that if he just tried some really good wine and paid more attention he would discover a whole new world.

Cueball's answer is the main message of the comic. He says that wine is no different from anything else in this respect, and makes a list starting with the wine but then going past {{w|house music}}, {{w|fonts}}, {{w|ants}}, {{w|Wikipedia:Signatures|Wikipedia signatures}} ending up with {{w|Canadian}} {{w|surrealist}} {{w|porn}}. His point is that if you spend enough time focusing one special type of subjects/taste/visual challenges, then you'll become a snobby '''{{w|connoisseur}}''' of that topic.

White Hat tries to defend wine by saying that some things have more depth than others (wine being among them), but Cueball challenges him on this by choosing something as obscure as 500 pictures of {{w|Joe Biden}}, the famously gaffe prone {{w|Vice President of the United States}} alongside {{w|Barack Obama}}, eating a sandwich as an example. He claims that if people are locked up in a box with those pictures for a year, they would end up being connoisseur on that subject with the same vehemence regarding the best picture as wine tasters can be about the best wine.

White Hat claims that this is an exaggeration, but Cueball takes this as a challenge so in the last panel, apparently White Hat and Cueball are actually running this experiment to see if they will end up concentrating on slight differences among the placement of mayonnaise on the pictures of Joe Biden eating a sandwich, just in the same way that White Hat concentrates on slight differences among kinds of wine. The result of the experiment is clearly going to Cueball's side, the discussion mainly going on the importance of mayo or the light through lettuce from the sandwiches.

This mentality may also be applied to online groups based on certain subjects (such as television shows, films, and other hobbies and interests), where arguments and vehement, stubborn opinions are common despite the fairly unimportant subject.

The title text presents the same idea in a different wording. The "scale of our brains" refers to a concept similar to Richard Dawkins' {{w|Middle World}}, where things too small (say, smaller than the point of a pin) or too big (bigger than what we can see from a mountaintop) are just out of our comprehension, so the things our brains understand must be neither too small nor too big, i.e. the "middle world".

However, the title text goes further in this idea: When we find things too big (like the distance to the Moon), we shrink it so that it fits into the "middle world" we're used to. Conversely, when we find things too small (say, a mote of dust), we expand it for the same reason. In a quite similar way, if all we have is pictures of Joe Biden eating a sandwich, we "resize" that subject so that we can fill books with the details about the pictures.

Examples of "connoisseurs" are used gain, with connoisseurs for ants being the subject of [[1610: Fire Ants]], for fonts in [[590: Papyrus]] and [[736: Cemetery]], for plastic straws in [[1095: Crazy Straws]] and the provided example here of surrealistic porn in [[598: Porn]].

In [[1534: Beer]], Cueball also argue slight differences in alcohol brands don't make much difference (in 915 "Wine all tastes the same to me."; in 1534, "maybe we should just admit that all beer tastes kind of bad and everyone's just pretending?") and people just pretend due to social pressure.

==Transcript==
:[White Hat is holding a wine glass down in one hand and holding a bottle of wine up in front of him with the other hand. He is looking at the label and talking with Cueball standing next to him with his own filled wine glass in one hand. He is looking down at the glass.]
:White Hat: How do you stand this cheap wine?
:Cueball: Wine all tastes the same to me.

:[Close-up of White Hat.]
:White Hat: You've just never had ''good'' wine. If you paid more attention, you'd realize there's a whole world here.

:[Close-up on Cueball, who spreads his arms out, resulting in the wine in the glass sloshing so much that part of the wine is above the rim of the glass, some even hanging over the edge and a spray droplet hanging above the sloshing liquid.]
:Cueball: But that's true of ''anything!'' Wine, house music, fonts, ants, Wikipedia signatures, Canadian surrealist porn—
:Cueball: Spend enough time with any of them and you'll become a snobby connoisseur.

:[This panel has no border and is next to but aligned further down than the first three panels. It shows a zoom out of both White Hat and Cueball again. White Hat now has both glass and bottle held down at his side. Cueball holds his glass down, but tilted away from him. A small puddle of wine is on the floor next to Cueball.]
:White Hat: But some things do have more depth than others.
:Cueball: If you locked people in a box for a year with 500 still frames of Joe Biden eating a sandwich, by the end they'd be adamant that some were great and some were terrible.
:White Hat: You're exaggerating.
:Cueball: Oh, really?

:[This panel is below the feet of the two characters from the previous panel. It goes further to the left than those two, and is wider than the previous panels, but it does not go much past the middle, so there is a blank white space to the left of this panel, below the first and most of the second panel. It shows a box, with two star burst on the surface from where two voices emanate from the inside. Over the top left of the panels frame is a small frame with a caption:]
:A year later:
:Voice (from left side of the box): Sure, most closed-mouth frames are boring, but in #415, the way the man's jaw frames the mayo on his hand is pure perfection, and—
:Voice (from right side of the box): What a surprise- ''you'' praising a mayo frame. Listening to '''you''', I'd think there was nothing else in The Sandwich.
:Voice (from right side of the box): Frankly, the light hitting J.B.'s collar through the lettuce would put #242 in my top ten even if he had ''no'' mayo on his hand at ''all''.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Politics]]
[[Category:Food]] 
[[Category:Wikipedia]] 
[[Category:Animals]] 
[[Category:Music]] 
[[Category:Sex]]

1773: Negativity

2016-12-16T13:56:03Z

162.158.74.15:

{{comic
| number = 1773
| date = December 16, 2016
| title = Negativity
| image = negativity.png
| titletext = [Google search] how do I block my lawn
}}

==Explanation==
Cueball is going outside for some fresh air because he wants to escape the toxicity of the Internet, which is known for hosting several hostile and unpleasant ideas and people. However, as he walks, some grass speaks up to insult him, and Cueball is upset to find that he hasn't escaped the negativity at all. The title text expands on this, with him searching Google for how to "block the lawn". Blocking someone refers to a standard setting on websites and online services that can prevent certain users from communicating with you, but it is as yet unknown how this would work for a lawn insulting you. {{Citation needed}}.

==Transcript==
[Cueball walking on grass]

Cueball: It's nice to get outside, away from the pain and negativity of the internet,

[Cueball stops walking]

Cueball: And just enjoy the cool breeze and the grass under my feet.

[Cueball stands there, hands to his hips, looking to the cloudy sky]

[Cueball looks surprised to the grass]

Grass: You suuuuck

Cueball: Hey!

{{comic discussion}}