explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:1043: Ablogalypse

2018-11-15T14:10:51Z

162.158.89.175: Add a link to the google trend search

Actually, the august 18 date was premature; blog beat tumblr over the rest of august and so they didn't cross in August. Revised data showed that the crossing actually occurred for the first time in november 2012. [[Special:Contributions/75.103.23.206|75.103.23.206]] 22:32, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
:I updated it. Randall's guess was only a month off. --[[Special:Contributions/98.203.241.55|98.203.241.55]] 17:41, 26 April 2013 (UTC)
Guys this is sad: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=xkcd&cmpt=q&tz= {{unsigned ip|173.245.56.180}}
: This one's sadder. [http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%2Fm%2F0fzd3g%2C%20%2Fm%2F0f22hf%2C%20%2Fm%2F028d4%2C%20%2Fm%2F01tjl%2C%20%2Fm%2F0h6l7y&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B7 All of them] are in decline.
XKCD seems to be accurate: https://trends.google.fr/trends/explore?date=all&q=blog,tumblr,wordpress,livejournal

2071: Indirect Detection

2018-11-12T07:19:53Z

162.158.89.175: Adds transcript

{{comic
| number = 2071
| date = November 12, 2018
| title = Indirect Detection
| image = indirect_detection.png
| titletext = I'm like a prisoner in Plato's Cave, seeing only the shade you throw on the wall.
}}

==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.}}

[Social media post]

Everyone on here needs to stop laughing about how "adopting pets from a shelter is for losers" and "those animals should all be hunted for sport instead." It's reprehensible on so many levels! First of all...

[Caption under the panel]

Sometimes, one of my friends posts an angry response to some terrible opinion I've never heard before, and it's a weird indirect way to learn how awful their other friends must be.

[Title text]

I'm like a prisoner in Plato's Cave, seeing only the shade you throw on the wall.

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:1458: Small Moon

2018-11-05T12:16:16Z

162.158.89.175:

Probably another dig at the Pluto "dwarf planet" controversy?[[Special:Contributions/199.27.133.109|199.27.133.109]] 06:38, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
:Implying that it might not be? [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.109|108.162.216.109]] 15:54, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

This is too good. I laughed for about 2 straight minutes.. :D [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.89|199.27.128.89]] 06:50, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

Added a short placeholder explanation for the comic itself, using [[Special:Contributions/199.27.133.109|199.27.133.109]]'s suggestion. Needs refining and explaining of the alt text. Cheers. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.207|173.245.54.207]] 07:04, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

In the movie, they didn't have 3 hours to argue over the thing. Not sure if that's relevant... [[User:Haelbarde|Haelbarde]] ([[User talk:Haelbarde|talk]]) 07:11, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

The reason it couldn't be a space station would be that something so large would wind up collapsing in on its own gravity. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.204|173.245.54.204]] 08:38, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
:It's not solid, it's a comapritively low density on the whole (on the order of ten thousand million''th''s that of Earth's sea-level atmospheric pressure, if I've not thrown a rogue zero or two in to the calculation by accident, so is doubtless mostly vacuum outside of the functional/habitable/structural areas), there are obviously various gravitational compensators for the inhabited sections (hence "looking sideways out of the equator ring" and along the beam-channel, yet "up from the surface" from the trench system defence turrets and other internal shafts are also vertiginously 'up-down' in nature) and doubtless its structural stength is composed of various Unotanium (i.e. "durasteel") alloys and the like, way beyond what we could currently build with Earthly technology. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.245|141.101.98.245]] 10:37, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

I would note that a Death '''Star''' can not be a moon. [[User:Briff|Briff]] ([[User talk:Briff|talk]]) 10:10, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
:Note that it is canon that the "Star Destroyer"s are neither (if taken literally) capable of destroying stars nor (in the sense of "star ship" in general) are they technically destroyer-class ships. You've got to put it down to The Empire just having no sense of relevence when it comes to naming its vessels. Probably too much influence from clone-thinking... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.245|141.101.98.245]] 10:37, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
:I will argue that by my understanding of the term, it actually is a moon whenever it is orbiting a planet but it would probably be better to come up with new terminology given the interstellar capabilities. --[[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.183|108.162.237.183]] 12:44, 10 December 2014 (UTC)Band of Traveling Accountants

I've never heard of the word "deunifying"; did you mean "disuniting" or "disunifying"?[[Special:Contributions/173.245.54.203|173.245.54.203]] 14:09, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
:That would probably have been me who wrote that. I didn't spend too much time thinking about it, was just putting something up, fully expecting it to get fixed up later [[User:Haelbarde|Haelbarde]] ([[User talk:Haelbarde|talk]]) 00:57, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I marked the transcript as incomplete; we can't be sure as to who is saying which lines in the final panel without Randall telling us himself. Notably, the second-to-last-line does not sound like something Ben Kenobi would say; more likely it's Han Solo. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.188|108.162.216.188]] 13:54, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
:Agreed. Comment is much more easily seen as coming from Solo than Kenobi. And, if they did rescue Leia during the intervening interval (one of the two scenarios suggested), Kenobi wouldn't be present. Equinox [[Special:Contributions/199.27.128.117|199.27.128.117]] 16:59, 10 December 2014 (UTC)
:I have two reasons why I'd stick with my original Luke and Ben for the last panel: 1) On a cursory read of the comic, without thinking about what would have happened in the movie, the natural assumption is they have been arguing for the entire 3 hours, so its the same two people, and 2) If they had actually been captured by the Death Star, there would no longer be any argument. They would have found upon closer inspection that it is in fact a space station. Note that in the final panel they're arguing about classifying it as a moon, as opposed to the Title Text, in which the options both acknowledge its artificial/station status.[[User:Haelbarde|Haelbarde]] ([[User talk:Haelbarde|talk]]) 00:57, 11 December 2014 (UTC)
:Randall's official transcript (in the source code of http://xkcd.com/1458/, look for <code><div id="transcript" style="display: none"></code>) shows who is saying what in the last panel. Therefore, I have updated the previously "Unknown" speakers in the Transcript section for this comic. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.238.155|108.162.238.155]] 23:32, 3 August 2015 (UTC)

Dear other editors: "In this galaxy" was wordplay on the {{w|Star Wars opening crawl}}. I find your lack of pop culture disturbing. Changing the phrase to "In this solar system" was incorrect. Furthermore, although the predominant civilization on Earth allows moons of nearly any size, it is not necessarily true that inhabitants of SWG followed the same nomenclature. I think the wording should be restored. - [[User:Frankie|Frankie]] ([[User talk:Frankie|talk]]) 17:42, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

:In fact, we know for sure that SWG defines "moon" differently {{w|Natural satellite|than we do}}, because when the Millennium Falcon arrived, the Death Star was not orbiting another non-star body (it was the largest body in its spatial neighborhood) and therefore could not be a moon (as defined in this galaxy). - [[User:Frankie|Frankie]] ([[User talk:Frankie|talk]]) 18:03, 10 December 2014 (UTC)

:Frankie's observation is something I thought of after seeing the movie as a kid, but the station could actually be orbiting the combined gravity of the debri field of the planet it just destroyed. The 'tidal' forces on the station would be different from the debri than from the planet, because the matter is now distributed differently, but the death star still could be an orbiting body, for a while at least. Once the debri field becomes more distributed the situation would be as Frankie stated. [[User:SeanLynch|SeanLynch]] ([[User talk:SeanLynch|talk]]) 15:54, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

I notice Randall removed the "We'll be back next week" line from his What-If page today. I wonder what's up since it's been over two weeks. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.210.241|108.162.210.241]] 02:21, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Would it be fair to say this strip is also a reference to the fact that any object of large enough mass in space would have its own gravity? (Setting aside an earlier comment about the Death Star being mostly vacuum) {{unsigned ip|108.162.221.246}}

I haven't seen Star Wars in a while, but was it not Han Solo who said the "It's too big to be a space station" line? After all, Solo was more worldly than Luke at the time. [[User:Phineas81707|Phineas81707]] ([[User talk:Phineas81707|talk]]) 08:59, 4 May 2016 (UTC)

:Actually, in Munroe's transcript it says 'Luke: It's too big to be a space station.' Should we stick with the transcript on site or with the canon (according to which you are correct, Phineas81707)? After all, the comic is diverging anyway and does so just two lines earlier, according to Munroe's transcript.

2055: Bluetooth

2018-10-15T12:26:58Z

162.158.89.175: Add pun on standard

{{comic
| number = 2055
| date = October 5, 2018
| title = Bluetooth
| image = bluetooth.png
| titletext = Bluetooth is actually named for the tenth-century Viking king Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson, but the protocol developed by Harald was a wireless charging standard unrelated to the modern Bluetooth except by name.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Bluetooth}} is a technology invented in the mid 1990s and intended for devices to connect wirelessly over a relatively short range for the purpose of transmitting information and/or audio. For example, a headset that connects via Bluetooth could be connected to a computer that's also Bluetooth-enabled, and then whatever would normally come out of the computer's speakers would come out the headset's ear pieces instead, and whatever was spoken into the headset's microphone would be transmitted to the computer's audio input system as if coming in through the computer's microphone. For this to work, the two devices need to be paired, which means they need to know the unique identification number of the other device and have been given permission to communicate with it, as well as knowing what kind of data exchanges are both possible and allowed. Pairing is not always a smooth process, especially given the somewhat limited methods some of these devices have for user interaction. For example, headsets typically don't have screens and user interfaces that make it easy to select what computer or other device you want them to connect to, so you're often confronted by blinking lights and/or sounds to make it through the pairing process, with each device having its own method for initiating or accepting a pairing request.

[[Cueball]] is talking to [[White Hat]] about {{w|Bluetooth}} and wireless connectivity. He asks if it has become easier to stream audio via Bluetooth since he last used it. White Hat then jests that it has become an easy-to-use and streamlined service, where connecting devices is easy, and he gives some examples of how easy it is to use. Cueball is excited about this, until White Hat reveals that he was lying and that Bluetooth is still as hard to use as ever. Cueball then invokes the name of "Josiah Bluetooth", a fictitious person implied to have invented the eponymous Bluetooth. "Josiah" is an old-timey name and suggests the amusing idea that in the 1700s or 1800s a hardy inventor named Josiah Bluetooth came up with the idea for wireless audio. (Note that while there is no "Josiah Bluetooth" person, there is a "[https://www.impossible.com/josiah/ Josiah]" Bluetooth ceramic speaker.)

This comic also references the common problem of audio playing through the wrong device when Bluetooth is activated.

The title text is another misdirection joke because while the first part of the sentence is true (Bluetooth was indeed named after a tenth-century Viking king), it goes on to make the silly claim that King Harald himself developed a wireless charging standard. This is a reference to the {{w|Qi_(standard)|Qi wireless power transfer standard}} that, like Bluetooth, is a well-branded industry standard with a catchy name and wide adoption that also does not work quite as well as promised even 10 years after its first release. (It could also be a reference to Medieval Vikings charging into battle, which is, by most accounts, usually a fairly wireless affair (assuming one discounts chainmail armor). In this case, the standard could be a pun as a standard also denotes a royal or military flag.)

Specifically, the Viking king referenced in the title text, {{w|Harald Bluetooth|Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson}}, usually called Harald Bluetooth, was a ruler of Denmark and Norway who died in 985 or 986. Jim Kardach of Intel named the Bluetooth protocol after him, apparently as he united the various Norse tribes of Denmark into a single kingdom just as Bluetooth unites communication protocols. The {{w|Bluetooth#Logo|Bluetooth logo}} unites the two Norse {{w|runes}} corresponding to "H" and "B" for Harald Bluetooth.

==Transcript==
:[Cueball and White Hat are talking, Cueball is holding a cell phone and wireless headphones.]
:Cueball: I haven’t used a wireless/bluetooth thingy in like ten years. Is audio stuff still a nightmare?
:White Hat: Nah, it’s great now.

:[Zoom in on White Hat, Cueball is off-screen.]
:White Hat: You tap devices together twice to link them and they flash in sync. (It pairs using accelerometer timing and sound.) Tap them three times to disconnect.
:White Hat: You can pair multiple inputs and outputs and it handles it smoothly.
:Cueball (off screen): Nice!
:White Hat: It just works. Sound comes from where you expect.
:Cueball (off screen): Wonderful.

:[Zoom out to White Hat and Cueball facing each other.]
:White Hat: Haha, just kidding, it’s a nightmare.
:Cueball: ''Noooooo!''
:White Hat: When I connect to my car, music starts blasting from my headphones while the car repeatedly plays a “New connection!” chime.
:Cueball: ''This is not what Josiah Bluetooth intended!''

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Computers]]
[[Category:Smartphones]]

Talk:2014: JWST Delays

2018-07-02T21:20:54Z

162.158.89.175: Doomsday

Haha - I made this same graph 2 weeks ago! [[User:Cosmogoblin|Cosmogoblin]] ([[User talk:Cosmogoblin|talk]]) 17:39, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Suggest the last sentence be made more general: "The title text refers to a fundamental question of the Big Bang Theory; will the universe expand forever, or will is collapse back on itself? The likely answer to this question has changed over the decades as new measurements have been made, and new theories such as dark matter and dark energy developed to explain the new measurements. Apparently, and for an analogous reason, between 2018 and 2020 the likely answer to the fundamental JWST question will change." [[User:GODZILLA|GODZILLA]] ([[User talk:GODZILLA|talk]]) 17:58, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

Does today's prediction of 2026 count? If that is included in the data set, it would then skew the best-fit line to be steeper. If a new prediction is made using that new best-fit line, that would further skew the line, and so on, causing the acceleration the title text anticipates between 2018 and 2020.[[Special:Contributions/162.158.63.88|162.158.63.88]] 20:10, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

[[wikipedia:Heinz von Foerster#Doomsday equation|Von Foersters's doomsday]] is Friday 13th of November 2026. (cue Twilight Zone intro) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.89.175|162.158.89.175]] 21:20, 2 July 2018 (UTC)

1920: Emoji Sports

2017-11-24T10:50:24Z

162.158.89.175:

{{comic
| number = 1920
| date = November 24, 2017
| title = Emoji Sports
| image = emoji_sports.png
| titletext = No horse has yet managed the elusive Quadruple Crown—winning the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont Stakes, and the Missouri Horse Hole.
}}

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

{| class="wikitable"
!Emoji
!Sport
!Description
|-
|🤽🌋
|Lavaball
|Throwing a ball into the an active volcano would quickly end the game
|-
|🤾‍♀️🤺
|Bladeball
|Would also lead to the quick destruction of the ball
|-
|💃💃⚽
|Fancyball
|It would be difficult to kick a giant football while wearing high heels (though possible with a normal sized one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GykP0XsLIA)
|-
|🕳️🏇🏇🏇
|Horse hole
|Horses might not cooperate or be serious injured when raced into a large hole
|-
|🔪🏀⛏️
|Basketball Shredding
|Another sport which would be destructive on the equipment
|-
|🥚🔭🕵️‍♀️
|Eggspotting
|A popular sport on Pinterest
|-
|⛷️🐊
|Alligator Jumping
|Fast paced and popular spectator sport but limited season when both snow and alligators are readily available. This is actually a crocodile emoji.
|-
|👩🎣🧜‍♂️
|Merfishing
|
|-
|👨🏸🧚🏸👩
|Tinkerball
|Playing badminton with a fairy, named after [[wikipedia:Tinker Bell|Tinker Bell]]
|-
|🥌🦔🥌
|Hedgehog Curling
|
|-
|🗜️🍔
|Burger Clamping
|
|-
|👩‍🚀🏹🛰️
|Consequence archery
|Archery on a space station would lead to the decompression of the space station, and necessitate the evacuation of the astronauts aboard.
|-
|🦉➡️📬
|Owlstuffing
|Although the flag is up, the mailbox seems to be missing mail.
|-
|🍴🕯️🍴
|Candle Eating
|
|-
|⛳💣🏌️‍♀️
|Consequence Golf
|
|-
|👉🐍👈
|Snake Shaming
|
|-
|🔥🧗‍♀️🔥
|Hell Escape
|
|-
|🎮🥑🎮
|Multiplayer Avocado
|May lead to guacamole
|}

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

{{comic discussion}}