explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

User talk:Trogdor147

2024-05-14T18:10:28Z

172.69.134.96:

{{Welcome}}
...did you just steal my userbox that i stole from another users? wow. someone keep this chain alive. [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 05:16, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
:kudos to user [[User:SomeoneIGuess|SomeoneIGuess]] for the free user box [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 05:17, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

Did you help make machine? [[User:Apollo11|Apollo11]] ([[User talk:Apollo11|talk]]) 15:09, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
:do you mean this year’s April fool’s comic? Im pretty sure it was Randall who made it [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 15:46, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
::I belive it was Randell and some friends. On Torgd's userpage they said "I am responsible for [machine] your welcome" [[User:Apollo11|Apollo11]] ([[User talk:Apollo11|talk]]) 15:50, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
Yeah I just checked-"[Machine] was created with Max Goodhart, Ed White, Alex Garcia, Kevin Cotrone, Conor & Ami Stokes, Liran Nuna, Patrick, Manish Goregaokar, Benjamin Staffin, Amber, and Michael Leuchtenburg with physics by Rapier."[[User:Apollo11|Apollo11]] ([[User talk:Apollo11|talk]]) 15:53, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
:so you’re saying that trogdor147 is one those people and couldn’t possibly be lying? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.96|172.69.134.96]] 18:10, 14 May 2024 (UTC)

2192: Review

2024-03-28T23:54:24Z

172.69.134.96:

{{comic
| number = 2192
| date = August 21, 2019
| title = Review
| image = review.png
| titletext = Controls are a little hard to figure out.
}}

==Explanation==
This comic is a five star review of planet {{w|Earth}}, by [[Randall]], depicted as [[Cueball]] in his profile picture. The review is written as a video game review, praising the [[1110: Click and Drag|size]] and aesthetics of the world. The comic's humor draws from the fact that gamers cannot use reviews to decide whether they want to "play" the Earth,{{citation needed}} and the fact that there's no place that the Earth can be reviewed (with the possible exception of [[1803: Location Reviews|Google, Yelp]], or ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''). The "huge world" remark is a play on {{w|Open world}} games like {{w|The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt}}, which are praised when their size allows hundreds of hours of exploration; exploring Earth would allow more than a few hundred hours of novelties.

Earth (or humans and other life forms on Earth) has many problems at the moment, such as {{w|war}}, [[:Category:Climate change|climate change]], {{w|overpopulation}}, {{w|gun violence}}, {{w|sexual violence}}, {{w|censorship}}, {{w|poverty}}, and increasing {{w|Depression (mood)|depression}}, to name just a few. This comic serves as a reminder that, despite these issues, the world is a five-star world. It encourages us to look around: there's a lot of world to explore.

An game of fictional reviews of Earth can be found on the website neal.fun on the game Earth Reviews: [https://neal.fun/earth-reviews/ Earth Reviews]

The title text states that the 'controls are hard to figure out', possibly alluding to the fact that it takes a lot of time to learn how to walk and talk, a rather basic thing in most video games, or to the fact that it is in general hard to navigate around in one's life, as has been the subject of many comics.

While there aren't any games that can recreate the detail that reality has (Due to the computing power required to do such a thing would be on an intergalactic level to recreate Earth 1 to 1 in a simulation), there are some games that attempt to have a map that is similar in area or graphics that look as detailed as reality. However, there are many games that have successfully implemented difficult game-play/hard to learn controls.

Examples of games with large worlds: {{w|World of Warcraft}}, {{w|Fallout 3}}, the {{w|Red Dead}} series, {{w|The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim}}, {{w|Minecraft}}, the {{w|Grand Theft Auto}} series, {{w|The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt}}, {{w|The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild}}, {{w|Elden Ring}}

Examples of games with difficult controls: the {{w|Souls (series)|Souls series}}, {{w|Bloodborne}}, {{w|Stephen's Sausage Roll}}, {{w|Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy}}, {{w|Elden Ring}}

==Transcript==
:[A profile picture of Cueball in a small frame is next to five solid yellow stars. Below this is a review:]
:★★★★★
:Great graphics, huge world

:[Caption below the comic:]
:My overall review of Earth

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Online reviews]]
[[Category:Video games]]

2892: Banana Prices

2024-02-09T23:12:26Z

172.69.134.96: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2892
| date = February 9, 2024
| title = Banana Prices
| image = banana_prices_2x.png
| imagesize = 564x378px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = It's a linear extrapolation, Michael. How big could the error be? 10%?
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by an IMPERIAL BANANA THERMAL DETONATOR - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw ‘It’s one banana, Michael. What could it cost, $10?'] is a line from an {{w|Arrested Development}} episode (Season 1, Episode 6, "Charity Drive", 2003) that became well known as a meme used to mock out-of-touch elites. The character who spoke this line -- Lucille Bluth, a rich socialite -- didn't know whether a banana cost $10 in 2003 because she never did any grocery shopping "because we have people for that." According to the graph, the banana price at the time of that episode was actually just under 25 cents.

'''This comic illustrates a whole suite of ways to violate statistical best practices and to 'lie with data.' And the additional use of an "unreliable narrator" device gives this comic several layers of meaning.'''

To initially mislead the reader and to ultimately demonstrate how easy it is to be fooled by various methods of 'lying with data,' Randall impressively combines several statistical 'sins' in one graph, such as:
* false precision
* extrapolating an order of magnitude deeper into the future than is advisable
* referring to a logarithmic extrapolation as linear
* ignoring historical norms and high variability in making future predictions
* logarithmic scales when they're inappropriate and misleading
* articulating multiple potential scenarios that are actually highly correlated with each other.

At first, the comic looks like a wry observation that the irony of this sitcom line will be obsolete in a century or two. This comic shows a graph of three, different, projected, future prices for bananas over the next 250 years. One extrapolates from the current inflation rate in general. Another uses the more specific inflation rate for fresh fruit, which is made from less data but is more relevant than a general rate dominated by the cost of housing. The final line is a "linear" extrapolation from 50 years of historic banana prices. The comic seems to say that it will take a century or two before the irony of the sitcom quote becomes anachronistically meaningless. This prediction depends on these particular extrapolations being accurate.

(While these extrapolations look linear, they are in fact logarithmic, since a linear extrapolation on a graph with a logarithmic scale is actually a logarithmic extrapolation. The graph is drawn to a logarithmic vertical scale on the vertical (left) axis, which makes it possible to visualize exponential price-rise as the dotted line.)

Upon closer inspection though, it's apparent that the graph-maker-cum-caption-writer is making some absurd assumptions about inflation continuing at its current level of about 3.5%. The caption writer, in this case, is an unreliable narrator who is ''also'' humorously out-of-touch like Lucille Bluth, but in a different way. If inflation returns to its recent historic norm of 1%, then it will actually take 300 years for the price of a banana to rise past $10. But as recently as 2022 the rate of inflation was as high as 6% in the US, a rate at which the banana would reach $10 in a mere 60 years (if it were sustained for 60 years). Even a short period of high inflation would be equivalent to a long period of low inflation. Simply assuming a constant 3% inflation rate for the next 100 years -- despite historical evidence -- is extremely simplistic.

Another, more subtle, illustration of false precision is the graph's use of three different assumptions for the extrapolation of banana prices. At first glance, using three different trend lines seems to show a "range" of potential scenarios and acknowledge the prediction's uncertainty. However, all three underlying trends are correlated: general inflation is highly correlated to fruit price inflation and banana price inflation. Using three different trends that are all highly correlated is scant better than using just one.

An additional example of "lying with data" is the use of a logarithmic graph for economic data. It's highly unusual to graph economic data logarithmically, as economic variables rarely show exponential change over time -- and even when they do, it's easier to show that change on a normal linear graph. If this same set of extrapolations were shown on a linear graph, the absurdly accelerating slope of the extrapolations would give away how ridiculous these extrapolations are.

(The main exception is financial market analysis, in which some traders like to use logarithmic graphs as one of many tools to perceive and predict hidden price trends that don’t show up in normally scaled charts.)

Finally, the reference to "BLS/St. Louis Fred" -- a widely respected source of economic data -- appears to lend credibility to the graph, but the only data that is truly credible is the historic price data. It's one more example -- citing respected sources -- of a way to fool unsuspecting readers into giving a prediction more credibility than it deserves.

The title text is a wink from Randall about this unreliable narrator by using the ignorant tone of Lucille Bluth to wryly acknowledge that, in fact, that error of the extrapolations greatly exceeds 10%. Just as Lucille was very wrong about a $10 banana (a price threshold), so too is the Lucille of the title text very wrong about the 10% error (a proportional change). It does so in the form of a meta-joke about the false precision of extrapolations, while continuing the theme of the speaker's extreme ignorance. Assuming that the error couldn't be more than 10% shows that the Lucille speaker continues to be hilariously off-base, presuming far more accuracy from a multi-century prediction than is warranted.

Besides the inflation example, another way the extrapolation could be wrong was if -- in the next 100 years -- there were a massive banana crash or extinction {{w|Banana#Pests, diseases, and natural disasters|as has happened}} {{w|Gros Michel banana|before}} due to the banana's lack of genetic diversity, in which case the sharply reduced supply of bananas could send the price past $10 very quickly.

Overall, the comic is a clever commentary about the false precision of extrapolation and how easy it is to be fooled by it, illustrating its point by initially misleading the reader with its own false precision, and wrapping it all in a pop-culture reference. Any economic extrapolation into the distant future based on past data points is just an educated guess likely to be quite wrong, with an expected error far in excess of 10%. (A rare example of a field in which 75-year predictions are highly accurate is demographic age charts, since the number of babies born this year is causal of the # of 75-year-olds alive in 75 years.)

Log scales and their peculiarities are a recurring xkcd theme, and this is the second comic in a row to play with logarithms (the prior one being [[2891: Log Cabin]]). It's also the second comic in the last four to involve predictions across centuries (i.e. [[2889: Greenhouse Effect]]). Another comic whose subject is extrapolation is [[605: Extrapolating]]. This comic looks a lot like [[1007: Sustainable]].

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

:[A graph with the x-axis showing time, from the years 1950 to around 2275. The y-axis is a log scale showing the price of a banana from $0.10 to over $10.00. A label called "Price of a banana (BLS/St. Louis ''Fred''[https://fred.stlouisfed.org/])" show a rising trend in the price of a banana. There are two dots on that trend. One is labeled "Episode airs" and the other one "Now". 3 extrapolations shown as dashed lines labeled "General inflation rate", "Fresh fruit price trend" and "Banana price trend" extend until reaching the $10 mark, indicated by 3 dots.]

:[Caption above the graph:] "It's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? $10?"

:[Caption below the panel:] That line probably has another century or so left.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Line graphs]]
[[Category:Timelines]]
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Extrapolation]]

2873: Supersymmetry

2024-01-04T22:09:35Z

172.69.134.96: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2873
| date = December 27, 2023
| title = Supersymmetry
| image = supersymmetry 2x.png
| imagesize = 313x375px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = High-speed collisions at the Baby Park track may support the hypothesis that Daisy is her own evil twin, a theory first suggested by Nintendo in the game Majorana's Mask.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic imagines a "theory of supersymmetric Mario Bros." that merges the theoretical physics concept of {{w|supersymmetry}} (explained [[#Background on subatomic particles|below]]) with another "super" thing, {{w|Super Mario Bros.}}, originally developed for the {{w|Nintendo Entertainment System}} and later the ''Super'' Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), two home game consoles popular during Randall's childhood. Mario game characters are equated with certain subatomic particles, with the central protagonists Mario and Luigi (his brother) comprising the center of an atom (proton and neutron).

The "Free Luigi Decay" diagram is a {{w|Feynman diagram}}, a {{w|particle physics}} depiction of interactions between particles. This diagram reinterprets the process of {{w|free neutron decay}}, in which a neutron that is left alone — not part of a nucleus with a proton — is unstable, such that one of its constituent quarks will transform, making a more stable proton, by emitting a W- boson (not shown, or renamed), after around 10 to 30 minutes. The boson will then almost immediately decay into a suitable electron and neutrino. In Free Luigi Decay, the Luigi particle decay leads into there being a Mario, a Peach, and a notably right-handed Daisy, which would imply that this particular Daisy represents a {{w|sterile neutrino}}. The instability of a Luigi particle could be a reference to the fact that Luigi is almost never seen without Mario; decades of Mario games and spinoffs have produced just a few Luigi-only video games, such as ''{{w|Mario Is Missing!}}'' and the ''{{w|Luigi's Mansion (franchise)|Luigi's Mansion}}'' series. However, there is only one Peach-only game and no game with Daisy as the main character at all, so it's unclear whether Randall really intended to make an explanation of there being few Luigi-only games.

The Mario characters and their subatomic particle equivalents:

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"
|-
! Particle !! Symbol !! Type !! Charge !! Mass !! Mario Character !! Notes
|-
| {{w|Proton}}
| p / p+
| Baryon ('uud' quarks)
| +1
| ≲1 {{w|Dalton (unit)|mu}}
| Mario
| The hero-protagonist of a large majority of the series
|-
| {{w|Neutron}}
| n / n⁰
| Baryon ('udd' quarks)
| +0
| ≳1 mu
| Luigi
| Mario's younger brother and deuteragonist of many of the games, as well as the unwilling protagonist of a few games
|-
| {{w|Antiproton}} (not involved in the diagram)
| p / p-
| Antibaryon ('uud' quarks)
| -1
| as proton*
| Wario
| Mario's arch-rival, occasional antagonist/anti-hero, protagonist of the ''Wario Land'' series, and major character in the ''WarioWare'' series 
|-
| {{w|Antineutron}} (not involved in the diagram)
| n / n-0
| Antibaryon ('udd' quarks)
| -0
| as neutron*
| Waluigi
| Luigi's rival and Wario's partner, exclusively appearing in spin-off games such as ''Mario Tennis'', ''Mario & Sonic'', ''Mario Kart'', and ''Mario Party'' 
|-
| {{w|Electron}}
| e-
| Lepton (charged)
| -1
| 5.5x10-4 mu
| (Princess) Peach
| Mario's love interest, as well as the "damsel in distress" and/or reward-giver when not a character in her own right
|-
| {{w|Positron}} / Antielectron (not depicted/involved)
| e+
| Antilepton (charged)
| +1
| as electron*

|-
| {{w|Electron Neutrino}}
| νe
| Lepton (uncharged)
| 0
| Assumed >0 (very small*)
| (Princess) Daisy
| Luigi's love interest, as well as another "damsel in distress" and/or reward-giver when not a character in her own right
|-
| Electron {{w|Neutrino#Antineutrinos|Antineutrino}} (not depicted, hypothetical)
| νe
| Antilepton (uncharged)
| 0
| as electron neutrino*

|}
<nowiki/>* - to within experimental uncertainty

The Mario-Peach particle relationship is appropriate. Just as Mario is attracted to Princess Peach in the first generation of Mario games, so is the Mario particle (proton) attracted to the Peach particle (electron).

The particle assignments for Peach and Daisy are also appropriate. Just as Princess Peach is often the central character (e.g., needing rescue) with Princess Daisy usually playing a supporting or secondary role, so too is the electron a well-known particle with a significant role in forming atoms and determining chemical properties, while the neutrino is more elusive, playing a less obvious role in the universe.

The title text is a pun on the title of the Nintendo 64 game ''{{w|The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask}}'' and the concept of {{w|Majorana fermion}}, which attempts to reconcile how, while many particles have separate antiparticle counterparts, certain ones do not. Until this is resolved, scientists may depict a theoretical antiparticle in place of a neutrino in order to preserve various total values across the diagram. But scientists do wonder if a neutrino is its own antiparticle, much as they have also previously wondered if {{w|Neutrino oscillation|they also flip their 'flavor'}} as a way to explain certain experimental results.

Baby Park is an oval-shaped race track in the ''{{w|Mario Kart}}'' series and used as a particle collider in the title text, first featured in ''{{w|Mario Kart: Double Dash|Mario Kart: Double Dash!!}}'' on the Nintendo GameCube, and most recently appearing in ''{{w|Mario Kart 8 Deluxe}}'' for the Nintendo Switch. The Baby Park track is unusually short by the series' standards, making collisions between racers more likely than on the other, longer tracks.

This comic was posted shortly after the release of [https://www.gameshub.com/news/news/wapeach-princess-peach-waluigi-creator-2634191/ concept art] from ''Mario Tennis'' (the game where Waluigi debuted) of Wapeach, an "evil" counterpart to Peach which was ultimately scrapped. Under the model depicted in the comic, Wapeach would serve as a positron analogue.

===Background on subatomic particles===
At the atomic level, particle interactions may involve the bulky nucleons (protons and neutrons, these being each a particular triumvirate of quark 'flavors'), electrons (smaller, charged fermions) and various others (such as neutrinos, also fermions, chargeless and often ''nearly'' massless). Sometimes other more exotic/fundamental particles (force-mediating or otherwise transient) are included.

Added within the {{w|standard model}} are the "{{w|antiparticle}}s" that are oppositely charged (or built up of more fundamental antiparticles), and further issues have required extending this further through theories of supersymmetry which further adds counterparts that have alternate '{{w|Spin (physics)|spin}}'s.

The right-handed Daisy (Electron Neutrino) means that Daisy’s direction of spin (in subatomic terms, a measurement which does not now match that of the angular momentum in classical physics which inspired its naming) is the same as the direction of motion. A left-handed Daisy (Electron Neutrino) would have the opposite value.

Certain current understandings of the process require that the electron neutrino be an ''anti''neutrino, but antineutrinos have not so far been sufficiently confirmed to exist, with some theorising that a neutrino can be its own anti-particle (unlike the neutral neutron, composed of charged quarks, which has the similarly neutral antineutron, composed of oppositely charged antiquarks).

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

:[List of characters with their heads on the left side and particles with their depictions on the right side.]
:Mario : Proton
:Luigi : Neutron

:Wario : Antiproton
:Waluigi : Antineutron

:Peach : Electron
:Daisy : Electron neutrino

:Free Luigi decay:
:[An illustration of Luigi → Mario + Peach + Daisy (shown with the characters' heads).]
:[Label below Daisy:] (Right-handed)

:[Caption below the panel:]
:The theory of Supersymmetric Mario Bros suggests that each fundamental particle has a Super Nintendo partner.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Mario Kart]]
[[Category:Physics]]

2873: Supersymmetry

2024-01-04T22:09:05Z

172.69.134.96: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2873
| date = December 27, 2023
| title = Supersymmetry
| image = supersymmetry 2x.png
| imagesize = 313x375px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = High-speed collisions at the Baby Park track may support the hypothesis that Daisy is her own evil twin, a theory first suggested by Nintendo in the game Majorana's Mask.
}}

==Explanation==

This comic imagines a "theory of supersymmetric Mario Bros." that merges the theoretical physics concept of {{w|supersymmetry}} (explained [[#Background on subatomic particles|below]]) with another "super" thing, {{w|Super Mario Bros.}}, originally developed for the {{w|Nintendo Entertainment System}} and later the ''Super'' Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), two home game consoles popular during Randall's childhood. Mario game characters are equated with certain subatomic particles, with the central protagonists Mario and Luigi (his brother) comprising the center of an atom (proton and neutron).

The "Free Luigi Decay" diagram is a {{w|Feynman diagram}}, a {{w|particle physics}} depiction of interactions between particles. This diagram reinterprets the process of {{w|free neutron decay}}, in which a neutron that is left alone — not part of a nucleus with a proton — is unstable, such that one of its constituent quarks will transform, making a more stable proton, by emitting a W- boson (not shown, or renamed), after around 10 to 30 minutes. The boson will then almost immediately decay into a suitable electron and neutrino. In Free Luigi Decay, the Luigi particle decay leads into there being a Mario, a Peach, and a notably right-handed Daisy, which would imply that this particular Daisy represents a {{w|sterile neutrino}}. The instability of a Luigi particle could be a reference to the fact that Luigi is almost never seen without Mario; decades of Mario games and spinoffs have produced just a few Luigi-only video games, such as ''{{w|Mario Is Missing!}}'' and the ''{{w|Luigi's Mansion (franchise)|Luigi's Mansion}}'' series. However, there is only one Peach-only game and no game with Daisy as the main character at all, so it's unclear whether Randall really intended to make an explanation of there being few Luigi-only games

The Mario characters and their subatomic particle equivalents:

{| class="wikitable" style="margin:auto"
|-
! Particle !! Symbol !! Type !! Charge !! Mass !! Mario Character !! Notes
|-
| {{w|Proton}}
| p / p+
| Baryon ('uud' quarks)
| +1
| ≲1 {{w|Dalton (unit)|mu}}
| Mario
| The hero-protagonist of a large majority of the series
|-
| {{w|Neutron}}
| n / n⁰
| Baryon ('udd' quarks)
| +0
| ≳1 mu
| Luigi
| Mario's younger brother and deuteragonist of many of the games, as well as the unwilling protagonist of a few games
|-
| {{w|Antiproton}} (not involved in the diagram)
| p / p-
| Antibaryon ('uud' quarks)
| -1
| as proton*
| Wario
| Mario's arch-rival, occasional antagonist/anti-hero, protagonist of the ''Wario Land'' series, and major character in the ''WarioWare'' series 
|-
| {{w|Antineutron}} (not involved in the diagram)
| n / n-0
| Antibaryon ('udd' quarks)
| -0
| as neutron*
| Waluigi
| Luigi's rival and Wario's partner, exclusively appearing in spin-off games such as ''Mario Tennis'', ''Mario & Sonic'', ''Mario Kart'', and ''Mario Party'' 
|-
| {{w|Electron}}
| e-
| Lepton (charged)
| -1
| 5.5x10-4 mu
| (Princess) Peach
| Mario's love interest, as well as the "damsel in distress" and/or reward-giver when not a character in her own right
|-
| {{w|Positron}} / Antielectron (not depicted/involved)
| e+
| Antilepton (charged)
| +1
| as electron*

|-
| {{w|Electron Neutrino}}
| νe
| Lepton (uncharged)
| 0
| Assumed >0 (very small*)
| (Princess) Daisy
| Luigi's love interest, as well as another "damsel in distress" and/or reward-giver when not a character in her own right
|-
| Electron {{w|Neutrino#Antineutrinos|Antineutrino}} (not depicted, hypothetical)
| νe
| Antilepton (uncharged)
| 0
| as electron neutrino*

|}
<nowiki/>* - to within experimental uncertainty

The Mario-Peach particle relationship is appropriate. Just as Mario is attracted to Princess Peach in the first generation of Mario games, so is the Mario particle (proton) attracted to the Peach particle (electron).

The particle assignments for Peach and Daisy are also appropriate. Just as Princess Peach is often the central character (e.g., needing rescue) with Princess Daisy usually playing a supporting or secondary role, so too is the electron a well-known particle with a significant role in forming atoms and determining chemical properties, while the neutrino is more elusive, playing a less obvious role in the universe.

The title text is a pun on the title of the Nintendo 64 game ''{{w|The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask}}'' and the concept of {{w|Majorana fermion}}, which attempts to reconcile how, while many particles have separate antiparticle counterparts, certain ones do not. Until this is resolved, scientists may depict a theoretical antiparticle in place of a neutrino in order to preserve various total values across the diagram. But scientists do wonder if a neutrino is its own antiparticle, much as they have also previously wondered if {{w|Neutrino oscillation|they also flip their 'flavor'}} as a way to explain certain experimental results.

Baby Park is an oval-shaped race track in the ''{{w|Mario Kart}}'' series and used as a particle collider in the title text, first featured in ''{{w|Mario Kart: Double Dash|Mario Kart: Double Dash!!}}'' on the Nintendo GameCube, and most recently appearing in ''{{w|Mario Kart 8 Deluxe}}'' for the Nintendo Switch. The Baby Park track is unusually short by the series' standards, making collisions between racers more likely than on the other, longer tracks.

This comic was posted shortly after the release of [https://www.gameshub.com/news/news/wapeach-princess-peach-waluigi-creator-2634191/ concept art] from ''Mario Tennis'' (the game where Waluigi debuted) of Wapeach, an "evil" counterpart to Peach which was ultimately scrapped. Under the model depicted in the comic, Wapeach would serve as a positron analogue.

===Background on subatomic particles===
At the atomic level, particle interactions may involve the bulky nucleons (protons and neutrons, these being each a particular triumvirate of quark 'flavors'), electrons (smaller, charged fermions) and various others (such as neutrinos, also fermions, chargeless and often ''nearly'' massless). Sometimes other more exotic/fundamental particles (force-mediating or otherwise transient) are included.

Added within the {{w|standard model}} are the "{{w|antiparticle}}s" that are oppositely charged (or built up of more fundamental antiparticles), and further issues have required extending this further through theories of supersymmetry which further adds counterparts that have alternate '{{w|Spin (physics)|spin}}'s.

The right-handed Daisy (Electron Neutrino) means that Daisy’s direction of spin (in subatomic terms, a measurement which does not now match that of the angular momentum in classical physics which inspired its naming) is the same as the direction of motion. A left-handed Daisy (Electron Neutrino) would have the opposite value.

Certain current understandings of the process require that the electron neutrino be an ''anti''neutrino, but antineutrinos have not so far been sufficiently confirmed to exist, with some theorising that a neutrino can be its own anti-particle (unlike the neutral neutron, composed of charged quarks, which has the similarly neutral antineutron, composed of oppositely charged antiquarks).

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

:[List of characters with their heads on the left side and particles with their depictions on the right side.]
:Mario : Proton
:Luigi : Neutron

:Wario : Antiproton
:Waluigi : Antineutron

:Peach : Electron
:Daisy : Electron neutrino

:Free Luigi decay:
:[An illustration of Luigi → Mario + Peach + Daisy (shown with the characters' heads).]
:[Label below Daisy:] (Right-handed)

:[Caption below the panel:]
:The theory of Supersymmetric Mario Bros suggests that each fundamental particle has a Super Nintendo partner.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Video games]]
[[Category:Mario Kart]]
[[Category:Physics]]

559: No Pun Intended

2023-12-30T21:26:37Z

172.69.134.96: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 559
| date = March 23, 2009
| title = No Pun Intended
| image = no_pun_intended.png
| titletext = Like spelling 'dammit' correctly -- with two m's -- it's a troll that works best on the most literate.
}}

==Explanation==
"No pun intended" is an idiom meaning that something just said wasn't meant to be a {{w|pun}}, implying that the preceding statement could be interpreted as one. As done in the comic, following a non-pun with "no pun intended", although factually accurate, breaks this implication and confuses listeners who will be trying to work out which part of the sentence could have been interpreted as a pun.

In this comic, which is part of the [[:Category:My Hobby|My Hobby]] series, [[Cueball]] uses this tactic to confuse [[Beret Guy]], who spends the next three hours trying to understand what pun there could have been in Cueball's sentence: ''I think he's internalized his girlfriend's attitudes''. The guy Cueball talks about seems to have taken over ({{w|Internalization|internalized}}) all his girlfriend's attitudes, values, standards and opinions, putting these instead of those he has from his own identity or sense of self. This is probably sad, but there is no pun in the sentence.

Beret Guy, however, has been fooled by the addition of ''no pun intended'' and tries to overanalyze the sentence - did Cueball mean ''Lied'' when saying ''Interna'''li'''z'''ed''''' or was it ''Analyzed'' or even ''Attitudes'' he meant; could that be the pun? Since there was no pun, he will never find a solution. This was Cueball's plan all along.

It seems like Beret Guy, after three hours, finally gives up when he says ''Dammit''. This then leads to the title text joke.

Unfortunately for the hobbyist, blank puns default to sexual innuendos, the most notorious example being [http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/if-you-know-what-i-mean "If You Know What I Mean."]

The title text elicits a similar confused reaction, as the most literate people will be more likely to want to spell out "[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/damn_it damn it]" rather than using the also correct abbreviated form with morphed spelling, [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dammit dammit], which is referred to as ''with two m's'' because many people ([http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/79282/dammit-vs-damnit mainly in the US] it seems) contract damn it to [https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/damnit damnit], which is the "wrong way".

This way of confusing people and messing with their brains is normally an action done by [[Black Hat]], xkcd's resident classhole. The reason Cueball is shown is probably because Randall uses Cueball to represent himself.

==Transcript==
:[Caption above the panel:]
:'''My Hobby:'''
:Appending "no pun intended"
:to lines with no pun in them.

:[Cueball is talking to Beret Guy.]
:Cueball: I think he's internalized his girlfriend's attitudes - no pun intended - and so...

:[The next panel is inlaid partly over the first panel. Beret Guy is thinking. Above his thought bubble is a caption:]
:Three hours later:
:Beret Guy (thinking): "Internalized?" Lied? Analyzed? Or is it "attitudes"? ''Dammit.''

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Beret Guy]]
[[Category:My Hobby]]
[[Category:Language]]
[[Category:Puns]]

2787: Iceberg

2023-06-09T22:37:51Z

172.69.134.96: /* Explanation */ Love this one; just trimming the incomplete template

{{comic
| number = 2787
| date = June 9, 2023
| title = Iceberg
| image = iceberg_2x.png
| imagesize = 258x397px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = 90% of the iceberg is hidden beneath the water, but that 90% only uses 10% of its brain, so it's really only 9%.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a MISSUNDERSTOOD ICEBERG. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The [https://www.agcas.org.uk/write/MediaUploads/Resources/ITG/iceberg_metaphor.pdf Iceberg metaphor] is a famous metaphor sometimes [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31633371/ misattributed to Freud]. It asserts that the majority (often stated as 90%) of an iceberg is below the surface, as a metaphor for the invisible aspects of the thing being compared. For instance, the majority of mass in the universe does not appear to be in the form of ordinary ("baryonic") matter but dark matter or dark energy. Excluding dark energy, dark matter accounts for about 85% of the total mass of the universe. So baryonic matter is like the "tip of the iceberg," visible above the surface, while dark matter is the invisible majority of the iceberg below the surface.

The author deliberately misunderstands the metaphor by taking it literally. He thinks the teacher is saying the part of an iceberg below the surface is literally made of dark matter. He points out that the Titanic sank after its hull hit an iceberg underwater, which wouldn't be possible if it were made of dark matter. Dark matter is not known to interact at all with baryonic matter, except by gravity, and we have only ever detected it gravitationally.

The title text references the myth that we use only 10% of our brain, and we could become more intelligent or powerful by "unlocking" the remaining 90%. If icebergs had brains, and the 90% in the "dark matter" part underwater used only 10% of its brain, while the tip used 100% of its brain, then most of the cognition would occur in the tip. However, the "9%" figure would still be meaningless; it should instead be 9/19 = 47.37%. In reality, human beings use pretty much all of their brain. They just don't use it all at the same time. Doing so wouldn't result in heightened intelligence or superpowers, but a (most likely fatal) seizure.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
:[Ponytail is standing on a podium and pointing to a chart depicting an iceberg in the water.]
:Off screen voice: But then how did it interact with the ordinary baryonic matter in the Titanic's hull?
:[Label of iceberg above the water:] Normal Matter
:[Label of iceberg beneath the water:] Dark Matter

:[Caption below panel:]
:My Hobby: Refusing to understand the iceberg metaphor

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category: Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category: My Hobby]]
[[Category: Physics]]

2782: Wikipedia Article Titles

2023-05-30T08:10:29Z

172.69.134.96: /* Explanation */ better preposition

{{comic
| number = 2782
| date = May 29, 2023
| title = Wikipedia Article Titles
| image = wikipedia_article_titles_2x.png
| imagesize = 402x439px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = I would never stoop to vandalism, but I'm not above discreetly deleting the occasional 'this article contains excessive amounts of detail' tag.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by MERYL STREEP'S SECOND SEAGULL. This article does not yet have too much detail. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

This comic is a chart reflecting where various Wikipedia articles (real or imagined) might rank in how effectively they would act as {{w|clickbait}} for [[Randall]].

{{w|Meryl Streep}} is a famous and widely acclaimed American actress. Randall apparently has little interest in reading about her, comparatively speaking. He appears to have slightly more interest in reading about seagulls, which on Wikipedia redirect to the {{w|Gull}} article, because "seagull" is a common colloquial synonym. Two more units down from "seagull" on Randall's scale indicating his increasing interest level, he suggests that a hypothetical Wikipedia link to "Meryl Streep (seagull)", which according to {{w|Wikipedia:Article titles#Precision|Wikipedia article title conventions}} would likely refer to a notable seagull named Meryl Streep, would be more interesting to him.

Streep was a lead actress in a 2001 {{w|Delacorte Theatre}} production of {{w|Anton Chekhov}}'s play, ''{{w|The Seagull}}''.[https://playbill.com/article/the-seagull-opens-its-wings-in-central-park-aug-12-com-98105] A further three units beyond on Randall's interestingness scale is a hypothetical link to an article about a "Meryl Streep Seagull incident", which while possibly not conforming to current {{w|Wikipedia:Article titles#Descriptive title|Wikipedia requirements for sufficiently descriptive article titles}}, might refer to a notable event which occurred during the production of the 2001 play. According to an [https://www.salon.com/2001/08/27/seagull/ August 27, 2001 article in ''Salon''], "a 40-ish man was found dead in the bushes from a single gunshot wound near the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, just yards away from where [Streep's co-star] {{w|Philip Seymour Hoffman}} offs himself with a single gunshot wound every night as Konstantin Gavrilovich in Anton Chekhov's ''The Seagull.''" However, there is no hint of any direct connection between Streep and the deceased, so absent any clear evidence of such reported in {{w|Wikipedia:Reliable sources#News organizations|reliable news sources}}, it is extremely unlikely that Wikipedia editors would create or allow an article with a title suggesting there may be, as that would violate their {{w|Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons|Biographies of Living Persons policy}}. Alternatively, such an article could be about an incident in which a seagull notably caused Meryl Streep problems, a time when Meryl Streep notably caused problems for a seagull, or both.

The final imagined Wikipedia page is a {{w|Wikipedia:Disambiguation|disambiguation page}}, depicted as four units even more likely to be more quickly clicked. Disambiguation pages are only necessary when there are multiple notable articles of sufficiently similar names which must be listed with clarifying details to avoid confusion. In this case, it may indicate that other variations of the aforementioned situations occurred in multiple incidents. However, the titles of disambiguation pages rarely appear in links, as you usually reach them as a result of a search for an ambiguous term such as "{{w|go}}". Note that disambiguation pages are not articles.

The title text suggests that Randall is an {{w|Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia|inclusionist wikipedian}}, and as such is not above occasionally deleting editorial message boxes claiming that their article contains too much detail.

==Transcript==
:[A chart is shown with a vertical axis with eleven evenly spaced ticks. There is now arrow on the line but a divided arrow is to the left of the axis pointing down. In the division there is a label. There are five ticks that have labels. Above the chart there is a title in two lines with the top line in larger font:]
:<big>Hypothetical Wikipedia Article Titles</big>
:Ranked by how quickly I would click on them
:Arrow label: More quickly
:1st tick: Meryl Streep
:2nd tick: Seagull
:4th tick: Meryl Streep (seagull)
:7th tick: Meryl Streep seagull incident
:11th tick: Meryl Streep seagull incident (disambiguation)

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring real people]]
[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Rankings]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]
[[Category:Animals]]

Talk:2782: Wikipedia Article Titles

2023-05-29T18:14:10Z

172.69.134.96: tick marks

Of course, I had to search for those keywords and found this: [https://www.playbill.com/article/bulletin-meryl-streep-in-talks-to-do-seagull-in-central-park-com-87578 Playbill: Bulletin: Meryl Streep in Talks to Do Seagull in Central Park]. Couldn't find anything about a Seagull *incident*, however. We may have to wait until the production has completed. [[User:Shamino|Shamino]] ([[User talk:Shamino|talk]]) 13:44, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
:Or doesn't happen at all. The incident might be a fight between Streep and someone involved in the production. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 14:07, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
::Whatever happens we need to somehow inject the name "Meyrl Street seagull incident" into the news coverage so that the Wikipedia article can be created. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.101|172.70.162.101]] 14:24, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

'''''Ah-HAH!''''' https://www.salon.com/2001/08/27/seagull/ "a 40-ish man was found dead in the bushes from a single gunshot wound near the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, just yards away from where Philip Seymour Hoffman offs himself with a single gunshot wound every night as Konstantin Gavrilovich in Anton Chekhov's ''The Seagull.''" (in which Streep was his co-star.) Thanks to ChatGPT-4's WebPilot plug-in, by the way. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.214|172.69.134.214]] 17:24, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Re the transcript: I don't think they're called checkmarks. Tick marks, maybe.
[[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.232|172.71.182.232]] 18:00, 29 May 2023 (UTC)
:{{done}} [[Special:Contributions/172.69.134.96|172.69.134.96]] 18:14, 29 May 2023 (UTC)