explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:3063: Planet Definitions

2025-04-07T14:36:18Z

172.69.195.121:

The one currently posted has Pluto highlighted in the second box and not highlighted in the first box. Too hard to tell if it's trolling or a genuine mistake. :-D

:Apparently a mistake since it's fixed now. [[User:HughNo|HughNo]] ([[User talk:HughNo|talk]]) 19:59, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

And the first one also has a moon hilighted instead I think?? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.126.5|162.158.126.5]] 15:59, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

:Was about to write the same. The coloring in the first two lines arund Pluto seem wrong (or mistankingly switched). --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.222.246|172.71.222.246]] 16:17, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

This, this is the hill I will die on. I was radicalised by this paper: [https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.15285 Moons Are Planets: "Scientific Usefulness Versus Cultural Teleology in the Taxonomy of Planetary Science"]
In short; planets are what planetary scientists study. Round things with the *good stuff*: atmospheres, oceans, volcanoes (of lava or water ice) (see diagram page 53).
Pluto, Titan, Ceres, Io and Europa are all in the sweet spot where you're not so small you're just a lump of rocks who happen to be stuck together into a lump, and not so large you're just a mostly undifferentiated mass of fusing hydrogen/helium plasma.
And it's consistent with our pre-20th Century understanding of what a planet is, whereas the IAU definition is trying to preserve 19th Century astrology. An amazing read and a strong recommend for anyone who cares about this subject. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.138|172.69.79.138]] 16:45, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:Ooh, thank you! That was fascinating and I'm head-canonizing that definition now. –[[User:P1h3r1e3d13|P1h3r1e3d13]] ([[User talk:P1h3r1e3d13|talk]]) 23:57, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Does this sort of count as pi-related for pi day? [[User:TomtheBuilder|TomtheBuilder]] ([[User talk:TomtheBuilder|talk]]) 17:04, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:he doesn't do themed comics anymore 😔 [[User:CalibansCreations|'''Caliban''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 17:12, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:: Sure he does. [[2962]] and [[2969]] weren't too long ago. Seems like it, though. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.222|172.71.182.222]] 03:31, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:::I don't understand either the "he doesn't do themes" bit, or the full nature of the reply, frankly. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.205.122|172.68.205.122]] 22:52, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I was somewhat disappointed to get to the end of the table without seeing either an astrology or Sailor Moon joke. -- [[User:Angel|Angel]] ([[User talk:Angel|talk]]) 18:12, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Is it possible that Uranus is marked under "Empiricist" because of the "Randall has seen Uranus" joke? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.42.178|172.70.42.178]] 18:38, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

The "{{w|Classical planet|Classical Planets}}" should be 7, including the Sun and the Moon.
:The average distance of the orbit of the Moon around the Earth must be slightly farther away than the orbit of the Sun around the Earth, since the Moon lags behind the Sun a little more each day, but the orbits must cross or we would never have a solar eclipse :P [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 19:41, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Wouldn't the Regolithic one depend on the exact definitions of "dirt", "ice", and "covered"? It seems that an argument could be made that the giant planets also count there but have a much thicker atmosphere on the outside, and disqualifying because of the atmosphere could exclude others like Earth depending on the exact threshold used. [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 19:08, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Has Randall not seen the sun before?
:I'm impressed that he has seen Uranus (unless that actually is a joke), especially if he saw it unaided (apparently it actually can be barely seen with the naked eye if the conditions are incredibly good). [[User:SammyChips|SammyChips]] ([[User talk:SammyChips|talk]]) 19:36, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:Could the sun be classified as a "world"? --[[User:MothWaves|MothWaves]] ([[User talk:MothWaves|talk]]) 19:43, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:I assumed he meant "seen directly with my eyes", so that a photograph would not count, but looking through a telescope during an astronomy night at the local University would count. And he hasn't looked *closely* at the Sun, because of the need for eye protection. [[User:JimJJewett|JimJJewett]] ([[User talk:JimJJewett|talk]]) 23:49, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Technically, spacecraft have landed on Mercury, Jupiter, and Saturn. Just not in a survivable manner. [[User:Redacted II|Redacted II]] ([[User talk:Redacted II|talk]]) 19:37, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:Have we really not sent anything directly into the Sun yet? [[User:JimJJewett|JimJJewett]] ([[User talk:JimJJewett|talk]]) 23:51, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
::The most "into the Sun" we've done is [https://science.nasa.gov/mission/parker-solar-probe/ the Parker Solar Probe], and it hasn't attempted to 'land' there (apart from that being effectively impossible, even beyond the likes of Cassini's final fall "onto" Saturn). It's also ''very hard'' to even send things into the Sun, because the direct method would need you to send a craft from Earth backwards at the same speed as the Earth orbits forwards (or very close to that), otherwise all you can do is fall ''past'' it and loop back up again. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.94|162.158.74.94]] 01:00, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:No one even knows if Jupiter and Saturn have a *land* to land on. [[User:SDSpivey|SDSpivey]] ([[User talk:SDSpivey|talk]]) 14:54, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
::Sstill subject to further study, but the crushed and burnt (and probably unrecognisable) remains of the probes will be 'landed' (or floating on top of any layer that they're ultimately more buoyant than) down there, somewhere (unless they're totally ablated away, but there'll probably be ''some'' fragments of hi-tech metal frame, even if no circuit boards or metal foils survive) Should there be a form of life in existence down in the depths of the gas-giant's mass, with any curiosity to them, I imagine they'll be wondering what this new variety of 'space rain' is, that's totally unlike the usual ex-asteroidal/cometish stuff that they must occasionally get punching down through from the inaccessible upper reaches above their native environment. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.68|162.158.74.68]] 19:59, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

It looks like the Pluto error in Traditionalist and Modernist images were fixed. I now see Pluto highlighted in traditionalist and Pluto unhighlighted in Modern. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.7.91|172.68.7.91]] 19:44, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

indeed, it seems fine now, i removed my earlier comment--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.233.116|162.158.233.116]] 23:06, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

//Jean-Luc Margot wrote a serious planet definition proposal// in 2024 as a starting point for community conversations and welcomes feedback. In 2019 I wrote a small article myself on planet and moon classes simply by size. //Mondklassen "wwwahnsinn"// (in German).
[[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.108|162.158.159.108]] 19:49, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

I'm disputing that there has never been a formal definition of "planet" prior to 2006 - the ancient Greek definition of "wandering [relative to seemingly-fixed stars] points of light in the night sky" seems formal enough to me. I marked it {{tl|actual citation needed}}. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.227.73|198.41.227.73]] 19:52, 14 March 2025‎
: I've reworded the sentence to say "in modern times" so we aren't making unfounded and likely-incorrect claims about antiquity. [[Special:Contributions/198.41.227.73|198.41.227.73]] 21:19, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Does anyone else strongly dislike the term '''natural satellite''' replacing ''moon''? Under the new nomenclature, only Earth's moon is 'the Moon'. All other moons are now merely natural satellites. Phobos, Deimos, Ganymede, are no longer considered moons. My biggest problem with the new definition is that planets themselves are natural satellites of stars. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.225|172.71.182.225]] 20:13, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

It seems likely that the Saturnian moon highlighted in the Maritime definition is Titan, since it has liquid seas and lakes on its surface. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.6.5|172.69.6.5]] 21:54, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:I've noted in the Transcript that (despite apparently being ''identical'' pre-highlight drawings in all other ways, or at least very consistently reproduced), Saturn is given one moon ''most'' of the time, but two moons on occasion. Similarly, Uranus's moons (spread from upper-right to lower-left) do-or-do-not include the dot (in one case suffering a highlighting) moving across the face of the planet. From an analytical perspective, I'm wondering if Randall did indeed copypaste the 'normal' iillustration, but then have to manually add in "whoops, I forgot I need to highlight a further item thaat I haven't already drawn" into some of the established copies, touching up where necessary (and maybe where still not necessary too). ...But I'm not sure it matters what he did or did not do. It's just an observation about the result. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.190|172.69.79.190]] 23:03, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:Yeah, Titan's present in all the diagrams, and a second moon of Saturn shows up when highlighting is necessary. The bonus "Marine Biologist" planet is clearly Enceladus, but the bonus "Judgemental" planet doesn't line up with it: presumably it's one of Saturn's other moons. Which one? My wild guess is Iapetus. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.150.27|172.68.150.27]] 01:48, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Great explanation, thank you, but was it really necessary to include a snide dig at Baby Boomers? Not a BB myself - I'm gen X, if we're using those facile labels - but surely we don't need to encourage intergenerational resentment and conflict. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.116|172.68.174.116]] 03:22, 15 March 2025 (UTC) 
As a historian, I strongly disagree with the snide definition of tradition. (No, not a BB.) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.212.132|162.158.212.132]] 07:40, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:That's a direct quote from a prior comic, that whoever wrote it in the first placce ysed, so I've rewritten it to perhaps ''not'' look quite so much like some editor's own grudge/snidiness (which it may or may not be, but not without Randall giving justifiable precedent to say it). Maybe can be tweaked further, but it might be a shame to lose the inter-comic referential humour that (regardless of tone) is staple for this site. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.109|162.158.74.109]] 12:25, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
::I wrote it. No snideness intended. I thought the connection was topical. Unfortunately, thanks to the "Okay boomer" phenomenon, any reference to the generation comes across as condescending. The "Tradition" strip was published in 2011, and the phrase rose to popularity in 2019. It, like [[36]], is just one of those things that is not standing the test of time. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.47.89|172.70.47.89]] 20:22, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I believe we're currently missing part of the joke in the mouseover text. Not only is Earth now a star because of human fusion, it's also no longer a planet, because, due to human satellites and spacecraft, it no longer clears its orbit.
[[Special:Contributions/198.41.227.42|198.41.227.42]] 06:20, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Isn't the usual singular of criteria criterion? According to my dictionary, a criterium is a type of cycling race.--[[Special:Contributions/172.71.26.100|172.71.26.100]] 09:46, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
:Indeed. Maybe a thinko, though, rather. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.139|172.69.79.139]] 11:06, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I am curious why only one of the Galilean moons counts as pretty, and I wonder which one (either Ganymede or Callisto, given where its drawn). They are all pretty to me, I like how surprisingly distinct they look from one another.
[[User:Terdragontra|Terdragontra]] ([[User talk:Terdragontra|talk]]) 13:18, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

Re title text: With the launch of the JWST, Earth has no longer cleared its orbital neighborhood, right? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.176.57|172.70.176.57]] 14:27, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

I tend to go by an expansive definition myself, considering all dwarf planets "planets" in my eyes. But I'm not like, arguing with the IAU's definition, this is just how I prefer to think of them, because dwarf planets are really cool. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.126.140|172.70.126.140]] 19:35, 15 March 2025 (UTC)

In the title text explanation, there's no mention of the inclusion of the phrase about Earth clearing its orbital neighborhood. I think this has something to do with all of our man-made satellites that have not been cleared from Earth's orbital neighborhood. Does anyone else think that's an important part of the title text and needs to be explained? [[User:Ianrbibtitlht|Ianrbibtitlht]] ([[User talk:Ianrbibtitlht|talk]]) 13:33, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

I think I like the "Recognizable" criteria. Something is a planet if it orbits the Sun and there exists at least one photograph of the object that a reasonably knowledgeable layperson can correctly identify. That would mean that all of the IAU defined planets are planets (except maybe Mercury), and that Pluto became a planet in 2015. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.245.141|172.68.245.141]] 14:34, 16 March 2025 (UTC)
:...there's a risk that Uranus and/or Neptune ("or both... hang on... which one's supposed to be bluer..? and is this one of those miscalibrated images or not..?") might drop out of the Recognisable grouping. And the Moon would be added, unless you arbitrarily banned near-side images, in which case it'd be demoted to "dunno" except by particularly adept selenophiles who probably even know the far-side, and limbs, like the back of their own hands. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.74.94|162.158.74.94]] 16:55, 16 March 2025 (UTC)

A definition I thought up a while ago that I'm pretty proud of is that a planet is an object that is not a star or moon, has a stable orbit around a star, and that has a larger mass than the largest moon in its solar system. (a moon is defined as having a barycenter inside an object that directly orbits the Sun). That way, there is a clear, natural, distinction of larger bodies and smaller ones that conforms to the public thinking of a planet as large and not a moon. By my definition, the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. (Though Mercury is famously smaller in radius than the moons Ganymede and Titan, it has more mass -- and given that mass grants greater gravity, I consider mass to be more important). My wider category of a world is for all star-orbiters that have differentiated layers, so the worlds in the Solar System would be (I think) Mercury, Venus, Earth, the Moon, Ceres, Vesta, Jupiter, Ganymede, Callisto, Europa, Io, Saturn, Titan, Uranus, Neptune, Triton, Pluto, Charon, Quaoar, Haumea, Makemake, Gonggong, Eris, and Sedna. This would be a harder category to assign than planet and a bit more fuzzy -- which plays in to the fuzzy use of world already existing -- but is still more clear cut than "gravitationally rounded" as no object is a perfect sphere and the strict definition of hydrostatic equilibrium means Mercury is not a planet. Of course, since no exomoons have been discovered as they are very hard to find, all exoplanets discovered would be planets -- which is nice and uncomplicated and natural for the human to assume that the bodies are planets. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.145|108.162.245.145]] 18:11, 16 March 2025 (UTC)
: Having the status of bodies be contingent on what is going on elsewhere seems even more problematic than current arguments over where artificial lines between categories should be drawn. In theory, Jupiter could capture a passing wandering planet and, under your system, instantly demote a bunch of the current planets to non-planets, even though nothing about them has actually changed.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.160.219|172.70.160.219]] 09:51, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
:: And, in a way, that's what happened to Pluto. Nobody was really bothered about it not having 'cleared' Neptune from its orbit (or, it appears, consider it a problem that Neptune hasn't cleared Pluto from its own, so already a partial fudge of meaning there) when it was an acceptible planet. Maybe the runt of the litter (comparing disfavourably against even some moons, including our own), but most people were happy to slide with it as one (with perhaps a bit more attention on Ceres, too, once more), even as it became clear that its own largest moon was more co-binary, and that there were a number of other (lesser) plutoids doing the same sort of thing. The 'sudden appearance' (i.e. realisation of) a larger (now dwarf-)planet changed that.
:: I mean, I'm not advocating for either turn of terminology (though I definitely grew up, and lived most my adult life, ''knowing'' that Pluto was a planet), but taxonomy of all kinds is tricky. Just ask Linnaeus. As more information overturns how we group things, even when the realities of the things we group don't themselves change. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.57|172.70.162.57]] 11:23, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

'''"Modern" vs "Current"'''. Does anyone feel frustrated when people confuse "modern", "contemporary", and "current"? "Modern" is post-1500, "contemporary" is the age someone lives in, and "current" is 'today'. Throughout 75 years of the modern era, Pluto 'was' considered a planet. Is anyone willing to shift non-canonical usage of "modern" to "current" in the article? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.95.28|172.71.95.28]] 15:59, 15 March 2025 (UTC)
: "''Modern" is post-1500''" -- '''Museum of '''Modern''' Art''', 1929/1930 until today (essentially Pluto's reign); works to 1885 --[[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 00:54, 17 March 2025 (UTC)
:: {{w|Modernity#Scientific}}. It varies a bit field by field, but in science, philosophy, and history, "modernity" begins around 1500. Western History is divided into classical antiquity, middle ages, and modernity. Oh, and Copernicus, father of modern (non-classical) astronomy? He lived 1473-1543. [[Special:Contributions/104.23.170.4|104.23.170.4]] 02:07, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

I added a bunch of Wikipedia citations. I went by the WP rule (citation needed) of linking the first non-parenthesized instance of a word/phrase. That does make for some awkward things, like lists with only some of the items linked, and the {{w|natural satellite|moon}} link in a mention under '''Simplistic''' rather than on the more relevant '''Lunar'''.
–[[User:P1h3r1e3d13|P1h3r1e3d13]] ([[User talk:P1h3r1e3d13|talk]]) 22:34, 14 March 2025 (UTC)
:That all went to pot a bit, anyway, when it was all transformed into a sortable table. (I'm a big fan of a handy table, in the right circumstances, but I'm not sure it was necessarily the better format in this case.) What might be best, in demanding a tabled case, is to have a table ''of objects'' (both displayed and referenced), and then explain in which comic-table rows they do (or should, or ''maybe'') appear. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.115|172.70.86.115]] 13:22, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

According to the "simplistic" definition, the rings themselves (also round) are separate planets. If the simplistic definition had merely been "spheroidal" rather than "round", they would not be. I'd love to see a version of the chart where Saturn is green, but the rings are white. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.99.166|172.71.99.166]] 23:36, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Shouldn't the Utratraditionalist version of the solar system have 7 planets (including the Sun and the Moon)? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.245.136|172.68.245.136]] 15:15, 17 March 2025 (UTC)

Given that it is now considered a dwarf planet, and a lot of people, and perhaps the world itself, are unhappy, would it not be appropriate to rename it Grumpy?{{unsigned|Jmbryant|12:22, 18 March 2025}}

I wonder if this comic was tangentially inspired by the fairly recent discovery of a further 128 (suspiciously round number, that..!) moons of Saturn, making it now having well into the 200 'moons', on top of its ring-debris. And the possibility of the IAU having to weigh in and now officially decide what a ''moon'' is, especially in contrast to all the material in Saturn's rings (maybe broken up ex-moons, possibly raw material for future moon-clumps). One would suspect a version of "clear the area around the planet it orbits", and a (looser?) threshold of hydrostatic equilibreum/sphericity might be the starting point. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.221|172.69.43.221]] 13:54, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

There should be a “Dayist” list of objects that have a day of the week named after them: Sun (Sunday), Moon (Monday), Mercury (Tuesday), Jupiter (Wednesday), Mars (Thursday), Venus (Friday), and Saturn (Staurday).
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.67.147|172.69.67.147]] 19:56, 18 March 2025 (UTC)
:Mild correction: Tuesday is named for Mars, Mercury lends its name to Wednesday, and Jupiter Thursday. Also this would be the Ultratraditionalist definition, but Randall excluded the Sun and Moon from that for some reason. {{unsigned ip|108.162.227.64|12:12, 7 April 2025‎}}
::Depends upon your pantheon, and your interpretations/inter-relations with the others.
Wednesday is named for Wodan/Wotan/Odin/etc, the head of the Norse-like gods, so is equivalent to Jove/Jupiter of the Latinesque pantheon (even though latinesque day-naming indeed goes instead with Mercury to inspire "Mercredi"/etc).
::Tuesday ''is'' more Mars, Týr/Tiw being the son of Odin (maybe, could also be from the not-god/jottun Hymir) who has the aspect of conflict and thus is Mars the mediteranean god and directly Mars the planet.
::Thusday (being Thor) does not normally ''have'' a planet associated with him. Sometimes (instead of Odin), being equated to Jove/Jupiter (probably the lightning, as from the Zeus of the Greek equivalence/basis for Roman theistic lore), but at other times more just Hercules (planetless). I dare say that those more familiar with some of his MCU appearances probably would say war/Mars, these days!
::The core Anglo-Saxon (and a lot of the unsyncratic versions of the northern-European legends, before Rome started trying to say "you worship <'pagan' god>, and that's ok, because we recognise them too, as an aspect of <Roman god>, and will gladly build/improve a temple dedicated to <pagano-Roman synthesis version> as a token of you all now being Roman!") didn't really do so much "days<-+->planets linking". "Saturday" used to be "Washing day", before Saturn (as a figure from the Roman myth, technically considered the same as the Titan Cronos, who was in that case more a "season of harvests" figure than one given a day, but the mixing and matching is somewhat complicated across this original 'home' region) made his way into that position. Further cultures may well have other ideas, probably beyond the scope of this explanation, and I think even 'close' non-anglo interpretations (e.g. the Romance tradition) shouldn't be looked at beyond what ''is'' the current not-all-planets list. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.121|172.69.195.121]] 14:36, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

Might be worth mentioning that Neil DeGrasse Tyson was a proponent(ish) of the "Condescending" view "He said he'd take all four rocky planets in our solar system — Earth, Mars, Mercury and Venus — and call them dwarf planets rather than admit Pluto to the planet club."- https://www.space.com/29960-stephen-colbert-pluto-neil-tyson-video.html [[Special:Contributions/172.70.42.168|172.70.42.168]] 21:29, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

The reactionary traditionalists ought to be told that if Pluto is a planet, then so is Eris, so even then, there would not be nine planets, but 10. (No mention on whether it's in the 8th dimension) -- {{unsigned|KeithTyler|22:39, 19 March 2025 (UTC)}}
:''Two'' planets: Pluto and Eris. And, as with "King Buns", Pluto is the most important! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.115|172.70.86.115]] 13:22, 20 March 2025 (UTC)

1606: Five-Day Forecast

2025-04-02T11:40:23Z

172.69.195.121: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 1606
| date = November 20, 2015
| title = Five-Day Forecast
| image = five_day_forecast.png
| titletext = You know what they say--if you don't like the weather here in the Solar System, just wait five billion years.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Weather forecasting}} is an extremely difficult task, even if it is only for five days. In numerical models, extremely small errors in initial values double roughly every five days for variables such as temperature and wind velocity. So most {{w|Meteorology#Meteorologists|meteorologists}} provide us with only a five-day forecast.

In this comic [[Randall]] takes this to the extreme by first showing a '''Five-Day Forecast''' and then progressing to five-month, year, million, billion and finally trillion-year forecasts, leading to {{tvtropes|WeirdWeather|weather patterns that we don't regularly see.}}

Since the first weather symbol is the same in all six rows, we can assume it indicates the weather today and not tomorrow, in a trillion years, etc. It is only in the second panel of each row that time has passed per the row's label. Consequently, the last column gives the predictions for four days, four months, ..., four trillion years from today.

When moving past the five-day prediction, the forecast is just a qualified guess based on the time of year. In a month it is Christmas as shown in the second panel of the second row. Then it is January and February so snow is likely, but certainly not something that happens on all days of a winter month.

Looking at the five-year forecast, guesses are made as to what the weather will be like at the same time of year. For these first three predictions the weather symbols are all of the same three types: Sun, clouds and some kind of {{w|precipitation}}, rain or snow, with the temperature ranging from 21 to 44 °F (-6.1 to 6.6 °C) - late-{{w|Autumn#Date definitions|autumn/fall}} (perhaps early-{{w|Winter#Astronomical and other calendar-based reckoning|winter}}) temperatures.

Then we go into the far future, jumping a million years from panel to panel. But still the weather symbols stay the same. In 3 million years, however, aliens (or advanced humans) attack with energy beams from {{w|flying saucers}}. They are absent a million years later, or at least not actively attacking in any visible way during this later snapshot. The temperature range remains the same across the panels except that it rises to 52 °F (11 °C), a possible reference to global warming, in one panel, and while the attack is going on it rises to 275 °F (135 °C).

Once we get to the billion-year mark it actually becomes more meaningful to try to predict the "weather", because now we reach the times when the {{w|Sun}} begins to change. Although the Sun will continue to burn hydrogen for about 5 billion years yet (while in its {{w|Sun#Main sequence|main sequence|}}), it will grow in diameter as it begins to exhaust its supply of fuel. The core will contract to increase the temperature, and the outer layer will then compensate by expanding slightly. This is what is indicated in panels two and three, where the color of the Sun changes towards red as the surface becomes cooler as it expands away from the center of the Sun. The temperature will rise on Earth as indicated in the panels (105 °F = 40.5 °C and 371 °F = 188 °C). The temperature will get hot enough in about [http://phys.org/news/2015-02-sun-wont-die-billion-years.html a billion years] that the Earth's oceans will boil away.

Once it {{w|Sun#After core hydrogen exhaustion|no longer has enough hydrogen}}, the Sun will expand into a {{w|red giant}}. This should not happen until around {{w|Sun#Composition|five billion years from now}}, but in the forecast it is indicated to happen in only three. Maybe this is Randall taking liberties to show what happens during this phase, which would not fit into a four-billion-year forecast. Alternatively it just indicates how uncertain these kinds of forecasts are, or a statement that we may not know for certain that it will take five not three billion years, nor what toll other influences (such as attacking aliens) might take on the Sun.

In any case, the fourth panel shows the temperature at Earth's position inside the red giant Sun. The color of the panel indicates that we are inside the Sun. The temperature is 71,488,106 degrees Fahrenheit (39,715,597 degrees Celsius). The current temperature of the center of the Sun is "only" 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius), and although that may rise by a factor of ten during {{w|Stellar nucleosynthesis|helium fusion}}, that will only be at the very core and not out in the solar atmosphere reaching out to Earth. Here the temperature would only be of the order of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, since the Sun's outer temperature decreases as it increases its diameter. So this panel's temperature also makes little sense by current understanding. It may involve some ambiguities regarding what the forecast means; the edge of the red giant Sun is predicted to be somewhere near the current orbit of Earth, but the position of the Earth could change. The most likely prediction at the moment is for Earth to move outward but, if the planet is engulfed by the Sun, it would spiral inward, and at some point fall apart. So in some sense "here" for the forecast could become a position deep inside the Sun, where core temperatures could reach 100 million Kelvin. The temperatures shown are unreasonably precise; they probably should have only two or at most three significant figures, if not for the running theme of escalating levels of prescience (enough to predict a future attack by flying saucers, etc).

The red giant phase lasts only half a million years, so a billion years after the Sun has been a red giant its outer atmosphere will definitely have disappeared, leaving only a dim, cool {{w|white dwarf}} to cool down. Given Randall's version of this time schedule, then it will have had about a billion years to cool down, but would still likely be the brightest object in the sky as seen from where the Earth once was. It is not shown in the last panel, where we just see other stars of the Galaxy. The temperature is down to that of the {{w|Cosmic microwave background|background radiation}}. Today this radiation has a temperature of 2.72548 kelvin = -270.4245 °C = -454.7641 °F. That is a few degrees F colder than what is shown in the comic, which states the temperature is -452 °F = 4.26 kelvin. This higher temperature may have been chosen to reflect that even the light from other stars would increase the actual temperature.

In the last panel with trillions of years, we jump right past the Sun's red giant phase to a panel looking much like the one after five billion years with only other stars, one of the original stars being no longer visible. Over the next three trillion years the stars become fewer and dimmer as they run out of fuel, while fewer new ones form to continue the cycles of star-formation. After four trillion years the background temperature decreases one degree to -453 °F as the universe keeps expanding and the wavelength of the radiation does the same, thus decreasing its temperature.

The title text is a play on comments referring to fast-changing weather on a more ordinary human timescale, such as Mark Twain's quip, "If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes."

A ten-day forecast was used in [[1245: 10-Day Forecast]]. In [[1379: 4.5 Degrees]], Randall looked at the weather over long periods of time as well. in [[1643: Degrees]] he addressed Celsius vs. Fahrenheit for measuring temperature.

===Image using Celsius===

There is a different user-made version for the picture, using [[3001|Celsius]] instead of Fahrenheit, [[:File:five_day_forecast_Celsius.png|in this image link]]. (For a version that also uses Kelvin, [[:File:five_day_forecast_Celsius+Kelvin.png|click here]].)

==Transcript==
:[A grid with six rows of five columns, where each row is labeled to the left. For each of the 30 squares a temperature is given in Fahrenheit at the top left. The rest of the square represents the weather as in a weather forecast (or some other relevant items for the comic), mainly in bright colors. Below are the six labels given above each of their five weather symbols with temperature given below these symbols description.]

:'''Your 5-day forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:41°F
:[A grey cloud with six lines of blue raindrops below.]
:36°F
:[A grey cloud in front of a yellow sun.]
:40°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:44°F

:'''Your 5-month forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A green Christmas tree with red presents beneath it.]
:29°F
:[A grey cloud with four snowflakes below.]
:21°F
:[A grey cloud with four snowflakes below.]
:24°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:35°F

:'''Your 5-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:25°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:36°F
:[A grey cloud with six lines of blue raindrops below.]
:37°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:41°F

:'''Your 5-million-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:52°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:40°F
:[Two red flying saucers (with bright domes) are shooting energy beams downwards. One of the beams seems to impact with something at the bottom of the panel, which then explodes. Two plumes of smoke rises up from below, drifting to the right.]
:275°F
:[A grey cloud in front of a yellow sun.]
:40°F

:'''Your 5-billion-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A larger orange sun.]
:105°F
:[A very large red sun.]
:371°F
:[A pale yellow panel with no drawing.]
:71,488,106°F
:[A night sky with many bright stars.]
:-452°F

:'''Your 5-trillion-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A night sky with many bright stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with many stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with fewer not so bright stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with few dim stars.]
:-453°F

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Weather]]
[[Category:Aliens]]
[[Category:Christmas]]

1606: Five-Day Forecast

2025-04-02T11:02:06Z

172.69.195.121: Makes no sense.

{{comic
| number = 1606
| date = November 20, 2015
| title = Five-Day Forecast
| image = five_day_forecast.png
| titletext = You know what they say--if you don't like the weather here in the Solar System, just wait five billion years.
}}

==Explanation==
{{w|Weather forecasting}} is an extremely difficult task, even if it is only for five days. In numerical models, extremely small errors in initial values double roughly every five days for variables such as temperature and wind velocity. So most {{w|Meteorology#Meteorologists|meteorologists}} provide us with only a five-day forecast.

In this comic [[Randall]] takes this to the extreme by first showing a '''Five-Day Forecast''' and then progressing to five-month, year, million, billion and finally trillion-year forecasts, leading to {{tvtropes|WeirdWeather|weather patterns that we don't regularly see.}}

Since the first weather symbol is the same in all six rows, we can assume it indicates the weather today and not tomorrow, in a trillion years, etc. It is only in the second panel of each row that time has passed per the row's label. Consequently, the last column gives the predictions for four days, four months, ..., four trillion years from today.

When moving past the five-day prediction, the forecast is just a qualified guess based on the time of year. In a month it is Christmas as shown in the second panel of the second row. Then it is January and February so snow is likely, but certainly not something that happens on all days of a winter month.

Looking at the five-year forecast, guesses are made as to what the weather will be like at the same time of year. For these first three predictions the weather symbols are all of the same three types: Sun, clouds and some kind of {{w|precipitation}}, rain or snow, with the temperature ranging from 21 to 44 °F (-6.1 to 6.6 °C) - winter temperatures.

Then we go into the far future, jumping a million years from panel to panel. But still the weather symbols stay the same. In 3 million years, however, aliens (or advanced humans) attack with energy beams from {{w|flying saucers}}. They are gone a million years later. The temperature range remains the same across the panels except that it rises to 52 °F (11 °C), a possible reference to global warming, in one panel, and while the attack is going on it rises to 275 °F (135 °C).

Once we get to the billion-year mark it actually becomes more meaningful to try to predict the "weather", because now we reach the times when the {{w|Sun}} begins to change. Although the Sun will continue to burn hydrogen for about 5 billion years yet (while in its {{w|Sun#Main sequence|main sequence|}}), it will grow in diameter as it begins to exhaust its supply of fuel. The core will contract to increase the temperature, and the outer layer will then compensate by expanding slightly. This is what is indicated in panels two and three, where the color of the Sun changes towards red as the surface becomes cooler as it expands away from the center of the Sun. The temperature will rise on Earth as indicated in the panels (105 °F = 40.5 °C and 371 °F = 188 °C). The temperature will get hot enough in about [http://phys.org/news/2015-02-sun-wont-die-billion-years.html a billion years] that the Earth's oceans will boil away.

Once it {{w|Sun#After core hydrogen exhaustion|no longer has enough hydrogen}}, the Sun will expand into a {{w|red giant}}. This should not happen until around {{w|Sun#Composition|five billion years from now}}, but in the forecast it is indicated to happen in only three. Maybe this is Randall taking liberties to show what happens during this phase, which would not fit into a four-billion-year forecast. Alternatively it just indicates how uncertain these kinds of forecasts are, or a statement that we may not know for certain that it will take five not three billion years.

In any case, the fourth panel shows the temperature at Earth's position inside the red giant Sun. The color of the panel indicates that we are inside the Sun. The temperature is 71,488,106 degrees Fahrenheit (39,715,597 degrees Celsius). The current temperature of the center of the Sun is "only" 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius), and although that may rise by a factor of ten during {{w|Stellar nucleosynthesis|helium fusion}}, that will only be at the very core and not out in the solar atmosphere reaching out to Earth. Here the temperature would only be of the order of thousands of degrees Fahrenheit, since the Sun's outer temperature decreases as it increases its diameter. So this panel's temperature also makes little sense. It may involve some ambiguities regarding what the forecast means; the edge of the red giant Sun is predicted to be somewhere near the current orbit of Earth, but the position of the Earth could change. The most likely prediction at the moment is for Earth to move outward, but if the planet is engulfed by the Sun, it would spiral inward, and at some point fall apart. So in some sense "here" for the forecast could become a position deep inside the Sun, where core temperatures could reach 100 million Kelvin. The temperatures shown are unreasonably precise; they probably should have only two or at most three significant figures.

The red giant phase lasts only half a million years, so a billion years after the Sun has been a red giant its outer atmosphere will definitely have disappeared, leaving only a dim, cool {{w|white dwarf}} to cool down. Given Randall's version of this time schedule, then it will have had about a billion years to cool down, but would still likely be the brightest object in the sky as seen from where the Earth once was. It is not shown in the last panel, where we just see other stars of the Galaxy. The temperature is down to that of the {{w|Cosmic microwave background|background radiation}}. Today this radiation has a temperature of 2.72548 kelvin = -270.4245 °C = -454.7641 °F. That is a few degrees F colder than what is shown in the comic, which states the temperature is -452 °F = 4.26 kelvin. This higher temperature may have been chosen to reflect that even the light from other stars would increase the actual temperature.

In the last panel with trillions of years, we jump right past the Sun's red giant phase to a panel looking much like the one after five billion years with only other stars. Over the next three trillion years the stars become fewer and fewer and dimmer and dimmer as they run out of fuel and fewer new stars form. After four trillion years the background temperature decreases one degree to -453 °F as the universe keeps expanding and the wavelength of the radiation does the same, thus decreasing its temperature.

The title text is a play on comments referring to fast-changing weather on a more ordinary human timescale, such as Mark Twain's quip, "If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes."

A ten-day forecast was used in [[1245: 10-Day Forecast]]. In [[1379: 4.5 Degrees]], Randall looked at the weather over long periods of time as well. in [[1643: Degrees]] he addressed Celsius vs. Fahrenheit for measuring temperature.

===Image using Celsius===

There is a different user-made version for the picture, using [[3001|Celsius]] instead of Fahrenheit, [[:File:five_day_forecast_Celsius.png|in this image link]]. (For a version that also uses Kelvin, [[:File:five_day_forecast_Celsius+Kelvin.png|click here]].)

==Transcript==
:[A grid with six rows of five columns, where each row is labeled to the left. For each of the 30 squares a temperature is given in Fahrenheit at the top left. The rest of the square represents the weather as in a weather forecast (or some other relevant items for the comic), mainly in bright colors. Below are the six labels given above each of their five weather symbols with temperature given below these symbols description.]

:'''Your 5-day forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:41°F
:[A grey cloud with six lines of blue raindrops below.]
:36°F
:[A grey cloud in front of a yellow sun.]
:40°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:44°F

:'''Your 5-month forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A green Christmas tree with red presents beneath it.]
:29°F
:[A grey cloud with four snowflakes below.]
:21°F
:[A grey cloud with four snowflakes below.]
:24°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:35°F

:'''Your 5-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:25°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:36°F
:[A grey cloud with six lines of blue raindrops below.]
:37°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:41°F

:'''Your 5-million-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:52°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:40°F
:[Two red flying saucers (with bright domes) are shooting energy beams downwards. One of the beams seems to impact with something at the bottom of the panel, which then explodes. Two plumes of smoke rises up from below, drifting to the right.]
:275°F
:[A grey cloud in front of a yellow sun.]
:40°F

:'''Your 5-billion-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A larger orange sun.]
:105°F
:[A very large red sun.]
:371°F
:[A pale yellow panel with no drawing.]
:71,488,106°F
:[A night sky with many bright stars.]
:-452°F

:'''Your 5-trillion-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A night sky with many bright stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with many stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with fewer not so bright stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with few dim stars.]
:-453°F

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with inverted brightness]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Weather]]
[[Category:Aliens]]
[[Category:Christmas]]

Talk:3069: Terror Bird

2025-03-31T14:51:25Z

172.69.195.121:

Oh, wow, never seen a blank explanation before! [[User:RadiantRainwing|RadiantRainwing]] ([[User talk:RadiantRainwing|talk]]) 02:48, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

Jill is a pretty rare character (only 59 appearances). Cool to see a rare character. {{unsigned|DollarStoreBa'al|03:46, 29 March 2025}}
:[[Jill]] is at 40 at the moment (41 as long as this comic is on the front page, but then back to the real 40). Not sure how you got the 59? Originally she was called Science Girl, and I'm not at all in favor of the name change... Not sure who thought that was a good idea? She is a generic girl interested in science. And in one comic she's a young adult and in one she is looking different. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:41, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
::Why back to 40? What is "real" about it? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.42.128|172.70.42.128]] 13:48, 31 March 2025 (UTC)
:::I would say that's the official count. Go to the [[:Category:Comics featuring Jill|Pages in category "Comics featuring Jill"]] list and it (currently) says "The following 41 pages are in this category, out of 41 total." (Which includes the Main Page, right now, that transcludes the latest comic, which happens to be 3069 at the moment, but will change later.)
:::I have no idea where "59 appearances" comes from, perhaps the OP has a different count in mind. The 40(+1) could be wrong if the "Comics featuring Jill" is missing (or incorrectly added) for some comics, but that's a different issue. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.121|172.69.195.121]] 14:51, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

this seems to be a play on dinosaurs in media to look more accurate by having feathers, which some view as making them less scary. this comic is a reversal, where the bird is supposedly more accurate and scarier. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.242.28|108.162.242.28]] 04:17, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
:hmm maybe [[User:RadiantRainwing|RadiantRainwing]] ([[User talk:RadiantRainwing|talk]]) 16:09, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
::No it is about a specific bird type from long after the dinosaurs died out, and it is mentioned both in the comic title and in the title text. Nothing to do with dinosaurs. Have also removed that category as though birds evolved from dinosaurs they are no longer that! --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:49, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Considering there are childs show with Barney the purple dinosaur, and that's supposed to be tyrannosaurus-rex, apex predator, and is STILL not scary, making Big Bird scary is not related to what species it might be at all. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 16:58, 29 March 2025 (UTC)

I suspect Randall just received the latest edition of Scientific American. It summarizes recent discovery of a thick keratin sheath over the already known bony weapons in some dino species, making the nasty parts even nastier: bigger, heavier, and more resistant to damage. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.191.130|172.71.191.130]] 22:59, 29 March 2025 (UTC)
:But this is not a dinosaur! --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:49, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
::All birds are dinosaurs, cladistically. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.165|172.69.79.165]] 05:02, 31 March 2025 (UTC)

'''Bird Height''' It looks like the bird is around 12 feet / 3.5 m tall (in comparison with the humans), but the Wikipedia article indicated that terror birds reached at max 10 feet / 3 meters. Is anyone eyeballing the situation differently? Is that noteworthy? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.229|172.71.182.229]] 01:02, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
:Jill's a child. 'Hairy' could be a non-adult Hairy (just older/taller than Jill). Have you tried instead assuming that the comic Bird is 10' high and working out if Jill/Hairy are reasonable (maybe both adolescent) sizes in comparison? [[Special:Contributions/162.158.33.253|162.158.33.253]] 01:36, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
::I get the bird to be 8/3 the height of Hairy. Thus Hairy should be 1,12 m for it to be only 3 m tall. That is like a 5 year old... And Jill is considerably shorter and girls at that age it not shorter than boys, and since they are in a museum with scary animals I would assume 3-5 year old kids would not run around alone. I would agree that Hairy could represent a kid, but he is tall enough compared to Jill that he could be the adult Hairy. That would make the skeleton more than 4 m tall. There could be some issue with perspective. Maybe they are further away that the skeleton. Most likely Randall did not put too many thoughts into this and just wanted the skeleton to tower over the humans. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 15:49, 30 March 2025 (UTC)
::: Me again. Thanks! "'' just wanted the skeleton to tower over the humans''" just seems ... [(*)], I guess. If that were true, he may as well have shown a disproportionately large cat or cockroach or amoeba. They would be just as scary. The difference is that readers would be less likely to take it seriously with a familiar. Ah, well. Thanks! (* I removed something critical / judgemental I'd feel guilty about posting about a comic I love.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.46.27|172.70.46.27]] 23:55, 30 March 2025 (UTC)

Talk:388: Fuck Grapefruit

2025-03-10T19:43:27Z

172.69.195.121:

Why are seeded grapes deemed more tasty than seedless grapes? Them seeds taste awful and bitter when you accidentally bite into them. [[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]] ([[User talk:Davidy22|talk]]) 12:22, 14 October 2012 (UTC)
:This is just my subjective opinion, but the presence of seeds wouldn't affect the tasty-untasty axis, but the difficulty axis. The actual fruit tastes the same, but having to remove the seeds is an issue of eating the fruit. That said, not sure why they're HIGHER on the tasty axis. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.165.166|162.158.165.166]]
:Yeah! And red apples are clearly more tasty than green (unless you're using them for cooking), and bananas are the tastiest fruit ever! In other words, it's all subjective. (You might argue that the seeds add to the flavour, much like a small amout of fat in meat; obviously the fact that they're less easy implies pulling all the seeds out first to make sure you don't bite one.) [[Special:Contributions/94.0.161.247|94.0.161.247]] 10:34, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
:Seedless grapes (and seedless versions of other fruits) are often considered to be slightly less tasty than their seeded counterparts because a compromise was made: putting all efforts toward being tasty and easy to grow, versus dividing the effort between those and making them seedless. Additionally, some seedless fruits (including certain brands or breeds) are simply less mature versions of their seedless equivalent (this is part of why some bunches of seedless grapes have seeds in many of the fruits, albeit smaller and/or fewer seeds than the seeded equivalent). It's also possible that the y-axis difference between the two was unintentional, but there's enough of a difference that I'm strongly in favor of interpreting it as intentional. [[User:JET73L|JET73L]] ([[User talk:JET73L|talk]]) 17:34, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
I disagree with the placement of bananas and pears. They are both really easy and reasonably tasty (although taste is a matter of personal preference).[[Special:Contributions/75.69.96.225|75.69.96.225]] 21:54, 11 March 2013 (UTC)
:Problem is, pomegranates burn calories instead of adding to them. Unless you get pre-picked. There should be a third axis, but alas, with a webcomic, it is not possible. {{unsigned ip|108.162.216.45}}
Fyi to open a coconut, do not smash a rock against the coconut, smash the coconut against the rock! [[Special:Contributions/193.188.240.138|193.188.240.138]] 14:30, 26 July 2013 (UTC)
:A rock? Is this a deserted island scenario you're describing? Most households have something called a hammer. [[User:Tharkon|Tharkon]] ([[User talk:Tharkon|talk]]) 03:24, 23 November 2013 (UTC)
::A hammer? Is this a woodwork shed scenario? ;) A professional coconut opener uses one or two strokes from the blunt side of a machete on the equator of the coconut. I still agree with Randall on the difficulty, though. More specialized equipment is neeeded to separate the copra. And it's not tasty either.[[User:Mumiemonstret|Mumiemonstret]] ([[User talk:Mumiemonstret|talk]]) 09:05, 17 June 2014 (UTC)
:::Not unless you eat an Almond Joy! ...Unless you're allergic to nuts that is. In that case, you might never get to try an Almond Joy. (Dang it... now I want one. xD) --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 15:04, 15 September 2016 (UTC)
::::Mounds bar--[[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.89|173.245.48.89]] 03:48, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
:::::Well, yes, there's that. The only problem = same with the "beer" comic, dark chocolate isn't that good. Should it be safe to just say we're pretending to like it? Because everyone I know (including me) think it doesn't taste good. --[[User:JayRulesXKCD|JayRulesXKCD]] ([[User talk:JayRulesXKCD|talk]]) 11:12, 11 October 2016 (UTC)
::::::I can only conclude that you've never had good dark chocolate. Dove & Godiva are crap. Lindt is barely tolerable. Chocolove is good, but even then I personally don't go much above the minimum 70% cocoa content necessary to qualify as dark chocolate... I find their 73% very tasty, & their ''Sea Salt & Almond'' is so good it's often sold out all over. (Note that bars with almonds &\or cherries are only rated as 55% cocoa or so, because they have almonds &\or cherries in them! They're still not milk chocolate.) Milk chocolate can be good, sure: Even though I can't understand how Hershey wins international competitions, I do enjoy it ''melted''. Melted milk chocolate is ''awesome''. The thing about ''dark'' chocolate is that it can be not only tasty, but ''therapeutic''. Lack of clinical studies aside, any chocoholic can tell you that a good dose of dark chocolate can dramatically stimulate one's mental state. I don't know that I'd call it "good for you"; more like "addictive"... but I definitely enjoy the taste of a ''good'' dark chocolate more than most "good" milk chocolates.
::::::[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 22:01, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
:::::::Quality dark chocolate IS amazing-I enjoy indulging in a nice bar of Dandelion Chocolate SF at any hour. That said, whenever I do consume chocolate, I immediately have a very strong urge to sneeze. If anybody knows why, could you please enlighten me? Thanks! [[User:42.book.addict|42.book.addict]] ([[User talk:42.book.addict|talk]]) 17:11, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
Is there a program do make charts looking like these? With the little pictures in the chart. [[User:RecentlyChanged|RecentlyChanged]] ([[User talk:RecentlyChanged|talk]]) 13:26, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
:Yes. The program is called "Paper and Pencil; and something to color them."[[User:SarcasticMoe|SarcasticMoe]] ([[User talk:SarcasticMoe|talk]]) 25:61, 26 November 2013 (UTC)
The transcript needs fixing. It is currently inaccurate in places, like, for example, strawberries in the comic are placed below seeded grapes on the tastiness axis, but the transcript says that strawberries are tastier than seeded grapes. Also, the transcript is missing seedless grapes. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.216.45|108.162.216.45]] 03:48, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
:I have changed the transcrip so that the explanation part is removed. And this part I have now added as a table and in this corrected the numbers so strawberries and grapes are in the correct order etc. At the same time I made many other corrections and improvements for the entire explanation. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 10:22, 12 January 2015 (UTC)
While I disagree with the rating in tastyness... Then it is true that bananas is more difficult to start eating than fruit without peel - like pears. However, bananas are very easy to peel! And you do not get sticky as with a fresh pear. I thus think it is easier to eat bananas than pears because of that.[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 07:30, 29 March 2014 (UTC)
:It's all subjective anyway. I, for example consider bananas to be more tasty than pears. [[User:Tharkon|Tharkon]] ([[User talk:Tharkon|talk]]) 20:09, 8 August 2014 (UTC)

The problem with bananas which adds to their difficulty is that you have a rather large peel. You can't get away with just tossing your peel anywhere, too. Someone might slip on them. [[Special:Contributions/173.245.48.181|173.245.48.181]] 19:58, 7 January 2015 (UTC)

I can't believe nobody has stuck up for the deliciousness of by far the most underrated fruit on this chart, tomatoes. [[Special:Contributions/141.101.105.24|141.101.105.24]] 03:05, 2 February 2018 (UTC)
:the sugarfree dwarf watermelon? [[User:Lysdexia|Lysdexia]] ([[User talk:Lysdexia|talk]]) 06:35, 5 January 2019 (UTC)

; Guess, what?

Coconuts: x=-Little Bigeddon%, y=-Little Bigeddon%. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.93.69|162.158.93.69]] 07:46, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Conclusion: Randall has terrible taste, in fruit. — [[User:Kazvorpal|Kazvorpal]] ([[User talk:Kazvorpal|talk]]) 07:56, 10 November 2019 (UTC)
:Agreed.
:[[User:ProphetZarquon|ProphetZarquon]] ([[User talk:ProphetZarquon|talk]]) 22:01, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

A fair few people here don't seem to get that the entire tasty/untasty is opinion based. [[User:Beanie|Beanie]] ([[User talk:Beanie|talk]]) 11:58, 23 March 2021 (UTC)

In my opinion, the best fruits are oranges and mangos, but peaches are a close second[[User:I HAVE NO NAME|I HAVE NO NAME]] ([[User talk:I HAVE NO NAME|talk]]) 11:23, 20 August 2024 (UTC)
:...surely, given this opinion, peaches would have to be a close ''third''... ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.121|172.69.195.121]] 19:43, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

People who think oranges are bad have never eaten a chilled one in the shower. [[User:Willintendo|Willintendo]] ([[User talk:Willintendo|talk]]) 14:35, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Talk:2928: Software Testing Day

2024-05-12T14:12:37Z

172.69.195.121: ...pseudocode altered to theoretically being able to be run under either 0..11 or 1..12 monthvalue ranges (yes, still assuming we're not using a 0..daysInMonth-1 'day in month' range offset... but that'd be rarer and simple to refactor only as required).

What holiday are they referring to? In the UK we will have a long weekend due to the Early May Bank Holiday. But May Day isn't a "thing" in the USA, is it? Or should we just assume this is set in Britain? [[User:Zeimusu|Zeimusu]] ([[User talk:Zeimusu|talk]]) 13:45, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
:Well, that's refering to the official STD(!) set to be on January 0th (+24hr+12hr), so I don't think it's a topical scene.
:It looks like our Leftpondian friends have official ''nationwide'' 'holidays' on: New Year's Day (1/Jan), Martin Luther King, Jr, Day. (3rd Monday in January), Inauguration Day (20/Jan, every 4 years), Presidents Day (3rd Monday in February), Memorial Day (last Monday in May), Juneteenth (19/Jun), Independence Day (4/Jul), Labor Day (1st Monday in September), Columbus Day (2nd Monday in October), Veterans Day (11/Nov), Thanksgiving Day (4th Thursday in November), Christmas Day (25/Dec). And then there'll be additional state/more local days, no doubt. (And, because of labo(u)r laws, or insufficient ones, I'm given to believe that might be more of an inconvenience/inapplicability to quite a lot of workers.)
:But this seems to be a highly specific 'QA'/software-testers' tradition, either within a particular company or across ''all'' such professionals. At least within the xkcd universe, which might have all kinds of other strangenesses to it that we're only seeing the vaguest outline of through these comics. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.188|172.71.242.188]] 17:37, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
:"May Day isn't a ''thing'' in the USA, is it?" -- Personal holiday. At my house (Maine USA) a maypole is customary (if snow allows). When I was very young (1950s California) we celebrated in kindergarten, but I think religious bigots cancelled that. --[[User:PRR|PRR]] ([[User talk:PRR|talk]]) 19:55, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
:Could be talking about Cinco de Mayo, a Mexican holiday that a lot of Americans also celebrate. The same day (May 5) is also Cartoonist Day -- as a cartoonist himself, this could be Randall's way of celebrating it. [[User:N0lqu|-boB]] ([[User talk:N0lqu|talk]]) 14:49, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I exapnded the "hours on/after midnight" section a bit. Nearly put down that the 'official' day at times used to start at 6:00AM (or dawn, depending upon whether some form of consistent timekeeping or just practical astronomical cycles dominated), so that the post-midnight activities of people (very unusual, for most, but would include liturgical ceremonies) also belonged to the prior daylight cycle. And that "noon" was the "ninth hour" of the day (~3PM, give or take), before clock changes and civil practice moved it to midday. - But this really is beyond the scope of the above explanation, so mentioning it here instead. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.38.91|162.158.38.91]] 18:09, 4 May 2024 (UTC)
:I work in public transport, where we use times up to 32:00 but ignore daylight saving time on the night it switches (so on that night, 30:00 might be 5am or 7am in the sunday morning). Also, we have different notations for time as a specific point in the day (7:10) or as a duration (7h10). [[User:IIVQ|IIVQ]] ([[User talk:IIVQ|talk]]) 06:47, 5 May 2024 (UTC)

I'll just leave this here :) https://gist.github.com/timvisee/fcda9bbdff88d45cc9061606b4b923ca [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 07:28, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Some years ago there were gigs at the local [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB--qzE4JhE indie disco] which started after midnight (because, due to licensing rules, opening doors before midnight would imply extra costs, since it would count as an extra working day). When posting about those gigs I would write something like "1:00 in the night from Friday to Saturday", so as to not be ambiguous. [[User:Rps|Rps]] ([[User talk:Rps|talk]]) 13:09, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

I understood this in a wholly different way.... I thought that since many companies are doing server maintenance + possibly software testing on days where not many people are working, this refers to Cueball (as a software engineer) bitterly commenting about not having a day off when everybody else has.--[[Special:Contributions/162.158.111.177|162.158.111.177]] 06:57, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
: At least for the "software testing" part this is in general not true. Most companies have dedicated test systems, which are, in an ideal world, even separate from the development systems. This is, for example, the default system landscape that SAP recommends for their users (and ofc SAP itself). https://help.sap.com/docs/SOFTWARE_LOGISTICS_TOOLSET_CTS_PLUG-IN/05c12df5b54849c49940a14bc089d8b4/63a30a4ac00811d2851c0000e8a57770.html?locale=en-US [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 07:22, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
: I rather read it as "testing the test system". The meta-test of whether a particularly extreme test would not just fail the test but cause the testing system to failover badly. To this end, ''nothing but the accumulatively bad testing'' can be run (upon the test system), everything else is put on hold (because regular testing added to the test-testing would confound the matter, and be useless anyway if the test-tests made the thing fold under the pressure first) and this forces the testers to keep their hands off everything for the duration (the 'day' given the test value of 0th January, and the rest), much as per the [[Compiling]] down-time.
: If the meta-test goes wrong (causes the meta-testing to fail, or perhaps does not fail 'correctly' at the non-meta test level) then the human testers no longer have their time off and are called back in for their mini-holiday (or no longer allowed to leave, if the failure happens during pre-test-test testing).
: For the crashing of the "recordkeeping system", as per title-text, this could be anything from deliberately "give a test we know crashes the (non-meta) system" by the testers to the non-tester recordkeepers not trusting the testers (and test-testers) and so trying to use the test-test data themselves upon a system of their own that is definitely not test-test-proof because they hadn't had asked for (test-)tester validation of it. (I've been part of a Change Control processing group where we've been made aware of a sub-group that has been reconfiguring its own little corner of the system without due reference to company policy, perhaps due to office politics and "it's nothing to do with them", etc.)
: But I'm not sure it's quite as simple as that. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.43.183|172.69.43.183]] 09:28, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Changed away from the description of the javascript being "abused" by non-standard values. It may be a valid shortcut to just add a relevent ('over the top') value to <code>dayOfMonth</code> or <code>hourOfDay</code> variables, or even subtract and let the inbuilt algorithm resolve the oddness (with some testing, or documented confirmation, that it does the right thing).
 If the core function isn't actually broken/fooled/exceptioned by out-of-normal-range inputs, it allows "this exact same time next week" without having to additionally do your own <code>this.day=this.day+7; if this.day>daysInMonth(this.month) { this.day=this.day-daysInMonth(this.month); this.month++; if this.month>valueDecember { this.month=valueJanuary; this.year++ } }</code> and hope you've not missed off any exception in your reinvention of the same wheel that the date-handling code has probably already covered. In ''at least'' as much detail as you just did, prior to feeding it with your 'presanitised' variables, but if you know you need to maybe add <code>,this.Year</code> to the <code>daysInMonth(...)</code> param, to cover leapyear differences then you already know to test the inbuilt function with an edge-condition to make sure ''it'' knows (before then looking to maybe fudge any adjusting code of your own to undo any inbuilt errors that you see).
 And if it's already good enough to deal with everything necessary, with or without additional functionality-refinements, then it's just a bonus that you can actually supply a dateTime adjusted by subtracting some relevent <code>secondsInSiderealYear</code> from the current <code>observationTime.seconds</code> to give a different retrospective timestamp to if you had taken off <code>secondsInTropicalYear</code> instead (having tested that it does the right thing for your purposes when it leaps back from Gregorian into Julian calendars, if this is deemed relevent). Neater code, for which simple comments/documentation can reveal the pre-testing done that justifies it. You could even put that in validating initialiser that fails-over (or sets up an appropriate autocorrection flag) when it finds your script is being run with library versions of the functions (or within a set of ENV settings) that are wrong... Of course, it may take a bugrep from an end-user to ''know'' where it goes wrong, but if you're serious enough to reimplement the whole shebang manually with absolutely ''every'' possible issue of contention 'correctly' pre-handled, then you are also capable of saving yourself the effort and just validating whether the function calls were pre-pre-handling this already. You can be control-freaky in different ways (non-delegating or delegating-but-checking), much as you can let process errors slip through in different ways (significantly err yourself or miss significant errors already made by others).
 Horses for courses, of course! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.172|172.70.90.172]] 13:59, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

2929: Good and Bad Ideas

2024-05-07T10:45:00Z

172.69.195.121: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2929
| date = May 6, 2024
| title = Good and Bad Ideas
| image = good_and_bad_ideas_2x.png
| imagesize = 595x522px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = While it seemed like a fun prank at the time, I realize my prank fire extinguishers full of leaded gasoline were a mistake.
}}

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

This is a scatter plot comparing how good an idea sounds to how good the idea actually is. For example, leaded gasoline sounds like a good idea due to the anti-knocking effects, but is actually a bad idea due to lead toxicity. Fake prank fire extinguishers however sound bad and are bad as they can result in a dangerous situation in an emergency. Putting mold on infections sounds like a bad idea, but this could be referring to Penicillin, an antibiotic.

The title text combines leaded gasoline and a fake prank fire extinguisher into something that is worse than either. Not only is the fire extinguisher fake, it also releases flammable material onto the fire, and there is the additional lead toxicity.

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Idea !! What it means !! How good it sounds !! How good it actually is !! Explanation
|-
|Leaded Gasoline||Adding tetraethyl lead to gasoline to increase performance||++||---||Leaded gasoline was introduced in the early 1920s to greatly increase fuel efficientcy and engine performance. Lead, however, is toxic. Burning the leaded gasoline in an engine releases the lead in the air. This is bad, and was known to be bad at the time, which is why there was an extensive PR campaign by oil companies to prove the alleged safety of the new product, which broadly speaking succeeded up until the 1970s.
|-
|Bloodletting||Releasing "bad blood" from the veins||---||---||You need your blood.{{Citation needed}} Bloodletting has been performed as a medical procedure for at least 2000 years until it was considered pseudoscience from the 19th century, when the harmful effects became known. The idea was to withdraw blood to balance the body's "humors". Nowadays phlebotomy is only used therapeutically in a small number of cases, such as hemochromatosis (too much iron in the body).
|-
|Asbestos||Mineral which does not burn and is good isolation||+++||---||Asbestos was used extensively. Sadly the microscopic fibers which make up asbestos greatly increase the risk of cancer when inhaled.
|-
|Extension cords with prongs on both ends||allows easy connection between 2 female connectors||0 (neutral)||---||Prongs on both ends would make it easier to plug the extension cord in on either side. But once plugged into an outlet, the other end becomes a serious shock hazard.
|-
|Stair Kayaking||Riding down a flight of stairs in a kayak||--||---|| Stair kayaking is a stunt where a person positions a kayak at the top of a flight of stairs and then, using their paddle to push off, rides the kayak down the stairs. This poses significant risks of injury or death, as well as being very bad for the kayak, which is designed to ride on water, not concrete.
|-
|Fake prank fire extinguishers||||---||---|| The idea of placing fake fire extinguishers as a prank, presumably so that a person who thinks they are grabbing a real fire extinguisher will instead find a decoy, sounds very dangerous and potentially life-threatening for many people, and it would, in fact, be highly dangerous. In the United States, (and presumably most countries), this would also be a felony in most, if not all, jurisdictions. An example of a similar situation, although not intended as a prank, can be found here[https://twitter.com/ThatSamWinkler/status/1657154071051239424]
The title text expands this idea by having the prank fire extinguishers filled with (leaded) gasoline. This is literally adding fuel to the fire.
|-
|Always saying what you think||...regardless of the feelings of others or other considerations||++||--||They may reply without concern for ''your'' feelings or other considerations. Openness and honesty are seen as positive character traits in people, however taken to the extreme of ''always'' telling people what you think about them, can lead to awkward or unpleasant situations. Keeping negative thoughts to yourself or telling "white lies" can be considered a better alternative in some situations.
|-
|Replying to spammers||Clicking on the "Reply" button from spam mails and writing (and sending) a reply (or worse, clicking on the links in these mails)||--||--||
|-
|Solar cars||Having {{w|Solar panel|solar panels}} on the car's surface (mostly hood and roof) for power generation||+++||-||Cars require large amounts of energy in short periods of time and portable solar panels do not produce this, nor are they as efficient as fixed installations on the power grid.
There are competitions for solar powered cars, though, like the {{w|World Solar Challenge}}.
|-
|Heelies||{{w|Heelys}} are shoes with a inline skate wheel embedded in the sole, at the heel. ||+||-||Heelys allow the wearer (usually children) to shift between normal walking and rolling like a roller skate. This sounds like fun but has lead to numerous injuries.
|-
|Prequels||A work of fiction (mostly movie) telling the "story before the story" of another work of fiction.||+++||-||More of a good story sounds great on the surface, but the constraints of a prequel's ending needing to create the starting conditions of the original work often precludes organic development and causes contrived plots.
|-
|Transition Lenses||Photochromic lenses in glasses get darker (like sunglasses) in bright light.||+||-||Photochromic lenses are clear lenses that darken when exposed to UV light, then turn clear again when the exposure is removed. The advantage is that wearers of glasses don't need to buy separate (prescription) sunglasses. However, the process is relatively slow (about a minute) so not so useful when there is a quick succession of shade and bright light, perhaps in a forest or when driving. Also, car windscreen filter out UV light to some degree, which prevents the glasses from darkening as required. Finally, the process is temperature dependent, so in hot weather the glasses don't become as dark and in cold weather they might stay dark for too long.
|-
|Cutting pizza in squares||Cutting (a presumably round) pizza in squares||-||-||Most people cut pizza into wedges and hold it by the crust. Cutting it into squares allows for more pieces to be shared, but pieces near the center will have no crust to hold it by, getting cheese and sauce all over your fingers. There will also be lots of leftover tiny pieces. While hardly a disaster like the other items in its quadrant, square pizza pieces are just not very useful and rather inefficient. Cutting a rectangular pizza into squares might not suffer from the problems above, but, unless the pizza itself is square and cut only inot four squares, some people will end up with a higher crust-to-topping ratio than others.
|-
|{{w|Project Orion (nuclear propulsion)|Project Orion}}||Study by the U.S. government looking into nuclear pulse propulsion for spacecraft.||---||-||Using repeated nuclear explosions to generate motion sounds bad for both the spacecraft and everything else, especially with a ground launch, but there are ways to address a lot of the concerns, so it isn't as bad as it sounds. Project Orion's theorized specific impulse and thrust would also be far higher than anything chemical rockets can accomplish. The efficiency of Project Orion is extremely low, however.
|-
|Soup||Soup||0 (neutral)||0 (neutral)||Soup is probably one of the oldest foods created by prehistoric cooks. Most people enjoy it, though many soups are considered somewhat lacking as a meal on their own, or bland.
|-
|Combo washer dryers||A device which combines washing machine and laundry dryer into one device||+++||+||Better at space efficiency, but worse at each task than separate devices.
|-
|Cutting sandwiches diagonally||Cutting sandwiches diagonally||+||+||Generally regarded{{Actual citation needed}} as the structurally superior way to slice a sandwich, providing better support in the hand and fewer all-crust bites. Required in the assembly of a club sandwich, where the diagonal components are stacked again.
|-
|{{w|Diverging diamond interchange|Diverging diamond interchanges}}||Road junction where the two road direction cross over to switch sides (so if you normally drive on the right, now you drive on the left) then switch back to normal after the junction||-||+||Highway engineers believe the shape improves safety and traffic flow through the interchange because switching to the other side facilitates merging to and from the other road in the junction. However the shape appears to be insanity to an unfamiliar driver.
|-
|Toasting sandwiches||Making a sandwich first and then cooking it, as in a dedicated {{w|Pie_iron|sandwich toaster}}, a {{w|toaster oven|toaster oven}} or frying pan, or under a grill.||++||++||The grilled cheese sandwich is a familiar form to most people, and many other sandwiches are improved by toasting as a final step. Others, such as the {{w|western sandwich|Western}} or {{w|club sandwich|club}} are prepared using toast. The {{w|peanut butter, banana and bacon sandwich|Elvis}} is a specific case of a sandwich that normally wouldn't be toasted, but is improved by it - peanut butter, bacon, banana, and jelly, with the assembly lightly fried.
|-
|Crumple zones||Designated areas of a car that crumple in case of a crash... ||--||++||...to absorb the energy of the crash to prevent damage to the passengers
|-
|Sliced bread||Bread, sliced by the baker before packaging for sale||+++||++||It's far more convenient for making sandwiches or toast, but unfortunately pr-esliced bread will go stale faster and some applications may be better off thicker or thinner than the slices provided. Sliced bread is often used as a comparator for how good something is in the phrase 'the best thing since sliced bread'.
|-
|Pizza||Flat, though usually leavened, bread with tomato sauce, cheese, and often vegetables or preserved meats||++||++ꟶ||Pizza is a widely popular dish throughout much of the world, uncontroversial {{w|Anchovies_as_food|except}} {{w|Pineapple|certain}} [https://www.taste.com.au/recipes/nutty-choc-pizza-fresh-berries/2c0220a4-8463-45ff-b2ba-ac7e5012a006 toppings].
|-
|Eating citrus fruit while at sea||||0 (neutral)||+++||The vitamin C present in citrus fruits prevents one from contracting {{w|Scurvy|scurvy}}.
|-
|Putting mold on infections||Seemingly a reference to ancient practice of pressing moldy bread against infected wounds||---||++||While this sounds like a good way to get a fungal infection, with the correct mold this is a primitive antibiotic, and led to the discovery of penicillin.
|-
|Wheels on luggage||Some luggage bags have small wheels inset on their frame and a carrying handle.||+++||+++||A relatively simple fitting for rigid or semi-rigid luggage that substantially eases its transport through air and seaport terminals.
|-
|Heat pumps||Refrigeration (or air conditioning) technology operated in reverse to heat an area instead.||++||+++||Because refrigeration is a very efficient way to move heat (as long as the cold side's temperature is high enough) this is often far more energetically efficient than directly heating a space. Reversible heat pumps also exist which can take care of both temperature needs in some climates.
|-
|Laser eye surgery||Surgical techniques using lasers for precision cutting in the eyeball.||-||+++||This technology has substantially improved the eyesight of millions of people worldwide by allowing treatment of eye problems otherwise only corrected by lenses, or entirely untreatable. Randall has previously commented on laser eye surgery, amongst other ideas both good and bad, in [[1681: Laser Products]].
|-
|Fecal transplants||Transfer of gut microbiome of healthy person to sterilised gut of ill person.||---||+++||The gut microbiome is a collection of bacteria that lives in our guts. It can influence our health. It is responsible for last stages of digesting our food. It can also produce neurotransmitters that are carried by blood to our brain influencing our behaviour. A healthy microbiome can be destroyed by bad eating habits, unhealthy lifestyle, infections or antibiotics. The important part is a composition of different species of bacteria that compromise the biome. Sometimes it may be necessary to completely sterilise the gut and then take a sample of a healthy biome from another person. A sample is enough as the bacteria will multiply. As long as the patient eats correctly, the microbiome after transplant should develop correctly.

It sounds bad because we tend to think of our feces as something gross, to be discarded. It is called fecal transplant as our feces contain about 50% of gut bacteria, but nowadays the sample usually takes the form of a coated pill that is applied rectally.
|-
|}

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

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Charts]]

2922: Pub Trivia

2024-04-19T14:12:58Z

172.69.195.121: /* Explanation */

{{comic
| number = 2922
| date = April 19, 2024
| title = Pub Trivia
| image = pub_trivia_2x.png
| imagesize = 422x666px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Bonus question: Where is London located? (a) The British Isles (b) Great Britain and Northern Ireland (c) The UK (d) Europe (or 'the EU') (e) Greater London
}}

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

The comic shows Cueball reading off bad trivia questions which are either confusing or don't have an answer.
The caption states that this is because he was paid to sabotage other bars that offer trivia so that people will want to go to the one that hired him.

1. Which member of BTS has a birthday this year?

BTS is a K-Pop group. Every member would have a birthday in 1 year.

2. How many sides does a platonic solid have?

4, 6, 8, 12, or 20 in Euclidean 3-space

3. What is the smallest lake in the world?

Unknowable as there are many small bodies of water in the world, and determining which is the smallest while still being large enough to count as a lake is a complicated question.

4. Which Steven Spielberg movie features more shark attacks? Jaws (1875) or Lincoln (2012)

Jaws, as Lincoln has a surprising lack of shark attacks.

5. How many planets were there originally?

Question lacks context, since it doesn't define what originally means, and there is no way to know when humans first found out that the wandering stars were actually other worlds, or that Earth is a planet.

6. What NFL player has scored the most points outside of a game?

As points are not usually scored outside of games, this is a nonsense question.

7. The Wright brothers built the first airplane. Who built the last one?

Since airplanes are built continuously, there is no way to know who built the last one.

8. Is every even number greater than2 the sum of two primes?

This is [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldbach%27s_conjecture an open question in math].

9. Not counting Canberra, what city is the capitol of Australia?

Nonsense question, since each country only has one capitol (citation needed)

10. Who played the drums?

Lots of people, needs context.

The alt-text bonus question:

Bonus question: Where is London located? (a) The British Isles (b) Great Britain and Northern Ireland (c) The UK (d) Europe (or 'the EU') (e) Greater London

All choices are technically correct as they are all names for the same geographical area.

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

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:2919: Sitting in a Tree

2024-04-13T11:42:53Z

172.69.195.121:

Meh, they're just dropping burning pine cones on the wargs. [[User:BunsenH|BunsenH]] ([[User talk:BunsenH|talk]]) 04:06, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

I hope I did this right, seeing as this was my first ever edit! [[User:Name of User|Name of User]] ([[User talk:Name of User|talk]]) 04:15, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Did Randall mean e-filing as in submitting your tax return on the web, and how is that more alarming than ironing sitting on a branch? Or is there some other meaning to efiling? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.243.77|172.68.243.77]] 06:46, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
:Could be that they're sitting in a ''data tree'', selectively traversing it to find [[2918: Tick Marks|a fraudulent subset of transactional records]] to 'declare'... [[Special:Contributions/141.101.99.74|141.101.99.74]] 10:18, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

So, "whaling" can mean hitting (usually in the form "whaling on"), but "whaling" also means spending a lot of money, such as when gambling or in a video game. {{unsigned ip|172.71.222.210|11:05, 13 April 2024}}
:Personally, I just automatically thought they would be ''actually'' hunting marine mammals![[[731: Desert Island|''cetacean]] [[1402: Harpoons|needed'']]] [[Special:Contributions/172.69.194.204|172.69.194.204]] 11:30, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Do "perish/carriage" actually rhyme in (perhaps) the Bostonian accent? I'm drawn back to the state of the Edmund Fitzgerald lyrical rhyming scheme. It might work better using something like "pillage/carriage", with ''only'' the vowel-problem. At which point I could imagine it sort of working in a (bad) Kiwi or Africaans 'iccint'. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.195.121|172.69.195.121]] 11:42, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

Five-Minute Comics: Part 4

2023-12-14T20:17:28Z

172.69.195.121: Undo revision 330789 by 172.71.242.130 (talk) More a tone of a Talk comment than for an Explanation.

{{comic
| date = 
| title = Five-Minute Comics: Part 4
| image = five minute comics part 4.png
| ldomain = imgs
| lappend = comics/five_minute_comics_part_4.png
| extra = yes
}}

* This comic was accidentally [https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/five_minute_comics_part_4.png posted on imgs.xkcd.com] by the website management in place of [[940: Oversight]].

==Explanation==
[[File:five_minute_comics_part_4_message.png|frame|alt=Transcript: Sorry! Minor glitch in the universe. Nothing to see here. Move along! -- Management||The [http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/five_minute_comics_part_4.png original image link] now shows this image instead of the comic.]]

This is a "five-minute comic" by Randall that was released by mistake by the management of the xkcd website on August 19, 2011, and was quickly replaced by the correct comic, [[940: Oversight]]. Interestingly, the last comic is an early version of [[942: Juggling]], which was published less than a week after this comic. The comic has [[:Category:No date|no official release day]].

Randall had originally posted three of these five minutes comics during one week in November 2010 almost a year before this one was released by mistake. Here is thus a complete list of all four comics in the entire [[:Category:Five-minute comics|Five-minute comics]] series:
*[[819: Five-Minute Comics: Part 1]]
*[[820: Five-Minute Comics: Part 2]]
*[[821: Five-Minute Comics: Part 3]]
*[[Five-Minute Comics: Part 4]]

Here is a list with explanations for each of the small comics:
# The first comic shows what appears to be a dramatic stand-off between two athletes. One of them appears to be holding a tennis racket (or racquet), and the other a baseball bat, which would explain the fact that no one has scored any points yet.
# ''{{w|Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?}}'' (known outside North America as ''Are You Smarter Than a 10-Year-Old?'') is a television game show where the contestant has to answer questions a school student in the fifth grade (age 10) should be able to answer, but an adult has generally long since forgotten because of the subject's little use in everyday life. The comic shows a similar show, with "smarter" replaced by "sluttier". "Slut" is a (usually) derogatory term for a sexually-promiscuous person (usually female). The contestant hopes "to God" the answer is “yes", as she either would be greatly disturbed if the fifth-grade contestants were more sexually provocative than herself or she takes pride in her sluttiness and would be dismayed at being bested by a child who is presumably not as experienced in behaving sluttily.
# The comic below puts together two phrases "{{w|Muslim call to prayer}}" and "{{w|call for papers}}". The former, known as adhan, is called out by a {{w|muezzin}} from the mosque five times a day, traditionally from the minaret (a tall spire typical for mosques, depicted in the comic), summoning Muslims for mandatory worship. The latter refers to the announcement of an academic conference, when prospective presenters are instructed how to submit their abstracts and papers. The result is a muezzin announcing a submission deadline instead of the usual religious verses.
# The comic on the right refers to ''{{w|The Wonderful Wizard of Oz}}'', where Dorothy (the little girl) is captured in a {{w|tornado}} that transports her, along with her farmhouse, into the Land of Oz. When Dorothy sees the tornado she runs into her home to find her aunt Em. However instead of being greeted by her aunt as expected, she finds a robot which either contains or has replaced her aunt, making her scream in fear. ''The Wizard of Oz'' was later referenced in [[1149: Broomstick]]. Tornadoes are a [[:Category:Tornadoes|recurring subject]] on xkcd.
# "Evolution has not prepared humans/me/us/men/women to..." is a common excuse by some people to justify their behavior by blaming it on basic instincts over which they have no control. Not pooping in other people's floor lamps is something most people are sufficiently evolved to be capable of.{{Citation needed}}
# The comic to the right shows two characters preparing for a duel. One of them activates their {{w|lightsaber}}, a weapon from the ''{{w|Star Wars}}'' franchise. The other one follows by turning on a flash-light, which superficially resembles a lightsaber in their deactivated state, but serves quite a different purpose.{{Citation needed}} [[1397: Luke]] has a similar concept.
# "Jack and Jill went up the hill / To fetch a pail of water. / Jack fell down and broke his crown, / And Jill came tumbling after." is a traditional English nursery rhyme. San Juan Hill is the site of {{w|Battle of San Juan Hill|a decisive battle of the Spanish-American War}}. The poem was later used as the title for this comic: [[1662: Jack and Jill]].
# The comic at the bottom is an early version (hand drawn) of [[942: Juggling]] which comes 2 comics after this comic was released.

==Transcript==
:;Comic #1
:[A man facing left is at home plate ready to bat for 3 panels.]
:[A man facing right is holding a tennis racket and a tennis ball.]
:[The two men stand facing each other.]
:[A scoreboard is shown:]
:HOME:00 VISITOR:00

:;Comic #2
:[Cueball is standing on a platform, holding a microphone. Megan is behind a podium, a game show contestant.] 
:Cueball: Welcome back to our show, ''Are You Sluttier Than A Fifth Grader?''
:Megan: I hope to ''God'' the answer is "yes."

:;Comic #3
:[A mosque stands at the edge of a town.]
:Voice: Submission deadline is 5:00 PM December ''THIIIIIIIIRD!''
:Caption: The Muslim call for papers

:;Comic #4
:[A little girl (Dorothy) is running away from a tornado.]
:Dorothy: Auntie Em! Auntie Em!

:[A robot, labeled "EmTron 3000".]
:EmTron 3000: YES, CHILD?

:Dorothy: AAAAAAA

:;Comic #5
:[Megan is pointing angrily towards her floor lamp, which has poop in it.]
:Megan: !!!
:Cueball: Look - the fact of the matter is that evolution has not prepared humans to handle the decision of whether or not to poop in your floor lamp.

:;Comic #6
:[A man unsheathes his lightsaber.]
:Lightsaber: Snap-''HISSS''

:[The other man turns on a flashlight.]
:Flashlight: ''click''

:;Comic #7
:[Two children walk up a hill.]
:Narration: Jack and Jill went up a hill

:[A well at the top of the hill.]
:Narration: To fetch a pail of water.

:[A man on a horse with a sword holding a flag that is mostly obscured.]
:Narration: Alas, that hill was San Juan Hill,

:[A cavalry charging. The rest of the flag is revealed and has Rough Riders written on the it.]
:Narration: And gruesome was the slaughter.
:Flag: Rough Riders

:;Comic #8
:[The panel shows a close up of Cueball reading a book. The book is called "How To Juggle" and has a picture of a person juggling on the cover.]

:[The view now shows the entirety of Cueball. A book is on the floor behind them, and he is holding some juggling balls.]

:[Cueball throws the juggling balls in the air.]

:[He lowers his arms to prepare to catch the balls. The balls are still hovering in mid-air.]

:[Cueball now stands with his arms by his sides. The balls have not moved and are still suspended in mid-air.]

:[Cueball jumps, trying to grab the lowest ball. He can't reach.]

:[Cueball scratches his head and stares at the still floating juggling balls.]

:[Cueball throws the book into a trash can.]

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Deleted comics]]
[[Category:Extra comics]]
[[Category:No date]]
[[Category:Five-minute comics| 04]]
[[Category:Comics sharing name|Five-minute comics]]
[[Category:No title text]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Megan]]
[[Category:Multiple Cueballs]]
[[Category:Sport]] 
[[Category:Star Wars]]
[[Category:Robots]]
[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]] 
[[Category:Fiction]]
[[Category:Tornadoes]]

1107: Sports Cheat Sheet

2023-12-14T16:15:26Z

172.69.195.121:

{{comic
| number = 1107
| date = September 12, 2012
| title = Sports Cheat Sheet
| image = sports_cheat_sheet.png
| titletext = I would subscribe to a Twitter feed that supplied you with one reasonable sports opinion per day, like "The Red Sox can't make the playoffs (championship games), but in last night's game their win seriously damaged the chances of the Yankees (longstanding rival team)."
}}

==Explanation==
[[Randall]] presents a "cheat sheet" which is a handy reference guide for something that is generally expected to be memorized or known by someone familiar with the knowledge domain. Cheat sheets are commonly used in mathematical applications to list important formulas or for measurement conversions; but they may also be used in other applications.

This cheat sheet allows Randall to figure out what sport other people are arguing over on the basis of the time of year and where the argument is occurring. The chart is based on the annual seasons (periods when the top professional and college leagues play) of each sport.

In the United States, the chart is divided among {{w|baseball}}, {{w|basketball}} and {{w|American football}}. Hockey is not shown, suggesting that he may not consider hockey a sport to compare with the three listed, he does not encounter arguments about hockey (of the four major professional sports leagues in North America, the {{w|NHL}} is significantly behind the others in terms of attention as its appeal is traditionally limited by geography to Canada and the northern United States), or that he perhaps does not need a chart to determine when the argument is about hockey (they may be obvious for countless reasons, including the physicality of typical hockey confrontations). Also, golf is not shown as well implying Randall may not think it's an important sport. The chart suggests that football is the most popular of the three sports, or at least more popular to argue about (of the four major professional sports leagues in North America, the {{w|NFL}} generally has the most attention).

The {{w|NFL}} football regular season generally runs from September to December with playoffs in January and early February. Overlapping this period of time, NCAA college football is also occurring, from September to December, with their bowl games in December and January. Almost all of this period, sports arguments are likely to be about football. The {{w|NBA}} basketball regular season runs from late October to mid-April with playoffs in April and into June. {{w|NCAA}} college basketball starts in November but peaks in March with the NCAA Basketball Tournament ([[1819: Sweet 16|March Madness]]). According to the chart, the arguments about basketball don't begin until the football season is over. They continue through the end of April, but start again at the end of May during the playoff finals. The {{w|MLB}} baseball regular season runs from April through September with playoffs in late September and October. When the baseball season begins, arguments shift from the ongoing basketball season to the new baseball season. As mentioned, the NBA Finals create some basketball arguments again for a few weeks. Similarly, the start of the NFL season in September makes it more likely arguments then will be about football. Baseball takes over briefly during the playoffs in October.

One of the punchlines is that outside the US, all sports arguments are about {{w|association football}} (soccer) all year round. The two types of football are noted on the chart by an icon showing the ball used in each sport. Of course, in reality, most countries have seasonal sports besides football, which may range from cricket to ice skating. However, non-American sporting events are unlikely to be brought up in the United States, and when they do it is very often association football as its active seasons are potentially long and overlapping (being played in both hemispheres and across most latitudes).

The title text continues on the theme of this chart being for someone who doesn't know anything about sports. Randall imagines a {{w|Twitter}} feed where you receive a salient sports opinion each day, presumably so that you could repeat the opinion to your friends and appear knowledgeable about sports. As the feed is for those uninformed about sports, there are clarifications of important terms in brackets.

The suggested Twitter message mentioned in the title text is accurate for the date of the comic. On September 11, 2012 the baseball team {{w|Boston Red Sox}} played the {{w|New York Yankees}} and won, 4 runs to 3. The Red Sox were already mathematically eliminated from the playoffs (meaning they needed to win more games than remained in the season to qualify). The Yankees were at the top of the standings, but were in a close race for the playoffs with the {{w|Baltimore Orioles}} (both teams had a win-loss record of 79 wins to 62 losses, with 21 games each remaining to play). To be guaranteed a spot in the playoffs, the Yankees had to win more of their remaining games than the Orioles. Losing to the Red Sox made this task harder. (For those wondering, both the Yankees and the Orioles made to the playoffs, but neither made it to the championship round, the World Series.)

Traditionally, the Red Sox and the Yankees have a {{w|Yankees–Red Sox rivalry|long-standing rivalry}}, especially among fans. Many Red Sox fans consider a loss by the Yankees nearly as good as a win by the Red Sox (and the Red Sox beating the Yankees the best of both worlds). If the Red Sox can't win the World Series, then at least they can help prevent the Yankees from winning it.

For those with less interest in either depicted form of 'football', there are several other {{w|Australian rules football|local}} or {{w|Rugby football|global varieties}} that could be discussed, as there are also other world-spanning sports that may provide a significantly {{w|Cricket season|seasonal or year-round}} interest for their adherents. From Randall's own perspective, however, they are perhaps unlikely to feature prominently enough in observed conversations to need mentioning in this simplified cheatsheet, or form the basis of useful 'opinion hints' along the lines of the baseball one. Other people, especially outside the US, could probably make use of significantly different versions (''possibly'' still dominated by soccer, at least in the non-local scope).

This strip is one of several in which Randall attempts to trivialize sports (see for instance [[904: Sports]], [[1480: Super Bowl]], [[1507: Metaball]] and [[1859: Sports Knowledge]]).

==Transcript==
:[A three-column table. Months are arrayed down the first column, the second and third columns show sports, with the divisions in partial months rather than lined up with the ends of months. American football and association football (i.e. soccer) are differentiated by small icons in brackets depicting the respective balls used.]

:'''Which sport are they arguing about?'''
:-My cheat sheet-

:[The second column, reproduced using approximate dates.]
:US:
:Football [ovoid ball drawn in brackets]: January 1 - February 10
:Basketball: February 10 - April 20
:Baseball: April 20 - May 25
:Basketball: May 25 - June 15
:Baseball: June 15 - August 20
:Football [ovoid]: August 20 - October 5
:Baseball: October 5 - October 20
:Football [ovoid]: October 20 - December 31

:[The third column, reproduced using approximate dates.]
:non-US:
:Football [truncated icosahedron, 20 hexagons and 12 pentagons]: January 1 - December 31

==Trivia==
The idea of a website that supplies sports talking points to non-fans was previously used in a 2008 episode of the sitcom ''{{w|The IT Crowd}}'', which might be where Randall got the idea. There, the site (Bluffball) focused on UK football, and offered the lines "Did you see that ludicrous display last night?", "What was {{w|Arsene Wenger|Wenger}} thinking sending {{w|Theo Walcott|Walcott}} on that early?" and "The trouble with {{w|Arsenal FC|Arsenal}} is they always try and walk it in."

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:American football]]
[[Category:Basketball]]
[[Category:Baseball]]
[[Category:Soccer]]
[[Category:Sport]]