explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:2831: xkcd Phone Flip

2023-09-21T11:20:58Z

172.70.162.46:

this is my first time editing, did i do well? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.202|172.70.134.202]] 21:39, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
:Decent enough, assuming you were the one giving the reference to the Z-series. But it'll be expanded, improved and reformatted a lot, I predict. I put in my own (intended) first-edit, but clearly there's you (and possibly A.N. Other) already adding their own thoughts. (Which I am counting on, rather than trying to write it all in one go all by myself... I'll wait for it to settle down and ''then'' see if there are various tweaks I'll want try on whatever form it becomes.) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.7|172.70.90.7]] 21:50, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
:The other person was me, but I think there's someone else as well reformatting and rewriting things.--[[Special:Contributions/172.68.34.38|172.68.34.38]] 23:57, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

So, what is the meaning of "flip" here? [[User:JohnHawkinson|JohnHawkinson]] ([[User talk:JohnHawkinson|talk]]) 22:07, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
:It's a reference to the Samsung Galaxy line of folding smartphones, which is marketed as 'Galaxy Z Flip' phones. While there had been double-screened smartphones in the past, Samsung was able to figure out some way to have the actual screen flex and fold in the middle so that when it's closed the primary screen is protected, but when opened up the user sees a single screen without a hinge in the middle. The current model (the 'Z Flip 5') is the sixth iteration of the device since it was originally introduced in China in 2019. [[User:RAGBRAIvet|RAGBRAIvet]] ([[User talk:RAGBRAIvet|talk]]) 22:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

:I think it's just part of the whole marketroid feeling these are supposed to have. It's part of the name and the [alleged] "marketing" department, as is typical, came up with something extremely dumb and useless. See: [https://serverfault.com/questions/117799/which-version-of-sunos SunOS vs Solaris] [[Special:Contributions/162.158.197.132|162.158.197.132]] 22:32, 20 September 2023 (UTC)

Anybody else think the main sequence battery is a fusion cell that is also the chemical flashlight and full spectrum backlight that necessitates the SPF 15 coating? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.151.83|172.71.151.83]] 22:36, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
:I'm thinking it's a reference to the Cyalume lightsticks which need to be bent, which shatters a small glass vial inside and releases a hydrogen peroxide solution into a second solution of an oxalate ester and electron-rich dye contained within the outer plastic shell. The resulting chemiluminescent reaction creates visible light. [[User:RAGBRAIvet|RAGBRAIvet]] ([[User talk:RAGBRAIvet|talk]]) 22:42, 20 September 2023 (UTC)
:I assumed main sequence refers to stellar evolution in astronomy. {{w|Main sequence}} These stars have a relatively long life, matching the description. The SPF 15 coating and full spectrum would also make sense. However I am not sure that description as a chemical flashlight would follow appropriate. The primary energy generation would be nuclear (fusion). It has been long enough since I took astronomy I don't remember all the details of how the energy is converted into light, and whether that would ultimately be considered a chemical, thermal, or nuclear process (or combination thereof). [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.152|172.69.22.152]] 00:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Arch support may also refer to the Linux distro [[Special:Contributions/162.158.110.237|162.158.110.237]] 08:42, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

I initially misread the title text as being a ''Thanos'' partnership. In which case, presumably inadvertently touching the button could wipe out half the population of the universe.[[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.77|172.71.242.77]] 10:25, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
:Can destroy mountains with one click, but not half the population [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.220|172.70.90.220]] 10:32, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

The breaking the glass might refer to “ Break glass (which draws its name from breaking the glass to pull a fire alarm) refers to a quick means for a person who does not have access privileges to certain information to gain access when necessary.”

With a chemical flashlight, I assume the free refills might actually come in handy (though it doesn't say there is a chemical flashlight and with the flip form, bending might just refer to some mechanical switch activating the flashlight - or considering the possibly stellar power source, it just removes shielding). [[User:627235|627235]] ([[User talk:627235|talk]]) 11:01, 21 September 2023 (UTC)
:At least it isn't a "chemical fleshlight". Moreover one activated by severe bending! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 11:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Had thought to note (but couldn't find a way to slip it into the Explanation) that the origami-form relies upon a square sheet, but the unfolded form seems to be (close enough to) 2:1 ratio. If it ''is'' 2:1 (give or take excess to go around the initial bend), the first step might of course be to make the screen effectively 2-ply, then worry about how to seemlessly fold ''that'' into the Fortune Teller, with convex/concave folds and the necessary compound corners. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 11:20, 21 September 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2751: March Madness

2023-03-18T15:55:42Z

172.70.162.46:

== Difficult ==

An hour, and still no explanation. Is this harder to get than usual, or is it just me?

Left top two are march [word], next two are [word] of march, bottom left section all reference Seventy-Six Trombones, which is apparently a common song for marching bands. Top right section is March of the [word], and bottom right is [word] March. [[User:NyanSequitur|NyanSequitur]] ([[User talk:NyanSequitur|talk]]) 19:15, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Well I was going to say something, but now I find myself doubting my ability to find patterns and understand references. This man is on another level. [[User:Toriski3037|Toriski3037]] ([[User talk:Toriski3037|talk]]) 19:29, 17 March 2023 (UTC)

Not confident enough to edit the actual article directly, but I can get the gist of these references:

:- March Madness (NCAA Basketball Tournament)
:- March Hare ("Mad as a march hare" being a common idiom in English, and the March Hare being a 'mad' character in Alice in Wonderland)
:- Middlemarch (novel by George Eliot)
:- Ides of March (March 15th, aka Julius Caesar Assassination Day)
:- aforementioned "Seventy-Six Trombones" references - the first three lines, followed by an impressive option later in the lyrics
::- "Seventy-six trombones led the big parade"
::- "with a hundred and ten cornets right behind"
::- "there were more than a thousand reeds springing up like weeds"
::- "there were fifty mounted cannon in the battery/ thundering, thundering, louder than before"
::- (possibly worth noting: the first version of the song ends with "the kids began to march/ and they're marching still, right today!" - it was a pain to confirm this, since the reprise of the song is much easier to find)
::- (also worth noting for the title text: the song is introduced with the character claiming that the 76 trombone parade was from the day when several historical notables, culminating in "John Philip Sousa", "all came to town on the very same historic day")
:- March of the Dimes (charity)
:- March of the Toy Soldiers (musical piece from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker)
:- March of the Ents (from Lord of the Rings)
:- March of the Penguins (documentary about emperor penguins, narrated by Morgan Freeman, also relevant to title text)
:- Wedding March (musical piece - per Wikipedia, the "here comes the bride" piece which I thought of is actually the "Bridal Chorus" from Wagner's Lohengrin; the most famous Wedding March is from Felix Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream, used more commonly at the end of weddings)
:- Funeral March (musical piece - most famous version is Chopin's)
:- Imperial March (musical piece by John Williams for Star Wars)
:- Nissan March (model of car; Nissan is also the official sponsor of March Madness)

Hopefully this will help someone look up properly cited references! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.144|172.70.134.144]] 19:53, 17 March 2023 (UTC)
:: nice work! [[User:Iggynelix|Iggynelix]] ([[User talk:Iggynelix|talk]]) 12:51, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

I hope the previous contributor doesn't mind that I tidied up their layout. I hope the ExplainXKCD Police don't object to the way I did that. :) [[Special:Contributions/172.68.210.5|172.68.210.5]] 00:46, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

March is not another word for parade. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.130.84|172.70.130.84]] 01:27, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
:It can be. I wouldn't call a Mardi Gras parade a march, but I would do an {{w|Orange Order|Orange Order}} one, for example. And the defining characteristic of a "band parade", above even a mishmash of men just shuffling along the road in a group, is (generally!) walking in lockstep (keeping the music in lockstep), so that (frivolity and syncopation aside) it is as much a march as anything. I mean, I'm not the OA of that phrase linking the sense, but there's clear overlap that cannot be denied as intended. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.242.12|172.71.242.12]] 09:59, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

For the second bracket in the top left quadrant, "Ides" refers to "Ides of March", which implies the structure used here is "___ of March", which means that the reference would rather be "Middle of March" (rather than Middlemarch), which is used in crossword puzzle as a clue for the word "arc". [[Special:Contributions/172.71.178.186|172.71.178.186]] 12:23, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

:Since the "Ides of March" and "Middle of March" are almost the same, this bracket will settle that question. I do not see any relationship between "Ides of March" and the novel "Middlemarch." Therefore, I agree with "Middle of March" over "Middlemarch" for the explanation. [[User:TCMits|TCMits]] ([[User talk:TCMits|talk]]) 14:46, 18 March 2023 (UTC)
::Why does there need to be any kind of relationship between Ides (Of) March and Middlemarch, other than the "March" bit? And "Middle Of March" is weirdly generic/obscure for a humourous reference, anyway. If you ask me, Randall just missed a trick to put "Ides Of" in that spot, for the sake of pedants. Or deliberately didn't as a pedant-snipe, perhaps. I'll live with Middlemarch as a good enough basis for what is written, because it's perfectly in keeping with other bracket-oddities we've seen. IMHO, HTH, HAND, TTFN. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 15:55, 18 March 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2744: Fanservice

2023-03-02T13:43:35Z

172.70.162.46:

I don’t want to be that guy but “I got to the explanation so early that its only 1 sentence!” [[Special:Contributions/172.70.174.43|172.70.174.43]]
:I also don't want to be that other guy, but while I was composing my "there wasn't anything yet, let's put something there" text, something actually appeared. (Though it just appended my bit, didn't give me Edit Conflict warning.) I'll let someone else mish-mash the useful bits of both fresh-starts together, though. Might be that none of my contribution is worthwhile.
:(I took quite a while trying to decide whether to make a joke that if he was a ''specialist'' in air-movement devices, without necessarily branching out into any air-conditioning elements, then ''<something something, insert some useful words here>'' OnlyFans! So then I obviously eventually decided it wasn't worth it. ;) ) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.100|172.70.90.100]] 16:47, 1 March 2023 (UTC)

;New recurring subject?
First we had [[2036: Edgelord]]. Then we had [[2654: Chemtrails]]. Now we have this comic. They all start with "So, I hear" and end with "How to annoy". So I think that
a new recurring subject has been established. I'm thinking it should be called something like "How To Annoy Comics". [[User:SilverTheTerribleMathematician|Silver]] ([[User talk:SilverTheTerribleMathematician|talk]]) 16:40, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
:Might be best wait for a third one, or more. A category of two is a bit of a stretch. Someone pointed out the prior one, so should be easier to pick up all three+ examples when it becomes a more definite 'thing'.
:And if we were to call it "How to annoy" (say) and then the actual third is very similar but actually ends "How to confuse" then the category is already non-descriptive. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 16:55, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
::There are 3 aren’t there? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.38.150|172.70.38.150]] 17:40, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
:::There were two originally (I'd forgotten the chemtrails one, myself, when first thinking of this) and, yes, there's now three identified "So I hear/How to annoy"s. Might have crossed the threshold. But leaving that decision to someone who can do something about it. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.90.253|172.70.90.253]] 18:12, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
:Agreed. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.38.77|172.70.38.77]] 18:46, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
::I also agreed and could see that there where already 6 comics about how to Annoy. So I think the [[:Category:How to annoy]] is well named, and should also include those other comics that are not completely similar to this one. And thus I have created the page and made some description. Also this is similar to other categories like My Bobby, fun facts and protip. So I linked to them from the new category and vise versa. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:26, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
:::Thanks. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.42.157|172.70.42.157]] 13:29, 2 March 2023 (UTC)
:::Made some rephrasings in the Category (you may have already noticed). I'm also not sure if there should necessary be any "and at this point, we created the category" spiel in describing the category. It seems a bit
:::My ideal way of "explaining the category" would be that the three (or more, given Fan Service is almost exactly the same Cueball vs Annoyed, but with others involved) of the most common form could be listed (chronologically) as being one person saying something that annoys another. If we can be sure it will be promptly updated if/when further core-archetype examples appear (the list of membership is automatic, of course).
:::Then others (currently Normal + Spiral) ''could'' be listed explicitly, if they start to hold similar forms (mathematical plots?), or the fact that there are also other forms is sufficient note. (But this could lead to effectively listing everything twice. Narratively then the auto-list. Breaking out into sub-cats would be better if that got too crazy.)
:::Ditto with other Categories that have a "And then we realised that..." sort of form. Nicely expounded, often very well written, but I'm not sure it has the right tone. IMO, YMMV. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 13:43, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Should the connection to [[2036: Edgelord]] be at the start of the explanation? --[[User:Purah126|Purah126]] ([[User talk:Purah126|talk]]) 19:05, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
:Yes. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 09:26, 2 March 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2744: Fanservice

2023-03-01T16:55:38Z

172.70.162.46: Typo corrections, while commenting anew.

Talk:2742: Island Storage

2023-02-26T19:56:57Z

172.70.162.46:

Hey at least New Zealand made it onto this map! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.178.48|172.70.178.48]] 17:46, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Of course the proper storage mode involves packing the continents back to Gondwada layout and then hiding them on the far side ;-) [[User:RIIW - Ponder it|RIIW - Ponder it]] ([[User talk:RIIW - Ponder it|talk]]) 18:59, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

It seems worth noting that the scale was distorted to make some islands fit. Greenland has a longitudinal height of 2671 km, but has been shrunken considerably in order to be wedged into a 1725 km gap in the Gulf of Mexico. [[User:Altay|Altay]] ([[User talk:Altay|talk]]) 19:58, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
:I thought it was the size of Africa. ---[[User:Theunlucky|Theunlucky]] ([[User talk:Theunlucky|talk]]) 20:35, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
:Maybe he started with a cursed projection that makes Greenland smaller. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 20:35, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

Seeing the ?? next to the British Isles, I think part of the islands there are the Danish islands squeezed aside to make space. (Okney Islans, Fair Isle, Shetland, Hebrides, Føroyar, etc. are probaly used to fill the gaps...) [[Special:Contributions/162.158.95.82|162.158.95.82]] 20:54, 24 February 2023 (UTC)
:Those are all pretty small. I think it's more likely Svalbard/Spitsbergen. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.131.181|172.70.131.181]] 02:09, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
::There's quite a lot of Nowegian islands, some of which are fairly large. --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.184|172.69.79.184]] 07:37, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Where do we mention the typo in the title text? (Should be "Scandinavian".) --[[User:Flicky|Flicky]] ([[User talk:Flicky|talk]]) 12:30, 25 February 2023 (UTC)
:I'll see what I think works. If all else fails, I could add a Trivia section (as I'm going to add an auxilliary reference), but maybe I don't need to... [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.128|172.70.86.128]] 13:15, 25 February 2023 (UTC) EDIT: Edit done. But some further tweaks planned, if no-one else improves/revises it before I get there.

I think the additional island nudged into Scandinavia with Britain and Ireland might be Tierra del Fuego at the bottom tip of South America? It sure looks like it. [[User:XKCDFan|XKCDFan]] ([[User talk:XKCDFan|talk]]) 13:45, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

No, I believe Tierra del Fuego has been relocated to St. Lawrence Bay.

Isn't it Sjaelland, turned upside down to fit, since Ireland has taken its spot? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 19:48, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

As one who'll remain furious about Brexit until the second they repeal the bastard, I look at this with misty-eyed hope. It's a Yes from me. [[User:Yorkshire Pudding|Yorkshire Pudding]] ([[User talk:Yorkshire Pudding|talk]]) 00:20, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

What's Brexit ?? [[User:I27.O.O.I|127.0.0.1]] ([[User talk:I27.O.O.I|talk]]) 02:59, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
:A few years ago BRitain voted to EXIT (hence "Brexit") the European union, to remain/return to being politically etc separate after the countries of Europe united - such as adopting the Euro as a shared currency. Brexit seems a largely unpopular concept, widely considered a bad idea with mostly downsides, even before the decision was made, so not sure how the hell it passed (I'm Canadian, an outsider to this living across the ocean, so I only know these broad strokes). [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:01, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
::<People who did not like the EU>: We don't like the EU! We demand to leave!
::<Prime Minister> I shall try to change things so we all like the EU...
::<EU> Yeah, maybe some of that, but definitely not the other stuff.
::<People...> Boo, hiss! We'll start our own political party! With blackjack and hookers!
::<Various other people who tried this before> Yeah, we'll join that. Down with the establishment! (Which some of us are part of.) We demand a vote on the issue.
::<PM> That's a worrying amount of people who should be supporting me, and may split my vote. Ok, we'll have a vote, to settle the issue (less risky than the Opposition getting in).
::<People... + Various...> Great. So, anyway, we promise; an XBox in every home; chocolate cake will stay just as delicious but not be fattening; and those people you don't like..? They're about to camp out in your roof-space, ''unless'' you vote to Leave. [...paraphrased/analogous, the real arguments being many and varied]
::<Others> That's... just wrong. And what about the good reasons to stay? If we leave then...
::<People... interupting> You're scaremongering. We will create a perfect idyll. But if we don't leave, everyone will end up being forced to all the time speak French or German or Italian or Spanish... or Arabic!
::<Others> But..?
::<People...> Stop trying to scare us! Beware the scary EU instead!
::[...much more of this... 'Leave' promises/threatens, 'Remain' warns and tries to explain how the status quo is Ok. Most traditional political parties have some people wanting to Leave, some wishing to Remain, and some people don't care about Brexit but don't like the Remain-leaning PM]
::[Vote happens]
::[Around a third of voters vote Remain, marginally more vote Leave, the rest don't vote]
::[Or, roughly a quarter each are Remain, Leave, Didn't vote and Couldn't vote.]
::<People...> An overwhelming landslide! Right, lets Brexit. How do we do that again?
::[Arguments range amongst Brexiteers between total international isolation and just trying to get marginally better deal. Those who disliked the Prime Minister are already happy, because he quit and left the next couple of PMs try to herd the Brexit cats, etc, over the next half dozen years... and continuing still with 'minor' issues such as how to circle the square which is Ireland (seeing as it involves Eire, Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain)...]
::...opinions about whether this is the true tone of the timeline will vary, but I contend that it is at least not ''wrong''. Maybe someone can update us on attitudes and recollections upon these matters in another decade? <s>Or when it finally gets completely and sorted in a mutually satisfactory manner, if that happens earlier.</s> ;) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 19:56, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Anyone else left thinking that this would severely mess up the ecology of a number of islands, particularly where species have evolved in the absence of predators found on the mainland? No? Probably just me, then.... [[User:Zoid42|Zoid42]] ([[User talk:Zoid42|talk]]) 15:21, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

== Where is Hawaii? ==

I don't see it mentioned in the list of where things were moved to. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.34.73|172.70.34.73]] 03:25, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
:Agreed, I added it to the Incomplete tag (don't want to assume). Tiny at this scale, I suspect Gulf Of Mexico? [[User:NiceGuy1|NiceGuy1]] ([[User talk:NiceGuy1|talk]]) 06:01, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Talk:2742: Island Storage

2023-02-25T19:48:34Z

172.70.162.46:

Talk:732: HDTV

2023-02-09T14:50:11Z

172.70.162.46: Strange change. If it is to be done, keep the paragraph change. (That apostrophe in "TV's" shouldn't be there, but I'd he resistant to anything other than whitespace/markup changes.) Also, I don't get the logic of this reply... ;)

But it's on a ''bigger screen''. Jokes aside, I believe TVs are more impressive because the refresh rate is higher and the TV needs more circuitry on the back-end to handle the physically larger screen and the multiple possible inputs. I may be wrong. '''[[User:Davidy22|Davidy22]]'''[[User talk:Davidy22|<tt>[talk]</tt>]] 13:25, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

The commentary about computer screen sizes needs to be dated and/or updated, as it's clearly outdated. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.212.196|108.162.212.196]] 17:17, 11 January 2014 (UTC)
: I don't think that's the case. TV's rely on standards, think of blu-ray, dvd, VHS, DVB-C (cable). A change in media format would require users to buy a new hardware, people are likely not willing to buy new equipment every two years.
: For computers it's different. The video output is generated and not played back. Computers are more flexible and if a format is not supported a simple update can fix everything. [[User:Necessaryevil|Necessaryevil]] ([[User talk:Necessaryevil|talk]]) 15:25, 13 December 2018 (UTC)

977: Map Projections

2023-01-15T17:15:39Z

172.70.162.46: /* Goode Homolosine */

{{comic
| number = 977
| date = November 14, 2011
| title = Map Projections
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = map_projections.png
| titletext = What's that? You think I don't like the Peters map because I'm uncomfortable with having my cultural assumptions challenged? Are you sure you're not... ::puts on sunglasses:: ...projecting?
}}
{{TOC}}
==Explanation==
{{w|Map projection}}, or how to represent the spherical Earth surface onto a flat support (paper, screen...) to have a usable map, is a long-time issue with very practical aspects (navigation, geographical shapes and masses visualization, etc.) as well as very scientific/mathematical ones, involving geometry or even abstract algebra among other things. There is no universal solution to this problem: Any 2D map projection will always distort in a way the spherical reality. Many projections have been proposed in various contexts, each intending to minimize distortions for specific uses (for nautical navigation, for aerial navigation, for landmass size comparisons, etc.) but having drawbacks from other points of view. Some of them are more frequently used than others in mass media and therefore more well-known than others, some are purely historical and now deprecated, some are very obscure, etc.

[[Randall]] suggests here the idea that someone's "favorite" map projection can reveal aspects of their personality, then goes through a series of them to show what they can mean.

He may actually believe that all map projections are in a way bad. This could be inferred from the fact that he much later began publishing a series of [[:Category:Bad Map Projections|Bad Map Projections]].
===Mercator===
[[File:MercatorProjection.jpg|frame|The Mercator projection]]
The {{w|Mercator projection}} was introduced by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. The main purpose of this map is to preserve compass bearings; for example 13 degrees east of north will be 13 degrees clockwise from the ray pointing toward the top of the map, at every point. A mathematical consequence is the mapping is conformal, i.e. if two roads meet at a certain angle on the surface of the Earth, they will meet at that same angle on the map. It also follows that at every point the vertical and horizontal scales are the same, so locally i.e. considering only a small part of the map, geographical features (shapes, angles) are well represented, which helps a lot in recognizing them on-the-field, or for local navigation in that small part only. For this reason, that projection (or a close variant) is used in several online mapping services (such as Google Maps), which means that it is frequently encountered by the general public. A straight line on the map corresponds to a course of constant bearing (direction), which was very useful for nautical navigation in the past (and thus made that projection very well-known).

However, from a global point of view, this projection is radically incorrect in how it shows the size of landmasses (for instance, Antarctica and Greenland seem gigantic), and furthermore, it always excludes a small region around each pole (otherwise the map would be of infinite height), so it doesn't provide a complete solution for the problem of map projection. The comic implies that people who like that projection aren't very interested with map issues, and typically use what they are offered without thinking much about it.

{{clear}}

===Van der Grinten===
[[File:VanDerGrintenProjection.jpg|frame|The Van der Grinten projection]]
The {{w|Van der Grinten projection}} is not much better than the Mercator. It was adopted by {{w|National Geographic}} in 1922 and was used until they updated to the Robinson projection in 1988.

The Van der Grinten projection is circular as opposed to the Mercator projection. The fictional person believes a circular map is more fitting to the real Earth's three-dimensional spherical nature because both are round. This belief fails to recognize that a two-dimensional circle has very little in common with the surface of a sphere, and thus this projection still causes a vast distortion of space and area. Because of this, Randall implies the Van der Grinten enthusiast to be optimistic and childishly simple-minded (e.g. "you like circles").

{{clear}}

===Robinson===
[[File:RobinsonProjection.jpg|frame|The Robinson projection]]
The {{w|Robinson projection}} was developed by {{w|Arthur H. Robinson}} as a map that was supposed to look nice and is often used for classroom maps. National Geographic switched to this projection in 1988, and used it for ten years, switching to the {{w|Winkel tripel projection|Winkel-Tripel}} in 1998.

{{w|The Beatles}} was a rock band that enjoyed great commercial success in the 1960s, and are widely considered the best act ever in the genre of popular music. The Beatles, coffee, and running shoes are all things that are very commonly enjoyed and largely uncontroversial, as well as being comforting. Liking these specific things suggests an ordinary, easygoing lifestyle paralleled by the projection.

{{clear}}

===Dymaxion===
[[File:DymaxionProjection.jpg|frame|The Dymaxion projection]]
Also called the Fuller Map, the {{w|Dymaxion map}} takes a sphere and projects it onto an icosahedron, that is a polyhedron with 20 triangular faces. It is far easier to unwrap an icosahedron than it is to unwrap a sphere into a 2D object and has very little skewing of the poles. {{w|Buckminster Fuller}} was an eccentric futurist who believed, for example, that world maps should allow no conception of "up" or "down". He was therefore more than happy to defy people's expectations about maps in the pursuit of mathematical accuracy.

Randall associates the projection to geek subculture and niche markets:
*{{w|Isaac Asimov}} was an American science-fiction writer, who (as well as publishing many textbooks) is considered the father of the modern concept of robots. He invented the {{w|Three Laws of Robotics}}. He also worked on more than 500 books throughout his career.
*{{w|XML}} is the eXtensible Markup Language. It is used to represent data in a format that machines can read and understand, as well as being human-readable. In practice, XML is cumbersome to read.
*{{w|Vibram FiveFingers|Toed shoes}} are a [[1065: Shoes|favorite]] of Randall's to pick on. In society they are seen as a {{w|geek}} clothing item.
*Brought to the world by {{w|Dean Kamen}}, the {{w|Segway PT}} was supposed to be a device that changed the way cities were built. In reality, most jurisdictions have put in place rules specifically against Segways, making them a frustration to own and use within the law (in some states in Australia, it is illegal to use them on public footpaths or roads). Also, the former owner of {{w|Segway Inc.}}, the late {{w|Jimi Heselden}}, accidentally rode his Segway off a cliff in 2010. Ninebot, then owner of the Segway brand, announced in 2020 that the flagship 2-wheeled self-balancing vehicle would be discontinued.
*At the time of comic release, 3D goggles, nowadays widely known as {{w|Virtual reality headset|VR headsets}}, were considered a gimmick at best. The original idea is as old as 3D graphics, but it never really took off until mid-2010s. Earlier products were very unwieldy and offered poor graphics quality, so no one took this technology seriously.
*{{w|Dvorak Simplified Keyboard|Dvorak}} is an alternate keyboard layout to {{w|QWERTY}}. According to legend, QWERTY was invented to help keep manual typewriters from jamming (by placing the most used keys far from each other) but Dr. {{w|August Dvorak}} performed many studies and found the mathematically optimal keyboard layout to reduce finger travel for right handed typists. While some claim Dvorak is technically better than QWERTY, QWERTY had become the standard. Most keyboards were laid out in QWERTY format, but a lot of software exists to remap the keys to DVORAK for those interested in typing faster. Retraining the brain to use Dvorak takes perhaps a week. It has become a [[:Category:Dvorak|recurrent theme]] on xkcd.

{{clear}}

===Winkel-Tripel===
[[File:Winkel-TripelProjection.jpg|frame|The Winkel Tripel projection]]
Proposed by Oswald Winkel in 1921, the {{w|Winkel tripel projection}} tried to reduce a set of three (German: Tripel) main problems with map projections: area, direction, and distance. The {{w|Kavrayskiy VII projection|Kavrayskiy projection}} is very similar to the Winkel Tripel and was used by the USSR, but very few in the Western world know of it.

The comic links this projection to {{w|hipster}} subculture. The hipster stereotype is to avoid conforming to mainstream fashions. "Post-" refers to a variety of musical genres such as {{w|post-punk}}, {{w|post-grunge}}, {{w|post-minimalism}}, {{w|post-rock}}, etc. that branch off of other genres, and are generally considered less accessible than the genres that spawned them. Liking a genre just called "post-" implies that the listener prefers music that is less mainstream, and may have that as the only criterion for listening.

;Trivia
*In German "Winkel-Tripel-Projektion" means Winkel's triple projection, and therefore the hyphen shouldn't be there: "Winkel Tripel" or "Winkel tripel".
*This projection was later used in [[2242: Ground vs Air]].
{{clear}}

===Goode Homolosine===
[[File:GoodeHomolosineProjection.jpg|frame|The Goode Homolosine projection]]
The {{w|Goode homolosine projection}} takes a different approach to skewing a sphere into a roughly circular surface. An orange peel can be taken from an orange and flattened with fair success; this is roughly the procedure that {{w|John Paule Goode}} followed in creating this projection. Randall is suggesting that people who like this map also prefer relatively easy solutions to other things in life, despite those solutions having nuanced problems that are more difficult to address.

People often make arguments that if normal people ran the United States, then the US wouldn't be in the trouble it is. This is from the belief that career politicians are simply out to make money and will only act in the interest of their constituency when their continued easy life is threatened (usually around election time). While some form of this view is very common and probably pretty much correct, Randall is saying that someone who likes this map may take this to extremes.

Airline food is another, much maligned, problem. How do you store enough food to feed people on long airplane trips? What kind of food can be served in an enclosed, low-air-pressure environment? The common solution is to use some kind of prepackaged, reheated meal. Randall is saying that the people in favor of the Goode Homolosine wonder why the airlines don't simply order meals from the restaurants in the airport, store that food, and serve it, rather than using bland reheated food. However, this seemingly-obvious solution ignores how being in an airplane dulls your sense of taste. Airplane food is actually over seasoned for eating on the ground, meaning that if airlines switched to restaurant food it would probably taste even blander. There would also be issues with acquiring special meals (for example, vegetarian, Kosher, and Halal meals), especially if suitable restaurants were not in close range to the airport.

Older cars burned oil like mad fiends, and oil back then would become corrosive to the innards of an engine, so oil had to be changed often. But, with the introduction of synthetic motor oil and better designed engines, new cars only need their oil changed about every 10,000 to 15,000 miles. A common conspiracy theory is that modern automobile oil manufacturers still recommend that car owners change their oil every 3,000-5,000 miles to "drum" up more business, even though that frequency is unnecessary.

All of these references suggest that people who like the Goode Homolosine projection are fans of simple solutions to problems. However, while the solutions appear to be an easy, common-sense solution, they all rely on over-simplifying the problem, and ignoring any problems introduced by the solution itself. For instance: the restaurants might have trouble making enough food for the whole plane, and it could get cold before being served; the air conditions [http://www.nbcnews.com/health/one-reason-airline-food-so-bad-your-own-tastebuds-6C10823522 aboard planes] can affect taste, so airlines say they optimize for this; there is no such thing as a "normal" person, and if there were, they would have less political experience than politicians, while remaining subject to the same pressures and problems with the larger political system; and the Goode Homolosine projection, while mostly resembling a flattened orange peel as suggested by the earlier analogy, does indeed cut down on distortion, but also has serious problems of its own, such as leaving huge gaps of nothingness between the continents, making distances across the oceans difficult to visualize.

{{clear}}

===Hobo–Dyer===
[[File:Hobo-DyerProjection.jpg|frame|The Hobo–Dyer projection]]
The {{w|Hobo–Dyer projection}} was commissioned by Bob Abramms and Howard Bronstein and was drafted by Mick Dyer in 2002. It is a modified {{w|Behrmann projection}}. The goal was to be a more visually pleasing version of the Gall–Peters.

As is discussed in the Gall–Peters explanation, the Gall–Peters was developed to be equal area, so that economically disadvantaged areas can at least take comfort in the fact that their country is represented correctly by area on maps.

Randall associates the Hobo–Dyer projection to "crunchy granola" — a stereotype associated with vegetarianism, environmental activism, anti-war activism, liberal political leanings, and some traces of {{w|hippie}} culture.

With feminism becoming mainstream and non-binary genders being more widely accepted, some have begun to invent gender-neutral pronouns so that when referring to a person whose gender is not known they cannot be offended by being referred to by the wrong pronouns. In {{w|Middle English}} 'they' and 'their' were {{w|Singular they|accepted genderless pronouns that could replace 'he', 'she'}} as well as be used to represent a crowd, but this usage is considered by some to be grammatically incorrect because of the plural/singular debate ([https://www.merriam-webster.com/video/the-awkward-case-of-his-or-her stupid Victorian Grammarians!]). There have been {{w|gender-neutral pronoun#Invented pronouns|many attempts at popularizing invented gender-neutral pronouns}} and they are beginning to achieve some degree of success in the mainstream.

{{clear}}

===Plate Carrée===
[[File:PlateCarreeProjection.jpg|frame|The Plate Carrée projection]]
Also known as the {{w|Equirectangular projection}}, it has apparently been in use since approximately 100 AD. The benefit of this projection is that latitude and longitude can be used as x,y coordinates. This makes it especially easy for computers to graph data on top of it.

According to the comic, the projection appeals to people who find much beauty in simplicity.

{{clear}}

===A Globe!===
[[File:GlobeProjection.jpg|frame|The Globe "projection"]]
In any good discussion there has to be at least one smart-ass.{{Citation needed}} This is a comic about map projections, that is, the science of taking a sphere and flattening it into 2 dimensions. The smart-ass believes that we shouldn't even try: a sphere is, tautologically, the perfect representation of a sphere.

To quote ''{{w|The Princess Bride}}'': "Yes, you're very smart. Shut up."

A globe is, obviously, the "map projection" used by {{w|Google Earth}} when zoomed out.

{{clear}}

===Waterman butterfly===
[[File:WatermanButterflyProjection.jpg|frame|The Waterman Butterfly projection]]
Similar to the Dymaxion, the {{w|Waterman butterfly projection}} turns a sphere into an octahedron, and then unfolds the net of the octahedron, which was devised by mathematician {{w|Waterman polyhedron|Steve Waterman}} based upon the work of {{w|Bernard J.S. Cahill}}.

Bernard Cahill published a [http://www.genekeyes.com/B.J.S._CAHILL_RESOURCE.html butterfly map] in 1909. Steve Waterman probably has the only extant "ready to go" map following the same general principles, though Gene Keys may not be far behind. Waterman has a poem with graphics in a similar vein to this xkcd comic that is worth reading.[http://web.archive.org/web/20120118095915/http://watermanpolyhedron.com/worldmap.html]

[https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/pcr.2016.48.issue-4/pcr-2016-0014/pcr-2016-0014.pdf Polyhedral projections] like Cahill, Dymaxion or Waterman typically offer better accuracy of size, shape and area than flat projections, at the expense of compass directionality, connectedness, and other complications.

The joke is that the person responding deeply understands map projections; anyone who knows of this projection is a person that Randall would like to get to know.

{{clear}}

===Peirce quincuncial===
[[File:PeirceQuincuncialProjection.jpg|frame|The Peirce Quincuncial projection]]
The {{w|Peirce quincuncial projection}} was devised by {{w|Charles Sanders Peirce}} in 1879 and uses {{w|complex analysis}} to make a {{w|conformal mapping}} of the Earth, that conforms except for four points which would make up the midpoints of sides and lie on equator (the equator is represented by a square and the corners connect the sides in the middle.)

{{w|Inception}} was a 2010 movie about {{w|meta}} {{w|lucid dream}}ing. It has a complex story that is difficult to follow and leaves the viewer with many questions at the end, and almost always needs to be watched multiple times to be understood.

The human brain is not well developed to deal with oddly obvious things. One example is that everyone has a skeleton, but everyone is surprised to see a part of their body represented by an X-ray. Another is the fascinating complexity of the human hand, a machine which is amazingly complex, driven by a complex interplay of electrical and chemical signals; yet is the size of the hand and so useful. A fascination with or fixation on {{tvtropes|ContemplatingYourHands|such thoughts}} is often associated with an altered state of mind brought on by marijuana consumption. Therefore, Randall may be implying that this map would appeal to stoners.

{{clear}}

===Gall–Peters===
[[File:Gall-PetersProjection.jpg|frame|The Gall–Peters projection]]
The {{w|Gall–Peters projection}} is mired in controversy, surprisingly for a map. {{w|James Gall}}, a 19th-century clergyman, presented this projection in 1855 before the {{w|British Association for the Advancement of Science}}. In 1967, the filmmaker {{w|Arno Peters}} created the same projection and presented it to the world as a "new invention" that put poorer, less powerful countries into their rightful proportions (as opposed to the Mercator). Peters played the marketing game and got quite a few followers of his map by saying it had "absolute angle conformality," "no extreme distortions of form," and was "totally distance-factual" in an age when society was very concerned about social justice. All of these claims were in fact false. The Mercator projection distorts size in favor of shape, and Gall-Peters distorts shape in favor of size, being especially inaccurate at the equator and the poles.

Anyone who loves such a politically charged map that has become popular by way of marketing stunts and false claims, Randall would rather not have anything to do with. Alternatively Randall just dislikes this map projection so much due to the above mentioned major inaccuracies, that he hates anyone who likes it.

{{clear}}

===Title text===
The title text makes a joke that goes to the familiar meme from ''{{w|CSI: Miami}}'', in which the star, David Caruso starts a sentence, then puts on his sunglasses and ends the sentence with a corny pun. In this case, the pun is on {{w|map projection}} and {{w|projection (psychology)|projection}} in psychology. Psychological projection is an unconscious defense mechanism wherein a person who is uncomfortable with their own impulses denies having them and attributes them to other people, and blames these people for these impulses. The Sunglasses internet meme has been used [[:Category:Puts on sunglasses|in other comics]] as well.

==Transcript==
:What your favorite
:'''Map Projection'''
:says about you
:[All of these are organized as Title, a copy of the particular projection underneath, and what it says about you under that.]

:*Mercator
:**You're not really into maps.
:*Van der Grinten
:**You're not a complicated person. You love the Mercator projection; you just wish it weren't square. The Earth's not a square, it's a circle. You like circles. Today is gonna be a good day!
:*Robinson
:**You have a comfortable pair of running shoes that you wear everywhere. You like coffee and enjoy The Beatles. You think the Robinson is the best-looking projection, hands down.
:*Dymaxion
:**You like Isaac Asimov, XML, and shoes with toes. You think the Segway got a bad rap. You own 3D goggles, which you use to view rotating models of better 3D goggles. You type in Dvorak.
:*Winkel-Tripel
:**National Geographic adopted the Winkel-Tripel in 1998, but you've been a W-T fan since ''long'' before "Nat Geo" showed up. You're worried it's getting played out, and are thinking of switching to the Kavrayskiy. You once left a party in disgust when a guest showed up wearing shoes with toes. Your favorite musical genre is "Post–".
:*Goode Homolosine
:**They say mapping the Earth on a 2D surface is like flattening an orange peel, which seems enough to you. You like easy solutions.You think we wouldn't have so many problems if we'd just elect ''normal'' people to Congress instead of Politicians. You think airlines should just buy food from the restaurants near the gates and serve ''that'' on board. You change your car's oil, but secretly wonder if you really ''need'' to.
:*Hobo-Dyer
:**You want to avoid cultural imperialism, but you've heard bad things about Gall-Peters. You're conflict-averse and buy organic. You use a recently-invented set of gender-neutral pronouns and think that what the world needs is a revolution in consciousness.
:*Plate Carrée (Equirectangular)
:**You think this one is fine. You like how X and Y map to latitude and longitude. The other projections overcomplicate things. You want me to stop asking about maps so you can enjoy dinner.
:*A Globe!
:**Yes, you're very clever.
:*Waterman Butterfly
:**Really? You know the Waterman? Have you seen the 1909 Cahill Map it's based— ...You have a framed reproduction at home?! Whoa. ...Listen, forget these questions. Are you doing anything tonight?
:*Peirce Quincuncial
:**You think that when we look at a map, what we really see is ourselves. After you first saw ''Inception'', you sat silent in the theater for six hours. It freaks you out to realize that everyone around you has a skeleton inside them. You ''have'' really looked at your hands.
:*Gall-Peters
:**I ''hate'' you.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Maps‏‎]]
[[Category:Dvorak]]
[[Category:Puts on sunglasses]]
[[Category:Puns]]
[[Category:Aviation]]

977: Map Projections

2023-01-15T17:13:42Z

172.70.162.46: /* Goode Homolosine */

{{comic
| number = 977
| date = November 14, 2011
| title = Map Projections
| before = [[#Explanation|↓ Skip to explanation ↓]]
| image = map_projections.png
| titletext = What's that? You think I don't like the Peters map because I'm uncomfortable with having my cultural assumptions challenged? Are you sure you're not... ::puts on sunglasses:: ...projecting?
}}
{{TOC}}
==Explanation==
{{w|Map projection}}, or how to represent the spherical Earth surface onto a flat support (paper, screen...) to have a usable map, is a long-time issue with very practical aspects (navigation, geographical shapes and masses visualization, etc.) as well as very scientific/mathematical ones, involving geometry or even abstract algebra among other things. There is no universal solution to this problem: Any 2D map projection will always distort in a way the spherical reality. Many projections have been proposed in various contexts, each intending to minimize distortions for specific uses (for nautical navigation, for aerial navigation, for landmass size comparisons, etc.) but having drawbacks from other points of view. Some of them are more frequently used than others in mass media and therefore more well-known than others, some are purely historical and now deprecated, some are very obscure, etc.

[[Randall]] suggests here the idea that someone's "favorite" map projection can reveal aspects of their personality, then goes through a series of them to show what they can mean.

He may actually believe that all map projections are in a way bad. This could be inferred from the fact that he much later began publishing a series of [[:Category:Bad Map Projections|Bad Map Projections]].
===Mercator===
[[File:MercatorProjection.jpg|frame|The Mercator projection]]
The {{w|Mercator projection}} was introduced by Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator in 1569. The main purpose of this map is to preserve compass bearings; for example 13 degrees east of north will be 13 degrees clockwise from the ray pointing toward the top of the map, at every point. A mathematical consequence is the mapping is conformal, i.e. if two roads meet at a certain angle on the surface of the Earth, they will meet at that same angle on the map. It also follows that at every point the vertical and horizontal scales are the same, so locally i.e. considering only a small part of the map, geographical features (shapes, angles) are well represented, which helps a lot in recognizing them on-the-field, or for local navigation in that small part only. For this reason, that projection (or a close variant) is used in several online mapping services (such as Google Maps), which means that it is frequently encountered by the general public. A straight line on the map corresponds to a course of constant bearing (direction), which was very useful for nautical navigation in the past (and thus made that projection very well-known).

However, from a global point of view, this projection is radically incorrect in how it shows the size of landmasses (for instance, Antarctica and Greenland seem gigantic), and furthermore, it always excludes a small region around each pole (otherwise the map would be of infinite height), so it doesn't provide a complete solution for the problem of map projection. The comic implies that people who like that projection aren't very interested with map issues, and typically use what they are offered without thinking much about it.

{{clear}}

===Van der Grinten===
[[File:VanDerGrintenProjection.jpg|frame|The Van der Grinten projection]]
The {{w|Van der Grinten projection}} is not much better than the Mercator. It was adopted by {{w|National Geographic}} in 1922 and was used until they updated to the Robinson projection in 1988.

The Van der Grinten projection is circular as opposed to the Mercator projection. The fictional person believes a circular map is more fitting to the real Earth's three-dimensional spherical nature because both are round. This belief fails to recognize that a two-dimensional circle has very little in common with the surface of a sphere, and thus this projection still causes a vast distortion of space and area. Because of this, Randall implies the Van der Grinten enthusiast to be optimistic and childishly simple-minded (e.g. "you like circles").

{{clear}}

===Robinson===
[[File:RobinsonProjection.jpg|frame|The Robinson projection]]
The {{w|Robinson projection}} was developed by {{w|Arthur H. Robinson}} as a map that was supposed to look nice and is often used for classroom maps. National Geographic switched to this projection in 1988, and used it for ten years, switching to the {{w|Winkel tripel projection|Winkel-Tripel}} in 1998.

{{w|The Beatles}} was a rock band that enjoyed great commercial success in the 1960s, and are widely considered the best act ever in the genre of popular music. The Beatles, coffee, and running shoes are all things that are very commonly enjoyed and largely uncontroversial, as well as being comforting. Liking these specific things suggests an ordinary, easygoing lifestyle paralleled by the projection.

{{clear}}

===Dymaxion===
[[File:DymaxionProjection.jpg|frame|The Dymaxion projection]]
Also called the Fuller Map, the {{w|Dymaxion map}} takes a sphere and projects it onto an icosahedron, that is a polyhedron with 20 triangular faces. It is far easier to unwrap an icosahedron than it is to unwrap a sphere into a 2D object and has very little skewing of the poles. {{w|Buckminster Fuller}} was an eccentric futurist who believed, for example, that world maps should allow no conception of "up" or "down". He was therefore more than happy to defy people's expectations about maps in the pursuit of mathematical accuracy.

Randall associates the projection to geek subculture and niche markets:
*{{w|Isaac Asimov}} was an American science-fiction writer, who (as well as publishing many textbooks) is considered the father of the modern concept of robots. He invented the {{w|Three Laws of Robotics}}. He also worked on more than 500 books throughout his career.
*{{w|XML}} is the eXtensible Markup Language. It is used to represent data in a format that machines can read and understand, as well as being human-readable. In practice, XML is cumbersome to read.
*{{w|Vibram FiveFingers|Toed shoes}} are a [[1065: Shoes|favorite]] of Randall's to pick on. In society they are seen as a {{w|geek}} clothing item.
*Brought to the world by {{w|Dean Kamen}}, the {{w|Segway PT}} was supposed to be a device that changed the way cities were built. In reality, most jurisdictions have put in place rules specifically against Segways, making them a frustration to own and use within the law (in some states in Australia, it is illegal to use them on public footpaths or roads). Also, the former owner of {{w|Segway Inc.}}, the late {{w|Jimi Heselden}}, accidentally rode his Segway off a cliff in 2010. Ninebot, then owner of the Segway brand, announced in 2020 that the flagship 2-wheeled self-balancing vehicle would be discontinued.
*At the time of comic release, 3D goggles, nowadays widely known as {{w|Virtual reality headset|VR headsets}}, were considered a gimmick at best. The original idea is as old as 3D graphics, but it never really took off until mid-2010s. Earlier products were very unwieldy and offered poor graphics quality, so no one took this technology seriously.
*{{w|Dvorak Simplified Keyboard|Dvorak}} is an alternate keyboard layout to {{w|QWERTY}}. According to legend, QWERTY was invented to help keep manual typewriters from jamming (by placing the most used keys far from each other) but Dr. {{w|August Dvorak}} performed many studies and found the mathematically optimal keyboard layout to reduce finger travel for right handed typists. While some claim Dvorak is technically better than QWERTY, QWERTY had become the standard. Most keyboards were laid out in QWERTY format, but a lot of software exists to remap the keys to DVORAK for those interested in typing faster. Retraining the brain to use Dvorak takes perhaps a week. It has become a [[:Category:Dvorak|recurrent theme]] on xkcd.

{{clear}}

===Winkel-Tripel===
[[File:Winkel-TripelProjection.jpg|frame|The Winkel Tripel projection]]
Proposed by Oswald Winkel in 1921, the {{w|Winkel tripel projection}} tried to reduce a set of three (German: Tripel) main problems with map projections: area, direction, and distance. The {{w|Kavrayskiy VII projection|Kavrayskiy projection}} is very similar to the Winkel Tripel and was used by the USSR, but very few in the Western world know of it.

The comic links this projection to {{w|hipster}} subculture. The hipster stereotype is to avoid conforming to mainstream fashions. "Post-" refers to a variety of musical genres such as {{w|post-punk}}, {{w|post-grunge}}, {{w|post-minimalism}}, {{w|post-rock}}, etc. that branch off of other genres, and are generally considered less accessible than the genres that spawned them. Liking a genre just called "post-" implies that the listener prefers music that is less mainstream, and may have that as the only criterion for listening.

;Trivia
*In German "Winkel-Tripel-Projektion" means Winkel's triple projection, and therefore the hyphen shouldn't be there: "Winkel Tripel" or "Winkel tripel".
*This projection was later used in [[2242: Ground vs Air]].
{{clear}}

===Goode Homolosine===
[[File:GoodeHomolosineProjection.jpg|frame|The Goode Homolosine projection]]
The {{w|Goode homolosine projection}} takes a different approach to skewing a sphere into a roughly circular surface. An orange peel can be taken from an orange and flattened with fair success; this is roughly the procedure that {{w|John Paule Goode}} followed in creating this projection. Randall is suggesting that people who like this map also prefer relatively easy solutions to other things in life, despite those solutions having nuanced problems that are more difficult to address.

People often make arguments that if normal people ran the United States, then the US wouldn't be in the trouble it is. This is from the belief that career politicians are simply out to make money and will only act in the interest of their constituency when their continued easy life is threatened (usually around election time). While some form of this view is very common and probably pretty much correct, Randall is saying that someone who likes this map may take this to extremes.

Airline food is another, much maligned, problem. How do you store enough food to feed people on long airplane trips? What kind of food can be served in an enclosed, low-air-pressure environment? The common solution is to use some kind of prepackaged, reheated meal. Randall is saying that the people in favor of the Goode Homolosine wonder why the airlines don't simply order meals from the restaurants in the airport, store that food, and serve it, rather than using bland reheated food. However, this seemingly-obvious solution ignores how being in an airplane dulls your sense of taste. Airplane food is actually over seasoned for eating on the ground, meaning that if airlines switched to restaurant food it would probably taste even blander. There would also be issues with acquiring special meals (for example, vegetarian, Kosher, and Halal meals), especially if suitable restaurants were not in close range to the airport.

Older cars burned oil like mad fiends, and oil back then would become corrosive to the innards of an engine, so oil had to be changed often. But, with the introduction of synthetic motor oil and better designed engines, new cars only need their oil changed about every 10,000 to 15,000 miles. A common conspiracy theory is that modern automobile oil manufacturers still recommend that car owners change their oil every 3,000-5,000 miles to "drum" up more business, even though that frequency is unnecessary.

All of these references suggest that people who like the Goode Homolosine projection are fans of simple solutions to problems. However, while the solutions appear to be an easy, common-sense solution, they all rely on over-simplifying the problem, and ignoring any problems introduced by the solution itself. For instance: the restaurants might have trouble making enough food for the whole plane, and it could get cold before being served; the air conditions [http://www.nbcnews.com/health/one-reason-airline-food-so-bad-your-own-tastebuds-6C10823522 aboard planes] can affect taste, so airlines say they optimize for this; there is no such thing as a "normal" person, and if there were, they would have virtually no chance at actually getting into government office and/or may not have prior political experience that would be helpful for congress; and the Goode Homolosine projection, while mostly resembling a flattened orange peel as suggested by the earlier analogy, does indeed cut down on distortion, but also has serious problems of its own, such as leaving huge gaps of nothingness between the continents, making distances across the oceans difficult to visualize.

{{clear}}

===Hobo–Dyer===
[[File:Hobo-DyerProjection.jpg|frame|The Hobo–Dyer projection]]
The {{w|Hobo–Dyer projection}} was commissioned by Bob Abramms and Howard Bronstein and was drafted by Mick Dyer in 2002. It is a modified {{w|Behrmann projection}}. The goal was to be a more visually pleasing version of the Gall–Peters.

As is discussed in the Gall–Peters explanation, the Gall–Peters was developed to be equal area, so that economically disadvantaged areas can at least take comfort in the fact that their country is represented correctly by area on maps.

Randall associates the Hobo–Dyer projection to "crunchy granola" — a stereotype associated with vegetarianism, environmental activism, anti-war activism, liberal political leanings, and some traces of {{w|hippie}} culture.

With feminism becoming mainstream and non-binary genders being more widely accepted, some have begun to invent gender-neutral pronouns so that when referring to a person whose gender is not known they cannot be offended by being referred to by the wrong pronouns. In {{w|Middle English}} 'they' and 'their' were {{w|Singular they|accepted genderless pronouns that could replace 'he', 'she'}} as well as be used to represent a crowd, but this usage is considered by some to be grammatically incorrect because of the plural/singular debate ([https://www.merriam-webster.com/video/the-awkward-case-of-his-or-her stupid Victorian Grammarians!]). There have been {{w|gender-neutral pronoun#Invented pronouns|many attempts at popularizing invented gender-neutral pronouns}} and they are beginning to achieve some degree of success in the mainstream.

{{clear}}

===Plate Carrée===
[[File:PlateCarreeProjection.jpg|frame|The Plate Carrée projection]]
Also known as the {{w|Equirectangular projection}}, it has apparently been in use since approximately 100 AD. The benefit of this projection is that latitude and longitude can be used as x,y coordinates. This makes it especially easy for computers to graph data on top of it.

According to the comic, the projection appeals to people who find much beauty in simplicity.

{{clear}}

===A Globe!===
[[File:GlobeProjection.jpg|frame|The Globe "projection"]]
In any good discussion there has to be at least one smart-ass.{{Citation needed}} This is a comic about map projections, that is, the science of taking a sphere and flattening it into 2 dimensions. The smart-ass believes that we shouldn't even try: a sphere is, tautologically, the perfect representation of a sphere.

To quote ''{{w|The Princess Bride}}'': "Yes, you're very smart. Shut up."

A globe is, obviously, the "map projection" used by {{w|Google Earth}} when zoomed out.

{{clear}}

===Waterman butterfly===
[[File:WatermanButterflyProjection.jpg|frame|The Waterman Butterfly projection]]
Similar to the Dymaxion, the {{w|Waterman butterfly projection}} turns a sphere into an octahedron, and then unfolds the net of the octahedron, which was devised by mathematician {{w|Waterman polyhedron|Steve Waterman}} based upon the work of {{w|Bernard J.S. Cahill}}.

Bernard Cahill published a [http://www.genekeyes.com/B.J.S._CAHILL_RESOURCE.html butterfly map] in 1909. Steve Waterman probably has the only extant "ready to go" map following the same general principles, though Gene Keys may not be far behind. Waterman has a poem with graphics in a similar vein to this xkcd comic that is worth reading.[http://web.archive.org/web/20120118095915/http://watermanpolyhedron.com/worldmap.html]

[https://www.degruyter.com/downloadpdf/j/pcr.2016.48.issue-4/pcr-2016-0014/pcr-2016-0014.pdf Polyhedral projections] like Cahill, Dymaxion or Waterman typically offer better accuracy of size, shape and area than flat projections, at the expense of compass directionality, connectedness, and other complications.

The joke is that the person responding deeply understands map projections; anyone who knows of this projection is a person that Randall would like to get to know.

{{clear}}

===Peirce quincuncial===
[[File:PeirceQuincuncialProjection.jpg|frame|The Peirce Quincuncial projection]]
The {{w|Peirce quincuncial projection}} was devised by {{w|Charles Sanders Peirce}} in 1879 and uses {{w|complex analysis}} to make a {{w|conformal mapping}} of the Earth, that conforms except for four points which would make up the midpoints of sides and lie on equator (the equator is represented by a square and the corners connect the sides in the middle.)

{{w|Inception}} was a 2010 movie about {{w|meta}} {{w|lucid dream}}ing. It has a complex story that is difficult to follow and leaves the viewer with many questions at the end, and almost always needs to be watched multiple times to be understood.

The human brain is not well developed to deal with oddly obvious things. One example is that everyone has a skeleton, but everyone is surprised to see a part of their body represented by an X-ray. Another is the fascinating complexity of the human hand, a machine which is amazingly complex, driven by a complex interplay of electrical and chemical signals; yet is the size of the hand and so useful. A fascination with or fixation on {{tvtropes|ContemplatingYourHands|such thoughts}} is often associated with an altered state of mind brought on by marijuana consumption. Therefore, Randall may be implying that this map would appeal to stoners.

{{clear}}

===Gall–Peters===
[[File:Gall-PetersProjection.jpg|frame|The Gall–Peters projection]]
The {{w|Gall–Peters projection}} is mired in controversy, surprisingly for a map. {{w|James Gall}}, a 19th-century clergyman, presented this projection in 1855 before the {{w|British Association for the Advancement of Science}}. In 1967, the filmmaker {{w|Arno Peters}} created the same projection and presented it to the world as a "new invention" that put poorer, less powerful countries into their rightful proportions (as opposed to the Mercator). Peters played the marketing game and got quite a few followers of his map by saying it had "absolute angle conformality," "no extreme distortions of form," and was "totally distance-factual" in an age when society was very concerned about social justice. All of these claims were in fact false. The Mercator projection distorts size in favor of shape, and Gall-Peters distorts shape in favor of size, being especially inaccurate at the equator and the poles.

Anyone who loves such a politically charged map that has become popular by way of marketing stunts and false claims, Randall would rather not have anything to do with. Alternatively Randall just dislikes this map projection so much due to the above mentioned major inaccuracies, that he hates anyone who likes it.

{{clear}}

===Title text===
The title text makes a joke that goes to the familiar meme from ''{{w|CSI: Miami}}'', in which the star, David Caruso starts a sentence, then puts on his sunglasses and ends the sentence with a corny pun. In this case, the pun is on {{w|map projection}} and {{w|projection (psychology)|projection}} in psychology. Psychological projection is an unconscious defense mechanism wherein a person who is uncomfortable with their own impulses denies having them and attributes them to other people, and blames these people for these impulses. The Sunglasses internet meme has been used [[:Category:Puts on sunglasses|in other comics]] as well.

==Transcript==
:What your favorite
:'''Map Projection'''
:says about you
:[All of these are organized as Title, a copy of the particular projection underneath, and what it says about you under that.]

:*Mercator
:**You're not really into maps.
:*Van der Grinten
:**You're not a complicated person. You love the Mercator projection; you just wish it weren't square. The Earth's not a square, it's a circle. You like circles. Today is gonna be a good day!
:*Robinson
:**You have a comfortable pair of running shoes that you wear everywhere. You like coffee and enjoy The Beatles. You think the Robinson is the best-looking projection, hands down.
:*Dymaxion
:**You like Isaac Asimov, XML, and shoes with toes. You think the Segway got a bad rap. You own 3D goggles, which you use to view rotating models of better 3D goggles. You type in Dvorak.
:*Winkel-Tripel
:**National Geographic adopted the Winkel-Tripel in 1998, but you've been a W-T fan since ''long'' before "Nat Geo" showed up. You're worried it's getting played out, and are thinking of switching to the Kavrayskiy. You once left a party in disgust when a guest showed up wearing shoes with toes. Your favorite musical genre is "Post–".
:*Goode Homolosine
:**They say mapping the Earth on a 2D surface is like flattening an orange peel, which seems enough to you. You like easy solutions.You think we wouldn't have so many problems if we'd just elect ''normal'' people to Congress instead of Politicians. You think airlines should just buy food from the restaurants near the gates and serve ''that'' on board. You change your car's oil, but secretly wonder if you really ''need'' to.
:*Hobo-Dyer
:**You want to avoid cultural imperialism, but you've heard bad things about Gall-Peters. You're conflict-averse and buy organic. You use a recently-invented set of gender-neutral pronouns and think that what the world needs is a revolution in consciousness.
:*Plate Carrée (Equirectangular)
:**You think this one is fine. You like how X and Y map to latitude and longitude. The other projections overcomplicate things. You want me to stop asking about maps so you can enjoy dinner.
:*A Globe!
:**Yes, you're very clever.
:*Waterman Butterfly
:**Really? You know the Waterman? Have you seen the 1909 Cahill Map it's based— ...You have a framed reproduction at home?! Whoa. ...Listen, forget these questions. Are you doing anything tonight?
:*Peirce Quincuncial
:**You think that when we look at a map, what we really see is ourselves. After you first saw ''Inception'', you sat silent in the theater for six hours. It freaks you out to realize that everyone around you has a skeleton inside them. You ''have'' really looked at your hands.
:*Gall-Peters
:**I ''hate'' you.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Maps‏‎]]
[[Category:Dvorak]]
[[Category:Puts on sunglasses]]
[[Category:Puns]]
[[Category:Aviation]]

2719: Hydrogen Isotopes

2023-01-06T16:43:03Z

172.70.162.46: /* Explanation */ Typo, commas

{{comic
| number = 2719
| date = January 2, 2023
| title = Hydrogen Isotopes
| image = hydrogen_isotopes_2x.png
| imagesize = 442x250px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Oops, All Neutrons is also known as Neutral Quadrium, Nydnonen, and Goth Tritium.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a BREAK ROOM DE BROGLIE MICROWAVE USER. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

{{W|Hydrogen}} is the simplest of the chemical atoms, usually consisting of an electron orbiting a lone proton, but has two other naturally occurring {{w|isotope}}s. This comic shows real and humorously fictional forms of hydrogen, generally depicted according to the {{w|Discovery of the neutron#Proton–neutron model of the nucleus|Chadwick model}} of the atom; see [[2100: Models of the Atom]] for details.

{| class="wikitable"
! "Isotope"
! Real?
! Description
|-
|Hydrogen
|Yes
|Hydrogen-1 is the most common isotope of hydrogen, with one proton and one electron, ordinarily depicted with the electron orbiting the central proton. It is also occasionally known as protium.
|-
|Deuterium
|Yes
|{{w|Deuterium}} is the second most common isotope of hydrogen, with one electron and both a neutron and proton in its nucleus. About one of every 6,760 hydrogen atoms in seawater is deuterium. Its chemical symbol is D, or [[2614: 2|2H]], and it's also called heavy hydrogen or hydrogen-2.
|-
|Tritium
|Yes
|{{w|Tritium}} is the third most common isotope of hydrogen, with an electron orbiting a nucleus of one proton and two neutrons to give it an atomic mass of about three {{w|Dalton (unit)|daltons}}. It is radioactive with a half-life of about twelve years and is very rare (but not as rare as unbound "instant hydrogen" neutrons). It can also be designated as hydrogen-3, with the symbol T or, more often, 3H.
|-
|Ium
|Only in the lab
|This is a free electron orbiting around nothing. Following the naming of the heavier hydrogen isotopes, where a prefix designating the number of {{w|nucleons}} is followed by the suffix "-ium", the lack of a nucleus is designated here by the absence of a prefix. A free electron will not circle around nothing but ''will'' react to electromagnetic fields. A {{w|Penning trap}} can confine electrons to move in circles.
|-
|Wheelium
|No
|This fictional form consists of a proton, electron and neutron orbiting around nothing, with the appearance of all rotating as if on a wheel rim. The neutron could bind to the proton, but will more likely {{w|Elastic_scattering#Nuclear particle physics|elastically scatter}} away.
|-
|Instant hydrogen (ready in 15 minutes)
|Yes, but rare[https://radioactivity.eu.com/phenomenon/neutronic_radiation]
|This is just a single neutron. An unbound neutron will decay into a proton, an electron and an antineutrino, with a mean lifetime of just under fifteen minutes. The proton and electron ''can'' form into a hydrogen atom, but that only happens [https://van.physics.illinois.edu/ask/listing/1207 about four times in a million]. The name is likely a reference to "instant" food, such as noodles, which are reduced for convenience and can be quickly reconstituted when required.
|-
|Hydrogen (maximum strength)
|No
|This fictional isotope consists of an electron, a proton and what appear to be at least 14 neutrons. It can not be created by natural or artificial means{{Actual citation needed}} but, if it was, it would immediately decay by {{w|Nuclear drip line|dripping}} most all of the neutrons away and emitting a large amount of energy. "Maximum strength" may be a reference to over-the-counter medicines that contain the largest quantity of active ingredients permitted.
|-
|Oops, All Neutrons
|Extremely unlikely
|This fictional form consists of four neutrons, with one orbiting around a group of three. As the existence of {{w|tetraneutron|tetraneutrons}} is still uncertain, their possible configurations are unknown, but the depicted configuration is very unlikely given the characteristics of fundamental forces. The name is probably a reference to an American breakfast cereal called {{w|Cap'n Crunch#Variations|Oops! All Berries}}, which has also been referenced in [[2256]].
|}

The title text provides three other names for Oops, All Neutrons:
# "Neutral Quadrium": {{w|Isotopes_of_hydrogen#Hydrogen-4|Quadrium}} is the extremely rare artificial isotope hydrogen-4, with a proton and three neutrons.[https://www.chem.ccu.edu.tw/~hu/Web_Lib/articles/Muonium+H2_Science_2011.pdf][https://www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/GodesRcontrolled.pdf] The proton and electron have been replaced with neutrons.
# "Nydnonen" is the word "hydrogen" with three consonants replaced by the letter 'n' so that it has four of them, representing the four neutrons.
# "Goth Tritium": All the particles in the depiction are black, resembling typical {{w|gothic fashion}}, and in the same configuration as the particles of tritium.

==Transcript==
:[Eight drawings of different versions of hydrogen atoms are shown. They are arranged in two rows of four. The depictions use the planetary model version with for instance a negative electron (with a "-" written inside a small circle) orbiting a positive proton (with a "+" written inside a larger circle) and a black neutron depicted as a circle of the same size as the neutron, as in the second atom - Deuterium. Each has a label underneath. Here, they are listed in reading order:]
:[An electron orbiting a proton:]
:Hydrogen

:[An electron orbiting a proton connected with a neutron:]
:Deuterium

:[An electron orbiting a proton connected with two neutrons, so that they form a triangle:]
:Tritium

:[An electron orbiting nothing:]
:Ium

:[An electron, a proton and a neutron placed equidistant from each other on the same circular orbit around nothing:]
:Wheelium

:[A single neutron:]
:Instant Hydrogen (ready in 15 minutes)

:[An electron orbiting a proton connected with many neutrons, 13 visible with six touching the proton which are in front. Four more are close to those six and mostly shown and then three are only just visible behind the others. Looking closely there are also two smaller dots near the edge indicating at least two more, for 15 that can be seen. And several more would be behind the visible neutrons if this forms a spherical shape. The electron's orbit just barely goes around the outer neutrons:]
:Hydrogen (maximum strength)

:[Four neutrons, arranged like the particles in Tritium but with a neutron orbiting a triangle of neutrons.]
:Oops, All Neutrons

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Charts]]
[[Category:Physics]]
[[Category:Chemistry]]

2715: Pando

2022-12-23T13:23:11Z

172.70.162.46: /* Explanation */ ...no, looks like I didn't disturb much, that I didn't intend to disturb. And found a minor typo as an excuse to make this statement that (whatever anyone else wants to do) I'm happy with how my EC merge attempt sorted itself out.. ;)

{{comic
| number = 2715
| date = December 23, 2022
| title = Pando
| image = pando_2x.png
| imagesize = 422x372px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The presents under the tree are actually a single gift connected by an underground ribbon system.
}}

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

{{w|Pando_(tree)|Pando}} is a {{w|Populus tremuloides|quaking aspen}} tree colony in {{w|Fishlake National Forest}}, Utah. Depending on how you measure[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWAA-SrrFUQ], Pando is the largest living organsim on earth, and is thereby also the largest tree on earth. (By dry mass (Weight not including water), Pando is the largest living thing humans have found. There is [https://www.forbes.com/sites/linhanhcat/2019/02/22/largest-organism-in-the-world/?sh=43fdf2a444ac one fungus in Oregon] which may weigh more including water, but that fungus is not a tree)

Pando is a Tree colony, a type of {{w|Clonal colony}} made of trees. Clonal colonies all form from the same seed or other origin, and are all genetically identical. Tree colonies spread using their extensive root system. Under all trees there are {{w|Root|roots}}, which gather nutrients and water from soil. On clonal trees (Such as the Quaking Aspen, Pando's Species), when roots from one tree surface they can form another tree/stalk. This additonal stalk is a genetic clone of the original. This clone then grows it's own root network, and where they surface they too form more clones. However, crucially, the roots between the clones do not naturally seperate, so all clones naturally stay attached. Each clone has a limited lifespan, only a few decades/centuries, but the colony can live for millenia. For example, the only known wild example of {{w|Lomatia tasmanica|''Lomatia tasmanica'', aka King's lomatia,}} is a clonal shrub thought to be at least 43,600 years old, and Pando itself is thought to be around 14,000 years old.

{{w|Christmas}} is a celebration on the 25th of December, traditionally celebrating the birth of {{w|Jesus}}, but that festival being built heavily upon pagan traditions[https://chefin.com.au/blog/these-6-christmas-traditions-are-actually-pagan-customs/] and annual social customs, then arguably converted into a far more secular event (with or without rampant consumerism). This comic was published on the 23rd of December, 2 days until Christmas, or [[Christmas Eve Eve]]

The concept of a {{w|Christmas tree}}, itself, is rooted in various pre-Christian folkloric traditions and, in the modern era, may be adapted or adopted as required by local and personal circumstances, and need not be an {{w|Evergreen}} fir tree with an angel (or star) atop, but merely any handy plant (or artificial substitute) strewn with such decorations and/or {{w|Christmas lights|lights}} as the owner wishes. Because humans are, well, humans, people and places often compete to hold the record for the largest christmas tree. At time of publishing (And writing), the tallest christmas tree is officially a 64.36m (221ft) tall {{w|Douglas fir}} that was displayed in {{w|Northgate Station (shopping mall)|Northgate Shopping Center}}{{Actual citation needed}}, Seattle, WA in 1950[https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/77271-tallest-christmas-tree][https://www.historylink.org/File/21359]. The most widely spread, however, is likely the [https://www.italybyevents.com/en/events/umbria/world-largest-christmas-tree-gubbio/ Christmas tree display] in {{w|Gubbio}}, a town in Umbria, Italy, where hundreds of trees on a mountain face are lit up with light to form a christmas tree shape.

Sidenote: A lot of articles say that the Gubbio tree has a Guinness world record. However, I can't find a citation for that. If anyone can, please add it. That would be appreciated.

In this comic, [[Randall]] proposes putting christmas lights all the way around Pando to turn into (Technically) a christmas tree. As Pando is the worlds largest tree then, if this plan were to be carried out, it would safely take the record and hold it for quite some time.

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

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:2711: Optimal Bowling

2022-12-16T12:56:52Z

172.70.162.46:

Who cares about rules? I mean, I'm pretty sure your score won't count according to rules if you bowl from establishment uphill from bowling alley. -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 05:36, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

If the ball has a diameter of 8.5 inches (multiplied by 2.54 and Pi makes about 67.8cm circumference) the rpm is also limited by the speed of light of the surface (reached at about 6.4x10^9rpm).

Please elaborate on how widespread the aforementioned destruction would be. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.38|172.71.154.38]] 10:50, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
: See What-If #1 (https://what-if.xkcd.com/1/) for reference. [[User:Elektrizikekswerk|Elektrizikekswerk]] ([[User talk:Elektrizikekswerk|talk]]) 11:01, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Randall is clearly overestimating the mass range at which "equipment damage" would occur. Even 10^3 kilos is a //car//. I'm pretty sure that throwing a bowling ball the mass of a car would do a lot of equipment damage. I believe the 10^10 to 10^20 range should be "widespread destruction" (already a category above) and between that and the Schwarzchild mass should be something like "all life on Earth destroyed" because 10^20 kilos is plenty large enough for a global killer asteroid (admittedly its velocity would be much smaller... but still, I don't see how you have 1% of the Moon's mass in bowling ball without wiping out all life on Earth). [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.175|172.70.85.175]] 11:20, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
: That's the joke :) The humour is in the understatement [[User:Xseo|Xseo]] ([[User talk:Xseo|talk]]) 11:51, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
::If the bowling ball is made from material on Earth having 1 % of the Moons mass concentrated in one city but without any speed should not have any wide impact on Earth. Probably alot for those in the city. the gravity changes locally, and surrounding area. But not massive destruction. If 1% of Moons mass was added to Earth I also do not think it would make much difference, as long as it was placed softly on Earth. --[[User:Kynde|Kynde]] ([[User talk:Kynde|talk]]) 12:26, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

For further edification: A 10^3 kg bowling ball traveling at 10^3 m/s is approximately equivalent to a shell fired from the main battery gun of a battleship. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.74|162.158.159.74]] 11:40, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
: Or maybe a cannonball...?[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 12:56, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

The aim graph is wrong, isn't it? I have never practiced bowling, but I am pretty sure I have seen videos explaining that you need to aim on the side, and the spin will bring the ball to strike the pin group with an angle, not head on. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.134.132|172.71.134.132]] 12:26, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
:It's not clear what the target is in the aim graph. If it's straight down the middle towards the headpin, you're right. But maybe it's aiming towards that optimal curve angle. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 14:50, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
:: on that note, what is assumed for the other 3 parameters as 1 is changed along the graph? 0? average? optimal? [[Special:Contributions/172.71.22.160|172.71.22.160]] 15:04, 15 December 2022 (UTC)Bumpf
:considering the whole graph covers everything up to and including facing away from the lane, it could be that the spike "at" 0 degrees encompasses a lot of fine grain control. After all being 5 degrees off center wouldn't show up much in a 360 degree span, but could make a decent difference on where the ball hits within a lane.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.134.96|172.70.134.96]] 15:59, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

Is there an extra gag in the fact all the numbers are on a logarithmic scale, or is that just so he can get to the absurdist values? [[Special:Contributions/172.68.174.164|172.68.174.164]] 16:52, 15 December 2022 (UTC)

I would like to know precisely how anybody scores a strike when their ball has 0 RPM!? Y'all playing on ice rinks!? --[[Special:Contributions/172.69.79.185|172.69.79.185]] 00:49, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
:I think "spin" is referring to horizontal spin (along the vertical axis), since "speed" is a separate graph. No spin then just means no curve. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.182.49|172.71.182.49]] 08:19, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

At the beginning it references "Ten Pin Bowling" by which I presume the author of that section was referring to "Duck Pin Bowling" which is the major form in the United States. There is also "Candle Pin Bowling" which is a different class of Ten Pin, but with very differently shaped pins and smaller balls without finger holes and mostly limited to small areas of the Northeast. Some of the physics is enough different that the curves would vary if they weren't so absurdly scaled already, in that sense the graphs are as applicable to Candle Pin as they are to Duck Pin. Of course, this is all in the extreme detail that's not really relevant to readers understanding, so I'm not sure if it needs to be explained. [[User:MAP|MAP]] ([[User talk:MAP|talk]]) 05:12, 16 December 2022 (UTC)
*No, I really meant {{w|ten-pin bowling}}. {{w|Duckpin bowling}} is a variation played regularly in only a few states, and {{w|candlepin bowling}} is yet another variation played in only a few states. But the kind of bowling most widely played in the U.S. is ten-pin bowling. See the respective Wikipedia articles linked in the preceding sentences. --[[Special:Contributions/172.71.254.94|172.71.254.94]] 08:17, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I'm surprised Randall didn't include a graph on ball size effect on your chances ;-) --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.129.138|162.158.129.138]] 09:51, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

Talk:Title text

2022-12-13T23:46:23Z

172.70.162.46:

Everyone except this wiki calls it ‘alt-text’, Randall himself included. See XKCD 45. I vote for changing all occurrences of title text in this wiki to alt-text. --[[Special:Contributions/173.245.51.212|173.245.51.212]] 20:55, 3 July 2014 (UTC)
: Randall also called it “title text” twice: [[442]], [[1045]]. —[[Special:Contributions/108.162.253.174|108.162.253.174]] 09:07, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
: The link doesn't give any evidence why calling this the 'alt text' is incorrect. But if you inspect the page source, you'll see Randall uses the 'title' attribute, rather than the 'alt' attribute for this purpose. {{unsigned|Accidus}}
:: This is because while a "title" shows up on mouseover, the "alt" shows up only if the image doesn't load, so you know what was supposed to be there. It'd be harder to cause the image not to load just to see a little extra joke. [[Special:Contributions/172.68.26.23|172.68.26.23]] 12:14, 22 January 2018 (UTC)
:::Please stop writing in all-capitals in your edit summaries. It sounds like you're shouting. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.93.105|162.158.93.105]] 08:33, 23 January 2018 (UTC)
:This is also because the "alt" attribute is older than the "title" attribute and most browsers used to show the value of "alt" as a tooltip if no "title" was given. --[[Special:Contributions/162.158.93.105|162.158.93.105]] 08:33, 23 January 2018 (UTC)

Are there actually any comics without title text? If not, I propose removing the first "almost." [[Special:Contributions/172.68.34.4|172.68.34.4]] 20:54, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Is it possible to simulate title text on the wiki for pictures? [[User:ColorfulGalaxy/Gallifreyan/SCG|ColorfulGalaxy]] [[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 20:13, 11 December 2022 (UTC)
:In what way? The standard comic-template already makes the title text an alt text (or whatever it is, tag-attribute-wise) to the image, if you hover/inspect the image. Which means a slow-loading page (whenever it's a bad connection) gives the placeholder TT ''and'' the subtitle TT, until the image is actually available. May depend upon browser/etc, but should be like that for most people. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.91.77|172.70.91.77]] 20:12, 12 December 2022 (UTC)
::Thanks, and what about title text for text? [[User:ColorfulGalaxy|ColorfulGalaxy]] ([[User talk:ColorfulGalaxy|talk]]) 07:48, 13 December 2022 (UTC)
:::I'm not sure what you even mean by that (unless it's that covered by the separate Transcript section), but you can ellucidate further if you wish. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 23:46, 13 December 2022 (UTC)

2705: Spacetime Soccer

2022-12-01T12:33:37Z

172.70.162.46: /* Transcript */

{{comic
| number = 2705
| date = November 30, 2022
| title = Spacetime Soccer
| image = spacetime_soccer_2x.png
| imagesize = 740x280px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = Spacetime Soccer, known outside the United States as '4D Football' is a now-defunct sport. Infamous for referee decisions hinging on inconsistent definitions of simultaneity, it is also known for the disappearance of many top players during... [more]
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a FOUR-DIMENSIONAL GOALIE - I still don't know what the offside rule actually is. I think it might... [more]. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
This comic proposes Spacetime Soccer, an impossible{{Citation needed}} sport consisting of a "regular" football field with a gravitational well in the center of it (although given the size of the indent presented, it would likely be spanning the size of planetary orbits). Not only would it be impossible for human players to travel through more than three spatial dimensions, it would also be very difficult to keep track of score and rules such as offsides. This comic was likely published in relation to the 2022 World Cup.

{{w|Offside (association football)|Offside}} is a description in soccer that applies to players who are in certain positions relative to the boundaries of the pitch, the ball, and the second-last opponent on the opposing team. Players in such positions are eligible for being judged guilty of an offside offence if they become involved in the ongoing play before rectifying their status. It is of special importance to know the different players' positions at the exact moment the ball gets passed, rather than when the passed ball may be received or the offside player is otherwise considered active. But in relativistic spacetime there is no universal definition of an exact moment, beyond a single point, as time may run at different speeds for multiple observers in varying situations (where they are moving relative to each other, are influenced by differing local gravity or – as seems very likely in this example – both).

The title text is written in the style of the beginning to a Wikipedia article on the topic. It mocks the fact that most countries in the world refer to the sport with that particular obscure offside rule as football (or some translation thereof, like fútbol or Fußball) while the USA call it soccer, which comes from the British shortening of "association football", because they already used the name "football" for gridiron football.

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

Some of the lines of a standard Association Football pitch are drawn on a "rubber sheet" visualisation of a gravity well in four dimensional spacetime. Visible features of the standard pitch are the outside borders, the goals and the small and large boxes around each. Absent are the corner quarter circles, the penalty spots and associated D, and the centre line. The central circle seems absent, but could be concealed by the curvature of the sheet. There are a number of other lines encircling and radial to the gravity well, they are visually identical to the familiar pitch markings so it is unclear whether these are intended to be drawn on the pitch or merely indications of the shape of the surface. A total of twenty figures can be seen on the pitch. Two are standing near the goal mouths, the rest are distributed around, and (as stick figures) it is impossible to say which are on each team or if one is the referee. A ball with motion lines is landing by the feet of one player who is running up one wing.

:Spacetime soccer got a lot of criticism for how many players fell into the gravity well, but what ultimately doomed it was the advanced mathematics required to figure out the offsides rule.

{{comic discussion}}

Talk:2705: Spacetime Soccer

2022-12-01T04:27:01Z

172.70.162.46:

Wow, that was fast {{unsigned ip|172.70.131.8|03:48, 1 December 2022‎}}
:What was? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 04:27, 1 December 2022 (UTC)

Talk:299: Aeris Dies

2022-11-30T02:21:02Z

172.70.162.46:

My first thought was that this isn't necessarily about Maggie dying. I think a person geeky and lonely enough would have this reaction even if Maggie only left her and didn't die. Also there is no clear reference to Maggie dying apart from being compared to Aeris. (I haven't gotten to this part of the game yet so I don't know if she dies enough to assume Maggie died too. I'd say thanks to Randall for the spoiler hadn't been this very comic the reason I started playing.) [[User:Matega|Matega]] ([[User talk:Matega|talk]]) 06:40, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

:I wondered about that too, but the statement "you can't bring her back" and the reference to her "old dresses" seem to imply that Maggie is, in fact, permanently dead. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.214.83|108.162.214.83]] 09:35, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
::Idunno... it would certainly make it a bit more creepy if she left him and he still had her "old dresses", though {{unsigned|Brettpeirce}}

Why is there doubt that Randall knew about the mod? He basically described it to a tee.{{unsigned|Flewk}}

Now that they're making an FFVII remake, I just thought of this. Since Aerith's death was so iconic and memorable that people went to such lengths to revive her, maybe they could revive her in a DLC that will piss off so many people for making it a DLC but they'll still buy it. It will sell like hot cakes. --FrigusAvis[[Special:Contributions/162.158.167.228|162.158.167.228]] 04:03, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

My wife, before she learned about unlimited cash hacks, would have her sim marry another sim, get him to climb into a swimming pool and then take out the ladder, so then he'd eventually drown and she'd gain all his resources, then do this again with another sim..and another. We're divorced now. —[[User:Kazvorpal|Kazvorpal]] ([[User talk:Kazvorpal|talk]]) 22:45, 3 November 2019 (UTC)
:Well, then... It could have turned out worse for you! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 02:21, 30 November 2022 (UTC)

477: Typewriter

2022-11-20T15:41:14Z

172.70.162.46: Someone was being stupid.

{{comic
| number = 477
| date = September 17, 2008
| title = Typewriter
| image = typewriter.png
| titletext = Somewhere in the world, my actual grandmothers are reading this and angrily exclaiming that I never write even malformed thank-you notes. DEAR GRANDMOMS: I AM SORRY! YOU ARE WONDERFUL PEOPLE AND THANK YOU FOR EVERYTHING LOVE reddit.com RANDALL.
}}

==Explanation==
[[Randall]] is writing a letter to his grandmother on a typewriter, thanking her for taking him and at least one other person on a trip. However, due to a habit he's developed from using a computer for so long, Randall inadvertently litters the letter with chunks of blank space followed by website URLs. As if through muscle memory, Randall periodically attempts to check the latest news by pressing a combination involving the Tab key, typing the URL of a specific website, then pressing a combination using the Tab key again.

On a computer, the ''Ctrl+Tab'' keyboard combination usually switches to between browser tabs within a window, such as between two {{w|Firefox}} tabs, while ''Alt+Tab'' switches between windows. However, there is only a simple ''Tab'' key on an old-fashioned typewriter. Pressing Tab there doesn't switch to another screen, it just moves the platen (the typewriter's cursor, so to speak) to the next tab stop, leaving a wide space before the next typing on the same piece of paper. So the key combination that would satisfy Randall's somewhat hyperactive impulses on a computer is dramatically different on a typewriter, where that key instead causes movement of the platen. So, he hits the tab key, types a URL, and hits the tab key again right in the middle of his letter. It also shows Randall's love of news and information websites.

The title text references that Randall's real grandmothers, upon seeing this comic, might feel bad that he doesn't write to them at all — not even poorly-written letters like in the comic. To remedy this, he writes a brief thank you note to his grandmothers... which also includes one ''Ctrl/Alt+Tab'' combination.

==List of websites==
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Website address
! Name of website
! Description
|-
| [http://www.cnn.com/ cnn.com]
| CNN
| News website
|-
| [http://www.reddit.com/ reddit.com]
| Reddit
| Discussion forums
|-
| [http://www.news.google.com/ news.google.com]
| Google News
| Collection of news websites
|-
| [http://www.boingboing.net/ boingboing.net]
| BoingBoing
| Blogging
|-
| [http://www.bbc.co.uk/ bbc.co.uk]
| BBC
| British Broadcasting Corporation's website
|-
| [http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/ fivethirtyeight.com]
| FiveThirtyEight
| News, mainly politics
|-
| [http://www.slashdot.org/ slashdot.org]
| Slashdot
| News and forums
|}

==Transcript==
:[A typewriter is shown with the following letter in it:]
<pre>
Dear Grandmom, cnn.com
I hope this reddit.com letter
finds you well. I wanted to say I
really news.google.com enjoyed the
trip you boingboing.net took us on,
and am looking forward to bbc.co.uk
visiting later fivethirtyeight.com
this year.
Love, slashdot.org

Your grandson,
</pre>

:[Caption below the panel:]
:I didn't realize how bad my habit of tabbing to Firefox every few seconds to check news sites had gotten until I tried writing on a typewriter.

{{comic discussion}}
[[Category:Comics featuring Randall Munroe]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Nate Silver]]

Talk:2699: Feature Comparison

2022-11-17T09:54:54Z

172.70.162.46:

The image has changed. Now Mastodon includes USER-RUN INSTANCES (though I believe it should also have a check next to DOESN'T REQUIRE CENTRAL SERVER).

I tried googling "wikipedia feature comparison chart". Instead of finding a page explaining how these charts work, I got a chart comparing different wiki softwares. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 23:22, 16 November 2022 (UTC)

Of course, it wouldn't be hard to make apps on smartphones support mesh networks ... however, the manufacturers and app developers prefer to work hard to make sure they don't work without being connected to internet and serving advertisement. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Direct Although ...] -- [[User:Hkmaly|Hkmaly]] ([[User talk:Hkmaly|talk]]) 00:25, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

There seems to be a lot of wrongness about this matrix. Besides that mastodon instances can be run by user (which is fixed):
* Mastodon does not support file transfer. You can only upload images, and ''not'' even all image formats—webp is not supported. Some other ActivityPub servers support file upload, but then it's not Mastodon.
* IRC also doesn't support file transfer afaik.
* Mastodon and SMS don't require a central server
* Discord, Reddit, and Slack doesn't have user-run instances
* Discord doesn't have builtin games last time I checked. The games are by the bots,

I don't know about Slack, but pretty much all of Discord and Reddit is user-run/moderated instances.
:That slash is doing a lot of work there. [[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.31|172.69.34.31]] 06:57, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

"IRC itself is a teleconferencing system, which (through the use of the client-server model) is well-suited to running on many machines in a distributed fashion. A typical setup involves a single process '''(the server) forming a central point''' for clients (or other servers) to connect to, performing the required message delivery/multiplexing and other functions." – J. Oikarinen, D. Reed; Internet Relay Chat Protocol; RFC 1459; May 1993. Emphasis added. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.154.158|172.71.154.158]] 01:45, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Notably, Mastodon ''eschews'' file transfer - audio specifically - for fear of enabling piracy (issue #7495). Tumblr would have a more comprehensive version of file transfer.
[[Special:Contributions/172.71.146.136|172.71.146.136]] 03:17, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

IRC has (X)DCC for File Transfers and for it's centralisation it depends on the deployment, the original network that became EFNet (Eris-Free Network) doesn't have a central server, but things like Libera and OFTC have centralised services for authentication and servers maintained by only one organisation. Btw for games on the fediverse (which Mastodon is part of) Misskey includes some, sadly they're centralised. [[User:Lanodan|Lanodan]] ([[User talk:Lanodan|talk]]) 03:40, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Tumblr does have group chats. They're publicly viewable by anyone, but only people in the group can send messages, so I think they still count as group chats.

It appears we are all having a [[386]] moment watching Randall finally be wrong about something. How dare he?! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.111.30|172.70.111.30]] 05:37, 17 November 2022 (UTC)
: Nobody wants to put this train wreck into the explanation, but someone has to. I'm guessing we're waiting for further corrections just in case.
[[Special:Contributions/172.69.34.31|ki172.69.34.31]] 06:57, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Discord did add games recently: https://discord.com/blog/server-activities-games-voice-watch-together
[[User:Spenc|Spenc]] ([[User talk:Spenc|talk]]) 07:28, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

He also just left out Matrix entirely, y'know I'm starting to think this isn't a serious comparison. --[[Special:Contributions/172.70.250.193|172.70.250.193]] 07:42, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Not sure what built-in would mean, but Slack has plenty of games you can install on it as an admin (Similar to Discord) [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.223|172.70.162.223]] 09:52, 17 November 2022 (UTC)

Also on April fool's days Tumblr occasionally have some sort of built-in game [[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.46|172.70.162.46]] 09:54, 17 November 2022 (UTC)