explain xkcd - User contributions [en]

Talk:3004: Wells

2024-10-30T08:45:06Z

172.70.46.108:

We definitely need some funny explanation for wells and boreholes. Come on, people, you know the drill! [[Special:Contributions/172.70.85.139|172.70.85.139]] 14:50, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
:insert laugh track here [[User:Psychoticpotato|P?sych??otic?pot??at???o ]] ([[User talk:Psychoticpotato|talk]]) 14:59, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
:Who're you calling a borehole? [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 15:15, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

plot convenience 💔 [[User:CalibansCreations|'''<span style="color:#ff0000;">Caliban</span>''']] ([[User talk:CalibansCreations|talk]]) 17:56, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Fortunately there aren't many Hg wells. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.134.243|162.158.134.243]] 18:05, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
:The only ones that existed are gone now, although they ''did'' survive an alien attack. [[User:Psychoticpotato|P?sych??otic?pot??at???o ]] ([[User talk:Psychoticpotato|talk]]) 01:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

FYI: the "Random" button currently seems to be broken. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.154.244|162.158.154.244]] 18:08, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
:Aaaaaaaaaand it's back again. huh. [[Special:Contributions/162.158.159.5|162.158.159.5]] 18:15, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The similarity with C&H is a bit superficial. Baby humans instinctively drink from their mother's breast, baby calves go to cow udders, and the similarity between the two fluids is pretty obvious. So it's not as random as drinking whatever clear liquid you find underground. [[User:Barmar|Barmar]] ([[User talk:Barmar|talk]]) 19:15, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
:While your logic does make sense on the surface, once you actally aply it.... the similarity between animals mating and humans is pretty obvious.... We stop drinking milk from our mothers as a child and drinking it again is considered very strange, so it would be even more strange to start drinking a different "mothers" milk. {{unsigned|Apollo11|22:39, 28 October 2024 (UTC))}}
:It's the same with the joke about eggs, if predators eat them, it's not far-fetched to think we might be able to as well [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.104|141.101.98.104]]

Seriously though, how did people discover wells? Some internet says from animals that dig for water, but it's still impressive [[Special:Contributions/141.101.98.104|141.101.98.104]]
: I imagine it started with an effort to "improve" on a natural spring, perhaps in desperation after the surface flow of one stopped. But that's conjecture. The {{w|Wells|Wikipedia}} article provides much information on what happened next. But not all clear liquids that come out of a well are potable (brines, for example). And it's fun, sort of, to conjecture what would have happened if 19th-century US rigs, drilling for oil, [https://www.dude-n-dude.com/2024/08/04/ai-oil-ill/ had hit methane instead].[[Special:Contributions/108.162.245.66|108.162.245.66]] 23:17, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
:: Reminds me of the first discovery of a "helium well". Traditionally, to mark the discovery of a gas-well you would chuck a burning bale of straw into the (closable) outlet to get a demonstrative flame. Then they {{w|File:Kansas_Helium_Marker.jpg|found one}} where the bale was extinguished, instead of the gas lit. Eventually they realised that there was helium in it (though incidental amounts, compared to the majority nitrogen that actually rendered the actual methane a slightly-below-combustable proportion), and it attained a new usefulness after the disappointment of not being the usually lucrative gas-strike they originally thought it was. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.26.55|172.71.26.55]] 00:13, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Maybe we need a category for "stuff that seems like it should not work"? I can recall [[2540: TTSLTSWBD]], [[2775: Siphon]], [[2115: Plutonium]]. Anything else? [[Special:Contributions/172.70.86.22|172.70.86.22]] 10:21, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
: I agree, theres been a few comics with simaliar punchlines, "the siphon glitch" for example [[User:Apollo11|Apollo11]] ([[User talk:Apollo11|talk]]) 15:57, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

The current explanation seems to have an awful lot of preamble on things that aren't about the comic before you get to the stuff that is about it (in the third paragraph. Feels like that could be significantly cut down, if not simply removed/moved to trivia.[[Special:Contributions/172.70.162.2|172.70.162.2]] 16:50, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
:Could be, but the original was basically "to get water, you dig a well (unless there's a river)". When the truth is that it's more complicated than that, and wells sort of fill in a gap in supply when natural water is unavailable or inappropriate (see also {{w|qanat}}s, etc, which I would have mentioned myself).
:I wouldn't know what to cut out from what's there without ignoring a significant bit of relevant explanation. It'd be a lot of little bits of streamlining, but some people much prefer just deleting chunks of paragraph and not reading what's left to make sure it still makes narrative sense. Yes, a completer history could by given in Trivia, but then I think it'd get even longer. [[Special:Contributions/172.71.26.55|172.71.26.55]] 17:16, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Anyone noticed how the comic's frame appears thinner than usual on the top and the sides? [[Special:Contributions/172.69.22.243|172.69.22.243]] 17:12, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Saying that something shouldn't be "surprising" because of the "complex systems" underlying it seems downright contradictory. It's surprising exactly ''because'' it is complex. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.46.108|172.70.46.108]] 08:45, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

3003: Sandwich Helix

2024-10-25T15:28:28Z

172.70.46.108: /* Explanation */ Grammar: "which" -> "whose" ("of which the" also works)

{{comic
| number = 3003
| date = October 25, 2024
| title = Sandwich Helix
| image = sandwich_helix_2x.png
| imagesize = 257x376px
| noexpand = true
| titletext = The number one rule of string manipulation is that youâ€™ve got to specify your encodings.
}}

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

This comic details an important issue in communication: even if the content of your message goes through, there might be important context that is necessary to correctly interpret it.

Communication is a way to convey ideas, and Cueball is explaining a concept of communication he calls a "Sandwich Helix", however when pressed on what that is, he says nobody knows -- indicating that over the years communication has failed to retain the meaning of this supposedly very important concept. The humor is that if this truly was the #1 rule of communication, communication should have been able to retain its meaning. On the basis that the number #1 rule about communication would probably be the ''most'' important rule, it might even be construed to be the rule about properly communicating all context (by some apparent analogy), which would he irony — but only if anyone still understood it.

The fictitious "Sandwich Helix" plays on another concept in communication, the "{{w|Compliment sandwich|Compliment Sandwich}}", wherein a statement of criticism is sandwiched between two complimentary statements in order to make the negative statement easier to accept. The difference is that the Compliment Sandwich is a communication technique which is well known and whose meaning has not been lost. A possible inspiration for the "helix" part is the {{w|Spiral model}} of software development, involving iteration and revisiting key stages to keep a project on track, with spirals often being {{w|Spiral#Helices|technically conflated with helices}}.

The title text contains several randomish characters where an apostrophe should be, as an example of a string that did NOT have its encoding handled properly. It is an example of {{w|Mojibake}}. Some special characters and symbols require a special encoding (such as Unicode, UTF-8, etc.) in order to be stored and displayed properly, and are encoded using the equivalent of multiple characters. If the code to display the text doesn't understand what encoding was used, you can get "garbage" similar to what is in the title text. In this case, the original character was probably <code>’</code>, which when encoded in UTF-8 and decoded in Windows-1252 becomes <code>â€™</code>. Similar garbage is seen in the title text of [[1683: Digital Data]].

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

:[Cueball, with his palm out, is standing in front of a class and facing Ponytail and Hairy, who are sitting at their classroom desks.]
:Cueball: Always remember the #1 rule of communication:
:Cueball: ''Sandwich Helix.''
:Ponytail: What does that mean?
:Cueball: Unfortunately, the context has been lost.
:Cueball: But we know the message, and that's the important part.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Ponytail]]
[[Category:Comics featuring Hairy]]

Talk:2835: Factorial Numbers

2023-09-29T22:30:32Z

172.70.46.108: i am angry for no reason

Number systems aren't real math, at least not serious math. They're an affectation. 99.9% of math is number-system-independent, so nobody should care about them. [[Special:Contributions/172.70.46.108|172.70.46.108]] 22:30, 29 September 2023 (UTC)